Canadian cultural and consumer trends have established high household energy consumption rates, as compared to other first world nations. This study examines the correlation between cultural influence, occupant behaviour, and the resulting effectiveness of optional or mandatory energy efficiency strategies in Canadian homes. Energy efficiency has historically been approached from a design and construction perspective; however, monitoring and verification during a post-occupancy period has gone largely undocumented. Given the lack of data, the effectiveness of any policy or standard towards sustainability is difficult to quantify. In two case studies, located in Calgary, AB (Canada), the impacts of housing typology, construction methodology and occupant behaviour were researched to collect post-occupancy energy use data. The results of the first case study demonstrate a +300% variation in consumption rates when comparing same unit type, location, construction and solar photovoltaic array. A second case study examines a home designed to be Net-Zero Energy (NZE), which is coupled with renewable technology and subsequently monitored post-occupancy, then compared to modelled/predicted loads. A third case, which strives to reduce both operational and embodied energy pre- and post-occupancy, is examined to illustrate the pre-occupancy energy required by various standard and alternative construction materials. This paper aims to provide context and validation of energy efficient design, construction, standards/codes, and in conjunction with occupant behaviour or cultural patterns of consumption. The results strive to identify which strategies may ultimately have more impact on national goals of energy efficiency and carbon reduction, and whether or not top down policy can be an effective way of managing energy use in households.

This study presents the development of a real-scale latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) device based on an air-PCM (phase change material) heat exchanger. The device uses the outdoor ambient temperature difference between night and day to refresh the indoor air and shift or completely avoid the use of air-conditioning in air-cooling in the building sector. The design is based on an extensive set of numerical simulations, performed by the commercial software ANSYS Fluent, focused on a parametric study allowing to identify the optimum value of different design parameters in order to have 10 hours of temperature shift. The numerical simulations were supported by experimental measurements done with a small-scale test rig. Additionally, the thermal response of the PCM to cooling and heating was also studied in a controlled temperature and humidity environment.

The consumption of material, energy, and water resources is inextricably linked to population growth with a unique impact on urban areas, especially in light of significant investments in infrastructure to support urban development. Urban metabolism is becoming popular as it provides a framework accounting the mass and energy flows through a city. An urban metabolism study was conducted to estimate the inputs and outputs of energy and pollutants from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The objective of this study was to determine the energy consumption of Riyadh using locally generated data from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2012 and analysing the temporal trends of energy consumption and associated environmental impact. The socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics of Riyadh are well represented in its metabolism indicators. The high growth rate in population along with urban expansion has resulted in an increase in energy consumption. Riyadh has seen an increase in energy consumption at a rate of about 6% per annum. On a per capita basis, preliminary results show that the energy consumption increased by 31% from 1996 to 2012. Also, per capita CO2 emissions have increased by the same percentage. Results also show increasing mobile energy consumption from 20k TJ in 1986 to 157k TJ in 2012, which points to Riyadh’s inefficient urban form. The study findings highlight the importance for developing effective policies for improving the use of resources.

The purpose of this study is to provide evidences in context of life cycle and free cash flow theories. The study examines the potential factors of firms to pay dividend by conducting logistic regression with sample of 138 firms listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange for period 2010 till 2015. The result of analysis shows that dividend payers generally are firms at mature stage which is consistent with life cycle theory. Also, these mature firms normally are larger firms, more profitable, higher earnings, higher debt and diminish for investment opportunities. In addition, the higher debt for dividend payers indicates the existence of free cash flow effects.

The “transfer of technology”, typical of a top-down linear process of innovation cannot be used in the new contexts of sustainability, characterised by uncertainty and complexity. There is a need to redefine categories and concepts around which innovation and agricultural policies are built, as those currently in use provide only a partial representation of reality. Innovation paradigms underpinning technological development and public policies design will have a direct impact on decisions regarding which agricultural models will ultimately be supported. Looking at local learning capacity and systems of relations can help to understand the potential to develop innovation within a specific context. This work contributes to the definition of new actors who are developing innovation for sustainability in rural areas. The study focuses on the knowledge systems of farmers who are applying alternative breeding strategies: it uses a network approach to explore the knowledge system in which individual farmers are embedded in order to understand their specific relational features. Three main conclusions emerge from the study: for enhancing the agro-ecological innovation paradigm there is a need to define the ‘innovation broker’, to revise the evaluation system of public research and to integrate innovation and agricultural policies.

It is important for railway operators to make suitable timetables. On the assumption that passengers’ train paths are invariant even if the timetable changes, the timetables are determined according to the various statistical data under the current timetable. In planning the timetable, it is difficult to grasp the change of passengers’ paths due to timetable modifications because it is too complex. In this paper, we propose a framework of timetabling with due consideration of the path change and propose a practical timetabling system which can quickly estimate the congestion of each train by using passengers’ origin–destination (OD) data collected by automatic ticket checkers. With the system, timetable planners can interactively make and modify timetables by trial and error while confirming the congestion, and finally, they can reach the most preferable one. In order to realize such an interactive system, it is important to develop a fast estimation algorithm of train congestion. We developed a new shortest path search algorithm to determine which trains each passenger gets on. The algorithm devised based on the Dijkstra method has two features. First, the shortest path search from each node to all the destination stations in the composed graph network is executed only once. Second, overlapping the path searches are omitted using stored information of the shortest paths which have already been searched. By applying this algorithm, it took only about 10 s to estimate the train congestion under a timetable of the whole day on an urban commuter line.

This paper deals with an optimization approach to railway track allocation, which is one of the most important decision problems in the presence of multiple train operating companies (TOCs). In fact there has been deep discussion about how to boost the competition environment in Korean railway since the functional reform in 2004, which at last resulted in introducing a new entrant to high-speed railway passenger transportation market. Finally, in August 2016, two operating companies will compete on the major routes in the Korean high-speed railway network. The infra manager, KR Network, who is responsible for allocating the slots, has been developing their own allocation procedure which partly uses an optimization model for adjusting the times of requested train-paths. But one of the TOCs’ concerns with respect to the adjustment is that their train-set routing plan could be in disorder by the adjustment of the arrival/departure times. Assuming TOCs submit their routing plan as well as their desired train-paths, we present an optimization model and algorithm for track allocation problem, considering the routing plan requested by TOCs. The model is developed on a time-space network, where a train-path can be described as the sequence of the arcs. Based on the network, we developed an column-generation approach to dynamically generate the promising train-paths for each requested one so as to maximize the total profit while preventing the routing plans from disrupting by means of setting up the arcs only among the two successive train-paths in the routing plan. Also we present the experimental results applied to the Korean high-speed railway network.

The planning of a rail system requires the definition of travel demand in terms of passenger (or freight) flows for sizing physical and technological elements (such as number of trains, signalling system type, length and width of platforms). Moreover, once a system has been set up and functional elements have been acquired, system management in terms of services and related timetables requires knowledge of travel demand flows. Much has been written about the methods and techniques for estimating travel demand by means of analytical models (calibrated by surveys), statistical processing of survey data and/ or correcting model results by using properly collected traffic counts. However, whatever the adopted approach, it is necessary to proceed with survey campaigns to acquire experimental data. Obviously, the greater the number of detected data (and related acquisition costs and times), the greater the accuracy of travel demand estimations. Hence, in real cases, a fair compromise between survey costs and estimation accuracy has to be struck.

In this context, we propose an analytical methodology for identifying space–time relations between passenger counts to reduce the amount of data to be surveyed without affecting estimation accuracy. In particular, our proposal is based on defining analytical functions to provide boarding and alighting flows depending on the station (space component) and the time period (time component) in question. Finally, in order to show the feasibility of the proposed methodology and related improvements with respect to traditional approaches, we applied our proposal to the case of a real metro line in Naples (Italy) by comparing different levels of detail in passenger surveys.

This article describes how to maximize the number of freight trains through global networks. Nowadays, the capacity of railway lines and also of railway nodes can be calculated by using analytic algorithms. Currently there is no generally accepted method to allocate the overall capacity of lines and nodes of such networks by using analytic algorithms. However, to maximize the number of train runs, the rail passenger service will be fixed on the scheduled train course so that the rail freight service can use the remaining capacity on a planned or re-routed train course. Existing or detected bottlenecks could be eliminated by means of sensible re-routing due to optimization, which will reveal the best train paths through the network. The article concludes with an illustrative computation for a generic railway sub-network to exhibit how the optimization is working.

Train rescheduling means a transient situation to correct a train diagram in a suspended state due to traffic accidents or disasters. Automatic (or half manual) rescheduling has been studied, and such previous research has shown promising results.

In this paper, we describe a train timetable rescheduling method. In Japanese urban areas, some private companies operate on each other’s tracks. If vehicle types have limitations due to ground facilities or company rules, the vehicle has to be operated under these limitations even when running on a rescheduled timetable. Even if the ground facilities of different companies have uniform conditions, local and rapid trains must be operated in a distinct manner.

Therefore, we suggest a rescheduling method. With this method, each vehicle type and its vehicle routes based on the track layout are registered, and rescheduling diagrams are composed with the route combinations.

Important conditions to decide the combinations are vehicle location at the operation resumption time and the introduction of same-type vehicles at an originally unscheduled timing. We compare the traffic effects for some combinations of the latter situation where originally unscheduled same-type vehicles are introduced for rescheduling. The evaluation values are average headway time and its standard deviation at all stations on the timetable.

We apply our rescheduling method to a theoretical line and timetable modelled on existing urban lines in Japan where trains go and come back on double tracks, and indicate the efficacy of our rescheduling method.

Nowadays, the most commonly used configuration to supply high-speed trains is 2 × 25 kV power supply system. The location of ground faults in 2 × 25 kV power supply systems is a difficult task, since the use of distance protection relays to localize ground faults positions doesn’t work properly as the relation between the distance and the impedance seen by the distance protection relays is not linear and therefore the location is not accurate enough. A new simple and economical method to identify the subsection between autotransformers (ATS) and the conductor (positive or negative) where the ground fault is happening, based on the comparison of the angle between the current and the voltage of the positive terminal in each autotransformer, was developed recently. Consequently, after the identification of the subsection and the conductor with the ground fault, only this subsection where the ground fault is present, will be quickly removed from service, with the minimum effect on rail traffic. The high-speed trains demand a power about 12–16 MW, hence a significant current flow through the conductors of the 2 × 25 kV power system. This paper presents a study about the influence of the current consumed by the high-speed trains on this novel ground fault identification method. The operation of the method is correct even with the high-speed train currents in the section with a ground fault. This fact has been validated through numerous computer simulations, obtaining excellent results.

More than ever before, success or a failure of a modern company is the result of managers’ ability to adopt his/her way of managing everyday changing circumstances. The organizational environment demands effective managers with the ability to make effective decisions which will shape business performance. So, it could be acknowledged that among several different factors that can determine a company’s progress, the key factors are managers - their qualities and skills. This paper considers similarities and differences among managers in two companies in Croatia - family owned and nonfamily owned - analyzing eight essential skill areas where they should focus their efforts: understanding team dynamics, selecting and developing the right people, delegating, motivating, managing conflict, communicating, decision making and problem solving, and avoiding common managerial mistakes. Qualitative research was conducted and interesting and somewhat puzzling results were found. Results indicated that ownership made a difference concerning managerial skills. Based on the overall findings, the research offers foundation for future research in this area. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of value for managers and their companies due to the improvement and development of all essential areas of managing.

The railway industry has taken a great effort and is currently focused on exploitation of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for the European train control system (ETCS). It has been assessed that replacement of track balises, used for safe train location determination, with virtual balises (VBs) detected by means of GNSS will significantly reduce the track-side infrastructure and operational costs. However, this innovated ETCS can be put into operations only in the case when detection of VBs by means of GNSS will achieve the same safety integrity level (SIL 4) and availability as it is required for physical balise groups (BGs).

This paper describes a novel travelling virtual balise (TVB) concept, which was proposed to meet the demanding ETCS safety requirements for GNSS using the existing European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) safety-of-life (SoL) service. The TVB concept profits from the basic feature of GNSS – i.e. the ability of abundant train position determination in GNSS service volume, which cannot be realized by current track balise groups (BGs) with a spacing of hundreds of metres or more. The frequent GNSS train positions are utilized for (1) fast diagnostics of on-board location determination system (LDS), (2) introduction of reactive fail-safety into LDS and (3) derivation and justification of the ETCS safety requirements for EGNOS.

The TVB concept brings one significant advantage to ETCS in contrast to the static VBs – i.e. the safety requirement for LDS doesn’t depend longer on the distance between successive VBs. It means that the existing spacing between physical BGs (up to 2.5 km) can be also preserved in case of TVBs. It can significantly improve the availability of LDS. Further it was found that a less demanding tolerable hazard rate (THR) requirement for GNSS of about 1e-7/1 h or more still enables to meet the ETCS THR requirement for VB determination, i.e. THR_VB of 0.67e-9/1 h. Thus the ETCS TVB concept opens the door for efficient use of the EGNOS SoL service, originally developed for aviation.

Convenience is an important requirement of a scheduled transit system. The authors proposed a new method to evaluate a train schedule by using entropy of the information theory. By the aspect of statistical mechanics, the randomness of a schedule is associated with the convenience of the schedule. However, the way of using entropy requires special conditions. In this paper, we show that we can relax the conditions by interpreting the entropy as information.

First, we explain the representation of a schedule by a tree structure. Introducing the tree structure, we recognize the more composite construction of schedules. The tree structure leads to the concept of conditional entropy. Using the concept of conditional entropy, we can evaluate schedules of the states of different places or times. Secondly, we can understand what the information of the schedule is. We can grasp that the information is the benefit of knowing the schedule. The increase of the entropy corresponds to the increase of the benefit. Moreover, it becomes possible to express an unexpected disbenefit by the entropy with the loss of information. In other words, the benefit is a positive entropy and the disbenefit is negative entropy. Finally, we show that we are able to deal with an influence of wasteful time in a schedule, such as an unnecessary waiting time and an extra duration by using the entropy. It is very important that we can evaluate negative effects, namely the discrepancy of supply and demand from the point of view of time.

In strategic subway scheduling stage, the conflict sometimes comes from different requirements of the subway operator. This study aims to investigate the significant factors concerning strategic subway scheduling problem and to develop an automatic procedure of feasibility analysis in subway scheduling. To this end, accurate simulation of train movement (via a simulator, named HAMLET) is applied first by considering the line geography, train performances, actual speed restrictions, etc. The critical elements of subway scheduling and their correlations are then studied and a bound structure of the critical factors is established. The feasibility of primary plan requirements is analysed with the restrictions of the bound structure. Infeasible aspects and possible adjustments are shortly discussed. Finally, the subsequent applications including schedule generation and optimization according to various objectives are indicated as well.

Railway operation can be perceived as a complex system consisting of thousands of constituent elements, including demands for transportation and a variety of transportation resources, such as tracks, track blocks, stations, sidings, trains, crews, etc. Overall behaviour of a railway operation is characterized by unpredictable disruptive events such as changes in availability of resources due to failures, weather conditions or human errors. In addition transportation demands tend to change over time whilst changing transportation resources, such as tracks, is not always possible or practical. The key task of railway management is the allocation of transportation resources to transportation demands with a goal of achieving a complete match, ensuring a smooth operation. The difficulty of this task primarily depends on the variability of demand and reliability of resources, in particular, tracks, trains and human resources. The paper describes how to design complex adaptive railway schedulers, which allocate resources to demands in real time and ensure rapid rescheduling in reaction to unpredictable disruptive events.

In railway lines where trains are running densely, a small increase of a dwell time causes a delay and the delay tends to expand and propagate to many other trains. One idea to avoid such delays is to increase dwell times of trains in timetables. Increase of dwell times, however, may cause an expansion of headways and we may have to decrease the frequency, which is never allowed in a congested railway line. In this article, we propose a procedure to get a timetable in which each train is given an enough amount of dwell time without reducing the frequency of trains. Our key idea is to find a train performance curve which minimizes the departure–arrival interval of trains and to make use of the generated time to increase the dwell times. In this process, we do not stick to an idea that travel times of trains have to be minimized. Following this procedure, we can increase the dwell times without reducing the frequency. We have applied our procedure to actual timetables and confirmed that our procedure works very well.

The aim of this article is to study how selected variables influence delays in train traffic. Data has been collected on train movements, timetables, weather and capacity utilization on a highly utilized single-track railway line in southern Sweden during 2014. Based on this dataset, we have analysed how different factors affect delays in passenger traffic. We measure delays in a novel way, as deviations from the scheduled duration for each line section and station stop, not as deviations from a published or operational timetable, and this allows us to identify when and where the delays first occur. Average delays were much larger at station stops. The most significant factor affecting delays was the scheduled duration time at station stops and the existence of margins on line sections. If trains arrive to a line section or station stop slightly delayed they speed up the activity, otherwise they are typically delayed. The influence of weather was less significant and somewhat contradictory: snow and cold temperatures increase delays on line sections but reduce them at station stops, while precipitation made no difference. Capacity utilization seems to have a negative correlation with delays, but we have too little variation in the levels to be confident. All studied variables, except for precipitation, have impacts that are statistically significant to a very high degree of confidence, using both t-tests and regression analysis. The results of this study have important practical implications for timetable construction; for instance we estimate that a reallocation of scheduled time at stations could reduce delays by as much as 80%.

new railway line for commuter trains through central Stockholm, the ‘City line’, is under construction and will open in 2017. The line will have two new underground stations and these will be equipped with platform screen doors in order to enhance air quality and prevent suicides. Several stations along the line will have only two platform tracks and this will limit capacity.

Neither trains nor platform doors will be fully automatized and thus the drivers will have to stop the trains in exact position to match the platform doors. Consequently, adding extended times for opening and closing doors will prolong the dwell time by approximately 12 s/stop.

an extensive capacity evaluation has been carried out as a RailSys simulation in order to find out whether a capacity of 24 trains/hour/ direction can be reached. The core part of the study was to prepare dwell time distributions for all stations along the line. These distributions include several terms, namely additional braking time due to a more careful and precise braking, time to correct stopping position (stochastic), door opening time, passenger exchange time (stochastic), door closing time, door obstruction time (stochastic) and driver’s reaction time before departure.

The simulation results indicate that the extended dwell times caused by the platform screen doors limit capacity to 22 trains/hour in one direction and 24 trains/hour in the other direction. This difference comes from the fact that the station with the longest dwell times is located adjacent to a station with four platform tracks where trains can recover delays. Thus, the delay level differs significantly between the two traffic directions. This delay difference influences the useful capacity in such a way that the most punctual direction has a higher capacity.

Some of the active substances allowed in organic production are now approved as basic substances under the EU plant protection products regulation. Previously, all organic farming permitted active substances were approved as conventional plant protection products. In accordance with the criteria of Article 23 of the EU regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, basic substances are granted without maximum residue limits and have a good prospect for being included in Annex II of organic farming Regulation (EC) 889/2008. In fact, most of them are already permitted in organic farming. At this stage, it seems desirable to organize applications in order to avoid duplications and to clarify strategy across Europe. This organization should be planned in order to identify corresponding knowledge and data from field experiments, and to further constitute the most crucial issues related to organic production. A work of this nature was initially supported by IFOAM-EU for lecithin, calcium hydroxide and Quassia extract. The Institut Technique de l’Agriculture Biologique (ITAB) was previously engaged in a large-scale approval plan motivated by the continuous demand for the regularization of compounds/substances already in use and has a mandate for testing and approving new compatible substances. Thus, the horsetail extract (Equisetum arvense) was the first approved basic substance and ITAB has obtained 11 of the 15 basic substances approved at the EU level.

A review of Green’s functions for dissimilar or homogeneous elastic space containing penny-shaped or annular interfacial cracks under singular ring-shaped loading sources is presented. The solutions are based on fictitious singular loading sources and superposition of the fundamental solutions of the following two problems: (a) Dissimilar elastic solid without crack under singular source, and (b) Dis-similar elastic solid containing crack under surface tractions. The above Green’s functions have the following advantages: (i) No multi-region BE modeling for the dissimilar material is necessary, and (ii) No discretization of the crack surface is necessary. Numerical examples are presented and discussed.

The objective of this article is to develop a boundary element numerical model to solve coupled problems involving heat energy diffusion, convection and radiation in a participating medium. In this study, the contributions from radiant energy transfer are presented using two approaches for optical thick fluids: the Rosseland diffusion approximation and the P1 approximation. The governing Navier– Stokes equations are written in the velocity–vorticity formulation for the kinematics and kinetics of the fluid motion. The approximate numerical solution algorithm is based on a boundary element numerical model in its macro-element formulation. Validity of the proposed implementation is tested on a one-dimensional test case using a grey participating medium at radiative equilibrium between two isothermal black surfaces.

In this paper we consider vibrations of the baffled elastic fuel tank partially filled with a liquid. The compound shell was a simplified model of a fuel tank. The shell is considered to be thin and the Kirchhoff–Love linear theory hypotheses are applied. The liquid is supposed to be an ideal and incompressible one and its flow introduced by the vibrations of a shell is irrotational. The problem of the fluid-structure interaction was solved using the reduced boundary and finite element methods. The tank structure was modeled by the FEM and the liquid sloshing in a fluid domain was described by using the multi-domain BEM. The rigid and elastic baffled tanks of different forms were considered. The dependencies of frequencies via the filling level were obtained numerically for vibrations of the fluid-filled tanks with and without baffles.

The corrosion electric field around the surface of stainless steel under tensile stress is addressed through the experiment and simulation. When the stress is applied, the passive film is locally damaged on the grain boundaries causing microscopic stress and strain concentrations. In a corrosive environment, the plastic strain induced by the strain concentration breaks the passive film and generates a new surface without the passive film. This causes a galvanic corrosion between the intact surface with passive film and the damaged surface without passive film. The effect of stress on the polarization curve was observed by electrochemical and mechanical experiments, and we found that the spontaneous potential decreased as the applied stress increased. To evaluate the electrochemical property of stressed stainless steel, the electric field analysis is formulated by the boundary element method (BEM) with the damaged passive film model and the empirical polarization curve model.

In boundary element method (BEM), one encounters linear system with a dense and non-symmetric square matrix which might be so large that inverting the linear system is too prohibitive in terms of cpu time and/or memory. Each usual powerful treatment (Fast Multipole Method, H-matrices) developed to deal with this issue is optimized to efficiently perform matrix vector products. This work presents a new technique to adequately and quickly handle such products: the Sparse Cardinal Sine Decomposition. This approach, recently pioneered for the Laplace and Helmholtz equations, rests on the decomposition of each encountered kernel as series of radial Cardinal Sine functions. Here, we achieve this decompo- sition for the Stokes problem and implement it in MyBEM, a new fast solver for multi-physical BEM. The reported computational examples permit us to compare the advocated method against a usual BEM in terms of both accuracy and convergence.

In recent years significant focus has been given to the study of Radial basis functions (RBF), especially in their use on solving partial differential equations (PDE). RBF have an impressive capability of inter- polating scattered data, even when this data presents localized discontinuities. However, for infinitely smooth RBF such as the Multiquadrics, inverse Multiquadrics, and Gaussian, the shape parameter must be chosen properly to obtain accurate approximations while avoiding ill-conditioning of the interpolating matrices. The optimum shape parameter can vary significantly depending on the field, particularly in locations of steep gradients, shocks, or discontinuities. Typically, the shape parameter is chosen to be high value to render flatter RBF therefore yielding a high condition number for the ensuing interpola- tion matrix. However, this optimization strategy fails for problems that present steep gradients, shocks or discontinuities. Instead, in such cases, the optimal interpolation occurs when the shape parameter is chosen to be low in order to render steeper RBF therefore yielding low condition number for the interpolation matrix. The focus of this work is to demonstrate the use of RBF interpolation to capture the behaviour of steep gradients and shocks by implementing a blending scheme that combines high and low shape parameters. A formulation of the RBF blending interpolation scheme along with test- ing and validation through its implementation in the solution of the Burger’s linear advection equation and compressible Euler equations using a Localized RBF Collocation Meshless Method (LRC-MM) is presented in this paper.

A formulation is presented to perform crack propagation analyses in cohesive materials with the dual boundary element method (DBEM) using the tangential differential operator in the traction boundary-integral equations. The cohesive law is introduced in the system of equations to directly compute the cohesive forces at each loading step. A single edge crack is analyzed with the linear function to describe the material softening law in the cohesive zone, and the results are compared with those from the literature.

This special issue contains a selection of papers presented at the renowned International Conference on Boundary Elements and other Mesh Reduction Methods (BEM) which is now in its 39th edition, having started in 1978. The meeting was organised by the University of Mississippi in the USA and the Wessex Institute, UK.

It was at Southampton University where the technique started in the mid-1970s, with the first successful development of boundary integral equations into what is now known as the Boundary Element Method. The success of the meeting has been possible by its continuous evolution. In the early 1990s it was decided to cover all types of Mesh Reduction, opening up a wide new field of technical and applied research.

The success of that policy is reflected in the continuous growth of the ranking of the Journal associated with the Conference, i.e. the one of Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements. The Journal is now in the top third of all its categories.

A major development took place last year when WIT Press decided to make available in Open Access form all the conference papers published since 1993. This move has dramatically increased the number of citations that the papers achieve. It is part of the Wessex Institute policy of disseminating scientific and technical outputs as widely as possible.

The international researcher will find in this issue a selection of the most recent developments in the method which in the last few years has attracted the attention of a variety of industrial users.

The next 40th Conference will take place in the New Forest National Park in the UK, home of the Wessex Institute, giving the occasion to the participants to become more aware of the activities on Campus, where research is focused on the development and applications of boundary elements.

The Editors would like to thank all authors for the quality of their papers and the members of the International Scientific Advisory Committee and other colleagues for their help in reviewing the material. The support of Elsevier is gratefully acknowledged for financing the expenses associated with awarding of the 2016 George Green’s Medal.

The Editors

Siena, 2016

This paper is focused on the analysis of the numerical solution of flow problems in irregular domains. The numerical approach is based on the weighted least squares (WLS) approximation constructed over the local support domain, i.e. a sub cluster of computational nodes, to evaluate partial differential operators, in our case spatial derivatives up to second order. There are several possibilities for elegant formulation as well as computer implementation of such method, which are first and foremost consequence of the fact that the node has to be aware only of the distance to other nodes, i.e. no topological relation between nodes is required. The presented meshless approach is applied on the lid-driven cavity problem in randomly generated domain. It is demonstrated that using adequately wide support domains, i.e. enough support nodes with a proper weighting, provide stable results even in highly deformed domains, however, at the cost of the accuracy and computational complexity, especially in cases when the support domain changes during the computation. The optimal meshless configuration, i.e. support of 15 nodes weighted with Gaussian weight function and monomials up to second order as basis, is suggested based on experimental analyses. The results are presented in terms of comparison with already published data on regular nodal distributions, convergence analysis on regular nodal distribution and stability analysis of the solution with respect to the level of nodal irregularity and local support size.

In this paper, we derive a boundary-domain integral formulation for the energy transport equation under the assumption that the fluid properties, through which the energy is transported by diffusion and convection, are spatially and temporally changing. The energy transport equation is a second-order partial differential equation of a diffusion-convection type, with the fluid temperature as the independent variable. The presented formulation does not require a calculation of the temperature gradient, thus it is, for a known fluid velocity field, linear.

The final boundary-domain integral equation is discretized using a domain decomposition approach, where the equation is solved on each sub-domain, while subdomains are joined by compatibility conditions. The validity of the method is checked using several analytical examples. Convergence properties are studied yielding that the proposed discretization technique is second-order accurate.

The developed method is used to simulate flow and heat transfer of nanofluids, which exhibit properties that depend on the solid particle concentration. A Lagrange-Euler approach is used.

A time-dependent fully-parallelised formulation of the BEM is applied to transient thermal problems in the context of light-based medical devices. The method is initially verified against benchmark problems. The limitations of the model are discussed, particularly the singularity challenge inherent in the fundamental solution. The method is then applied for a representative 3D clinical problem, further illustrating the singularity challenge.

In this paper, we present briefly the derivation of the equations of motion and boundary conditions for elastic plates with functionally graded Young’s modulus and mass density of the plate subjected to transversal transient dynamic loads. The unified formulation is derived for three plate bending theories, such as the Kirchhoff–Love theory (KLT) for bending of thin elastic plates and the shear deformation plate theories (the first order – FSDPT, and the third order – TSDPT). It is shown that the transversal gradation of Young’s modulus gives rise to coupling between the bending and in-plane deformation modes in plates subject to transversal loading even in static problems. In dynamic problems, there are also the inertial coupling terms. The influence of the gradation of material coef- ficients on bending and in-plane deformation modes with including coupling is studied in numerical experiments with consideration of Heaviside impact loading as well as Heaviside pulse loading. To decrease the order of the derivatives in the coupled PDE with variable coefficients, the decomposition technique is employed. The element-free strong formulation with using meshless approximations for spatial variation of field variables is developed and the discretized ordinary differential equations with respect to time variable are solved by using time stepping techniques. The attention is paid to the stability of numerical solutions. Several numerical results are presented for illustration of the coupling effects in bending of elastic FGM (Functionally Graded Material) plates. The role of the thickness and shear deformations is studied via numerical simulations by comparison of the plate response in three plate bending theories.

Velocity-pressure coupling schemes for the solution of incompressible fluid flow problems in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) rely on the formulation of Poisson-like equations through projection methods. The solution of these Poisson-like equations represent the pressure correction and the velocity correction to ensure proper satisfaction of the conservation of mass equation at each step of a time-marching scheme or at each level of an iteration process. Inaccurate solutions of these Poisson-like equations result in meaningless instantaneous or intermediate approximations that do not represent the proper time-accurate behavior of the flow. The fact that these equations must be solved to convergence at every step of the overall solution process introduces a major bottleneck for the efficiency of the method. We present a formulation that achieves high levels of accuracy and efficiency by properly solving the Poisson equations at each step of the solution process by formulating a Localized RBF Collocation Meshless Method (LRC-MM) solution approach for the approxima- tion of the diffusive and convective derivatives while employing the same framework to implement a Dual-Reciprocity Boundary Element Method (DR-BEM) for the solution of the ensuing Poisson equations. The same boundary discretization and point distribution employed in the LRC-MM is used for the DR-BEM. The methodology is implemented and tested in the solution of a backward- facing step problem.

For the analysis of cracks in three-dimensional isotropic thermoelastic media, a temperature and displacement discontinuity boundary element method is developed. The Green functions for unit-point temperature and displacement discontinuities are derived, and the temperature and displacement discontinuity boundary integral equations are obtained for an arbitrarily shaped planar crack. Our boundary element method is based on the Green functions for a triangular element. As an application, elliptical cracks are analyzed to validate the developed method. The influence of various thermal boundary conditions is studied.

This article addresses a specific type of boundary conditions in plane elastic boundary value problems, BVP. An elastic plane composed of two dissimilar isotropic materials is considered. It is assumed that the displacement vector orientations are known on both sides of the contour that separates the entire plane into interior and exterior domains. The stress vector is assumed to be continuous across the contour. The aim of this study is the investigation of solvability of this BVP and the development of appropriate numerical methods for solving the corresponding singular integral equation. The latter is necessary as the integral equation is homogeneous. It is shown that depending on the behaviour of the displacement vector orientations the solution of the problem may include a certain number of arbitrary linear parameters. A numerical approach is proposed based on the solution of the homogeneous Riemann BVP to form a non-homogeneous right hand side of the integral equation.

In this paper, we apply the recently proposed fast block-greedy algorithm to a convergent kernel-based collocation method. In particular, we discretize three-dimensional second-order elliptic differential equations by the meshless asymmetric collocation method with over-sampling. Approximated solutions are obtained by solving the resulting weighted least squares problem. Such formulation has been proven to have optimal convergence in H2. Our aim is to investigate the convergence behaviour of some three dimensional test problems. We also study the low-rank solution by restricting the approximation in some smaller trial subspaces. A block-greedy algorithm, which costs at most O(NK2) to select K columns (or trial centers) out of an M × N overdetermined matrix, is employed for such an adaptivity. Numerical simulations are provided to justify these reductions.

The paper reviews the influence of the variability in the morphology and the tissue properties of the human brain and eye, respectively, exposed to high-frequency (HF) radiation. Deterministic-stochastic modeling enables one to estimate the effects of the parameter uncertainties on the maximum induced electric field and Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). Surface Integral Equation (SIE) scheme applied to the brain exposed to HF radiation and hybrid boundary element method (BEM)/finite element method (FEM) scheme used to handle the eye exposure to HF radiation are discussed.

Furthermore, a simple stochastic collocation (SC), through which the relevant parameter uncertainties are taken into account, is presented. The SC approach also provides the assessment of corresponding confidence intervals in the set of obtained numerical results. The expansion of statistical output in terms of the mean and variance over a polynomial basis (via SC approach) is shown to be robust and efficient method providing a satisfactory convergence rate. Some illustrative numerical results for the maximum induced field and SAR in the brain and eye, respectively, are given in the paper, as well.

The vibration behaviour of ships is noticeably influenced by the surrounding water, which represents a fluid of high density. In this case, the feedback of the fluid pressure onto the structure cannot be neglected and a strong coupling scheme between the fluid domain and the structural domain is necessary. In this work, fast boundary element methods (BEMs) are used to model the semi-infinite fluid domain with the free water surface. Two approaches are compared: A symmetric mixed formulation is applied where a part of the water surface is discretized. The second approach is a formulation with a special half-space fundamental solution, which allows the exact representation of the Dirichlet boundary condition on the free water surface without its discretization. Furthermore, the influence of the compressibility of the water is investigated by comparing the solutions of the Helmholtz and the Laplace equation. The ship itself is modeled with the finite element method (FEM). A binary interface to the commercial finite element package ANSYS is used to import the mass matrix and the stiffness matrix. The coupled problems are formulated using Schur complements. To solve the resulting sys- tem of equations, a combination of a direct solver for the finite element matrix and a preconditioned GMRES for the overall Schur complement is chosen. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated using a realistic model problem.

Purpose: This paper explains the analysis of built-in premium within ‘premium-free’ FX Option strategies, also known as ‘exotic options’. The aim is to analyse whether such an increase in built-in premium would have an effect on the outcome of the strategies. Methodology: The analysis was conducted through three different currency pairs, namely, the EURUSD, EURJPY and EURGBP, throughout a period between 2007 to 2014. The authors used the Bloomberg terminal to design two different option strategies: Window Forward Extra and At Expiry Forward Extra. These strategies are known as low risk hedging strategies within the FX options industry. The authors examined different combinations of changes in built-in premium and analysed the respective outcome with each combination. The outcomes were compared to analyse whether an increase in built-in premium would have an effect on the outcome of the strategy. A test was also conducted should these strategies be used as a speculative tool. The strategies were built on a 1 year tenor which is rolled over every month. Hence, each month a hedge using the strategy for 1 year was conducted. The authors used back dated implied volatilies when performing the back-testing in order for results to be realistic. Findings: In most cases it was found that there was no effect on the outcome of the strategy. However, this was only valid if an expiry at a time is taken. On the other hand, when taking into account the whole sample, even though only 3% of the times there was an effect on the outcome of the strategy, the total result finds that an increase in built-in premium has an effect on the outcome of the strategy. Such result was found to be statistically significant using a paired sample t-test. This applied for all currency pairs under review. When analysing the exotic option strategies for speculative purposes, the authors found that in most cases it would have been better for brokers to take higher risk and receive an upfront Premium.

Main topic: A tsunami of regulations since the 2013 financial crisis is steering toward’s Europe’s financial service sector. At the same time the accounting standard for financial institutions’ core products the financial instruments will be changing. As disclosures according to IFRS 9 become mandatory by 2018, the existing IFRS Taxonomy for IFRS 9 already developed by the IFRS Foundation, represents a suitable and objective framework to assess IFRS 9 impact on disclosures. The specific goal of this paper is to perform a conceptual gap analysis considering the IFRS 9 taxonomy issued by the IASB and the Financial Reporting (FinRep) taxonomy on IFRS 9 issued by the European Banking Authority (EBA). In general, the IFRS Taxonomy is not used very much in practice. This is not understandable as several advantages relate to the IFRS taxonomy: as it is not the objective of a principle-based accounting standard to define specific rules for each and every disclosure, this is the reason why to derive reporting elements would be very difficult to accomplish. The IASB started to perform a review process of the XBRL Due Process in 2013. As a result the development of the IFRS taxonomy should become part of the general due process of the financial reporting standards. Due to these changes it is expected that the importance of the IFRS taxonomy will be growing. The FinRep-taxonomy has become mandatory since 2014 for all banks within Europe, to fulfill the regulatory reporting requirements according to the Capital Requirements Directive (CRR) IV. Results: Even though the disclosures for external reporting and for regulatory reporting are based on the same accounting framework International Financial Reporting Standards Boards (IFRS), differences can be observed with regard to disclosures, which are partly material. These differences become transparent when analysing IFRS- and FinRep-taxonomy reporting elements. This is caused by the principle-based IFRS, which enable scope of interpretation and the different objectives of the IASB and the banking supervision. Whereas the IASB follows the objective to develop industry non-specific international financial reporting standards, the banking supervision core focus lies on the banking industry. The EBA follows specific information requests with the FinRep-taxonomy in the role as banking supervisory. The IASB intends to provide decision useful information for investors. Nevertheless these two taxonomies provide the possibility for a starting point for the harmonization and the development of common practice disclosures, which could counteract against heterogeneous financial reporting and the issue of “information overload”. Method: Analytical Practical Implications: This paper is relevant for managers who are responsible for external and regulatory reporting.

This research was conducted to address the prevalent issues regarding the effect of industrial diversification and geographic diversification either partially or simultaneously on the practice of earnings management. By utilizing purposive sampling techniques on the secondary data, the total of 80 sample studies were drawn from manufacturing companies listed on Indonesian Stock Exchange for the period of 2011-2014. Multiple linear regression analysis provided by SPSS 21.0 was also employed to test the hypotheses constructed within this research. The result of the multiple linear regression analysis presents evidence that industrial diversification and geographic diversification simultaneously have a significant effect on the practice of earnings management. Alongside, it also affirms that partially, industrial diversification and geographic diversification have a significance effect on the practice of earnings management. These findings provide scholarly evidence on the implication of diversification strategies on the practice of earnings management to help financial statement users (investors, creditors, stakeholders, etc.), accounting standard setters, and regulators to assess the pervasiveness of earnings management within the company.

The objective of the study is to find out the impact of audit quality on earnings management. The study used a sample of all eighteen banks quoted on the stock exchange as at December, 2010. Data was gathered for the period 2005 to 2010. The cross-sectional year by year regression analysis was performed. Audit quality is measured by using audit fees and auditor change, and abnormal loan loss provision is used to measure earnings management. Though the result was mixed, however, based on the frequency of results for the period of the study, both audit fee and auditor change were positively related to abnormal loan loss provision. This suggests that high audit fee and change in auditor tenure will aggravate earnings management. We recommend that auditor change should not be ceremonial but based on fact of inefficiency and audit fee from each auditor client should be monitored to enforce the five per cent maximum from each client as suggested by Institute of Chartered Accountants code of ethics.

South Korea continued its achievements in education field like its global economic success. South Korea located in the first three ranks according to PISA (Programme for Intermational Student Assessment) report which ranks students’ success published by Organization for Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD) in 2012. Therefore with PISA report South Korea’s success in the field of education is registered. The aim of this study is investigating accounting education in South Korea, where its success on education is registered by PISA report and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are being used for long years. In accordance with the aim of the study, one high school, one associate degree and two undergraduate degree programs where accounting education is given are visited and interviews are conducted with the instructors. And assessments are made on accounting education in South Korea in the frame of these visits and interviews.

The study sought to investigate tax incentives, exclusively tax holiday and capital deductions and how they influence the attraction and retention of the Foreign Direct Investments in Export Processing Zones. A sample size of 72 employees of the firms operating under EPZs was selected for the study using stratified method for the firms and purposive method for the respondents. The study utilized descriptive survey design using self administered questionnaires to solicit information from sampled senior of Export Processing Zones firms. The study found that the use of tax holiday greatly influences the attraction and retention of Foreign Direct Investments. Arguably, the manufacturing sector seems greatly favored by the tax incentives compared to other sectors due to extended capital allowances. The research concludes that tax incentives should be enhanced towards boosting the growth and expansion of the foreign director investors and that the government should be willing to extend the tax holiday beyond ten years for the firms depending on capital injected on long term basis.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the dividend policy dynamics in context to firm specific and macroeconomic variables with stock price volatility in the financial sector of Pakistan. Panel data is used for the period 2006-2014 to identify the common, fixed, random and GMM effect. It is concluded that dividend payout ratio, market value, interest volatility and inflation volatility have positive significant correlation with price volatility. Common effect model shows that dividend payout and interest volatility has a significant positive impact on the share prices. Whereas fixed effect model is more appropriate and good fit than random effect model and model indicate that dividend payout ratio has significant positive impact and market volatility has significant negative impact on stock prices. GMM results also support the fixed and random effect outcomes with more robustness. This study significantly contributes in dividend policy decisions and elaborates the dynamic roll of micro and macro variables on stock price volatility in financial sector of Pakistan.

A growing number of educational programs in sustainability science has paralleled the rise of the field itself. The educational approach of these programs follows the problem-driven, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of the field itself. However, its effectiveness has yet to be systematically evaluated. Similarly, while ad-hoc evaluation schemes have attempted to monitor the quality of the educational programs, there is no standard method that accounts for the particularities of sustainability science programs. This study thus addresses the need for an assessment of the problem-driven approach of educational programs in sustainability science. We have conducted student self-assessments of field courses in the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS-GLI) at The University of Tokyo, which positions its field courses at the center of its curriculum. The self-assessments were based on five key competencies identified as particularly important for sustainability professionals. Workshops and questionnaires engaged students in a reflection of the six field courses and of their own personal development through the activities offered. Our questionnaire results indicate that the majority of participants were satisfied with how the courses furthered their personal development. While some participants expressed frustration at being unable to sufficiently address the respective field’s sustainability challenges due to time constraints, students generally recognized the five key competencies as important for addressing sustainability issues after participating in the courses. Moreover, participants attributed much of their learning to their active engagement in planned field research activities, rather than to passive learning. Variations in results across different course units provide material for further analysis and development of the curriculum. This study is an initial attempt at assessment, with room for ongoing improvement and further research to address additional requirements for fostering the next generation of sustainability professionals.

Reforms in the insurance sector were introduced much later in fact almost a decade later with the enactment of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act 1999, which facilitated the liberalization and opening of the insurance sector. There were two options before the Government of India to privatize insurance sector viz. (a) selling of two public sector insurance companies (LIC and GIC) to private and (b) allowing private sector to enter into insurance market and compete with the LIC and GIC. The Government took the latter route to open the insurance sector in 2000 and LIC and GIC were left untouched. Indian private companies entered the market as joint ventures with some of world’s largest insurance companies. Coexistence of private and public companies heightened competition and Indian insurance sector witnessed several significant changes such as a large number of new innovative products, improved distribution channels and the introduction of world class regulatory and supervisory standards. The most significant product innovation in the life insurance segment is the introduction of unit linked products (ULIPs). Unit linked plans offer long term investment option plus life coverage. In fact ULIPs are combination of both investment and insurance.In this research paper an attempt is made (a) to examine the rise and fall of ULIPs across the private insurers and LIC in the Indian insurance market by analyzing the distribution of first year premium during 2003-14 . The materials in the form of data and information are gathered from the Annual Reports of IRDA and Reports of Economic Survey of India of various years. The data and information collected were processed presented and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Mann Whitney Test Z value (equivalent to Wilcoxon’s rank sum z test) is also used in addition to the calculation of growth rate and percentage contribution of ULIPs to the total premium.

The aim of this research is to provide projections of the labor market in the Republic of Serbska, as a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (RS) in the period 2017 - 2021, based on an analytical approach and precise indicators. The basic methodology in creating projections on the labor market in the Republic of Serbska (RS) is statistical extrapolation of trends in demand and supply of labor at the level of the RS. Data for this study were standard reports of statistical institutions (Statistical Yearbook, Labor Force Survey, etc.), as well as special reports generated for the specific needs of this research. The results show that in the next 6 years, the number of working-age population will shrink by a further 59,000 people with 867,000 to 808,000. Out of the total working-age population, ie the active population. labor force (the sum of employed and unemployed) is will not change greatly, while the level of the inactive population, ie. working-age population not seeking employment will drop significantly. On the other hand, our projections show that, even in terms of the decline in the working-age population, the demand for labor will continue to grow. Also, according to projections, the number of unemployed ie. the excess of supply over demand of the labor force will decrease in the period 2017-2021. All this will not be without impact on wage levels. Total average gross wages will rise by 2021, but wage growth in the manufacturing industry will be much more pronounced. Therefore, it is essential to increase productivity and added value of companies because it is the only way to compensate for this increase in wages.

The traditional brick and mortar buildings labeled “Banks” are fast becoming a historical notion being replaced by electronic, paperless and virtual money. Globalisation has ushered a new era resulting in availability of mobile phones to the larger populace of the world despite physical location. Mobile networking has created a platform that has seen acquisition of mobile phones which in turn has accorded billions of people Self Service Technologies (SST). These services know no boundaries. This paper seeks to explore two determinant variables of the Technological Acceptance Model (TAM) which have become major variables in the implementation of mobile banking projects. Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) are arguably the cornerstones if mobile banking is to be successfully implemented, and hence adopted, in these financial services sector advancements. This Paper seeks to hypothetically explore the argument that PU and PEOU have the greatest impact on the implementation of mobile banking projects when considered in relation to other factors. The case of the mobile banking situation in Zimbabwe will be explored.

This paper investigated the efficacy of street vending as a means for achieving economic sustenance by those engaged in the business with special interest to those operating in the central business district of Harare. A sample of 225 street vendors was decided on and questionnaires were used to gather data. The questionnaires had a response rate of 89.7%. The paper also adopted the descriptive research design. The study found that most of the street vendors understudy are earning less than $2 per day which is very low. Moreover, the majority cannot afford decent homes and are renting or still living with their parents and relatives. The study also found that street vending could be a means for achieving economic sustenance by those engaged in the business if proper support structures are put in place by the government.

Long-term orientation is the tendency to prioritize the long-range implications and impact of decisions and actions that come to fruition after an extended time period. This paper examines the sustainability of entrepreneurs based on long term commitments and respect for tradition. The specific influence of long term commitments and respect for tradition predictors on demographic outcome variables like Age, Gender, Internal Motivation, External motivation, Academic experience and technical experience has been attempted to develop an instrument to measure Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to evaluate its impact on entrepreneur development.