FLOWER - Fuzzy lower than-best effort transport protocol

We present a new delay-based transport protocol named FLOWER, that aims at providing a Lower-than-Best-Effort (LBE) service. The objective is to propose an alternative to the Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) widely deployed within the official BitTorrent client. Indeed, besides its intra-fairness problem, known as latecomer unfairness, LEDBAT can be too aggressive against TCP, making it ill suited for providing LBE services over certain networks such as constrained wireless networks. By using a fuzzy controller to modulate the sending rate, FLOWER aims to solve LEDBAT issues while fulfilling the role of a LBE protocol. Our simulation results show that FLOWER can carry LBE traffic in network scenarios where LEDBAT cannot while solving the latecomer unfairness problem. Finally, the presented algorithm is simple to implement and does not require complex computation that would prevent its deployment

Comparative Analysis of Four New Alternative Types of Roundabouts: "Turbo", "Flower", "Target" and "Four-Flyover" Roundabout

Analysis of literature shows that "modern roundabouts" nowadays exist in all European countries, as well as in more than 60 countries elsewhere in the world. Nowadays, a growing number of studies, presented in scientific and professional literature, point out a poor trac safety characteristics of "standard" two-lane roundabouts and lower capacity then was expected. These problems are resolved in more ways in dierent countries; however the solution, whereby the number of conflict spots is diminished has proven to be the most successful. Lower number of conflict spots is one of characteristics of the alternative types of roundabouts. The alternative types of roundabouts are usually more recent and implemented only in certain countries. It is typical for them that they dier from "standard" one- and two-lane roundabouts in one or more design elements, while the purpose of their implementation is also specific. This paper illustrate four relative new alternative types of roundabouts – "turbo", "flower", "target" and "four flyover" roundabouts and their comparison from designing, capacity and trac – safety point of view

Design of the first Italian roundabout with jointed plain concrete pavement

This work presents the results of the overall design of the first Italian roundabout with jointed plain concrete pavement. The examined case study complies with current international standards and practices for geometry of roundabouts and road pavements. The construction of a concrete pavement in an urban roundabout will better manage and slow down fast vehicular flows, and increase traffic fluidity in an important junction, trafficked by heavy vehicles, where maintenance works should be reduced to avoid queues. The design of the roundabout involved several competences for: defining the geometry of the four-arm junction, designing the thickness of the jointed plain concrete pavement both on the circular crown and the arms, studying the mix design of a high resistance concrete. As regard to the pavement, the result of the study was an un-dowelled concrete pavement composed of square slabs laid on a cement concrete subbase and a granular layer. The shape of the slabs has been designed to optimize the structural performance of their material, which is a high strength concrete mix derived from an extensive laboratory test work. In general, the results summarized approaches typical of different design conditions: urban ones for traffic flow and safety needs; high-traffic ones for the chosen pavement type; airport ones for the absence of dowel and tie bars at the joints. Indeed, the article has highlighted that the design process of a concrete roundabout requires multiple analyses to consider various features and correctly re-design anexistingurbanjunction. Its geometrical design,the structural design of the concrete pavement and the theoretical and experimental design of the concrete mix were the main phases of this process and they needed different competences to conduct comprehensive and appropriate analyses

Western Highway Project Section 2 Beaufort to Ararat assessment under Environment Effects Act 1978

1.1 Purpose of this Document This is the assessment of environmental effects (Assessment) under the Environment Effects Act 1978 (EE Act) for the Western Highway Project Section 2 Beaufort to Ararat (WHP2). It represents the final step in the Environment Effects Statement (EES) process under the EE Act by providing advice to decision-makers on the likely environmental effects of the proposal, their acceptability and how they should be addressed in relevant statutory decisions. The Assessment is informed by the report of the recent Inquiry together with the EES and public submissions. This Assessment will inform the decisions required under Victorian law for the proposal to proceed, in particular approval decisions under the Planning and Environment Act 1987 (P&E Act). It will also inform the approval decision under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). 1.2 Project Description VicRoads proposes to duplicate the Western Highway between Beaufort (Martins Lane) and Ararat (Warrayatkin Road) as part of a larger project to duplicate the highway between Ballarat and Stawell. It is proposed to upgrade Section 2 Beaufort to Ararat to freeway standard in the long term. The project does not involve bypasses of Beaufort or Ararat. The project would mainly involve construction of a second carriageway adjacent and parallel to the existing highway on adjacent land. At Box’s Cutting and Buangor, new dual carriageways are proposed, and the existing highway would revert to a local road. When traffic conditions warrant and funding becomes available, it is proposed to upgrade Section 2 to a rural freeway standard. This would require construction of service roads for local access and grade separated interchanges. The EES addresses the effects of both the interim upgrade to a divided rural highway and the ultimate upgrade to a freeway. The project covers a route length of approximately 38 km through the Shire of Pyrenees and the Rural City of Ararat. The alignment spans six significant waterways and would require a new crossing of the Ballarat – Ararat railway line. It would affect land that is predominantly used for a variety of agricultural uses including plantations, grazing and cropping. A detailed description of the project is provided in Chapter 6 of the EES. 1.3 Structure of this Assessment Section 2 of this Assessment outlines both the EES process and statutory approvals required for the proposed development. The core part of this Assessment is Section 3, which first provides an outline of the process undertaken by VicRoads for analysing a range of potentially suitable alignment options, resulting in a short list of two options which would meet the project objectives. Section 3 then assesses the potential environmental effects of the two short-listed options evaluated in detail in the EES. Section 3 concludes with an assessment of the proposal and its overall outcomes in the context of applicable legislation, statutory policy as well as the relevant objectives and principles of ecologically sustainable development (ESD). Table 3 provides specific responses to the recommendations of the Inquiry

Distance-Dependent RED Policy (DDRED)

International audienceThe network quality of service (QoS) and the congestion control of the transport protocol are important parameters for the performance of a network data transfer. To this end, routers use various queue policies for packet dispatching, and all of them must deal with packet drop. We propose a new algorithm for packet drop in routers. Given that a packet drop wastes all the network resources it has already used, we propose a new policy which favors packets with higher distance from source. It can be simply integrated on top of tail drop or RED (with or without ECN) queue policies. Simulations with NS2 show that long flows are indeed favored compared to short flows, and lead to higher overall resource utilisation without sacrificing TCP fairness

Seeking Anonymity in an Internet Panopticon

Obtaining and maintaining anonymity on the Internet is challenging. The state of the art in deployed tools, such as Tor, uses onion routing (OR) to relay encrypted connections on a detour passing through randomly chosen relays scattered around the Internet. Unfortunately, OR is known to be vulnerable at least in principle to several classes of attacks for which no solution is known or believed to be forthcoming soon. Current approaches to anonymity also appear unable to offer accurate, principled measurement of the level or quality of anonymity a user might obtain. Toward this end, we offer a high-level view of the Dissent project, the first systematic effort to build a practical anonymity system based purely on foundations that offer measurable and formally provable anonymity properties. Dissent builds on two key pre-existing primitives - verifiable shuffles and dining cryptographers - but for the first time shows how to scale such techniques to offer measurable anonymity guarantees to thousands of participants. Further, Dissent represents the first anonymity system designed from the ground up to incorporate some systematic countermeasure for each of the major classes of known vulnerabilities in existing approaches, including global traffic analysis, active attacks, and intersection attacks. Finally, because no anonymity protocol alone can address risks such as software exploits or accidental self-identification, we introduce WiNon, an experimental operating system architecture to harden the uses of anonymity tools such as Tor and Dissent against such attacks.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Research on organic agriculture in the Netherlands : organisation, methodology and results

Chapters: 1. Organic agriculture in the Netherlands; 2. Dutch research on organic agriculture: approaches and characteristics; 3. Dutch knowledge infrastructure for organic agricultur'; 4. Sustainable systems; 5. Good soil: a good start; 6. Robust varieties and vigorous propagation material; 7. Prevention and control of weeds, pests and diseases; 8. Health and welfare of organic livestock; 9. Animal production and feeding; 10. Special branches: organic greenhouse production, bulbs, ornamentals and aquaculture; 11. Healthfulness and quality of products; 12. Economy, market and chain; 13. People and society. A publication of Wageningen UR and Louis Bolk Institut

Researching and designing walking

This report is the outcome of a research and development project about urban walking (funded by COWIfonden) between Roskilde University (Professor Jonas Larsen and others at the Department of People and Technology) and COWI AS.The research project started in 2019 and was finished in the first half of 2023. A central element of the project was to research the use of streets by pedestrians and implement temporary test designs. The project researched walking practices and made test cases in three Nordic cities: Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo.The report will hopefully inspire urban scholars, planners and designers in understanding walking and researching, planning and designing urban streets attuned to the needs and practices of pedestrians. The authors would like to thank the administration of the three cities in Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo for constructive comments on the research and especially for allowing the test designs to be implemented. Finally, the authors appreciate COWIfonden’s generous financial support and feedback during the project. Without this support, the project would not have been possibl