COMPUTATIONAL PROCESS MODELING OF HOUSEHOLD TRAVEL DECISIONS USING A GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM

ABSTRACT Household travel behaviour entails interdependent deliberate decisions, as well as the execution of routines not preceded by deliberate decisions. Furthermore, travel decisions are dependent on choices to participate in activities. Because of the complexity of the decision making process in which individuals are engaged, computational process models (CPMs) are promising means of implementing behavioral principles, which, unlike other disaggregate modeling approaches do not rely on a utility maximizing framework. A conceptual framework is proposed as the basis of a CPM interfaced with the geographical information system Arc/Info . How to model household' travel behaviour is illustrated in a case study of a single household in which one member started telecommuting.     

Face Matching in Large Database by Self-Organizing Maps

A novel self-organizing map (SOM) based retrieval system is proposed for performing face matching in large database. The proposed system provides a small subset of faces that are most similar to a given query face, from which user can easily verify the matched images. The architecture of the proposed system consists of two major parts. First, the system provides a generalized integration of multiple feature-sets using multiple self-organizing maps. Multiple feature-sets are obtained from different feature extraction methods like Gabor filter, Local Autocorrelation Coefficients, etc. In this platform, multiple facial features are integrated to form a compressed feature vector without concerning scaling and length of individual feature set. Second, an SOM is trained to organize all the face images in a database through using the compressed feature vector. Using the organized map, similar faces to a query can be efficiently identified. Furthermore, the system includes a relevance feedback to enhance the face retrieval performance. The proposed method is computationally efficient. Comparative results show that the proposed approach is promising for identifying face in a given large image database.     

Using Cellular Probabilistic Self-Organizing Map in Borrowing Channel Assignment for Patterned Traffic Load

The fast growing cellular mobile systems demand more efficient and faster channel allocation techniques. Borrowing channel assignment (BCA) is a compromising technique between fixed channel allocation (FCA) and dynamic channel allocation (DCA). However, in the case of patterned traffic load, BCA is not efficient to further enhance the performance because some heavy-traffic cells are unable to borrow channels from neighboring cells that do not have unused nominal channels. The performance of the whole system can be raised if the short-term traffic load can be predicted and the nominal channels can be re-assigned for all cells. This paper describes an improved BCA scheme using traffic load prediction. The prediction is obtained by using the short-term forecasting ability of cellular probabilistic self-organizing map (CPSOM). This paper shows that the proposed CPSOM-based BCA method is able to enhance the performance of patterned traffic load compared with the traditional BCA methods. Simulation results corroborate that the proposed method delivers significantly better performance than BCA for patterned traffic load situations, and is virtually as good as BCA in the other situations analyzed.     

Protocol for evaluating the efficacy of cetylpyridinium chloride as a beef hide intervention

The objective of this study was to establish the necessary protocols and assess the efficacy of cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) as an antimicrobial intervention on beef cattle hides. Experiments using CPC were conducted to determine (i) the methods of neutralization needed to obtain valid efficacy measurements, (ii) the effect of concentration and dwell time after treatment, (iii) the effect of CPC on hide and carcass microbial populations when cattle were treated at a feedlot and then transported to a processing facility for harvest, and (iv) the effectiveness of spray pressure and two-spray combinations of CPC and water to reduce hide microbial populations. Residual CPC in hide sponge samples prevented bacterial growth. Dey-Engley neutralization media at 7.8% and a centrifugation step were necessary to overcome this problem. All dwell times, ranging from 30 s to 4 h, after 1% CPC application to cattle hides resulted in aerobic plate counts and Enterobacteriaceae counts 1.5 log CFU/100 cm2 lower than controls. The most effective dose of CPC was 1%, which reduced aerobic plate counts and Enterobacteriaceae counts 2 and 1 log CFU/100 cm2, respectively. Low-pressure application of 1% CPC at the feedlot, transport to the processing facility, and harvest within 5 h of application resulted in no effect on Escherichia coli O157 prevalence on hides or preevisceration carcasses. Two high-pressure CPC washes lowered aerobic plate counts and Enterobacteriaceae counts by 4 log CFU/100 cm2, and two medium-pressure CPC washes were only slightly less effective. These results indicate that under the proper conditions, CPC may still be effective for reducing microbial populations on cattle hides. Further study is warranted to determine if this effect will result in reduction of hide-to-carcass contamination during processing.     

TIME-CRITICAL COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENT VEHICULAR NETWORKS

Vehicular networks are expected to empower auto V mated driving and intelligent transportation via vehicle-to-e very thing(V2X)communications and edge/cloud-ass...