Africa loses an excellent botanist and teacher, Professor Brian Harris

No Abstrac

Using Crowdsourced Vehicle Braking Data to Identify Roadway Hazards

Modern vehicles know more about the road conditions than transportation agencies. Enhanced vehicle data that provides information on “close calls” such as hard braking events or road conditions during winter such as wheel slips and traction control will be critical for improving safety and traffic operations. This research applied conflict analyses techniques to process approximately 1.5 million hard braking events that occurred in the state of Indiana over a period of one week in August 2019. The study looked at work zones, signalized intersections, interchanges and entry/exit ramps. Qualitative spatial frequency analysis of hard-braking events on the interstate demonstrated the ability to quickly identify temporary and long-term construction zones that warrant further investigation to improve geometry and advance warning signs. The study concludes by recommending the frequency of hard-braking events across different interstate routes to identify roadway locations that have abnormally high numbers of “close calls” for further engineering assessment

Birds of Golden Pride Project area, Nzega District, central Tanzania: an evaluation of recolonization of rehabilitated areas

In Tanzania, the success of habitat restoration in mining areas to create suitable environmental conditions for wildlife is poorly understood. Between March 2010 and December 2014 bird species were recorded at the Golden Pride Project area, a gold mine in Nzega District, central Tanzania. The aims of this study were to document bird communities in the mine area, and to assess the extent to which rehabilitated areas have been recolonised. Mist netting, point counts, timed species counts and opportunistic observations were used to document 181 species of birds at the mine area. These included two species endemic to Tanzania, the Tanzanian Red-billed Hornbill Tockus ruahae (treated here as a species separate from T. erythrorhynchus, see Kemp & Delport 2002, Sinclair & Ryan 2010) and Ashy Starling Cosmopsarus unicolor. Rehabilitated areas had about half the number of species found in the unmined areas. Bird use of areas under rehabilitation suggests that habitat restoration can be used to create corridors linking fragmented landscapes. Results suggest that as the vegetation of the rehabilitated areas becomes more structurally complex, the number of bird species found there will be similar to those in unmined areas. This study provides a baseline for future monitoring, leading to a better understanding of the process of avian colonisation of rehabilitated areas. Furthermore, results imply that in mining areas it is useful to have an unmined area where vegetation is naturally allowed to regenerate, free of human activity. These unmined areas can later act as source habitats from which birds can disperse into rehabilitation areas once the vegetation structure is sufficiently complex

An EUV Study of the Intermediate Polar EX Hydrae

On 2000 May 5, we began a large multi-wavelength campaign to study the intermediate polar, EX Hydrae. The simultaneous observations from six satellites and four telescopes were centered around a one million second observation with EUVE. Although EX Hydrae has been studied previously with EUVE, our higher signal-to-noise observations present new results and challenge the current IP models. Previously unseen dips in the light curve are reminiscent of the stream dips seen in polar light curves. Also of interest is the temporal extent of the bulge dip; approximately 0.5 in phase, implying that the bulge extends over half of the accretion disk. We propose that the magnetic field in EX Hydrae is strong enough (a few MG) to begin pulling material directly from the outer edge of the disk, thereby forming a large accretion curtain which would produce a very broad bulge dip. This would also result in magnetically controlled accretion streams originating from the outer edge of the disk. We also present a period analysis of the photometric data which shows numerous beat frequencies with strong power and also intermittent and wandering frequencies, an indication that physical conditions within EX Hya changed over the course of the observation. Iron spectral line ratios give a temperature of log T=6.5-6.9 K for all spin phases and a poorly constrained density of n_e=10^10-10^11 cm^-3 for the emitting plasma. This paper is the first in a series detailing our results from this multi-wavelength observational campaign.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Career Transitions of High-Profile Student-Athletes: Identity, Role Engulfment, and Psychological Well-Being

The purpose of this study is to build upon previous literature on the stages of career preparation of college student-athletes by examining identity, role engulfment, and psychological well-being as it relates to preparation for ‘post-playing days’ life. More specifically, the authors endeavored to examine the relationship between role engulfment and psychological well-being and how it affects post-athletic career transitions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 former Division I college football student-athletes who were previously student-athletes at 14 different Division I institutions. Utilizing identity, role engulfment, and psychological well-being as conceptual frameworks, this study discusses the how and why behind the experiences of high-profile student-athletes as they transition from athlete to their post-playing careers

Dashboards for Real-time Monitoring of Winter Operations Activities and After-action Assessment

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) operates a fleet of nearly 1100 snowplows and spends up to $60M annually on snow removal and de-icing as part of their winter operation maintenance activities. Systematically allocating resources and optimizing material application rates can potentially save revenue that can be reallocated for other roadway maintenance operations. Modern snowplows are beginning to be equipped with a variety of Mobile Road Weather Information Sensors (MARWIS) which can provide a host of analytical data characterizing on-the-ground conditions during periods of wintry precipitation. Traffic speeds fused with road conditions and precipitation data from weather stations provide a uniquely detailed look at the progression of a winter event and the performance of the fleet. This research uses a combination of traffic speeds, MARWIS and North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) data to develop real-time dashboards characterizing the impact of precipitation and pavement surface temperature on mobility. Twenty heavy snow events were identified for the state of Indiana from November 2018 through April 2019. Two particular instances, that impacted 182 miles and 231 miles of interstate at their peaks occurred in January and March, respectively, and were used as a case study for this paper. The dashboards proposed in this paper may prove to be particularly useful for agencies in tracking fleet activity through a winter storm, helping in resource allocation and scheduling and forecasting resource needs

Extraction of Vehicle CAN Bus Data for Roadway Condition Monitoring

Obtaining timely information across the state roadway network is important for monitoring the condition of the roads and operating characteristics of traffic. One of the most significant challenges in winter roadway maintenance is identifying emerging or deteriorating conditions before significant crashes occur. For instance, almost all modern vehicles have accelerometers, anti-lock brake (ABS) and traction control systems. This data can be read from the Controller Area Network (CAN) of the vehicle, and combined with GPS coordinates and cellular connectivity, can provide valuable on-the-ground sampling of vehicle dynamics at the onset of a storm. We are rapidly entering an era where this vehicle data can provide an agency with opportunities to more effectively manage their systems than traditional procedures that rely on fixed infrastructure sensors and telephone reports. This data could also reduce the density of roadway weather information systems (RWIS), similar to how probe vehicle data has reduced the need for micro loop or side fire sensors for collecting traffic speeds

Connected Vehicle Corridor Deployment and Performance Measures for Assessment

In November 2016, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) announced the Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) challenge to state and local agencies to kick start infrastructure deployments for V2I communications. The challenge involved the deployment of Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) infrastructure with SPaT broadcasts (current intersection signal light phase) on at least 20 signalized intersections in all of the 50 states by 2020. Although the roadmap for agencies to partner with the automotive industry is still evolving, it is important for Indiana to not only support the SPaT challenge, but also identify mutually beneficial opportunities for INDOT to partner with the automotive industry as Indiana has the second largest automotive related Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the country. During this study, connected traffic signal infrastructure was deployed at several locations around the state. The West Lafayette corridor SPaT message deployment was done using both traditional Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) as well cellular communication. This report details the deployment locations, the various public and private sector stakeholders that were engaged during the field testing, and several vehicle-infrastructure communication experiments that were used to evaluate connected vehicle use cases. The findings of this research were as follows: The team successfully demonstrated use cases for placing virtual vehicle detection calls to a traffic signal controller using SPaT messages and evaluated latency. The team developed a scalable methodology for characterizing the probability of a traffic signal phase changing by time of day. This methodology of using agency traffic signal data for green light prediction and engine shut down at red lights is particularly useful to the automotive industry. The team successfully demonstrated that split failures, reduced roadway friction and hard braking events can be identified on the vehicle and transmitted to an agency. This enhanced probe data information is particularly valuable to agencies for identifying traffic signal timing problems, segments impacted by winter weather and location where drivers are encountering roadway conditions required hard braking. DSRC provides the lowest latency communication, but in general commercial cellular interface between vehicles and infrastructure provided acceptable latency for most use cases. For most applications, the team believes a commercial cellular interface between vehicles and infrastructure is the most scalable and feasible for an agency to maintain

OGLE-2016-BLG-0613LABb: A Microlensing Planet in a Binary System

We present the analysis of OGLE-2016-BLG-0613, for which the lensing light curve appears to be that of a typical binary-lens event with two caustic spikes but with a discontinuous feature on the trough between the spikes. We find that the discontinuous feature was produced by a planetary companion to the binary lens. We find 4 degenerate triple-lens solution classes, each composed of a pair of solutions according to the well-known wide/close planetary degeneracy. One of these solution classes is excluded due to its relatively poor fit. For the remaining three pairs of solutions, the most-likely primary mass is about $M_1\sim 0.7\,M_\odot$ while the planet is a super-Jupiter. In all cases the system lies in the Galactic disk, about half-way toward the Galactic bulge. However, in one of these three solution classes, the secondary of the binary system is a low-mass brown dwarf, with relative mass ratios (1 : 0.03 : 0.003), while in the two others the masses of the binary components are comparable. These two possibilities can be distinguished in about 2024 when the measured lens-source relative proper motion will permit separate resolution of the lens and source.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure