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Research on external human–machine interfaces (eHMIs) has recently become a major area of interest in the field of human factors research on automated driving. The broad variety of methodological approaches renders the current state of research inconclusive and comparisons between interface designs impossible. To date, there are no standardized test procedures to evaluate and compare different design variants of eHMIs with each other and with interactions without eHMIs. This article presents a standardized test procedure that enables the effective usability evaluation of eHMI design solutions. First, the test procedure provides a methodological approach to deduce relevant use cases for the evaluation of an eHMI. In addition, we define specific usability requirements that must be fulfilled by an eHMI to be effective, efficient, and satisfying. To prove whether an eHMI meets the defined requirements, we have developed a test protocol for the empirical evaluation of an eHMI with a participant study. The article elucidates underlying considerations and details of the test protocol that serves as framework to measure the behavior and subjective evaluations of non-automated road users when interacting with automated vehicles in an experimental setting. The standardized test procedure provides a useful framework for researchers and practitioners.

Hydrogen internal combustion engines have the potential to become a key zero-emission propulsion system of the future. Especially the use in heavy-duty applications seems promising. However, some challenges remain, one of them being the tendency of these engines towards combustion anomalies. The present paper proposes a methodology for the quantification and evaluation of combustion anomalies occurring under varying operating conditions on an engine test bench. For this, a test procedure is defined to detect irregularities in a systematic way. The classification of the anomalies is conducted through a post-processing routine, which utilizes appropriate parameter limit values. The findings of this study indicate that engine anomaly behavior is strongly influenced by ambient conditions, most notably by elevated charge air and coolant temperatures. Furthermore, ignition timing exerts a significant additional effect. This paper also addresses the reproducibility and validity of the test procedure for real-life operation. All research activities conducted in this paper were performed under the scope of the COMET project Hylley.

A framework of “Adaptive Fire Testing” for knowledge-driven testing is being developed at Ghent University. When applying this framework, test specifications are adapted to maximize the expected utility (e.g., information gain) of performing the test. Thus, the value of conducting a test or experiment is evaluated before its execution, and a rational choice can be made between test protocol alternatives. In this contribution, we showcase a comparison among competing testing protocols based on expected information gain, using closed-form expressions and without relying on advanced sampling techniques. The case study highlights the potential of Adaptive Fire Testing to transform fire safety science and engineering by providing an objective and data-driven approach to choose between alternative experimental protocols.

This current and pioneering work aimed to assess the on-road performance of selected hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) in local urban road conditions following the World Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) and the chase car protocol. An experimental research design was also implemented to investigate the effects of the different payload conditions on vehicle performance, and corresponding drive cycle patterns for the test vehicles were generated from each on-road test. From the series of these on-road tests, it was revealed that there was high variability in speed profiles, and vehicle speed was generally found to be inversely related to payload weight. The variations in the state of charge, fuel fill-up, and fuel and energy parameters exhibited no significant differences in terms of payload conditions. When compared to both the Canada fuel consumption guide and the US fuel consumption guide, the resulting fuel consumption and energy consumption indicated that the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and Mitsubishi iMiEV exceeded energy efficiency standards, unlike the Toyota Prius. Meanwhile, in terms of CO2 emissions, all vehicles demonstrated around 40–70% lower emissions compared to conventional vehicles according to the 2023 estimates of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Being the first of its kind in the Philippines, this study on the on-road performance assessments of HEVs and EVs is essential because it provides empirical data on these vehicles’ actual performance in everyday driving conditions. The data are important for evaluating the potential to address environmental concerns, promote sustainable transportation solutions, influence consumer adoption, and shape government policies. With ongoing improvements in technology and expanding charging infrastructure, HEVs and EVs are poised for significant adoption in the coming years.

Medical comparative studies often involve collecting data from paired organs, which can produce either bilateral or unilateral data. While many testing procedures are available that account for the intra-class correlation between paired organs for bilateral data, more research needs to be conducted to determine how to analyze combined correlated bilateral and unilateral data. In practice, stratification is often used in analysis to ensure participants are allocated equally to each experimental condition. In this paper, we propose three Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)-based methods for testing the homogeneity of differences between two proportions for stratified bilateral and unilateral data across strata using Donner’s model. We compare the performance of these methods with a model-based method based on Generalized Estimating Equations using Monte Carlo simulations. We also provide a real example to illustrate the proposed methodologies. Our findings suggest that the Score test performs well and offers a valuable alternative to the exact tests in future studies.

This paper briefly introduces the progress of evaporative emission standards for light-duty vehicles in developed countries such as the United States and Europe, and the test procedures specified in the latest evaporative emission standard were concluded. Moreover, the development of evaporative emission standards for light-duty vehicles in China was comparatively analyzed. The evaporative emission test data from 2004 to 2019 was randomly selected for analysis of the trend of evaporative emission performance of vehicles in China with the use of EPR. Affected by the more stringent China 6 Evaporative Emissions standards issued in 2016, the EPR value of the evaporative emission test conducted according to the China 5 had continuously decreased to 41% in 2018. Subsequently, the EPR value increased again to a value of 60% in 2018 and 2019 due to strengthen of the emission limit from 2g to 0.7g and the raise of deterioration factor. Finally, based on the world's latest evaporative emission standards, the development trend of evaporative emission standards for light-duty vehicles in China is forecasted. The application of canister bench aging test, BETP, running loss emission test, and a test cycle with Chinese characteristics may be more conducive to control the light-duty vehicle emissions. Compared with the LEV 3, the evaporative emission limit of 0.7g/test specified in China 6 is still relatively larger. In addition, strengthen the control of durability test and in-use emission performance test would makes the HC emission less during the actual operation of the vehicle.

In latent variable models (LVMs) it is possible to analyze multiple outcomes and to relate them to several explanatory variables. In this context many parameters are estimated and it is common to perform multiple tests, e.g. to investigate outcome-specific effects using Wald tests or to check the correct specification of the modeled mean and variance using a forward stepwise selection (FSS) procedure based on Score tests. Controlling the family-wise error rate (FWER) at its nominal level involves adjustment of the p-values for multiple testing. Because of the correlation between test statistics, the Bonferroni procedure is often too conservative. In this article, we extend the max-test procedure to the LVM framework for Wald and Score tests. Depending on the correlation between the test statistics, the max-test procedure is equivalent or more powerful than the Bonferroni procedure while also providing, asymptotically, a strong control of the FWER for non-iterative procedures. Using simulation studies, we assess the finite sample behavior of the max-test procedure for Wald and Score tests in LVMs. We apply our procedure to quantify the neuroinflammatory response to mild traumatic brain injury in nine brain regions.

Battery safety is a prominent concern for the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs). The battery powering an EV contains highly energetic active materials and flammable organic electrolytes. Usually, an EV battery catches fire due to its thermal runaway, either immediately at the time of the accident or can take a while to gain enough heat to ignite the battery chemicals. There are numerous battery abuse testing standards and regulations available globally. Therefore, battery manufacturers are always in dilemma to choose the safest one. Henceforth, to find the optimal outcome of these two major issues, six standards (SAE J2464:2009, GB/T 31485-2015:2015, FreedomCAR:2006, ISO 12405-3:2014, IEC 62660-2:2010, and SAND2017-6295:2017) and two regulations (UN/ECE-R100.02:2013 and GTR 20:2018), that are followed by more than fifty countries in the world, are investigated in terms of their abuse battery testing conditions (crush test). This research proves that there is a need for (a) augmenting these standards and regulations as they do not consider real-life vehicle crash scenarios, and (b) one harmonised framework should be developed, which can be adopted worldwide. These outcomes will solve the battery manufacturers dilemma and will also increase the safety of EV consumers.

Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) represent a promising low-cost thin-film photovoltaic technology, with unprecedented power conversion efficiencies obtained for both single-junction and tandem applications 1 – 8 . To push PSCs towards commercialization, it is critical, albeit challenging, to understand device reliability under real-world outdoor conditions where multiple stress factors (for example, light, heat and humidity) coexist, generating complicated degradation behaviours 9 – 13 . To quickly guide PSC development, it is necessary to identify accelerated indoor testing protocols that can correlate specific stressors with observed degradation modes in fielded devices. Here we use a state-of-the-art positive-intrinsic-negative (p–i–n) PSC stack (with power conversion efficiencies of up to approximately 25.5%) to show that indoor accelerated stability tests can predict our six-month outdoor ageing tests. Device degradation rates under illumination and at elevated temperatures are most instructive for understanding outdoor device reliability. We also find that the indium tin oxide/self-assembled monolayer-based hole transport layer/perovskite interface most strongly affects our device operation stability. Improving the ion-blocking properties of the self-assembled monolayer hole transport layer increases averaged device operational stability at 50 °C–85 °C by a factor of about 2.8, reaching over 1,000 h at 85 °C and to near 8,200 h at 50 °C, with a projected 20% degradation, which is among the best to date for high-efficiency p–i–n PSCs 14 – 17 . We correlate lab test and field test results to better predict the performance of perovskite photovoltaics as a step towards real-world implementation.

Our understanding of phylogenetic relationships among bony fishes has been transformed by analysis of a small number of genes, but uncertainty remains around critical nodes. Genome-scale inferences so far have sampled a limited number of taxa and genes. Here we leveraged 144 genomes and 159 transcriptomes to investigate fish evolution with an unparalleled scale of data: >0.5 Mb from 1,105 orthologous exon sequences from 303 species, representing 66 out of 72 ray-finned fish orders. We apply phylogenetic tests designed to trace the effect of whole-genome duplication events on gene trees and find paralogy-free loci using a bioinformatics approach. Genome-wide data support the structure of the fish phylogeny, and hypothesis-testing procedures appropriate for phylogenomic datasets using explicit gene genealogy interrogation settle some long-standing uncertainties, such as the branching order at the base of the teleosts and among early euteleosts, and the sister lineage to the acanthomorph and percomorph radiations. Comprehensive fossil calibrations date the origin of all major fish lineages before the end of the Cretaceous.