The Effects of Gender on Commuter Behavior Changes in the Context of a Major Freeway Construction

To study the commuter travel behavior impacts of a nine-week reconstruction of Interstate 5 (I-5) in downtown Sacramento, California, a series of three internet-based surveys was conducted. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the first two of those surveys, focusing on the role of gender in commuters’ responses. Avoiding rush hour and changing route were the most common responses, and women were more likely than men to employ them. Among the changes that reduce vehicle-miles traveled, increasing transit use and increasing telecommuting were the most common. Overall, women were 21% more likely to make at least one change than men were. A binary logit model of the choice to increase transit use suggests that persuading current transit users to increase their transit use was easier than convincing nonusers to switch. Respondents who heard about the increased level of transit service were more likely to increase transit use. Employer transit subsidies supported increases in transit use (but only for women), while variable work hours (for women) discouraged them. Men in managerial/administration and women in larger households were also more likely to increase their transit use

Development of Urban Road Network Traffic State Dynamic Estimation Method

Traffic state estimation is a key problem with considerable implications in modern traffic management. A simple, general, and complete approach to the design of urban network traffic state and phase estimator has been developed in this paper. A uniform traffic state dynamic estimation method structure is designed which consists of three steps. (1) Floating-car data and radio frequency identification data preprocessing method is proposed to remove the abnormal data and finish the map matching process. (2) Section speed estimation method is proposed based on the degree of confidence. (3) Traffic phase identification method is proposed based on the estimated section speed. A number of simulation and field investigations have been conducted to test the estimator performance. The investigation results indicate that the proposed approach is of high accuracy and smoothness on the section speed estimation and effectively eliminates the influence of abnormal data fluctuations and insufficient data. And the traffic phase identification method can effectively filter out the abnormal distortion of estimated section speed around the threshold value and modify the phase step of traffic status caused by abnormal data

Study on long-term performance evaluation of auditory and speech ability in cochlear implant in congenital deaf children with cochlear nerve deficiency after cochlear implantation

Objective·To evaluate the long-term performance and influencing factors of auditory and speech abilities, and social-life abilities in congenital deaf children with cochlear nerve deficiency (CND) after cochlear implant (CI) surgery.Methods·Twenty-one CND children with CI implantation in Shanghai Ninth People′s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine were assigned to CND group, and twenty children with extremely severe sensorineural hearing loss with normal inner ear structure matching implantation age and CI use time of the CND group were selected as control group. The aided hearing threshold, Infant-toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS), LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ), Categories of Auditory Performance-Ⅱ (CAP-Ⅱ), Meaningful Use of Speech Scale (MUSS), Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR), closed and open disyllabic speech recognition test, and speech intelligibility test were used to hierarchically evaluate the subjects′ auditory and verbal abilities, and the Infant-junior Middle School Student′s Social Life Ability Scale (S-M Scale) was used to assess the subjects′ social-life ability.Results·The average aided hearing threshold of each frequency point in the CND group was significantly worse than that of the control group (all P<0.05). In the CND group, 90.5% of children′s aided hearing threshold of all frequencies entered the Chinese banana map. The auditory and speech abilities of the CND group were worse than those of the control group, and the significant differences between the two groups were found in the results of IT-MAIS, CAP-Ⅱ, MUSS, SIR, and closed and open disyllabic speech recognition (all P<0.05), but not in LEAQ. The social-life ability of the CND group was worse than that of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). There was no correlation between implantation age, usage time of CI, auditory and language rehabilitation time, and auditory and speech ability of the CND group.Conclusion·CI is an effective auditory intervention method for children with CND, but their average auditory and speech abilities and social-life abilities are significantly behind those of CI users with normal inner ear structure. Therefore, for CND children, individualized communication strategies and rehabilitation training methods should be emphasized, and the cultivation of social-life ability and psychological guidance should be strengthened

Estimation of Urban Link Travel Time Distribution Using Markov Chains and Bayesian Approaches

Despite the wide application of Floating Car Data (FCD) in urban link travel time and congestion estimation, the sparsity of observations from a low penetration rate of GPS-equipped floating cars make it difficult to estimate travel time distribution (TTD), especially when the travel times may have multimodal distributions that are associated with the underlying traffic states. In this case, the study develops a Bayesian approach based on particle filter framework for link TTD estimation using real-time and historical travel time observations from FCD. First, link travel times are classified by different traffic states according to the levels of vehicle delays. Then, a state-transition function is represented as a Transition Probability Matrix of the Markov chain between upstream and current links with historical observations. Using the state-transition function, an importance distribution is constructed as the summation of historical link TTDs conditional on states weighted by the current link state probabilities. Further, a sampling strategy is developed to address the sparsity problem of observations by selecting the particles with larger weights in terms of the importance distribution and a Gaussian likelihood function. Finally, the current link TTD can be reconstructed by a generic Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm incorporating high weighted particles. The proposed approach is evaluated using real-world FCD. The results indicate that the proposed approach provides good accurate estimations, which are very close to the empirical distributions. In addition, the approach with different percentage of floating cars is tested. The results are encouraging, even when multimodal distributions and very few or no observations exist

A Mathematical Modeling of Resonances of the Nonlinear Tilted Support Spring System under Harmonic Excitation

A novel nonlinear tilted support spring damping system is proposed in this paper. The nonlinear dynamic equation is developed under the foundation displacement excitation and the resonance frequency of the system is also analyzed. Furthermore, different support angles affecting the vibration amplitude and the natural frequency of the system are researched. The model of the tilted support spring damping system is analyzed by ANSYS, and modal analysis and harmonic response analysis are made under harmonic excitation. The study shows that the supporting angle makes a great impact on the amplitude of the system and the response amplitude of the system is also reduced with the decrease of support angle. Through the analysis and comparison of the example, it provides a theoretical basis of the analysis for the tilted support spring damping system support angle’s optimal design

Energy Efficiency Optimization in D2D-Cellular Converged Networks for Video Delivery

A new paradigm of wireless video delivery between users in the converged D2D network and cellular system is studied in this paper. D2D communication enables direct data transmissions of nearby user equipment (UE) by sharing the same time and frequency resource, thereby improving spectrum utilization, system throughput, and energy efficiency. Yet in the case that D2D network cannot provide the requested video files for the limited storage capacity of UE, users have to access the video files in the traditional cellular mode. This paper investigates a D2D-cellular converged network where users are scattered over the area of a single cell according to the spatial Poisson Point Processes and D2D users are able to store part of video files requested by other users according to file popularity. First, we derive the energy efficiency of the D2D-cellular converged network. Then, to maximize the energy efficiency of the D2D-cellular converged network, the optimal collaborative distance of D2D communication and the number of cache files are addressed. Finally, via simulations, we show the effects of these system parameters on energy efficiency and point out the existence of optimal solutions

The Effects of Gender on Commuter Behavior Changes in the Context of a Major Freeway Construction

To study the commuter travel behavior impacts of a nine-week reconstruction of Interstate 5 (I-5) in downtown Sacramento, California, a series of three internet-based surveys was conducted. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the first two of those surveys, focusing on the role of gender in commuters’ responses. Avoiding rush hour and changing route were the most common responses, and women were more likely than men to employ them. Among the changes that reduce vehicle-miles traveled, increasing transit use and increasing telecommuting were the most common. Overall, women were 21% more likely to make at least one change than men were. A binary logit model of the choice to increase transit use suggests that persuading current transit users to increase their transit use was easier than convincing nonusers to switch. Respondents who heard about the increased level of transit service were more likely to increase transit use. Employer transit subsidies supported increases in transit use (but only for women), while variable work hours (for women) discouraged them. Men in managerial/administration and women in larger households were also more likely to increase their transit use