Discomfort, Pressure Distribution and Safety in Operator's Seat-A Critical Review

Rosana G. Moreira, Editor-in-Chief; Texas A&M UniversityThis is an Invited Paper from International Commission of Agricultural Engineering (CIGR, Commission Internationale du Genie Rural) E-Journal Volume 5 (2003): H. Dhingra, V. Tewari, and S. Singh. Discomfort, Pressure Distribution and Safety in Operator's Seat-A Critical Review. Vol. V. July 2003

Methodology for finding optimum cell size for a grid based cellular automata traffic flow model

A methodology for determining optimum cell size for a grid based traffic flow model for heterogeneous traffic is proposed in this paper. The cell size is an important factor to determine as it affects the computational efficiency and model accuracy. The objective function minimizes three aspects namely the difference of distance headway in case of cellular automata and grid based traffic flow model, the total number of cells to represent different types of vehicles and multiple of cell width that gives closer representation of the different road widths. The presented method is found better then the previous attempt which tries to find the cell size by trial and error

Fuel Consumption Monitoring for Travel Demand Modeling

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of fuel consumption patterns on travel demand estimation. This paper evaluates and calibrates travel demand estimation by CUBE software and its relation to fuel consumption, with the use of data provided by Sharif University, for the city of Shiraz, Iran in 1999. This research proves the presence strong correlations between vehicle fuel use and the trip's generation process by exogenous and endogenous variables. The effect of energy consumption patterns on generation and distribution stage of travel demand modeling based on inverse ability has been considered in the present model

Proteomic Profiling and Neurodegeneration in West-Nile-Virus-Infected Neurons

West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne flavivirus, is a human, equine, and avian pathogen. High-resolution two-dimensional differential-gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) was used to characterize protein expression in primary rat neurons and to examine the proteomic profiling to understand the pathogenesis of West-Nile-associated meningoencephalitis. Three pH ranges, 3–10, 4–7, and 5–6, were used to analyze the protein spots. The proteins are labeled with fluorescent dyes Cy3 and Cy5 before being separated on the basis of charge and size respectively on a two-dimensional platform. About 55 proteins showed altered expression levels. These were then subsequently digested and identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) analysis using peptide mass fingerprinting and database searching. These cellular proteins could represent distinct roles during infection related to apoptosis. Our findings show that two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry is a powerful approach that permits the identification of proteins whose expression was altered due to West Nile virus infection

An Inverse Method for Policy-Iteration Based Algorithms

We present an extension of two policy-iteration based algorithms on weighted graphs (viz., Markov Decision Problems and Max-Plus Algebras). This extension allows us to solve the following inverse problem: considering the weights of the graph to be unknown constants or parameters, we suppose that a reference instantiation of those weights is given, and we aim at computing a constraint on the parameters under which an optimal policy for the reference instantiation is still optimal. The original algorithm is thus guaranteed to behave well around the reference instantiation, which provides us with some criteria of robustness. We present an application of both methods to simple examples. A prototype implementation has been done

Indium segregation to the selvedge of In\u3csub\u3e4\u3c/sub\u3eSe\u3csub\u3e3\u3c/sub\u3e (001)

Thermal motion of the surface atoms will lead to a decrease in photoemission intensity, while surface segregation may result in an increase of some phostoemission intensities. For In4Se3(001), both effects are seen. The Debye–Waller factor plot, based on the temperature dependent X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements on In4Se3(001), suggests an upper bound of 203 ± 6 K for the effective Debye temperature, based on the surface component of the In 3d5/2 core-level. Indium is found to segregate to selvedge (subsurface region) of the crystal