Let Trajectories Speak Out the Traffic Bottlenecks

Traffic bottlenecks are a set of road segments that have an unacceptable level of traffic caused by a poor balance between road capacity and traffic volume. A huge volume of trajectory data which captures realtime traffic conditions in road networks provides promising new opportunities to identify the traffic bottlenecks. In this paper, we define this problem as trajectory-driven traffic bottleneck identification : Given a road network R , a trajectory database T , find a representative set of seed edges of size K of traffic bottlenecks that influence the highest number of road segments not in the seed set. We show that this problem is NP-hard and propose a framework to find the traffic bottlenecks as follows. First, a traffic spread model is defined which represents changes in traffic volume for each road segment over time. Then, the traffic diffusion probability between two connected segments and the residual ratio of traffic volume for each segment can be computed using historical trajectory data. We then propose two different algorithmic approaches to solve the problem. The first one is a best-first algorithm BF , with an approximation ratio of 1-1/ e . To further accelerate the identification process in larger datasets, we also propose a sampling-based greedy algorithm SG . Finally, comprehensive experiments using three different datasets compare and contrast various solutions, and provide insights into important efficiency and effectiveness trade-offs among the respective methods.

Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance

This article examines a group of twelve fragments in different languages and different scripts previously held in the Schøyen collection in London and Oslo. After they first emerged on the market in 1993, these fragments received colourful hypothetical and/or fictional pseudo-provenances. However, a consideration of the material logic of these parchment fragments (including folding lines and sewing holes) as well as an examination of the Arabic marginal manuscript notes they carry allows us to re-establish their historical trajectory from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards. At this point, they became part of Muslim Damascene manuscript culture and were reused as wrappers for small booklets in the scholarly field of ḥadīth. In the late ninth/fifteenth century, these booklets were subjected to a massive binding project and the fragments went into new large volumes. This article thus suggests approaches to use provenance research in order to re-historicize decontextualized fragments in modern collections.

Predicting Human Mobility with Reinforcement-Learning-Based Long-Term Periodicity Modeling

Mobility prediction plays an important role in a wide range of location-based applications and services. However, there are three problems in the existing literature: (1) explicit high-order interactions of spatio-temporal features are not systemically modeled; (2) most existing algorithms place attention mechanisms on top of recurrent network, so they can not allow for full parallelism and are inferior to self-attention for capturing long-range dependence; (3) most literature does not make good use of long-term historical information and do not effectively model the long-term periodicity of users. To this end, we propose MoveNet and RLMoveNet. MoveNet is a self-attention-based sequential model, predicting each user’s next destination based on her most recent visits and historical trajectory. MoveNet first introduces a cross-based learning framework for modeling feature interactions. With self-attention on both the most recent visits and historical trajectory, MoveNet can use an attention mechanism to capture the user’s long-term regularity in a more efficient way. Based on MoveNet, to model long-term periodicity more effectively, we add the reinforcement learning layer and named RLMoveNet. RLMoveNet regards the human mobility prediction as a reinforcement learning problem, using the reinforcement learning layer as the regularization part to drive the model to pay attention to the behavior with periodic actions, which can help us make the algorithm more effective. We evaluate both of them with three real-world mobility datasets. MoveNet outperforms the state-of-the-art mobility predictor by around 10% in terms of accuracy, and simultaneously achieves faster convergence and over 4x training speedup. Moreover, RLMoveNet achieves higher prediction accuracy than MoveNet, which proves that modeling periodicity explicitly from the perspective of reinforcement learning is more effective.

Displacement of Manuscripts, Printing Revolution and Rediscovering Islamic Classics

Taking as the starting point, Ahmed El-Shamsy’s new book Rediscovering the Islamic Classics is a comprehensive introduction to trace the historical trajectory of Islamic intellectual legacy. In this engaging yet pleasantly thought-out book El Shamsy intends to offer a fresh conversation on the massive loss of manuscripts, role of colonialism and its role in strengthening the Orientalist enterprise in Muslim World including the drain of manuscripts into Europe. Bringing to light the agents and events of the Islamic print revolution, this work is also an absorbing examination of the central role printing and its advocates played in the intellectual history of the modern Arab world. This review essay offers a contextual perspective and a detailed rationale behind the loss of manuscripts and unpacks some of the important debates behind the decline and restoration of Islam’s intellectual legacy.

Development of English Legal Positivism from Bentham to Salmond and Brown: Leading Ideas in the Context of the Common Law Tradition

This article examines the peculiarities of the evolution of English legal positivism, which was the only direction of understanding law formed by professional lawyers, expressing the specifics of their legal consciousness, focused on understanding positive law and the practice of its implementation. The authors examine the key concepts that define the historical trajectory and problem field of legal positivism in the Anglo-American tradition, analyzing the legal teachings of T. Hobbes, D. Hume, J. Bentham, J. Austin, M. Hale, W. Blackstone, J. W. Salmond and W. J. Brown. The attention is drawn to the fact that Salmond lays down objections to the concept of law as a rule of the state and considers its main shortcomings. In his work “Jurisprudence or the Theory of Law”, Salmond presents the flaws and omissions of the “imperative theory of law”, among the proponents of which he names T. Hobbes, S. von Pufendorf, J. Bentham and J. Austin. Brown believes that the essence of law can be expressed by a set of three concepts: “will”, “command” and “reason”, and the just conception of law implies recognition of the elements of unity, growth and growth that is consciously directed towards the realization and achievement of the goal.

Ethnography and Criminal Cultures: Urban Change and the Context of Ethnographic Fieldwork

This chapter addresses ethnographies of criminal culture. It refers in particular to the fluctuating political economic context within which this academic tradition has functioned and its historical trajectory. It addresses criminal cultures of the industrial era, the ethnographic studies that chart the criminal cultures that emerged from post-industrial society, and the constraints imposed upon contemporary ethnographers by the neoliberal university. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the author’s long-term engagement in the field, and queries the relevance of the concept of criminal culture by referring to an ongoing case study that is informed by the political economy of post-industrial society rather than by the dead hand of criminological orthodoxy.

Making Modern Knowledge of Traditional Carpentry in China and Japan: Myth, Reality and Transmission

Carpentry skills were among the most important elements of building practice in premodern China and Japan, and traditional carpentry skills continue in use in both countries to the present day. Although their importance has been greatly marginalised in building practice, in both countries some master carpenters have gained public recognition. This paper compares the modernisation of traditional building knowledge in China and Japan, and the fate of carpentry knowledge as the building industry and the formal discipline of architecture evolved. It distinguishes three phases in this historical trajectory: the period during the introduction of Western architecture as a discipline, when traditional knowledge was rejected or used selectively in the construction of national histories of building; the period when modern technology took over the main building industry and traditional craftsmen had to confront the realities of new technologies of production; and the period, still unfolding today, where heritage movements are promoting the recuperation and development of traditional craft knowledge. For each country, the paper traces how the nation’s history of building was selectively fashioned into an orthodox narrative; explores the content of key early technical works (for China, the official handbook Yingzao fashi [Building standards] and the craftsman’s manual Lu Ban jing [Carpenters’ Canon], and for Japan kikujutsu [literally, “compass and ruler techniques”] books); and shows how a talented master carpenter succeeded in creating a niche for himself within the contemporary heritage culture. It concludes that differences in the cultural respect accorded to carpentry knowledge in the two countries are rooted in the contrasting status of craftsmen in the premodern era.

The effect of the 2011 Arab uprising in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena region): Morocco's quest for constitutional reform and the 20 February Movement

Historically, Morocco experienced widespread political repression during the 1970s through to the early 1990s. Through its exploitations, the monarchy regime repressed any claims aimed at challenging its authoritarian form of public space and debate. Encouraged by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and the Arab Spring, young Moroccans began to organise extensive demonstrations across the country demanding that a more substantive democracy, social justice and an anti-corruption mechanism be put in place. The 20 February movement, named after the first demonstration held on that date in 2011, is a worthy illustration of one of the latest social movements characterised by a concentrated use of technology and their disseminated membership. King Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful and the highest authority in Morocco, promised in a televised speech to introduce radical and genuine constitutional reforms that would democratise the country. This article describes the historical trajectory of the monarchy, the emergence and structuring of the 20 February movement and the neutralization strategy pursued by the monarchy in bringing about a constitutional change.

Makna Penting Demokrasi dan Musyawarah Bagi Keutuhan Bangsa Indonesia

The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI) based on the historical trajectory of the struggle, has the only state construction in the world where the nation is born first, then forms the state. The first President of the Republic of Indonesia Ir. Soekarno emphasized that the Unitary State is a National State. The purpose of the Indonesian nation to be born, independent, and to form a state has one goal, the will to elevate the dignity and life of the Indonesian people (Indonesian People's Sovereignty). Through an analysis of the reality of today's life, the Indonesian nation has lived in a condition of life order as if it were the same as a democratic state, namely that the first state was formed and the nation was born later. So that the sovereignty of the Indonesian people based on the principles of deliberation and representation has not been able to be realized.

Sustainable Development as a Cornerstone of Cities’ Engagement with International Law

Sustainable development may safely be regarded as a cornerstone of cities’ engagement with international law, an engagement which is certainly bound to increase in the time of COVID-19. This article revisits the historical trajectory of cities’ and local governments’ participation in sustainable development processes. It particularly focuses on the contemporary involvement of cities and their transnational networks in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and associated Sustainable Development Goals. Subsidiarity and public participation are fully discussed as conceptual underpinnings of cities’ growing role in the pursuit of sustainability. The article concludes that, as long as cities continue to demonstrate leadership and innovation in advancing cutting- edge solutions to problems of sustainability as a result of mechanisms that secure the meaningful participation of the communities of people concerned, their place in the global partnership for sustainable development will inevitably become ever more prominent.