This paper explores the effects of roadway and roadside environment characteristics on the speed chosen by drivers. This work is an observational study of 272 segments of two lane roads in Connecticut. Data was collected for lane width, shoulder width, road width, presence of curbs and edge delineation types. For the roadside environment the following variables were also measured: presence of side

Electroactive polymers (EAP) deform under electric fields and an advantage of EAP is that they may undergo deformations much larger than those capable by electroactive ceramics, however at comparatively much lower forces. As common for polymers, EAP exhibit time-dependent material behavior, i.e. an electro-viscoelastic effect. Modeling of this behavior is discussed. The forward motion problem foll

Road safety is one of the most important emerging applications envisioned for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Generally, such applications involve the broadcast of safety messages, consisting of beacons transmitting vehicles' state (e.g. position and velocity) with a regular period, as well as emergency messages warning about unexpected critical events. From the perspective of safety, the appl

The following text addresses the ecological and cultural significance of the threats affecting the honey-bee, and which are becoming apparent through the unusual and sometimes drastic death rates of bee colonies. General research conducted on this problem largely agrees that the threats to bees are a syndrome that has a multifactorial nature and anthropogenic origin. In face of a plethora of relev

Emulsification is an important unit operation used in the pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industry. Membrane emulsification is a relatively new membrane technology which allows the production of emulsion droplets under controlled conditions with a narrow droplet size distribution. The continuous phase flows tangentially to the membrane surface and sweeps away dispersed phase droplets forming fr

Scanning probe manipulation has been used to electrically connect two carbon nanotubes to an individual 7 nm gold particle, resulting in a system with multiple tunnel junctions. Single-electron charging effects in the gold particle was found to dominate the electrical transport measurements at T=4.2 K, whereas charging effects in the two carbon nanotube leads appeared as a fine structure. A simula

This thesis consists of four subprojects: (A) ‘Clouding of plagioclase by Fe-Ti oxides’, (B) ‘Fe-Ti oxides during high-pressure metamorphism of mafic rocks’, (C) ‘Magnetic study of Fe-Ti oxides in mafic rocks and metabasites’, and (D) ‘Topotactic phase transitions in oxide minerals’. A) In southern Sweden dolerite dikes and gabbros with clouded plagioclase are common. The crystal structures of th

In this paper the heat losses from a novel type of district heating culvert, termed Elgotherm, is investigated and compared to conventional culvert. The insulation material is made of expanded polystyrene and the culvert consists Of four cross-linked polyethylene pipes. The heat losses are calculated using both a time dependent and a stationary finite element model. Measured data from an existing

Vicinal Rh(111) surfaces are studied with high resolution core level photoemission. We demonstrate the possibility to distinguish between the different kinds of surface atoms on these surfaces by virtue of their 3d core level binding energies. In particular, the low coordinated step atoms are found to exhibit a clear fingerprint in Rh 3d spectra. We demonstrate how this may be used to show that in

Pervasive middleware systems are important for enabling the configuration and coordination of the services provided by devices in pervasive environments. PalCom is an example of such a system that aims to enable interaction among pervasive services over heterogeneous networks. In this paper we discuss the need for providing networking-media independent messaging among pervasive devices, and identi