An Effective Method for Constructing Data Structures Solving an Array Maintenance Problem

In this paper a constructive method of data structures solving an array maintenance problem is offered. These data structures are defined in terms of a family of digraphs which have previously been defined, representing solutions for this problem. We present as well a prototype of the method in Haskell.

Financial constraints on research and development

This dissertation examines whether-there exists financial constraints and, if so, their implications for investment in research and development expenditures. It develops a theoretical model of credit rationing and research and development in which both are determined simultaneously and endogenously. The model provides a useful tool to examine different policies that may help alleviate the negative the effect of financial constraints faced by firms.^ The empirical evidence presented deals with two different cases, namely, the motor vehicle industry in Germany (1970-1990) and the electrical machinery industry In Spain (1975-1990).^ The innovation in the empirical analysis is that it follows a novel approach to identify events that allow us to isolate the effect of financial constraints in the determination of research and development.^ Further, empirical evidence is presented to show that in the above two cases financial constraints affect investment in physical capital as well.^ The empirical evidence presented supports the results of the theoretical model developed in this dissertation, showing that financial constraints negatively affect the rate of growth of innovation by reducing the intensity of research and development activity. ^

Toward A Better Understanding of the Evolution of Hotel Development: A Discussion of Product-specific Lodging Demand

In his essay - Toward a Better Understanding of the Evolution of Hotel Development: A Discussion of Product-Specific Lodging Demand - by John A. Carnella, Consultant, Laventhol & Horwath, cpas, New York, Carnella initially describes his piece by stating: “The diversified hotel product in the united states lodging market has Resulted in latent room-night demand, or supply-driven demand resulting from the introduction of a lodging product which caters to a specific set of hotel patrons. The subject has become significant as the lodging market has moved toward segmentation with regard to guest room offerings. The author proposes that latent demand is a tangible, measurable phenomenon best understood in light of the history of the guest room product from its infancy to its present state.” The article opens with an ephemeral depiction of hotel development in the United States, both pre’ and post World War II. To put it succinctly, the author wants you to know that the advent of the inter-state highway system changed the complexion of the hotel industry in the U.S. “Two essential ingredients were necessary for the next phase of hotel development in this country. First was the establishment of the magnificently intricate infrastructure which facilitated motor vehicle transportation in and around the then 48 states of the nation,” says Carnella. “The second event…was the introduction of affordable highway travel. Carnella goes on to say that the next – big thing – in hotel evolution was the introduction of affordable air travel. “With the airways filled with potential lodging guests, developers moved next to erect a new genre of hotel, the airport hotel,” Carnella advances his picture. Growth progressed with the arrival of the suburban hotel concept, which wasn’t fueled by developments in transportation, but by changes in people’s living habits, i.e. suburban affiliations as opposed to urban and city population aggregates. The author explores the distinctions between full-service and limited service lodging operations. “The market of interest with consideration to the extended-stay facility is one dominated by corporate office parks,” Carnella proceeds. These evolutional states speak to latent demand, and even further to segmentation of the market. “Latent demand… is a product-generated phenomenon in which the number of potential hotel guests increases as the direct result of the introduction of a new lodging facility,” Carnella brings his unique insight to the table with regard to the specialization process. The demand is already there; just waiting to be tapped. In closing, “…there must be a consideration of the unique attributes of a lodging facility relative to its ability to attract guests to a subject market, just as there must be an examination of the property's ability to draw guests from within the subject market,” Carnella proposes.

An Electric Vehicle Dispatch Module for Demand-Side Energy Participation

The penetration of the electric vehicle (EV) has increased rapidly in recent years mainly as a consequence of advances in transport technology and power electronics and in response to global pressure to reduce carbon emissions and limit fossil fuel consumption. It is widely acknowledged that inappropriate provision and dispatch of EV charging can lead to negative impacts on power system infrastructure. This paper considers EV requirements and proposes a module which uses owner participation, through mobile phone apps and on-board diagnostics II (OBD-II), for scheduled vehicle charging. A multi-EV reference and single-EV real-time response (MRS2R) online algorithm is proposed to calculate the maximum and minimum adjustable limits of necessary capacity, which forms part of decision-making support in power system dispatch. The proposed EV dispatch module is evaluated in a case study and the influence of the mobile app, EV dispatch trending and commercial impact is explored.

2005 Seat Belt Usage Survey, June 12, 2006

During the spring and summer of 2005, two surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign. In the pre-campaign survey of seat belt usage, the usage/non-usage of 15,444 front seat occupants of cars, vans, SUVs and pickups were observed at 100 locations. In the post-campaign survey of seat belt usage, 15,731 observations were made of front seat occupants of cars, vans, SUVs and pickups. The day of the week and time of day the observations took place were selected for each site using a random number generation computer program.

2006 Seat Belt Usage Survey, April 28, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

2007 Seat Belt Usage Survey, April 28, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

2008 Seat Belt Usage Survey, April 28, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

2010 Seat Belt Usage Survey, April 28, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

2009 Seat Belt Usage Survey, April 28, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

2011 Seat Belt Usage Survey, July 20, 2011

Surveys were taken of motor vehicle drivers’ and passengers’ seat belt usage. These surveys are before and after parts of the “Click it or Ticket” education and enforcement campaign. The whole project starts with a pre-campaign survey followed by the four-week public information, education and enforcement campaign. Finally, the postcampaign survey is taken to test the effectiveness of the education and enforcement campaign.

Cow, farm, and management factors during the dry period that determine the rate of clinical mastitis after calving

The purpose of the research was to investigate cow characteristics, farm facilities, and herd management strategies during the dry period to examine their joint influence on the rate of clinical mastitis after calving. Data were collected over a 2-yr period from 52 commercial dairy farms throughout England and Wales. Cows were separated for analysis into those housed for the dry period (8,710 cow-dry periods) and those at pasture (9,964 cow-dry periods). Multilevel models were used within a Bayesian framework with 2 response variables, the occurrence of a first case of clinical mastitis within the first 30 d of lactation and time to the first case of clinical mastitis during lactation. A variety of cow and herd management factors were identified as being associated with an increased rate of clinical mastitis and these were found to occur throughout the dry period. Significant cow factors were increased parity and at least one somatic cell count ≥200,000 cells/mL in the 90 d before drying off. A number of management factors related to hygiene were significantly associated with an increased rate of clinical mastitis. These included measures linked to the administration of dry-cow treatments and management of the early and late dry-period accommodation and calving areas. Other farm factors associated with a reduced rate of clinical mastitis were vaccination with a leptospirosis vaccine, selection of dry-cow treatments for individual cows within a herd rather than for the herd as a whole, routine body condition scoring of cows at drying off, and a pasture rotation policy of grazing dry cows for a maximum of 2 wk before allowing the pasture to remain nongrazed for a period of 4 wk. Models demonstrated a good ability to predict the farm incidence rate of clinical mastitis in a given year, with model predictions explaining over 85% of the variability in the observed data. The research indicates that specific dry-period management strategies have an important influence on the rate of clinical mastitis during the next lactation.

Cow, farm, and herd management factors in the dry period associated with raised somatic cell counts in early lactation

This study investigated cow characteristics, farm facilities, and herd management strategies during the dry period to examine their joint influence on somatic cell counts (SCC) in early lactation. Data from 52 commercial dairy farms throughout England and Wales were collected over a 2-yr period. For the purpose of analysis, cows were separated into those housed for the dry period (6,419 cow-dry periods) and those at pasture (7,425 cow-dry periods). Bayesian multilevel models were specified with 2 response variables: ln SCC (continuous) and SCC >199,000 cells/mL (binary), both within 30 d of calving. Cow factors associated with an increased SCC after calving were parity, an SCC >199,000 cells/mL in the 60 d before drying off, increasing milk yield 0 to 30 d before drying off, and reduced DIM after calving at the time of SCC estimation. Herd management factors associated with an increased SCC after calving included procedures at drying off, aspects of bedding management, stocking density, and method of pasture grazing. Posterior predictions were used for model assessment, and these indicated that model fit was generally good. The research demonstrated that specific dry-period management strategies have an important influence on SCC in early lactation.

Geospatial Data Indexing Analysis and Visualization via Web Services with Autonomic Resource Management

With the exponential growth of the usage of web-based map services, the web GIS application has become more and more popular. Spatial data index, search, analysis, visualization and the resource management of such services are becoming increasingly important to deliver user-desired Quality of Service. First, spatial indexing is typically time-consuming and is not available to end-users. To address this, we introduce TerraFly sksOpen, an open-sourced an Online Indexing and Querying System for Big Geospatial Data. Integrated with the TerraFly Geospatial database [1-9], sksOpen is an efficient indexing and query engine for processing Top-k Spatial Boolean Queries. Further, we provide ergonomic visualization of query results on interactive maps to facilitate the user’s data analysis. Second, due to the highly complex and dynamic nature of GIS systems, it is quite challenging for the end users to quickly understand and analyze the spatial data, and to efficiently share their own data and analysis results with others. Built on the TerraFly Geo spatial database, TerraFly GeoCloud is an extra layer running upon the TerraFly map and can efficiently support many different visualization functions and spatial data analysis models. Furthermore, users can create unique URLs to visualize and share the analysis results. TerraFly GeoCloud also enables the MapQL technology to customize map visualization using SQL-like statements [10]. Third, map systems often serve dynamic web workloads and involve multiple CPU and I/O intensive tiers, which make it challenging to meet the response time targets of map requests while using the resources efficiently. Virtualization facilitates the deployment of web map services and improves their resource utilization through encapsulation and consolidation. Autonomic resource management allows resources to be automatically provisioned to a map service and its internal tiers on demand. v-TerraFly are techniques to predict the demand of map workloads online and optimize resource allocations, considering both response time and data freshness as the QoS target. The proposed v-TerraFly system is prototyped on TerraFly, a production web map service, and evaluated using real TerraFly workloads. The results show that v-TerraFly can accurately predict the workload demands: 18.91% more accurate; and efficiently allocate resources to meet the QoS target: improves the QoS by 26.19% and saves resource usages by 20.83% compared to traditional peak load-based resource allocation.

Factores asociados al desplazamiento activo en bicicleta al colegio en el Distrito Bogotá, Colombia. Estudio FUPRECOL

Introducción: El transporte activo (TA) puede ser una oportunidad para incrementar los niveles de actividad física diarios de los niños y adolescentes, además de destacarse como una estrategia práctica, accesible y sostenible a largo plazo. Objetivos: El objetivo del presente estudio es doble: Analizar los patrones de desplazamiento activo en bicicleta al y desde el centro educativo, y b) Identificar los factores asociados al uso de la bicicleta como TA; en una muestra de niños y jóvenes pertenecientes a escuelas oficiales de Bogotá, Colombia. Material y métodos: Se trata de un sub-análisis del estudio FUPRECOL en 8060 niños y adolescentes entre los 9-17 años de edad). El modo de desplazamiento del escolar fue determinado a través de la pregunta: “¿Durante los últimos 7 días, usaste bicicleta para ir al colegio/escuela y volver a la casa?. Dicha respuesta se categorizó en activos “Si” (si se desplazan en bicicleta) y pasivos “No” (si se desplazan en vehículo motorizado). Se midieron parámetros antropométricos de peso, talla y perímetro de cintura. El máximo nivel de estudios alcanzados por la madre/padre (no reporta, primaria o secundaria/técnico o tecnólogo/universitario o postgrado) y la composición del hogar (vive con padre/vive con madre/con ambos padres/con abuelos/otros familiares) se auto-reportó por los padres. Las relaciones entre el TA y los factores anteriormente descritos se analizaron mediante regresión logística binaria. Resultados: El 21,9% del total de la muestra reporta usar la bicicleta como medio de transporte y el 7,9% acumula más de 120 minutos al día. Se observó una mayor probabilidad de usar la bicicleta como medio de desplazamiento activo a la escuela en los varones, en los jóvenes entre 9 y 12 años, y en aquellos cuyo padre/madre reportaron mayor grado académico, es decir, “universitario/postgrado”. 3 Conclusión: Los hallazgos del presente estudio sugieren que es necesario promover el TA desde la niñez, poniendo mayor énfasis en el paso a la adolescencia y en las jóvenes, para así aumentar los niveles diarios de AF de estos.