Time preferences and risk aversion: tests on domain differences

The design and evaluation of environmental policy requires the incorporation of time and risk elements as many environmental outcomes extend over long time periods and involve a large degree of uncertainty. Understanding how individuals discount and evaluate risks with respect to environmental outcomes is a prime component in designing effective environmental policy to address issues of environmental sustainability, such as climate change. Our objective in this study is to investigate whether subjects' time preferences and risk aversion across the monetary domain and the environmental domain differ. Crucially, our experimental design is incentivized: in the monetary domain, time preferences and risk aversion are elicited with real monetary payoffs, whereas in the environmental domain, we elicit time preferences and risk aversion using real (bee-friendly) plants. We find that subjects' time preferences are not significantly different across the monetary and environmental domains. In contrast, subjects' risk aversion is significantly different across the two domains. More specifically, subjects (men and women) exhibit a higher degree of risk aversion in the environmental domain relative to the monetary domain. Finally, we corroborate earlier results, which document that women are more risk averse than men in the monetary domain. We show this finding to, also, hold in the environmental domain

A Study of Automotive Security : CAN Bus Intrusion detection Systems, Attack Surface, and Regulations

The innovation in the automotive sector enhanced the technology implemented in vehicles by the manufacturers. Consequently, the overall driving experience improved, thanks to the introduction of better safety, utility, and entertainment systems. Moreover, automobiles began collecting and exchanging data with the external world through different communication protocols. However, these additions have started to attract attention from security experts. More importantly, malevolent attackers have exploited the technologies and their related attack points to carry out malicious activities to cause data security and safety issues. These issues have led to establishing standards and regulations (ISO 21434, UNECE 155, etc.) that redefine vehicle design and development by incorporating security protocols and requirements necessary to create secure automobiles. However, these documents analyze the problem at a high level and do not dwell on practical solutions implementation analysis. This work presents an in-depth study of in-vehicle communication concerns via Controller Area Network (CAN) bus safety problems analysis with different proposed solutions. Specifically, a survey of Intrusion Detection Systems developed in the literature is brought up: simulation of three CAN bus intrusion detection systems against various attacks. The results show effectiveness against disruptive attacks, i.e., with numerous messages sent in a short period of time, but conversely have difficulty detecting more targeted attacks with few transmitted packets. The solutions analysis is an excellent starting point for security engineers to be able to develop Intrusion Detection Systems for the CAN bus capable of detecting attacks that will become increasingly complex and difficult to counter over time

Households’ Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Improved Solid Waste Management Interventions Using Choice Experiment Approach: Debre Tabor Town, Northwest Ethiopia

Good Solid Waste Managemnt (SWM) practices are indispensable for maintaining quality environment and the health of urban dwellers in most developing countries, like Ethiopia. However, for successful implementation of adequate SWM options, households’ preferences and their Willingness to Pay (WTP) should be taken in to consideration. The main aim of this study was to analyse the preferences of households’ and estimate the WTP for improved SWM service attributes in the form of money income and labor effort using choice experiment approach. Multi-stage stratified random sampling design was used to draw sample households and primary data was collected from 220 households living in Debre Tabor town. In addition to the standard conditional logit model, the Random Parameter Logit Model (RPLM) and the Latent Class Models (LCM) were estimated to relax the independent of the irrelevant alternatives assumption and account preferences heterogeneity for various SWM attributes. The RPL results indicated that preferences for all attributes were heterogonous among households, a conclusion that was supported by the wide variation in LCM estimates between classes.  Based on the implicit price,mode of transportation was the foremost attribute followed by solid waste disposal method, and  service delivery institute and sorting of solid waste was the least important attributes. The welfare measure result showed that households were WTP a considerable amount of money for the improved SWM interventions scenario. The result further revealed that respondents with higher level of income, higher level of education and female headed households preferred the upswing SWM interventions. The finding showed that analyzing households’ preferences is very important to prioritize among alternatives for the implementation of good SWM. Therefore, studying this aspect can contribute to the successful implementation of sound SWM practices. In order to achieve adequate SWM options, it is also recommended that the urban planner or concerned body need to take account  households’ preferences for improved SWM interventions. Keywords: Choice Experiment Approach, Debre Tabor, Solid Waste Management , Willingness to Pa

Postprocessing Neuroimaging methods in MRI and PET/MRI with applications to Multiple Sclerosis and other Neurological diseases

Many non-invasive imaging instruments have been developed in the last 40 years, allowing to obtain images of the interior human body while the patient is still alive. In the contest of Neurology studies, imaging system as CT, MRI, SPECT or PET allows to obtain biomarkers useful to quantitatively distinguish between healthy and unhealthy subjects, evaluate the staging of a Neurological illness in a patient, evaluate the efficacy of a treatment, explore the causes of the illness. In this work MRI and PET imaging system introduced from scratch, going from reconstruction from raw data to state-of-the art post-processing techniques and the computation of more popular biomarkers. After these introduction, three original work using the recent PET/MRI imaging system are presented, with a particular focus on the methods. These three studies involve patients with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's Disease and Brain Tumor

Implementing streamlined radiology reporting and clinical results management in low-dose CT screening for lung cancer

Lung cancer kills more people in the UK than any other cancer. Mortality rates are poor, with fewer than 10% of people alive 10 years after diagnosis. Lung Cancer Screening (LCS) with low-dose CT (LDCT) is effective at reducing lung cancer mortality when employed in at-risk populations; because of this, in the US, LCS has been implemented as a national programme. The UK does not currently screen for lung cancer, but in 2019 NHS England announced a pilot scheme to implement lung health checks (LHC) in areas with the poorest lung cancer outcomes. Despite these advances in LCS in the UK, there are outstanding questions about how LCS could be implemented safely and effectively, which this thesis, based on experience and data from the SUMMIT Study, aims to investigate. To provide screening safely, implementation of any study or programme must focus on maintaining a favourable cost to benefit ratio. This is particularly true in LCS where high false positive and overdiagnosis rates, as well as considerable levels of incidental findings, lead to possible psychological stress, needless investigations and interventions, making provision challenging to both screenees and healthcare providers. The SUMMIT Study investigates how to deliver evidence-based LCS in a large population (25,000), and this thesis in particular focusses on how LCS can be streamlined through proformatisation of radiological data collection, clinical actioning of results and standardised communication with general practitioners (GPs) and participants. This thesis explains the approach to managing pulmonary nodules and incidental findings detected at LDCT in SUMMIT, and how these findings are collected, triaged, and communicated in a way that is both efficient and safe. Early data from SUMMIT is presented to understand how evidence-based proformas may enable streamlined clinical management, data collection and results communications, while decreasing the burden on healthcare professionals and participants alike

EG-ICE 2021 Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering

The 28th EG-ICE International Workshop 2021 brings together international experts working at the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolutions to support multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways