PARAMETRIC FORMULATION OF THE FLOODABLE LENGTH CURVE: APPLICATION CASE TO OFFSHORE PATROL VESSELS

The residual buoyancy of vessels after damage has a fundamental role in their survivability and it is implemented through adequate ship internal subdivision. Traditionally the number and the position of transverse watertight bulkheads are selected for most ships early in the design phase by means of the “floodable length curve” coupled with the concept of “margin line”. However, for naval vessels, it is more and more common during the acquisition process to explore a wide domain of feasible ships, identified with the assistance of automated processes and assessed also in terms of capabilities, among which is survivability. The generation and the comparison of a considerable number of different ship configurations is very time consuming. Therefore recourse to a parametric expression of the floodable length curve is considered to be a very efficient approach and would thus enable characterisation of the ship, in terms of survivability performance. In this paper such an approach is presented, using an offshore patrol vessel (OPV) as the case study.

StressDat – Database of speech under stress in Slovak

The paper describes methodology for creating a Slovak database of speech under stress and pilot observations. While the relationship between stress and speech characteristics can be utilized in a wide domain of speech technology applications, its research suffers from the lack of suitable databases, particularly in conversational speech. We propose a novel procedure to record acted speech in the home of actors and using their own smartphones. We describe both the collection of speech material under three levels of stress and the subsequent annotation of stress levels in this material. First observations suggest a reasonable inter-annotator agreement, as well as interesting avenues for the relationship between the intended stress levels and those perceived in speech.

Becoming Urban: New Zealand towns in the 1850s

During the 1850s the first inland towns were founded at Greytown and Masterton. They signalled a new direction in Pākehā settlement, a movement from coastal edge port "cities" to secondary towns in the (North Island) interior. It was from these centres that colonisation proceeded apace. These new towns followed the pattern of New Zealand urbanism established in the 1840s: low-density development with houses and buildings scattered over a wide domain. Could they then really be called towns? Architecturally, the built environment of all towns might be best described as utilitarian and frontier-like. But the decade is notable for the first expressions of a grander, civic architecture, best shown in the construction of public buildings, some of which are examined here. Were these New Zealand's first urban buildings?

A Survey on Encrypted Network Traffic Analysis Applications, Techniques, and Countermeasures

The adoption of network traffic encryption is continually growing. Popular applications use encryption protocols to secure communications and protect the privacy of users. In addition, a large portion of malware is spread through the network traffic taking advantage of encryption protocols to hide its presence and activity. Entering into the era of completely encrypted communications over the Internet, we must rapidly start reviewing the state-of-the-art in the wide domain of network traffic analysis and inspection, to conclude if traditional traffic processing systems will be able to seamlessly adapt to the upcoming full adoption of network encryption. In this survey, we examine the literature that deals with network traffic analysis and inspection after the ascent of encryption in communication channels. We notice that the research community has already started proposing solutions on how to perform inspection even when the network traffic is encrypted and we demonstrate and review these works. In addition, we present the techniques and methods that these works use and their limitations. Finally, we examine the countermeasures that have been proposed in the literature in order to circumvent traffic analysis techniques that aim to harm user privacy.

The history of LHCb

In this paper, we describe the history of the LHCb experiment over the last three decades, and its remarkable successes and achievements. LHCb was conceived primarily as a $${b} $$ b -physics experiment, dedicated to $$CP$$ CP violation studies and measurements of very rare $${{b}} $$ b decays; however, the tremendous potential for $${c} $$ c -physics was also clear. At first data taking, the versatility of the experiment as a general-purpose detector in the forward region also became evident, with measurements achievable such as electroweak physics, jets and new particle searches in open states. These were facilitated by the excellent capability of the detector to identify muons and to reconstruct decay vertices close to the primary $${{p}} {{p}} $$ pp interaction region. By the end of the LHC Run 2 in 2018, before the accelerator paused for its second long shut down, LHCb had measured the CKM quark mixing matrix elements and $$CP$$ CP violation parameters to world-leading precision in the heavy-quark systems. The experiment had also measured many rare decays of $${b} $$ b and $${c} $$ c quark mesons and baryons to below their Standard Model expectations, some down to branching ratios of order 10$$^{-9}$$ - 9 . In addition, world knowledge of $${{b}} $$ b and $${{c}} $$ c spectroscopy had improved significantly through discoveries of many new resonances already anticipated in the quark model, and also adding new exotic four and five quark states. The paper describes the evolution of the LHCb detector, from conception to its operation at the present time. The authors’ subjective summary of the experiment’s important contributions is then presented, demonstrating the wide domain of successful physics measurements that have been achieved over the years.

The cubature formulas computing modeling

Presented paper is related with the problem of hybrid computing structures design and their methodology. The main purpose is the theoretical basis for the automated design supercomputing devices development and the different restrictions accounting. The theory of space granular models and granular computing are used for the new theoretical basis development. As a result, the mathematical models, provided in this paper, may be implemented to the FPGA units by the special COLAMO programming language. The new approach provides the universal computing devices for the multidimensional cubature formulas for the very wide domain of engineering problems.

Parametric Formulation of the Floodable Length Curve: Application Case to Offshore Patrol Vessels

The residual buoyancy of vessels after damage has a fundamental role in their survivability and it is implemented through adequate ship internal subdivision. Traditionally the number and the position of transverse watertight bulkheads are selected for most ships early in the design phase by means of the “floodable length curve” coupled with the concept of “margin line”. However, for naval vessels, it is more and more common during the acquisition process to explore a wide domain of feasible ships, identified with the assistance of automated processes and assessed also in terms of capabilities, among which is survivability. The generation and the comparison of a considerable number of different ship configurations is very time consuming. Therefore recourse to a parametric expression of the floodable length curve is considered to be a very efficient approach and would thus enable characterisation of the ship, in terms of survivability performance. In this paper such an approach is presented, using an offshore patrol vessel (OPV) as the case study.

Behaviour of Soft Clayey Soil Improved by Fly Ash and Geogrid under Cyclic Loading

The effect of Cyclic loading on the foundation behaviour of many engineering structures presents more important and related to many problems in geotechnical engineering, Especially when construction on soft ground area which represent one of the major concerns in geotechnical engineering. This paper is conducted to investigate the influence of using several improving techniques as (fly ash, Geo-grid, fly ash and Geo-grid) on the behavior of soft clayey soil subjected to cyclic loading. A total of twenty four models have been tested which consists of a wide domain of boundary conditions, such as untreated model, Geo-grid reinforced models, fly ash treated models and models treated with fly ash incorporated with Geo-grid were conducted by varying parameters such as, footing elevations, test velocity and number of geogrid layers. The analysis demonstrates that the settlement behaviour of footing resting on treated models with fly ash and two Geo-grid layers perform better than other improving techniques. Also observed there was an increase in settlement, which corresponds to the increase in test velocity from 6 to 9 mm/sec. Furthermore, it was conducted that the more depth of footing the soil settlement decreases. In general, when other factors remaining constant, the bearing capacity of soil goes on increasing when the depth increased.

People's Republic of China

This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights China’s continuing transition to a more sustainable growth path and the advance of reforms across a wide domain. Growth slowed to 6.7 percent in 2016 and is projected to remain robust, at 6.7 percent, in 2017 owing to the momentum from last year’s policy support, strengthening external demand, and progress in domestic reforms. Inflation rose to 2 percent in 2016 and is expected to remain stable, at 2 percent, in 2017. Essential supervisory and regulatory action is being taken against financial sector risks, and corporate debt is growing more slowly, reflecting restructuring initiatives and overcapacity reduction.