Variable speed limits: conceptual design for Queensland practice

Variable Speed Limits (VSL) is an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) control tool which can enhance traffic safety and which has the potential to contribute to traffic efficiency. Queensland's motorways experience a large volume of commuter traffic in peak periods, leading to heavy recurrent congestion and a high frequency of incidents. Consequently, Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads have considered deploying VSL to improve safety and efficiency. This paper identifies three types of VSL and three applicable conditions for activating VSL on for Queensland motorways: high flow, queuing and adverse weather. The design objectives and methodology for each condition are analysed, and micro-simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of VSL

Bis[μ-bis(diphenylphosphino)methane-К²P:P’]bis[(saccharinato-КN)- palladium(I)] dichloromethane solvate

The dimeric palladium(I) saccharinate complex [Pd₂(sac)₂(dppm)₂], has been characterized as its di¬chloro¬methane solvate, i.e. [Pd₂(C₇H₄NO₃S)₂(C₂₅H₂₂P₂)₂]•CH₂Cl₂. The complex features a Pd—Pd bond bridged by two dppm ligands, with the saccharinate ligands N-bonded trans to the Pd—Pd bond

Valorizing innovation through imaginativeness in business venturing

This dissertation features three empirical studies on entrepreneurship and innovation. These studies combine knowledge from different fields of discipline, such as Econometrics, Management, and Psychology. In this research, I examine the entrepreneurial process that goes from the individual innovator to making an impact in the market through innovation. The first study assess the role of psychosocial development in business venturing. The second study examines the effect of imaginativeness on opportunity evaluation. The third study measures the impact of entrepreneurial motives on innovation in the market, with a focus on formal and informal institutional conditions. The findings show that personal accountability predicts entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which subsequently leads to a stronger entrepreneurial performance. Imaginativeness is a strong predictor of entrepreneurial orientation and opportunity evaluation. Opportunity-driven entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in radical innovation, new product introductions, and profound market expansion

Unequal Error Protection Querying Policies for the Noisy 20 Questions Problem

In this paper, we propose an open-loop unequal-error-protection querying policy based on superposition coding for the noisy 20 questions problem. In this problem, a player wishes to successively refine an estimate of the value of a continuous random variable by posing binary queries and receiving noisy responses. When the queries are designed non-adaptively as a single block and the noisy responses are modeled as the output of a binary symmetric channel the 20 questions problem can be mapped to an equivalent problem of channel coding with unequal error protection (UEP). A new non-adaptive querying strategy based on UEP superposition coding is introduced whose estimation error decreases with an exponential rate of convergence that is significantly better than that of the UEP repetition coding introduced by Variani et al. (2015). With the proposed querying strategy, the rate of exponential decrease in the number of queries matches the rate of a closed-loop adaptive scheme where queries are sequentially designed with the benefit of feedback. Furthermore, the achievable error exponent is significantly better than that of random block codes employing equal error protection.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Cigarette smoking and food insecurity among low-income families in the United States, 2001

The goal of this research is to quantify the association between food insecurity and smoking among low-income families. This analysis is a retrospective study using data from the 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal study of a representative sample of U.S. men, women, and children and the family units in which they reside. Family income is linked with U.S. poverty thresholds to identify 2,099 families living near or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Food insecurity (that is, having insufficient funds to purchase enough food to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle) is calculated from the eighteen core items in the food security module of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results indicate that smoking prevalence is higher among low-income families who are food insecure compared to low-income families who are food secure (43.6 percent versus 31.9 percent). Multivariate analysis reveals that smoking is associated with an increase in food insecurity of approximately 6 percentage points. Given our finding that families near the federal poverty level spend a large share of their income on cigarettes, perhaps it would be prudent for food assistance and tobacco control programs to work together to help low-income people quit smoking.

Clinical Characteristics and Detection of Polymerase Epsilon Mutant Endometrial Carcinoma

Polymerase Epsilon (POLE)-mutant endometrial cancer accounts for 7%-12% of endometrial cancer molecular types, and most of these patients are early-stage endometrioid carcinoma. Although POLE-mutant endometrial cancer has some unfavorable pathological features such as being poorly differentiated, the overall prognosis is good, and postoperative adjuvant treatment may be considered for de-escalation. POLE-mutant endometrial cancer is relatively less sensitive to postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but because of its ultra-high tumor mutation load, recurrent or advanced patients are expected to benefit from programmed cell death receptor 1 (PCDR1) blockade therapy. This review will discuss the clinical features of POLE-mutated endometrial carcinoma and the progress made in the detection of POLE gene mutations