Reductions in driver speed using posted feedback of speeding information: social comparison or implied surveillance?

Reducing driver speed has an essential role to play in traffic safety. This study measured the effect of a roadside sign, in a 50 km/h zone, that consecutively displayed one of three messages:

1. The average speed at the site: this message was designed to induce “social comparison” whereby drivers may reduce their speed in order to comply with the behaviour of the majority.

2. A warning that drivers’ speeds were being measured: this was intended to imply surveillance whereby drivers may reduce speed in order to avoid possible enforcement action.

3. A combination of both messages, to see if both together would have a greater effect than either alone.

The speed of drivers travelling along a busy urban road (11,500 cars daily in each direction) was measured using inductive loop detectors. The proportion of drivers travelling 60 km/h or less increased with all three messages, suggesting that both social comparison and implied surveillance are mechanisms by which driver speed may be reduced. However, the speed reductions were not as great as in previous studies of feedback signs. This may be due to differences in the existing safety culture.     

Speeding for fun? Exploring the speeding behavior of riders of heavy motorcycles using the theory of planned behavior and psychological flow theory

This paper focuses on a special segment of motorcyclists in Taiwan – riders of heavy motorcycles – and investigates their speeding behavior and its affecting factors. It extends the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explore motorcyclist speeding behavior by including the variables of psychological flow theory. The levels of sensation-seeking and riding experience are also used as grouping variables to investigate group differences from the influences of their affecting factors on speeding behavior. The results reveal that the psychological flow variables have greater predictive power in explaining speeding behavior than the TPB variables, providing useful insights into the unique nature of this group of motorcyclists, who are more prone to engage in speeding. Group differences with regard to both sensation-seeking and rider experience in speeding behavior are highlighted, and the implications of the findings are discussed.     

Is work function a surface or a bulk property?

We discuss whether the electronic work function (WF) can be considered as a surface property of a given conductor or a bulk property as we have demonstrated in the past that WF is a fundamental surface property which can be derived solely from bulk properties like the Wigner-Seitz radius and Fermi energy. The term “bulk” applies already to a very thin layer at the surface, where several monolayers (ML) is usually a sufficient thickness to go beyond the quantum size effects and into the bulk properties regime. In the case of large-size atoms like K, Ba, Ca, Th, etc. even 1 ML shows WF of the bulk material. At the same time, WF is an environment-sensitive property subject to large variations due to the sorption-desorption phenomena in the vacuum atmosphere. Our considerations are supported by a number of experimental results.     

Elastic–plastic fracture behavior of a radial matrix crack interacting with a circle inclusion with generalized Irwin corrections

A generalized Irwin plastic zone model is proposed to investigate the interaction problem for a circular inclusion embedded in an elastic–plastic matrix that contains a radial crack, oriented at an arbitrary angle from a remote load. The distributed dislocation technology is applied to formulate the current problem. The effective stress intensity factors, the plastic zone size, and the crack tip opening displacement are evaluated by solving the formulated singular integral equations. In the numerical examples, the inclusion is taken as a void and a rigid body. The effects of the crack angle and the inclusion–crack distance (the distance from the inclusion center to the crack center) on the effective stress intensity factors, the plastic zone size, and the crack tip opening displacement are discussed in detail. Numerical results show that if the crack angle is not large, the values of the plastic zone size and the crack tip opening displacement are less than the corresponding values in the homogenous case when the inclusion is a rigid body; when the inclusion is a void, these values are larger than the corresponding values in the homogenous case.     

Seed-dependent deposition behavior of Aβ peptides studied with wireless quartz-crystal-microbalance biosensor

Real-time monitoring of the deposition processes of Aβ1-40 and Aβ1-42 peptides on various seeds has been performed using a 55 MHz wireless quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM) over long-time periods (~40 h). Dissolved peptide solutions were stirred for nucleation and growth of seeds at pH = 7.4 and 4.6, which were immobilized on the sensor chips. The isolated Aβ peptides were then flowed at the neutral pH, focusing on the interaction between the seeds and the monomers (or small multimers), excluding other interactions among seeds and other aggregates. The thioflavin-T fluorescence assay and atomic-force microscopy were used for evaluating structures of the seeds and deposited aggregates. The deposition rate, determined by the frequency decrease, is about 100 monomers/nm(2)/year in the case of fibril formation. The notable deposition behavior was observed in the deposition of Aβ1-40 peptide on Aβ1-42 seeds grown at the lower pH, which can be an important model for Alzheimer's disease.     

Is the diatom sex clock a clock?

The unique life cycle of diatoms with continuous decreasing and restoration of the cell size leads to periodic fluctuations in cell size distribution and has been regarded as a multi-annual clock. To understand the long-term behaviour of a population analytically, generic mathematical models are investigated algebraically and numerically for their capability to describe periodic oscillations. Whereas the generally accepted simple concepts for the proliferation dynamics do not sustain oscillating behaviour owing to broadening of the size distribution, simulations show that a proposed limited lifetime of a newly synthesized cell wall slows down the relaxation towards a time-invariant equilibrium state to the order of a hundred thousand generations. In combination with seasonal perturbation events, the proliferation scheme with limited lifetime is able to explain long-lasting rhythms that are characteristic for diatom population dynamics. The life cycle thus resembles a pendulum clock that has to be wound up from time to time by seasonal perturbations rather than an oscillator represented by a limit cycle.     

A behavior based nonlinear multi‐agent framework using a hybrid approach

Abstract

In this paper, a novel design and implementation of a multi‐agent system via a hybrid approach is proposed. First of all, an autonomous agent is insured to be stable by employing the proposed local feedback control besides appropriate switching among well‐posed behaviors including obstacle avoidance, target approaching, wandering, manipulator grasping, etc. Next, a hybrid framework of the multi‐agent system (HMAS) is established for dealing with multi‐agent cooperative problems. The architecture of the inherent hierarchical control is designed consisting of two levels, where the first (lower) level mainly handles the continuous state describing the data acquired from various sensors, whereas the second (higher) level is responsible for providing a well performed supervisory control that can manipulate all available resources to successfully accomplish the underlying mission. In the Advanced Control Laboratory of the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University, an actual wheeled mobile robot (WMR) has been developed, named The Treasure Hunter (TTH), which is able to hunt treasures in an unknown environment whereby the effectiveness of the proposed approach can be satisfactorily demonstrated.     

Is there a pattern in European bus and coach incidents? A literature analysis with special focus on injury causation and injury mechanisms

In order to identify and describe a pattern in bus and coach incident related injuries and fatalities, and to suggest possible future measures for improvement of bus and coach safety, a literature analysis was performed. The results formed a multi-faceted pattern, which briefly can be described as follows; women travelled more frequently by bus as compared to men. Injuries sustained predominantly affected women 60 years of age and older. Of all traffic fatalities in Europe, bus and coach fatalities represented 0.3-0.5%. In the OECD countries, the risk of being killed or seriously injured was found to be seven to nine times lower for bus and coach occupants as compared to those of car occupants. Despite the fact that fatalities were more frequent on rural roads, a vast majority of all bus and coach casualties occurred on urban roads and in dry weather conditions. Boarding and alighting caused about one-third of all injury cases. Collisions were a major injury-contributing factor. Buses and coaches most frequently collided with cars, but unprotected road users were hit in about one-third of all cases of a collision, the point of impact on the bus or the coach being typically frontal or side. Rollovers occurred in almost all cases of severe coach crashes. In this type of crash projection, total ejection, partial ejection, intrusion and smoke inhalation were the main injury mechanisms and among those, ejection being the most dangerous. A 2-point belt may prevent passenger ejection, but in frontal crashes when the upper abdominal parts and the head hit the seatback in front, it could, however, contribute to head and thoracic injuries. Hence, a 3-point belt provides the best restraint in rollovers and frontal crashes.     

A comparative analysis of constitutive behaviors of Mg–Mn alloys with different heat-treatment parameters

Mg–1.8Mn (wt.%) alloy was solution-treated by three regimes to obtain different initial microstructures. Isothermal hot compression tests were conducted in the temperature range of 250–450 °C and strain rate 0.01–1 s⁻¹ for each of the initial states. Constitutive constants for each initial state were obtained and compared. The results showed that homogenization of initial microstructure can significantly decrease the deformation resistance during hot working. It was also revealed that the dispersion of second-phase particles 1–1.5 μm in size with appropriate volume fraction (1–2%) and inter-particle spacing in initial microstructure can impart superior hot work deformation ability to the materials. Excessive amounts of particles resulted in an increase of the flow stresses and working-hardening degree. A large volume fraction of nano-sized particles also imposed difficulty in plastic deformation but with less harmful effects than the larger-sized particles. The influencing mechanism of the particle distribution on the constitutive behavior is discussed.     

Vortex Dynamics in a Superconducting Film with a Kagome and?a?Honeycomb Pinning Landscape

The vortex dynamics in a superconducting thin Al film with a periodic Honeycomb or Kagome array of antidots has been investigated by electrical transport measurements. The large values of the superconducting coherence length and penetration depth of the Al films guarantee a maximum of one flux quantum trapped per pinning site. This allows us to directly compare the experimental results with previous theoretical investigations based on molecular dynamics simulations. For the Kagome lattice, two submatching features not anticipated theoretically at H/H ₁=1/3 and 2/3, where H ₁ is the field at which the number of vortices coincides with the number of pinning sites, are observed. Possible corresponding stable vortex patterns are suggested. For the Honeycomb pinning landscape, the commensurability effects are in agreement with the theoretical expectations. A preliminary analysis of the vortex mobility in this lattice shows the presence of a weak vortex guidance.     

Is hair loss a reality in neuro-interventional radiology?

Reports in the literature of radiation-induced hair loss are becoming increasingly common. This work describes a retrospective dose study of patients (n = 958) undergoing diagnostic (primarily cerebral angiograms) and therapeutic (primarily cerebral embolisation) procedures in a neuro-interventional suite. A comparison of patient doses as dose area product (DAP) readings from a single-plane image intensifier system (mean DAP value of 8772 cGy cm2) were compared with patient doses from a flat panel biplane system (mean DAP value of 7855 cGy cm2). Over 80 % of patients requiring neuro-interventional procedures were found to undergo two procedures or more. An estimated 7 % of therapeutic procedures were found to reach the International Commission on Radiological Protection threshold for temporary epilation.     

Measuring the relationships among university,industry and other sectors in Japan’s national innovation system: a comparison of new approaches with mutual information indicators

Co-authored publications across sectors have been used as indicators of the triple helix model and more generally for the study of science–technology relations. However, how to measure the relationships among the three or more sectors is a technically difficult issue. Using mutual information as an indicator has proved to be effective, but it is not widely used. In this paper, we introduced φ coefficients and partial correlation as conventional indicators to measure the relationships among sectors on the basis of Japanese publication data in the ISI-databases. We also proposed a new approach of graphical modeling based on partial correlation for studying university–industry–government relationships and relationships with other sectors. The conventional indicators give results that are consistent with mutual information, which shows that collaborations among the three national sectors (U, I, G) are getting weaker and that members of these sectors tend to collaborate much more with foreign researchers. It is also shown that universities used to play the central role in the national publication system and acted as a bridge between national sectors and foreign researchers. However, since 2000, the situation has been changing. The center of the Japanese research network is becoming more “foreign” oriented.