The growing demand for efficient traffic management underscores the need for simplified tools that identify critical road sections requiring improvement. This study developed a road network screening tool using online traffic data to assess traffic conditions across Thailand’s highway network. The proposed methodology simplifies the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) methods for determining a facility’s Level of Service (LOS), significantly reducing data and time requirements. Roads were classified into urban streets, multilane highways, and two-lane highways, leveraging speed data from Google Maps API. Requiring less data than traditional methods, the tool identified road sections with poor traffic conditions, particularly in urban areas where higher proportions of LOS D or worse were observed. This simplified approach provides actionable insights for prioritizing critical road improvement projects and serves as a highly practical solution for the highway agencies to efficiently allocate resources to mitigate coFFngestion and enhance traffic flow across the national highway network.
Turnaround Maintenance (TAM) in petrochemical facilities is characterised by high schedule pressure, intensive resource concurrency, and stringent safety constraints arising from simultaneous operations (SIMOPS) that must be taken in parallel. While existing scheduling approaches focus primarily on planning-phase optimisation, executionphase control remains a critical source of delays and resource-access conflicts. This study proposes an execution-control framework designed to enhance schedule robustness and decision-making effectiveness during TAM execution. The framework integrates constraint-based control mechanisms, short-interval coordination, and SIMOPS-informed decision rules to manage execution uncertainty in dense work environments. Validation is conducted through a structured workshop-based simulation and a live petrochemical shutdown case study, enabling comparative assessment against conventional execution practices. The results signify improved conflict resolution, significantly higher decision quality without increased latency, and enhanced schedule resilience under disruption, evidenced by a 9.6% baseline schedule compression and a 26-hour reduction in actual shutdown duration compared to historical benchmarks. The findings demonstrate that execution-focused control, systematically integrated with Lean, Agile, and spatial constraints, provides measurable benefits beyond traditional planning-centric methods. The study contributes a practical, field-validated approach to TAM execution and control management.
Sulfate exposure can adversely affect the long-term performance of concrete, creating a need for nondestructive methods capable of monitoring durability-related changes. This study investigates the durabilityrelated behavior of concrete mixtures containing silica fume (SF) and fly ash (FA) under sulfate-exposure conditions using nondestructive testing (NDT) methods. Type I/II and Type V cement systems with water-to-cement (w/c) ratios of 0.4 and 0.5 were evaluated using electrical resistivity (ER) and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) measurements. Theresults showed that both surface and bulk ER values generally increased with curing age, consistent with continued hydration and changes in the transport characteristics of the concrete matrix. Specimens with a lower w/c ratio of 0.4 exhibited higher resistivity values than the corresponding w/c = 0.5 mixtures, indicating lower ionic transport under the investigated conditions. Type V cement mixtures generally produced higher resistivity values than the corresponding Type I/II specimens, particularly at lower water contents, although the magnitude of this difference depended on mixture composition and measurement method. Both SF and FA influenced the electrical response, with moderate addition levels producing favorable resistivity responses in several mixtures. UPV measurements provided complementary information on internal material continuity, with the highest UPV of 3535.25 m/s observed for the Type V FA5 mixture at w/c = 0.5, corresponding to an estimated compressive strength of 33.74 MPa. Overall, the results show that the coordinated use of SER, BER, and UPV can capture the influence of water-to-cement ratio, cement type, and supplementary cementitious material addition on complementary transport-related and acoustic responses of concrete under sulfate exposure.
The continuous increase in mobile subscribers, coupled with the growth of diverse applications, directly impacts the demand for wireless communication. As 5G deployments occur globally, industry and academia are developing concepts and technologies to support 6G and beyond networks to meet this continuously surging demand. One of the core technologies for future communication networks is the development of techniques for efficiently managing dynamic frequency usage. Ultra Dense Networks (UDN) have been the primary network type deployed. The three main application classes have been specified for 5G networks, differentiated by different service performance requirements, and the network slicing technique has been proposed to divide 5G system resources, recognizing the different needs of various services. This work presents a technique to improve the efficiency of managing a limited frequency spectrum dynamically using the Reinforcement Learning (RL) technique. The approach takes into account the needs and usage patterns of wireless communication services. Results from the numerical analysis show that the system performance when implementing the proposed technique has improved with suitable configuration parameters compared with systems operated with traditional resource allocation approaches in terms of system throughput, spectrum efficiency, packet loss rate, and fairness, and the performance is satisfactory for individual traffic measurements.
This paper presents a low-profile arc-shaped slotted antenna for implantable biomedical telemetry around the 915 MHz band. The baseline antenna has compact dimensions of π × (5.25)2 × 1.27 mm3 and employs two arc-shaped slots, a shorting pin, and a full ground plane to achieve miniaturization and impedance matching in a tissueloaded environment. The Rogers RO3210-based baseline design provides a simulated -10 dB impedance bandwidth of approximately 100 MHz and a peak gain of -35 dBi in a homogeneous muscle model. Its performance was evaluated in homogeneous and multilayer tissue phantoms and at different anatomical implant locations, including the arm, chest, and abdomen, using the Gustav realistic human voxel model. To address the biocompatibility issue associated with direct Rogers RO3210 exposure, an external biocompatible coating was integrated into the antenna design process. A 0.1-mm zirconia-coated antenna was retuned after applying the coating layer to compensate for coating-induced dielectric loading. The retuned zirconia-coated configuration achieves an S11 of approximately -20.3 dB at 915 MHz with an 83-MHz impedance bandwidth and is selected as the practical implantable configuration. The uncoated baseline prototype was fabricated and measured in minced pork as a muscle-equivalent medium, showing good agreement with the corresponding simulation results. SAR and link-budget analyses were also performed as supporting feasibility assessments for implantable telemetry operation.
