Analysis of Deterioration Models for Lightly Loaded Thin Seal Flexible Pavements

2003 ◽  
Vol 1819 (1) ◽  
pp. 294-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry J. McManus ◽  
John B. Metcalf

A set of deterioration models is required to manage local government authority (LGA) pavements in a cost-effective manner; yet, most existing deterioration models have been derived for the major highways of the State Road Authority system. LGA pavements are different in terms of pavement life, the effect of the environment, loading, and expectations of performance with respect to riding quality. There is a greater emphasis on sustained light routine maintenance in LGAs. There is a need to develop models that more closely represent LGA pavements so they can be used to forecast the deterioration of the asset and to provide better guidance for rehabilitation planning. Existing pavement deterioration models, such as Highway Development Management-III (HDM-III), were examined for application to the Australian LGA pavement set. In general, such models were too complex for use in LGAs, and they also used roughness as a performance measure. Roughness is not commonly measured in LGA pavement networks. Other studies have shown that HDM-III could overestimate the deterioration of lightly loaded pavements. For this study, data on deterioration of several LGA pavements were collected and analyzed. Visual assessment data on pavement condition were captured in a “snapshot” survey of pavements of different ages. Thus, the data represent an age cross-section sample. Little or no correlation was found between any of the performance indicators and age when the full data sets were used for the analyses. Some correlation was apparent with the averaged data for each age. Even then, some of the trendlines observed indicated a performance with age, contrary to normal expectations. It appears that factors besides age have a significant influence on the behavior of LGA pavement.

Author(s):  
L Mohana Tirumala ◽  
S. Srinivasa Rao

Privacy preserving in Data mining & publishing, plays a major role in today networked world. It is important to preserve the privacy of the vital information corresponding to a data set. This process can be achieved by k-anonymization solution for classification. Along with the privacy preserving using anonymization, yielding the optimized data sets is also of equal importance with a cost effective approach. In this paper Top-Down Refinement algorithm has been proposed which yields optimum results in a cost effective manner. Bayesian Classification has been proposed in this paper to predict class membership probabilities for a data tuple for which the associated class label is unknown.


Geophysics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. G249-G260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esben Auken ◽  
Louise Pellerin ◽  
Niels B. Christensen ◽  
Kurt Sørensen

Electrical and electromagnetic (E&EM) methods for near-surface investigations have undergone rapid improvements over the past few decades. Besides the traditional applications in groundwater investigations, natural-resource exploration, and geological mapping, a number of new applications have appeared. These include hazardous-waste characterization studies, precision-agriculture applications, archeological surveys, and geotechnical investigations. The inclu-sion of microprocessors in survey instruments, development of new interpretation algorithms, and easy access to powerful computers have supported innovation throughout the geophysical community and the E&EM community is no exception. Most notable are development of continuous-measurement systems that generate large, dense data sets efficiently. These have contributed significantly to the usefulness of E&EM methods by allowing measurements over wide areas without sacrificing lateral resolution. The availability of these luxuriant data sets in turn spurred development of interpretation algorithms, including: Laterally constrained 1D inversion as well as innovative 2D- and 3D-inversion methods. Taken together, these developments can be expected to improve the resolution and usefulness of E&EM methods and permit them to be applied economically. The trend is clearly toward dense surveying over larger areas, followed by highly automated, post-acquisition processing and interpretation to provide improved resolution of the shallow subsurface in a cost-effective manner.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 2519-2532
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Nargesian ◽  
Abolfazl Asudeh ◽  
H. V. Jagadish

Data scientists often develop data sets for analysis by drawing upon sources of data available to them. A major challenge is to ensure that the data set used for analysis has an appropriate representation of relevant (demographic) groups: it meets desired distribution requirements. Whether data is collected through some experiment or obtained from some data provider, the data from any single source may not meet the desired distribution requirements. Therefore, a union of data from multiple sources is often required. In this paper, we study how to acquire such data in the most cost effective manner, for typical cost functions observed in practice. We present an optimal solution for binary groups when the underlying distributions of data sources are known and all data sources have equal costs. For the generic case with unequal costs, we design an approximation algorithm that performs well in practice. When the underlying distributions are unknown, we develop an exploration-exploitation based strategy with a reward function that captures the cost and approximations of group distributions in each data source. Besides theoretical analysis, we conduct comprehensive experiments that confirm the effectiveness of our algorithms.


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
D. Main ◽  
L. Ng ◽  
A. North

Earth Tech has been successfully benchmarking Canadian municipal water, wastewater and stormwater utility operations since 1997. While the fundamental purpose of this project was metric benchmarking for the purpose of making performance comparisons to guide continuous improvement, the project is now serving as a dynamic platform to consider, examine, and implement a broad range of utility best practices that have resulted in superior performance where they have been implemented. The keys to success, however, were based more on a process that emphasizes communication, teamwork, and collaboration rather than the trend to push computerized data management systems to their fullest potential, and most importantly, in recognizing the importance of ‘hard work’. With these success factors now well understood and documented, it is feasible to benchmark almost any public infrastructure amongst agencies that are willing, regardless of their level of technological development. Finally, by sharing this methodology, the performance measure descriptions and detailed definitions, it is also feasible to make international comparisons in a simple and cost effective manner, thus opening the door to the broad exchange of international best practices.


Author(s):  
Sunil Nagpal ◽  
Mohammed Monzoorul Haque ◽  
Sharmila S. Mande

Motivation: 16S rRNA gene amplicon based sequencing has significantly expanded the scope of metagenomics research by enabling microbial community analyses in a cost-effective manner. The possibility to infer functional potential of a microbiome through amplicon sequencing derived taxonomic abundance profiles has further strengthened the utility of 16S sequencing. In fact, a surge in 'inferred function metagenomic analysis' has recently taken place, wherein most 16S microbiome studies include inferred functional insights in addition to taxonomic characterization. Tools like PICRUSt, Tax4Fun, Vikodak and iVikodak have significantly eased the process of inferring function potential of a microbiome using the taxonomic abundance profile. A platform that can enable hosting of inferred function 'metagenomic studies' with comprehensive metadata driven search utilities (of a typical database), coupled with on-the-fly comparative analytics between studies of interest, can be a major improvement to the state of art. ReFDash represents an effort in the proposed direction. Methods: This work introduces ReFDash - a Repository of Functional Dashboards. ReFDash, developed as a significant extension of iVikodak (function inference tool), provides three broad unique offerings in inferred function space - (i) a platform that hosts a database of inferred function data being continously updated using public 16S metagenomic studies (ii) a tool to search studies of interest and compare upto three metagenomic environments on the fly (iii) a community initiative wherein users can contribute their own inferred function data to the platform. ReFDash therefore provides a first-of-its-kind community-driven frame-work for scientific collaboration, data analytics, and sharing in this area of microbiome research. Results: Overall, the ReFDash database is aimed at compiling together a global ensemble of 16S-derived Functional Metagenomics projects. ReFDash currently hosts close to 50 ready-to-use, re-analyzable functional dashboards representing data from approximately 18,000 microbiome samples sourced from various published studies. Each entry also provides direct downloadable links to associated taxonomic files and metadata employed for analysis. Conclusion: The vision behind ReFDash is creation of a framework, wherein users can not only analyze their microbiome datasets in functional terms, but also contribute towards building an information base by submitting their functional analyses to ReFDash database. ReFDash web-server may be freely accessed at https://web.rniapps.net/iVikodak/refdash/


Author(s):  
W.J. Parker ◽  
N.M. Shadbolt ◽  
D.I. Gray

Three levels of planning can be distinguished in grassland farming: strategic, tactical and operational. The purpose of strategic planning is to achieve a sustainable long-term fit of the farm business with its physical, social and financial environment. In pastoral farming, this essentially means developing plans that maximise and best match pasture growth with animal demand, while generating sufficient income to maintain or enhance farm resources and improvements, and attain personal and financial goals. Strategic plans relate to the whole farm business and are focused on the means to achieve future needs. They should be routinely (at least annually) reviewed and monitored for effectiveness through key performance indicators (e.g., Economic Farm Surplus) that enable progress toward goals to be measured in a timely and cost-effective manner. Failure to link strategy with control is likely to result in unfulfilled plans. Keywords: management, performance


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Jia-Huan Qu ◽  
Karen Leirs ◽  
Remei Escudero ◽  
Žiga Strmšek ◽  
Roman Jerala ◽  
...  

To date, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensors have been exploited in numerous different contexts while continuously pushing boundaries in terms of improved sensitivity, specificity, portability and reusability. The latter has attracted attention as a viable alternative to disposable biosensors, also offering prospects for rapid screening of biomolecules or biomolecular interactions. In this context here, we developed an approach to successfully regenerate a fiber-optic (FO)-SPR surface when utilizing cobalt (II)-nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) surface chemistry. To achieve this, we tested multiple regeneration conditions that can disrupt the NTA chelate on a surface fully saturated with His6-tagged antibody fragments (scFv-33H1F7) over ten regeneration cycles. The best surface regeneration was obtained when combining 100 mM EDTA, 500 mM imidazole and 0.5% SDS at pH 8.0 for 1 min with shaking at 150 rpm followed by washing with 0.5 M NaOH for 3 min. The true versatility of the established approach was proven by regenerating the NTA surface for ten cycles with three other model system bioreceptors, different in their size and structure: His6-tagged SARS-CoV-2 spike fragment (receptor binding domain, RBD), a red fluorescent protein (RFP) and protein origami carrying 4 RFPs (Tet12SN-RRRR). Enabling the removal of His6-tagged bioreceptors from NTA surfaces in a fast and cost-effective manner can have broad applications, spanning from the development of biosensors and various biopharmaceutical analyses to the synthesis of novel biomaterials.


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