Lane Change Control Combined with Ramp Metering: A Strategy to Manage Delays at On-Ramp Merging Sections

Control measures at merging locations aimed at either the mainline traffic or on-ramp traffic do not lead to a fairness in the distribution of total delay across the two streams. This paper presents a control strategy of combining a lane change control with a ramp metering system at motorway merges. The control strategy presents the opportunity to control the delays incurred at the two traffic streams of the merge. An optimization problem is formulated for a multilane motorway with an on-ramp with the aim to minimize the total travel time of the system. The proposed strategy is tested using an incentive-based lane-specific traffic flow model. Results revealed a 17% reduction in the total travel time due to the proposed strategy. Moreover, it was shown that the distribution of delays over the mainline and on-ramp could be controlled via the proposed strategy. The performance of the combined control was also compared to the individual control measures. It was observed that the individual control measures (lane change only and ramp metering only) lead to high delays on either the mainline or on-ramp compared to the combined control, where the balance between the delay for the drivers on the mainline and on-ramp could be regulated. The combined lane change and ramp metering control presents opportunities for the road authorities to manage the total delay distribution across the two traffic streams.

Religious celibacy brings kin-selected benefits

The influence of inclusive fitness interests on the evolution of human institutions remains unclear. Religious celibacy constitutes an especially puzzling institution, often deemed maladaptive. Here, we present sociodemographic data from an agropastoralist Buddhist population in western China, where parents sometimes sent a son to the monastery. We find that men with a monk brother father more children, and grandparents with a monk son have more grandchildren, suggesting that the practice is adaptive. We develop a model of celibacy to elucidate the inclusive fitness costs and benefits associated with this behaviour. We show that a minority of sons can be favoured to be celibate if this increases their brothers’ reproductive success, but only if the decision is under parental, rather than individual, control. These conditions apply to monks in our study site. Inclusive fitness considerations appear to play a key role in shaping parental preferences to adopt this cultural practice.

Conclusion

Privacy will inevitably come into tension with other values that good societies should care about. This book intentionally has relatively little to say about those other values, because its goal has been to make the case for privacy on the occasion of its supposed death. We cannot appropriately weigh privacy against other values if we have little idea why it matters. To recap: Privacy is the degree to which human information neither is known nor used. Human information confers power over humans, and we should think about it in terms of the rules that govern human information—instrumental rules that promote human values like human identity, political freedom, and consumer protection. We should also start treating privacy as a fundamental right—not a right of individual control to be bartered away but one with social dimensions and that protects the most vulnerable among us. That’s why privacy matters.

New Agoraphobia: Reclaiming Controllability in a Society of Total Surveillance

<p>Increasingly ubiquitous forms of surveillance networks and methods are becoming commonplace in today’s societies. While their application is rational and for the most part beneficial their presence effects the perception of space, eroding margins of privacy, increasing pressure on public space, and in some cases perpetuating unjustifiable feelings of persecution and mental unrest. These consequences reduce individual control over one’s environment and furthermore represent an instance of a type of space itself creating anxieties, similarly to the onset of agoraphobia in the 1860’s. Applying a tripartite design approach of three different scales to a hypothetical scenario of an escalated total surveillance society in an urban setting leads to an exploration of physical space and the spatialisations of power and emotion in the issues of overexposure, crowding, and loss of control. Through the resulting designs it is demonstrated how an informed application of thresholds, materiality, and physically reconfigurable environments in built form can allow for instances of relief and grounding, the gesture such a relief provides itself also embodies intent and reaction, furthering the physical with a symbolic and psychosocial response.</p>

New Agoraphobia: Reclaiming Controllability in a Society of Total Surveillance

<p>Increasingly ubiquitous forms of surveillance networks and methods are becoming commonplace in today’s societies. While their application is rational and for the most part beneficial their presence effects the perception of space, eroding margins of privacy, increasing pressure on public space, and in some cases perpetuating unjustifiable feelings of persecution and mental unrest. These consequences reduce individual control over one’s environment and furthermore represent an instance of a type of space itself creating anxieties, similarly to the onset of agoraphobia in the 1860’s. Applying a tripartite design approach of three different scales to a hypothetical scenario of an escalated total surveillance society in an urban setting leads to an exploration of physical space and the spatialisations of power and emotion in the issues of overexposure, crowding, and loss of control. Through the resulting designs it is demonstrated how an informed application of thresholds, materiality, and physically reconfigurable environments in built form can allow for instances of relief and grounding, the gesture such a relief provides itself also embodies intent and reaction, furthering the physical with a symbolic and psychosocial response.</p>

La vulnerabilità come “ritorno del rimosso” e la nuova domanda di senso durante la pandemia da Covid-19

The great leap forward of medicine in the twentieth century contributed to the myth of the repression of vulnerability accompanied by the illusion of individual control and self-determination. However, epidemics, like major natural disasters, have continued to act as elements capable of upsetting scientific optimism. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its uncertain causes and unpredictable effects, has led to authentic demythologisation and caused a “return of the repressed”: a feeling of vulnerability along with dramatic awareness of our mortality. This phenomenon has been accompanied by a re-emerging demand for meaning, which has led to a more direct confrontation with the drama of suffering and the need for a personal relationship with the sacred, finally rediscovering the public dimension of prayer. Firstly, the article outlines in its essential features the ambiguity of the pre-pandemic cultural horizon. Secondly, it analyses the characteristics of the rise of a new sensibility, by referring also to the notion of prayer as a “political issue” coined by Jean Daniélou.

Claustrophobia: Totalitarianism and the Great Depression, 1920–1936

This chapter focuses on two of the three-tiered political identities, specifically the power of individual control (localism) and the force of nationalism. After the Great War, the 1920s roared with the possibilities of wealth, pleasure, the good life. Women seemed to be at the center of things: the “flapper,” homemaker, and female suffrage worlds. Yet national ambitions of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union were put on the fast track of totalitarianism working by way of fascism, monarchical dictatorship, and communism. The policies of those four placed thousands of people in “iron houses” to be suffocated, or, more likely, executed. To deal with these tragedies, the long shot seemed perhaps to be the wide-ranging individualism of Lu Xun, the “duende” of Garcia Lorca, and the initiative of countless others to try to exorcise nationalism run amok.