Automated Merging in a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) System

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is a form of cruise control in which a vehicle maintains a constant headway to its preceding vehicle using radar and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. Within the Connect & Drive1 project we have implemented and tested a prototype of such a system, with IEEE 802.11p as the enabling communication technology. In this paper we present an extension of our CACC system that allows vehicles to merge inside a platoon of vehicles at a junction, i.e., at a pre-defined location. Initially the merging vehicle and the platoon are outside each other’s communication range and are unaware of each other. Our merging algorithm is fully distributed and uses asynchronous multi-hop communication. Practical testing of our algorithm is planned for May 2011

Pseudomonas chloritidismutans sp. nov., a non-denitrifying chlorate-reducing bacterium

A Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped, dissimilatory chlorate-reducing bacterium, strain AW-1(T), was isolated from biomass of an anaerobic chlorate-reducing bioreactor. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rDNA sequence showed 100␜equence similarity to Pseudomonas stutzeri DSM 50227 and 98.6␜equence similarity to the type strain of P. stutzeri (DSM 5190(T)). The species P. stutzeri possesses a high degree of genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity. Therefore, eight genomic groups, termed genomovars, have been proposed based upon DeltaT(m) values, which were used to evaluate the quality of the pairing within heteroduplexes formed by DNA--DNA hybridization. In this study, DNA--DNA hybridization between strain AW-1(T) and P. stutzeri strains DSM 50227 and DSM 5190(T) revealed respectively 80.5 and 56.5␜imilarity. DNA--DNA hybridization between P. stutzeri strains DSM 50227 and DSM 5190(T) revealed 48.4␜imilarity. DNA--DNA hybridization indicated that strain AW-1(T) is not related at the species level to the type strain of P. stutzeri. However, strain AW-1(T) and P. stutzeri DSM 50227 are related at the species level. The physiological and biochemical properties of strain AW-1(T) and the two P. stutzeri strains were compared. A common characteristic of P. stutzeri strains is the ability to denitrify. However, in growth experiments, strain AW-1(T) could use only chlorate or oxygen as an electron acceptor and not nitrate, perchlorate or bromate. Strain AW-1(T) is the first chlorate-reducing bacterium described that does not possess another oxyanion-reduction pathway. Cell extracts of strain AW-1(T) showed chlorate and bromate reductase activities but not nitrate reductase activity. P. stutzeri strains DSM 50227 and DSM 5190(T) could use nitrate or oxygen as an electron acceptor, but not chlorate. Chlorate reductase activity, in addition to nitrate reductase activity, was detected in cell extracts of both P. stutzeri strains. Chlorite dismutase activity was absent in extracts of both P. stutzeri strains but was present in extracts of strain AW-1(T). Based on the hybridization experiments and the physiological and biochemical data, it is proposed that strain AW-1(T) be classified as a novel species of Pseudomonas, Pseudomonas chloritidismutans sp. nov. The type strain is strain AW-1(T) (=DSM 13592(T)=ATCC BAA-443(T))

Evaluating the Impact of Transmission Power on Selecting Tall Vehicles as Best Next Communication Hop

The relatively low height of antennas on communicating vehicles in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) makes one hop and as well multi-hop Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication susceptible to obstruction by other vehicles on the road. When the transmitter or receiver (or both) is a Tall vehi- cle, (i.e., truck), the V2V communication suffer less from these obstructions. The transmission power control is an important feature in the design of (multi- hop) VANET communication algorithms. However, the benefits of choosing a Tall vehicle when transmission power is varied are not yet extensively re- searched. Therefore, the main contribution of this paper is to evaluate the im- pact of transmission power control on the improved V2V communication capa- bilities of tall vehicles. Based on simulations, it is shown that significant bene- fits are observed when a Tall vehicle is selected rather than a Short vehicle as a next V2V communication hop to relay packets. Moreover, the simulation exper- iments show that as the transmission power is increasing, the rate of Tall vehi- cles that are selected as best next V2V communication hop is significantly growing

Prognostische Relevanz von p21, p27 und Cyclin D1 bei oralen Plattenepithelkarzinomen

Prognostische Relevanz von p21, p27 und Cyclin D1 bei oralen Plattenepithelkarzinomen.Es wurde die prognostische Relevanz der Zellzyklus-Proteine p21, p27 und Cyclin D1 bei Plattenepithelkarzinomen des Mundbodens untersucht. MATERIAL UND METHODE: 192 Patienten mit histologisch nachgewiesenem und chirurgisch behandeltem Plattenepithelkarzinom des Mundbodens wurden in diese Untersuchung einbezogen. Mit Hilfe von TMA`s wurde die Expression von p21, p27 und Cyclin D1 untersucht. ERGEBNISSE: Im Log-Rank Test ergab sich ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen der Expression von p21 und einer Verbesserung der Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit (p=0.01). p27 positive Tumore zeigten in der Subgruppe nodal positiver Tumore eine signifikant bessere Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit (p=0.03). Patienten mit p27 positiven PEC`s zeigten ein höheres Risiko an einem Rezidiv zu erkranken (p=0.04). p21 und p27 in Mundbodenkarzinomen scheinen vorhersagende Parameter zu sein, die die Prognose beeinflussen

Automatic Segmentation and Disease Classification Using Cardiac Cine MR Images

Segmentation of the heart in cardiac cine MR is clinically used to quantify cardiac function. We propose a fully automatic method for segmentation and disease classification using cardiac cine MR images. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was designed to simultaneously segment the left ventricle (LV), right ventricle (RV) and myocardium in end-diastole (ED) and end-systole (ES) images. Features derived from the obtained segmentations were used in a Random Forest classifier to label patients as suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, heart failure following myocardial infarction, right ventricular abnormality, or no cardiac disease. The method was developed and evaluated using a balanced dataset containing images of 100 patients, which was provided in the MICCAI 2017 automated cardiac diagnosis challenge (ACDC). The segmentation and classification pipeline were evaluated in a four-fold stratified cross-validation. Average Dice scores between reference and automatically obtained segmentations were 0.94, 0.88 and 0.87 for the LV, RV and myocardium. The classifier assigned 91% of patients to the correct disease category. Segmentation and disease classification took 5 s per patient. The results of our study suggest that image-based diagnosis using cine MR cardiac scans can be performed automatically with high accuracy.Comment: Accepted in STACOM Automated Cardiac Diagnosis Challenge 201