Automatic Parking Application

The purpose of this utility application is to automatically remind the users where their vehicle is parked. Using many sensors and features of the Apple iPhone, we can track changes in users’ behaviors and their surrounding such as air pressure, physical movement, connection proximity, and coordinate position. These allow for detecting not just the parking position, but also altitude and interior approximation within parking structures. Using a periodic assessment loop, this application silently waits for changes, remaining out of sight of common user activity. During an assessment, nearby connections, user position, and activity readings are evaluated. If a significant event, such as getting in a car or driving into a known parking location occurs, relevant methods are initiated, allowing for greater accuracy and ultimately a better user experience. Anyone who drives knows the struggle of searching for a parking spot for their vehicle. Finding the location of your parked car could even be more stressful. You may end up with walking up and down the stairs of a parking garage, wandering through a shopping center lot, or walking several blocks in the street only to remember the location of your car. Even once the car is located, it may be covered in tickets or impounded because of parking regulations. This scenario is especially true when users find themselves in a new city or in an unfamiliar part of the town. This application offers solutions to all of the cases mentioned above. An overview map displays nearby locations. Parking meters can be started to estimate fees and trigger alerts when time is low. When hunting for the tracked vehicle, directions can be requested through the application. Currently this application demonstrates the algorithms necessary to track a user’s vehicle through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection proximity. Utilizing Apple’s monitored regions, locations of interest allow for significant awareness by waking the application and performing relevant readings. Indoor position is determined using altitude readings, position plots, and headings with known location schematics. Users can save their personal locations and access features such as the building rendering, parking meter, and guided directions. A possible industry implementation of this application is the monitoring of businesses’ lots, allowing parking demand prediction along with restricting availability.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1174/thumbnail.jp

Slowly traveling gravity waves for Darcy flow: existence and stability of large waves

We study surface gravity waves for viscous fluid flows governed by Darcy's law. The free boundary is acted upon by an external pressure posited to be in traveling wave form with a periodic profile. It has been proven that for any given speed, small external pressures generate small periodic traveling waves that are asymptotically stable. In this work, we construct a class of slowly traveling waves that are of arbitrary size and asymptotically stable. Our results are valid in all dimensions and for both the finite and infinite depth cases.Comment: 22 page

Intentions to Consume Sustainably Produced Fish: The Moderator Effects of Involvement and Environmental Awareness

The purpose of this study is to apply the conceptual framework of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain the consumption of sustainable produced fish in Sweden. We seek to understand the moderating role of food product involvement and environmental awareness as extensions of traditional constructs such as attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control. The data were derived from a representative sample of 1974 Swedish consumers. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the relationships between constructs and evaluate the reliability and the validity of the constructs. Attitudes had a significantly positive effect on intention to consume fish in general and sustainably produced fish in particular. Social norms had significantly positive effect on intention to consume fish in general, but no effect on intention to consume sustainably produced fish. Behavioral control had no effect on behavioral intention. Interestingly, involvement negatively moderated the effect of attitudes on both intention to consume more fish and to consume more sustainably produced fish. Environmental awareness also negatively moderated the effect of attitudes on intention to consume more sustainably produced fish. It seems that attempts to create food product involvement and environmental awareness among consumers may have the opposite effect—a boomerang effect—than what conventional wisdom and much of the research on fish consumption indicates. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed

A big-data analytics method for capturing visitor activities and flows: the case of an island country

© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Understanding how people move from one location to another is important both for smart city planners and destination managers. Big-data generated on social media sites have created opportunities for developing evidence-based insights that can be useful for decision-makers. While previous studies have introduced observational data analysis methods for social media data, there remains a need for method development—specifically for capturing people’s movement flows and behavioural details. This paper reports a study outlining a new analytical method, to explore people’s activities, behavioural, and movement details for people monitoring and planning purposes. Our method utilises online geotagged content uploaded by users from various locations. The effectiveness of the proposed method, which combines content capturing, processing and predicting algorithms, is demonstrated through a case study of the Fiji Islands. The results show good performance compared to other relevant methods and show applicability to national decisions and policies

A big-data analytics method for capturing visitor activities and flows: the case of an island country

© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Understanding how people move from one location to another is important both for smart city planners and destination managers. Big-data generated on social media sites have created opportunities for developing evidence-based insights that can be useful for decision-makers. While previous studies have introduced observational data analysis methods for social media data, there remains a need for method development—specifically for capturing people’s movement flows and behavioural details. This paper reports a study outlining a new analytical method, to explore people’s activities, behavioural, and movement details for people monitoring and planning purposes. Our method utilises online geotagged content uploaded by users from various locations. The effectiveness of the proposed method, which combines content capturing, processing and predicting algorithms, is demonstrated through a case study of the Fiji Islands. The results show good performance compared to other relevant methods and show applicability to national decisions and policies

Changes in plasma phenylalanine, isoleucine, leucine, and valine are associated with significant changes in intracranial pressure and jugular venous oxygen saturation in patients with severe traumatic brain injury

Changes in plasma aromatic amino acids (AAA=phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine) and branched chain amino acids (BCAA=isoleucine, leucine, valine) levels possibly influencing intracranial pressure (ICP) and cerebral oxygen consumption (SjvO2) were investigated in 19 sedated patients up to 14days following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Compared to 44 healthy volunteers, jugular venous plasma BCAA were significantly decreased by 35% (p<0.001) while AAA were markedly increased in TBI patients by 19% (p<0.001). The BCAA to AAA ratio was significantly decreased by 55% (p<0.001) which persisted during the entire study period. Elevated plasma phenylalanine was associated with decreased ICP and increased SjvO2, while higher plasma isoleucine and leucine levels were associated with increased ICP and higher plasma leucine and valine were linked to decreased SjvO2. The amount of enterally administered amino acids was associated with significantly increased plasma levels with the exception of phenylalanine. Contrary to the initial assumption that elevated AAA and decreased BCAA levels are detrimental, increased plasma phenylalanine levels were associated with beneficial signs in terms of decreased ICP and reduced cerebral oxygen consumption reflected by increased SjvO2; concomitantly, elevated plasma isoleucine and leucine levels were associated with increased ICP while leucine and valine were associated with decreased SjvO2 following severe TBI, respectively. The impact of enteral nutrition on this observed pattern must be examined prospectively to determine if higher amounts of phenylalanine should be administered to promote beneficial effects on brain metabolism and if normalization of plasma BCAA levels is without cerebral side effect