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We calculate the parameters of the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equation of a three-dimensional attractive Fermi gas around the superfluid critical temperature. We compare different levels of approximation throughout the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) regime. We show that the inclusion of Gaussian fluctuations strongly modifies the values of the Ginzburg-Landau parameters approaching the BEC regime of the crossover. We investigate the reliability of the Ginzburg-Landau theory, with fluctuations, studying the behavior of the coherence length and of the critical rotational frequencies throughout the BCS-BEC crossover. The effect of the Gaussian fluctuations gives qualitative correct trends of the considered physical quantities from the BCS regime up to the unitary limit of the BCS-BEC crossover. Approaching the BEC regime, the Ginzburg-Landau equation with the inclusion of Gaussian fluctuations turns out to be unreliable., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, published in Condensed Matter

When streets are designed according to the shared space principle, road user are encouraged to interact spontaneously with each other for negotiating the space. These interaction mechanisms do not follow clearly defined traffic rules but rather psychological and social principles related to aspects of safety, comfort and time pressure. However, these principles are hard to capture and to quantify, thus making it difficult to simulate the behavior of road users. This work investigates traffic conflict situations between pedestrians and motorized vehicles, with the main objective to formulate a discrete choice model for the identification of the proper conflict solving strategy. A shared space street in Hamburg, Germany, with high pedestrian volumes is used as a case study for model formulation and calibration. Conflict situations are detected by an automatic procedure of trajectory prediction and comparison. Standard evasive actions are identified, both for pedestrians and vehicles, by observing behavioral patterns. A set of potential parameters, which may affect the choice of the evasive action, is formulated and tested for significance. These include geometrical aspects, like distance and speed of the conflicting users, as well as conflict-specific ones, like time to collision. A multinomial logit model is finally calibrated and validated on real situations. The developed approach is realistic and ready for implementation in motion models for shared space or any other less organized traffic environment., Comment: 13 pages, 5 tables, 6 figures. This paper will be submitted soon to Transportation Research Part C