Impacts to Traffic Behavior from Queue Warning Truck: Current Pilot Project

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) started deploying queue warning trucks ahead of interstate work zones to alert motorists of queued traffic. Along with visually alerting the motorists, digital alerts were integrated with navigational applications such as Apple Maps, Waze, and the in-vehicle infotainment system of Stellantis vehicles. More than 45,000 hours of alerting was provided to motorists across various interstates in Indiana over a 26-month period. This report evaluated the impact of queue warning trucks on traffic using hard braking events and traffic speeds provided by granular connected trajectory vehicle data. Evaluation of over 370 hours of queuing with the presence of queue trucks and 52 hours of queuing without the queue trucks indicated a decrease in hard braking events by 80% when trucks were present with digital alerts. It was also observed that traffic speeds started to reduce approximately 1,500 to 2,000 ft in advance of deployed queue trucks

Implementation of Enhanced Probe Data (CANBUS) for Tactical Workzone and Winter Operations Management

For over a decade, segment-based probe data has been extensively used by transportation stakeholders for monitoring mobility on Indiana roadways. However, enhanced probe data from connected vehicles includes a richer dataset that can provide more detailed real-time and after-action reviews. This enhanced data includes detailed vehicle trajectories, at 3s resolution, and “event data.” This event data is near real-time and includes hard-braking events, hard-acceleration events, weather-related data, including wiper activations and some seat belt usage data. This project developed a set of methodologies and resulting visualizations that enables the use of emerging connected vehicle data in operational decision-making on work zone management and winter operations activities. Each month approximately 13 billion connected vehicle records are ingested for Indiana. During peak periods, approximately 625,000 records per minute are ingested. Without substantial processing, this large data set is “data-rich, information-poor.” This study developed techniques to rapidly assign relevant data to interstate segments so that visual graphics could be efficiently generated. This provided the ability for both real-time monitoring as well as after action assessment to identify opportunities to improve both work zone operations and winter operation activities. The summaries derived from these datasets have helped promote effective actionable dialog among agencies, contractors, and public safety colleagues towards the overarching goal of improving interstate safety and mobility

Crowdsourcing/Winter Operations Dashboard Upgrade

INDOT has recently completed the deployment of Parsons telematics-based dash-cameras, automatic vehicle locator (AVL) positions, and spreader rate monitoring across their winter operations fleet. The motivation of this study was to develop dashboards that integrate connected vehicle data into the real-time monitoring and after-action review of winter storms. Each month approximately 13 billion connected vehicle records are ingested for the state of Indiana and almost 99 billion weather data records are ingested nationwide in 15-minute intervals. This study developed techniques to utilize this connected vehicle data and weather data to monitor real-time mobility of interstates and post storm after-action assessments to identify improvement opportunities of winter operations activities. In multiple instances, these agile reviews have influenced operational changes in snow removal and maintenance around the state, leading to a marked improvement in observed mobility and safety

Connected Vehicle-Centric Dashboards for TMC of the Future

The adoption of dashboards and tools into Traffic Management Centers (TMC) has been growing with advancements in connected vehicle (CV) data. These tools are now being utilized—not only for analyzing work zones, severe crashes, winter operations, and traffic signals—but also to provide measures for characterizing overall system mobility, resiliency, and after-action assessments. Previous studies have extended the concepts to include the enhanced trajectory-based CV data into dashboards that aid agencies in assessing and managing roadways. This study presents the extension of these tools that further improve the value and insights provided. It also highlights the evolution of CV data in Indiana. CV data in Indiana has grown to over 364 billion statewide records. Average overall penetration rate of CV data on interstates has increased to 6.32% in May 2022 with trucks accounting for 1.7%. Sections of this study also present the impact of rain intensity on interstate traffic and incorporation of such weather data into heatmap and other tools. Updates to existing dashboards and a summary of newly developed dashboards are synopsized in this report. Finally, this report presents a case study that highlights the use of these tools to assess and analyze the impact of tornadoes on interstate traffic in Indiana. As interest in these tools has grown, this project facilitated continued improvements and added features to meet the needs of INDOT and their partners

"What's (the) Matter?", A Show on Elementary Particle Physics with 28 Demonstration Experiments

We present the screenplay of a physics show on particle physics, by the Physikshow of Bonn University. The show is addressed at non-physicists aged 14+ and communicates basic concepts of elementary particle physics including the discovery of the Higgs boson in an entertaining fashion. It is also demonstrates a successful outreach activity heavily relying on the university physics students. This paper is addressed at anybody interested in particle physics and/or show physics. This paper is also addressed at fellow physicists working in outreach, maybe the experiments and our choice of simple explanations will be helpful. Furthermore, we are very interested in related activities elsewhere, in particular also demonstration experiments relevant to particle physics, as often little of this work is published. Our show involves 28 live demonstration experiments. These are presented in an extensive appendix, including photos and technical details. The show is set up as a quest, where 2 students from Bonn with the aid of a caretaker travel back in time to understand the fundamental nature of matter. They visit Rutherford and Geiger in Manchester around 1911, who recount their famous experiment on the nucleus and show how particle detectors work. They travel forward in time to meet Lawrence at Berkeley around 1950, teaching them about the how and why of accelerators. Next, they visit Wu at DESY, Hamburg, around 1980, who explains the strong force. They end up in the LHC tunnel at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland in 2012. Two experimentalists tell them about colliders and our heroes watch live as the Higgs boson is produced and decays. The show was presented in English at Oxford University and University College London, as well as Padua University and ICTP Trieste. It was 1st performed in German at the Deutsche Museum, Bonn (5/'14). The show has eleven speaking parts and involves in total 20 people.Comment: 113 pages, 88 figures. An up to date version of the paper with high resolution pictures can be found at http://www.th.physik.uni-bonn.de/People/dreiner/Downloads/. In v2 the acknowledgements and a citation are correcte

Reward and punishment-based compound cue learning and generalization in opiate dependency

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this recordSubstance dependence is thought to be mediated by abnormalities in cognitive abilities, but how this impacts decision-making remains unclear. This study aimed to test whether people who are opiate dependent differed from never-dependent controls in learning from reward and punishment or in the generalization of learning to novel conditions. Participants with opiate dependency consisted of 21 people who were outpatients in a methadone maintenance program; the control group consisted of 21 healthy participants with no histories of substance abuse. Subjects completed a computer-based task that involved two phases: the training phase involved participants being presented with compound stimulus (a shape and color) in each trial, with the goal of learning which compounds to 'pick' for rewards or 'skip' to avoid punishment. The test phase involved a transfer test, where stimuli from the first phase were combined together to form novel compounds without feedback. The control group demonstrated fewer errors compared to opiate-dependent individuals during the training phase. In the test phase, controls used prior knowledge of both shapes and colors in responding; however, opiate-dependent individuals used shapes but did not use their knowledge of color to modulate responding. When performance during training was equated in the groups using a learning threshold, this difference between groups on the generalization test remained. A deficit in learning generalization might be indicative of group differences in learning strategies in operation during training; however, future work is necessary to uncover the specific neural substrates in action during transfer tasks, and to determine the effects of acute methadone dosage on decision-making

Photoproduction of eta mesons from the neutron: cross sections and double polarization observable E

Photoproduction of $\eta$ mesons from neutrons} \abstract{Results from measurements of the photoproduction of $\eta$ mesons from quasifree protons and neutrons are summarized. The experiments were performed with the CBELSA/TAPS detector at the electron accelerator ELSA in Bonn using the $\eta\to3\pi^{0}\to6\gamma$ decay. A liquid deuterium target was used for the measurement of total cross sections and angular distributions. The results confirm earlier measurements from Bonn and the MAMI facility in Mainz about the existence of a narrow structure in the excitation function of $\gamma n\rightarrow n\eta$. The current angular distributions show a forward-backward asymmetry, which was previously not seen, but was predicted by model calculations including an additional narrow $P_{11}$ state. Furthermore, data obtained with a longitudinally polarized, deuterated butanol target and a circularly polarized photon beam were analyzed to determine the double polarization observable $E$. Both data sets together were also used to extract the helicity dependent cross sections $\sigma_{1/2}$ and $\sigma_{3/2}$. The narrow structure in the excitation function of $\gamma n\rightarrow n\eta$ appears associated with the helicity-1/2 component of the reaction