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Abstract-Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) aim to improve transportation activities that include traffic safety, transport efficiency and even infotainment on the wheels, in which a great number of traffic event-driven messages are needed to disseminate in a region of interest timely. However, due to the nature of VANETs, highly dynamic mobility and frequent disconnection, data dissemination faces great challenges. Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) protocols are the key technology to mitigate this issue. Therefore, we propose an infrastructure-less Traffic Adaptive data Dissemination (TrAD) protocol that considers road traffic and network traffic status for both highway and urban scenarios. TrAD is flexible to fit the irregular road topology and owns double broadcast suppression techniques. Three state-of-the-art IVC protocols have been compared with TrAD by means of realistic simulations. The performance of all protocols is quantitatively evaluated with different real city maps and traffic routes. Finally, TrAD gets an outstanding overall performance in terms of several metrics, even though under the worse condition of GPS drift.

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BACKGROUND: Flexible reinforced laryngeal mask airway (FLMA®) has gained popularity in thyroid surgery, but air leak and displacement are still concerns. METHODS: In this randomized, single-blinded, noninferiority, controlled trial, we randomized patients scheduled for elective radical thyroidectomy to an endotracheal tube (ETT) group or a FLMA group. The primary outcomes were ventilation leak volume, peak airway pressure, and partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (Petco 2). Data for primary outcomes were collected after insertion of ETT/FLMA, at incision, and at 10-minute intervals during surgery. Ten milliliters, 5 cm H2O, and 10 mm Hg were used as the noninferiority deltas for ventilation leak volume, peak airway pressure, and Petco 2, respectively. We assessed noninferiority of FLMA to ETT on the primary outcomes over time using the results of a linear mixed-effects model. The position of FLMA mask was evaluated before and after surgery, and the airway complications were recorded. RESULTS: A total of 132 patients were included: 65 in ETT group and 67 in FLMA group. Differences (FLMA group minus ETT group) of ventilation leak volume, peak airway pressure, and Petco 2 from the mixed-effects models were 2.09 mL (98.3% confidence interval [CI], –6.46 to 10.64), −0.60 cm H2O (98.3% CI, –2.15 to 0.96), and 1.02 mm Hg (98.3% CI, 0.04–1.99), respectively. Score of fiber-optic position of FLMA was significantly higher after surgery than before. There was no severe shift, loss of the mask seal, regurgitation, or aspiration in the FLMA group. One patient in the FLMA group experienced brief and easily controlled laryngospasm. CONCLUSIONS: In thyroid surgery, FLMA is noninferior to ETT in the peak airway pressure and Petco 2 although mild to moderate mask shift could occur during surgical manipulation. There is no evidence for a higher complication rate when FLMA is used.

If a female has sexual intercourse with two males at short intervals within the same ovulatory period, superfecundation may occur. This article reports two cases of paternity identification in twins. The results showed that each twin had come from a different father. Thus, great attention should be paid to such a situation when the twin paternity identification is asked for.

The last few years have seen substantial progress in the field of smart objects (SOs): their number, diversity, performance and pervasiveness have all been quickly increasing and this evolution is expected to continue. To the best of our knowledge, little work has been made to leverage this abundance of resources to develop assistive devices for Visually Impaired People (VIP). However, we believe that SOs can both enhance traditional assistive functions (i.e. obstacle detection, navigation) and offer new ways of interacting with the environment. After describing spatial and non-spatial perceptive functions enabled by SOs, this article presents the SO2SEES, a system designed to be an interface between its user and neighboring SOs. The SO2SEES allows VIP to query surrounding SOs in an intuitive manner, relying on knowledge bases distributed on Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platforms and the SO2SEES's own back-end. To evaluate and validate the exposed concepts, we have developed a simple working implementation of the SO2SEES system using semantic web standards. A controlled-environment test scenario has been built around this early SO2SEES system to demonstrate its feasibility. As future works, we plan to conduct field experiments of this first prototype with VIP end users. INDEX TERMS Internet of Things cloud framework, OWL, smart objects, semantic web rule language (SWRL), visually impaired people (VIP).

Though Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) become very popular in last the decade, dependability of CPS is still a critical issue and related survey is rare. We try to spell out the jigsaw of technologies and figure out the technical trends of dependable self-managing CPS. This survey first recalls the motivation and the similar concepts. By analyzing four generic architectures, we summarize the common characteristics and related assurance technologies, and propose a more generic environment-in-loop processing flow of CPS and a formal interaction flow between physical space and cyber space. Further, the similarity between correctness and dependability is formally analyzed and the new five research questions of dependable self-managing CPS are presented. Then we review the critical technologies and related correctness verification & validation (V&V) methods, the architectures for dependable self-managing CPS. Further, the detail dependability management and V&V technologies are surveyed, which covers the areas of running-time fault management methods and whole life cycle V&V technologies, maintenance and available tool sets. For holistic CPS development, Modeling techniques and MDE (model driven engineering) based V&V methods are analyzed in detail. Then we complete the jigsaw of technologies and figure out the missing part. Further, we propose the technical challenges and the further direction. To our best knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey on dependable self-managing CPS development and evaluation.

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) has been a popular research area in the last decade. The dependability of CPS is still a critical issue, and few surveys have been published in this domain. CPS is a dynamic complex system, which involves various multidisciplinary technologies. To avoid human errors and to simplify management, self-management CPS (SCPS) is a wise choice. To achieve dependable self-management, systematic solutions are necessary to verify the design and to guarantee the safety of self-adaptation decisions, as well as to maintain the health of SCPS. This survey first recalls the concepts of dependability, and proposes a generic environment-in-loop processing flow of self-management CPS, and then analyzes the error sources and challenges of self-management through the formal feedback flow. Focusing on reducing the complexity, we first survey the self-adaptive architecture approaches and applied dependability means, then we introduce a hybrid multi-role self-adaptive architecture, and discuss the supporting technologies for dependable self-management at the architecture level. Focus on dependable environment-centered adaptation, we investigate the verification and validation (V&V) methods for making safe self-adaptation decision and the solutions for processing decision dependably. For system-centered adaptation, the comprehensive self-healing methods are summarized. Finally, we analyze the missing pieces of the technology puzzle and the future directions. In this survey, the technical trends for dependable CPS design and maintenance are discussed, an all-in-one solution is proposed to integrate these technologies and build a dependable organic SCPS. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey on dependable SCPS building and evaluation.