Optimal On‑Ramp Metering of Urban Freeway Network for the Coronavirus Disease Control

The outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted our everyday life. Many local authorities enforced a cordon sanitaire for the protection of sensitive areas. Travellers can only pass the cordon after tested. This paper aims to propose a method to design an on-ramp control scheme to maximise urban freeway network throughput with a predetermined queuing delay constraint at all off-ramps around cordon sanitaire. A bi-level programming model is formulated where the lower-level is a transportation system equilibrium to predict traffic flow, and the upper-level is onramp metering optimisation that is nonlinear programming. A stochastic queuing model is used to represent the waiting phenomenon at each off-ramp where testing is conducted, and a heuristic algorithm is designed to solve the proposed bi-level model where a method of successive averages (MSA) is adopted for the lower-level model; A genetic algorithm (GA) with elite strategy is adopted for the upper-level model. An experimental study is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and algorithm. The results show that the methods can find a good heuristic optimal solution. These methods are useful for freeway operators to determine the optimal on-ramp control for disease control and prevention

Few-Shot Deep Adversarial Learning for Video-based Person Re-identification

Video-based person re-identification (re-ID) refers to matching people across camera views from arbitrary unaligned video footages. Existing methods rely on supervision signals to optimise a projected space under which the distances between inter/intra-videos are maximised/minimised. However, this demands exhaustively labelling people across camera views, rendering them unable to be scaled in large networked cameras. Also, it is noticed that learning effective video representations with view invariance is not explicitly addressed for which features exhibit different distributions otherwise. Thus, matching videos for person re-ID demands flexible models to capture the dynamics in time-series observations and learn view-invariant representations with access to limited labeled training samples. In this paper, we propose a novel few-shot deep learning approach to video-based person re-ID, to learn comparable representations that are discriminative and view-invariant. The proposed method is developed on the variational recurrent neural networks (VRNNs) and trained adversarially to produce latent variables with temporal dependencies that are highly discriminative yet view-invariant in matching persons. Through extensive experiments conducted on three benchmark datasets, we empirically show the capability of our method in creating view-invariant temporal features and state-of-the-art performance achieved by our method.Comment: Appearing at IEEE Transactions on Image Processin

Effect of Cured Time on Creep of Lightweight Aggregate Concrete

Creep and shrinkage are such properties that will occur in concrete when they are under load and exposed to surrounding. Since this property will cause deformation which may decrease the design strength of the concrete, it is necessary to do have more knowledge on this phenomenon. So, we will study the effect of creep on 7 and 14 days of cured time of specimens which sealed or unsealed will be considered, respectively. The specimens have shown how the concrete strains when they are under sustained load with time. Besides, the sealed specimens have shown how the basic creep is different from the total creep of concrete. Further, the specimens of loading at different ages have shown how the age at application of load influences creep. The result of the experiment has shown the relationship of strain under sustained load and time. Moreover, it is shown that creep is mainly related to the strength developed in the concrete

Study of Water Permeability of Lightweight Concrete

The relationship between water permeability and different levels of the tested layers from the top surface to the bottom surface of the lightweight concrete specimens is determined in this study. It is beneficial to develop the design criteria for a durable lightweight concrete. The water permeability coefficient K of the samples was determined by water permeability test using GWT. It is found that the water permeability coefficient K of the three layers in each set of samples tends to decrease as the level of the tested from the top surface increase. Larger Rebound Number and higher density in the bottom layer and more coarse lightweight aggregates in top layer correlate with the result of the descending water permeability trend and also indicate the existence of floatation of lightweight aggregates. Therefore, concrete uniform is very important for lightweight concrete

A method for estimation of critical stress intensity factor for welded sheet

Welded structures subjected to vibration loads in modern aerospace vehicles during practices have the hazard of undergoing fatigue. Critical stress intensity factor is the key parameter in the fatigue failure criterion. Usually fracture toughness is used as an approximation of the critical stress intensity factor in fatigue crack propagation calculation, however it can be seriously influenced by welding and thickness effects when applied to sheet metal welded joints. To solve the problem, this study analyzes these effects both experimentally and theoretically. The paper considers a method for estimation of the critical stress intensity factor based on crack size at the fatigue fracture location. Fatigue tests are conducted on welded specimens made of 2219-T87 aluminum alloy and critical stress intensity factors are calculated. The relationship for critical stress intensity factor results is determined from fracture crack sizes under different loading modes. Results reveal that the estimation method that was applied to measure the factor based on the fracture crack size excludes influences of welding and thickness effects in a convenient way of measurement and calculation. The method can be adopted for welded structures in spacecrafts subjected to vibration loads for fatigue failure analysis and reference of fracture toughness in engineering practice

Specific fungi associated with response to capsulized fecal microbiota transplantation in patients with active ulcerative colitis

ObjectiveFecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a novel microbial treatment for patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). In this study, we performed a clinical trial of capsulized FMT in UC patients to determine the association between the gut fungal community and capsulized FMT outcomes.DesignThis study recruited patients with active UC (N = 22) and healthy individuals (donor, N = 9) according to the criteria. The patients received capsulized FMT three times a week. Patient stool samples were collected before (week 0) and after FMT follow-up visits at weeks 1, 4, and 12. Fungal communities were analysed using shotgun metagenomic sequencing.ResultsAccording to metagenomic analysis, fungal community evenness index was greater in samples collected from patients, and the overall fungal community was clustered among the samples collected from donors. The dominant fungi in fecal samples collected from donors and patients were Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. However, capsulized FMT ameliorated microbial fungal diversity and altered fungal composition, based on metagenomic analysis of fecal samples collected before and during follow-up visits after capsulized FMT. Fungal diversity decreased in samples collected from patients who achieved remission after capsulized FMT, similar to samples collected from donors. Patients achieving remission after capsulized FMT had specific enrichment of Kazachstania naganishii, Pyricularia grisea, Lachancea thermotolerans, and Schizosaccharomyces pombe compared with patients who did not achieve remission. In addition, the relative abundance of P. grisea was higher in remission fecal samples during the follow-up visit. Meanwhile, decreased levels of pathobionts, such as Candida and Debaryomyces hansenii, were associated with remission in patients receiving capsulized FMT.ConclusionIn the metagenomic analysis of fecal samples from donors and patients with UC receiving capsulized FMT, shifts in gut fungal diversity and composition were associated with capsulized FMT and validated in patients with active UC. We also identified the specific fungi associated with the induction of remission. ClinicalTrails.gov (NCT03426683)