Search

In this article, I discuss the linguistic landscape of officially sanctioned street name signage on the Navajo Nation. Given the Navajo Nation's Enhanced 9-1-1 and Rural Addressing Initiative, this is a moment of transition for such signage. First I describe, in broad strokes, the linguistic landscape of the Navajo Nation. I then look at street name signs that are ostensibly written in Navajo in Ft. Defiance, AZ. These signs show "spectacular typos" that suggest a lack of familiarity with written or spoken Navajo. In the conclusion, following work in linguistic landscaping, I take up the issues of what kinds of audience these signs select and what kinds of imagined community these signs create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the meaning and identity in the signs, sounds, and spaces of Chinatown, New York. Topics discussed include street signs in the Chinatown which are written in Chinese and English language, rhetorical challenges when languages and cultures intersects, and translation of street name provided by the members of the Chinese Seniors Association of Houston.

Best connections in real networks are usually found by applying Dijkstra's shortest paths algorithm. Unfortunately, networks deriving from real-world applications are huge, yielding unsustainable times to compute shortest paths. Therefore, considerable research has been conducted in recent years to accelerate Dijkstra's algorithm on typical instances of transportation and communication networks, such as road networks. These efforts have led to the development of many so called speed-up techniques, as for example Arc-Flags. The main drawback of many of these techniques, including Arc-Flags, is that they do not work well in the realistic dynamic scenarios where the networks change over time. In this article, we introduce a new data structure, named Road-Signs, which is used to update the Arc-Flags of a graph in fully dynamic scenarios. Road-Signs can be used to compute Arc-Flags, can be efficiently updated and does not require large space consumption for sparse networks. We develop a fully dynamic algorithm for updating Arc-Flags, by updating Road-Signs, each time that a modification occurs on an edge of the network. We show that this algorithm is better than recomputation from scratch of Arc-Flags in terms of the affected parameters of the input, which makes this solution suitable to be efficient in practice. However, it is not better than recomputation from scratch in the worst case. We also propose an experimental study to evaluate the practical performance of the new dynamic algorithm. To this aim, we use real-world road networks subject to sequences of weight change operations. Our experiments show a significant speed-up in the updating phase with respect to the recomputation from scratch of Arc-Flags.Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 63(3), 243-259 2014 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents an automatic road traffic signs detection and recognition system based on hierarchical clustering of interest points and joint transform correlation. The proposed algorithm consists of the three following stages: interest points detection, clustering of those points and similarity search. At the first stage, good discriminative, rotation and scale invariant interest points are selected from the image edges based on the 1-D empirical mode decomposition (EMD). We propose a two-step unsupervised clustering technique, which is adaptive and based on two criterion. In this context, the detected points are initially clustered based on the stable local features related to the brightness and color, which are extracted using Gabor filter. Then points belonging to each partition are reclustered depending on the dispersion of the points in the initial cluster using position feature. This two-step hierarchical clustering yields the possible candidate road signs or the region of interests (ROIs). Finally, a fringe-adjusted joint transform correlation (JTC) technique is used for matching the unknown signs with the existing known reference road signs stored in the database. The presented framework provides a novel way to detect a road sign from the natural scenes and the results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed technique, which yields a very low false hit rate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There are numerous ways in which people make illegal or unauthorized alterations to urban space. This study identifies and analyzes one that has been largely ignored in social science: explicitly functional and civic-minded informal contributions that I call 'do-it-yourself urban design.' The research, which began as an investigation into more 'traditional' nonpermissable alterations, uncovered these cases-from homemade bike lanes and street signs to guerrilla gardens and development proposals-that are gaining visibility in many cities, yet are poorly accounted for by existing perspectives in the literature. This article examines the existing theories and evidence from interviews and other fieldwork in 14 cities in order to develop the new analytical category of DIY urban design. I present findings on the creators of these interventions, on their motivations to 'improve' the built environment where they perceive government and other development actors to be failing, and on the concentration of their efforts in gentrifying areas. This introduces the possibility of conflict and complicates their impact. I argue that DIY urban design has wide-ranging implications for both local communities and broader urban policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a classroom activity that integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) lessons and is related to various signs seen along the road. The topics discussed include traffic signs, outdoor advertising, and an activity that explores the design of these signs' supporting structures. The detailed procedures for the classroom activity are presented.

Transportation corridors at regional and national scales are vulnerable to region-wide natural disasters resulting from tropical cyclones, including tropical storms and hurricanes. In addition to floods and debris causing the corridors to be impassable, the widespread damage to signs, lights, and signals brings severe safety concerns to the system users. Agencies must prepare for tropical cyclone-related needs and anticipate various storm scenarios in order to prioritize their investment for upgrading existing equipment. This paper develops a method to consider investment alternatives for highway equipment (i.e., signs, signals, and lights) through the evaluation of trade-offs between cost and damage. First, the authors develop a model for determining wind damage to vulnerable equipment. Second, they characterize the types of highway equipment and associated costs. Third, they evaluate trade-offs among upfront equipment upgrade costs and potential wind damage to equipment in reference to particular tropical cyclone scenarios. Considering the various consequences of five hurricane categories enables the decision maker an opportunity to understand the trade-offs and to invest in equipment consistent with individual needs and values of the agency. To demonstrate the method for this paper, the authors use a study area consisting of 209 km (130 mi) of interstate highways and 309 km (190 mi) of U.S. and state routes managed by the Virginia Dept. of Transportation (VDOT). This paper is of interest to emergency managers, regulators, transportation agencies, and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poem "The Comedy of This King" by John Blair is presented. First Line: The sign on the street might say; Last Line: only your best and most wary love.

Navigating a car in an unfamiliar country becomes one of the major concerns with driving safety. Existing studies mainly used survey, focus group and statistical analysis to study this problem. Although the navigation system (e.g. GPS) gains an advantage in providing navigation assistances, paper maps and particularly internet maps are one of major ways for navigating in an unfamiliar area. This study is one of a few experimental studies which addressed a typical multitasking driving behaviour (driving and navigation task) in a cross-culture context. Twenty-four native American-English speakers navigated a driving simulator in urban environments which involved three formats of language settings of the street signs (English, Chinese or no street signs) and two types of map orientation consistency (driving from south to north vs. driving from north to south with a north-up map). It was found that female drivers made more wrong turns only with Chinese street signs but not in the other two conditions compared to male drivers. This indicated that female drivers actually behaved differently from male drivers in an unfamiliar driving environment with unfamiliar street names language. Both male and female drivers benefited from English street signs and reported higher driver workload with Chinese street signs. Interestingly, the average glance duration of maps with Chinese street signs was significantly less than that with English street signs, indicating that even though Chinese language belongs to ideograph with graphical information, its graphical information was not that helpful in assisting navigation task. In addition, female drivers had more instances of collisions with other vehicles, a longer distance of deviation from central line position, higher driver workload and a longer time period of map glance duration. For the main effect of map consistency, drivers made more wrong turns and perceived higher driving workload when they drove with inconsistent maps. Further implications of the current study in transportation safety of globalisation were also discussed, including improvement of street sign infrastructures and optimal ways of using and designing internet maps for drivers navigating in an unfamiliar country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tasks of traffic signs are notifying drivers about the current state of the road and giving them other important information for navigation. In this paper, a new approach for detection, tracking, and recognition such objects is presented. Road signs are detected using color thresholding, after that candidate blobs that have specific criteria are classified based on their geometrical shape and are tracked trough successive frames based on a new similarity measure. Candidate blobs that successfully pass the tracking module are processed for extracting their fractal features, and final recognition is done based on support vector machines with kernel function. Results validate effectiveness of newly employed fractal feature and show high accuracy with a low false hit rate of this method and its robustness to illumination changes and road sign occlusion or scale changes. Also results indicate that compared to the other pictogram feature representation techniques, this approach shows a more proper description of road signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road signs are infrastructure assets crucial for transportation safety. Transportation agencies need to inventory signs regularly, e.g., annually or every 2 years, for asset management. This article proposes a framework of intelligent road sign inventory (IRSI) to enhance sign data collection, compared with existing manual or semiautomatic methods. The two key technical problems of sign recognition and attribute computation are addressed for IRSI. Because sign colors are important for both image segmentation and color features analysis, a novel kernel-density-estimation-based statistical color model (KDE-SCM) is proposed to describe the widespread and multimodel sign color distributions. The KDE-SCM is embedded into a sign recognition algorithm by integrating sign shapes, textures, and other features. Furthermore, sign attributes, including the distance, local position, global positioning system (GPS) position, height, tilt angle, etc., are computed from image and GPS data. The proposed algorithms have been tested with the actual video log images collected on 35 km road segments in Kyoto City, Japan. For the KDE-SCM color models, the false positive rates for the red and blue colors are 0.9% and 0.7%, while the false negative rates are 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. The sign recognition algorithm was configured and applied to recognize three regulatory sign types of stop, no-crossing, and no-parking signs with 92.6% precision and 91.9% recall on average. The sign attribute computation model was also tested with the actual video log. The computation errors for distance, position, tilt angle, and height, etc., increase with the measurement distances. The sign-to-camera distances have the computation errors of less than 22 cm if the measurement distances are less than 15 m. The proposed algorithms demonstrate good potential for developing IRSI to enhance road asset data collection and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In landscapes inundated with roads, wildlife is likely to negatively interact with vehicles during its lifetime. Wildlife crossing signs are easily deployed, cost-effective, and meant to encourage wildlife-friendly driving practices in hopes of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) along roads. Here we use the placement of turtle crossing signs as a case study to provide recommendations for informed placement of mitigation structures across regional landscapes in Ontario and elsewhere. We collected relevant information (design, theft, and location) from 369 turtle crossing signs placed along roads. We then compiled turtle-vehicle collision data from various sources to statistically analyze where they occur in relation to habitat and road type. We also compared the locations of turtle crossing signs to validated hotspots, which was equivalent to 19,000 km of road in Southern Ontario. We found that at least 27% of signs were stolen and at least 10 different design types exist for crossing signs in Ontario. Thirteen percent of signs were not located at validated hotspots, and turtle-vehicle collisions occurred most often on paved highways and county roads. We conclude that a road mitigation strategy should accurately inventory where structures are located and monitor their effectiveness. Structures should be selectively placed using the best available information, such as metapopulation science and WVC data, especially in regions heavily fragmented by roads. In multi-jurisdictional regions, an effective strategy should also consider regional coordination that focuses on standardized sign design and information sharing in an adaptive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic road sign detection is important to a robotic vehicle that automatically drives on roads. As the colors of most traffic road signs are blue and red, in this paper, we use Hue- Saturation- Intensity (HSI) color space for color based segmentation at first. Using important geometrical features, the road signs are detected perfectly. After segmentation, it turns to classify every detected road signs. For this purpose, we employ and compare the performance of three classifiers; they are distance to border (DTB), FFT sample of signature, and code matrix. In this work, we use the code matrix as an efficient classifier for the first time. Although the achieved accuracy by code matrix is greater than the two referred classifiers in average, the main advantage is simplicity and so less computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a system for the implementation of "An Automatic Road Sign Recognizer for an Intelligent Transport System". This system a list of road signs are resized, converted to binary image then line segmentation, single sign segmentation. Then height, 4-poin concavity measurement, centroid and distance of the centroid from the origin of the sign are used as features. A method for accurately locating road signs in real time from a stream of images taken by video camera mounted on an Intelligent Transport System. The process the video stream and extract road sign and the extracted features are used to train a Backpropagation NN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multilingual societies, not only the names in urban toponymic inscriptions display identity politics and reproduce nationalist discourses but also the languages used. This is clearly the case with multilingual street signs, where specific preferences underlie the choice and placement of languages and scripts, signifying the processes and relationships of political and social power. Applying a historical perspective, this paper explores the politics underlying language preference and script display policies on street signs in British Mandate Palestine between 1922 and 1948 and in Israel after 1948. The paper examines how display and placement of Arabic, English, and Hebrew on street signs has been susceptible to shifting policies drafted and executed by various branches of local and national government. It further analyzes disputes arising from specific policies. The historical perspective sheds light on how political and legal contexts have influenced the promulgation of policies, whereas the semiotic approach directs attention to how the display of languages on street signs encodes political messages and ideological meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel method for the detection of vandalism events in video sequences. The method is based on a proposed definition for common vandal behaviors recorded on surveillance video sequences. To do this, the method monitors changes inside a restricted site containing vandalism-prone objects such as a vending machine, a pay phone, or a street sign. When an object is detected as leaving such a site, the proposed method checks if the site contains temporally consistent and significant static changes, representing damage. If there are such changes and given that the site is normally unchanged after legal use, a vandalism event is declared and the vandals are tracked. The proposed method is tested on video sequences showing real and simulated vandal behaviors and it achieves a detection rate of 96%. It detects different forms of vandalism such as graffiti and theft, and can handle sudden illumination changes, occlusions, and segmentation errors. The proposed method operates at a frame rate of 13 frames per second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A road sign recognition system based on adaptive image pre-processing models using two fuzzy inference schemes has been proposed. The first fuzzy inference scheme is to check the changes of the light illumination and rich red color of a frame image by the checking areas. The other is to check the variance of vehicle's speed and angle of steering wheel to select an adaptive size and position of the detection area. The Adaboost classifier was employed to detect the road sign candidates from an image and the support vector machine technique was employed to recognize the content of the road sign candidates. The prohibitory and warning road traffic signs are the processing targets in this research. The detection rate in the detection phase is 97.42%. In the recognition phase, the recognition rate is 93.04%. The total accuracy rate of the system is 92.47%. For video sequences, the best accuracy rate is 90.54%, and the average accuracy rate is 80.17%. The average computing time is 51.86 milliseconds per frame. The proposed system can not only overcome low illumination and rich red color around the road sign problems but also offer high detection rates and high computing performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics have increasingly begun to question the significance of bounded understandings of space and place, preferring instead to approach places as open, dynamic, relational entities that are in-formation, and the ways in which different places are connected by flows of people, ideas, and material things. The aim of this paper is to focus on the implications of networked and relational ways of thinking for how we understand the notion of 'territory', the archetypal example of bounded space. We discuss the need to develop a greater dialogue between relational and territorial understandings of space by exploring recent work on national territories. We contend that (1) the discourses and embodied practices of actors and (2) a whole series of objects are actively involved in producing a national territory that is open, contingent, and contested. The paper focuses on empirical material relating to Welsh roads and road signs-in particular the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales during the late 1960s and 1970s-as a way of highlighting the significance of these two themes. We conclude by arguing that territories are not relics of a static world of nation-states but, rather, the contingent products of an ongoing series of connections between people, discourses, and objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently in work zones, standard barricade warning lights are used to provide channelizing and warning functions. These yellow flashing lights are presently used for different work zone activities. Concepts for a non-standard barricade lighting system were developed and evaluated: flashing red lights when traffic is stopped or very slow within a work zone, flashing green lights when a work zone is inactive and traffic should proceed normally, expanding yellow lights when drivers should slow down and exercise enhanced caution, and sweeping yellow lights when lane closures require drivers to move to the right or left. Prototype units were designed and fabricated. A survey of driver understanding of these functions indicated that drivers would probably understand all of the functions but that the flashing red and green functions could result in conflicts with other roadway traffic control devices. A field evaluation of the expanding and sweeping functions in mock-up work zones demonstrated that driver comprehension of the lights could be translated to a driving situation. Drivers changed lanes sooner (providing a 40% longer lane change margin) in response to the sweeping function than to conventional flashing barricade lights, and subjective ratings about the intended meaning of the tested functions were also positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a complete traffic sign recognition system based on vision sensor onboard a moving vehicle which detects and recognizes up to one hundred of the most important road signs, including circular and triangular signs. A restricted Hough transform is used as detection method from the information extracted in contour images, while the proposed recognition system is based on Support Vector Machines (SVM). A novel solution to the problem of discarding detected signs that do not pertain to the host road is proposed. For that purpose infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication and a stereo vision sensor are used. Furthermore, the outputs provided by the vision sensor and the data supplied by the CAN Bus and a GPS sensor are combined to obtain the global position of the detected traffic signs, which is used to identify a traffic sign in the I2V communication. This paper presents plenty of tests in real driving conditions, both day and night, in which an average detection rate over 95% and an average recognition rate around 93% were obtained with an average runtime of 35 ms that allows real-time performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Four representative Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) highway sign support trusses were evaluated analytically and in the field to assess their design load capacity and fatigue resistance when subjected to wind loading. The three overhead span bridge and one cantilever welded aluminum truss structures were instrumented for static and dynamic field testing with strain gages and accelerometers to collect structural behavior data when subjected to manual excitation, wind loading, and truck gust excitation. Companion analytical models were developed and calibrated to represent the structures in the field, after which these were then used to assess the response of the trusses at full design wind loads. Current IDOT and AASHTO highway sign support structure design loading and resistance approaches with respect to both strength and fatigue have been critically assessed in light of the analyses and field test results, with recommendations made for improving future designs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: It was investigated how speed limit repetition and distraction affect drivers’ speed management throughout a road section where the imposed speed limit is not in accordance (too low) with road design.Background: It is not clear how driving speed evolves and to what degree speed limit repetition is necessary on roads where the imposed speed limit is not in accordance (too low) with road design. It is furthermore of interest how all these factors are influenced by driver distraction.Method: In a driving simulator, 47 volunteers completed one trip with and without distraction. Within each trip, three configurations were presented: speed limit sign repetition after every intersection, repetition only in the middle of a segment, or no repetition.Results: Distraction lowered driving speed. Speed management varied depending on speed limit repetition. The speed limit was exceeded more often when speed limit signs were repeated less frequently. When drivers were not reminded of the limit, speed linearly increased throughout the segment. In all three configurations, speed increased toward the end of the segment, but this increase was largest when there had been no repetition at all of the speed limit.Conclusion: In low-demanding road designs that allow drivers to exceed the speed limit, limit repetition is necessary. Frequent repetition may be preferred, as speed management was most homogenous in that case.Application: The proposed analysis of speed management throughout a section increases our understanding of how speed evolves and thereby shows where repetition of the speed limit is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: By researching current road signs recognition methods, we found that SIFT is rarely used for real time system because its computation cost is high; while PCA-SIFT often fails when objective images have obvious changes in scaling and rotation. To solve the problems of SIFT and PCA-SIFT, we propose a more effective real time road signs recognition algorithm named HSI-SIFT, it combines HSI image segmentation with SIFT recognition. We illustrate that HSI-SIFT can be used for real time road signs recognition efficiently; and it is more accurate and robust than PCA-SIFT to changes in scaling, rotation and illumination; moreover, HSI-SIFT is about 10 times faster than PCA- SIFT on average. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper disentangles cognitive and communicative factors influencing planning strategies in the everyday task of choosing a route to a familiar location. Describing the way for a stranger in town calls for fundamentally different cognitive processes and strategies than actually walking to a destination. In a series of experiments, this paper addresses route choices, planning processes, and description strategies in a familiar urban environment when asked to walk to a goal location, to describe a route for oneself, or to describe a route for an addressee. Results show systematic differences in the chosen routes with respect to efficiency, number of turns and streets, and street size. The analysis of verbal data provides consistent further insights concerning the nature of the underlying cognitive processes. Actual route navigation is predominantly direction-based and characterized by incremental perception-based optimization processes. In contrast, in-advance route descriptions draw on memory resources to a higher degree and accordingly rely more on salient graph-based structures, and they are affected by concerns of communicability. The results are consistent with the assumption that strategy choice follows a principle of cognitive economy that is highly adaptive to the degree of perceptual information available for the task. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article considers the political impact of a series of billboards that appeared at the Windsor–Detroit border and the Tijuana–San Ysidro border between 1991 and 2007. While there is a significant asymmetry between the political tensions on the northern and southern borders of the United States, there are remarkable parallels and relays between events that have taken place in major cities on these borders that indicate that generalized border anxiety has spread far beyond the localized territory of the southern borderlands. In this heightened climate of border insecurity, artists and community groups have seized on the geopolitical confusion that has emerged in mainstream American media where issues such as terrorism and illegal migration have often been folded into the same discourse. While border regions are tightly controlled spaces, these projects have served to highlight contradictory narratives of globalization and security, unmasking national insecurities that have been submerged through the bureaucratic discourses of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the more recent Smart Border agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article summarizes five lessons from the author's teaching program on reflective safety garments and road signs in her precalculus high school class. It notes that the author taught the students to let them review and strengthen their geometry and trigonometry skills using a practical application. Also demonstrated is the progression of student's knowledge about the mathematics and the physics underlying the design of reflective materials.

The article offers information on "Fragwürdige Ehrungen!? Straßennamen als Instrument von Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskultur," a conference on the cultural and political roles of street names in German history that was held in Münster, Germany on July 12, 2011. Topics discussed included the names of authors from Westphalia, Germany on street signs, the memorial function of street names, and the street numbers in Westphalia during the post-World War I era of national socialism.

The Japanese linguistic landscape is a dynamically vibrant area with words and phrases appearing in a vast array of locations written in a wide range of scripts, fonts, sizes and colours, and all serving a complex and interconnected array of functions. This visual landscape of shop signs, street signs, advertising posters, information boards and vending machines is complemented by a similar vibrancy and dynamism in more private domains such as restaurant menus, product packaging, clothing, newspaper articles, magazine stories and TV advertising. Immediately striking an observer of these contexts is the fact that, although the Japanese language has a highly complex writing system incorporating an admixture of logographic, syllabic and alphabetic characters, a great many of the words and phrases in Japanese social contexts are transcribed in Latin alphabet characters. Because the vast majority of these lexical items are either direct imports of words from the English language (often termed ‘loanwords' or ‘borrowings') or domestic creations based on English vocabulary (often termed ‘wasei eigo'/‘Japan-created English'), those who are familiar with the English language are assisted in their orientation around Japan by this pervasive use of English-based vocabulary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: Compliance with road safety signs is important in the reduction of motorcycle accidents. The aim of this study was to implement health education intervention and assess its impact on the knowledge of and compliance with road safety signs among commercial motorcyclists in Uyo, Southern Nigeria. Method: This was an intervention study among motorcyclists in Uyo, Southern Nigeria, with a control group from a similar town. The instrument of data collection was a semi-structured interviewer administered questionnaire. Subjects were selected through multistage sampling method. Baseline data on compliance to road safety signs was collected from both groups. Motorcyclists in the intervention group were given education on the importance of compliance to road safety signs. Data was subsequently collected from both groups 3 months post intervention and analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 11. Result: A total of 200 respondents participated in the study, 100 from each group. Following intervention, respondents with good knowledge score increased from 21% at baseline to 82% at 3 months post intervention in the intervention group (p<0.05) and from 19% to 21% in the control group. Compliance score in the intervention group increased from 15% to 70% (p<0.05) and from 12% to 18% in the control group. Conclusion: A significant increase in compliance to road safety signs was recorded among motorcyclists in the intervention group after safety education. All motorcyclists should therefore be given education on road safety signs as this will improve compliance and lead to safer road use among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]