Optimizing Energy Savings for a Fleet of Commercial Autonomous Vehicles via Centralized and Decentralized Platooning Decisions

Thanks to advanced technologies like Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, platooning is becoming more and more useful as a method to potentially increase road capacity and reduce energy consumption. While there are many studies in the literature reporting significant fuel and energy savings as a result of platooning, these studies are ignoring the extra energy required to maintain vehicles in close formation referred to as string stability. Also, there are other factors many of the current studies are not considering such as the position of a vehicle in a platoon, the background traffic that may complicate the process of forming platoons, and the vehicle type. Thus, optimizing and quantifying the savings that may be gained from platooning is challenging. In this study, we develop a simulation-optimization framework to tackle this challenge. The simulation model simulates real traffic conditions for individual vehicles and platoons. Additionally, the simulation model implements platoon forming decisions obtained from an optimization model. Vissim is used to simulate the actions taken by all the vehicles and platoons and capture the energy expended by each vehicle over its entire trip duration. Our optimization model determines vehicle-to-platoon assignments given the locations, speed, and acceleration of vehicles and platoons. Particularly, we concentrate two different optimization models. One is a centralized model to make platooning decisions with aim to maximize potential energy savings system-wide. On the other hand, a decentralized model utilizing a competition game is developed to make decisions for individual vehicle energy saving purpose. In addition to the simulation- optimization framework, an accurate energy consumption model is developed, which is inspired by the work of Tadakuma and colleagues. The energy consumption model utilizes a hybrid prediction formula for aerodynamic drag reduction in multi-vehicle formations unifying both physical mechanisms and existing empirical study data. In addition to the centralized and decentralized decision making models, we track a single platoon to observe the energy consumption for this one platoon under different parameters in order to better understand the factors that impact energy savings. Our results show that a system-wide savings of about 3% in centralized model, and 1.5% in decentralized model can be realized over 100 miles when platoons are formed strategically. Comparison between two models also confirm, as expected, that the centralized model forms better platoons in terms of energy savings

Neonatal Respiratory Virus Infection Shapes Pulmonary Function in Adult Mice

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza are the two most common causes of acute lower respiratory tract infections in infants. Epidemiological data suggest that both severe RSV and influenza infections during infancy are associated with long-term pulmonary function abnormalities. Despite of the severe burdens of RSV and influenza infections in infants, no efficacious vaccines are available for RSV and the current vaccine strategy for influenza is inconvenient due to the fact that vaccines are made annually based on the prediction of circulating strains in the next season. New strategies in vaccine development have been slow to arrive partly due to the fact that pathogenesis of RSV and influenza, especially in infants, is not well understood; and this is further complicated by the fact that most researchers use adult animal models to study immunopathology observed in human infants. To better model the infections of these two viruses in infants, we established neonatal mouse models for RSV and influenza infections. In our neonatal mouse model, both RSV and influenza infections led to long-term airway hyperreactivity associated with persistent pulmonary inflammation. An inchoate CD8+ T cell response was found to play a significant role in the pathogenesis of neonatal influenza infection; while a Th2 (IL-4-producing CD4+ T helper cell)-biased immune response was responsible for the pathogenesis of neonatal RSV infection and led to Th2-skewed secondary responses in adult mice originally infected as neonates. In an effort to seek a better vaccine strategy for RSV infection, we used antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) against IL-4 receptor alpha (IL-4Ralpha) to modulate the T cell responses at the time of primary RSV infection. Upon reinfection with RSV, IL-4Ralpha ASO treated mice were completely protected from airway hyperreactivity. This finding suggested that there was a delicate balance between Th1 (IFN-gamma-producing CD4+ T helper cell) and Th2 cell responses and that only a slight push in one direction (i.e., Th1) had a tremendous impact on subsequent diseases. Our data indicate that modulation of the immune responses to RSV during infantile infection may be of significant benefit to infants and that IL-4Ralpha may be part of a viable vaccine strategy

Negative Reputation Rate as the Signal of Risk in Online Consumer-to-Consumer Transactions

Previous online reputation research has been focused on the effects of positive and negative reputations on trust formation, trading price, and probability of sale. We propose that negative feedback rate (NFR) is the most important indicator of the risk of buying from a seller online. This proposition has been supported by an empirical study based on data collected from eBay.com. We found that the 6-month NFR in the current period predicts much better the future risk measured by the NFR in the next 6-month period than did net reputation score and negative reputation score. A seller’s life-long negative score in fact was not significant in predicting the future risk. In addition, a seller’s age in the market was found to have similar predicting power on risk as did net reputation score

The Choice of Tense in Translation into the Second Language

English tense is widely believed as one of the most problematic areas in the “interlanguage”, which includes non-native English speakers’ English writing and translations into the translator’s second language. This study aims to investigate the relationships between the tense choice in translation, the tense in the Chinese source text, and the translation competence of translators. A small Chinese-English parallel corpus has been built with 127 translations of Chinese press editorials by experienced native English speaking translators, experienced native Chinese speaking translators, and novice native Chinese speaking translators. Cross-tabulate analyses of this study have shown that the three groups of translators differ from one another significantly in their handling of marked Chinese past tense verbs, while they do not when translating Chinese sentences with contextually marked tense. This study suggests that in order to improve their translation quality, (1) experienced native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the percentages of Present Simple, Present Progress, Present Perfect, and Past Simple, and reduce the percentages of Past Perfect in their translation; (2) novice native Chinese speaking translators need to increase the percentages of Present Simple, and Present Progress, and reduce the percentages of Past Perfect, Past Simple, and Present Perfect in their translation

An Empirical Investigation of Build-or-Buy Decisions in Software Development

When an organization seeks to apply a computerbased application to its business processes, the decision of whether to build or buy software must typically be made. Much previous research has bypassed the build-or-buy decision stage. Even the limited studies focusing on the build-or-buy decision have tended to focus on checklists or guidelines for decision criteria and decision procedures. Thus, the build-or-buy decision process has not been explored fully from the behavioral perspective. The present research provides new insights into decision makers’ actual behavior when making build-or-buy decisions. Based on the belief processing model of Smith, Benson, and Curley (1991), a model is developed to describe the actual cognitive processes involved in the build-or-buy decision. Two hypotheses based on the theoretical background are proposed and will be investigated in an empirical study. We then describe the research methods for the empirical study in some detail. We conclude with a short discussion

Linking Information Technology and Competitive Strategy: Evidence from China’s Third-Party Logistics Industry

This study examined how information technology (IT) influences competitive strategies of third- party logistics (3PL) providers in mainland China. First, we examined the influences of IT on the firm’s IT advantage over its competitors. Second, the relationship between IT and competitive strategy was examined. The results show that IT has a significant influence on a firm’s IT advantage and its competitive strategy