Does the threat of disqualification deter drivers from speeding?

Road Safety Research Report, number 96, is available from the National Archives: Department for Transport, and can be accessed from the link below.It has long been recognised that driving speeds that are excessive and inappropriate to the conditions are a major contributory factor in road accidents, and a major issue for road safety. Restraining driving speeds has proved to be a difficult task, given the improvements over the years in both vehicle performance and road design. Within the traditional ‘three Es’ countermeasures of engineering, education and enforcement, recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of engineering measures designed to bring about speed reduction, but these tend to be restricted to specific parts of the road network. New technologies such as Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) offer considerable promise, but mainly in the medium or longer term. Similarly, educative efforts to induce attitude and behaviour change in this context are bearing fruit, yet this is a long-term rather than short-term project. For the foreseeable future, enforcement will remain the principal means of influencing speed, by setting speed limits and imposing sanctions on drivers who are caught exceeding them. The number of licence endorsements has increased enormously in recent years. However, over the same period the number of disqualifications resulting from ‘totting-up’ points has decreased. This would seem to indicate that many drivers who accumulate up to 11 penalty points are either acting as if deterred by the threat of disqualification, or are avoiding disqualification in some other way. The extent to which penalty points act as a deterrent for the benefit of road safety in general is therefore an important issue, and this report describes work that has been carried out to study this issue by TRL and Brunel University, under contract to the Department for Transport

Can DSM-5 Differentiate between Non-Pathological Possession and Dissociative Identity Disorder? A Case Study from an Afro-Brazilian Religion

The aim of this paper is to examine if the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5 are able to differentiate between non-pathological religious possession and dissociative identity disorder (DID). We use the case study of an individual who leads an Afro-Brazilian religious group (Umbanda), focusing on her personal development and possession experiences from early childhood to the present, spanning a period of over 40 years, and examine these data following DSM-5 criteria of DID (300.14). Her experiences of possession can be broken into two distinct stages. In the first (childhood and early adulthood), she displayed intrusive thoughts and a lack of control over possession states, which were associated with a heightened state of anxiety, loneliness, amnesia and family conflict (meeting all five criteria for DID). In the second stage (late 20s up to the present), she regularly experienced possession states, but felt in control of their onset and found them religiously meaningful. In this second stage, she only fulfilled three criteria for DID. We question the accuracy of diagnosing this individual with DID in her earlier life, and suggest that the DSM-5 criteria fail to address the ambiguity of affect surrounding possession experiences (positive at the individual level, negative at the interpersonal), and lack a clearer acknowledgement of the prevalence of possession and other unusual experiences in general populations

Harvesting, coupling and control of single exciton coherences in photonic waveguide antennas

We perform coherent non-linear spectroscopy of individual excitons strongly confined in single InAs quantum dots (QDs). The retrieval of their intrinsically weak four-wave mixing (FWM) response is enabled by a one-dimensional dielectric waveguide antenna. Compared to a similar QD embedded in bulk media, the FWM detection sensitivity is enhanced by up to four orders of magnitude, over a broad operation bandwidth. Three-beam FWM is employed to investigate coherence and population dynamics within individual QD transitions. We retrieve their homogenous dephasing in a presence of spectral wandering. Two-dimensional FWM reveals off-resonant F\"orster coupling between a pair of distinct QDs embedded in the antenna. We also detect a higher order QD non-linearity (six-wave mixing) and use it to coherently control the FWM transient. Waveguide antennas enable to conceive multi-color coherent manipulation schemes of individual emitters.Comment: 7 pages, 8 Figure

Impact of phonons on dephasing of individual excitons in deterministic quantum dot microlenses

Optimized light-matter coupling in semiconductor nanostructures is a key to understand their optical properties and can be enabled by advanced fabrication techniques. Using in-situ electron beam lithography combined with a low-temperature cathodoluminescence imaging, we deterministically fabricate microlenses above selected InAs quantum dots (QDs) achieving their efficient coupling to the external light field. This enables to perform four-wave mixing micro-spectroscopy of single QD excitons, revealing the exciton population and coherence dynamics. We infer the temperature dependence of the dephasing in order to address the impact of phonons on the decoherence of confined excitons. The loss of the coherence over the first picoseconds is associated with the emission of a phonon wave packet, also governing the phonon background in photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Using theory based on the independent boson model, we consistently explain the initial coherence decay, the zero-phonon line fraction, and the lineshape of the phonon-assisted PL using realistic quantum dot geometries

Antireflective photonic structure for coherent nonlinear spectroscopy of single magnetic quantum dots

This work presents epitaxial growth and optical spectroscopy of CdTe quantum dots (QDs) in (Cd,Zn,Mg)Te barriers placed on the top of (Cd,Zn,Mg)Te distributed Bragg reflector. The formed photonic mode in our half-cavity structure permits to enhance the local excitation intensity and extraction efficiency of the QD photoluminescence, while suppressing the reflectance within the spectral range covering the QD transitions. This allows to perform coherent, nonlinear, resonant spectroscopy of individual QDs. The coherence dynamics of a charged exciton is measured via four-wave mixing, with the estimated dephasing time $T_2=(210\,\pm\,40)$ ps. The same structure contains QDs doped with single Mn$^{2+}$ ions, as detected in photoluminescence spectra. Our work therefore paves the way toward investigating and controlling an exciton coherence coupled, via $s$,$p$-$d$ exchange interaction, with an individual spin of a magnetic dopant.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Exploring the needs of military children in public schools: What school psychologists need to know

Although research has been published documenting the increased risk for negative social, emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes of military-connected students, no research prior to this study has given voice to these students and explored their experiences and needs. Five military-connected high school students participated in a focus group exploring what their lived experiences are in the context of living in a military-connected home and what they wish their schools knew to better support them. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data and six themes emerged from the discussion: the emotional burden these students carry, distance they feel from their parent serving, pressure to succeed, the desire for visibility within their schools, going home to more than homework, and the instability and unknow of military life. These themes can provide a framework for schools to develop a multi-tiered system of support to ensure military-connected students are seen, heard, and supported at every transition. School psychologists can utilize these themes to advocate for military-connected students and support their needs with their unique knowledge of both the psychological and academic demands placed on student

Thermal design and characterization of a modular integrated liquid cooled 1200 V-35 A SiC MOSFET bi-directional switch

The aim of this work is the thermal design of a modular direct liquid cooled package for 1200 V–35 A SiC power MOSFETs, in order to take full advantage of the high power density and high frequency performance of these devices, in the development of a modular integrated solution for power converters. An accurate electro-thermal fluid dynamic model is set up and validated by thermal characterization on a prototype; numerical models have been used to study the internal temperature distribution and to propose further optimization

BPS Quivers of Five-Dimensional SCFTs, Topological Strings and q-Painlevé Equations

We study the discrete flows generated by the symmetry group of the BPS quivers for Calabi–Yau geometries describing five-dimensional superconformal quantum field theories on a circle. These flows naturally describe the BPS particle spectrum of such theories and at the same time generate bilinear equations of q-difference type which, in the rank one case, are q-Painlevé equations. The solutions of these equations are shown to be given by grand canonical topological string partition functions which we identify with τ-functions of the cluster algebra associated to the quiver. We exemplify our construction in the case corresponding to five-dimensional SU(2) pure super Yang–Mills and Nf= 2 on a circle

Management of Posterior Reversible Syndrome in Preeclamptic Women

Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a neurological syndrome associated with a number of conditions including preeclampsia. It is characterized by seizures, alteration of consciousness, visual disturbances, and symmetric white matter abnormalities, typically in the posterior parietooccipital regions of the cerebral hemispheres, at computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MRI). We report three new cases of PRES in preeclamptic patients and describe the management of these patients. We present a brief review of other cases in the literature, with particular attention to the anesthetic management