Behavioral Science Can Increase Zipper Merge Usage

Research demonstrates that zipper merges (or late merges), under heavy traffic conditions, are safer and faster than a traditional early merge. In implementation, zipper merges can be less efficient due to a lack of compliance on the part of drivers, often more accustomed to early merging. Behavioral science has been applied to a many transportation-related challenges, such as increasing seat belt usage and decreasing drinking and driving but has not yet been applied to the zipper merge. We have identified six relevant behavioral science strategies including (1) social norms, (2) appeals to reason, (3) emotional appeals, (4) humor, (5) memory activators, and (6) information versus instructions. We coded the presence of these strategies in existing communications from U.S. state Departments of Transportation. We report our findings for road signs and web-based public communications. Although there were trends across each category, there was high variation between states. This review suggests that there is a need to further investigate the potential of more behaviorally informed communications to increase compliance for zipper merges

Eclipse: Theories in Contemporary Art\u27s World

Globalization and New Internationalism have quickly become two of the most common and comprehensive theories for discussing contemporary art in the early twenty -first century. Moving beyond the formal qualities of a Eurocentric paradigm today\u27s art movement is often associated with ephemeral practices that span outside of both national territories and museum walls. While activating public pace and integrating electronic multimedia, artists and curators have begun to challenge the formal art institutional apparatus, showcasing a worldwide spectacle that merge together Western and non-Western art

Indians Once Roamed This Land…

The sun sat high in the cloudless, early summer sky. Jerry held his breath as Ryan punched the gas, jumping onto Route 3 a few feet ahead of an incoming tractor-trailer. Ryan laughed as the angry truck driver blasted his air horn at them as the ’79 Aspen rocketed up the highway. The ramp onto Route 3 didn’t leave much room for traffic to merge; leaving the brave to shoot out onto the highway and the timid to sit and wait for an opening, often to the angry blaring of horns behind them, pushing them to jump onto the highway. Tommy, Reg, and Avery were in the back seat, laughing along with Ryan… well, at least Reg was

Why are AGN found in High Mass Galaxies?

We use semi-analytic models implemented in the Millennium Simulation to analyze the merging histories of dark matter haloes and of the galaxies that reside in them. We assume that supermassive black holes only exist in galaxies that have experienced at least one major merger. Only a few percent of galaxies with stellar masses less than $M_* < 10^{10} M_{\odot}$ are predicted to have experienced a major merger and to contain a black hole. The fraction of galaxies with black holes increases very steeply at larger stellar masses. This agrees well with the observed strong mass dependence of the fraction of nearby galaxies that contain either low-luminosity (LINER-type) or higher-luminosity (Seyfert or composite-type) AGN. We then investigate when the major mergers that first create the black holes are predicted to occur. High mass galaxies are predicted to have formed their black holes at very early epochs. The majority of low mass galaxies never experience a major merger and hence do not contain a black hole, but a significant fraction of the supermassive black holes that do exist in low mass galaxies are predicted to have formed recently.Comment: 7 pages,7 figures, MNRAS submitte