Exploring the potential of open source data to generate congestion and emission trends in developing cities

Abstract: The growth in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has enhanced the way mobility in contemporary cities is managed. Given the growth in availability of traffic data that contains location-aware datasets, congestion and pollution indexes can be developed. Metropolitan cities such Johannesburg due to their economic activities, attract commuters into the city on a daily basis seeking greener pastures. This has led to major freeways and roads experiencing high levels of congestion. In 2020, due to a global pandemic of an outbreak of Corona Virus (COVID-19), the national government declared a national shutdown with only essential traffic being allowed to operate. Given the scenario of the national lock-down this allows for the statistical analysis of the impact of essential traffic on the overall transportation system. Consequently the aim of the paper was to explore the congestion and C02 emission impact of essential traffic for the City of Johannesburg. Using an exploratory approach, we monitored and collected traffic congestion data from the Tomtom traffic index for the metropolitan city of Johannesburg, South Africa. Using a mathematic model, we develop a relationship between congestion and pollution to visualise the variations in pollution and congestion levels during varies scenarios. We demonstrate this by comparing datasets for variations in congestion levels in two epochs, viz the period without movement restrictions and the period whereby movement is restricted. The results reveal essential traffic on the congestion index to be below 22 percent for both weekends and weekdays. A scenario common only during weekends in 2019. Whilst for the emission index, C02 levels are approximately less than 45 percent throughout the week. The paper concludes the investment into mining and analysing traffic data has a significantly role for future mobility planning in both the developed and developing world and, more generally, improving the quality of commuting trips in the city

Récepteur aveugle basé sur la décomposition PARAFAC pour des canaux de communication non-linéaires

Dans cet article, nous proposons une nouvelle approche d'égalisation aveugle basée sur une modélisation tensorielle d'un système de communication non-linéaire SIMO du type Wiener. Le tenseur cubique formé par les signaux reçus s'exprime comme une décomposition du type PARAFAC avec comme dimensions le temps, l'espace et la redondance introduite par un précodage. Les conditions d'unicité de cette décomposition sont établies et une solution d'égalisation aveugle sans ambiguïté est proposée

Autofluorescence spectroscopy of malpighian epithelial cells, as a new tool for analysis of cervical cancer precursors

A spectroscopic analysis of autofluorescence was investigated within the cell cytoplasm from cervical malpighian epithelia prepared on Thin-Prep smears. Autofluorescence emission spectra from 22 cervix were analyzed by microspectrofluorometry under a 363 nm laser excitation. Among the analyzed cervix, 6 were in normal limits, 6 in inflammatory limits, 5 were evocative of Low-Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesions (LGSILs) and 5 were evocative of High-Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesions (HGSILs). Cytoplasmic emission intensities at 450 nm of cells from inflammatory, LGSIL and HGSIL cervix were equivalent and were 3-fold higher than from normal cervix. All smears presented a two-fold lower autofluorescence emission in the cytoplasm than in the nucleus. The spectral profile analysis allows the discrimination of cells from inflammatory, LGSIL and HGSIL cervix. The 525/425 nm emission ratios were 0.75±0.1, 0.96±0.04 and 1.2±0.1 for inflammatory, LGSIL and HGSIL, respectively. We suggest that smears of normal, inflammatory, LGSIL and HGSIL cervix could be discriminated by the analysis of the 450 nm emission intensity and 525/425 nm emission ratios from cells of malpighian epithelia

FeedNetBack D03.04 -Wireless Transmission for Control

This report documents the research work carried out for Task 3.3. on wireless transmission for control. The main objective is to study and develop physical layer communication strategies which are adapted to fit a given control application. Accordingly, most of the work deal with reliable wireless transmission strategies under strict delay constraints. Five different approaches are taken. First, two novel transmission schemes for communication over unknown fading channels using non-orthogonal CDMA transmission for multi-sensor and/or multi-agents systems are proposed and discussed. Second, two novel instantaneous source coding mappings for a distributed source-channel coding problem are proposed, based on the study on the Cramér-Rao lower bound and the impact of the stretch factor. The scheme can be used to reduce transmission rate or mitigate the effects of the channel noise in the case of analog transmission. Next, a low-delay cooperative relaying strategy is proposed with an instantaneous mapping function which compresses all received signals in an orthogonal multiple-access relay channel. The optimization of the function results in non-linear mappings which in general outperform linear mappings. Further, the fundamental trade-off between reliability and delay is studied. To this end, upper bounds on the average error probability for sequential coding for the bidirectional broadcast channel with streaming sources are derived and the existence of a deterministic code is proved. Lastly, causal anytime codes based on unequal error protection using Luby transform codes for transmission over symmetric discrete memoryless channel are proposed and analytical upper-bounds on the end-to-end distortion of two anytime transmission schemes are derived

FeedNetBack D03.04 -Wireless Transmission for Control

This report documents the research work carried out for Task 3.3. on wireless transmission for control. The main objective is to study and develop physical layer communication strategies which are adapted to fit a given control application. Accordingly, most of the work deal with reliable wireless transmission strategies under strict delay constraints. Five different approaches are taken. First, two novel transmission schemes for communication over unknown fading channels using non-orthogonal CDMA transmission for multi-sensor and/or multi-agents systems are proposed and discussed. Second, two novel instantaneous source coding mappings for a distributed source-channel coding problem are proposed, based on the study on the Cramér-Rao lower bound and the impact of the stretch factor. The scheme can be used to reduce transmission rate or mitigate the effects of the channel noise in the case of analog transmission. Next, a low-delay cooperative relaying strategy is proposed with an instantaneous mapping function which compresses all received signals in an orthogonal multiple-access relay channel. The optimization of the function results in non-linear mappings which in general outperform linear mappings. Further, the fundamental trade-off between reliability and delay is studied. To this end, upper bounds on the average error probability for sequential coding for the bidirectional broadcast channel with streaming sources are derived and the existence of a deterministic code is proved. Lastly, causal anytime codes based on unequal error protection using Luby transform codes for transmission over symmetric discrete memoryless channel are proposed and analytical upper-bounds on the end-to-end distortion of two anytime transmission schemes are derived

Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Tannery and Slaughterhouse Wastewater for Solids Reduction and Resource Recovery: Effect of Sulfate Concentration and Inoculum to Substrate Ratio

Anaerobic digestion is considered unsuitable for the bioremediation of tannery effluent due to process inhibition, mainly due to high concentrations of sulfur species, and the accumulation of H2S and/or NH3. This study using the standardized biochemical methane potential protocol showed that efficient processing is possible with slaughterhouse wastewater, provided sufficient functional biomass is present at the start of the process and the SO42− concentration is below inhibition threshold. Methanogenic activity (K = 13.4–17.5 and µm = 0.15–0.27) and CH4 yields were high when reactors were operated ISR ≥ 3 and/or lower SO42− ≤ 710 mg/L while high SO42− ≥ 1960 mg/L and ISR < 3.0 caused almost complete inhibition regardless of corresponding ISR and SO42−. The theoretical optimum operating conditions (922 mg/L SO42−, ISR = 3.72) are expected to generate 361 mL biogas/gVS, 235 mL CH4/gVS with reduction efficiencies of 27.5% VS, 27.4% TS, 75.1% TOC, 75.6% SO42−, and 41.1% COD. This implies that tannery sludge will be reduced by about 27% (dry mass) and SO42− by 76%, with a fraction of it recovered as S0. The models displayed a perfect fit to the cumulative CH4 yields with high precision in the order Logistic > Cone > modified Gompertz > first order