Pedestrians dramatically overestimate their own visibility at night. This is likely to result in pedestrians unknowingly engaging in dangerous behavior. To determine the extent to which pedestrians' estimates of their own visibility are influenced by educational interventions, clothing reflectance, and headlamp beam setting, participants in 2 experiments estimated their own nighttime visibility by walking toward a stationary car to the point where they believed they were just recognizable as a pedestrian. In the first experiment 48 university students were tested and in the second experiment 9 high-school driver education students were tested. Overall, participants failed to appreciate the benefits of reflective clothing and of high-beam illumination. However, the participants in Experiment 1 who had heard a relevant lecture several weeks earlier gave estimates that were 10% shorter than did a control group. Participants in Experiment 2 heard a more focused and graphic-intensive lecture and gave estimates that were 56% shorter than did a control group. Potential applications of this research include increasing pedestrian safety by designing and implementing research-based public education campaigns aimed at reducing pedestrians' overestimates of their own nighttime visibility.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1518/hfes.46.1.170.30385 | DOI Listing |
BMC Biol
January 2025
Centre for Ecology & Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK.
Background: The spatial and spectral properties of the light environment underpin many aspects of animal behaviour, ecology and evolution, and quantifying this information is crucial in fields ranging from optical physics, agriculture/plant sciences, human psychophysics, food science, architecture and materials sciences. The escalating threat of artificial light at night (ALAN) presents unique challenges for measuring the visual impact of light pollution, requiring measurement at low light levels across the human-visible and ultraviolet ranges, across all viewing angles, and often with high within-scene contrast.
Results: Here, I present a hyperspectral open-source imager (HOSI), an innovative and low-cost solution for collecting full-field hyperspectral data.
Sci Data
December 2024
School of Spatial Planning and Design, Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou, 310015, China.
Nighttime light (NTL) data is recognized as a reliable proxy for measuring the scope and intensity of human activity, finding wide application in studies such as urbanization monitoring, socioeconomic estimation, and ecological environment assessment. However, the substantial discrepancies and limited temporal coverage of existing NTL datasets have constrained their potential for long-term research applications. To address this, a Nighttime Light U-Net super-resolution network is proposed for the cross-sensor calibration between the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) NTL data and the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership-Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) NTL data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper proposes a smart window for radiative cooling with adjustable transparency by leveraging the phase transition property of VO. The proposed smart window exhibits daytime visible light transmission and near-infrared light reflection, all-day radiative cooling, and a nighttime privacy protection feature. It comprises a bottom layer of VO/Ag/VO and top cubic two-dimensional SiO gratings, with structural parameters optimized by the genetic algorithm to ensure excellent optical performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Photochem Photobiol B
December 2024
CRETUS. Gemap (GI-1243), Departamento de Edafoloxía e Química Agrícola, Facultade de Farmacia, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Electronic address:
Night-time outdoor illumination in combination with natural sunlight can influence the visible phototrophic colonizers (mainly algae) growing on stone facades; however, the effects on the microbiome (invisible to the naked eye) are not clear. The presence of stone-dwelling microbes, such as bacteria, diatoms, fungi, viruses and archaea, drives further biological colonization, which may exacerbate the biodeterioration of substrates. Considering the microbiome is therefore important for conservation of the built heritage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
November 2024
Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Highly accurate nighttime cloud detection in satellite imagery is challenging due to the absence of visible to near-infrared (0.38-3 μm, VNI) data, which is critical for distinguishing clouds from other ground features. Fortunately, Machine learning (ML) techniques can more effectively leverage the limited wavelength information and show high-accuracy cloud detection based on vast sample volume.
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