text:
Orange County Coastkeeper Adds Jacqueline Neumann to Legal Team
Graduate of Whittier Law School signs on to fight water pollution
ORANGE COUNTY, March 1, 2016 – Orange County Coastkeeper, an organization that protects fishable, swimmable and drinkable waters in Orange County, dives into 2016 with Jacqueline Neumann stepping into its legal department. With the addition of Neumann, Coastkeeper's legal department now features two full-time attorneys.
Prior to joining Coastkeeper, Neumann earned her bachelors degree at the University of Arizona and her law degree from Whittier Law School. She prepared herself for this opportunity by completing Whittier's Environmental Law Concentration, a competitive program that trains the next generation of environmental attorneys.
A welcome addition to the successful Coastkeeper legal team, Neumann assists Senior Staff Attorney Colin Kelly in enforcement proceedings, compliance, and advocating Coastkeeper's position at regional meetings.
Kelly runs Coastkeeper's Environmental Law Clinic at Whittier Law School, which provides real-world experience in environmental advocacy to a select group of local law students. These students learn the intricacies of environmental law and how local, state and federal regulations impact the environment and the people who rely on and enjoy inland and coastal areas.
A pillar of the legal department, Kelly's stormwater enforcement program has resulted in over 50 cases and a 100 percent success rate. Coastkeeper looks forward to another successful year of enforcement and advocacy with Neumann joining the charge.
For more information on Orange County Coastkeeper, staff members and its work in Orange County, please visit www.coastkeeper.org.


Though the deadline for complying with significant reforms of the affordable care act has come and gone, payer organizations across the country are still adapting to the newfound complexities of the evolving industry. Exercise of greater choice by consumers in decisions related to their health coverage and care is pushing fundamental changes in how front- and back-end processes are run. The efficiency and effectiveness of core operations are now a strategic advantage, not merely an instrument for saving cost. To meet the challenges of dramatic change and remain competitive, payers must be able to handle increased capacity while maintaining the quality and performance standards that their members increasingly expect. More specifically, customer and claims support systems, staff, and marketing strategies all have to evolve and grow to support the millions of Americans required to have insurance.
Keeping existing members happy is just as important as gaining new ones. Customers facing antiquated processing, slow claims turnaround times, or poor customer service are likely to choose another carrier when they are given an easily accessible choice. Sophisticated consumer interface technologies and analytics solutions that promise to keep your customers happy have yet to fully realize their potential as a strategic advantage. Enterprises need the ability to embed these solutions in processes that are optimized for peak performance in a targeted way.
By interconnecting business processes in a continuum from the start of the value chain through the end product or desired outcome, organizations break down traditional geographic and departmental silos that create business value leakages and hinder progress.
Looking at best-in-class performance not just within but also across industries to identify improvements in process steps helps exceed benchmarks of highly effective competitors. Targeting improvement initiatives on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that maximize effectiveness helps organizations focus energy and resources to reach peak performance and generate ROI faster.
From enrollment to communications, payers should solidify their near-term staffing plans to ensure ongoing quality control, increased membership variability, team readiness, and talent retention. Conducting a comprehensive evaluation of process performance will root out any weaknesses in existing systems, making it easier to eliminate inefficiencies and boost the performance of existing teams.
GBS has resulted in improved scalability, lower costs, and optimized processes by industrializing operations across processes for leading healthcare companies.
But even with all this, it is difficult for any individual payer to accurately estimate just how much growth it needs to prepare for—and just how fast it needs to move—to make additional capacity available. Organizations looking to out-compete must define and adopt target operating models that provide the agility to respond to changes in volume and nature of demand faster than the competition. Global Business Services (GBS)—an evolution of shared services with a larger global footprint serving multiple functions—is a proven operating model that streamlines processes under a unified operating entity by decoupling business functions (combined with the advanced use of metrics, data-driven process management, specialized HR/organizational design, and effective IT). GBS has resulted in improved scalability, lower costs, and optimized processes by industrializing operations across processes for leading healthcare companies. These services can enable better decision making and nimbler pursuit of growth and adaptation to market contraction.
A wide range of partners, hardware, and software systems can support claims management, staff training, and other critical functions. With so much change and uncertainty, payers need to carefully select specific partners and technologies that support the continuity and stability of process, as well as those that help hold the organization accountable to critical and overarching change management timelines. Payers must also ensure leadership oversight in all partner and technology investments and look for opportunities to leverage convergence trends that help everyone in an organization increase transparency and capability.
Once a robust foundation of optimized processes is in place, technology solutions tailored to combine with the backbone of existing legacy systems and data can boost system and process performance without disrupting business as usual with the burden of a large-scale and costly change effort. Lightweight solutions such as robotic automation generate significant savings and improved quality and accuracy. Automation robots are cost-effective for implementing and practical for adopting since they can be easily deployed to work with any existing IT infrastructure and are flexible to be rapidly customized for any changes in process—a blessing in today's volatile business environment.
Most Americans have little experience choosing between varied coverage models or understanding the shared risk on which the health insurance pricing structure is based. To attract new customers, payers should reconfigure offerings to meet the questions, concerns, and priorities of this new target market. These portfolio adjustments will require a dramatic shift from business-to-business sales and communication strategies to business-to-consumer models.
Payers should be prepared to use advanced micro-targeting techniques and analytics to determine target customer profiles and assess the value and likely outcomes of new business strategy decisions. Social media monitoring will likely be used to help companies gather information on their target audience, pinpoint valuable market differentiators, and then help identify the best place to find target customers.
This has been authored by Sohil Goorha, Vice President Sales and Business Development, Healthcare at Genpact. This article was originally featured in Healthcare Payer News in July 2014.


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A new adaptive cruise control strategy and its stabilization effect on traffic flow
Chaoru Lu1 &
Arvid Aakre1
Connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technologies are likely to be gradually implemented over time. In this paper, an adaptive cruise control, named Smart Driver Model (SDM), is proposed to describe the autonomous vehicles flow. The stability criteria is proposed for SDM to judge the stability of homogeneous traffic flow. Numerical simulations were conducted to verify the results of the theoretical analysis. Single-lane vehicle dynamics in a traffic stream with connected and autonomous vehicles are simulated by varying model parameters. Simulation results are consistent with the results of linear stability analysis. As a result, a set of parameters is proposed to investigate the stabilization effect of the proposed model on homogeneous traffic flow considering realistic driving cycle and cut-in condition. By simulating a platoon with a lead vehicle which follows the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), we find out that the proposed model can stabilize the traffic flow with proposed parameters. The results from simulation and linear stability analysis show that SDM outperforms the IDM-ACC and the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover in terms of stabilization effect on homogeneous traffic flow. The simulation result shows that the SDM-equipped vehicles are able to stabilize the homogeneous traffic flow under cut-in condition.
Connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technologies have gained a lot of attention all over the world because of its potential in improving safety and congestion of the road transportation system. In particular, adaptive cruise control (ACC) is one of the most important CAV technologies that can enhance driving comfort, reduce driving errors, improve safety, increase traffic capacity and reduce fuel consumption [1].
Existing ACC methods are categorized into optimization-based ACCs, artificial intelligence technique-based ACCs and rule-based ACCs. Considering the fuel efficiency, signalized intersection, and road geometry, several optimization-based ACCs have been developed [2,3,4,5,6]. Naranjo et al. [7] proposed an ACC based on artificial intelligence techniques. Moreover, existing rule-based ACCs are based on three main headway selection policies: Constant Space-Headway (CSH), Constant Time-Headway (CTH) and Variable Time-Headway (VTH) [8]. CSH is not string stable and not suitable for ACC systems [9,10,11]. Among these three headway selection policies, the ACCs based on CTH are most closely related to normal manual car-following behavior. Moreover, Swaroop et al. [12] pointed out that the control design and stabilization challenges of the CTH-based car following criteria are significantly easier for other rule-based car-following models. As a result, in this paper, we focus on rule-based ACCs with constant time headway policies.
Several rule-based ACC methods have been proposed in the literature. Davis [13] proposed an ACC that automatically maintained a safe distance and minimized the speed difference between the following vehicle and its immediate preceding vehicle. Kesting et al. [14] proposed an ACC based on intelligent driver model (IDM) and inherited its intuitive parameters proposed by Treiber et al. [15]. The ACC proposed by Kesting et al. partially eliminates the unrealistic behavior of IDM in cut-in situations. However, since the ACC proposed by Kesting et al. inherits the instability of IDM under homogenous traffic flow condition [16]. Moreover, an ACC, which is proprietary to Nissan, was described by Shladover et al. [17]. Since this ACC is simplified representation for computation efficiency in simulation, it is not able to describe the ACC car-following behavior in the field test. Consequently, Milanés and Shladover [18] developed an ACC system to match the experimental result obtained from the production vehicle road tests. However, their research did not consider the stability in multi-car following scenarios.
By modeling ACC-equipped vehicles' behavior, the impact of ACC on traffic flow is widely studied [10, 19, 20]. Davis showed that the traffic congestions are not formed when the ACC-equipped vehicle reaches 20% [13]. Kesting et al. reported that the traffic congestion was completely eliminated when the share of the ACC-equipped vehicle reaches 25% [14]. Jerath and Brennan reported that the highway capacity drastically increases when the percentage of the ACC-equipped vehicle approaches 100% [21]. Moreover, by simulating a mixed traffic consisting of ACC-equipped and manually driven vehicles, Jiang et al. found that the introduction of ACC-equipped vehicles would enhance the free flow stability [22]. Yuan et al. investigated the transition probability from the synchronized flow to congestion and pointed out that ACC-equipped vehicles enhance the traffic stability of synchronized flow [23].
Consequently, scholars paid a lot of attention to the stabilization effect of ACC-equipped vehicles on traffic flow. Darbha and Rajagopal [11] mathematically investigated the stability of an intelligent cruise control system with a constant time headway policy and provided a framework for designing cruise control laws. Liang and Peng [10] proposed a framework to analysis string-stability of a string with ACC-equipped vehicles and human-driven vehicles. Davis [24] investigated the effect of vehicle response time and delay on string stability of adaptive cruise control systems. Later, Davis [25] investigated the impact of mechanical response of the dynamics and string stability of a platoon of adaptive cruise control vehicles. Hu et al. [26] derived a stability criteria of a platoon of ACC-equipped vehicles with actuator lag and sensor delay. Considering different models with the technology-appropriate assumption, Talebpour and Mahmassani [16] proposed a framework to investigate the impact of the connected and autonomous vehicle on traffic flow stability. Moreover, Davis [25] investigated the impact of mechanical response on string stability of a platoon of ACC-equipped vehicles. Considering the delay, Xing et al. [27], Wang et al. [28] and Besselink and Johansson [29] proposed appropriate control strategies to enhance string stability of ACC-equipped vehicle platoon. Moreover, Li et al. [30] proposed an extended intelligent driver model and analyzed the stability against a small perturbation by use of the linear stability method for the proposed model on a single lane. They found that the traffic flow stability can be improved by increasing the proportion of the direct power cooperation of the preceding vehicle. Recently, Wen-Xing and Li-Dong [31] proposed two lemmas and one theorem as criteria to judge the stability of homogeneous autonomous vehicles flow.
Among existing studies, most of the existing rule-based adaptive cruise control strategies are derived based on the human driver models, such as Intelligent Driver Model [15], Full Velocity Difference Model [32] and Optimal Velocity Model [33]. These adaptive cruise control strategies may inherit the limitation of the human driver models, such as instability [16, 34] and unrealistic behavior [13, 15, 33]. In this paper, we propose a rule-based adaptive cruise control to improve the stability and behavior of Intelligent Driver Model [15]. The stabilization effect of the proposed adaptive cruise control on traffic flow is discussed theoretically. Moreover, in order to estimate the performance of the proposed ACC, the stabilization effect of the proposed adaptive cruise control is compared with existing models.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents the proposed adaptive cruise control strategy. The linear stability analysis of the proposed model is represented in Section 3. Section 4 provides results from simulating single-lane vehicle dynamics with or without cut-in scenarios. The conclusions and limitations are presented in Section 5.
Smart driver model
In the past decades, numbers of car-following models have been introduced to simulate manually driven vehicle, such as Multi-anticipative Model [35], Tampere Model [36], Newell Model [37], Gipps Model [38], Full Velocity Difference Model [32] and Optimal Velocity Model [33]. Based on Gipps model, Treiber et al. proposed a human driver model named Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) [15]. By capturing different congestion dynamics, IDM provides greater realism than most of the deterministic acceleration modeling frameworks [16]. The IDM is formulated as follows:
$$ {a}_{IDM}^n={a}_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_n}{v_0}\right)}^{\delta }-{\left(\frac{s^{\ast }}{\Delta x\ }\right)}^2\right] $$
$$ {s}^{\ast }={s}_0+{v}_nT+\frac{v_n\left({v}_n-{v}_{n-1}\right)}{2\sqrt{a_{max}b}} $$
\( {a}_{IDM}^n \) is the acceleration of the following vehicle based on Intelligent Driver Model (m/s2);
δ is the acceleration exponent;
s0 is the standstill distance between stopped vehicles (m);
amax is the maximum acceleration (m/s2), which is predetermined and less than the Planck acceleration;
∆x is the gap between the leading and the following vehicle (m);
T is the desired time gap (s);
v0 is the maximum speed (m/s);
vn is the speed of the following vehicle (m/s);
vn − 1 is the speed of the leading vehicle (m/s);
s∗ is the desired gap (m); and.
b is the desired deceleration (m/s2).
In recent years, car-following models have evolved to describe the behavior of vehicles with advanced cruise controls, which take advantage of the sensing and vehicle to vehicle/vehicle to infrastructure (V2V/V2I) communication technologies. By using constant-acceleration heuristic (CAH) as an indicator, Kesting et al. proposed a rule-based adaptive cruise control based on IDM [34] (IDM-ACC). The ACC proposed by Kesting et al. partially eliminates the unrealistic behavior of IDM in cut-in situations. However, since the ACC proposed by Kesting et al. inherits its intuitive behavioral parameters of IDM, it inherits the instability of IDM under homogenous traffic flow condition [16].
A rule-based ACC, named Smart Driver Model (SDM) is proposed to address the instability of IDM under homogenous traffic condition. In this study, a single-lane car-following scenario is considered and the lane changing behavior is ignored. In this paper, we assume that on-board sensors measure vehicle speed, gap (relative distance) and relative speed with respect to the preceding vehicle on regular time intervals [28].
The acceleration of the following vehicle equipped with SDM is determined by the following equation:
$$ {a}_{SDM}^n={a}_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_n}{v_0}\right)}^{\delta}\right]-\frac{a_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_n}{v_0}\right)}^{\delta}\right]+\frac{v_n^2-{v}_{n-1}^2}{2\Delta x}}{\mathit{\exp}\left(\frac{\Delta x}{s_0+{v}_n\times T}-1\right)} $$
\( {a}_{SDM}^n \) is the acceleration of the following vehicle that is equipped with SDM (m/s2);
According to Eq. 1, SDM inherits the acceleration maneuver from Intelligent Driver Model [15]. As a result, the acceleration exponent is set as 4 according to existing studies [15, 34, 39]. Therefore, the vehicles equipped with SDM tend to accelerate with \( {a}_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}}{{\mathrm{v}}_0}\right)}^4\right] \) when ∆x is large. An SDM-equipped vehicle will brake while the speed of the SDM-equipped vehicle is greater than the leading vehicle speed and ∆x is less than the desired spacing. \( \frac{a_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_n}{v_0}\right)}^{\delta}\right]+\frac{v_n^2-{v}_{n-1}^2}{2\Delta x}}{\mathit{\exp}\left(\frac{\Delta x}{s_0+{v}_n\times T}-1\right)} \) is used to describe the deceleration maneuver. In the deceleration term, \( {a}_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_n}{v_0}\right)}^{\delta}\right] \) is used to offset the acceleration term. Moreover, considering the range policy, it ensures that the real deceleration is equal to or slight larger than the expected deceleration, which is \( \frac{{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}^2-{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}-1}^2}{2\Delta \mathrm{x}} \). Moreover, since exp(∙) > 0 and \( \exp (0)=1,\frac{1}{\exp \left(\frac{\Delta \mathrm{x}}{{\mathrm{s}}_0+{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}\times \mathrm{T}}-1\right)} \) is applied to describe the dependence of deceleration term on the ratio between actual spacing and desired spacing. Therefore. when there is no speed difference between the leading and following vehicle, a SDM-equipped vehicle 's acceleration increases with the ratio of ∆x to the desired spacing. According to the characteristics of the exponential function, the jerk of SDM-equipped vehicle, which represents the changing rate of SDM-equipped vehicle 's acceleration, decreases with the ratio of ∆x to the desired spacing. Consequently, the vehicle equipped with SDM can achieve smoother acceleration and deceleration which is able to stabilize the traffic flow.
Several properties of SDM are discussed as follows, considering special cases:
First, when SDM-equipped vehicle is cruising (i.e. \( {a}_{SDM}^n=0,{v}_n-{v}_{n-1}=0 \)), the speed-dependent spacing ∆x between the preceding and the following vehicle is given by
$$ \Delta x={s}_0+{v}_n\times T $$
The speed-dependent spacing ∆x equals to the desired spacing, that is, ∆x = s0 + vn × T.
Second, when the traffic density is low (i.e. ∆x is much larger than the desired spacing), SDM-equipped vehicles will accelerate to the maximum speed. When the leading vehicle is out of the detection range of SDM-equipped vehicle (∆x → ∞), \( \frac{{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}^2-{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}-1}^2}{2\Delta \mathrm{x}} \) is close to 0 and \( {e}^{\left(\frac{\Delta \mathrm{x}}{{\mathrm{s}}_0+{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}\times \mathrm{T}}-1\right)} \) is close to infinity. As a result, the acceleration of SDM is approximately equal to the maximum acceleration, \( {a}_{SDM}^n\approx {a}_{\mathrm{max}}\times \left[1-{\left(\frac{{\mathrm{v}}_{\mathrm{n}}}{{\mathrm{v}}_0}\right)}^4\right] \). After the speed of the SDM-equipped vehicle reaches the maximum speed, acceleration of SDM is 0.
Third, when SDM-equipped vehicle is following a slower vehicle or approaching a stopped vehicle (i.e. vn − vn − 1> 0) with the limited spacing (∆x → s0 + v0 × T), the acceleration equation of SDM is given by
$$ {a}_{\mathrm{SDM}}^{\mathrm{n}}\to -\frac{v_n^2-{v}_{n-1}^2}{2\left({s}_0+{v}_n\times T\right)} $$
Especially, when a SDM-equipped vehicle with the maximum speed approaches a stopped vehicle (i.e. vn = v0, vn − 1 = 0), the maximum kinematic deceleration is applied to avoid a collision, as follows.
$$ {a}_{\mathrm{SDM}}^{\mathrm{n}}=-\frac{v_0^2}{2\left({s}_0+{v}_0\times T\right)} $$
Forth, when the spacing is much smaller than the desired spacing (∆x ≪ s0 + v0 × T) and there is no significant speed differences (vn − vn − 1 ≈ 0), the acceleration is determined as follows:
$$ {a}_{SDM}^n\approx {a}_{\mathrm{max}}\left(1-\frac{1}{e^{\left(\frac{\Delta x}{s_0+{v}_n\times T}-1\right)}}\right) $$
Especially, when ∆x → 0, Eq. 5 reduces to
$$ {a}_{SDM}^n\approx {a}_{\mathrm{max}}\left(1-e\right) $$
Linear stability analysis
Linear stability method is widely applied to analyze the stabilization performance of car-following models [40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47]. In this section, we apply the linear stability method for the Smart Driver Model described in the last section. The general form of time-continuous car-following models is
$$ {\ddot{x}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)=f\left({v}_n(t),{s}_n(t),\Delta {v}_n(t)\right) $$
f is a general nonlinear function;
\( {\ddot{x}}_n(t) \) is the acceleration;
τ is the time delay;
vn(t) is the speed of vehicle n;
sn(t) is the spacing between vehicles n and n + 1; and.
∆vn(t) is the relative velocity between vehicles n and n + 1.
Moreover, the steady state of Eq. 1 is set as
$$ \overline{x_n}(t)=\left(N-n\right){s}_e+{v}_et,n=1,2,3,\dots, N $$
se is the spacing of adjacent vehicles in homogenous flow;
N is the total number of vehicles in homogenous flow;
ve is the speed of vehicles in homogenous flow; and.
\( \overline{x_n}(t) \) is the location of vehicle n at time t.
Moreover, yn(t) is introduced as a small perturbation from the steady state solution of the vehicle n at time t with the linear Fourier-mode expanding:
$$ {y}_n(t)={x}_n(t)-\overline{x_n}(t),{y}_n(t)\to 0 $$
By taking the second derivative of Eq. 9, we can obtain
$$ {\ddot{y}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)={\ddot{x}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)-{\left(\overline{x_n}\left(t+\tau \right)\right)}^{\prime \prime }={\ddot{x}}_n\left(t+\tau \right) $$
By substituting Eq. 7 into Eq. 10, we have
$$ {\ddot{y}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)=f\left({v}_n(t),{s}_n(t),\Delta {v}_n(t)\right) $$
By linearizing Eq. 11, we get the following equation
$$ {\ddot{y}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)={f}_v{\dot{y}}_n(t)+{f}_s\left({y}_n(t)-{y}_{n-1}(t)\right)+{f}_{\Delta v}\left({\dot{y}}_n(t)-{\dot{y}}_{n-1}(t)\right) $$
Where \( {f}_v={\left.\frac{\partial f}{\partial {v}_n}\right|}_{\left({v}_e,{s}_e,0\right)}\le 0 \), \( {f}_{\Delta v}={\left.\frac{\partial f}{\partial {\Delta v}_n}\right|}_{\left({v}_e,{s}_e,0\right)}\le 0 \), and \( {f}_s={\left.\frac{\partial f}{\partial {s}_n}\right|}_{\left({v}_e,{s}_e,0\right)}\ge 0 \).
We rewrite Eq. 12 to obtain the difference equation
$$ {\displaystyle \begin{array}{l}{\dot{y}}_n\left(t+2\tau \right)-{\dot{y}}_n\left(t+\tau \right)=\tau {f}_s\left({y}_n(t)-{y}_{n-1}(t)\right)+{f}_v\left({y}_n\left(t+\tau \right)-{y}_n(t)\right)\\ {}+{f}_{\Delta v}\left({y}_n\left(t+\tau \right)-{y}_n(t)-{y}_{n-1}\left(t+\tau \right)+{y}_{n-1}(t)\right)\end{array}} $$
By substituting \( {y}_n(t)=c{e}^{i{a}_kn+ zt} \) into Eq. 13, we have
$$ \left({e}^{\tau z}-1\right)\left[{e}^{\tau z}z-{f}_v-{f}_{\Delta v}\left(1-{e}^{-2i{a}_k}\right)\right]=\tau {f}_s\left({e}^{-i{a}_k}-1\right) $$
Where c is constant, ak = 2πk/N(k = 0, 1, …, N − 1).
By expanding z = z1(iak) + z2(iak)2 + …, \( {e}^{\tau z}=1+\tau z+\frac{\tau^2{z}^2}{2}+\bullet \bullet \bullet, \)and inserting it into Eq. 13, then the first order and second order terms of coefficients of the expression of z are described as follows
$$ {z}_1=\frac{f_s}{f_v} $$
$$ {z}_2=\frac{\left(1-\frac{\tau }{2}{f}_v\right){z}_1^2-{f}_{\Delta v}{z}_1-\frac{1}{2}{f}_s}{f_v} $$
If z2 < 0, the homogenous traffic flow is unstable. Alternatively, If z2 > 0, the homogenous traffic flow is stable. Therefore, the stability condition is described as follows
$$ Stability=\frac{1}{2}{f}_v^2-{f}_s+{f}_v{f}_{\Delta v}+\frac{\tau }{2}{f}_v{f}_s>0 $$
This stability condition is consistent with existing studies [30, 48].
In order to investigate the stabilization effect of the SDM model on homogeneous traffic flow, we have
$$ {f}_s=\frac{a_{\mathrm{max}}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]}{\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)} $$
$$ {f}_{\Delta v}=-\frac{v_e}{\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)} $$
$$ {f}_v=-\frac{a_{\mathrm{max}}T}{\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]-\frac{8{a}_{max}{v}_e^3}{v_0^4} $$
By substituting Eqs. 18–20 into Eq. 17, the stable condition is derived as follows
$$ \frac{\tau }{2}<\frac{1}{2}\frac{\left(\frac{a_{max}T}{\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]+\frac{8a{v}_e^3}{v_0^4}\right)\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)}{a_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]}-\frac{1}{\left(\frac{a_{max}T}{\left({s}_0+{v}_e\times T\right)}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]+\frac{8{a}_{max}{v}_e^3}{v_0^4}\right)}+\frac{v_e}{a_{max}\left[1-{\left(\frac{v_e}{v_0}\right)}^4\right]} $$
According to Eq. 23, the phase transition curves are derived. Figure 1 shows the neutral stability curves for different time delays, where the maximum acceleration a = 1.4 m/s2, maximum speed v0 = 30 m/s, and the standstill distance s0 = 1.5 m. The traffic flow is stable with uniform velocity steady state above the neutral stability line; conversely, the traffic is unstable and the traffic congestion emerges. From Fig. 1, one can observe that the neutral stability line moves up with the increase of time delay. The effect of the stability of traffic flow by considering the time delay can be further illustrated in Fig. 2, where the average speed ve = 4 m/s, maximum speed v0 = 30 m/s, and the standstill distance s0 = 1.5 m. Same as in the study conducted by Van Arem et al. [49], the maximum comfortable acceleration is 2 m/s2. From Fig. 2, one can see that by increasing the maximum acceleration a, the neutral stability curve changes down, which means that traffic flow will become more and more stable if the maximum acceleration of SDM-equipped vehicle increases, i.e., the traffic stability can be improved by raising the maximum acceleration. However, by increasing the maximum acceleration may make driving less comfortable. The improvement in traffic stability by decreasing the time delay also can be found here.
Phase diagram in the velocity-desired time gap for different time delay, where the maximum acceleration a = 1.4 m/s2, maximum speed v0 = 30 m/s, and the standstill distance s0 = 1.5 m
Phase diagram in the Maximum acceleration-desired time gap for different time delay, where the average speed ve = 4 m/s, maximum speed v0 = 30 m/s, and the standstill distance s0 = 1.5 m
According to Eq. 19, the stability of SDM is compared with IDM-ACC and the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover [18] by using the typical parameters from literature [18, 34]. Since IDM-ACC only eliminates the unrealistic behavior of IDM in cut-in situations, the linear stability of IDM-ACC is the same as the linear stability of IDM. As shown in Fig. 3, the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover is unstable with the proposed parameters. Same as the result in [16], the platoon of vehicles equipped with IDM-ACC is stable for speeds below 3.5 m/s and unstable for speed above 3.5 m/s. Moreover, the stability curve of SDM is above 0. When the speed is larger than 3.5 m/s, SDM outperforms IDM-ACC in terms of stability.
Stability of vehicle with different ACCs, which is using the typical parameters from literature [18, 34]
Numerical simulations
Platoon without cut-in
To validate the results of our theoretical stability analysis, a platoon with 100 vehicles are simulated on a one-lane highway (no lane-changing) with an infinite length. Moreover, the time delay of ACC-equipped vehicle are ignored to investigate the stabilization performance of the proposed model under ideal conditions. Two cases are conducted in this section.
A simple case is applied to investigate the impacts of desired time gap and maximum acceleration on the stabilization performance of the proposed model. Initially, the speed vinitial=10 m/s, stand still distance s0= 1.5 m and the spacing sinitial=s0 + vinitial × T. The initial steady state will be broken when the leading vehicle brakes urgently from 10 to 4 m/s during the time period 10 s ≤ t ≤ 13 s, followed by the following vehicle moving according to Eq. (4). As shown in Fig. 4(a), the traffic flow is unstable when the desired time gap is less than 1.6, where the maximum acceleration is 1.4 m/s2. Moreover, while the desired time gap is 1.6, the traffic flow is unstable when the maximum acceleration is 0.8 m/s2. The results are consistent with the results derived in last section.
Acceleration and speed profiles of 1st, 25th, 50th, and 100th vehicle for different maximum acceleration and desired time gap
In order to investigate the stabilization effect of the proposed model considering the realistic driving cycle, we assume the lead vehicle of platoon follows the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), as shown in Fig. 5. Moreover, the initial spacing and time headway are the desired spacing and desired time gap, respectively. According to the result of case 1, we set the maximum acceleration a = 1.4 m/s2, desired time gap T = 1.6 s, maximum speed v0 = 30 m/s, and the standstill distance s0 = 1.5 m. The parameters from case 1 is similar to the parameters of IDM-ACC proposed by Kesting et al. [34]. Moreover, the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover [18] is also simulated to compare with the IDM-ACC and SDM. In order to avoid the instability of the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover [18], we have k1 = 0.49 and k2 = 0.07, where the stability calculated based on Eq. 19 is 0.02. Therefore, the parameters from case 1 is used in the simulation for both IDM-ACC and SDM. As shown in Fig. 6, the acceleration variance is significantly decreasing for the SDM-equipped vehicle towards the end of the platoon. With before mentioned parameters, the proposed model can stabilize the homogeneous traffic flow considering a realistic driving cycle. Moreover, SDM outperforms the IDM-ACC and Milanés and Shladover Model in terms of stabilization effect on homogeneous traffic flow.
Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) [52]
Acceleration profiles of 1st, 25th, 50th, and 100th vehicle equipped with Milanés and Shladover Model, IDM-ACC and SDM
Platoon with cut-in
Based on the simulation conducted by [50], a platoon with 16 vehicles, when a cut-in occurs between the fourth and fifth positions, is simulated to investigate the stability of SDM under cut-in condition. The cut-in rules and parameters are based on the study conducted by Davis [51]. The simulation starts with the 16 SDM-equipped vehicles. The leading vehicle is manually driven and its speed profile is generated using real data from experimental tests. The other vehicles follow the leading vehicle. One can appreciate how the speed changes are not amplified upstream. Then a vehicle cuts in between the fourth and fifth vehicles. For the sake of clarity in the figure, the speeds of the first four vehicles have been removed from the plots of the results for the rest of the simulation. From second 340, the cut-in vehicle depicted in the graph with the red solid lane splits the string in two. This vehicle is computer generated and it is assumed that it is manually driven with small speed oscillations around 25 m/s. As shown in Fig. 7, the oscillations from the cut-in vehicle are reduced by the 5th to the 16th vehicles. With the proposed parameters, the proposed model can stabilize the homogeneous traffic flow under cut-in condition.
Simulation results from a vehicle performing a cut-in in the fourth position of 16 ACC vehicles
Conclusion and future work
In this paper, an adaptive cruise control, named Smart Driver Model (SDM), is proposed to describe the autonomous vehicles flow. Meanwhile, the stability criteria is proposed for SDM to keep the homogeneous traffic flow stable. Numerical simulations were conducted to verify the results of the theoretical analysis. We find that simulation results are consistent with the results of linear stability analysis. Considering a platoon without cut-in, the simulation result shows that the proposed model can stabilize the homogeneous traffic flow considering a realistic driving cycle. Moreover, the results from simulation and linear stability analysis show that SDM outperforms the IDM-ACC and the ACC proposed by Milanés and Shladover in terms of stabilization effect on homogeneous traffic flow. Considering a platoon with cut-in, a platoon with 16 vehicles, when a cut-in occurs between the fourth and fifth positions, is simulated to investigate the stability of SDM under cut-in condition. The simulation result shows that the SDM-equipped vehicles are able to stabilize the homogeneous traffic flow under cut-in condition. In the future, considering the information from multiple preceding vehicles and the surrounding traffic, SDM can be extended to energy-efficient control strategies and personalized information systems.
The present paper has the following limitations. First, the stability analysis is based on the theoretical model and simulation. Second, the lane-changing behavior is ignored to investigate the stability of the proposed model. Third, heterogeneous traffic conditions with ACC-equipped vehicles and human-driven vehicles is not considered in this paper. The fourth limitation comes from the same model parameter setting within a vehicle string in the simulation experiments. The impacts of different driver characteristics, such as reaction time, acceleration capabilities, and desired time gaps, within a string can be found by a sensitive analysis in subsequent simulations. In the future, the data collected from SDM-equipped vehicles should be used to validate the theoretical results. The proposed model will be implemented in an advanced and sophisticated traffic simulation model to discover the traffic impact of ACC vehicles on heterogeneous traffic flow. Moreover, specific lane-change maneuver needs to be designed for SDM in order to improve the stabilization effect of autonomous vehicles on the road transportation system.
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Traffic Engineering Research Center, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 7 A, 7034, Trondheim, Norway
Chaoru Lu
& Arvid Aakre
Search for Chaoru Lu in:
Search for Arvid Aakre in:
CL developed the ACC and drafted the paper. AA participated in the design of the study. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Correspondence to Chaoru Lu.
Lu, C., Aakre, A. A new adaptive cruise control strategy and its stabilization effect on traffic flow. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 10, 49 (2018) doi:10.1186/s12544-018-0321-9
Traffic flow stability

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Dhm Investments Inc offer Investments services and are situated in Carson City, Nevada. They can be found at 2533 N Carson St, Carson City 89706 as shown on the map above (please note that the map is accurate to within approximately 300 feet).
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Explore basic OData features built into the SAP Web IDE by building a simple SAPUI5 app.
This tutorial will introduce you to SAP Web IDE features relating to OData.
In this tutorial and others, the general name "SAP Web IDE" is used. Specifically, the "Full-Stack" version is implied throughout.
You'll create a very simple app based on a Northwind OData service, and in doing so will learn about what those features are. You'll also get a glimpse at the OData requests that are being triggered in the background by the SAPUI5 toolkit that supports OData natively.
You'll need to be running the Chrome web browser to use the developer tools described in the last step of this tutorial.
Once you start the SAP Web IDE, use the menu path File > New > Project from Template.
You'll be presented with a multi-step wizard.
In the Template Selection step, choose the category SAP Fiori Application, select the SAP Fiori Worklist application template, and proceed with Next.
The value you specify in the Project Name field becomes the name of the project's folder in the SAP Web IDE workspace. As such, there are restrictions (such as no spaces allowed). The Title field's value is displayed in the app itself. The value for the Namespace field is used in technical names for the app's artifacts and helps distinguish them from other artifacts and apps.
You can leave the values for the other fields empty. Now hit Next to continue on to the next step.
In the next step in the wizard, the Data Connection step, you get to specify an OData service upon which the app is to be based.
The Service Catalog source is for when your OData service is provisioned by an ABAP stack Gateway system, and discovery can happen via a special OData catalogue service.
The Workspace and File System sources are for when you wish to specify the location of a metadata document locally.
The Service URL source is for generic OData services, as opposed to OData services via an SAP Gateway.
The SAP API Business Hub service is for discovery of OData services through the SAP API Business Hub.
The app to be generated should use a Northwind OData service - in other words, a generic OData service. Any OData service that is to be defined via the Service URL or Service Catalog sources must be available via a destination definition in the Connectivity service of the SAP Cloud Platform.
In the Create a destination for the Northwind OData services tutorial, you will have done exactly this for the generic Northwind service endpoint. You'll now use this destination, indirectly, in this step of the wizard.
Select the Service URL source, then find and choose the Northwind destination.
and description Northwind OData services, joined together by a dash.
At this point you're not quite done. You've specified the destination, which points to the Northwind OData services URL root (https://services.odata.org), but you now must specify the rest of the URL to specify which version of which particular Northwind OData service to use.
Beyond showing simple list of entity sets in the OData service you specified, the SAP Web IDE offers a way to explore it in more detail.
Select the Show Details button to start the exploration.
Initially, an overview of the service details is shown.
But selecting the Diagram tab, as shown, will display a small version of an entity relationship diagram. Choose the open full screen button (indicated) to get a better view.
This will result in a large display of the entity relationship diagram that you can zoom in & out of and pan around, to inspect the detail of each entity type. Properties and navigation is included, with annotated relationships between the entity types where appropriate.
The entity relationship diagram feature is a great way to explore the OData service you're about to use in your app.
Now it's time to specify what data you want your app to display. This is done in the "Template Customization" step of the wizard.
For App Type specify Standalone App; this keeps things simple at this stage. The alternative is to specify the app as an SAP Fiori Launchpad Component, which is often what you want when developing apps to run within an SAP Fiori launchpad, but it will only distract from the topic of this tutorial, so choosing a simple standalone index.html based app will be fine here.
The rest of the fields in this step are related to places in the actual worklist presentation of data in the app. You'll see a small, annotated display in this wizard step that shows where each of the pieces of data will appear when the app is run.
What's special about this step in the wizard is that the choices for each of the rest of the fields are determined from the SAP Web IDE's automatic interpretation of the OData metadata document.
First, the choices for the Object Collection field are the entity sets defined in the metadata: Alphabetical_list_of_products, Categories, Category_Sales_for_1997, and so on. Choose Products.
Following this, the value of ProductID is automatically inserted into the Object Collection ID field. This is because the Product entity type, upon which the selected Products entity set is based, has ProductID specified as the key property.
In OData, the terms "entity set" and "collection" are used interchangeably.
Similarly, various values are presented as possible choices for the Object Title field. These values are the different properties from the Product entity type. Choose ProductName.
There are two other fields, Object Numeric Attribute and Object Unit of Measure, both optional. The values of the properties specified for these fields will appear on the right side of the app, as shown in the annotated display. For the Object Numeric Attribute field, choose the UnitPrice property, and leave the Object Unit of Measure blank, because in the definition of the Product entity type in this Northwind OData service there happens to be no relevant unit of measure property.
If you had chosen a different template that expressed a relationship between two entity types, such as a Master-Detail template, you would also see the choice for the secondary object being restricted to those entity types that were related to the primary entity type chosen (e.g. Order and Order_Detail).
After the wizard completes, you should end up with a project folder called ProductData in your workspace.
In mid-2018, the SAP Web IDE gained a Workspace Manager feature, allowing you to create, name and manage multiple workspaces. In screenshots here and elsewhere, the name of the workspace (at the root of the workspace tree) may differ from what you see in your own SAP Web IDE instance. The default name is Workspace whereas here the screenshots are from within the author's workspace called ODataFoundations.
In the layout editor, identify the control where the UnitPrice property is specified, select it, and the properties for that control (which is an ObjectNumber control) appear on the right hand side. In the Unit property, enter the string USD as a currency.
The Northwind data set is a good one for simple tutorials, but doesn't contain everything a real business service would do. Currency is one of the things that is missing, so we're just deciding here that it's US Dollars.
Save the file with File > Save menu path (or the Save icon in the top left, above the workspace display).
It's almost time to run the app, but there's one more thing to do so we can more easily examine the details of the OData calls that will be made.
OData supports so-called Batch Processing, which allows more than one OData operation to be sent with a single HTTP request. There's a special endpoint in an OData service for this, used for all batch requests. Batch requests are made with the HTTP POST method.
By default, when a UI5 based app is generated from a template in the SAP Web IDE, the version of the UI5 OData mechanism used is one that supports the use of batch processing, and has the option turned "on" by default (this is the V2 version of the ODataModel mechanism).
One the one hand, the fact that batch processing is on by default is great, because sending multiple OData operations in a single HTTP POST request is good for performance. On the other hand, it makes it more difficult to see what's going on under the covers. So for the purposes of investigation, turn batch processing off, as described next.
In a similar way to how you found and opened the Worklist.view.xml file with the layout editor, find the manifest.json file in the webapp/ folder, and open it with the code editor, via the context menu.
This file contains JSON which has a very particular format, so please pay attention to formatting and syntax such as remembering commas, double quotes and so on.
In the manifest.json file, locate the "models" section within the "sap.ui5" section, and find the "default model" which is signified by an empty string ("") as the property. You can see this in line 69 of the screenshot.
Remember to put a comma on the line preceding this, too.
Save your changes with File -> Save and you're done.
Now it's time to actually run the app. Use the green Run icon near the top of the SAP Web IDE and in the dialog box Choose the File to Run that appears, select the index.html file name and then OK.
Don't worry about the titles in angle brackets, such as <Products>, <ProductName> and <UnitPrice>. These are placeholders for the internationalization features, which are not the subject of this tutorial. If you do want to replace these placeholders with real titles, you can edit the file i18n.properties in the webapp/i18n/ folder. (The term i18n is short for "internationalization").
Turn on the Chrome Developer Tools ("dev tools" for short). You can do this with keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-I (or Cmd-Shift-I on a Mac) or by simply right-clicking on any part of the app display and selecting "Inspect".
When the Chrome Developer Tools open, select the Network panel, as shown, and enter northwind into the Filter field, as shown. This will restrict the display of network requests to those containing that string, in other words, to the OData URLs. Ensure also that All is selected next to the filter.
The dev tools may open docked at the bottom of the app, or at the side. It doesn't really matter, but you can change your docking preferences with the dev tools menu in the upper right.
At this point there will probably be nothing displayed in the Network panel, because all of the calls to the OData service that were required in the app's startup have been made before the Network panel was opened. So refresh the app with the browser refresh button.
a call to retrieve the first 20 entries in the Products entity set, via a combination of the system query options $skip=0 and $top=20. You can also see that the $orderby system query option is being used; this is caused by the sorter specification in the binding of the Products entity to the Table control's "items" aggregation.
If you want to investigate this sorter specification in the "items" binding, look in the Worklist.view.xml file (open it using the context menu to select the Code Editor rather than the Layout Editor) and search for the <Table> XML element.
Can you guess what will happen if you press the More button at the bottom of the products display?
Another OData call is made, similar to the previous one, but this time with a value of 20 for the $skip system query option, so that in combination with $top=20, the next 20 items are retrieved.
This has been a very brief glimpse into what happens with OData calls behind the scenes. Switching off batch mode and opening up the Network panel in the Chrome dev tools is a very useful way of getting a better feel for what is actually going on behind the scenes.


Ramsgate's all weather lifeboat was launched to assist a 30ft yacht which had been dismasted after a collision with a container ship 24 miles east of the town.
The call came in at 7.58am yesterday, Sunday 13 November.
Another vessel was standing by, relaying the casualty's VHF transmissions to the UK Coastguard as, due to having no mast, the yacht's sole crew member was relying on a hand held radio.
The Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Lydd arrived on scene first and took over communications with UK Coastguard and the lifeboat crew.
Once on scene the lifeboat crew confirmed that the yacht was not taking on any water and it was decided to tow the stricken vessel to the safety of Ramsgate Harbour. A line and a hand held VHF radio were passed to the yacht's single-handed sailor, who wished to remain aboard.
The incident is under investigation with the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.


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Bring on the PodCats with Ben Adler
Former Kansas State offensive lineman Ben Adler talks with us about how he's preparing for the 2022 draft and shares some insight on other Wildcat draft hopefuls.
By Luke Thompson and JT VanGilder Apr 16, 2022, 12:28pm CDT
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After a productive career at Kansas State, Ben Adler's ready for a shot at the NFL.
Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Kansas State's Ben Adler didn't start playing offensive line until high school and worked hard to go from a redshirt freshman to a reliable two-year starter in five years as a Wildcat, earning First Team Academic All-Big 12 honors along the way. Now Ben's preparing for the NFL draft and he told us what that process has been like for the last four months, including an invitation to the College Gridiron Showcase and some time spent training with former NFL offensive lineman Eugene Chung in Florida.
We also spoke with Ben a little bit about other K-State draft hopefuls, including quarterback Skylar Thompson and offensive lineman Josh Rivas. Obviously, we wish them all the best and hope they get good news on draft day, or at least are given some kind of an opportunity to show what they can do at the next level.
You can follow Ben on Twitter @Ben_Adler63 or @ben_adler_ on Instagram.


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Q: e.target not working in opera, chrome I made a nav bar with jQuery, which is supposed to toggle the dropdowns on click. Most of the functionality works as it should.

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Everything works right, but when I click outside of the nav bar, the dropdowns do not go away. How can I make these work? http://sarkelliancreed.comule.com/c/new/nav

A: Your code is working fine.
Currently, your  element is only occupying height and width of navigation bar.
Once you add more content to your page, it will increase height of  element.
For example, here is one example where I set CSS:
height:500px
background-color:orange

for  and it will work when you click anywhere inside  element.
JSFiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/j66wjtmy/

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I acually had a professor like this! He was fun and frustrating at the same time. For more great fiction, go to Dorinda's Treasures in Jars of Clay blog.
My name is Mort. And when I say Mort, I mean MORT. I wear a purple lab coat and a sequined bow tie that spins and lights up when I press a hidden button. I've had some spectacular life experiences. Indeed, I could fill a book with them, but I'll only share a few choice moments.
Building things is my hobby. I built a plane once using the Popular Mechanics article, "Build Your Own Solo Plane in Two Weekends." It took me two months to accumulate the stuff, and then another month to convince my wife to let me tackle another secret project, but oh doggie, once I got started, it was a "cinch-arino".
I worked nonstop on that cool baby for three months, but just when my wife was starting to get mean about my hobby, I surprised her with my announcement that the marvelous machine was ready to F-L-Y!
When she laid eyes on my perfected project, a look of wonder, then bewilderment, and finally amusement, spread over her face.
"Yessirree Bob, and it's a dandy, isn't it?" I proclaimed proudly.
"Yeah! Um…uh-oh. Oooh…yeah." That was a bummer realization. I deflated like last week's birthday balloon.
Hmm…had to get it out of the basement…righto. My wife watched me in silence for a second, shook her head, and went chuckling upstairs to finish dinner. Took me two months more to take it apart and put it together again in the barn, but what a beauty!
I love my students. They tickle my funny bone with their silly questions and their serious faces. They seem to appreciate me, too. For instance, today I wrote the entire genetic plan of the red-eyed, vestigial-winged fruit fly on the chalkboards. The entire time I was scribbling out the charts, my rolling commentary kept the class howling like banshees. I never dreamed Genetics could be so humorous to them. Weird though, when I got to the end of the third board, the chart was totally wrong. Tom pointed out to me the source of my tiny error. Seems I switched the F1 parents with the F2 offspring way back on board one. Oh well. A little erasing and an hour later, the charts were complete and accurate. Too bad the class ended before I finished the F5's.
Just before I went home, one of my students needed to come in and do a make-up lab. I told her I'd be happy to help her out. I proceeded to carefully place Professor Beech's bounteous and beloved beaker over the Bunsen burner. My student turned out to be cautious and observant. Very astute.
Yessirree Bob! An ace student, for sure. She did a wonderful job helping me mop up the mess.
My favorite class is Anatomy and Physiology. The day we went to collect animal parts from the farm down the road was a glorious example of higher education. It was a happy "co-ink-a-dink", too, that spaghetti with meat sauce was on the menu in the cafeteria. What a great way to learn where our food comes from!
I want my students to handle the merchandise, so to speak, and enjoy the natural beauty of God's creation. I often encourage them to "get their hands in there and learn, learn, learn!" Too bad so many were squeamish that day; they missed out on observing the beautiful cerulean color of the vitreous matter of the cow's eye. It was gorgeous!
The Anatomy class gives me the chance to exploit my favorite joke of all time. When the students come in the door, I say, "Welcome to Mort's Mortuary! You stab 'em, we slab 'em!" They love that. And it's an apropos introduction to the "Picking Up Road Kill for Further Study" lesson. Too bad the class is right after lunch. Some students don't seem to take my little joke well; I think the carbs are a detriment to their learning experience. Makes them sluggish and pale.
That reminds me; I wonder why Brenda Bradley turned green and ran out of class yesterday? I hope she doesn't have the flu. I'd sure hate to have her miss the "Picking Apart Your Formaldehyde-Preserved Dog Fish Shark" lesson.
Well, he's in, and in case you were wondering (as I was) who confirmed him, here's the list. I noticed that Sherrod Brown, whom I contacted and whom I received a "thank you for contacting me" email reply, didn't vote at all. That's one way to avoid controversy. (CORRECTION: I WAS SENT A NOTE THAT MR. BROWN WAS NOT TRYING TO AVOID CONTROVERSY. HE IS IN HIS HOME STATE TAKING CARE OF PERSONAL FAMILY MATTERS, SO WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR THE VOTE. I WANT TO BE FAIR TO HIM ON THIS ISSUE.) But Senator Voinovich, who didn't respond to my email by one jot or tittle, voted to confirm him. Thanks, Mr. Republican!
What frosts me the most is the idea being put out there by many stalwart senators that Geithner had "paid up and made it right". Really? Geithner waited until he was being "vetted" for the Treasury Secretary job to pay up and make it right. Ick. That feels slimy, but perhaps our senators are used to that slick feeling by now.
Having the experience of seeing my dad struggle with Alzheimer's disease has led me down paths of spirituality that I'd rather never have traveled. When a terrible disease such as this one waltzes into a family, a major split in philosophy of life often occurs.
One group of loved ones may decide that quality of life has to take precedence over quantity. How often have I heard people say: "If I had to live like that, I'd rather just go ahead and die." On the surface, this sounds like a noble and heroic statement. But I've seen a good man struggle to keep each breath and each moment of life he had left be a holy mission: to honor His Creator with whatever little bit of strength and life he could muster. I saw my late husband strive to live one more day...one more hour...one more minute...and he did it with far more grace than I think I could muster. The intensity of good men to honor living with their last breath feels to me like an honest recognition of God's genes in them. In a sense, they see each breath as holy...a holy mission from God because to keep living, in the face of pain and adversity, is do God's will to the nth degree.
I struggle now with this quality of life philosophy because in my dad, I see God. In my dad, I feel a breath from his mouth that was begun in Adam and came from God Himself. In my dad, I still see his hands and his feet and the little things that still bring him joy. In this illness, all but the barest pleasures...the ones we come into the world with: the desire to feed and to laugh and to see our loved ones faces, are often the only things left. I have learned to strip down my definition of the "good" life to mere seconds in the tiniest of moments that could be called "good". I've learned to find great treasure and great worth in seeing Dad cross his ankles and tap his toes...it means he's content. I sigh and say, "That is good...he's feeling no pain for right now."
When I stroke his soft, spiky, white hair, and his eyes close in comfort, I say, "This is good...he's feeling my love and concern for him: he knows I care." He may remember in that very moment only, and not much beyond a moment, but I've had to learn that it's enough. Life is good for that minute or two.
There are sparks of life in Dad that surprise and confound us still. When I see that, I know life is good...I know His Creator has blessed him and us...and I squelch the selfish side of me that deigns to think there should be more. I'm beginning to know that the act of living...Dad's perseverance to keep fighting...a sigh of happiness from him that shows his pleasure in something as simple as a cup of hot coffee, is a holy act ordained and given as a gift by God. I sometimes find myself wanting to say out loud: "You have given my dad so much...and You have blessed his kids so much...even in Dad's illness, You are a holy and loving God."
There are some members in my family that would not agree. Some will find this attitude unrealistic or even wrong. But in my heart and soul, more and more I am learning that the bending of the will...the surrender of the wants...the sigh that says, "I let go of how I want it" is more an act of worship than any other kind of sacrifice I could offer to the Lord. And to say to God, with hands lifted up-- holding nothing--"I am blessed" has to be one of the dearest offerings God can receive.
Quality versus quantity...the wants versus the is...the desires versus the reality...they are all a measure of a heart. Taking a life and holding each little thing as sacred, and offering back to God our loved one's futures--whatever they may be--that, to me, is recognizing the holiness in each soul that comes only from the hand of God.
For these reasons, I have come to the conclusion that Do Not Resuscitate orders are contrary to right to life thinking. To me, it is better to ALWAYS opt for life.
"Lord, thank You that each breath You breathed in my dad has Your loving DNA mingled through it. Continue to help me see each living moment that Dad has left as a gift from Your hand...and help me to know that whatever You do for Dad in the next few days, You have ordained it holy and worthy and right. In Jesus' lovely name, Amen."
"Man, did you see who you're scheduled to swim rats with today?" my colleague, and locker companion asks with a laugh.
"Nope. Haven't looked at the schedule. I presume I'm going to be setting up my mouse study in Repro," I mutter while I pull on my scrubs.
For some reason, though I don't know Phoebe Wise that well, I don't want Perry talking bad about her. I've only worked with her a few times before, but she caught my attention. Quiet. A little shy, but really smart. Hard worker. She's never let me down any of the times she's taken my studies on my weekends off.
I check the schedule to see which room the behaviorals are in. Well, looks like we'll be swimming the F1 generation today. I hate that behavioral. Boring and long. Some of the rats are quick studies, but some can take the whole sixty seconds and still not swim their way to the end of the maze. Sixty seconds doesn't seem like a lot of time until you multiply it by fifty critters.
"Hi Ben," Phoebe says with a smile when I enter the room.
I like Group Ones best. Defective genes rarely affect the control animals, but the higher groups could have potential delay deformities. With Group Twos whose parents have defective genes we could end up with more animals not being able to figure out the maze, which means a longer amount of time in this room.
"Okay. Go ahead and drop the first guy." I set the timer.
Phoebe leans over the tank and gently releases the first male into the water. He swims in a circle for a second and then takes off around the perimeter of the maze. Phoebe has nice hair that lies along the back of her neck like a scarf. I watch her eyes follow the pup around the maze. Her smile is still in place, and she chuckles gently as she records the rat's swift progress.
My question startles her, and she delays answering me while she retrieves the pup from the water.
"I needed peace, Ben," she finally answers.
Her eyes meet mine, and I get the feeling she's reading my mind.
"Peace. Huh. Well, I know how lack of peace feels," I say with a laugh.
Now how did she know I was thinking that? She's looking at me with such genuine concern that I feel tears gathering at the edge of my eyelids. Whoa. Time to get back to work. Get a grip, Ben.
We finish the rats in less than three hours, and I head out the door to my next assignment.
Phoebe catches my eye just before I close the door to her study, and her gentle smile makes me stop.
I don't answer her, but she stays put in front of me. Again, my throat aches suddenly with a sad kind of longing, and Phoebe seems to know it, too. She pats my arm before heading back to her study.
I nod mutely and turn to leave. One last time I glance back at Phoebe, and even her shoulders seem set with purpose and strength. "What makes Phoebe-the-Wise so wise?" I ask myself. "Is it some kind of spiritual gift that only Christians have?" I don't know, but I plan to find out. Someday.
While searching for a list of literary agents that represent Christian authors, I came across this post written by Michael S. Hyatt (President and CEO at Thomas Nelson Publishers). His blog, From Where I Sit, has a list of agents with whom his company is familiar.
I plan to take a day or two to read through this list and check out these agents. Mr. Hyatt's blog is chock full of informative posts that are of great value for the green writer (like me). I really want to set aside a week devoted only to researching the next step, assessing my book's status, and further compiling my novel. Now if only I could find a week that is not filled with "other" stuff!
It's quiet here, save for the soft sfffft sound of the ventilator. It's Sunday night, after dinner, and I'm sitting in my dad's ICU room in the dark. The weather channel is playing in the background because Dad loves weather as much as a meteorologist does. We're hoping he'll listen and hear familiar things as he goes in and out of sleep.
He has begun to waken and his eyes search the area right around his pillow until he locks onto the eyes of his family. He hasn't been responding to the staff, but the last time he had pneumonia, he did the same thing. For his family, he opens his eyes and shakes his head--slightly. All the vital signs are stable and for now, we're content just to watch and wait and offer him reassurance and comfort when he looks for us.
As I sit here, I think of how many life and death experiences our family has known within these hospital walls. Tears of sadness and tears of joy have all been shed in this place. Fifty-two years ago yesterday, I made my debut in the world in this building and as I watch over Dad for a time tonight, I think back to what a day it must have been for him and Mom that snowy January Thursday. My sister was just a baby, too...thirteen months old...so Mom was worried about her and anxious to get home. Dad has always loved his kids and enjoyed every minute he spent with them, so I imagine that day years ago was a happy moment for him. I have him to thank for my name as Mom allowed him to to name me. (She gave my sister her name.). He chose to name me after his mom and my mom.
But not all of our memories here have been happy ones. I said goodbye to my son's father in these walls...my dad was with my husband, in fact, when he took his last breath. I had called Dad to spell me for a time so I could take my little boy home, get him a clean set of clothes, and drop him off with my mom before heading back to the hospital for the night. For whatever reason, while I was gone, Jim slipped home to Heaven When the hospital tracked me down at my mom's house, I just didn't think I could face what awaited me at the hospital, but Dad stayed with me and helped me do the things I had to do. I remember how tightly he held my hand as he walked me to the elevator on the Cancer floor for the last time. I had a feeling that if he could have taken my grief and pain away from me, he would have. To spare him, I tried my best not to cry, but the burden of sorrow was nearly too much to carry. I remember feeling very weak and faint...almost like a balloon that could easily float through the ceiling of that tormenting place. I dare say that if I could have floated away from the pain that night, I would have...Dad right beside me. But what rooted us to the earth then and now, was love of my son...love of family...and a dim, though honestly weak, faith that God could somehow get me through this horrible moment in time.
So now it's my turn to sit by him and scramble from my chair to his bedside when he struggles with the straps that hold his hands to his side, or when he wakes and becomes aware of the tubes in his throat. His eyes slowly open and he has even smiled at us through his medical miseries, and I try to stroke away the fear while whispering, "It's going to be OK...you're getting stronger every day...don't worry." He grasps my fingers when I hold his hand as I lean over his bed, and there is a little relaxing of his eyebrows as he watches me silently. We have the same gray/blue eyes...and we're familiar to each other.
Hospital vigils are often not fun, and having the blessings of modern medicine can bring with it fears and relief, but being there for one another through all of them is the constant that ties these events together. Through it all, we go on and we keep holding hands, and stroking foreheads, and offering love and comfort...and living our lives, as much as possible, in and out of these familiar, yet impersonal, hospital walls.
MULTIPLE BLES8INGS: SURVIVING TO THRIVING with TWINS and SEXTUPLETS is written by Jon and Kate Gosselin and Beth Carson. If you've ever watched the television series with this amazing family, you'll be familiar with the Gosselins. Their story, on TV, is remarkable, but reading the behind-the-scenes happenings and events that led to their eight children family (in only TWO pregnancies!)is equally remarkable.
The one thing that surprised me most about this book is the spiritual depth in both Jon and Kate Gosseling. Each chapter of the book begins with a scripture, and their many decisions, leading to the birth of their twins and then the sextuplets, was bathed in prayer. Though Kate and Jon sometimes come across as angry or brittle with each other in the TV series, much more love and compassion is written in the book and it gives a deeper sense of who each of these remarkable young people are together and as parents.
I read the entire book in one evening, as did my son, so it is not a heavy work of nonfiction: it is fun, happy, and spiritually satisfying. It has many photos scattered through the pages, as well as a small section documenting Kate's diary which she kept while on bed rest waiting for the birth of the sextuplets.
I recommend this book to fans of the TV series and to other readers who will enjoy getting to know more about this loving and unique family. Their experience is well worth reading about and will warm your heart besides!
When I found this verse recently, I thought, "I can't remember ever reading that before."
Somehow, knowing God directs the snowfall, my heart understands that the gentle flakes have more meaning. Or maybe it's really that snow has more purpose.
I've had to remind myself in winters past about the importance of snow, especially when it's March and a sunny day hasn't been seen in weeks. Instead, the snow covers every vestige of grass or growing thing by several inches.
At those times, I have to audibly remind myself, "More snow means a better growing season."
There are times, though, when I can't see beyond the cold and the white and the depressing feeling of being stuck inside. I can't see even two weeks into the future to know that a warm day or two will completely obliterate the seemingly invincible snow. That's when I have to get out the calendar and count the days until the rotation of the earth will bring us closer to the sun's warmth once again.
When my life feels cold, dreary, or depressing, just like that calendar, I have to get out my Bible and remind myself of the ways in which the Son brings me closer to the warmth of my Father's Heart.


They call it England's El Clasico, but the last two instalments on Merseyside have been an affront to that title.
Liverpool v Manchester United should be the game that stops the nation, but the only thing that has been stopped in this fixture at Anfield in Jose Mourinho's two visits is the tempo, his desperation not to lose illustrated in one startling statistic.
United have had forwards such as Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Marcus Rashford, Romelu Lukaku and Anthony Martial at their disposal but all they mustered were two routine shots on target over the course of those 180 minutes.
An image comes to mind from the fixture in October 2016.
Liverpool were attacking the Kop but across the 18-yard box there were four blue shirts blocking the way and another two sentries on the flank, meaning United played a back six.
Given how they have struggled this season — and given how much Mourinho could do with avoiding defeat — there must be a chance he throw a blanket over the contest once again, regardless of his declaration that United are going to Merseyside to win.
'But that's football tactics,' said Jurgen Klopp when asked if he was expecting a frustrating afternoon. 'I'm not the Pope of tactics telling people what they have to do.
'It's like France (at the World Cup). Antoine Griezmann, Paul Pogba… the players they had were unbelievable. But did they play bam, bam, bam like Spain? No. They went for the result.
The tone of the answer gave an insight into Klopp's frame of mind. Usually before the biggest games, he can bristle at such enquiries if he feels there is an invitation for him to give a headline, but he was relaxed.
A big weight was lifted from his shoulders when Liverpool beat Napoli to progress to the Champions League knockout phase, and it could be that achieving one target is the catalyst for an increase in their standards.
But will it be the catalyst for a season of promise to be transformed into a season of high achievement? Mourinho, you sense, is irked by the plaudits Klopp gets given he has nothing to show for his work.
'Do I have to win?' Klopp asked. 'What I have to do is make the best of the things the club is offering me. If people say the Champions League campaign last season was not a success because we didn't win the final, then I cannot change that.
'Was it the successful finish? No. But the ride was brilliant. Going to the final was fantastic. But in all departments of life, if only the best counts and effort doesn't, then life is s***.
Yet the indications are that success is creeping closer. On this weekend 12 months ago, Klopp had conceded that the title was an unfeasible objective.
Now he is preparing Liverpool for their most significant push for the biggest prize in a generation. First, though, he must deal with United.


text:
/**
 * @author Mark Fink
 * @date 19.09.15
 * @brief Command module makes heavy use of xprintf. We use the stub to capture output.
 *
 */
#ifndef EPICLIBS_XPRINTF_STUB_H
#define EPICLIBS_XPRINTF_STUB_H

#include <stdint.h>

void xprintf(const char *fmt, ...);
char* xprintf_get_message(void);
uint8_t xprintf_get_count(void);
void xprintf_reset(void);

#endif //EPICLIBS_XPRINTF_STUB_H

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
A reading guide to True the Vote, the controversial voter fraud watchdog
Suevon Lee/ProPublica.org
Sep 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM Sep 28, 2012 at 10:08 AM
As Nov. 6 approaches, the efforts of True the Vote, a Texas anti-voter fraud group recently profiled by the New York Times, are gaining national attention. Despite scant evidence of voter fraud, the group is laser-focused on weeding it out. It has pushed for voter-ID laws, voter roll purges and other controversial voting-related measures in a host of states. (Here is our guide to the voter ID controversy, where we note that evidence on both sides of the issue is lacking.)
As Nov. 6 approaches, the efforts of True the Vote, a Texas anti-voter fraud group recently profiled by the New York Times, are gaining national attention.
Despite scant evidence of voter fraud, the group is laser-focused on weeding it out. It has pushed for voter-ID laws, voter roll purges and other controversial voting-related measures in a host of states. (Here is our guide to the voter ID controversy, where we note that evidence on both sides of the issue is lacking.)
True the Vote also has promised to deliver 1 million volunteer poll watchers on Election Day, though its resources appear to be quite modest.
Given its annual summits featuring conservative speakers and its hand in spurring voter integrity projects around the country, we thought we'd take a closer look at this activist group.
True the Vote is a grassroots initiative spun out of a Houston, Texas-based Tea Party organization called King Street Patriots. Its focus is on training volunteers to serve as poll watchers on Election Day and inspecting voter registration rolls for hints ofinconsistency to flag to elections officials.
The group believes that citizen vigilance is necessary to protect elections from corruption and fraud.
Its leader, Catherine Engelbrecht, a former poll worker and suburban Texas mom, has repeatedly emphasized the group's nonpartisanship. "This has absolutely nothing to do with race or creed or color or party or politics, it's about principle," Engelbrecht said earlier this year in an interview to NRA News, a channel of the National Rifle Association.
But many of the group's tactics have come under fire for intimidating would-be votersand raising the specter of voter suppression. True the Vote has been backed mainly by Republican lawmakers and opposed by voting advocates that warn of minority disenfranchisement.
True the Vote did not respond to ProPublica's request for comment about these allegations.
Last year, True the Vote and King Street Patriots jointly released a blueprint for legislation to change voter registration rules. The guide's recommendations included requiring photo ID to vote, increasing penalties for forged or otherwise fraudulent voter registration applications, prohibiting same-day voter registration, allowing recording devices inside polling precincts and designating English as the "official language of Texas and the only language used on ballots."
What about funding?
So far, there hasn't been much. According to True the Vote's tax forms, the group raised $65,000 in 2010 and $137,000 in 2011.
While much of the money has come from anonymous donors, the New York Times reported that True the Vote received a $35,000 donation in 2011 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a Wisconsin-based organization known to award grants to conservative groups.
According to the Times, True the Vote had to return the donation because it was given on the condition that the group's application for tax-exempt status was approved by the IRS, which has not happened yet. We've asked True the Vote about this donation and it didn't respond to a request for comment.
It's really going to have 1 million volunteers on Election Day?
That is the goal, says Engelbrecht, the organization's chief: To "train, mobilize, and merge a million new election workers into the 2012 process," according to remarks she made last August during a panel hosted by the conservative group Judicial Watch.
But it's unclear how many volunteers True the Vote actually has.
While True the Vote initially focused on Harris County, Texas – the nation's third-largest voting district – they say they've since expanded into 35 states.
Michael Power, a True the Vote volunteer in Alabama contacted by ProPublica from a Tea Party Patriots group web page, said that his work involves looking out for "voters who are registered at non-residential properties, vacant lots, those types of things," or reporting fellow poll workers "who might be improperly influencing a person's ballot."
According to Power, voter rolls are purchased from the state, but also from "various companies that assemble records from the state," a strategy outlined here in this profileby ColorLines Magazine.
In interviews, Engelbrecht often discusses her observations as a poll worker during the 2008 election as her "Eureka" moment. In that year, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, became caught up in a controversy over collecting phony voter registration applications.
In recent months, True the Vote has taken up the mantle of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to maintain their voter registration rolls by removing the deceased, convicted felons or otherwise ineligible voters from their lists. (In February, a Pew Center on the States report found that 1.8 million dead people are still included on voter rolls while 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state.)
True the Vote has sent letters to 160 counties around the country alleging they have failed to update their voter rolls, according to "Bullies at the Ballot Box," a report by liberal groups Common Cause and Demos that is critical of True the Vote's methods.
Through its attorneys, True the Vote has demanded a correction and retraction of the report, which it says contains "misleading information" and "false and defamatory statements."
True the Vote has helped get out its name by partnering with larger, more prominent organizations. It has co-sponsored events with Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers and collaborated with other nonprofits such as Tea Party Patriots in places from Colorado to Alabama to host "Election Integrity" fundraisers and recruitment events.
Its mission also strongly resembles that of Republican-led political action committeeMadison Project's Code Red USA, which works on "participating in election integrity efforts, and/or participating in cross community engagement."
Engelbrecht told the New York Times that her group has no connection to Code Red USA.
Connections to the Tea Party King Street Patriots
True the Vote is often referred to as an offshoot of King Street Patriots. The two share leadership: Catherine Engelbrecht, her husband, Bryan Engelbrecht, and a person named Dianne Josephs are all listed as directors on both groups' tax forms. But a True the Vote spokesman told us that despite these connections, the group keeps separate accounting structures and staff from King Street Patriots.
That is relevant because True the Vote is seeking tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, which is for charitable or educational organizations that can only engage in a limited amount of lobbying and can't support or oppose candidates for elected office.
King Street Patriots, by contrast, is a 501(c)(4) social welfare group, meaning it can engage in an unlimited amount of political lobbying, as long as that is not its primary purpose (the definition of which is extremely murky, as ProPublica's recentinvestigation into dark money groups detailed).
While it's common for c4 groups to have separate charitable arms—The Sierra Club and National Rifle Association are examples of this—they must keep their financial accounting separate, said Lloyd Mayer, a law professor specializing in nonprofits and election law at Notre Dame Law School.
"It can even share a name, but it has to have its own money. That's the key thing," Mayer said.
According to a tax filing King Street Patriots provided to ProPublica, the group received $140,722 in donations in 2010. It's received an extension on its 2011 tax filing.
'Verify the Recall'
Earlier this year, thousands of True the Vote volunteers got involved in the Wisconsin recall election through an initiative, "Verify the Recall," that sought to identify illegitimate signatures on a petition to remove Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office.
Using its own methodology, True the Vote concluded that more than 63,000 signatures were ineligible. It also identified 2,590 names that were "potentially false" based on a predetermined list of names the group believed would be used fraudulently on the petition. Organizers declined to share this list with state officials.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, a non-partisan state regulatory agency consisting of six former state judge appointees, later discounted much of the group's findings and methodology, concluding they were "significantly less accurate, complete, and reliable than the review and analysis completed by the G.A.B." and that they "would not have survived legal challenge."
True the Vote's Lawsuits
Earlier this year, True the Vote teamed up with Judicial Watch to sue elections officials in Ohio and Indiana for their alleged failure to clean up their voter rolls.
In June, the group filed a motion for intervention in a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice to halt the Florida voter purge. Should the purge stop, the group argued, "registered voter members may have their votes cancelled out or diluted by unlawful ballots cast in the names of unlawfully present aliens."
Florida elections officials originally identified up to 2,600 non-citizens registered to vote in the state. But it turns out the number was actually a lot smaller. Recently, the state reached a partial agreement with voting rights groups, agreeing to notify these flagged voters that they'll remain eligible to vote in November.
2010 election controversy
In 2010, the Department of Justice launched a probe of alleged voter intimidation efforts by True the Vote poll watchers during the midterm elections in districts near Houston.
That year, a national voter hotline received more than 200 calls alleging voter intimidation – as well as other election snafus – from several states, Texas included. It's unclear to what extent True the Vote was responsible for those complaints.
The Justice Department investigation didn't proceed any further. True the Vote didn't respond to our questions about the episode.


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