When Do Luxury Cars Hit the Road? Findings by A Big Data Approach

In this paper, we focus on studying the appearing time of different kinds of cars on the road. This information will enable us to infer the life style of the car owners. The results can further be used to guide marketing towards car owners. Conventionally, this kind of study is carried out by sending out questionnaires, which is limited in scale and diversity. To solve this problem, we propose a fully automatic method to carry out this study. Our study is based on publicly available surveillance camera data. To make the results reliable, we only use the high resolution cameras (i.e. resolution greater than $1280 \times 720$). Images from the public cameras are downloaded every minute. After obtaining 50,000 images, we apply faster R-CNN (region-based convoluntional neural network) to detect the cars in the downloaded images and a fine-tuned VGG16 model is used to recognize the car makes. Based on the recognition results, we present a data-driven analysis on the relationship between car makes and their appearing times, with implications on lifestyles

Spring Landbird Migration along the Northern Coast of the Gulf of Mexico: Multi-Scaled Investigation of Stopover Ecology Within an Urbanized Landscape

Two-thirds of bird species breeding in eastern N. America annually migrate from temperate breeding grounds to tropical wintering locations, engaging in non-stop movement directly across the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Thus, millions of migrants concentrate in woodlands along the northern Gulf coast during spring and fall passage. These coastal landscapes are some of the most rapidly developing areas in the U.S. with population growth rates five times higher than that of inland areas. Anthropogenic pressures, along with human-created (e.g., oil spills) and natural disturbances (e.g., hurricanes), result in rapid degradation of sensitive coastal ecosystems, creating tension between importance of coastal landscapes for economic development and their value for energetically constrained migratory birds. There is urgency in conserving coastal habitats and identifying important stopover areas across the entire GOM to create a framework for monitoring critical habitats, design management and restoration strategies, and inform conservation goals. I used a multi-scaled approach to investigate migrant-habitat relations in a heterogeneous coastal landscape beginning with a broad, regional perspective and focusing more narrowly to ground-based study of individual migratory birds during spring stopover. At the regional level, I used weather surveillance radar to analyze migrant distributions. A network ofNext Generation Radar stations (NEXRAD) exists along the GOM coastline, and their surveillance areas encompass a significant portion of habitats critical to migratory birds in a heterogeneous landscape with urban development adjacent to fragile chenier plains, bottomland hardwood forests, and coastal marshes. I analyzed archived radar data for spring migratory periods over four )\u27ears at five of these stations. Reflectivity, a measure of returned radio energy from objects in a sampled volume of airspace and an index of relative bird density, was used to determine distributions of migrants across the region and within each radar sampling range, effectively highlighting important stopover habitats. Regional reflectivity revealed two peaks in migrant densities: (1) near -91°W in Louisiana and (2) at -84°W near Tallahassee, Florida. Migrant densities within hardwood forests peaked within 10 kilometers of the coastline. At the local level, high reflectivity was apparent at the immediate coast within some radar ranges regardless of habitat type, but the highest migrant densities were associated with bottomland hardwood forests further inland. To investigate landbird migrant stopover ecology immediately along the coast, I measured behavioral and physiological responses of migrants to human-dominated landscapes as stopover sites along the Mississippi Gulf coast by quantifying migrant densities, condition, fat deposition, and potential for competitive pressure within forested patches that varied in size (two ≤1 ha; two ≥160 ha). Fuel deposition may be considered currency for successful travel optimization, particularly following trans-Gulf flight when migrants often must replenish depleted energy stores. Factors affecting site-specific fuel deposition were analyzed including plasma metabolite profiles and migrant to arthropod ratio as a measure of potential competition. Transect surveys and arthropod surveys were conducted during two spring migration events, and circulating triglyceride levels were identified from blood samples for comparative investigation of fuel deposition. Results revealed that migrants stop in coastal forests regardless of habitat patch size which suggests that coastal woodlots embedded in heavily urbanized settings may provide valuable opportunities for rest for en route migrants before continuing to stopover sites further inland. Migrants were more concentrated in smaller forested patches, and triglyceride levels and potential competitive pressure varied across stopover sites suggesting differences in fuel deposition of migrants across coastal habitats

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2018

This Research Report presents the FY18 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). Interested individuals may discuss ideas for new research collaborations, potential CRADAs, or research proposals with individual faculty using the contact information in this document

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2006

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2015

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems Engineering and Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2015

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems Engineering and Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Resident research associateships. Postdoctoral and senior research awards: Opportunities for research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Opportunities for research as part of NASA-sponsored programs at the JPL cover: Earth and space sciences; systems; telecommunications science and engineering; control and energy conversion; applied mechanics; information systems; and observational systems. General information on applying for an award for tenure as a guest investigator, conditions, of the award, and details of the application procedure are provided

Data Fusion for MaaS: Opportunities and Challenges

© 2018 IEEE. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) in design is an essential facilitator for the development and implementation of smart cities, where modern cooperative transportation and integrated mobility are highly demanded. Owing to greater availability of different data sources, data fusion problem in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) has been very challenging, where machine learning modelling and approaches are promising to offer an important yet comprehensive solution. In this paper, we provide an overview of the recent advances in data fusion for Mobility as a Service (MaaS), including the basics of data fusion theory and the related machine learning methods. We also highlight the opportunities and challenges on MaaS, and discuss potential future directions of research on the integrated mobility modelling