Racecar: Ratings and Content Employed to Calculate Accurate Recommendations

Racecar is a recommender system for movies that combines collaborative filtering-based, feature-based, and tag-based recommendations. A simple linear model (SlopeOne) is used for the collaborative filtering module, while the other two sub-systems are naive Bayes classifiers. In order to derive the best system, the modules are tested both alone and in combination. The lowest error (MAE 0.9328, RMSE 1.214) results from putting 90% weight on the collaborative filtering module and 10% weight on the feature-based recommendation module

VANET-enabled eco-friendly road characteristics-aware routing for vehicular traffic

There is growing awareness of the dangers of climate change caused by greenhouse gases. In the coming decades this could result in numerous disasters such as heat-waves, flooding and crop failures. A major contributor to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions is the transport sector, particularly private vehicles. Traffic congestion involving private vehicles also causes a lot of wasted time and stress to commuters. At the same time new wireless technologies such as Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) are being developed which could allow vehicles to communicate with each other. These could enable a number of innovative schemes to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. 1) EcoTrec is a VANET-based system which allows vehicles to exchange messages regarding traffic congestion and road conditions, such as roughness and gradient. Each vehicle uses the messages it has received to build a model of nearby roads and the traffic on them. The EcoTrec Algorithm then recommends the most fuel efficient route for the vehicles to follow. 2) Time-Ants is a swarm based algorithm that considers not only the amount of cars in the spatial domain but also the amoumt in the time domain. This allows the system to build a model of the traffic congestion throughout the day. As traffic patterns are broadly similar for weekdays this gives us a good idea of what traffic will be like allowing us to route the vehicles more efficiently using the Time-Ants Algorithm. 3) Electric Vehicle enhanced Dedicated Bus Lanes (E-DBL) proposes allowing electric vehicles onto the bus lanes. Such an approach could allow a reduction in traffic congestion on the regular lanes without greatly impeding the buses. It would also encourage uptake of electric vehicles. 4) A comprehensive survey of issues associated with communication centred traffic management systems was carried out