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This study aims to study the connected vehicle (CV) impact on highway operational performance under a mixed CV and regular vehicle (RV) environment.

The authors implemented a mixed traffic flow model, along with a CV speed control model, in the simulation environment. According to the different traffic characteristics between CVs and RVs, this research first analyzed how the operation of CVs can affect highway capacity under both one-lane and multi-lane cases. A hypothesis was then made that there shall exist a critical CV penetration rate that can significantly show the benefit of CV to the overall traffic. To prove this concept, this study simulated the mixed traffic pattern under various conditions.

The results of this research revealed that performing optimal speed control to CVs will concurrently benefit RVs by improving highway capacity. Furthermore, a critical CV penetration rate should exist at a specified traffic demand level, which can significantly reduce the speed difference between RVs and CVs. The results offer effective insight to understand the potential impacts of different CV penetration rates on highway operation performance.

This approach assumes that there shall exist a critical CV penetration rate that can maximize the benefits of CV implementations. CV penetration rate (the proportion of CVs in mixed traffic) is the key factor affecting the impacts of CV on freeway operational performance. The evaluation criteria for freeway operational performance are using average travel time under different given traffic demand patterns.

Clinical manifestations of drug-induced skin reactions include a wide range of symptoms, from mild drug-induced exanthemas to dangerous and life-threatening generalized systematic reactions. Drug-induced skin reactions to psychotropic medication are usually associated with antiepileptic drugs. However, a significant role can be assigned to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. We report a case of a female patient, who after approximately one month therapy with escitalopram developed a bilateral ankle edema, which resolved completely within the first week following its discontinuation. Although serious complications are rare, clinicians should be aware of severe skin complications in patients treated with antidepressants, which necessitate careful clinical monitoring and management. Individualization of pharmacotherapy is crucial, together with regular evaluation of safety and tolerance of the treatment.

The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (di George syndrome) is one of the most prevalent genetic disorders. The clinical features of the syndrome are distinct facial appearance, velopharyngeal insufficiency, conotruncal heart disease, parathyroid and immune dysfunction; however, little is known about possible neurodegenerative diseases. We describe the case of an 18-year old patient suffering from 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. Since adolescence, he presented with behavioral disorders, recommended treatment with 2 mg aloperidin and he presented cervical dystonia and emergence of torticollis and trunk dystonia. Antipsychotic medications either accelerate or reveal dys-tonic symptoms.

This study aims to present a vision-guided robotic system design for application in vat photopolymerization additive manufacturing (AM), enabling vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with injection molding process.

In the system, a robot equipped with a camera and a custom-made gripper as well as driven by a visual servoing (VS) controller is expected to perceive objective, handle variation, connect multi-process steps in soft tooling process and realize automation of vat photopolymerization AM. Meanwhile, the vat photopolymerization AM printer is customized in both hardware and software to interact with the robotic system.

By ArUco marker-based vision-guided robotic system, the printing platform can be manipulated in arbitrary initial position quickly and robustly, which constitutes the first step in exploring automation of vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with soft tooling process.

The vision-guided robotic system monitors and controls vat photopolymerization AM process, which has potential for vat photopolymerization AM hybrid with other mass production methods, for instance, injection molding.

The Greek version of the Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS) was developed to respond to the need of Greek-speaking individuals. The translated questionnaire was administered to 128 HIV outpatients (aged 37.1±9.1) and 166 control patients (aged 32.4±13.4). In addition to the DTS Greek scale, subjects were assessed with two other scales useful for assessing validity. For each factor analyses two components were extracted, based on Cattell's scree test. The two components solution accounted for 55.34% of the total variation in case of frequency variables and 61.45% in case of severity variables. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient and Guttman split-half coefficient of the DTS scale were 0.93 and 0.88 respectively. The test-retest reliability of the Greek version of DTS scale proved to be satisfactory. Individual items had good intra-class correlation coefficients higher than 0.5, which means that all questions have high levels of external validity. The psychometric strength of interview for post-traumatic stress disorder-Greek version it's reliable for its future use, particularly for screening subjects with possible diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.

This study aimed to develop the integration of the multiperiod production-distribution model in a closed-loop supply chain involving carbon emission and traceability. The developed model was for agricultural food (agri-food) products, considering the reverse flow of food waste from the disposal center (composting center) to producers.

The results indicate that integrating the production and distribution model considering food waste recycling provides low carbon emissions in lower total costs. The sensitivity analysis also found that there are trade-offs between production and distribution rate and food waste levels on carbon emission and traceability.

This study focuses on the mathematical modeling of a multiperiod production-distribution formulation for a closed-loop supply chain.

The model of the agri-food closed-loop supply chain in this study that considers food recycling and carbon emissions would help stakeholders involved in the agri-food supply chain to reduce food waste and carbon emissions.

This study investigates the dynamic causality linkages between fiscal deficits and selected macroeconomic indicators in a panel of five East African Community countries.

The research design is based on panel cointegration tests, panel cross-section dependence tests, panel error correction-based Granger causality tests and panel impulse response functions.

Results show that there is long-run feedback causality among fiscal deficits and each of the variables include gross domestic product (GDP) growth, current account balance, interest rates, inflation, grants and debt service. Short-run Granger causality dynamics indicate that there is feedback causality between fiscal deficits and GDP growth; no causality between fiscal deficits and inflation; no causality between fiscal deficits and current account; no causality between fiscal deficits and interest rates; feedback causality between fiscal deficits and grants; and no causality between fiscal deficits and debt service. Impulse response functions show positive and significant impacts of current account balance, inflation and grants; negative and significant impacts of real GDP growth and lending rates; and insignificant effects of debt service.

While the study examines the dynamic causality between fiscal deficits and selected macroeconomic indicators in the East African Community, the analysis excludes South Sudan due to significant data limitations.

In light of the East African Community's aspirations to achieve convergence on key macroeconomic targets, including the fiscal deficit, this research provides novel insights on fiscal policy determinants and causality dynamics.

The dynamic relationships between fiscal policy and macroeconomic variables may have social implications for welfare, equitable growth and distribution of resources.

With a focus on the East African Community, this paper contributes to the literature on the macroeconomic determinants of fiscal deficits in regional economic communities.

On-ramp merging areas are typical bottlenecks in the freeway network since merging on-ramp vehicles may cause intensive disturbances on the mainline traffic flow and lead to various negative impacts on traffic efficiency and safety. The connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), with their capabilities of real-time communication and precise motion control, hold a great potential to facilitate ramp merging operation through enhanced coordination strategies. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the existing ramp merging strategies leveraging CAVs, focusing on the latest trends and developments in the research field.

The review comprehensively covers 44 papers recently published in leading transportation journals. Based on the application context, control strategies are categorized into three categories: merging into sing-lane freeways with total CAVs, merging into sing-lane freeways with mixed traffic flows and merging into multilane freeways.

Relevant literature is reviewed regarding the required technologies, control decision level, applied methods and impacts on traffic performance. More importantly, the authors identify the existing research gaps and provide insightful discussions on the potential and promising directions for future research based on the review, which facilitates further advancement in this research topic.

Many strategies based on the communication and automation capabilities of CAVs have been developed over the past decades, devoted to facilitating the merging/lane-changing maneuvers at freeway on-ramps. Despite the significant progress made, an up-to-date review covering these latest developments is missing to the authors’ best knowledge. This paper conducts a thorough review of the cooperation/coordination strategies that facilitate freeway on-ramp merging using CAVs, focusing on the latest developments in this field. Based on the review, the authors identify the existing research gaps in CAV ramp merging and discuss the potential and promising future research directions to address the gaps.

The objective of this paper is to examine the determinants of the Greek house market during the period 2006–2022 using not only economic variables but also behavioral variables, taking advantage of available information on the volume of Google searches. In order to quantify the behavioral variables, we implement a Python code using the Pytrends 4.9.2 library.

In our study, we assert that models relying solely on economic variables, such as GDP growth, mortgage interest rates and inflation, may lack precision compared to those that integrate behavioral indicators. Recognizing the importance of behavioral insights, we incorporate Google Trends data as a key behavioral indicator, aiming to enhance our understanding of market dynamics by capturing online interest in Greek real estate through searches related to house prices, sales and related topics. To quantify our behavioral indicators, we utilize a Python code leveraging Pytrends, enabling us to extract relevant queries for global and local searches. We employ the EGARCH(1,1) model on the Greek house price index, testing several macroeconomic variables alongside our Google Trends indexes to explain housing returns.

Our findings show that in some cases the relationship between economic variables, such as inflation and mortgage rates, and house prices is not always consistent with the theory because we should highlight the special conditions of the examined country. The country of our sample, Greece, presents the special case of a country with severe sovereign debt issues, which at the same time has the privilege to have a strong currency and the support and the obligations of being an EU/EMU member.

The results suggest that Google Trends can be a valuable tool for academics and practitioners in order to understand what drives house prices. However, further research should be carried out on this topic, for example, causality relationships, to gain deeper insight into the possibilities and limitations of using such tools in analyzing housing market trends.

This is the first paper, to the best of our knowledge, that examines the benefits of Google Trends in studying the Greek house market.

Resilience concepts in integrated urban transport refer to the performance of dealing with external shock and the ability to continue to provide transportation services of all modes. A robust transportation resilience is a goal in pursuing transportation sustainability. Under this specified context, while before the perturbations, robustness refers to the degree of the system’s capability of functioning according to its design specifications on integrated modes and routes, redundancy is the degree of duplication of traffic routes and alternative modes to maintain persistency of service in case of perturbations. While after the perturbations, resourcefulness refers to the capacity to identify operational problems in the system, prioritize interventions and mobilize necessary material/ human resources to recover all the routes and modes, rapidity is the speed of complete recovery of all modes and traffic routes in the urban area. These “4R” are the most critical components of urban integrated resilience.

The trends of transportation resilience's connotation, metrics and strategies are summarized from the literature. A framework is introduced on both qualitative characteristics and quantitative metrics of transportation resilience. Using both model-based and mode-free methodologies that measure resilience in attributes, topology and system performance provides a benchmark for evaluating the mechanism of resilience changes during the perturbation. Correspondingly, different pre-perturbation and post-perturbation strategies for enhancing resilience under multi-mode scenarios are reviewed and summarized.

Cyber-physic transportation system (CPS) is a more targeted solution to resilience issues in transportation. A well-designed CPS can be applied to improve transport resilience facing different perturbations. The CPS ensures the independence and integrity of every child element within each functional zone while reacting rapidly.

This paper provides a more comprehensive understanding of transportation resilience in terms of integrated urban transport. The fundamental characteristics and strategies for resilience are summarized and elaborated. As little research has shed light on the resilience concepts in integrated urban transport, the findings from this paper point out the development trend of a resilient transportation system for digital and data-driven management.