Science Foundation Arizona

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Advanced technologies that assist the human driver or reduce (or even eliminate) the human driver’s role are becoming increasingly prevalent in new light-duty vehicles used by the general public. These technologies are divided between Active Safety features that monitor the human driver and vehicle motion and act intermittently to mitigate and avoid crashes, and Driving Automation features that assume some or all of the dynamic driving task from the human driver. Both types of technologies have the potential to reduce injuries and save lives by reducing the frequency and/or severity of crashes.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph"><b>Safety Impacts of Active Safety and Driving Automation Features</b> addresses the current capabilities and future potential for Active Safety and Driving Automation features to reduce crash frequency and severity and provides an overview of the state of the industry for both types of features, including current deployments, trends, and anticipated rollouts. Gaps in knowledge, unsettled issues, and suggestions for future research will also be discussed.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph"><a href="https://www.sae.org/publications/edge-research-reports" target="_blank">Click here to access the full SAE EDGE</a><sup>TM</sup><a href="https://www.sae.org/publications/edge-research-reports" target="_blank"> Research Report portfolio.</a></div></div>

The developments in automated driving system (ADS) technologies over the last decade have significantly increased the need for robust and high-quality ADS-equipped vehicle (AV) testing. While testing in naturalistic driving environments (NDEs) offers realism, it is often costly, and inefficient in capturing rare corner or edge cases critical for safety evaluation. A more practical solution is to design an Augmented Reality (AR)-enhanced, Digital Twin (DT) system. This paper proposes an AR-enhanced DT framework integrating two open-source automated driving software platforms, Autoware and CARLA. By generating digital traffic, CARLA provides a virtual driving environment (VDE), within which Autoware, serving as the ADS software, navigates. In this architecture, the pivotal component is a ROS2-based merger which injects simulated traffic into Autoware. This integrated framework was deployed on the BELIV research AV platform, the BELIV vehicle, at the Polytechnic campus of Arizona State University. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, highlighting its potential to enhance AV testing.

This study examined the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) in practice, as perceived and experienced by teachers in the Southwest School District (SSD). To evaluate teacher effectiveness, SSD is using SAS EVAAS® for high-stakes consequences more than any other district or state in the country. A mixed-method design including a large-scale electronic survey was used to investigate the model’s reliability and validity; to determine whether teachers used the SAS EVAAS® data in formative ways as intended; to gather teachers’ opinions on SAS EVAAS®’s claimed benefits and statements; and to understand the unintended consequences that occurred as a result of SAS EVAAS® use in SSD. Results revealed that the reliability of the SAS EVAAS® model produced split and inconsistent results among teacher participants, and teachers indicated that students biased the SAS EVAAS® results. The majority of teachers disagreed with the company’s marketing claims and did not report similar SAS EVAAS® and principal observation scores, reducing the criterion-related validity of both measures of teacher quality. Many unintended consequences associated with the high-stakes use of SAS EVAAS® emerged through teachers’ responses, which revealed among others that teachers felt heightened pressure and competition, which reduced morale and collaboration, and encouraged cheating or teaching to the test in attempt to raise SAS EVAAS® scores. The results of this study, one of the first to investigate how the SAS EVAAS® model works in practice, should be considered by policymakers, researchers, and districts when considering implementing the SAS EVAAS®, or any value-added model for teacher evaluation.

A program model has been developed and implemented over the last three years to provide a robust optical technologybased science education program to students aged 9‒11 years (5th grade), a formative time in the development of a student's interest in science and engineering. We have created well-tested and evaluated teaching kits for the classroom to teach about the basics of image formation and telescopes. In addition we provide professional development to the teachers of these students on principles of optics and on using the teaching kits. The program model is to reach every teacher and every student in a number of mid-sized rural communities across the state of Arizona. The Galileoscope telescope kit is a key part of this program to explore optics and the nature of science. The program grew out of Module 3 of the NSF-Supported Hands-On Optics project (SPIE, OSA, and NOAO) and from the Science Foundation Arizonasupported Hands-On Optics Arizona program. NOAO has conducted this program in Flagstaff, Yuma, Globe, and Safford, Arizona and is being expanded to sites across the entire state of Arizona (295,254 square kilometers). We describe the educational goals, evaluations, and logistical issues connected to the program. In particular, we proposed that this model can be adapted for any rural or urban locations in order to encourage interest in science, astronomy and optics.

We comment on a paper in this volume by Kouznetsov et al. (1), who report that the 14 C age of the textile, which was originally dated as about 2, 195 ± 55 yr BP was changed by 1,400 yr to about 800 yr BP, by heating in air containing small amounts of water. These authors also make several claims about the reliability of radiocarbon dating of cellulose and cellulose-containing textiles. They include statements that 14 C is not distributed uniformly in flax, and an untested claim that isotopic fractionation of 14 C relative to 13 C and 12 C occurs in some way different from that accounted for by the usual equations employed by radiocarbon laboratories. They use their results to question the validity of all radiocarbon measurements, and specifically to criticize the radiocarbon results on the Shroud of Turin (2).

We employed a systemwide approach, a large and robust set of radiocarbon ages, and modern process analogs to interpret the Holocene history of forest fire–related sedimentation and overall alluvial activity in northeastern Yellowstone National Park. Debris-flow and flood events following the 1988 fires provided facies models for interpreting the stratigraphic record of fire-related sedimentation within valley-side alluvial fans of Soda Butte Creek. Fire-related deposits make up approximately 30% of the late Holocene fan alluvium. Fifty 14 C ages on fire-related events cluster within the intervals of 3300–2900, 2600–2400, 2200–1800, and 1400–800 yr B.P. and suggest earlier episodes of large fires and fan aggradation around 7500, 5500, and 4600–4000 yr B.P. A major pulse of fire-related debris-flow activity between 950 and 800 yr B.P. coincided with the height of the widely recognized Medieval Warm Period (ca. a.d. 1050–1200). Instrumental climate records over the last ∼100 yr in Yellowstone imply that the intensity and interannual variability of summer precipitation are greater during warmer periods, enhancing the potential for severe short-term drought, major forest fires, and storm-generated fan deposition. Along lower Soda Butte Creek, fill-cut terrace treads were created by lateral migration of channels and accumulation of overbank sediments ca. 8000 yr B.P. (terrace level T1a), 7000–5600 (T1b), 3100–2600 (T2), 2000–1300 (T3), and post–800 yr B.P. (T4). These periods coincide with overbank sedimentation on Slough Creek and the Lamar River but alternate with intervals of fire-related fan deposition, implying a strong climatic control. Local paleoclimatic data suggest cooler, effectively wetter conditions during terrace tread formation. In warmer, drier intervals, reduced average runoff in axial streams results in meander-belt narrowing; concurrent channel incision may be caused by infrequent large floods. Greater resistance to downcutting, however, allowed fewer terraces to be formed along Slough Creek and the Lamar River. Alluvial systems in northeastern Yellowstone show a clear response to millennial-scale climatic cycles, wherein alluvial fans aggrade and prograde over flood plains in drier periods. Axial streams widen their flood plains and trim back the fans during wetter periods. “Small-scale” climatic fluctuations of the Holocene thus had substantial impact on postglacial landscapes in northeastern Yellowstone.