Navigating a car in an unfamiliar country using an internet map: effects of street language formats, map orientation consistency, and gender on driver performance, workload and multitasking strategy.

Navigating a car in an unfamiliar country becomes one of the major concerns with driving safety. Existing studies mainly used survey, focus group and statistical analysis to study this problem. Although the navigation system (e.g. GPS) gains an advantage in providing navigation assistances, paper maps and particularly internet maps are one of major ways for navigating in an unfamiliar area. This study is one of a few experimental studies which addressed a typical multitasking driving behaviour (driving and navigation task) in a cross-culture context. Twenty-four native American-English speakers navigated a driving simulator in urban environments which involved three formats of language settings of the street signs (English, Chinese or no street signs) and two types of map orientation consistency (driving from south to north vs. driving from north to south with a north-up map). It was found that female drivers made more wrong turns only with Chinese street signs but not in the other two conditions compared to male drivers. This indicated that female drivers actually behaved differently from male drivers in an unfamiliar driving environment with unfamiliar street names language. Both male and female drivers benefited from English street signs and reported higher driver workload with Chinese street signs. Interestingly, the average glance duration of maps with Chinese street signs was significantly less than that with English street signs, indicating that even though Chinese language belongs to ideograph with graphical information, its graphical information was not that helpful in assisting navigation task. In addition, female drivers had more instances of collisions with other vehicles, a longer distance of deviation from central line position, higher driver workload and a longer time period of map glance duration. For the main effect of map consistency, drivers made more wrong turns and perceived higher driving workload when they drove with inconsistent maps. Further implications of the current study in transportation safety of globalisation were also discussed, including improvement of street sign infrastructures and optimal ways of using and designing internet maps for drivers navigating in an unfamiliar country.</p

Cubic and hexagonal boron nitride phases and phase boundaries

Phase stability of boron nitride (BN) polymorphs at elevated temperature is perplexing due to their complex nucleation and growth kinetics, nevertheless, holds great significance in fundamental science and technology. Therefore, the phase-transformation of three-dimensional cubic BN (3D c-BN) to a two-dimensional hexagonal BN (2D h-BN) or vice versa, remains an exciting domain to explore. Here, we used temperature-dependent spark plasma sintering on 3D c-BN, enabling phase transformations to a mixed phase of 3D/2D c-BN/h-BN material and ultimately to 2D h-BN. The phase transformed 2D h-BN ceramic features an extremely high density reaching ∼90% of the theoretical limit, and exhibits excellent room temperature thermal conductivity and mechanical properties. Our findings provide valuable fundamental insights into the complex phase diagram, the relative stability regimes and boundaries of 3D c-BN and 2D h-BN phase, with the exhibition of functional properties, pivotal for extreme environments sustainable material-based technology.</p

Cubic and hexagonal boron nitride phases and phase boundaries

Phase stability of boron nitride (BN) polymorphs at elevated temperature is perplexing due to their complex nucleation and growth kinetics, nevertheless, holds great significance in fundamental science and technology. Therefore, the phase-transformation of three-dimensional cubic BN (3D c-BN) to a two-dimensional hexagonal BN (2D h-BN) or vice versa, remains an exciting domain to explore. Here, we used temperature-dependent spark plasma sintering on 3D c-BN, enabling phase transformations to a mixed phase of 3D/2D c-BN/h-BN material and ultimately to 2D h-BN. The phase transformed 2D h-BN ceramic features an extremely high density reaching ∼90% of the theoretical limit, and exhibits excellent room temperature thermal conductivity and mechanical properties. Our findings provide valuable fundamental insights into the complex phase diagram, the relative stability regimes and boundaries of 3D c-BN and 2D h-BN phase, with the exhibition of functional properties, pivotal for extreme environments sustainable material-based technology.</p

ILC Reference Design Report Volume 1 - Executive Summary

The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a 200-500 GeV center-of-mass high-luminosity linear electron-positron collider, based on 1.3 GHz superconducting radio-frequency (SCRF) accelerating cavities. The ILC has a total footprint of about 31 km and is designed for a peak luminosity of 2x10^34 cm^-2s^-1. This report is the Executive Summary (Volume I) of the four volume Reference Design Report. It gives an overview of the physics at the ILC, the accelerator design and value estimate, the detector concepts, and the next steps towards project realization.The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a 200-500 GeV center-of-mass high-luminosity linear electron-positron collider, based on 1.3 GHz superconducting radio-frequency (SCRF) accelerating cavities. The ILC has a total footprint of about 31 km and is designed for a peak luminosity of 2x10^34 cm^-2s^-1. This report is the Executive Summary (Volume I) of the four volume Reference Design Report. It gives an overview of the physics at the ILC, the accelerator design and value estimate, the detector concepts, and the next steps towards project realization

ILC Reference Design Report Volume 4 - Detectors

This report, Volume IV of the International Linear Collider Reference Design Report, describes the detectors which will record and measure the charged and neutral particles produced in the ILC's high energy e+e- collisions. The physics of the ILC, and the environment of the machine-detector interface, pose new challenges for detector design. Several conceptual designs for the detector promise the needed performance, and ongoing detector R&D is addressing the outstanding technological issues. Two such detectors, operating in push-pull mode, perfectly instrument the ILC interaction region, and access the full potential of ILC physics.This report, Volume IV of the International Linear Collider Reference Design Report, describes the detectors which will record and measure the charged and neutral particles produced in the ILC's high energy e+e- collisions. The physics of the ILC, and the environment of the machine-detector interface, pose new challenges for detector design. Several conceptual designs for the detector promise the needed performance, and ongoing detector R&D is addressing the outstanding technological issues. Two such detectors, operating in push-pull mode, perfectly instrument the ILC interaction region, and access the full potential of ILC physics