Leveraging Snow Plow Dashboards Cams and Connected Vehicle Speed Data to Improve Winter Operations Performance Measures

Recent developments in mobile phone applications for polling traffic and roadway condition data from the public have led to new data sources that complement traditional Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) sensors, weather stations, and automatic vehicle location (AVL) on fleet vehicles. This study compared qualitative assessments by different users of snow plow dashboard images with interstate connected vehicle speeds. The data set was composed of 1,119 geotagged images collected during a snowstorm on February 2-3, 2016, on Interstate 80. The images were classified by three users into one of seven categories to describe the road conditions. The classification of images saw the greatest deviation when road conditions were “wet,” “dry,” or “icy,” suggesting some variation in the interpretation of these categories by the users. Connected vehicle speed data was used to validate conditions and analyze speeds at GPS locations of each image for a two-hour window around when the image was taken to identify any potential impacts the plows have made. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used for all before and after combinations to determine which comparisons were the most significant between minutes before and after the plow, and found that speed data taken between 17 to 12 minutes before the plow had the greatest maximum distance improvement on the speed distributions 25 to 35 minutes after the plow has gone through. Longer term, these techniques will provide a framework for agencies to dynamically monitor changing road conditions and respond to changing weather conditions

Electrophysiological and morphological heterogeneity of slow firing neurons in medial septal/diagonal band complex as revealed by cluster analysis

Slow firing septal neurons modulate hippocampal and neocortical functions. Electrophysiologically, it is unclear whether slow firing neurons belong to a homogeneous neuronal population. To address this issue, whole-cell patch recordings and neuronal reconstructions were performed on rat brain slices containing the medial septum/diagonal band complex (MS/DB). Slow firing neurons were identified by their low firing rate at threshold (\u3c 5Hz) and lack of time-dependent inward rectification (Ih). Unsupervised cluster analysis was used to investigate whether slow firing neurons could be further classified into different subtypes. The parameters used for the cluster analysis included latency for first spike, slow afterhyperpolarizing potential, maximal frequency and action potential (AP) decay slope. Neurons were grouped into three major subtypes. The majority of neurons (55%) were grouped as cluster I. Cluster II (17% of neurons) exhibited longer latency for generation of the first action potential (246.5±20.1 ms). Cluster III (28% of neurons) exhibited higher maximal firing frequency (25.3±1.7 Hz) when compared to cluster I (12.3±0.9 Hz) and cluster II (11.8±1.1 Hz) neurons. Additionally, cluster III neurons exhibited faster action potentials at suprathreshold. Interestingly, cluster II neurons were frequently located in the medial septum whereas neurons in cluster I and III appeared scattered throughout all MS/DB regions. Sholl’s analysis revealed a more complex dendritic arborization in cluster III neurons. Cluster I and II neurons exhibited characteristics of “true” slow firing neurons whereas cluster III neurons exhibited higher frequency firing patterns. Several neurons were labeled with a cholinergic marker, Cy3-conjugated 192 IgG (p75NTR), and cholinergic neurons were found to be distributed among the three clusters. Our findings indicate that slow firing medial septal neurons are heterogeneous and that soma location is an important determinant of their electrophysiological properties. Thus, slow firing neurons from different septal regions have distinct functional properties, most likely related to their diverse connectivity

Temperature Effects in the Composition of Metal Halide Perovskite thin Films

Metal halide perovskites have shown to be a structure with great promise as an efficient photovoltaic, but at the same time it is affected by instability problems that degrade their performance. Degradation mechanisms vary with temperature, moisture, oxidation, and energy conversion during light exposure. We study performance loss due to temperature by probing diffusion of elemental composition across the thickness of films produced by spin coating and for temperatures ranging from 20 to 200°C. X-ray reflectivity was used to identify the electron density, composition, and quality of the films, aided with X-ray fluorescence and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies to obtain information about degradation of the organic phase of the films

Pathways to paediatric urology subspecialisation:a study of casemix, incumbent attitudes and opinions

Objective: To identify any self-reported differences or attitudes towards certification, publication, or practice patterns between adult urology and paediatric general surgery-trained paediatric urology providers. There are no known published differences in clinical/operative/research outcomes in either group. Methods: An 18-item cross-sectional survey was compiled through the EAU Young Academic Urologists (YAU) office and disseminated to a trans-Atlantic convenience sample of current practising paediatric urologists. This was created using a mini-Delphi method to provide current semi-quantitative data relating to current opinions and attitudes of this cohort. Results: A total of 228 respondents completed the survey, with female respondents representing 37% and 34% for urology and paediatric general surgery, respectively. Nearly 90% overall respondents felt that a full 2-year paediatric fellowship program was very important and 94% endorsed a collaborative dedicated paediatric urology on call service, with 92% supporting the joint development of transitional care. Urology managed higher numbers of bedwetting (p = 0.04), bladder bowel dysfunction (p = 0.02), endourological procedures (p = 0.04), and robotics (p = 0.04). Paediatric general surgery managed higher numbers of laparoscopic reconstruction (p = 0.03), and posterior urethral valve ablation (p = 0.002). Conclusion: This study represents the first time that a cross-sectional cohort of paediatric urologists from different training backgrounds were compared to assess their productivity, practice patterns and attitudes. Paediatric urology is in a unique position to have two contributing specialities, with the ability to provide optimal transitional and lifelong care. We believe that there should be a strong emphasis on collaboration and to remove any historically-created barriers under policies of equity, diversity and inclusivity.</p

Isoperimetric inequalities for some integral operators arising in potential theory

In this paper we review our previous isoperimetric results for the logarithmic potential and Newton potential operators. The main reason why the results are useful, beyond the intrinsic interest of geometric extremum problems, is that they produce a priori bounds for spectral invariants of operators on arbitrary domains. We demonstrate these in explicit examples.Comment: This conference paper gives a review of our previous results in the subjec

Effects of polylinker uATGs on the function of grass HKT1 transporters expressed in yeast cells

HvHKT1 mediates K+ or Na+ uniport in yeast cells if the expression promoter is joined directly to the HvHKT1 cDNA, and Na+-K+ symport if a 59-nt polylinker is inserted. Our results show that three ATG triplets in the polylinker decreased the synthesis of the transporter and that the lower amount of transporter caused the functional change. With the rice HKT1 cDNA, the 59-nt polylinker changed the mode of Na+ uptake from K+-insensitive to K+-inhibitable. These two modes of Na+ uptake also occurred in rice plant

Effect of molecular and electronic structure on the light harvesting properties of dye sensitizers

The systematic trends in structural and electronic properties of perylene diimide (PDI) derived dye molecules have been investigated by DFT calculations based on projector augmented wave (PAW) method including gradient corrected exchange-correlation effects. TDDFT calculations have been performed to study the visible absorbance activity of these complexes. The effect of different ligands and halogen atoms attached to PDI were studied to characterize the light harvesting properties. The atomic size and electronegativity of the halogen were observed to alter the relaxed molecular geometries which in turn influenced the electronic behavior of the dye molecules. Ground state molecular structure of isolated dye molecules studied in this work depends on both the halogen atom and the carboxylic acid groups. DFT calculations revealed that the carboxylic acid ligands did not play an important role in changing the HOMO-LUMO gap of the sensitizer. However, they serve as anchor between the PDI and substrate titania surface of the solar cell or photocatalyst. A commercially available dye-sensitizer, ruthenium bipyridine (RuBpy), was also studied for electronic and structural properties in order to make a comparison with PDI derivatives for light harvesting properties. Results of this work suggest that fluorinated, chlorinated, brominated, and iyodinated PDI compounds can be useful as sensitizers in solar cells and in artificial photosynthesis.Comment: Single pdf file, 14 pages with 7 figures and 4 table

Residual γH2AX foci as an indication of lethal DNA lesions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Evidence suggests that tumor cells exposed to some DNA damaging agents are more likely to die if they retain microscopically visible γH2AX foci that are known to mark sites of double-strand breaks. This appears to be true even after exposure to the alkylating agent MNNG that does not cause direct double-strand breaks but does produce γH2AX foci when damaged DNA undergoes replication.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To examine this predictive ability further, SiHa human cervical carcinoma cells were exposed to 8 DNA damaging drugs (camptothecin, cisplatin, doxorubicin, etoposide, hydrogen peroxide, MNNG, temozolomide, and tirapazamine) and the fraction of cells that retained γH2AX foci 24 hours after a 30 or 60 min treatment was compared with the fraction of cells that lost clonogenicity. To determine if cells with residual repair foci are the cells that die, SiHa cervical cancer cells were stably transfected with a RAD51-GFP construct and live cell analysis was used to follow the fate of irradiated cells with RAD51-GFP foci.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>For all drugs regardless of their mechanism of interaction with DNA, close to a 1:1 correlation was observed between clonogenic surviving fraction and the fraction of cells that retained γH2AX foci 24 hours after treatment. Initial studies established that the fraction of cells that retained RAD51 foci after irradiation was similar to the fraction of cells that retained γH2AX foci and subsequently lost clonogenicity. Tracking individual irradiated live cells confirmed that SiHa cells with RAD51-GFP foci 24 hours after irradiation were more likely to die.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Retention of DNA damage-induced γH2AX foci appears to be indicative of lethal DNA damage so that it may be possible to predict tumor cell killing by a wide variety of DNA damaging agents simply by scoring the fraction of cells that retain γH2AX foci.</p

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi. Methods and Protocols.

Ferrol, N.; Lanfranco, L. (Eds.) 2020 Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi. Methods and Protocols. Vol 2146. pp. 257. ISBN 978 1 0716-0602-

Vessel Shrinkage as a Sign of Atherosclerosis Progression in Type 2 Diabetes : A Serial Intravascular Ultrasound Analysis

OBJECTIVE—The aim of this study was to determine the natural history of vascular remodeling of atherosclerotic plaques in patients with type 2 diabetes and the predictors of vessel shrinkage