My research goal is to continue to advance the state of the art in multi-agent reinforcement learning. There exist many real world examples of multi-agent domains that I plan to work with in the future, such as fire and emergency response in an wide scale emergency situation (such as an earthquake), vehicle routing and product delivery, passenger pickup, dropoff, and scheduling for taxis, and g...

VESPA (Vehicular Event Sharing with a mobile P2P Architecture) is a system designed for vehicles to share information in inter-vehicle ad-hoc networks. The originality of VESPA is to support any type of event (e.g., available parking spaces, accidents, emergency brakings, obstacles in the road, information relative to the coordination of vehicles in emergency situations, etc.) in the network. I...

In the United States, passenger vehicle manufacturers have been working together, along with the U. S. government, to study wireless communications for vehicle safety applications. From 2002-4, seven automotive manufacturers— BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, and VW— worked with the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) to evaluate vehicle safety applications enabled ...

According to data from the United Nations, more than 3000 people have died each day in the world due to road traffic collision. Considering recent researches, the human error may be considered as the main responsible for these fatalities. Because of this, researchers seek alternatives to transfer the vehicle control from people to autonomous systems. However, providing this technological innova...

Evaluation of the contamination of stethoscopes used in pediatric units of a hospital and emergency service showed that 87% of them presented contaminated diaphragms. Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus was the microorganism most frequently isolated. The resistance to antibiotics indicates that stethoscopes should be considered to be an important vehicle for disseminating bacteria resistant to an...

The importance of emergency response systems cannot be overemphasized today due to the many manmade and natural disasters in the recent years such as September 2001 and the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster. The overall cost of the Japan disaster alone is estimated to have exceeded 300 billion USD. Transportation and telecommunications play a critical role in disaster response and ma...

Epidemiological studies around the world point to motor vehicle accidents as being one of the leading causes of death. The objective of our study was to analyze some characteristics of motor vehicle accidents in the region of Herzegovina. The study included 226 patients treated at the Clinic for Surgical Diseases and Urology of the University Clinical Hospital Mostar in 2005. A total of 78.3% o...

THE PATIENT A 37-year-old man injured his right wrist in a motor vehicle collision. In the emergency department he had severe wrist pain and median nerve paresthesia. Wrist radiographs identified a dorsal perilunate dislocation (PLD) with the carpus dislocated dorsally and the lunate tilted volar but still located in the lunate fossa. Post-reduction computed tomography scan confirmed no fractures.

Occult or incomplete rupture refers to a surgical scar separating but the visceral peritoneum staying intact. It is usually asymptomatic and does not require emergency surgery. Complete rupture can be: Traumatic: A motor vehicle accident. Incorrect use of oxytocic agent. A poorly conducted attempt at operative vaginal delivery (typically breech extraction with an incompletely dilated cervix). (...

Occult or incomplete rupture refers to a surgical scar separating but the visceral peritoneum staying intact. It is usually asymptomatic and does not require emergency surgery. Complete rupture can be: Traumatic: A motor vehicle accident. Incorrect use of oxytocic agent. A poorly conducted attempt at operative vaginal delivery (typically breech extraction with an incompletely dilated cervix). (...