CommuniSense: Crowdsourcing Road Hazards in Nairobi

Nairobi is one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities and a major business and technology powerhouse in Africa. However, Nairobi currently lacks monitoring technologies to obtain reliable data on traffic and road infrastructure conditions. In this paper, we investigate the use of mobile crowdsourcing as means to gather and document Nairobi's road quality information. We first present the key findings of a city-wide road quality survey about the perception of existing road quality conditions in Nairobi. Based on the survey's findings, we then developed a mobile crowdsourcing application, called CommuniSense, to collect road quality data. The application serves as a tool for users to locate, describe, and photograph road hazards. We tested our application through a two-week field study amongst 30 participants to document various forms of road hazards from different areas in Nairobi. To verify the authenticity of user-contributed reports from our field study, we proposed to use online crowdsourcing using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to verify whether submitted reports indeed depict road hazards. We found 92% of user-submitted reports to match the MTurkers judgements. While our prototype was designed and tested on a specific city, our methodology is applicable to other developing cities.Comment: In Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2015

Compressed sensing with combinatorial designs: theory and simulations

In 'An asymptotic result on compressed sensing matrices', a new construction for compressed sensing matrices using combinatorial design theory was introduced. In this paper, we use deterministic and probabilistic methods to analyse the performance of matrices obtained from this construction. We provide new theoretical results and detailed simulations. These simulations indicate that the construction is competitive with Gaussian random matrices, and that recovery is tolerant to noise. A new recovery algorithm tailored to the construction is also given.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Medical Professionalism: Who Needs It?

Anecdotal and public opinion evidence that respect for physicians may be decreasing could be explained by a decline, or perceived decline, in medical professionalism. Causes for the latter are discussed, and physician embrace of “the new professionalism” is suggested

Variable sediment oxygen uptake in response to dynamic forcing

Seiche-induced turbulence and the vertical distribution of dissolved oxygen above and within the sediment were analyzed to evaluate the sediment oxygen uptake rate (JO2), diffusive boundary layer thickness (δDBL), and sediment oxic zone depth (zmax) in situ. High temporal-resolution microprofiles across the sediment-water interface and current velocity data within the bottom boundary layer in a medium-sized mesotrophic lake were obtained during a 12-h field study. We resolved the dynamic forcing of a full 8-h seiche cycle and evaluated JO2 from both sides of the sediment-water interface. Turbulence (characterized by the energy dissipation rate, ε), the vertical distribution of dissolved oxygen across the sediment-water interface (characterized by δDBL and zmax), JO2, and the sediment oxygen consumption rate (RO2) are all strongly correlated in our freshwater system. Seiche-induced turbulence shifted from relatively active (ε = 1.2 × 10-8 W kg-1) to inactive (ε = 7.8 × 10-12 W kg-1). In response to this dynamic forcing, δDBL increased from 1.0 mm to the point of becoming undefined, zmax decreased from 2.2 to 0.3 mm as oxygen was depleted from the sediment, and JO2 decreased from 7.0 to 1.1 mmol m-2 d-1 over a time span of hours. JO2 and oxygen consumption were found to be almost equivalent (within ~ 5% and thus close to steady state), with RO2 adjusting rapidly to changes in JO2. Our results reveal the transient nature of sediment oxygen uptake and the importance of accurately characterizing turbulence when estimating JO2

Decompositions of complete graphs into cycles of arbitrary lengths

We show that the complete graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into $t$ cycles of specified lengths $m_1,\ldots,m_t$ if and only if $n$ is odd, $3\leq m_i\leq n$ for $i=1,\ldots,t$, and $m_1+\cdots+m_t=\binom n2$. We also show that the complete graph on $n$ vertices can be decomposed into a perfect matching and $t$ cycles of specified lengths $m_1,\ldots,m_t$ if and only if $n$ is even, $3\leq m_i\leq n$ for $i=1,\ldots,t$, and $m_1+\ldots+m_t=\binom n2-\frac n2$.Comment: 182 pages, 0 figures, A condensed version of this paper was published as "Cycle decompositions V: Complete graphs into cycles of arbitrary lengths" (see reference [24]). Here, we include supplementary data and some proofs which were omitted from that pape