Assessing the Safety and Reliability of Autonomous Vehicles from Road Testing

There is an urgent societal need to assess whether autonomous vehicles (AVs) are safe enough. From published quantitative safety and reliability assessments of AVs, we know that, given the goal of predicting very low rates of accidents, road testing alone requires infeasible numbers of miles to be driven. However, previous analyses do not consider any knowledge prior to road testing – knowledge which could bring substantial advantages if the AV design allows strong expectations of safety before road testing. We present the advantages of a new variant of Conservative Bayesian Inference (CBI), which uses prior knowledge while avoiding optimistic biases. We then study the trend of disengagements (take-overs by human drivers) by applying Software Reliability Growth Models (SRGMs) to data from Waymo’s public road testing over 51 months, in view of the practice of software updates during this testing. Our approach is to not trust any specific SRGM, but to assess forecast accuracy and then improve forecasts. We show that, coupled with accuracy assessment and recalibration techniques, SRGMs could be a valuable test planning aid

Hypergraph model of social tagging networks

The past few years have witnessed the great success of a new family of paradigms, so-called folksonomy, which allows users to freely associate tags to resources and efficiently manage them. In order to uncover the underlying structures and user behaviors in folksonomy, in this paper, we propose an evolutionary hypergrah model to explain the emerging statistical properties. The present model introduces a novel mechanism that one can not only assign tags to resources, but also retrieve resources via collaborative tags. We then compare the model with a real-world dataset: \emph{Del.icio.us}. Indeed, the present model shows considerable agreement with the empirical data in following aspects: power-law hyperdegree distributions, negtive correlation between clustering coefficients and hyperdegrees, and small average distances. Furthermore, the model indicates that most tagging behaviors are motivated by labeling tags to resources, and tags play a significant role in effectively retrieving interesting resources and making acquaintance with congenial friends. The proposed model may shed some light on the in-depth understanding of the structure and function of folksonomy.Comment: 7 pages,7 figures, 32 reference

Assessing students’ engagement: A review of instruments with psychometric Qualities

Este E-Book reúne um conjunto de investigações apresentadas no “I Congresso Internacional Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Perspetivas da Psicologia e Educação” (ICIEAE), organizado no âmbito do “Projeto PTDC/CPE-CED/114362/2009 - Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Diferenciação e Promoção” (EAE-DP), financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).Framework: Students Engagement in School (SES) has been occupying a central position in the discussions regarding factors of academic success and school dropout. A considerable amount of literature on this concept exists. Although its conceptualization varies according to authors and the theoretical framework they have adopted, there is a wide agreement concerning its multidimensional nature. Key dimensions of students engagement in school (i.e., cognitive, affective, behavioral and, more recently, agentic) have been described and empirically validated. Purpose:This study aimed to review the literature on assessment of students engagement in school through a focus on the psychometric characteristics of several instruments. Methodology: The present paper focuses on self-report measures which are multidimensional. These instruments were validated on heterogeneous samples. Results: Twelve self-report measures designed to measure the students engagement in school were referred, along with four other instruments targeting teachers’ perspective as well as observational measures. Conclusions: Various measures stem from different theoretical perspectives and were developed with different types of samples. Conceptual variations often expressed in the number of dimensions considered and in items content variability suggest limitations when comparing psychometric indings of different studies. Suggestions: Studies on instruments we reviewed in the present paper suggest the need for further research on the multidimensionality of school engagement construct. Research should go beyond investigation of differential and predictive validity of measures. Thus, there is little evidence regarding the validity of engagement in school measures, when investigation of effects of specific intervention programs is aimed or validity of their use in quasiexperimental studies with useful applications in the field of education

Outsmart supply dips in renewable energy

Integrating intermittent renewable-energy supplies into existing electricity grids in a stable way will depend on artificial intelligence. Such a system could process massive volumes of consumption data and adjust power usage almost instantly, giving real-time control over supply and demand. Domestic consumers would be rewarded (with cheaper bills) for shifting their energy demand at short notice when the grid has a power imbalance, as is already the case for large industrial consumers and grid-scale storage systems. Smart meters that collect household consumption data would enable this process. By 2020, the United Kingdom aims to have such meters in 26 million homes and the European Union has a target of 200 million. These meters would contain microcontroller devices that communicate wirelessly with the grid. The meter could then momentarily dim lighting or switch off electric heaters, for example, without discomforting the occupiers. The efficiency of this process will depend on demand predictions for individual consumers, which involves using large amounts of data to model people's energy constraints and preferences over time. Embedded artificial intelligence will analyse and model these consumption data, enabling the grid response to occur within seconds

Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase Is Required for Neurogenesis in the Developing Central Nervous System of Zebrafish

10.1371/journal.pone.0063757PLoS ONE85

The evaluation of interrelation between the state of sportsmens’ health and environmental occupational factors

Catedra Igienă, USMF „Nicolae Testemiţanu” Centrul Naţional de Medicină Sportivă „Atletmed” al MS RMIn this paper there are presented the peculiarities of correlation between physiological indexes of funcţional systems of sportsmens’ organism and occupational factors of the environment. On the basis of correlation analysis it was established the fact that the functional state of sportsmen’s organisms correlates with the environmental factors of training, not only directly but also indirectly, from unimportant connections till the manifested ones. Sunt prezentate particularităţile de corelaţie a indicilor fiziologici ai sistemelor funcţionale ale organismului sportivilor cu factorii mediului ocupaţional. S-a stabilit, că starea funcţională a organismului sportivilor corelează cu factorii mediului de antrenament, atât direct cât şi indirect, de la legături neînsemnate pănă la cele exprimate

Legal linguistics as an academic and professional discipline:identifying clients, customers, stakeholders

Robu N. V. Legal linguistics as an academic and professional discipline:identifying clients, customers, stakeholders / N. V.Robu // Теоретичні та практичні проблеми забезпечення сталого розвитку державності та права : матер. міжнар. наук. конф. (Одеса, 30 листопада 2012 р.) Т.1 / відп. за випуск д.ю.н., проф. В. М. Дрьомін ; Націон. ун-т «Одеська юридична академія». – Одеса : Фенікс, 2012. – С. 720-722

Modern legal language: universality and aloofness

Robu N. V., Samokhvalova, A. V. Modern legal language: universality and aloofness / N. V. Robu, A. V. Samokhvalova // Правове життя сучасної України: матеріали Міжнар. наук. конф. проф.-викл. та аспірант. складу / відп. за вип. В. М. Дрьомін; НУ ОЮА, Півд. регіон. центр НАПрН України. – Одеса: Фенікс, 2014. – Т. 2. – С. 613-614.Mentioned above allows to consider modern legal language to include abstraction, impersonality and objectivisation, neutrality and even metaphors in it in order to be clearly understood by lawyers and simple citizens

Preparation and optical characterization of the new polymer nanocomposites

The polymer nanocomposites consisting of polyvinylalcohol (PVA) and chalcogenide non-crystalline semiconductors (ChNS) as arsenic selenide (As2Se3) and arsenic sulfide (As2S3) were obtained. The optical absorption was investigated for thin films of polymer-ChNS composites in the spectrum range of 0.3 – 3 μm at different concentration of ChNS and ultraviolet (UV) irradiation doses. We found that composites show in the spectrum the infrared (IR) shift of absorption edge. The UV irradiation leads to photodarkening of nanocomposites practically in all scanned spectrum range