Calibration and Validation of A Shared space Model: A Case Study

Shared space is an innovative streetscape design that seeks minimum separation between vehicle traffic and pedestrians. Urban design is moving toward space sharing as a means of increasing the community texture of street surroundings. Its unique features aim to balance priorities and allow cars and pedestrians to coexist harmoniously without the need to dictate behavior. There is, however, a need for a simulation tool to model future shared space schemes and to help judge whether they might represent suitable alternatives to traditional street layouts. This paper builds on the authors’ previously published work in which a shared space microscopic mixed traffic model based on the social force model (SFM) was presented, calibrated, and evaluated with data from the shared space link typology of New Road in Brighton, United Kingdom. Here, the goal is to explore the transferability of the authors’ model to a similar shared space typology and investigate the effect of flow and ratio of traffic modes. Data recorded from the shared space scheme of Exhibition Road, London, were collected and analyzed. The flow and speed of cars and segregation between pedestrians and cars are greater on Exhibition Road than on New Road. The rule-based SFM for shared space modeling is calibrated and validated with the real data. On the basis of the results, it can be concluded that shared space schemes are context dependent and that factors such as the infrastructural design of the environment and the flow and speed of pedestrians and vehicles affect the willingness to share space

An Analysis of the Spatio-Temporal Factors Affecting Aircraft Conflicts Based on Simulation Modelling

The demand for air travel worldwide continues to grow at a rapid rate, especially in Europe and the United States. In Europe, the demand exceeded predictions with a real annual growth of 7.1% in the period 1985-1990, against a prediction of 2.4%. By the year 2010, the demand is expected to double from the 1990 level. Within the UK international scheduled passenger traffic is predicted to increase, on average, by 5.8 per cent per year between 1999 and 2003. The demand has not been matched by availability of capacity. In Western Europe many of the largest airports suffer from runway capacity constraints. Europe also suffers from an en-route airspace capacity constraint, which is determined by the workload of the air traffic controllers, i.e. the physical and mental work that controllers must undertake to safely conduct air traffic under their jurisdiction through en-route airspace. The annual cost to Europe due to air traffic inefficiency and congestion in en-route airspace is estimated to be 5 billion US Dollars, primarily due to delays caused by non-optimal route structures and reduced productivity of controllers due to equipment inefficiencies. Therefore, to in order to decrease the total delay, an increase in en-route capacity is of paramount importance. At a global scale and in the early 1980s, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) recognised that the traditional air traffic control (ATC) systems would not cope with the growth in demand for capacity. Consequently new technologies and procedures have been proposed to enable ATC to cope with this demand, e.g. satellite-based system concept to meet the future civil aviation requirements for communication, navigation and surveillance/ air traffic management (CNS/ATM). In Europe, the organisation EUROCONTROL (established in 1960 to co-ordinate European ATM) proposed a variety of measures to increase the capacity of en-route airspace. A key change envisaged is the increasing delegation of responsibilities for control to flight crew, by the use of airborne separation assurance between aircraft, leading eventually to ?free flight? airspace. However, there are major concerns regarding the safety of operations in ?free flight? airspace. The safety of such airspace can be investigated by analysing the factors that affect conflict occurrence, i.e. a loss of the prescribed separation between two aircraft in airspace. This paper analyses the factors affecting conflict occurrence in current airspace and future free flight airspace by using a simulation model of air traffic controller workload, the RAMS model. The paper begins with a literature review of the factors that affect conflict occurrence. This is followed by a description of the RAMS model and of its use in this analysis. The airspace simulated is the Mediterranean Free Flight region, and the major attributes of this region and of the traffic demand patterns are outlined next. In particular a day?s air traffic is simulated in the two airspace scenarios, and rules for conflict detection and resolution are carefully defined. The following section outlines the framework for analysing the output from the simulations, using negative binomial (NB) and generalised negative binomial (GNB) regression, and discusses the estimation methods required. The next section presents the results of the regression analysis, taking into account the spatio-temporal nature of the data. The following section presents an analysis of the spatial and temporal pattern of conflicts in the two airspace scenarios across a day, highlighting possible metrics to indicate this. The paper concludes with future research directions based upon this analysis.

Sternal Anomalies with Supernumerary and Subnumerary Vertebrae and Ribs – Case Reports

Background: Variations in the number of ribs and vertebrae have been noted in other wise normal looking people with some having supernumerary while others subnumerary. Sternal variations and anomalies though have not been as widely documented. These are two cases with one having a combination of sternal anomalies, supernumerary thoracic vertebrae and ribs and subnumerary lumbar vertebrae while the other had subnumerary thoracic vertebrae and ribs.Findings: Case 1: A 38year old female who had eleven thoracic vertebrae and corresponding pairs of ribs, nine pairs attached and two floating. The other skeletal components were normal. Case 2: Adult male had 13 thoracic vertebrae and thirteen corresponding pairs of ribs. Ten pairs of ribs attached to the cage and three floating. There were four lumber vertebrae. The manubrium of the sternum was much longer, ended at the third coastal cartilage attachment and there was an oval defect in the body of the sternum at the level of 5th costal cartilage. The rest of the skeleton was normal.Conclusions: Osteological variations in the rib cage and vertebrae are clinically important because they can mislead an unsuspecting clinician during diagnostic and therapeutic lumbar punctures, counting of ribs during heart examinations, drainage of the thorax and the 12th rib is important in citing of the incision for nephrectomy and other medical procedures. Radiological diagnosis, Forensic and medical legal pathological identifications need to put into consideration such variations

Smart tattoo: technology for monitoring blood glucose in the future

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.New ways of measuring blood glucose bring hope of easing the burden of diabetes management for patients living with the conditions. The smart tattoo is an innovation that represents a nascent nanotechnology, which is designed to be implanted within the skin to provide continuous and reliable glucose detection for individuals diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. The potential benefits of the smart tatto are compelling not only due to the potential of these nanodevices to prevent diabetic complications and decrease the related social costs, but also due to ease of use and relative user comfort. However, despite the advantages of the smart tattoo, it is important that health professionals, in embracing nanotechnology, understand the ethical implications of using these innovative devices

A multi-objective GA-based optimisation for holistic Manufacturing, transportation and Assembly of precast construction

Resource scheduling of construction proposals allows project managers to assess resource requirements, provide costs and analyse potential delays. The Manufacturing, transportation and Assembly (MtA) sectors of precast construction projects are strongly linked, but considered separately during the scheduling phase. However, it is important to evaluate the cost and time impacts of consequential decisions from manufacturing up to assembly. In this paper, a multi-objective Genetic Algorithm-based (GA-based) searching technique is proposed to solve unified MtA resource scheduling problems (which are equivalent to extended Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problems). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that a GA-based optimisation approach is applied to a holistic MtA problem with the aim of minimising time and cost while maximising safety. The model is evaluated and compared to other exact and non-exact models using instances from the literature and scenarios inspired from real precast constructions

Level of Male Involvement in Home Based Care for People Living with HIV and AIDS in Nyando District, Western Kenya

Kenya’s HIV prevalence is estimated at 7% (KDHS, 2003) and (28.6%) in Nyando District. With the increasing number of PLWHAs, Home Based Care (HBC) has been implemented to relieve the health facilities. This has resulted to great burden of care to family members especially the women in addition to their daily responsibilities in the home. Previous studies have reported low male involvement and high burden of care of the sick at home on women without quantifying the areas of HBC that men are not involved in. This study was conducted to determine the level of male involvement in the provision of HBC services to PLWHAs in Nyando District of Western Kenya.This was a descriptive and exploratory study which employed quantitative methods. Purposive sampling was used to identify the study respondents who were men heads of households living with PLWHAs.This study established the level of male involvement in all the 4 HBC services outlined in the home based care  policy for Kenya.Counselling and psychological care (60.7%), Nursing care 931.4%), Social support (26.4%) and Clinical care (19.3%).Men are not main caregivers of PLWHAs in their households, majority (85%) provide some form of HBC services. Men provide HBC services for the PLWHAs depending on type of care, gender of PLWHAs and familial relationship. Male involvement is important in reducing the burden of women as main caregivers for the PLWHAs. Key words; Male-involvement, Home-based-care, HIV/AIDS, People-living-with-HIV-and AID

Factors influencing performance of seedplot technique in seed potato quality improvement among small scale farmers.

Potato seedborne diseases majorly causes continuous low yields in potato production in East and Central Africa. A small seedplot technology (SSPT) has been developed as a step towards effective management of the seedborne diseases. This was successfully promoted and adapted to varying farming conditions, as a self-sustaining technology for on-farm seed potato production, where disease-free seed is planted at high-density in plots that are apparently free from bacterial wilt. The objectives of the study were to establish the influence of spacing and fertiliser nutrient composition on the performance of small seedplot, and to determine the influence of fertilizer levels on the performance of small seedplot. Trials with 5 potato varieties were conducted in seven locations for three seasons. Different fertiliser types (DAP and NPK) and rates (0, 45, 90 kgNha−1) were used at a spacing of 20×20 cm and 30×30 cm, to optimise management for SSPT. In most locations, tuber numbers were higher with NPK application compared with DAP. When planting in common spacing of 75×30 cm the varieties used in the trials produce about 25 tubers m−1, whereas the SSPT spacings of 20×20 cm and 30×30 cm produced 67 and 54 tubersm−2, respectively. Data was collected on tuber number, size and weight. The results indicated that the spacing of 20×20 cm produced higher tuber number per m2 (51, 71 and 80 at 0, 45 and 90 kgNha−1, respectively) than with a spacing of 30×30 cm (45, 55 and 61 at 0, 45 and 90 kgNha−1, respectively). However, double starter seed is required and handling in planting is more difficult. Moreover, the multiplication rate per tuber was about 20% higher at a spacing of 30×30 cm compared with the spacing of 20×20 cm. Hence, in general if clean land is extremely limited the spacing of 20×20 cm should be chosen to make best use of this part, whereas if clean land is relatively sufficient a spacing of 30×30 cm seems to be more practicable and economically viabl

Perception on biophysical components of Kit‐Mikayi site for cultural landscape conservation

Customs and traditions of cultural landmarks which kept the landmarks’ memory alive through time have been eroded by infiltration of western culture, modernism and population increase. Kit‐Mikayi is a cultural landscape regarded as sacred by the local community and one of the major potential tourist attraction destinations in Nyanza Province, western part of Kenya. Despite the sites’ unique geomorphology and appreciation of its other natural components, little objective information is available about the inherent landscape and associated cultural values. Besides, no study has been conducted on visual quality assessment to examine the inherent and associative values of Kit‐Mikayi, for understanding landscape qualities for protection and sustainable conservation. The objective of this study was to investigate the major landmarks and environmental aesthetic value of Kit‐Mikayi cultural site. The study involved identification of biophysical elements at the site and assessment of the community’s perception and judgement. The study employed survey research design, questionnaires and observations through eight photographic records taken at sixty three (63) selected sites representing different features. The results show that biophysical components associated with the site were major landmarks. The respondents perceived the site for ecotourism with median of four for conservation. The findings shows that the highest median was three on naturalness, Kruskal Wallis test showed high significance difference (p<0.0001) amongst respondents perception who preferred the site to remain natural for diversification in utilization of the resources to avoid overdependence.Key words: Conservation, cultural landscape, ecotourism, geomorphological features, Kit‐Mikay