Driver Responses to Graphic-Aided Portable Changeable Message Signs in Highway Work Zones

Portable changeable message signs (PCMSs) have been employed in highway work zones as temporary traffic control devices. Various studies showed that adding graphics to PCMS messages can provide advantages to traditional text messages, such as increasing legibility and improving the understanding of elderly drivers. This article synthesizes the findings of a two-phase research project aimed to investigate driver responses to graphic-aided PCMSs. Different text and graphic-aided PCMSs representing roadwork and flagger were set up in the upstream of highway work zones, and speed data of more than 2,700 vehicles were collected with a series of five speed sensors to determine vehicle speed reduction. Nearly 1,000 onsite driver surveys were performed to identify driver preference on the added graphics. The results discovered that graphic-aided PCMSs reduced mean vehicle speed between 13% and 17% and reduced the speed of passenger cars and trucks significantly differently depending on their locations in work zone. The results indicated that all drivers correctly interpreted the flagger graphic and two work-zone graphics, and suggested that 52% to 71% of drivers preferred to see graphics in PCMS messages. The findings also revealed that driver age did not have a significant impact on driver preference on PCMS message format

Determining the Effectiveness of Graphic-aided Portable Changeable Message Signs in Highway Work Zones

Portable changeable message signs (PCMSs) have been employed in highway work zones as a temporary traffic control device in the United Stated for many years. The traditional message format on PCMSs is text-based, which has been found to have several limitations in recent studies, such as confusing drivers and delaying their responses during driving, being difficult to read for elderly drivers and non-English-speaking drivers, difficult to see under adverse viewing conditions, and having a short range of legibility. The use of graphic-aided messages on PCMSs has many advantages over text-based PCMSs based on a number of previous laboratory simulation experiments. This research project was conducted using field experiments and driver surveys to determine the effectiveness of graphic-aided PCMS in reducing vehicle speeds in the upstream of one-lane two-way rural highway work zones. Field experiments and surveys were designed and conducted in two phases. Field experiment Phase I was performed to compare the effectiveness of a text PCMS, two text-graphic PCMSs, and a graphic PCMS in reducing vehicle speeds in highway work zones. Through the driver surveys in Phase I, it was found that 12% to 21% of drivers were confused by the work zone graphic. Therefore, field experiment Phase II was conducted to compare the effectiveness of five graphic-aided PCMSs with the original work zone graphic and two redesigned work zone graphics (two alternative graphics) in reducing vehicle speeds. In addition, driver survey Phase II was performed to determine drivers' acceptance of the implementation of graphic-aided PCMS in highway work zones. Vehicle speed data and driver survey data were analyzed using a variety of statistical methods, including frequency analysis, linear and nonlinear regression models, hypothesis tests, independent two-sample t-tests, and Chi-square tests of independence. The major findings of this research project included the comparison of the effectiveness of text, text-graphic, and graphic PCMSs in reducing mean vehicle speeds in the upstream of highway work zones; the comparison of the effectiveness of graphic-aided PCMSs with the original and alternative work zone graphics in reducing mean vehicle speeds; and drivers' perception of graphics on PCMSs, acceptance of graphic-aided PCMSs, and preferences of message formats under different PCMSs. Based on the findings, recommendations were made for future research and implementation of graphic-aided PCMSs in the work zones. The results of this study provided valuable knowledge to government agencies and the transportation industry on how to regulate and utilize graphic-aided PCMSs in highway work zones

Field Experiments for Comparing the Effectiveness of Graphics Displayed in a Portable Changeable Message Sign in Highway Work Zones

The traditional message format on a portable changeable message sign (PCMS) is text-based, which has been found to have several limitations in recent studies. The use of graphic-aided messages on PCMSs has many advantages over text-based PCMSs based on a number of previous laboratory simulation experiments. To validate the effectiveness of graphic-aided PCMSs, a field experiment was conducted at a highway work zone in the summer of 2010. The results of data analysis indicated that between 12% and 21% of drivers got confused when the work zone graphic was displayed on the graphic-aided PCMS. Therefore, there was a need to improve the work zone graphic representation on the PCMS. Two alternative graphics were designed after the 2010 field experiment. The objective of this research project was to compare the effectiveness of two alternative work zone graphics displayed on a graphic-aided PCMS in reducing vehicle speeds in the upstream of a one-lane two-way highway work zone. Field experiments were conducted to collect vehicle speed data. In addition, driver surveys were performed to evaluate drivers’ acceptance on the implementation of a graphic-aided PCMS in work zones. The results of speed data analysis suggested that using alternative work zone graphics on the graphic-aided PCMSs could reduce mean vehicle speeds more effectively than using the original work zone graphic. The results of driver surveys revealed that all drivers successfully interpreted the two alternative work zone graphics in the work zone. Thus, authors concluded that the quality of graphic design had a significant impact on drivers’ understanding and acceptance of the graphic-aided PCMS in highway work zones

Efficacy of some selected neo-adjuvant chemotherapy regimens in the treatment of advanced oral squamous cell carcinoma, and their effects on immune function

Purpose: To investigate the clinical efficacy of different neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) regimens in the treatment of advanced oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), and their influence on immune function of the patients.Methods: Advanced OSCC patients (n = 94) who received NACT served as subjects in this study. They were assigned to 2 different treatment groups. Forty patients received docetaxel and fluorouracil regimen (DF group), while 54 patients received taxotere, cisplatin and fluorouracil regimen (TPF group). Surgery was performed after NACT. Changes in clinical efficacy and immune function were monitored in both groups. The clinical baseline data of patients were assessed prior to the treatments. Independent indicators of prognosis were determined using Cox regression analysis (CRA).Results: Clinical treatment efficacy was higher in TPF group than in DF group (p < 0.05). Objective remission rate (ORR) in DF group was lower than that in TPF group (p < 0.05). After chemotherapy, both groups had increased levels of CD4+ and CD4+/CD8+, and reduced level of CD8+, when compared with pre-chemotherapy values, with higher levels of CD4+ and CD4+/CD8+ ratio, and lower level of CD8+ in TPF group than in DF group (p < 0.05). Multivariate CRA revealed that the independent factors for prognosis of oral carcinoma (OC) were tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage and lymph node metastasis.Conclusion: These results indicate that TFP regimen improves clinical efficacy and immune function in patients with advanced OSCC

Determining the Effectiveness of Graphic-aided Dynamic Message Signs in Work Zone

Portable changeable message signs (PCMSs) have been employed in highway work zones as an innovative temporary traffic control (TTC) device in the United Stated for many years. The traditional message format on a PCMS is text-based, which has been found to have several limitations in recent studies, such as confusing drivers and delaying their responses during driving, being difficult to read for older drivers and non-English-speaking drivers, and having a short range of legibility. The use of graphic-aided messages on PCMSs has many advantages over text-based PCMSs based on a number of previous laboratory simulation experiments. This research project used field experiments and driver surveys to determine the effectiveness of a graphic-aided PCMS on reducing vehicle speed and drivers' acceptance of utilizing a graphic-aided PCMS in the upstream of a one-lane two-way rural highway work zone. Field experiment were conducted to compare the effectiveness of text PCMS, graphic-aided PCMS, and graphic PCMS on reducing vehicle speed in a highway work zone in Kansas , and to develop regression models of the relationship between mean vehicle speed and distance under three PCMS conditions. Driver surveys were conducted to evaluate drivers’ opinions on the implementation of a graphicaided PCMS in the highway work zone. The findings showed that 1) using a text, a graphic-aided, and a graphic PCMS resulted in a mean vehicle speed reduction of 13%, 10%, and 17%, respectively; 2) using a graphic-aided PCMS reduced mean vehicle speed more effectively than using a text PCMS from 1,475 ft to 1,000 ft in the upstream of a work zone; using a graphic PCMS reduced mean vehicle speed more effectively than using a text PCMS from 1,475 ft in the upstream of the work zone to the location of the second TTC sign (W20-4 sign); 3) the majority of drivers understood the work zone and flagger graphics and believed the graphics drew their attention more to the work zone traffic conditions; and 4) more drivers preferred the information to be presented in the graphic-aided and graphic formats if the graphic-aided and graphic PCMSs were available

Deformable Siamese Attention Networks for Visual Object Tracking

Siamese-based trackers have achieved excellent performance on visual object tracking. However, the target template is not updated online, and the features of the target template and search image are computed independently in a Siamese architecture. In this paper, we propose Deformable Siamese Attention Networks, referred to as SiamAttn, by introducing a new Siamese attention mechanism that computes deformable self-attention and cross-attention. The self attention learns strong context information via spatial attention, and selectively emphasizes interdependent channel-wise features with channel attention. The cross-attention is capable of aggregating rich contextual inter-dependencies between the target template and the search image, providing an implicit manner to adaptively update the target template. In addition, we design a region refinement module that computes depth-wise cross correlations between the attentional features for more accurate tracking. We conduct experiments on six benchmarks, where our method achieves new state of-the-art results, outperforming the strong baseline, SiamRPN++ [24], by 0.464->0.537 and 0.415->0.470 EAO on VOT 2016 and 2018. Our code is available at: https://github.com/msight-tech/research-siamattn.Comment: CVPR 2020, with code available at: https://github.com/msight-tech/research-siamatt

Albumin Binding Function: The Potential Earliest Indicator for Liver Function Damage

Background. Currently there is no indicator that can evaluate actual liver lesion for early stages of viral hepatitis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cirrhosis. Aim of this study was to investigate if albumin binding function could better reflect liver function in these liver diseases. Methods. An observational study was performed on 193 patients with early NAFLD, viral hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Cirrhosis patients were separated according to Child-Pugh score into A, B, and C subgroup. Albumin metal ion binding capacity (Ischemia-modified albumin transformed, IMAT) and fatty acid binding capacity (total binding sites, TBS) were detected. Results. Both IMAT and TBS were significantly decreased in patients with NAFLD and early hepatitis. In hepatitis group, they declined prior to changes of liver enzymes. IMAT was significantly higher in cirrhosis Child-Pugh class A group than hepatitis patients and decreased in Child-Pugh class B and class C patients. Both IMAT/albumin and TBS/albumin decreased significantly in hepatitis and NAFLD group patients. Conclusions. This is the first study to discover changes of albumin metal ion and fatty acid binding capacities prior to conventional biomarkers for liver damage in early stage of liver diseases. They may become potential earliest sensitive indicators for liver function evaluation

Giant Second-Harmonic Generation Response and Large Band Gap in the Partially Fluorinated Mid-Infrared Oxide RbTeMo2O8F

Strong second-harmonic generation (SHG) and a wide band gap are two crucial but often conflicting parameters that must be optimized for practical nonlinear optical (NLO) materials. We report herein the first d0-transition-metal (TM) tellurite with half of the d0-TM-octahedra partially fluorinated, namely, quinary RbTeMo2O8F, which exhibits giant SHG responses (27 times that of KH2PO4 (KDP) and 2.2 times that of KTiOPO4 (KTP) with 1064 and 2100 nm laser radiation, respectively), the largest SHG values among all reported metal tellurites. RbTeMo2O8F also possesses a large band gap (3.63 eV), a wide optical transparency window (0.34-5.40 μm), and a significant birefringence (Δn = 0.263 at 546 nm). Theoretical calculations and crystal structure analysis demonstrate that the outstanding SHG responses can be definitively attributed to the uniform alignment of the polarized [MoO5F]/[MoO6] octahedra and the seesaw-like [TeO4], and the consequent favorable summative polarization of the three distinct SHG-active polyhedra, both induced by partial fluorine substitution on the [MoO6] octahedra.This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 51432006), Ministry of Education of China for Changjiang Innovation Research Team (no. IRT14R23), Ministry of Education and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs for 111 Project (no. B13025), and the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. M.G.H. thanks the Australian Research Council for support (DP170100411)