Wytze de Vries, Erik van den Eshof, Jorn van Kampen
et al.
Electric endurance racing is characterized by severe energy constraints and strong aerodynamic interactions. Determining race-winning policies therefore becomes a fundamentally multi-agent, game-theoretic problem. These policies must jointly govern low-level driver inputs as well as high-level strategic decisions, including energy management and charging. This paper proposes a bi-level framework for competitor-aware race management that combines game-theoretic optimal control with reinforcement learning. At the lower level, a multi-agent game-theoretic optimal control problem is solved to capture aerodynamic effects and asymmetric collision-avoidance constraints inspired by motorsport rules. Using this single-lap problem as the environment, reinforcement learning agents are trained to allocate battery energy and schedule pit stops over an entire race. The framework is demonstrated in a two-agent, 45-lap simulated race. The results show that effective exploitation of aerodynamic interactions is decisive for race outcome, with strategies that prioritize finishing position differing fundamentally from single-agent, minimum-time approaches.
The function field analogue of Chebyshev's bias was first studied by Cha. In this paper, we study *ties* in this race, namely collections of distinct congruence classes $c_1, \dots, c_k \in (\mathbb{F}_q[T] / m)^\times$ for which $$π(N; m, c_1) = π(N; m, c_2) = \dots = π(N; m, c_k)$$ holds for infinitely many $N$. We provide infinitely many examples of $(m, c_1, \dots, c_k)$ for which the tie holds whenever $N$ satisfies certain congruence conditions. We give two different proofs: first, via the explicit formula for prime counts in terms of $L$-functions together with a matrix analogue of Möbius inversion, where exceptional pairs of Galois-conjugate elements in the corresponding cyclotomic fields produce ties; and second, via an explicit bijection arising from the $\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{F}_q)$-action. Our examples also include characteristic 2 cases.
The article explores the revitalization of Italy's "inner areas" - —fragile territories facing challenges such as depopulation, abandonment, and a lack of essential services, primarily due to limited mobility. The enhancement of secondary and disused railways is proposed as a tool for territorial rebalancing, to be achieved through multilevel governance that integrates spatial planning, interinstitutional cooperation, and the strategic allocation of financial and economic resources. This approach aims to move beyond sectoral perspectives on infrastructure networks.
The Axis Contract is introduced as an integrated framework linking urban planning and mobility, centered on the right to mobility and the empowerment of local communities.
The article is structured into three parts: the first examines the relationship between territory, mobility, and infrastructure policies; the second analyzes the French Contrat d’axe model and its applicability in Italy; and the third presents the results of an interdisciplinary study on the reactivation of the Civitavecchia -Capranica - Orte railway line.
The findings confirm that the Axis Contract is an effective tool for integrating urban and mobility planning, addressing accessibility needs, and promoting the sustainable rebalancing of territories.
Transportation engineering, Urbanization. City and country
Alexey Paznikov, Andrey Kogutenko, Yaroslav Osipov
et al.
Dynamic data race detectors are indispensable for flagging concurrency errors in software, but their high runtime overhead limits their adoption. This overhead stems primarily from pervasive instrumentation of memory accesses - a significant fraction of which is redundant. We addresses this inefficiency through a static, compiler-integrated approach that identifies and eliminates redundant instrumentation, drastically reducing the runtime cost of dynamic data race detectors. We introduce a suite of interprocedural static analyses reasoning about memory access patterns, synchronization, and thread creation to eliminate instrumentation for provably race-free accesses and show that the completeness properties of the data race detector are preserved. We further observe that many inserted checks flag a race if and only if a preceding check has already flagged an equivalent race for the same memory location - albeit potentially at a different access. We characterize this notion of equivalence and show that, when limiting reporting to at least one representative for each equivalence class, a further class of redundant checks can be eliminated. We identify such accesses using a novel dominance-based elimination analysis. Based on these two insights, we have implemented five static analyses within the LLVM, integrated with the instrumentation pass of the race detector ThreadSanitizer. Our experimental evaluation on a diverse suite of real-world applications demonstrates that our approach significantly reduces race detection overhead, achieving a geomean speedup of 1.34x, with peak speedups reaching 2.5x under high thread contention. This performance is achieved with a negligible increase in compilation time and, being fully automatic, places no additional burden on developers. Our optimizations have been accepted by the ThreadSanitizer maintainers and are in the process of being upstreamed.
Formula One (F1) race strategy takes place in a high-pressure and fast-paced environment where split-second decisions can drastically affect race results. Two of the core decisions of race strategy are when to make pit stops (i.e. replace the cars' tyres) and which tyre compounds (hard, medium or soft, in normal conditions) to select. The optimal pit stop decisions can be determined by estimating the tyre degradation of these compounds, which in turn can be computed from the energy applied to each tyre, i.e. the tyre energy. In this work, we trained deep learning models, using the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 team's historic race data consisting of telemetry, to forecast tyre energies during races. Additionally, we fitted XGBoost, a decision tree-based machine learning algorithm, to the same dataset and compared the results, with both giving impressive performance. Furthermore, we incorporated two different explainable AI methods, namely feature importance and counterfactual explanations, to gain insights into the reasoning behind the forecasts. Our contributions thus result in an explainable, automated method which could assist F1 teams in optimising their race strategy.
S. Chambliss, Carlos P. R. Pinon, K. Messier
et al.
Significance It is known, to researchers and heavily impacted communities, that people of color face a higher average burden of air pollution. It was unknown whether racial/ethnic disparities were caused by spatial heterogeneities at the level of city blocks, neighborhoods, or urban regions. Our approach leverages a unique set of highly local observations, covering every city block of 13 cities and urban districts that are home to 450,000 people. We find that even for pollutants with steep localized gradients, differences in average outdoor concentrations among racial/ethnic groups are driven by regional variability. However, localized peaks indicate opportunities to reduce extremes within groups. The methods and findings of this study can inform strategies to reduce disparities in urban air pollution exposure. Disparity in air pollution exposure arises from variation at multiple spatial scales: along urban-to-rural gradients, between individual cities within a metropolitan region, within individual neighborhoods, and between city blocks. Here, we improve on existing capabilities to systematically compare urban variation at several scales, from hyperlocal (10 km), and to assess consequences for outdoor air pollution experienced by residents of different races and ethnicities, by creating a set of uniquely extensive and high-resolution observations of spatially variable pollutants: NO, NO2, black carbon (BC), and ultrafine particles (UFP). We conducted full-coverage monitoring of a wide sample of urban and suburban neighborhoods (93 km2 and 450,000 residents) in four counties of the San Francisco Bay Area using Google Street View cars equipped with the Aclima mobile platform. Comparing scales of variation across the sampled population, greater differences arise from localized pollution gradients for BC and NO (pollutants dominated by primary sources) and from regional gradients for UFP and NO2 (pollutants dominated by secondary contributions). Median concentrations of UFP, NO, and NO2 are, for Hispanic and Black populations, 8 to 30% higher than the population average; for White populations, average exposures to these pollutants are 9 to 14% lower than the population average. Systematic racial/ethnic disparities are influenced by regional concentration gradients due to sharp contrasts in demographic composition among cities and urban districts, while within-group extremes arise from local peaks. Our results illustrate how detailed and extensive fine-scale pollution observations can add new insights about differences and disparities in air pollution exposures at the population scale.
Resumo A agenda de cidades inteligentes vem se consolidando no Brasil a partir de relações de poder assimétricas entre atores estatais e não estatais, sendo atravessada por conflitos de interesses entre empresas, governos e comunidades em nível transnacional, regional e local. Da Nova Agenda Urbana assinada em Quito, em 2016, aos novos “planos diretores” encabeçados por consultorias privadas nos municípios brasileiros, abordagens corporativas de inteligência no espaço urbano têm salientado a racionalidade neoliberal por trás do conceito e seus desdobramentos. Aqui, apresenta-se um olhar crítico dessa agenda desde o Sul Global, articulando o alcance do poder corporativo, a garantia de direitos (à cidade e digitais) e a resistência exercida a partir de colaborações locais e internacionais.
El objetivo del artículo es estudiar los diferenciales en el acceso a la propiedad de la vivienda de los migrantes internacionales en Buenos Aires desde una perspectiva demográfica poco aplicada al tema en América Latina, que explora la intensidad y el calendario del fenómeno en generaciones, grupos y territorios específicos. Para ello, se reconstruyeron las cohortes de nacimiento de diferentes colectivos nacionales a partir de datos de edad y lugar de nacimiento, de los censos de población argentinos de 1970 a 2010. Como resultado principal, se pudo conocer que a mayor edad se produce un progresivo acceso a la propiedad de la vivienda, pero que el acceso al suelo se ha vuelto más restrictivo. Ello ha afectado a las generaciones más recientes en general, incluida la población argentina, pero muy especialmente a los migrantes de países limítrofes de sectores sociales más bajos y en los territorios más disputados de la ciudad.
Grace Nkansa Asante, Paul Owusu Takyi, Gideon Mensah
ABSTRACTIt is hypothesized that a well-functioning financial market is necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve the expected economic growth. Therefore, policy instruments of government aimed at streamlining financial sector activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are imperative. As a result, this paper explores the effect of financial development on economic growth by allowing the link between the two far variables to be mediated by the quality of institutions for the period 2000–2019. Using Twenty-nine (29) countries and the System-Generalized Method of Moments (system-GMM) estimation method, it is found that financial development has a positive and significant effect on economic growth. In addition, it is found that, when rule of law, political stability, and regulatory quality are highly effective, the positive effect of financial development on economic growth is magnified.
Economic growth, development, planning, Human settlements. Communities
Hannah N. Collins, Paula I Johnson, Norma Calderon
et al.
Background Personal care products may contain many chemicals, some of which are suspected endocrine disrupters. This is an important source of chemical exposure for women, but little is known about how chemical exposure differs among different races/ethnicities. Objective This study examines differences in personal care product use among Black, Latina, Vietnamese, Mixed Race, and White women in California. Methods We used a community-based participatory process to create and administer a personal care product usage survey to 321 Black, Latina, Vietnamese, Mixed Race, and White women. We used multivariate regression models with pairwise comparisons to examine the frequency of product use by race/ethnicity. Results We found distinct trends of personal care product use by race/ethnicity: Latina women typically used makeup most frequently; Black women used certain hair products or styles most frequently; and Vietnamese women were most likely to use facial cleansing products compared to other races/ethnicities. Latina and Vietnamese women were less likely to try to avoid certain ingredients in their products. Significance These findings can help estimate disparities in chemical exposure from personal care product use and complement future research on health inequities due to chemical exposures in the larger environmental and social context.
Abstract In the USA, Black women are at disproportionately higher risk for HIV compared to women of other races/ethnicities, which can be explained by the Substance Abuse, Violence and AIDS (SAVA) syndemic. Disparities in HIV, substance use and violence are driven by multiple influences, including structural factors (e.g. housing and poverty), which exacerbate social- and individual-level factors leading to more sex partners, engaging in unprotected sex, having sex for money, experiencing forced sex from an intimate partner or increased substance use, all of which increase HIV risk. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a pill that can prevent HIV, is a discreet and underutilised method that Black women experiencing syndemics can use to decrease their risk. This study explored Black women’s interest in, and barriers to adopting PrEP over 6 months. Thirty Black women (age M = 32.2) who experienced multiple substance use, violence and HIV-related syndemic factors were interviewed four times over a 6-month period. Results demonstrated that experiencing intimate partner violence, substance use, community violence and other structural factors (poor access to social services, transport and childcare) all acted as barriers to PrEP adoption. Future research should consider multi-level interventions that include methods such as media campaigns, providing PrEP or referrals where women who experience syndemic and structural factors seek help, and implement a PrEP adherence programmes and interventions in support group settings.
AbstractIn a number of new initiatives, the problems of a fragmented curriculum and student isolation in existing large classes are addressed through peer‐facilitated learning opportunities, or more ambitiously, by restructuring the curriculum to create linked classes.
Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) Executive Global Studies 2020–2022 cohort members share the challenges, fears, and pride experienced while exploring the future of policing…for police.
Human settlements. Communities, Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Abstract Japan has long embarked on the city transformation journey, from green city to eco city, ubiquitous city, sustainable city, and now zero‐emission city. A smart city is not considered smart if it is not green, not sustainable, and not environmentally friendly. The journey is long but progressive, and the Japanese government has been supportive in its city transformational efforts. Japanese cities are marked by distinctive local cultures, habitat, people, food, beliefs, history etc. From Tokyo to Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Kobe and Yokohama, cities in Japan have advanced into high levels of urbanisation. The increase in population and traffic utilisation have resulted in higher energy demands and pollution of the environment. These concerns have motivated Japan to strive for cities with zero‐emission and Tokyo, as the country's capital, will lead in this drive. The author outlines the current situation in Japan, the impact of global warming and climate change, presents the motivation behind the new strategy, and narrates and discusses Tokyo city’s zero‐emission strategy and execution plans and how it works towards achieving net zero by 2050.
Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General), City planning
YBPK Christian Elementary School in Ngaglik, Sukun, Malang has applied the School Literacy Movement (SLM) at the stages of habituation and development with the support from the Community Service Team, Faculty of Cultural Studies Universitas Brawijaya. The community service in 2021 was specifically aimed at assisting the school in implementing the SLM learning stage. At this stage, literacy activities were carried out in the pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading activities. The post-reading activities resulted in several products, including mind maps, drawings, posters, and poems. The teachers observed that the students felt comfortable with the selected SLM activities. This also suggests that teachers are required to be resourceful in designing literacy activities. The programme evaluation reveals that some students were uninterested in the pre-reading activities because the teachers simply explained the vocabulary used in the reading. Nevertheless, the school is committed to keeping the SLM programme to help achieve the school goals of producing excellent graduates and creating an enjoyable learning atmosphere for the teachers and students.
We investigate the product structure of hereditary graph classes admitting strongly sublinear separators. We characterise such classes as subgraphs of the strong product of a star and a complete graph of strongly sublinear size. In a more precise result, we show that if any hereditary graph class $\mathcal{G}$ admits $O(n^{1-ε})$ separators, then for any fixed $δ\in(0,ε)$ every $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal{G}$ is a subgraph of the strong product of a graph $H$ with bounded tree-depth and a complete graph of size $O(n^{1-ε+δ})$. This result holds with $δ=0$ if we allow $H$ to have tree-depth $O(\log\log n)$. Moreover, using extensions of classical isoperimetric inequalties for grids graphs, we show the dependence on $δ$ in our results and the above $\text{td}(H)\in O(\log\log n)$ bound are both best possible. We prove that $n$-vertex graphs of bounded treewidth are subgraphs of the product of a graph with tree-depth $t$ and a complete graph of size $O(n^{1/t})$, which is best possible. Finally, we investigate the conjecture that for any hereditary graph class $\mathcal{G}$ that admits $O(n^{1-ε})$ separators, every $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal{G}$ is a subgraph of the strong product of a graph $H$ with bounded tree-width and a complete graph of size $O(n^{1-ε})$. We prove this for various classes $\mathcal{G}$ of interest.
Published studies have suggested the bias of automated face-based gender classification algorithms across gender-race groups. Specifically, unequal accuracy rates were obtained for women and dark-skinned people. To mitigate the bias of gender classifiers, the vision community has developed several strategies. However, the efficacy of these mitigation strategies is demonstrated for a limited number of races mostly, Caucasian and African-American. Further, these strategies often offer a trade-off between bias and classification accuracy. To further advance the state-of-the-art, we leverage the power of generative views, structured learning, and evidential learning towards mitigating gender classification bias. We demonstrate the superiority of our bias mitigation strategy in improving classification accuracy and reducing bias across gender-racial groups through extensive experimental validation, resulting in state-of-the-art performance in intra- and cross dataset evaluations.
P. Hitchens, A. V. Morrice-West, M. Stevenson
et al.
Studies of racehorse injury or fatality in various countries have identified common, and in some cases conflicting, risk factors. We conducted a systematic search of the relevant literature published from 1990 to 2017. Peer-reviewed articles were included if they reported the incidence of fatal or catastrophic musculoskeletal injury (CMI) in Thoroughbred flat races (n=21) or risk factors for CMI (n=65). Pooled effect sizes were estimated using the random-effects DerSimonian-Laird model. The pooled incidence of CMI was 1.17 (95% confidence interval 0.90, 1.44) per 1000 race starts. Almost 300 factors have been investigated in epidemiological studies for potential associations with CMI. Factors found to have consistent evidence of increasing risk of CMI are: (1) Horse-level factors such as older horse age and age at first start, male sex, and higher race class or lower claiming price; (2) Race-level factors such as firmer track conditions on turf and wetter conditions on dirt, longer race distance, and a greater number of starters; and (3) Management-related factors including more time since previous start, greater number of starts, longer career length, issues identified at pre-race examination, previous injury, and recent administration of medication or injections. Studies investigating recent cumulative distance of high-speed exercise were conflicting and suggestive of at least two mechanisms of injury related to the accumulation of bone damage: (1) In well adapted bone following a period of intense training; and (2) In poorly adapted bone at relatively low levels of training intensity. Future studies should evaluate success of interventions and mechanisms for injury.
Energy system contribution during cross-country (XC) skiing races is dependent on several factors, including the race duration, track profile, and sub-techniques applied, and their subsequent effects on the use of the upper and lower body. This review provides a scientific synopsis of the interactions of energy system contributions from a physiological, technical, and tactical perspective. On average, the aerobic proportion of the total energy expended during XC skiing competitions is comparable to the values for other sports with similar racing times. However, during both sprint (≤ 1.8 km) and distance races (≥ 10 and 15 km, women and men, respectively) a high aerobic turnover interacts with subsequent periods of very high work rates at ~ 120 to 160% of VO2peak during the uphill sections of the race. The repeated intensity fluctuations are possible due to the nature of skiing, which involves intermittent downhills where skiers can recover. Thus, the combination of high and sustained aerobic energy turnover and repeated work rates above VO2peak, interspersed with short recovery periods, distinguishes XC skiing from most other endurance sports. The substantially increased average speed in races over recent decades, frequent competitions in mass starts and sprints, and the greater importance of short periods at high speeds in various sub-techniques, have demanded changes in the physiological, technical, and tactical abilities needed to achieve world-class level within the specific disciplines.