Tidewater metropolitan area transportation survey study

Results of a survey conducted in southeastern Virginia to identify public opinion regarding requirements for future public transportation are analyzed. The effects of age and income level on attitudes concerning city living and no importance of various characteristics described for urban transportation systems are identified

A Person Following Algorithm for Use with a Single Forward Facing RGB-D Camera on a Mobile Robot

This thesis examines the problem of person following. A person following algorithm can be separated into two distinct parts: the detection and tracking of a target and the actual following of a target. This thesis focuses mainly on the detection and tracking of a target person. For the purposes of this thesis a simple robot control architecture is used. The robot moves to follow the target in a straight line. No path planning is considered when executing robot movement. This thesis aims to accomplish three tasks. First, the system should be able to track and follow a target when no occlusions occur. The non-occlusion scenarios should consider the target in environments with no other people, environments with other people present at different distances, and environments with other people present at similar distances. The second goal will be to track the target person through brief occlusions. The system should be able to detect when the target has been occluded, register the occlusion, and reacquire the target upon completion of the occlusion. The third and final goal of this thesis is to reacquire the target after a long term occlusion. The system must recognize that the target person has disappeared from the scene, wait for the target to reappear, and reacquire the target upon reappearance. These goals will be accomplished using a generic person detector realized by a HOG person detector, a specific appearance model based on color histograms, a particle filter that will serve as an integrating structure for the tracker, and a simplistic robot control architecture. In the following chapters I will discuss the motivation behind this work, previous research done in this area, the methods used in this thesis and the theory behind them. Experimental results will then be analyzed and discussion concerning the results and possible improvements to the system will be presented

Bacterial Exchange via Nanotubes: Lessons Learned from the History of Molecular Biology

DNA transfer between bacteria has a long and storied history. Starting shortly after the discovery by Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty that DNA was the genetic material, the exchange of DNA between bacteria confirmed that DNA transfer could stably change the phenotypic behavior of organisms. Continued effort along these lines led to the discovery of conjugation systems, bacteriophage transduction, bacterial genome mapping, and to some represents the birth of molecular biology. Recent findings by Dubey and Ben-Yehuda (2011) expand on these early results by suggesting that exchange between bacteria may occur continuously under certain growth conditions via nanotubes. These nanotubes have a structure similar to cell membranes and are sensitive to mild detergent treatment. Transfer of protein and plasmid DNA was demonstrated directly between neighboring and distant bacteria of the same and different genera. Transfer of RNA cannot be ruled out and the transfer of chromosomal DNA was not addressed. This work may reveal an important mechanism behind the spread of antibiotic resistance, however, much work remains to be done in order to confirm or refute the role of this mechanism in the dangerous spread of antibiotic resistance within the prokaryotic biosphere. The work of early molecular biology pioneers can be used as inspiration, if not as a direct template to guide future experimental confirmation