Incorporate Emerging Travel Modes in the Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) Tool

Performance-based planning helps local and state decision makers to understand the potential impacts of policy decisions, supporting cost-effective investments and policy choices that can help achieve policy goals. In addition, it can enable monitoring of progress and facilitate needed adjustments, help them communicate to the public, and assist them with meeting federal regulations and the intent of MAP21. The Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) is a performance-based planning tool first developed by Oregon State DOT (as GreenSTEP) and later adapted for use by other states in the form of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Emissions Reduction Policy Analysis Tool (EERPAT) and the underlying basis of the SHRP2 C16 Smart Growth Area Planning software (SmartGAP). As the popularity of the RSPM tool grows and application cases expand, there is recognition that a deeper understanding is needed to determine how mode choices and mode share may be impacted by policy and investment decisions and how these mode choices further influence performance outcomes of the transportation system. This is particularly important when the tool is applied in a broader base of planning and decision-making processes to truly understand what may be the best decisions for the entire multi-modal and inter-modal transportation system. ODOT is sponsoring a first phase research project led by this research team to incorporate broad stroke multi-modal travel choices in the RSPM tool. This proposed project hopes to leverage the ODOT and NITC funding to further study, along with existing modes, emerging travel modes, including car sharing, bike sharing, and autonomous vehicles, with stated preference (SP) experiments, and incorporate these new options into the RSPM tool. These modes have been rapidly gaining popularity worldwide, which will have long-term implications for car ownership decisions, fleet characteristics, travel patterns, and further system-wide performance outcomes. By incorporating these modes in the mode choice module, this project will make the RSPM tool sensitive to policies and investment targeted to shift mode share and enable it to evaluate futures in which these modes may become the mainstream, besides contributing to the emerging body of research that aims to better understanding these modes

Low dose and fast grating-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging using the integrating-bucket phase modulation technique

X-ray phase-contrast imaging has experienced rapid development over the last few decades, and in this technology, the phase modulation strategy of phase-stepping is used most widely to measure the sample's phase signal. However, because of its discontinuous nature, phase-stepping has the defects of worse mechanical stability and high exposure dose, which greatly hinder its wide application in dynamic phase measurement and potential clinical applications. In this manuscript, we demonstrate preliminary research on the use of integrating-bucket phase modulation method to retrieve the phase information in grating-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging. Experimental results showed that our proposed method can be well employed to extract the differential phase-contrast image, compared with the current mostly used phase-stepping strategy, advantage of integrating-bucket phase modulation technique is that fast measurement and low dose are promising.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

The effects of structural parameters on excitation force of airflow vibration piezoelectric generator

In order to meet the requirements of airflow vibration piezoelectric generator, and solve the critical issue of stable excitation force, the key is to effectively control structure sensitive parameters. The range of structural parameters of airflow excitation device are optimized by simplified orthogonal test. The result shows that corresponding to different resonator lengths, it approximates a linear increasing trend between the amplitude of excitation force and airflow velocity, and the greater length owns the smaller slope, and vice versa. It is relatively complex for the space and ring gaps, too big or too small gap would make the amplitude smaller or even no waveform formed. The length of resonator is the main factor impacting on the frequency of excitation sound pressure, and the frequency decreases with the increase of the length, presenting an inverse relationship, and the space and ring gaps have less effect on the frequency. Therefore, for high airflow velocity, the stable excitation force of high amplitude and frequency can be obtained by short resonator. In addition, reasonable space and ring gaps are also important for ensuring bigger amplitude of excitation sound pressure. The resulting sensitive parameter values of sound excitation device can be used as references for engineering design

Effects of nitrogen addition and mowing on nitrogen- and water-use efficiency of Artemisia frigida in a grassland restored from an abandoned cropland

Aims Competition among plants in a community usually depends on their nitrogen (N)-use efficiency (NUE) and water-use efficiency (WUE) in arid and semi-arid regions. Artemisia frigida is an indicator species in heavily degraded grassland, however, how its NUE and WUE respond to N addition in different successional stages is still unclear, especially with mowing, a common management practice in semi-arid grasslands.Methods Based on a long-term controlled experiment with N addition and mowing in an abandoned cropland from 2006 to 2013, we investigated the NUE and WUE of A. frigida in two patches (i.e. grass and herb patches) in 2013 which represented two potential successional stages from herb to grass communities. The coverage of A. frigida was higher (about 50%) in the herb patch than in the grass patch (about 10%). Stable isotopic C (delta C-13) and N (delta N-15) as well as C and N pools were measured in plants and soils. NUE was calculated as leaf C/N, and leaf delta C-13 values were used as a proxy for WUE.Important Findings N addition did not affect WUE of A. frigida, but significantly decreased NUE by 42.9% and 26.6% in grass and herb patches, respectively. The response of NUE to N addition was related to altering utilization of different N sources (NH4+ vs. NO3-) by A. frigida according to the changed relationship between leaf delta N-15/soil delta N-15 and NUE. Mowing had no effect on NUE regardless of N addition, but significantly increased WUE by 2.3% for A. frigida without N addition in the grass patch. The addition of N reduced the positive effect of mowing on its WUE in grass patch. Our results suggested that decreased NUE and/or WUE of A. frigida under mowing and N addition could reduce its competition, and further accelerate restoration succession from the abandoned cropland to natural grassland in the semi-arid region

Strong Designated Verifier Signature Schemes with Undeniable Property and Their Applications

Most of the strong designated verifier signature (SDVS) schemes cannot tell the real signature generator when the signer and the designated verifier dispute on a signature. In other words, most of the SDVS schemes do not have the undeniability property. In this paper, we propose two SDVS schemes which hold the undeniability property, namely, strong designated verifier signature with undeniability property (SDVSUP). Our two schemes are called SDVSUP-1 and SDVSUP-2. In our two SDVSUP schemes, the signer not only can designate a verifier but also can designate an arbiter who can judge the signature when the signer and the designated verifier dispute on the signature. What is more, the judgment procedure can be performed by the arbiter alone without help from the signer or the designated verifier, which increases the judgment efficiency and reduces the complexity of signature confirmation. We also demonstrate a real instance of applying our SDVSUP scheme to electronic bidding system