The Effects of Fatigue on Driver Performance for Single and Team Long-Haul Truck Drivers

Driver fatigue is an important safety issue for long-haul truck drivers. To provide an efficient means of obtaining sleep, long-haul truck drivers often use tractors equipped with sleeper berth units. Depending on the type of cargo and distances traveled, long-haul truck drivers either drive in teams or alone as single drivers. Team drivers, therefore, typically sleep in a moving truck whereas single drivers sleep in a stationary truck. It has been hypothesized that sleeping in a moving truck could adversely affect the sleep quality and, therefore, the alertness level of team drivers. A naturalistic data collection system was developed and installed in two Class 8 heavy trucks. This trigger-based system consisted of vehicle sensors and cameras that allowed the experimenters to obtain the driving performance and driver alertness data for analysis of fatigue. Fatigue was measured using both objective and subjective measures that were recorded before and after sleep and while driving. Fatigue and driving performance were compared for single versus team drivers to determine which driver type acquired the greatest sleep deficit during a trip. Results suggest that single drivers were more frequently involved in critical incidents while exhibiting extreme drowsiness than were team drivers by a factor of 4 to 1. These results will be discussed in relation to the general safety of single versus team trucking operations

The Effects of Fatigue on Driver Performance for Single and Team Long-Haul Truck Drivers

Driver fatigue is an important safety issue for long-haul truck drivers. To provide an efficient means of obtaining sleep, long-haul truck drivers often use tractors equipped with sleeper berth units. Depending on the type of cargo and distances traveled, long-haul truck drivers either drive in teams or alone as single drivers. Team drivers, therefore, typically sleep in a moving truck whereas single drivers sleep in a stationary truck. It has been hypothesized that sleeping in a moving truck could adversely affect the sleep quality and, therefore, the alertness level of team drivers. A naturalistic data collection system was developed and installed in two Class 8 heavy trucks. This trigger-based system consisted of vehicle sensors and cameras that allowed the experimenters to obtain the driving performance and driver alertness data for analysis of fatigue. Fatigue was measured using both objective and subjective measures that were recorded before and after sleep and while driving. Fatigue and driving performance were compared for single versus team drivers to determine which driver type acquired the greatest sleep deficit during a trip. Results suggest that single drivers were more frequently involved in critical incidents while exhibiting extreme drowsiness than were team drivers by a factor of 4 to 1. These results will be discussed in relation to the general safety of single versus team trucking operations

Scaling of thermal conductivity of helium confined in pores

We have studied the thermal conductivity of confined superfluids on a bar-like geometry. We use the planar magnet lattice model on a lattice $H\times H\times L$ with $L \gg H$. We have applied open boundary conditions on the bar sides (the confined directions of length $H$) and periodic along the long direction. We have adopted a hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm to efficiently deal with the critical slowing down and in order to solve the dynamical equations of motion we use a discretization technique which introduces errors only $O((\delta t)^6)$ in the time step $\delta t$. Our results demonstrate the validity of scaling using known values of the critical exponents and we obtained the scaling function of the thermal resistivity. We find that our results for the thermal resistivity scaling function are in very good agreement with the available experimental results for pores using the tempComment: 5 two-column pages, 3 figures, Revtex

The H1 detector at HERA

General aspects of the H1 detector at the electron-proton storage ring HERA as well as technical descriptions of the magnet, luminosity system, trigger, slow-control, data acquisition and off-line data handling are given. The three major components of the detector, the tracking, calorimeter and muon detectors, will be described in a forthcoming article. The present paper describes the detector that was used from 1992 to the end of 1994. After this a major upgrade of some components was undertaken. Some performance figures from luminosity runs at HERA during 1993 and 1994 are given.0SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Combined dark matter searches towards dwarf spheroidal galaxies with Fermi-LAT, HAWC, H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS

Cosmological and astrophysical observations suggest that 85\% of the total matter of the Universe is made of Dark Matter (DM). However, its nature remains one of the most challenging and fundamental open questions of particle physics. Assuming particle DM, this exotic form of matter cannot consist of Standard Model (SM) particles. Many models have been developed to attempt unraveling the nature of DM such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the most favored particle candidates. WIMP annihilations and decay could produce SM particles which in turn hadronize and decay to give SM secondaries such as high energy $\gamma$ rays. In the framework of indirect DM search, observations of promising targets are used to search for signatures of DM annihilation. Among these, the dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are commonly favored owing to their expected high DM content and negligible astrophysical background. In this work, we present the very first combination of 20 dSph observations, performed by the Fermi-LAT, HAWC, H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS collaborations in order to maximize the sensitivity of DM searches and improve the current results. We use a joint maximum likelihood approach combining each experiment's individual analysis to derive more constraining upper limits on the WIMP DM self-annihilation cross-section as a function of DM particle mass. We present new DM constraints over the widest mass range ever reported, extending from 5 GeV to 100 TeV thanks to the combination of these five different $\gamma$-ray instruments