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The advancement of driving automation systems is transforming surface transportation. Understanding how drivers develop trust in these systems is crucial for their effective implementation. This study investigated the influence of drivers’ initial expectations and the consistency in system errors on trust in a Level-3 automated driving system (ADS). Participants read descriptions that characterized system capabilities to be either high or low, following which their initial levels of expectation were assessed. Error patterns (no, consistent, inconsistent errors) were manipulated across three simulated drives. Subjective trust ratings after each drive and reaction time to takeover requests (TORs) were measured. Results showed that initial expectations did not significantly impact overall trust or TOR performance; instead, trust was adjusted based on the system’s actual performance. These suggested a greater influence of direct experience over drivers’ preconceived expectations. The perceived predictability of the system partially mediated the effect of error consistency on trust, with inconsistent errors worsening TOR performance. The study highlighted the need for predictable ADS designs and driver-system interactions to enhance trust and road safety. 

The phase transitions of a series of Co-doped Heusler alloys, Ni2Mn1−xCoxGa (0⩽x⩽0.2), were investigated experimentally using the magnetization measurements, x-ray diffraction, and calorimetric measurements up to their respective melting points. With increasing Co concentration, the structural transition temperatures, Curie temperatures, and melting points, were observed to increase, while the order–disorder transition temperatures decreased. Temperature-dependent x-ray diffraction experiments revealed two different crystal structures in the low-temperature martensite phase for different Co concentrations. However, above their respective structural transitions, both low-temperature crystal structures transformed into the L21 cubic structure. These findings enabled the construction of a complete magnetic and structural phase diagram for Ni2Mn1−xCoxGa, spanning from cryogenic temperatures to the melting points. The temperature-dependent XRD results revealed the abrupt changes in interatomic Mn–Mn distances, which validates the crucial role of Mn–Mn interatomic distance and the effect of the magnetic coupling competition in the structural stability between the martensite phase and austenite phase. 

The Kondo lattice is one of the classic examples of strongly correlated electronic systems. We conduct a controlled study of the Kondo lattice in one dimension, highlighting the role of excitations created by the composite fermion operator. Using time-dependent matrix product state methods, we compute various correlation functions and contrast them with both large-N mean-field theory and the strong-coupling expansion. We show that the composite fermion operator creates long-lived, charge-e and spin-1/2 excitations, which cover the low-lying single-particle excitation spectrum of the system. Furthermore, spin excitations can be thought to be composed of such fractionalized quasiparticles with a residual interaction which tend to disappear at weak Kondo coupling. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

In this study, phase transitions (structural and magnetic) and associated magnetocaloric properties of stoichiometric MnCoGe have been investigated as a function of annealing pressure. Metastable phases were generated by annealing at 800 °C followed by rapid cooling under pressures up to 6.0 GPa. The x-ray diffraction results reveal that the crystal cell volume of the metastable phases continuously decreases with increasing thermal processing pressure, leading to a decrease in the structural transition temperature. The magnetic and structural transitions merge and form a first-order magnetostructural transition between the ferromagnetic orthorhombic and paramagnetic hexagonal phases over a broad temperature range (>80 K) spanning room temperature, yielding considerable magnetic entropy changes. These findings demonstrate the utility of thermal processing under high pressure, i.e., high-pressure annealing, to control the magnetostructural transitions and associated magnetocaloric properties of MnCoGe without altering its chemical composition. 

Balancing relative expression of pathway genes to minimize flux bottlenecks and metabolic burden is one of the key challenges in metabolic engineering. This is especially relevant for iterative pathways, such as reverse β-oxidation (rBOX) pathway, which require control of flux partition at multiple nodes to achieve efficient syn thesis of target products. Here, we develop a plasmid-based inducible system for orthogonal control of gene expression (referred to as the TriO system) and demonstrate its utility in the rBOX pathway. Leveraging effortless construction of TriO vectors in a plug-and-play manner, we simultaneously explored the solution space for enzyme choice and relative expression levels. Remarkably, varying individual expression levels led to substantial change in product specificity ranging from no production to optimal performance of about 90% of the theoretical yield of the desired products. We obtained titers of 6.3 g/L butyrate, 2.2 g/L butanol and 4.0 g/L hexanoate from glycerol in E. coli, which exceed the best titers previously reported using equivalent enzyme combinations. Since a similar system behavior was observed with alternative termination routes and higher-order iterations, we envision our approach to be broadly applicable to other iterative pathways besides the rBOX. Considering that high throughput, automated strain construction using combinatorial promoter and RBS libraries remain out of reach for many researchers, especially in academia, tools like the TriO system could democratize the testing and evaluation of pathway designs by reducing cost, time and infrastructure requirements. 

Abstract This paper is concerned with a degenerate and time delayed virus infection model with spatial heterogeneity and general incidence. The well‐posedness of the system, including global existence, uniqueness, and ultimately boundedness of the solutions, as well as the existence of a global attractor, is discussed. The basic reproduction number is defined and a characterization of is presented. Without the compactness of the solution semiflow, we establish the global dynamics of the system based on . In addition, when the system is spatially homogeneous, the unique infection steady state is globally asymptotically stable. Simulations are presented to illustrate our theoretical results. 

1-Decanol has great value in the pharmaceutical and fragrance industries and plays an important role in the chemical industry. In this study, we engineered Escherichia coli to selectively synthesize 1-decanol by using enzymes of the core reverse β-oxidation (rBOX) pathway and termination module with overlapping chain-length specificity. Through screening for acyl-CoA reductase termination enzymes and proper regulation of rBOX pathway expression, a 1-decanol titer of 1.4 g/L was achieved. Further improvements were realized by engineering pyruvate dissimilation to ensure the generation of NADH through pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) and reducing byproduct synthesis via a tailored YigI thioesterase knockout, increasing 1-decanol titer to 1.9 g/L. The engineered strain produced about 4.4 g/L 1-decanol with a yield of 0.21 g/g in 36 h in a bi-phasic fermentation that used a dodecane overlay to increase 1-decanol transport and reduce its toxicity. Adjustment of pathway expression (varying inducer concentration) and cell growth (oxygen availability) enabled 1-decanol production at 6.1 g/L (0.26 g/g yield) and 10.05 g/L (0.2 g/g yield) using rich medium in shake flasks and bioreactor, respectively. Remarkably, the use of minimal medium resulted in 1-decanol production with 100% specificity at 2.8 g/L (0.14 g/g yield) and a per cell mass yield higher than rich medium. These 1-decanol titers, yields and purity are at least 10-fold higher than others reported to date and the engineered strain shows great potential for industrial production. Taken together, our findings suggest that using rBOX pathway and termination enzymes of proper chain-length specificity in combination with optimal chassis engineering should be an effective approach for the selective production of alcohols.