Augmented reality "AR" is a promising paradigm that can provide users with real-time, high-quality visualization of a wide variety of information. In AR, virtual objects are added to the real-world view in a real time. Using the AR technology can offer a very realistic environment for driving enhancement as well as driving performance testing under different scenarios. This can be achieved by adding virtual objects (people, vehicles, hazards, and other objects) to the normal view while driving in a safe controlled environment. In this dissertation, the feasibility of adapting the AR technology into traffic engineering was investigated. Two AR systems; AR Vehicle "ARV" system and Offline AR Simulator "OARSim" system were built. The systems' outcomes as well as the on-the-road driving under the AR were evaluated. In evaluating systems' outcomes, systems were successfully able to duplicate real scenes and generate new scenes without any visual inconsistency. In evaluating on-the-road driving under the AR, drivers' distance judgment, speed judgment, and level of comfort while driving were evaluated. In addition, our systems were used to conduct two traffic engineering studies; left-turn maneuver at un-signalized intersection, and horizontal visibility blockage when following a light truck vehicle. The results from this work supported the validity of our AR systems to be used as a surrogate to the field-testing for transportation research.

In recent years, there has been a pronounced (re-)turn to questions of ontology, matter, and realism in the humanities and social sciences. What all these theoretical formations have in common is their profound challenge to human exceptionalism. Taken together, these approaches have productively been described as constituting a “nonhuman turn.” This article is a theoretical exploration of the relationship between the intellectual and political practice of Cultural Studies on the one hand and the nonhuman turn on the other. For this purpose, it brings both “into encounter” (Donna Haraway), investigating points of affinity, tension, and compatibility. The essay argues that such a theoretical encounter could prove to be tremendously fruitful, both intellectually and politically, and that Cultural Studies should thus take a genuine interest in these new approaches, engage with them, put them to the test, and, when needed, “translate” and “re-articulate” them. The result could be a Cultural Studies for the Anthropocene which would have a lot to contribute to the critical (cultural/political/social/economic) struggles being fought today.

In the United States, there are two schemes of operating traffic signal controls for permitted protected left turns (PPLT) namely the traditional five-section head system (known as Dog-House) and the flashing yellow arrow system (FYA). Past studies have agreed that these controls lead to decrease the average delay per left turn vehicle, decrease the protected green time, increase the left turn capacity, and enhance the intersection overall operation. The flashing yellow arrow (FYA) has been approved by the Federal Highway Administration as the national standard for the PPLT operations at signalized intersections. So, the Florida Department of Transportation also approved this new system and they are extensively replacing the traditional system with the new system on the area of Central Florida (Lin, et al, 2010). Both these systems have been used for a long time and there are some studies that evaluated these systems but there are limited number of projects that evaluated and/or compared between the two PPLT systems from the operational perspective. The main goal of this research is to study the characteristics of traffic operations and evaluate the effectiveness of the conversion from five-section head signal to the FYA treatments at 13 intersections located in Orlando, Florida. To reach this goal, detailed data collection efforts were conducted at 13 selected intersections in the central Florida area and appropriate statistical tests were conducted using the Minitab 17 Software. Statistical tests were attempted to fit different new regression models that correlate delay and left turn volumes as response variables against a set of independent variables that included permitted green time, opposing volume, percent of trucks, time gaps, speed, and land use type. In addition to fitting the data to regression models, these models were also analyzed for the purpose of detecting any significant differences between the five-section head treatment and FYA treatment. The statistical differences of converting the five-section head system to FYA system were discussed. The results in this thesis agreed with some of the previous studies and did not agree with others. In general, the flashing yellow arrow system was found to enhance the intersection operation, increase the number of left turn vehicles, and reduce the delay. Also, some suggestions and recommendations were made based on this study results.

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In 1895, French sociologist Gustave Le Bon proclaimed the era of crowds upon us, in his influential work, The Crowd. Le Bon's work was translated into English a year later, inspiring a number of similar works by American sociologists, and almost single-handedly creating the discipline of crowd psychology. Interest in the new masses was not limited to sociologists, however. Due to advances in transportation and communication technologies, and the rise of the city, the problem of "in the mass" came to pervade the atmosphere of America, at the turn of the twentieth-century. Thus, American writers also wrestled with the difficulty of representing this catch-all entity "crowd," often speculating about what the psychology of the crowd might mean for the future of democracy. But, whereas early crowd theory was overwhelmingly conservative in its depiction of the crowd mind as a site of primitive impulses, irrational emotions, and affective contagion, authors like Frank Norris and Sherwood Anderson, though largely ceding to this description, saw in the crowd the possibility for an entirely new social consistency. Contrary to sociological prescriptives designed to brace the individual against the imminent threat of crowd contagion, however, Norris and Anderson identify what contemporary theorist Roberto Esposito terms the "immunitary regime" as the true difficulty to overcome. For Esposito, the biopolitically engendered immunitary dispositif protects modern individuals from "a risky contiguity with the other, relieving them of every obligation toward the other and enclosing them once again in the shell of their own subjectivity" (Terms 49). It is this hard shell of subjectivity that Norris and Anderson attempt to break down in their works. In this way, the two authors represent a small segment of a genealogical thread in American fiction--one stretching from Whitman, to Steinbeck, and beyond--that takes a gambit on what Badiou calls the "communist hypothesis." Perhaps most importantly, though, the texts of Norris and Anderson demonstrate, either deliberately or otherwise, that such a gambit must preclude any recourse to substantialist notions of innate gregariousness, primitive sympathy, or herd instinct. Thus, while refusing to endorse the immunitarian paradigm as the final word on being-together, Norris and Anderson demonstrate how we must work and think through immunity to arrive at an adequate concept of collective life in the modern era. While other studies of the crowd or the masses often ask what the multitude stands for, in a metonymical or metaphorical register, this one asks how it is formed, how it functions, and what it could mean for the possibility of collective life in modernity. Similarly, whereas other studies often judge a particular representation of the crowd against a preformed model of what constitutes the properly political, the following study attempts to unearth the crowd's immanent possibilities to potentially change those very models. / English

The purpose of this study was to examine the following prosodic elements: speech rate, turn-taking latency, number of interruptions, and utterance duration across two groups' neurotypical and autistic young adults. Furthermore, the end goal of this study is to help provide a baseline and clinical application of prosodic differences between autistic and neurotypical adults. Speech samples were collected from 11 neurotypical and 11 autistic young adults from the ages of 18-26. Speech samples were recorded responses from a 10-minute interview between two research assistants and the autistic or neurotypical individual. Using Praat software, speech samples were analyzed and used to calculate speech rate, utterance duration, turn-taking latency, and the number of interruptions for each subject. Across the four prosodic elements, there were significant differences between the autistic and neurotypical groups. The neurotypical group exhibited significantly higher speech and interruption rates when compared to the autistic group. Whereas, the autistic group displayed longer turn-taking latency periods and longer utterance durations. Across all conditions, there were no significant difference between biological sex or effect of familiarity within the autistic and neurotypical groups. Results of this study provide clinicians and researchers a baseline of prosodic differences found between autistic and neurotypical individuals. Future research is needed to better understand how these findings might improve the assessment and treatment of autistic individuals.

Driving field experiment data were used to investigate lane changes in which a slow lead vehicle was present to: 1) characterize lane changes, 2) develop predictive models, 3) provide collision avoidance system (CAS) design guidelines. A total of 3,227 slow lead vehicle lane changes over 23,949 miles were completed by sixteen commuters. Two instrumented vehicles, a sedan and an SUV, were outfitted with video, sensor, and radar data systems that collected data in an unobtrusive manner. Results indicate that 37.2% of lane changes are slow lead vehicle lane changes, with a mean completion time of 6.3 s; most slow lead vehicle lane changes are leftward, rated low in urgency and severity. A stratified sample of 120 lane changes was selected to include a range of maneuvers. On the interstate, lane changes are performed less often, <i>t</i>(30) = 2.83, <i>p</i> = 0.008, with lower urgency ratings, <i>F</i>(1, 31) = 5.24, <i>p</i> = 0.05, as compared to highway lane changes, as interstates are designed for smooth flow. Drivers who usually drive sedans are more likely to make lane changes than drivers of SUVs, <i>X</i> ²⁺(1)= 99.6247, <i>p</i> < 0.0001, suggesting that driving style is maintained regardless of which experimental vehicle is driven. Turn signals are used 64% of the time but some drivers signal after the lane change starts. Of cases in which signals are not used, 70% of them are made with other vehicles nearby. Eyeglance analysis revealed that the forward view, rearview mirror, and left mirror are the most likely glance locations. There are also distinct eyeglance patterns for lane changing and baseline driving. Recommendations are to use forward view or mirror-based visual displays to indicate presence detection, and auditory displays for imminent warnings. The "vehicle + signal" logistic regression model is best overall since it takes advantage of the distance to the front and rear adjacent vehicle, forward time-to-collision (TTC), and turn signal activation. The use of additional regressors would also improve the model. Five design guidelines are included to aid in the development of CAS that are useable, safe, and integrated with other systems, given testing and development. / Ph. D.