Suchergebnisse

JAPANESE OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA) IS UNDERGOING A MAJOR TRANSFORMATION IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA. AS TOTAL AID SUPPLY HAS STAGNATED IN THE 1990S, JAPAN HAS EMERGED AS THE NEW TOP ODA DONOR. TAKING THE LEADERSHIP IN THIS AREA, JAPAN HAS RECENTLY JOINED THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN SHIFTING FROM PROVISION OF TRADITIONAL "HARDWARE" INFRASTRUCTURE AND EQUIPMENT, TO "SOFTWARE" - HUMAN RESORCE DEVELOPMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL BUILDING, EMPHASIZING SOCIAL ISSUES LIKE AIDS, WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT, POPULATION, AND THE ENVIRONMENT. ALTHOUGH EXPRESSING STRONG POLICY SUPPORT FOR SOFTWARE AID ISSUES, JAPAN'S PRESENT BUREAUCRATIC COMPLEXITY, HUMAN RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS, PROJECT MONITORING AND EVALUATION, AND GENERALLY CLOSED POLICY PROCESS LIMIT THE ODA ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO IMPLEMENT THEM. THIS ANALYSIS SUGGESTS SOME CHANGES WHICH MAY BENEFIT THE PRESENT SYSTEM: STRUCTURAL REFORM, INCLUDING STREAMLINING THE ODA BUREAUCRACY AND STRENGTHENING ITS SOFTWARE AID ELEMENTS, AND OPENING ODA PROCESSES WIDER TO PARTICIPATION BY THOSE OUTSIDE THE GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING FOSTERING LINKAGES WITH EXTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS.

SummaryVisual acuity was tested and the anterior portion of the eye inspected among the Gidra in Lowland Papua New Guinea, who depend on hunting for their animal food. The visual acuity of the youths and adults was as high as that of hunters and gatherers; 88% of the males and 81% of the females had an acuity of 1·2 or better. The elders had far lower acuity, correlated with the advance of cataract (or corneal opacity). The senescent visual acuity is discussed in relation to little practice and low productivity of the elders' hunting, and to the Gidra traditional age-grade system.

Design criteria for coastal defenses exposed to wave overtopping are usually assessed by mean overtopping discharges and maximum individual overtopping volumes. However, it is often difficult to give clear and precise limits of tolerable overtopping for all kinds of layouts. A few studies analyzed the relationship between wave overtopping flows and hazard levels for people on sea dikes, confirming that one single value of admissible mean discharge or individual overtopping volume is not a sufficient indicator of the hazard, but detailed characterization of flow velocities and depths is required. This work presents the results of an experimental campaign aiming at analyzing the validity of the safety limits and design criteria for overtopping discharge applied to an urbanized stretch of the Catalan coast, exposed to significant overtopping events every stormy season. The work compares different safety criteria for pedestrians. The results prove that the safety of pedestrians on a sea dike can be still guaranteed, even for overtopping volumes larger than 1,000 L/m. Sea storms characterized by deep-water wave height between 3.6 and 4.5 m lead to overtopping flow depth values larger than 1 m and flow velocities up to 20 m/s. However, pedestrian hazard is proved to be linked to the combination of overtopping flow velocity and flow depth rather than to single maximum values of one of these parameters. The use of stability curves to assess people's stability under overtopping waves is therefore advised. ; This research was funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No.: 792370. The authors would like to acknowledge the students Mauro Campagnola and Maria Luigia Robustelli, who carried out the experimental campaign under the guidance and supervision of C.A, and the technical/research staff of LIM/UPC, in particular Joaquim Sospedra, Oscar Galego and José M. Alsina for their support and assistance for the model constructions and setup of measurement systems. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (published version)

As a next-generation plant, a large-scale Japan sodium-cooled fast reactor (JSFR) adopts a number of innovative technologies in order to achieve economic competitiveness, enhanced reliability, and safety. This paper describes safety requirements for JSFR conformed to the defense-in-depth principle in IAEA. Specific design features of JSFR are a passive reactor shutdown system and a recriticality-free concept against anticipated transients without scram (ATWS) in design extension conditions (DECs). A fully passive decay heat removal system with natural circulation is also introduced for design-basis events (DBEs) and DECs. In this paper, the safety design accommodation in JSFR was validated by safety analyses for representative DBEs: primary pump seizure and long-term loss-of-offsite power accidents. The safety analysis also showed the effectiveness of the passive shutdown system against a typical ATWS. Severe accident analysis supported by safety experiments and phenomenological consideration led to the feasibility of in-vessel retention without energetic recriticality. Moreover, a probabilistic safety assessment indicated to satisfy the risk target.

Three open source wave models are applied in 2DV to reproduce a large-scale wave flume experiment of bichromatic wave transformations over a steep-sloped dike with a mildly-sloped and very shallow foreshore: (i) the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations solver interFoam of OpenFOAM® (OF), (ii) the weakly compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics model DualSPHysics (DSPH) and (iii) the non-hydrostatic nonlinear shallow water equations model SWASH. An inter-model comparison is performed to determine the (standalone) applicability of the three models for this specific case, which requires the simulation of many processes simultaneously, including wave transformations over the foreshore and wave-structure interactions with the dike, promenade and vertical wall. A qualitative comparison is done based on the time series of the measured quantities along the wave flume, and snapshots of bore interactions on the promenade and impacts on the vertical wall. In addition, model performance and pattern statistics are employed to quantify the model differences. The results show that overall, OF provides the highest model skill, but has the highest computational cost. DSPH is shown to have a reduced model performance, but still comparable to OF and for a lower computational cost. Even though SWASH is a much more simplified model than both OF and DSPH, it is shown to provide very similar results: SWASH exhibits an equal capability to estimate the maximum quasi-static horizontal impact force with the highest computational efficiency, but does have an important model performance decrease compared to OF and DSPH for the force impulse. ; This research was part of the CREST (Climate REsilient CoaST) project (http://www.crestproject.be/en), funded by the Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology, grant number 150028. The work described in this section was supported by the European Community′s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme through the grant to HYDRALABPLUS, Contract no. 654110. C.A. acknowledges funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, grant number 792370. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (published version)

In this paper, a Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations solver, interFoam of OpenFOAM®, is validated for wave interactions with a dike, including a promenade and vertical wall, on a shallow foreshore. Such a coastal defence system is comprised of both an impermeable dike and a beach in front of it, forming the shallow foreshore depth at the dike toe. This case necessitates the simulation of several processes simultaneously: wave propagation, wave breaking over the beach slope, and wave interactions with the sea dike, consisting of wave overtopping, bore interactions on the promenade, and bore impacts on the dike-mounted vertical wall at the end of the promenade (storm wall or building). The validation is done using rare large-scale experimental data. Model performance and pattern statistics are employed to quantify the ability of the numerical model to reproduce the experimental data. In the evaluation method, a repeated test is used to estimate the experimental uncertainty. The solver interFoam is shown to generally have a very good model performance rating. A detailed analysis of the complex processes preceding the impacts on the vertical wall proves that a correct reproduction of the horizontal impact force and pressures is highly dependent on the accuracy of reproducing the bore interactions. ; This research was part of the CREST (Climate REsilient CoaST) project (http://www.crestproject.be/en), funded by the Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology, grant number 150028. The work described in this section was supported by the European Community's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme through the grant to HYDRALABPLUS, Contract no. 654110. C.A. acknowledges funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, grant number 792370. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (published version)

This paper presents the detailed components of the Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) [1] [2] [3] active node framework based on the novel Virtual Environment (VE) concept. It also presents the dynamic and autonomic deployment of differentiated services and the configuration capabilities thereof enabled. The FAIN node supports the dynamic deployment and instantiation of multiple active VEs, each one of them capable of hosting multiple Execution Environments (EE) and supporting communication among different EEs in the same node. The EEs may, in turn, be deployed and instantiated on demand thereby introducing new features and functionality in the node according to new requirements and arising needs. We tested the FAIN active network by developing and dynamically deploying a control EE, which was designed and tested for the QoS configuration of the Diffserv-enabled pan-European FAIN testbed [4]. The work presented in this paper was performed in the European Union research and development project under the Information Society Technologies programme. Keywords: FAIN, Active Node, Virtual Environment, Execution Environment © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2004.

This paper presents the detailed components of the Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) [1] [2] [3] active node framework based on the novel Virtual Environment (VE) concept. It also presents the dynamic and autonomic deployment of differentiated services and the configuration capabilities thereof enabled. The FAIN node supports the dynamic deployment and instantiation of multiple active VEs, each one of them capable of hosting multiple Execution Environments (EE) and supporting communication among different EEs in the same node. The EEs may, in turn, be deployed and instantiated on demand thereby introducing new features and functionality in the node according to new requirements and arising needs. We tested the FAIN active network by developing and dynamically deploying a control EE, which was designed and tested for the QoS configuration of the Diffserv-enabled pan-European FAIN testbed [4]. The work presented in this paper was performed in the European Union research and development project under the Information Society Technologies programme.

This work presents the results of an experimental investigation on the e_ects of a sequence of storms on wave overtopping at a nearly vertical battered seawall at the back of a sandy foreshore. The experiments were carried out in the Large Wave Flume (GWK) at Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany), as part of the research project ICODEP (Impact of Changing fOreshore on flood DEfence Performance), within the European Union programme Hydralab+. The layout consisted of a 10/1 battered seawall and a natural sandy foreshore with an initial 1:15 slope. The beach sand had a nominal diameter of 0.30 mm. Three storm sequences were simulated, where each consisted of three individual storms. Each storm was divided into six steps in which the wave conditions and still water level were varied to represent the peak of an actual storm. The six sea states were based on a JONSWAP spectral shape, with wave heights roughly between 0.6 m and 0.8 m. Two still water levels were tested. For the central two steps the level was such that the freeboard was only 0.14 m and almost all waves were overtopping. In the remaining steps low still water levels were employed, leaving a narrow swash zone. Two storm profiles were considered, the first one with a lower level of energy and the second one with a higher one. These were combined in the three di_erent sequences. All the tested wave conditions were designed to be erosive for the beach, with no recovery in between. Each sequence started from a plain beach configuration and the beach was not restored in between storms. The measurements included waves, pressure and forces, sediment concentrations and flow velocity together with overtopping. The profile of the beach was measured after each sea state tested.