Highlights: IEEE ITS Society Technical Committee on Mobile Communications Networks for ITS

[EN] The TC on 'Mobile Networks for ITS' has been in existence since 2005. It will continue to initiate activities (through journal and magazine special issues, workshops, conferences, forums, etc.,) and to promote the technical interactions among professionals in the field. The success of the TC will depend on the contributions of its members and organizers. We would like to thank Prof. Urbano Nunes (VP Technical Activities) for inviting us to submit this highlight. We would also like to thank all the TC members who have supported us over the years. We look forward to your continual participation in the future.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain, under Grant TIN2011-27543-C03-01.Toh, CK.; Higashino, T.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Weigle, MC. (2012). Highlights: IEEE ITS Society Technical Committee on Mobile Communications Networks for ITS. IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine. 4(1):33-37. doi:10.1109/MITS.2011.2178875S33374

A hybrid constraint-based programming approach to design a sports tournament scheduling

We investigate the problem of sports tournament scheduling as reflected in the quality of tournament schedule in University Utara Malaysia (UUM). The background of the sports tournament problems that inefficiency of the human scheduler, time-consuming task and unfairness among the athletes that need to be solved gives direction and motivation in investigating the problem of scheduling the sports tournament. Subsequently,previous work related to the problem is discussed. Thus, we present an innovative hybrid of a constraint-based algorithm and a neighbourhood search, which is an exploration into alternative and improved methodology in the problem of sports tournament scheduling with special multiple constraints. A scheduling system is then developed. As a result, fair distribution of break or rest times and game venues among the competing teams are achieved in our objectives. The sports tournament scheduling system assists and improves the sports events management through high quality schedule as compared with the current human scheduler, which consider rest period, day and time preferences and venue availability. Thus, this sophisticated algorithm provides the feasible, optimum, efficient and quick solution

Synthesis of electroneutralized amphiphilic copolymers with peptide dendrons for intramuscular gene delivery

Intramuscular gene delivery materials are of great importance in plasmid-based gene therapy system, but there is limited information so far on how to design and synthesize them. A previous study showed that the peptide dendron-based triblock copolymer with its components arranged in a reversed biomembrane architecture could significantly increase intramuscular gene delivery and expression. Herein, we wonder whether copolymers with biomembrane-mimicking arrangement may have similar function on intramuscular gene delivery. Meanwhile, it is of great significance to uncover the influence of electric charge and molecular structure on the function of the copolymers. To address the issues, amphiphilic triblock copolymers arranged in hydrophilic-hydrophobic-hydrophilic structure were constructed despite the paradoxical characteristics and difficulties in synthesizing such hydrophilic but electroneutral molecules. The as-prepared two copolymers, dendronG2(l-lysine-OH)-poly propylene glycol2k(PPG2k)-dendronG2(l-lysine-OH) (rL2PL2) and dendronG3(l-lysine-OH)-PPG2k-dendronG3(l-lysine-OH) (rL3PL3), were in similar structure but had different hydrophilic components and surface charges, thus leading to different capabilities in gene delivery and expression in skeletal muscle. rL2PL2 was more efficient than Pluronic L64 and rL3PL3 when mediating luciferase, β-galactosidase, and fluorescent protein expressions. Furthermore, rL2PL2-mediated growth-hormone-releasing hormone expression could significantly induce mouse body weight increase in the first 21 days after injection. In addition, both rL2PL2 and rL3PL3 showed good in vivo biosafety in local and systemic administration. Altogether, rL2PL2-mediated gene expression in skeletal muscle exhibited applicable potential for gene therapy. The study revealed that the molecular structure and electric charge were critical factors governing the function of the copolymers for intramuscular gene delivery. It can be concluded that, combined with the previous study, both structural arrangements either reverse or similar to the biomembrane are effective in designing such copolymers. It also provides an innovative way in designing and synthesizing new electroneutralized triblock copolymers, which could be used safely and efficiently for intramuscular gene delivery

Potential grouper feed formulation based on evolutionary algorithm concept with a unique selection operator

The problems of insufficient wild catch grouper fish and the high demand in the market have increased the need of farming the grouper fish.In order to farm the grouper fish, there is a need to have abundant of trash fish as their feeds since grouper fish is a carnivorous fish.But, trash fish is dramatically expensive and hard to store, hard to maintain the quality of nutrients as well as the quantity throughout the years.Therefore, turning to formulated feed mix is the alternative. However, the issue is on its cost while providing quality feed mix.That leads to the search for an approach which could provide the most suitable feed ingredients and nutrients.One potential approach is the Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) which has been used to solve the feed formulation problems in poultry, shrimp and cattle.Hence, in this study, an EA-based approach with a refinement on using the standard deviation in the strategy of tournament selection has been proposed to minimize the total cost in formulating the feed of grouper fish.Results show that the lowest cost can be accepted while satisfying the nutrient requirements of grouper fish

Determining the representative factors affecting warning message dissemination in VANETs

In this paper, we present a statistical analysis based on the 2k factorial methodology to determine the representative factors affecting traffic safety applications in Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Our purpose is to determine what are the key factors affecting Warning Message Dissemination (WMD) in order to concentrate on such parameters, thus reducing the amount of required simulation time when evaluating VANETs. Simulation results show that the key factors affecting warning messages delivery are: (i) the transmission range, (ii) the radio propagation model used, and (iii) the density of vehicles. Based on this statistical analysis, we evaluate a compound key factor: neighbor density. This factor combines the above-mentioned factors into a single entity, reducing the number of factors that must be taken into account for VANET researchers to evaluate the benefits of their proposals.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant TIN2008-06441-C02-01, and by the Fundacion Antonio Gargallo, under Grant 2009/B001.Martínez Domínguez, FJ.; Toh, CK.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2012). Determining the representative factors affecting warning message dissemination in VANETs. Wireless Personal Communications. 67(2):295-314. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-010-9989-4S295314672Eichler, S. (2007). Performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.11p WAVE communication standard. In Proceedings of the vehicular technology conference (VTC-2007 Fall), USA.Fall, K., & Varadhan, K. (2000). ns notes and documents. The VINT Project. UC Berkeley, LBL, USC/ISI, and Xerox PARC. Available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-documentation.html .Fasolo, E., Zanella, A., & Zorzi, M. (2006). An effective broadcast scheme for alert message propagation in vehicular ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Istambul, Turkey.Korkmaz, G., Ekici, E., Ozguner, F., & Ozguner, U. (2004). Urban multi-hop broadcast protocols for inter-vehicle communication systems. In Proceedings of First ACM Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET 2004).Martinez, F. J., Toh, C.-K., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2009). Realistic radio propagation models (RPMs) for VANET simulations. In IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (WCNC), Budapest, Hungary.Martinez, F. J., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2008). CityMob: A mobility model pattern generator for VANETs. In IEEE vehicular networks and applications workshop (Vehi-Mobi, held with ICC), Beijing, China.Martinez, F. J., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2009). A performance evaluation of warning message dissemination in 802.11p based VANETs. In IEEE local computer networks conference (LCN 2009), Zürich, Switzerland.Torrent-Moreno, M., Santi, P., & Hartenstein, H. (2005). Fair sharing of bandwidth in VANETs. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international workshop on vehicular ad hoc networks, Germany.Tseng Y.-C., Ni S.-Y., Chen Y.-S., Sheu J.-P. (2002) The broadcast storm problem in a mobile ad hoc network. Wireless Networks 8: 153–167Wisitpongphan N., Tonguz O., Parikh J., Mudalige P., Bai F., Sadekar V. (2007) Broadcast storm mitigation techniques in vehicular ad hoc networks. Wireless Communications IEEE 14(6): 84–94. doi: 10.1109/MWC.2007.4407231Yang, X., Liu, J., Zhao, F., & Vaidya, N. H. (2004). A vehicle-to-vehicle communication protocol for cooperative collision warning. In Proceedings of the first annual international conference on mobile and ubiquitous systems: Networking and services (MobiQuitous’04).Yoon, J., Liu, M., & Noble, B. (2003). Random waypoint considered harmful. Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOMM 2003, San Francisco, California, USA.Zang, Y., Stibor, L., Cheng, X., Reumerman, H.-J., Paruzel, A., & Barroso, A. (2007). Congestion control in wireless networks for vehicular safety applications. In Proceedings of the 8th European Wireless Conference, Paris, France

DrivingStyles: A Mobile Platform for Driving Styles and Fuel Consumption Characterization

[EN] Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) rely on connected vehicle applications to address real-world problems. Research is currently being conducted to support safety, mobility and environmental applications. This paper presents the DrivingStyles architecture, which adopts data mining techniques and neural networks to analyze and generate a classification of driving styles and fuel consumption based on driver characterization. In particular, we have implemented an algorithm that is able to characterize the degree of aggressiveness of each driver. We have also developed a methodology to calculate, in real-time, the consumption and environmental impact of spark ignition and diesel vehicles from a set of variables obtained from the vehicle's electronic control unit (ECU). In this paper, we demonstrate the impact of the driving style on fuel consumption, as well as its correlation with the greenhouse gas emissions generated by each vehicle. Overall, our platform is able to assist drivers in correcting their bad driving habits, while offering helpful tips to improve fuel economy and driving safety.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, Proyectos I+D+I 2014, Spain, under Grant TEC2014-52690-R.Meseguer Anastasio, JE.; Toh, CK.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano, J.; Manzoni, P. (2017). DrivingStyles: A Mobile Platform for Driving Styles and Fuel Consumption Characterization. Journal of Communications and Networks. 19(2):162-168. doi:10.1109/JCN.2017.000025S16216819

Functional characterization of PETIOLULE-LIKE PULVINUS (PLP) gene in abscission zone development in Medicago truncatula and its application to genetic improvement of alfalfa

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) is one of the most important forage crops throughout the world. Maximizing leaf retention during the haymaking process is critical for achieving superior hay quality and maintaining biomass yield. Leaf abscission process affects leaf retention. Previous studies have largely focused on the molecular mechanisms of floral organ, pedicel and seed abscission but scarcely touched on leaf and petiole abscission. This study focuses on leaf and petiole abscission in the model legume Medicago truncatula and its closely related commercial species alfalfa. By analysing the petiolule-like pulvinus (plp) mutant in M. truncatula at phenotypic level (breakstrength and shaking assays), microscopic level (scanning electron microscopy and cross-sectional analyses) and molecular level (expression level and expression pattern analyses), we discovered that the loss of function of PLP leads to an absence of abscission zone (AZ) formation and PLP plays an important role in leaflet and petiole AZ differentiation. Microarray analysis indicated that PLP affects abscission process through modulating genes involved in hormonal homeostasis, cell wall remodelling and degradation. Detailed analyses led us to propose a functional model of PLP in regulating leaflet and petiole abscission. Furthermore, we cloned the PLP gene (MsPLP) from alfalfa and produced RNAi transgenic alfalfa plants to down-regulate the endogenous MsPLP. Down-regulation of MsPLP results in altered pulvinus structure with increased leaflet breakstrength, thus offering a new approach to decrease leaf loss during alfalfa haymaking process