《鹿特丹规则》之单位责任限制问题评述——兼论对我国相关规定的潜在影响

单位赔偿责任限制问题是海运承运人中较为特色的规定,有其存在的历史和经济合理性。它不仅仅表现为责任限额的高低,责任限制权主体、丧失责任限制权等其他相关规定,也属于单位责任限制问题范畴。《鹿特丹规则》在承运人责任制度等方面有所创新的同时,也对该问题有相应规定,除了责任主体、适用范围、批量合同对单位责任限制影响较大之外,主要继承了现存海运公约规定,并没有太多创新。但是《鹿特丹规则》在主体制度的创新有助于消除中国港口经营人是否应当享有责任限制的争论,在适用范围上扩大则有可能使我国部分非海运区段承运人享有责任限制。因此,该公约就此问题的规定仍然潜在地影响着中国。此外,未来立法或者修改法律时,我国应有全局意识,考虑单位责任限制所在的整体法律语境,根据我国具体实践设定责任限额并扩大涵盖的索赔事项范围。更进一步而言,我国应该多考虑多式联运的赔偿责任限额冲突问题。

Effects of Shrub on Runoff and Soil Loss at Loess Slopes Under Simulated Rainfall

Improved understanding of the effect of shrub cover on soil erosion process will provide valuable information for soil and water conservation programs.Laboratory rainfall simulations were conducted to determine the effects of shrubs on runoff and soil erosion and to ascertain the relationship between the rate of soil loss and the runoff hydrodynamic characteristics.In these simulations a 20° slope was subjected to rainfall intensities of 45,87,and 127 mm/h.The average runoff rates ranged from 0.51 to 1.26 mm/min for bare soil plots and 0.15 to 0.96 mm/min for shrub plots.Average soil loss rates varied from 44.19 to 114.61 g/(min·m^2) for bare soil plots and from 5.61 to 84.58 g/(min·m^2) for shrub plots.There was a positive correlation between runoff and soil loss for the bare soil plots,and soil loss increased with increased runoff for shrub plots only when rainfall intensity is 127 mm/h.Runoff and soil erosion processes were strongly influenced by soil surface conditions because of the formation of erosion pits and rills.The unit stream power was the optimal hydrodynamic parameter to characterize the soil erosion mechanisms.The soil loss rate increased linearly with the unit stream power on both shrub and bare soil plots.Critical unit stream power values were 0.004 m/s for bare soil plots and 0.017 m/s for shrub plots.

（Dis）Economies of Scale in Business Software Systems Development and Enhancement Projects

In the software engineering literature, it is commonly believed that economies of scale do not occur in case of software Development and Enhancement Projects （D＆EP）. Their per-unit cost does not decrease but increase with the growth of such projects product size. Thus this is diseconomies of scale that occur in them. The significance of this phenomenon results from the fact that it is commonly considered to be one of the fundamental objective causes of their low effectiveness. This is of particular significance with regard to Business Software Systems （BSS） D＆EP characterized by exceptionally low effectiveness comparing to other software D＆EP. Thus the paper aims at answering the following two questions： （1） Do economies of scale really not occur in BSS D＆EP？ （2） If economies of scale may occur in BSS D＆EP, what factors are then promoting them？ These issues classify into economics problems of software engineering research and practice.

A New Attempt of Using Crushed Plastic Solid Wastes in Water Filtration

The aim of this new study is to investigate the ability of using crushed plastic solid wastes in water filtration by using a pilot plant. Two sets of filters were used. The first set represents mono media filters. The first filter is a sand media with effective size of 0.65 mm and the others three are plastic media with different grain sizes. The second set represents dual media filters with different depths, the filters were made to operate with the same effective size （0.6-1.0 mm）. These filters were subjected to the same operating conditions of filtration rates and infiuent turbidity. The filters were operated at rates of 5, 7.5, 10, and 12.5 m/h in order to find the optimum filtration velocity with influent turbidity ranged between 7 and l0 NTU （nephelometric turbidity unit）. The results indicated that the single plastic filters and the dual filters produced water of the same high quality as the sand filter. Plastic filters were slower in the development of head losses by about of 8%-78% less and they have longer running time than the sand filter, while the dual filters were slower in the development of head losses by about of 14%-16% and they have longer running time by about of 12%-40% than the sand filter.

The Drainage Exchange of Stormwater Potential in Flat Area Problems

Groundwater as an alternative source still does not contribute to the water supply in area of Parit Raja because of the limitation of water availability in the ground. This lacking of groundwater could be caused by the circumstance that the top layer of soil is dominated by compacted clay around 2 meters in which its permeability is small, so the water is difficult to infiltrate the ground. The recharge well technique was designed based on the flat area problems, layer of real condition, flow water table and low infiltration rate. Resistivity soundings were made at existing wells to assess the subsurface layers. Beside that, the past records on floods event, sub surface and surface studies were collected around study area as a preliminary studies. It was presented that the study area promised good prospects to increase the capability of groundwater and contribute to the drainage system by reducing the volume of rainfall runoff using the recharge well technique.

A Fast Half-Pixel Motion Estimation Algorithm and Efficient Interpolation Hardware Architecture Unit for H.264/AVC

In this paper, a fast half-pixel motion estimation algorithm and its corresponding hardware architecture is presented. Unlike three steps are needed in typical half-pixel motion estimation algorithm, the presented algorithm needs only two steps to obtain all the interpolated pixels of an entire 8x8 block. The proposed architecture works in a parallel way and is simulated by Modelsirn 6.5 SE, synthesized to the Xilinx Virtex4 XC4VLX15 FPGA device. The implementation results show that this architecture can achieve 190 MHz and 10 clock cycles are reduced to complete the entire interpolation process when compared with typical half-pixel interpolation, which meets the requirements of real-time application for very high defination videos.

Strata-pressure behavior of double-unit mining method combining fully-mechanized and mechanized coal face

Based on the engineering background of double-unit face mining under complicated geological conditions and the lagging fully-mechanized face surpassing the fore mechanized face of double-unit face in Zhou Yuanshan coal mine, strata-pressure behavior in the process was analyzed based on FLAC3D and on-site measurement. The results show that the stress concentration factor of superposition abutment pressure and the alternate distance of double-unit face are meeting gauss function, the relationship between the depth of stress concentration point and alternate distance also meets gaussian function. When the alternate distance is larger than 24 m, the superimposition of pilot support pressure in the double-unit face is weak. When the alternate distance is more than 12-15 m, the changes of the roof subsidence coefficient and the depth of stress con- centration point are stabilized; when the alternate distance is 3-6 m, the fore working face end is in the greatest impact area of superposition abutment pressure, this area should be avoided in determining the reasonable alternate distance.

Unsuccessful letter–sound integration in English reading by native Chinese speakers: evidence from an event related potentials study

Integrating letters and sounds are essential for successful reading in alphabetic languages. It remains unclear if native speakers of non-alphabetic languages integrate letters and sounds in reading an alphabetic lan- guage in the same way as native alphabetic readers do. Chinese is a morpho-syllabic system （each character cor- responds to one syllable） and contrasts sharply with alphabetic languages such as English. Several fMRI studies have shown that native Chinese speakers apply their native language system to read English words. By using the cross- modal mismatch negativity （MMN） paradigm, we directly investigated letter-sound integration for reading in English among native Chinese speakers. To investigate the effect of native language background on letter-sound integration in second language reading, a group of native Korean English learners served as a comparison group. We compared MMN responses between an auditory only condition （only vowels presented） and two audiovisual conditions （AV0, vowel presented synchronously with the corresponding letter; AV200, the letter presented 200 ms before the corresponding vowel） for both native Chinese and native Korean speakers. Native Chinese speakers demonstrated significantly attenuated MMN amplitudes in audiovisual conditions compared with the auditory only condition, regardless of their phonological decoding speed. In con- trast, native Korean speakers showed amplified amplitude MMN in AV200 compared with that in the auditory only condition. The results suggest that native language may shape the brain responses of second language learners to reading a second language in the early stages. Native non- alphabetic language speakers may be unable to use visual information to facilitate their phonological processing in the early stage while naT：lye alphabetic language speakers are capable of integrating letter sounds automatically.

Commuting dual Toeplitz operators on the harmonic Bergman space

We completely characterize commuting dual Toeplitz operators with bounded harmonic symbols on the harmonic Bergman space of the unit disk. We show that for harmonic ■ and ψ, S■Sψ= SψS■ on(L2h)⊥if and only if ■ and ψ satisfy one of the following conditions:(1) Both ■ and ψ are analytic on D.(2) Both ■ and ψ are anti-analytic on D.(3) There exist complex constants α and β, not both 0, such that ■ = αψ + β.Furthermore, we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for S■Sψ= S■ψ.

A new kind of optimal second-order symplectic scheme for seismic wave simulations

Here we introduce generalized momentum and coordinate to transform seismic wave displacement equations into Hamiltonian system.We define the Lie operators associated with kinetic and potential energy,and construct a new kind of second order symplectic scheme,which is extremely suitable for high efficient and long-term seismic wave simulations.Three sets of optimal coefficients are obtained based on the principle of minimum truncation error.We investigate the stability conditions for elastic wave simulation in homogeneous media.These newly developed symplectic schemes are compared with common symplectic schemes to verify the high precision and efficiency in theory and numerical experiments.One of the schemes presented here is compared with the classical Newmark algorithm and third order symplectic scheme to test the long-term computational ability.The scheme gets the same synthetic surface seismic records and single channel record as third order symplectic scheme in the seismic modeling in the heterogeneous model.

Simple aspects of femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy

Femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy （FSRS）, using an overlapping pair of narrow band Raman pump and broadband probe pulses with heterodyne detection along the probe pulse direction, is a new nonlinear spectroscopic technique to record vibrational spectra of even highly fluorescent molecules and to study vibrational dynamics on excited electronic states of molecules, as in photoisomerization. FSRS is described by diagrammatic third-order perturbation theory with wave packet analysis. The phase matching condition gives rise to forty-eight terms for FSRS, but the resonant condition reduces it to just eight terms, which can be depicted by Feynman dual time-line diagrams, or closed time path loop diagrams, or the complementary four-wave mixing energy level diagrams. The eight terms fall into four sets-SRS（I）, SRS（Ⅱ）, IRS（I）, IRS（Ⅱ）-where SRS stands for stimulated Raman scattering and IRS stands for inverse Raman scattering. The SRS（I） set can also account for spontaneous Raman scattering, but the remaining SRS（Ⅱ）, IRS（I） and IRS（Ⅱ） terms are only present in stimulated scattering with the presence of a probe field. The SRS（I） set accounts for the Stokes Raman lines while the IRS（I） term accounts for the anti-Stokes lines, relative to the Raman pump frequency, in the FSRS spectrum. The remaining SRS（Ⅱ） and IRS（Ⅱ） terms give rise to broad baselines. Using a harmonic oscillator model, analytic results are obtained for the four-time correlation functions in the third-order polarizations. The issue of high time and high frequency resolution in time-resolved FSRS spectra is discussed. Calculations are made with the theory to compare with experimental results for： （a） resonance FSRS of fluorescent Rhodamine 6G and （b） 2D-FSRS from a coherent vibrational state that has been prepared by an impulsive, off-resonant pump pulse on CDCl3. The calculated results compared well with experimental results, and in the case of 2D-FSRS on CDCl3 there is a dominant cascade effect contributing to the FSRS spectra.