New ITS applications for metropolitan areas based on Floating Car Data

The paper describes a couple of FCD based vehicular traffic applications and services. This new method is especially beneficial for regions with a poor traffic monitoring infrastructure because the necessary monetary effort to establish such a system is very small in comparison to conventional systems and it is flexible and easily adaptable to other regions. Particularly, emerging markets like China with a fast-changing road network and a high penetration of lat-est information technologies on one side but with serious foreseeable traffic related problems on the other side can surely profit from this approach. The new data collection and analysing methods result in better performance of the services enhance the scope of the services and hopefully enlarge user acceptance. All of the proposed solutions are prototypes and not all of them have been extensively tested up to now. Certainly, specific data processing methods need further research, some refinements and calibrations. Additionally, some applications still suffer from insufficient data penetration. Nevertheless, the approach is very general and it is very likely that FCD availability will sharply increase in near future and will enhance the quality of services

Towards area-wide traffic monitoring-applications derived from probe vehicle data

Comprehensive, up-to-date traffic monitoring is the basis for mobility information and traffic management systems. However, conventional stationary traffic data measurements are hardly able to provide the necessary data for an area-wide monitoring and cannot deliver enough information for many traffic related services. Therefore an al-ternative approach using positioning data of commercial vehicle fleets for traffic monitoring issues has been established. This paper surveys differnt prototype applications based on this probe vehicle data. Continuous monitoring and information of traffic situation via the World Wide Web accomplished by jam detection and highlighting is the basic service. Further on, vehicle route guidance systems using current and historic data achieve superior performance. Such guidance systems have been tested as modules for dynamic navigation and fleet disposition system. Finally a method to derive digital road maps and street characteristics from positioning data is presented

PORTAL: Pilot study on the safety and tolerance of preoperative melatonin application in patients undergoing major liver resection: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Major surgical procedures facilitate systemic endotoxinemia and formation of free radicals with subsequent inflammatory changes that can influence the postoperative course. Experimental data suggest that preoperative supraphysiological doses of melatonin, a potent immuno-modulator and antioxidant, would decrease postoperative infectious and non-infectious complications induced by major abdominal surgery.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>A randomized controlled double blind single center clinical trial with two study arms comprising a total of 40 patients has been designed to assess the effects of a single preoperative dose of melatonin before major liver resection. Primary endpoints include the determination of safety and tolerance of the regimen as well as clinical parameters reflecting pathophysiological functions of the liver. Furthermore, data on clinical outcome (infectious and non-infectious complications) will be collected as secondary endpoints to allow a power calculation for a randomized clinical trial aiming at clinical efficacy.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Based on experimental data, this ongoing clinical trial represents an advanced element of the research chain from bench to bedside in order to reach the highest level of evidence-based clinical facts to determine if melatonin can improve the general outcome after liver resection.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>EudraCT200600530815</p

Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003)

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1,105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space

Registered replication report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003)

The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1,105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space

Comparison and Assessment of Large Urban Road Networks - a Case Study

This paper presents the results of a case study of road infrastructure assessments of two large German cities, namely Berlin and Munich. The major aim is to investigate the quality of the main road network as a whole and to identify infrastructure deficiencies. The used methodology is based on integral assessment criteria derived from comprehensive traffic monitoring data. These data are collected by using taxis as probe vehicles

BENEFITS AND LIMITS OF RECENT FLOATING CAR DATA TECHNOLOGY – AN EVALUATION STUDY

Probe Vehicle Data or Floating Car Data (FCD) collected from vehicle fleets are an excellent technology for the traffic surveillance needed to support various applications of Intelligent Transport Systems. Data from an FCD-fleet result in travel time maps of the area under surveillance. Despite the simplicity of such a system, traffic surveillance based on such data has some disadvantages. The main shortcoming is caused by the insufficient penetration rate which has been achieved so far. Operating systems of Floating Car Data use at maximum several hundred up to few thousand vehicles in urban street networks composed of some ten or even hundred thousands of road kilometers. Questions arise about the reliability of travel time information on routes derived by very few probe vehicles. Unfortunately, most systems lack of a systematic performance evaluation. In this contribution, a taxi-based FCD system with about 500 taxis, operational running in Nuremberg, Germany, is tested with data from a measurement campaign. This campaign of four days duration had been conducted along a main street in Nuremberg using license plate recognition to estimate the travel times along the street. These data are compared to the travel time calculations obtained from the taxi-FCD system. The main result is that the FCD system is particularly able to detect jammed situations and the travel times calculated by the system deliver valuable data for mobility and traffic information systems