Transport mode preferences,risk perception and worry in a Norwegian urban population

The main aim of the present study was to compare risk perception among Norwegians (n = 512) living in the region of Oslo. This study was part of an ERANET 13 project entitled PETRIS, Perception of transport risk in France and Norway. The data collection was carried out in January 2011. The response rate was 51 percent. The results showed that respondents, divided in two groups according to their transport mode preferences, assessed differently risk perception in public and private transportation. Respondents who preferred collective transportation assessed the probability of experiencing criminality in collective transport modes as higher than those who preferred private modes. They were also more worried of experiencing accidents, criminality, and terror attacks in collective transportation. The relationship between transport mode preferences and use, risk perception and worry are discussed.     

Consumer adoption of RFID-enabled services. Applying an extended UTAUT model

In this article, an extended version of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is applied to explore the significance of various antecedents of acceptance of eight versions of a radio frequency identification (RFID) enabled service. The results show significant influences from performance expectancy, effort expectancy and technology anxiety on attitude to use RFID-enabled services, while facilitating conditions and attitude to use both have significant influences on intention to use the services. Looking into potential moderating influences, gender moderates most of the relationships in the model while age and experience with identification technology do not seem to be relevant moderators. Exploring the potential moderating influence of context experience, experience of the service context is found to moderate some of the relationships in the model. Managerial implications point to the importance of developing useful and user-friendly services and of communicating the user friendliness to potential customers to avoid the potential negative influence of technology anxiety. Service development and market communication should be sensitive to gender and context experience.     

Explicit solution for the natural frequency of structures with partial viscoelastic treatment

The free vibration characteristics of structures with viscoelastic treatment are represented by the complex-valued natural frequencies. The assumed single mode representation associated with the low-frequency stiffness of the viscoelastic treatment is modified by a correction term representing the influence from residual vibration modes. The correction term is eliminated in terms of the corresponding natural frequency associated with the high-frequency stiffness of the viscoelastic treatment, whereby an expression is obtained for the complex-valued natural frequency, which only requires the solution of two real-valued eigenvalue problems.     

Viscosity reduction of isotonic solutions of the photosensitizer TPCS2a by cyclodextrin complexation

Meso-tetraphenyl chlorin disulphonate (TPCS_2a) is a photosensitizer (PS) particularly developed and patented for use in the technology of photochemical internalization (PCI) against cancer. TPCS_2a is known to aggregate in aqueous media even at low concentrations (≥0.1?µM) and to form a high-viscosity network at clinically relevant concentrations (mM). The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of two hydroxypropylated cyclodextrin derivatives of beta and gamma type, respectively i.e. HPβCD and HPγCD, on the aggregation and solubilization of TPCS_2a in isotonic solutions. Samples containing micromolar concentrations of TPCS_2a were studied spectrophotometrically, while samples containing a clinical relevant concentration (10?mM?=?9?mg/ml) of TPCS_2a were evaluated by dynamic viscosity measurements. HPβCD was determined to be a more suitable solubilizer of TPCS_2a than HPγCD in aqueous media both in the absence and presence of salt. The complexation stoichiometry between TPCS_2a/HPβCD at micromolar to millimolar concentrations of TPCS_2a was determined to be 1:3 and 1:2 in the absence and presence of isotonic NaCl, respectively. The network of TPCS_2a (10?mM) was broken down in the presence of 3% w/v (=?20?mM) HPβCD, i.e. a 1:2 molar ratio between TPCS_2a and the cyclodextrin. Formation of the inclusion complex resulted in low viscosity samples both in water and in the presence of isotonic NaCl or phosphate buffered saline (PBS) at 25?°C and 37?°C.     

Hybrid damper with stroke amplification for damping of offshore wind turbines

The magnitude of tower vibrations of offshore wind turbines is a key design driver for the feasibility of the monopile support structure. A novel control concept for the damping of these tower vibrations is proposed, where viscous‐type hybrid dampers are installed at the bottom of the wind turbine tower. The proposed hybrid damper consists of a passive viscous dashpot placed in series with a load cell and an active actuator. By integrated force feedback control of the actuator motion, the associated displacement amplitude over the viscous damper can be increased compared with the passive viscous case, hereby significantly increasing the feasibility of viscous dampers acting at the bottom of the wind turbine tower. To avoid drift in the actuator displacement, a filtered time integration of the measured force signal is introduced. Numerical examples demonstrate that the filtered time integration control leads to performance similar to that of passive viscous damping and substantial amplification of the damper deformation without actuator drift. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Algorithmic probabilistic game semantics

We present a detailed account of a translation from probabilistic call-by-value programs with procedures to Rabin’s probabilistic automata. The translation is fully abstract in that programs exhibit the same computational behaviour if and only if the corresponding automata are language-equivalent. Since probabilistic language equivalence is decidable, we can apply the translation to analyse the behaviour of probabilistic programs and protocols. We illustrate our approach on a number of case studies.