A Measurement Based Shadow Fading Model for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Network Simulations

The vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) propagation channel has significant implications on the design and performance of novel communication protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Extensive research efforts have been made to develop V2V channel models to be implemented in advanced VANET system simulators for performance evaluation. The impact of shadowing caused by other vehicles has, however, largely been neglected in most of the models, as well as in the system simulations. In this paper we present a shadow fading model targeting system simulations based on real measurements performed in urban and highway scenarios. The measurement data is separated into three categories, line-of-sight (LOS), obstructed line-of-sight (OLOS) by vehicles, and non line-of-sight due to buildings, with the help of video information recorded during the measurements. It is observed that vehicles obstructing the LOS induce an additional average attenuation of about 10 dB in the received signal power. An approach to incorporate the LOS/OLOS model into existing VANET simulators is also provided. Finally, system level VANET simulation results are presented, showing the difference between the LOS/OLOS model and a channel model based on Nakagami-m fading.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Hindawi International Journal of Antennas and Propagatio

Veterinary student competence in equine lameness recognition and assessment: a mixed methods study

The development of perceptual skills is an important aspect of veterinary education. The authors investigated veterinary student competency in lameness evaluation at two stages, before (third year) and during (fourth/fifth year) clinical rotations. Students evaluated horses in videos, where horses were presented during trot on a straight line and in circles. Eye-tracking data were recorded during assessment on the straight line to follow student gaze. On completing the task, students filled in a structured questionnaire. Results showed that the experienced students outperformed inexperienced students, although even experienced students may classify one in four horses incorrectly. Mistakes largely arose from classifying an incorrect limb as lame. The correct detection of sound horses was at chance level. While the experienced student cohort primarily looked at upper body movement (head and sacrum) during lameness assessment, the inexperienced cohort focused on limb movement. Student self-assessment of performance was realistic, and task difficulty was most commonly rated between 3 and 4 out of 5. The inexperienced students named a considerably greater number of visual lameness features than the experienced students. Future dedicated training based on the findings presented here may help students to develop more reliable lameness assessment skills

Interactive document summarisation.

This paper describes the Interactive Document Summariser (IDS), a dynamic document summarisation system, which can help users of digital libraries to access on-line documents more effectively. IDS provides dynamic control over summary characteristics, such as length and topic focus, so that changes made by the user are instantly reflected in an on-screen summary. A range of 'summary-in-context' views support seamless transitions between summaries and their source documents. IDS creates summaries by extracting keyphrases from a document with the Kea system, scoring sentences according to the keyphrases that they contain, and then extracting the highest scoring sentences. We report an evaluation of IDS summaries, in which human assessors identified suitable summary sentences in source documents, against which IDS summaries were judged. We found that IDS summaries were better than baseline summaries, and identify the characteristics of Kea keyphrases that lead to the best summaries

A predefined channel coefficients library for vehicle-to-vehicle communications

It is noticeable that most of VANETs communications tests are assessed through simulation. In a majority of simulation results, the physical layer is often affected by an apparent lack of realism. Therefore, vehicular channel model has become a critical issue in the field of intelligent transport systems (ITS). To overcome the lack of realism problem, a more robust channel model is needed to reflect the reality. This paper provides an open access, predefined channel coefficients library. The library is based on 2x2 and 4x4 Multiple – Input – Multiple – Output (MIMO) systems in V2V communications, using a spatial channel model extended SCME which will help to reduce the overall simulation time. In addition, it provides a more realistic channel model for V2V communications; considering: over ranges of speeds, distances, multipath signals, sub-path signals, different angle of arrivals, different angle departures, no line of sight and line of sight. An intensive evaluation process has taken place to validate the library and acceptance results are produced. Having an open access predefined library, enables the researcher at relevant communities to test and evaluate several complicated vehicular communications scenarios in a wider manners with less time and efforts

Wind environment evaluation in neighborhood residential areas in Malaysia:a case study of Johor Bahru metropolitan city

This paper discusses planning guidelines at the neighborhood residential areas in consideration of wind flow in Malaysia. It aims to reduce the energy consumption particularly from the usage of home air conditioners. Natural wind flow is one of the most effective methods to help achieve the energy saving objectives in large cities especially under the tropical climate like Malaysia. This paper presents the results of several wind tunnel tests on selected neighborhood residential areas in the Johor Bahru Metropolitan City. Moreover, the wind environment evaluation of the selected case study areas under the climate conditions of the city was carried out. The results of the evaluation shows that the mean wind velocities at 1.5m height of some of the Malaysian terraced houses cases were in the comfort zone particularly during the northeast monsoon period. Nevertheless, both in the southwest monsoon period and the inter monsoon period, although the mean values of wind velocity ratio of the Malaysian terrace houses had been slightly higher than the trend line of the Japanese apartment houses, the mean wind velocities in all the cases in the Johor Bahru City and Japan did not reach the required comfort zones

Template-driven teacher modelling approach : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Science at Massey University, Palmerston North

This thesis describes the Template-driven Teacher Modeling Approach, the initial implementation of the template server and the formative evaluation on the prototype. The initiative of Template-driven teacher modeling is to integrate the template server and intelligent teacher models in Web-based education systems for course authoring. There are a number of key components in the proposed system: user interface, template server and content repository. The Template-Driven Teacher Modeling (TDTM) architecture supports the course authoring by providing higher degree of control over the generation of presentation. The collection of accumulated templates in the template repository for a teacher or a group of teachers are selected as the inputs for the inference mechanism in teacher's model to calculate the best representation of the teaching strategy, and then predict teacher intention when he or she interacts with the system. Moreover, the presentation templates are kept to support the re-use of the on-line content at the level of individual screens with the help of Template Server

Families and Communities Against Child Sexual Exploitation (FCASE) : final evaluation report

This is the final evaluation report for the Barnardo’s Families and Communities Against Sexual Exploitation project (FCASE), produced by the International Centre, researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Trafficking at the University of Bedfordshire. The programme was launched in April 2013, funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and concluded in March 2015. The evaluation was undertaken during the same period. The FCASE model has been piloted in three sites, which for the purposes of this report have been anonymised and will be referred to using pseudonyms. It consists of the following elements: a structured programme of six to eight weeks direct work with young people and families where a risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been identified; delivery of CSE training with professionals; and undertaking community awareness raising. The evaluation has been informed by a range of qualitative data. The report identifies the elements that work well and some of the challenges in its implementation. This had been done in order to determine good practice in supporting families and communities and embed more effective practice on protecting children and young people, including those in foster care, from sexual exploitation, harnessing the protective factors within a child’s family and/or foster home. The learning from the project is intended to help other agencies to implement the FCASE model. An on-line learning resource is to be produced in order to facilitate this process

On Marton's inner bound for broadcast channels

Marton's inner bound is the best known achievable region for a general discrete memoryless broadcast channel. To compute Marton's inner bound one has to solve an optimization problem over a set of joint distributions on the input and auxiliary random variables. The optimizers turn out to be structured in many cases. Finding properties of optimizers not only results in efficient evaluation of the region, but it may also help one to prove factorization of Marton's inner bound (and thus its optimality). The first part of this paper formulates this factorization approach explicitly and states some conjectures and results along this line. The second part of this paper focuses primarily on the structure of the optimizers. This section is inspired by a new binary inequality that recently resulted in a very simple characterization of the sum-rate of Marton's inner bound for binary input broadcast channels. This prompted us to investigate whether this inequality can be extended to larger cardinality input alphabets. We show that several of the results for the binary input case do carry over for higher cardinality alphabets and we present a collection of results that help restrict the search space of probability distributions to evaluate the boundary of Marton's inner bound in the general case. We also prove a new inequality for the binary skew-symmetric broadcast channel that yields a very simple characterization of the entire Marton inner bound for this channel.Comment: Submitted to ISIT 201

Implementation of the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities: A Three-Year Retrospective

In April 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) launched the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA) to increase the effectiveness of efforts to eliminate health disparities by coordinating partners, leaders, and stakeholders committed to action. At its core, the NPA is an experiment in collaboration that relies heavily on those on the front line who are actively engaged in minority health work at multiple levels. It gives them the responsibility of identifying and helping to define core actions, new approaches, and new partnerships that ultimately will help to close the health gap in the United States. This paper provides a retrospective examination of the NPA’s creation and development of health equity coalitions at the federal and regional levels and its establishment of strategic national partnerships to move a health equity agenda forward. The article explores how the development of this infrastructure has, in turn, led to the implementation of actions and activities to address health disparities. The article concludes with a reflection on emerging opportunities for improvement and ways forward to continue the initiative’s evaluation and secure its sustainability