A Windowed Transportation Planning Model

This research develops and applies a transportation planning model that integrates regional and local area forecasting approaches. While regional models have the scope to model the interaction of demand and congestion, they lack the spatial detail of a local approach. Local approaches typically do not consider the feedback between new project traffic and existing levels of traffic. Using a window, which retains the regional trip distribution information and the consistency between travel demand and congestion, allows the use of a complete transportation network and block level traffic zones while retaining computational feasibility. By combining the two methods, a number of important policy issues can be addressed, including the implications of traffic calming, changes in flow due to alternative traffic operation schemes, the influence of micro-scale zoning changes on nearby intersections, the impact of TDM on traffic congestion, and the consequences of a suburban light rail line.transportation planning model, traffic impact study, travel demand model, intersection control, window .

An Oil Spill Spatial Data Model for Qinzhou Bay Based on the KML

Qinzhou Bay is an important channel of Chinese southwest goes to sea. The Qinzhou Bay was chosen as the study area in this paper. Using the international advanced model Oilmap, Analysis of oil spill on the initial oil membrane formation factors, exclude some of initial oil film effects are not important factors, Find suitable for oil spill earlier an oil spill force model. Combined with the natural condition of Qinzhou Bay, The transport process of oil membrane in the condition of different wind and current was observed in Qinzhou Bay by means of experiments. This paper analyzes the main factors, such as the shape of oil membrane and migration directions, which leads to the oil spill, and got a suitable model of oil spill to Qinzhou Bay. In order to achieve its visual in the software of geographic information system, the model of oil spill was defined through the KML

Localization and delocalization of light in photonic moiré lattices

Moiré lattices consist of two superimposed identical periodic structures with a relative rotation angle. Moiré lattices have several applications in everyday life, including artistic design, the textile industry, architecture, image processing, metrology and interferometry. For scientific studies, they have been produced using coupled graphene–hexagonal boron nitride monolayers1,2, graphene–graphene layers3,4 and graphene quasicrystals on a silicon carbide surface5. The recent surge of interest in moiré lattices arises from the possibility of exploring many salient physical phenomena in such systems; examples include commensurable–incommensurable transitions and topological defects2, the emergence of insulating states owing to band flattening3,6, unconventional superconductivity4 controlled by the rotation angle7,8, the quantum Hall effect9, the realization of non-Abelian gauge potentials10 and the appearance of quasicrystals at special rotation angles11. A fundamental question that remains unexplored concerns the evolution of waves in the potentials defined by moiré lattices. Here we experimentally create two-dimensional photonic moiré lattices, which—unlike their material counterparts—have readily controllable parameters and symmetry, allowing us to explore transitions between structures with fundamentally different geometries (periodic, general aperiodic and quasicrystal). We observe localization of light in deterministic linear lattices that is based on flat-band physics6, in contrast to previous schemes based on light diffusion in optical quasicrystals12, where disorder is required13 for the onset of Anderson localization14 (that is, wave localization in random media). Using commensurable and incommensurable moiré patterns, we experimentally demonstrate the two-dimensional localization–delocalization transition of light. Moiré lattices may feature an almost arbitrary geometry that is consistent with the crystallographic symmetry groups of the sublattices, and therefore afford a powerful tool for controlling the properties of light patterns and exploring the physics of periodic–aperiodic phase transitions and two-dimensional wavepacket phenomena relevant to several areas of science, including optics, acoustics, condensed matter and atomic physics.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Novel Evolution-Based Method for Detecting Gene-Gene Interactions

BACKGROUND: The rapid advance in large-scale SNP-chip technologies offers us great opportunities in elucidating the genetic basis of complex diseases. Methods for large-scale interactions analysis have been under development from several sources. Due to several difficult issues (e.g., sparseness of data in high dimensions and low replication or validation rate), development of fast, powerful and robust methods for detecting various forms of gene-gene interactions continues to be a challenging task. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this article, we have developed an evolution-based method to search for genome-wide epistasis in a case-control design. From an evolutionary perspective, we view that human diseases originate from ancient mutations and consider that the underlying genetic variants play a role in differentiating human population into the healthy and the diseased. Based on this concept, traditional evolutionary measure, fixation index (Fst) for two unlinked loci, which measures the genetic distance between populations, should be able to reveal the responsible genetic interplays for disease traits. To validate our proposal, we first investigated the theoretical distribution of Fst by using extensive simulations. Then, we explored its power for detecting gene-gene interactions via SNP markers, and compared it with the conventional Pearson Chi-square test, mutual information based test and linkage disequilibrium based test under several disease models. The proposed evolution-based method outperformed these compared methods in dominant and additive models, no matter what the disease allele frequencies were. However, its performance was relatively poor in a recessive model. Finally, we applied the proposed evolution-based method to analysis of a published dataset. Our results showed that the P value of the Fst -based statistic is smaller than those obtained by the LD-based statistic or Poisson regression models. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: With rapidly growing large-scale genetic association studies, the proposed evolution-based method can be a promising tool in the identification of epistatic effects

Assessing the Pharmacological and Therapeutic Efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Liangxue Tongyu Prescription for Intracerebral Hemorrhagic Stroke in Neurological Disease Models

Intracerebral hemorrhage is a fatal subtype of stroke, with crucial impact on public health. Surgical removal of the hematoma as an early-stage treatment for ICH can’t improve long-term prognosis remarkably. Liangxue tongyu prescription (LP), a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formula, includes eight ingredients and has been used to treat ICH in the clinical. In the study, we elucidated the pharmacological efficacy and therapeutic efficacy of LP to dissect the mechanism of LP against ICH via network analysis and experimental validation. First, we discovered 34 potential compounds and 146 corresponding targets in LP based on network prediction. 24 signal pathway were obtained by the Clue Go assay based on potential compounds in LP against ICH. Second, we found that LP can not only decreased the level of high sensitive C reactive protein (HS-CRP), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), NF-kβ, D-dimmer (D2D), estradiol (E2), S-100B, neuron specific enolase (NSE), and interleukin 1 (IL-1) in plasma on spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), but also promoted cell proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis on the glutamate-induced PC12 cell. The compounds including Taurine, Paeonol, and Ginsenoside Rb1 in LP can activate PI3K/AKT pathway. Third, from the three-factor two-level factorial design, compound combinations in LP, such as Taurine and Paeonol, Taurine and Geniposide, Ginsenoside Rg1, and Ginsenoside Rb1, had first-level interactions on cell proliferation. Compound combinations including Taurine and Paeonol, Ginsenoside Rg1 and Ginsenoside Rb1 had as significant increase in efficiency on inhibiting the apoptosis of PC12 cells at the low concentration and up-regulating of PI3K and AKT. Overall, our results suggested that LP had integrated therapeutic effect on ICH due to activities of anti-inflammatory, anti-coagulation, blood vessel protection, and protection neuron from excitotoxicity based on the way of “multi-component, multi-target, multi-pathway,” and compound combination in LP can offer protection neuron from excitotoxicity at the low concentration by activation of the PI3K/Akt signal pathway

A conscious mouse model of gastric ileus using clinically relevant endpoints

BACKGROUND: Gastric ileus is an unsolved clinical problem and current treatment is limited to supportive measures. Models of ileus using anesthetized animals, muscle strips or isolated smooth muscle cells do not adequately reproduce the clinical situation. Thus, previous studies using these techniques have not led to a clear understanding of the pathophysiology of ileus. The feasibility of using food intake and fecal output as simple, clinically relevant endpoints for monitoring ileus in a conscious mouse model was evaluated by assessing the severity and time course of various insults known to cause ileus. METHODS: Delayed food intake and fecal output associated with ileus was monitored after intraperitoneal injection of endotoxin, laparotomy with bowel manipulation, thermal injury or cerulein induced acute pancreatitis. The correlation of decreased food intake after endotoxin injection with gastric ileus was validated by measuring gastric emptying. The effect of endotoxin on general activity level and feeding behavior was also determined. Small bowel transit was measured using a phenol red marker. RESULTS: Each insult resulted in a transient and comparable decrease in food intake and fecal output consistent with the clinical picture of ileus. The endpoints were highly sensitive to small changes in low doses of endotoxin, the extent of bowel manipulation, and cerulein dose. The delay in food intake directly correlated with delayed gastric emptying. Changes in general activity and feeding behavior were insufficient to explain decreased food intake. Intestinal transit remained unchanged at the times measured. CONCLUSION: Food intake and fecal output are sensitive markers of gastric dysfunction in four experimental models of ileus. In the mouse, delayed gastric emptying appears to be the major cause of the anorexic effect associated with ileus. Gastric dysfunction is more important than small bowel dysfunction in this model. Recovery of stomach function appears to be simultaneous to colonic recovery

Le grand timonier et les tigres en papier

Yuanlin Huang. Le grand timonier et les tigres en papier. In: Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps, n°28, 1992. L'image du pouvoir dans le dessin d'actualité. Le temps des monarques. Le temps des chefs. Le temps des leaders, sous la direction de René Girault . pp. 40-43

Selecting Bicycle Commuting Routes Using GIS

This study develops a procedure for using a geographic information system (GIS) to select bicycle routes in a city. The procedure includes: developing the required database, finding the most desirable route between each origin­ destination pair, and identifying the best bicycle routes in a city. The study shows that GIS is a powerful tool for developing a database from various readily available sources; that it can conveniently integrate quantitative analysis, data manipulation, and visualization in one operating environment; and that GIS is uniquely capable of performing spatial analyses that are critical to the selection of bicycle routes

Road supply and traffic in California urban areas

We estimate relationships between the supply of state highways, measured in lane-miles, and the quantity of traffic, measured in vehicle-miles traveled, for urban counties and metropolitan areas in the state of California. The analysis employs a panel data set of annual observations for the years 1973 to 1990. We estimate several versions of a log-linear model including fixed regional and time period effects. Our main concern is with models of state highway (as opposed to total) vehicle-miles traveled. By using two types of models designed to capture long-term effects, we estimate that state highway vehicle-miles traveled has a lanemile elasticity of 0.6-0.7 at the county level and 0.9 at the metropolitan level, and that the full impact of vehicle-miles traveled materializes within five years of the change in road supply. We also consider limited data on off-state highway vehicle-miles traveled, and find no conclusive evidence that increases in state highway lane-miles have affected traffic on other roads. Population, income, and gasoline price elasticities are also discussed. We find that, even when all these factors are accounted for, there has been a sharp increase in the propensity towards vehicle travel over the period of study, particularly during the late 1980s.