Feasibility of Unconditional Transit Signal Priority Considering Delay Savings at Signalized Intersections: A Case Study of Dalian BRT Line No.1

AbstractActive transit signal priority (TSP) is a useful tool to remove or minimize control delay for buses at signalized intersections and consequently improve the performance of bus service. Conditional TSP has been proofed to be an effective measure with fewer impacts to non-prioritized traffic, and aroused increasingly research interests and implementation in European and North American cities nowadays. However, the implementation of conditional TSP requires a sophisticated mechanism for examining the schedule deviation of priority required buses, as well as scanning traffic operational conditions at network level. By contrast, unconditional TSP is a less costly and easier measure for implementation, because it gives priority to every required bus without considering its schedule deviation. The critical argument on unconditional TSP is its adverse impacts to non-prioritized traffic, particularly during peak hours. To determine the threshold for implementing unconditional TSP, in this paper, theoretical analysis based on signal display graphs of differential TSP granting strategies was undertaken to estimate delay savings and increments for prioritized and non- prioritized approaches respectively. In the next step, Dalian BRT line was taken as an example to verify the feasibility of unconditional TSP based on the proposed theory. Results show that unconditional TSP is feasible during off-peak hours, while for peak hours, feasibility of unconditional TSP mainly depended on the traffic volume of each approach

The Analysis Method of Capacity and Delay on Entrance Lane with Road-side Bus Lane

In order to reveal the traffic characteristics at signalized intersections with road-side bus lane, the analysis methods of capacity and delay at entrance lane were studied. Selecting a signalized intersection with road-side bus lane as investigation location, several traffic parameters were surveyed. Considering the traffic conflict between right-turn vehicles and through buses in this kind of entrance lane and based on the Gap Acceptance Theory, the calculation model of saturation flow rate, which is a key parameter both in the formulas of capacity and delay at signalized intersection mentioned in HCM2000, was improved. Using the investigation data, the calculation results of the traditional model and improved model were compared and analyzed. The research indicated that, comparing with common entrance lane, the capacity of right-turn lane at the entrance lane with bus lane should be reduced, and the travelling delay of bus lane and its inside adjacent lane should be increased. The degree of these effects is related to bus volume, right-turn volume and headway between buses

Topological classification of intrinsic 3D superconductors using anomalous surface construction

Intrinsic topological superconductors have protected gapless Majorana modes, bound and/or propagating, at the natural boundaries of the sample, without requiring field, defect, or heterostructure. We establish the complete classification/construction of intrinsic topological superconductors jointly protected by point-group and time-reversal symmetries in three dimensions. This is obtained from enumerating distinct ways for stacking $n$th-order irreducible building blocks, minimal anomalous surface states of $n$th-order topological superconductors. Particularly, our method provides a unified description of possible surface anomalies away from high-symmetry points/lines in terms of the homotopy group of the surface mass field.Comment: 43 pages, 9 figures, 4 table

Numerical Analysis of Discrete Switching Prey-Predator Model for Integrated Pest Management

The switching discrete prey-predator model concerning integrated pest management has been proposed, and the switches are guided by the economic threshold (ET). To begin with, the regular and virtual equilibria of switching system have been discussed and the key parameter bifurcation diagrams for the existence of equilibria have been proposed, which reveal the three different regions of equilibria. Besides, numerical bifurcation analyses show that the switching discrete system may have complicated dynamics behavior including chaos and the coexistence of multiple attractors. Finally, the effects of key parameters on the switching frequencies and switching times are discussed and the sensitivity analysis of varying parameter values for mean switching times has also been given. The results proved that economic threshold (ET) and the growth rate (α) were the key parameters for pest control

Effects of phosphorus on chemical forms of Cd in plants of four spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) cultivars differing in Cd accumulation

In order to clarify how cadmium (Cd) chemical forms in planta relate to the genotype difference in Cd accumulation of spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.), two low-Cd and two high-Cd cultivars were compared under a hydroponic experiment with two concentrations of Cd (8.98 or 44.71 μmol Cd L(-1)). The concentrations of phosphorus in the hydroponic system were also adjusted to two levels (0.5 and 1.0 mmol L(-1)) to investigate the influence of phosphorus on the forms and accumulation of Cd in the tested cultivars. Average Cd concentrations in shoots were 8.50-10.06 mg kg(-1) for high-Cd cultivars and 6.11-6.64 mg kg(-1) for low-Cd cultivars a under lower Cd treatment and were as high as 24.41-31.35 mg kg(-1) and 19.65-25.76 mg kg(-1), respectively, under a higher treatment. Phosphorus significantly decreased Cd accumulation in the tested cultivars, and the effect had superiority over the cultivar alternation under higher Cd stress. Cadmium in the NaCl-extractable fraction of the plant tissues showed the greatest relationship to genotype difference of Cd accumulation. The difference in the capacity to binding Cd into F HAc, F HCl, or F Residue was another important mechanism involving in the genotype difference in Cd accumulation of spinach. Among them, average proportion of Cd in F HAc in low-Cd cultivars was higher than that in high-Cd cultivars in association with the effect of phosphorus

Tribological Property Study of Xanthate Acetic Ester in Hydrogenated Oil

Xanthate was used as an initial reactant to synthesis two kinds of novel xanthate-containing acetic ester additives (HX and OX), and a four-ball machine was used as tribological tester to appraise their tribological behaviors in hydrogenated oil (10cst). The test results indicated that the as-synthesized additives possess good extreme pressure, antiwear and antifriction properties. The shorter carbon chains acetic ester, the better tribological properties the higher sulfur content. The action mechanism was estimated by analysis of the XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and SEM (scanning electron microscope) results of the worn steel ball surface, and the results illustrated that the protective film containing ferric sulfide and ferric sulfate compound was formed on the worn steel ball surface by xanthate acetic ester , and the protective film has good tribological properties

Differential miRNA expression in Rehmannia glutinosa plants subjected to continuous cropping

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The productivity of the medicinally significant perennial herb <it>Rehmannia glutinosa </it>is severely affected after the first year of cropping. While there is some information available describing the physiological and environmental causes of this yield decline, there is as yet no data regarding the changes in gene expression which occur when the species is continuously cropped.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using a massively parallel (Solexa) DNA sequencing platform, it was possible to identify and quantify the abundance of a large number of <it>R. glutinosa </it>miRNAs. We contrasted the miRNA content of first year crop plants with that of second year crop ones, and were able to show that of 89 conserved (belonging to 25 families) and six novel miRNAs (six families), 29 of the former and three of the latter were differentially expressed. The three novel miRNAs were predicted to target seven genes, and the 29 conserved ones 308 genes. The potential targets of 32 of these differentially expressed miRNAs involved in the main transcription regulation, plant development and signal transduction. A functional analysis of the differentially expressed miRNAs suggested that several of the proposed targets could be directly or indirectly responsible for the development of the tuberous root.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have compared differential miRNAs expression in the first year crop (FP) <it>R. glutinosa </it>plants and second year crop (SP) ones. The outcome identifies some potential leads for understanding the molecular basis of the processes underlying the difficulty of maintaining the productivity of continuously cropped <it>R. glutinosa</it>.</p

Test-Time Training for Semantic Segmentation with Output Contrastive Loss

Although deep learning-based segmentation models have achieved impressive performance on public benchmarks, generalizing well to unseen environments remains a major challenge. To improve the model's generalization ability to the new domain during evaluation, the test-time training (TTT) is a challenging paradigm that adapts the source-pretrained model in an online fashion. Early efforts on TTT mainly focus on the image classification task. Directly extending these methods to semantic segmentation easily experiences unstable adaption due to segmentation's inherent characteristics, such as extreme class imbalance and complex decision spaces. To stabilize the adaptation process, we introduce contrastive loss (CL), known for its capability to learn robust and generalized representations. Nevertheless, the traditional CL operates in the representation space and cannot directly enhance predictions. In this paper, we resolve this limitation by adapting the CL to the output space, employing a high temperature, and simplifying the formulation, resulting in a straightforward yet effective loss function called Output Contrastive Loss (OCL). Our comprehensive experiments validate the efficacy of our approach across diverse evaluation scenarios. Notably, our method excels even when applied to models initially pre-trained using domain adaptation methods on test domain data, showcasing its resilience and adaptability.\footnote{Code and more information could be found at~ \url{https://github.com/dazhangyu123/OCL}