582 research outputs found
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Does the threat of disqualification deter drivers from speeding?
Road Safety Research Report, number 96, is available from the National Archives: Department for Transport, and can be accessed from the link below.It has long been recognised that driving speeds that are excessive and inappropriate
to the conditions are a major contributory factor in road accidents, and a major issue
for road safety. Restraining driving speeds has proved to be a difficult task, given the
improvements over the years in both vehicle performance and road design.
Within the traditional âthree Esâ countermeasures of engineering, education and
enforcement, recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of engineering
measures designed to bring about speed reduction, but these tend to be restricted to
specific parts of the road network. New technologies such as Intelligent Speed
Adaptation (ISA) offer considerable promise, but mainly in the medium or longer term. Similarly, educative efforts to induce attitude and behaviour change in this context are bearing fruit, yet this is a long-term rather than short-term project. For the foreseeable future, enforcement will remain the principal means of influencing speed, by setting speed limits and imposing sanctions on drivers who are caught exceeding them.
The number of licence endorsements has increased enormously in recent years.
However, over the same period the number of disqualifications resulting from âtotting-upâ points has decreased. This would seem to indicate that many drivers who accumulate up to 11 penalty points are either acting as if deterred by the threat of disqualification, or are avoiding disqualification in some other way. The extent to which penalty points act as a deterrent for the benefit of road safety in general is therefore an important issue, and this report describes work that has been carried out to study this issue by TRL and Brunel University, under contract to the Department for Transport
Harvesting, coupling and control of single exciton coherences in photonic waveguide antennas
We perform coherent non-linear spectroscopy of individual excitons strongly
confined in single InAs quantum dots (QDs). The retrieval of their
intrinsically weak four-wave mixing (FWM) response is enabled by a
one-dimensional dielectric waveguide antenna. Compared to a similar QD embedded
in bulk media, the FWM detection sensitivity is enhanced by up to four orders
of magnitude, over a broad operation bandwidth. Three-beam FWM is employed to
investigate coherence and population dynamics within individual QD transitions.
We retrieve their homogenous dephasing in a presence of spectral wandering.
Two-dimensional FWM reveals off-resonant F\"orster coupling between a pair of
distinct QDs embedded in the antenna. We also detect a higher order QD
non-linearity (six-wave mixing) and use it to coherently control the FWM
transient. Waveguide antennas enable to conceive multi-color coherent
manipulation schemes of individual emitters.Comment: 7 pages, 8 Figure
Quantum Effects on the Synchronization Dynamics of the Kuramoto Model
The Kuramoto model serves as a paradigm for describing spontaneous
synchronization in a system of classical interacting rotors. In this study, we
extend this model to the quantum domain by coupling quantum interacting rotors
to external baths following the Caldeira-Leggett approach. Studying the
mean-field model in the overdamped limit using Feynman-Vernon theory, we show
how quantum mechanics modifies the phase diagram. Specifically, we demonstrate
that quantum fluctuations hinder the emergence of synchronization, albeit not
entirely suppressing it. We examine the phase transition into the synchronized
phase at various temperatures, revealing that classical results are recovered
at high temperatures while a quantum phase transition occurs at zero
temperature. Additionally, we derive an analytical expression for the critical
coupling, highlighting its dependence on the model parameters, and examine the
differences between classical and quantum behavior.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Antireflective photonic structure for coherent nonlinear spectroscopy of single magnetic quantum dots
This work presents epitaxial growth and optical spectroscopy of CdTe quantum
dots (QDs) in (Cd,Zn,Mg)Te barriers placed on the top of (Cd,Zn,Mg)Te
distributed Bragg reflector. The formed photonic mode in our half-cavity
structure permits to enhance the local excitation intensity and extraction
efficiency of the QD photoluminescence, while suppressing the reflectance
within the spectral range covering the QD transitions. This allows to perform
coherent, nonlinear, resonant spectroscopy of individual QDs. The coherence
dynamics of a charged exciton is measured via four-wave mixing, with the
estimated dephasing time ps. The same structure contains
QDs doped with single Mn ions, as detected in photoluminescence spectra.
Our work therefore paves the way toward investigating and controlling an
exciton coherence coupled, via ,- exchange interaction, with an
individual spin of a magnetic dopant.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
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Magnetization of polar ice: a measurement of terrestrial dust and extraterrestrial fallout
Laboratory-induced remanent magnetization of polar ice constitutes a measurement of the magnetization carried by the ferromagnetic dust particles in the ice. This non-destructive technique provides a novel kind of information on the dust deposited on the surface of polar ice sheets. Measurements made on ice samples from Greenland (North GRIP ice core) and Antarctica (Vostok and EPICA-Dome C ice cores) allowed the recognition of a fraction of magnetic minerals in ice whose concentration and magnetic properties are directly related to that of insoluble dust. The source of this fraction of magnetic minerals thus appears closely related to terrestrial dust transport and deposition and its magnetic properties are informative of the dust provenance areas. The rock-magnetic properties of the dust may reflect distinct changes of dust source areas from glacial to interglacial periods in agreement with and adding further information to the isotopic (87Sr/86Sr and 143Nd/144Nd) analyses. A second magnetic fraction consists of particles of nanometric size, which are superparamagnetic at freezer temperature and whose concentration is independent of the mass of aerosol dust found in the ice. The source of these nanometric-sized magnetic particles is ascribed to fallout of âmeteoric smokeâ and their concentration in ice was found to be compatible with the extraterrestrial fallout inferred from Ir concentrations. The diameter of the smoke particles as inferred from magnetic measurements is in the range of about 7â20 nm
Impact of phonons on dephasing of individual excitons in deterministic quantum dot microlenses
Optimized light-matter coupling in semiconductor nanostructures is a key to
understand their optical properties and can be enabled by advanced fabrication
techniques. Using in-situ electron beam lithography combined with a
low-temperature cathodoluminescence imaging, we deterministically fabricate
microlenses above selected InAs quantum dots (QDs) achieving their efficient
coupling to the external light field. This enables to perform four-wave mixing
micro-spectroscopy of single QD excitons, revealing the exciton population and
coherence dynamics. We infer the temperature dependence of the dephasing in
order to address the impact of phonons on the decoherence of confined excitons.
The loss of the coherence over the first picoseconds is associated with the
emission of a phonon wave packet, also governing the phonon background in
photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Using theory based on the independent boson
model, we consistently explain the initial coherence decay, the zero-phonon
line fraction, and the lineshape of the phonon-assisted PL using realistic
quantum dot geometries
Receptor-Coupled Phosphoinositide Hydrolysis in Human Retinal Pigment Epithelium
Carbachol and histamine stimulated phosphoinositide (PPI) hydrolysis in cultured human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), as reflected by an accumulation of 3 H-inositol phosphates in the presence of 10 m M Li + . Carbachol increased PPI hydrolysis to greater than 600% of basal with an EC 50 of 60 ΠM ; stimulation was linear up to 60 min. This activation likely occurred via the M 3 muscarinic cholinergic receptor based on the IC 50 values for 4-diphenylacetoxy- N -methylpiperidine methiodide (0.47 n M ), pirenzepine (280 n M ), and 11-[[2-[(diethylamino)methyl]-1-piperidinyl]-acetyl]-5,11-dihydro-6 H -pyrido[2,3- b ][1,4]benzodiazepin-6-one (1.4 ΠM ). Carbachol-mediated PPI hydrolysis was decreased by 80% in the absence of extracellular Ca 2+ . Histamine stimulated PPI turnover in a linear manner by 180% with an EC 50 of 20 ΠM by the H 1 histaminergic receptor. Serotonin, glutamate, norepinephrine, and dopamine were inactive. In human RPE, the resting cytoplasmic Ca 2+ concentration, as determined by fura-2 fluorescence, was 138 ± 24 n M . On the addition of carbachol, there was a 180% increase in peak intracellular Ca 2+ ; addition of histamine increased intracellular Ca 2+ by 187%. These results suggest receptor-mediated, inositol lipid hydrolysis is coupled to intracellular Ca 2+ flux in human RPE.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66430/1/j.1471-4159.1991.tb03471.x.pd
Synthesis and crystal structure of C2/c Ca(Co, Mg)Si2O6 pyroxenes : effect of the cationic substitution on the cell volume
A series of clinopyroxenes along the CaMgSi2O6-CaCoSi2O6 join was synthesized by quenching from melt at 1500\ub0C and subsequent annealing at 1250\ub0C (at 0.0001 GPa). This protocol proved to be the most effective to obtain homogenous, impurity free and stoichiometric pyroxenes as run products. Electron microprobe analyses in energy-dispersive mode were conducted and single-crystal X-ray diffraction data were collected on the Ca(CoxMg1-x)Si2O6 pyroxenes, with x = 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6; anisotropic structure refinements were performed. The effects of the cation substitution at the M1 site are described at the atomic level. The experimental findings of this study allowed us to extend the comparative analysis of the structural features of pyroxenes with divalent cations at the M1 and M2 sites
A computational approach to implicit entities and events in text and discourse
In this paper we will focus on the notion of âimplicitâ
or lexically unexpressed linguistic elements that are
nonetheless necessary for a complete semantic interpretation
of a text. We refer to âentitiesâ and âeventsâ because
the recovery of the implicit material may affect all the modules
of a system for semantic processing, from the grammatically
guided components to the inferential and reasoning
ones. Reference to the system GETARUNS offers one possible
implementation of the algorithms and procedures needed
to cope with the problem and enables us to deal with all the
spectrum of phenomena. The paper will address at first the
following three types of âimplicitâ entities and events:
â the grammatical ones, as suggested by a linguistic theories
like LFG or similar generative theories;
â the semantic ones suggested in the FrameNet project, i.e.
CNI, DNI, INI;
â the pragmatic ones: here we will present a theory and an
implementation for the recovery of implicit entities and
events of (non-) standard implicatures.
In particular we will show how the use of commonsense
knowledge may fruitfully contribute to find relevant implied
meanings. Last Implicit Entity only touched on, though for
lack of space, is the Subject of Point of View, which is computed
by Semantic Informational Structure and contributes
the intended entity from whose point of view a given subjective
statement is expressed
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