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AbstractNumerical odour standards are often used in conjunction with dispersion modelling to assess the acceptability of the odour environment around wastewater treatment works (WWTWs). However, the odour standards applied are based on very limited research, and there is very little information available regarding how well these standards work in practice. This paper describes the results of a study examining the relationship between odour modelling results and reported complaints around 15 WWTWs in the United Kingdom. Predicted odour concentrations around each of the works were calculated using industry standard odour emission rates. Records of reported odour complaints were obtained from the relevant local authority environmental health department. The study found that odour modelling results did not correlate well with the location of the reported complaints and that in most cases, odour modelling underestimated the area from which complaints would be received.

Due to the introduction of highly restrictive safety and pollution legislations in the railway industry, weight reduction has become an increasingly important topic over the last decade. Carbon fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) constitute an excellent alternative to traditional materials, due to their highly specific in-plane mechanical properties. Their use in railway industry, however, is currently hindered by their weak out-of-plane properties. Bogies and underframes are often subjected to impact loadings caused by objects and debris surrounding the tracks (i.e. ice, ballast) that become airborne during the train transit and impact lower part of the carriage. While metal structures absorb impact energy via plastic deformation, barely visible impact damage can occur in CFRP, weakening the component, and often leading to catastrophic failures. This work proposes a method for the improvement of impact absorption performance of railway composite structures via the addition of a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) coating to CFRP laminates. The thermomechanical behaviour of the thermoplastic layer was investigated with dynamic mechanical analysis and differential scanning calorimetry analysis to optimize the manufacturing process, while damping tests were carried out to demonstrate its unaltered energy absorption ability in the final manufactured structure. TPU/CFRP plates (150 × 100 mm 2 of in-plane size) were subjected to 2, 3 and 5 J impacts, and the results were compared with those of traditional CFRP laminates. Non-destructive test (NDT; i.e. C-scan, phased array) and compression-after-impact test were carried out on the impacted samples to assess the damaged area and residual in-plane mechanical properties. Results show that the TPU layer modifies the energy absorption mechanism, preventing the propagation of damage within the CFRP and resulting in undamaged samples even at the highest energy. To predict the TPU/CFRP impact behaviour and identify the best process parameters to optimize impact energy absorption, a finite element model was developed and validated using experimental data. The comparison showed good correlation, and a fine approximation of the different impact mechanisms was observed with a maximum error of 5% between experimental and simulated output values. The experimental and numerical results show that the TPU/CFRP laminates constitute a novel solution for the manufacturing of lighter and safer railway composite structures.

Game-theoretic approach has been providing a powerful tool in qualitative understanding of macroscopic social phenomena in social sciences, e.g., in economics and political science. Recently, researchers in physics, especially in statistical physics, use these game-theoretic approaches but in more quantitative way and have been producing a variety of interesting results in the new research area called 'sociophysics' by studying human society as a complex system. This work introduces recent works that have tackled combinatorial complexities arising in game-theoretic studies with the aid of simplified assumptions and numerical computations. We first show how cooperation emerges in the prisoner's dilemma game when each player's memory capacity is enhanced and suggest that the intelligent tit-for-tat strategy plays a crucial role in the history of cooperation. And then it is numerically shown that there is a certain case of simultaneous coordination among many players where the system has a high risk of failure when everyone is willing to follow the coordination, which is actually higher than when some are not concerned about it. Lastly, we discuss mathematical treatment of an equilibrium solution for a reverse auction game, which is a variant of the minority game, and its computational approach. ; Artikel på koreanska, abstract på engelska.

Abstract Do preschool children appreciate numerical value as an abstract property of a set of objects? We tested the influence of stimulus features such as size, shape, and color on preschool children's developing nonverbal numerical abilities. Children between 3 and 5 years of age were tested on their ability to estimate number when the sizes, shapes, and colors of the elements in an array were varied (heterogeneous condition) versus when they did not vary (homogeneous condition). One group of children was tested on an ordinal task in which the goal was to select the smaller of two arrays while another group of children was tested on a match‐to‐sample task in which the goal was to choose one of two visual arrays that matched the sample in number. Children performed above chance on both homogeneous and heterogeneous stimuli in both tasks. However, while children showed no impairment on heterogeneous relative to homogeneous arrays in the ordering task, performance was impaired by heterogeneity in the matching task. We suggest that nonverbal numerical abstraction occurs early in development, but specific task objectives may prevent children from engaging in numerical abstraction.