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The first four battery-powered trains from Siemens Mobility began regular service for regional rail transport on Network 8 (“Ortenau”) on 8 April 2024, marking a premiere in Germany. shows the Mireo Plus B train running without the pantograph lifted. The official start was celebrated by an exclusive inaugural trip from Offenburg to Oberkirch and back and was accompanied by Winfried Hermann, minister of transport for the state of Baden-Württemberg, together with numerous invited guests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In wafer etching, regular cleaning and maintenance of process chambers are necessary to reduce particle contamination of etched wafers during the wafer transfer process. Investigating alternative cleaning and maintenance is imperative. This study analyzed the number of particles falling onto a silicon wafer when the pressure difference within the process chamber was manipulated. We observed that rapid opening of the pressure control valve, which regulates the chamber’s pressure, caused contamination during wafer transport. This was particularly true when the change in the pressure ratio was considerable. The by-products near the side of the chamber’s pressure control valve were activated and transported. We verified this finding by adjusting the opening ratio of the pressure control valve (i.e., its degree of opening). We proposed that during the transition step of the etching process, this opening ratio can be controlled by regulating the process pressure through gas flow settings. This method could suppress the deposition of reflected particles originating from the turbomolecular pump’s pumping line on wafers, thereby minimizing the contamination of wafers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, hybrid multiplication schemes over the binary extension field $GF(2^{m})$ based on $n$ -term Karatsuba algorithm (KA) have been proposed for irreducible trinomials. Their complexities depend on a decomposition of $m$ and the choice of a generation polynomial. However, these multipliers have some limitations on a decomposition of $m$ or generation polynomial $x^{m}+x^{k}+1$ such that $m\geq 2k$ . In this paper, we loosen such limited conditions. We present a new hybrid bit-parallel multiplier based on $n$ -term KA for any irreducible trinomial $x^{m}+x^{k}+1\,\,(0< k< m)$ , where $m$ is decomposed as $m=nm_{0}+r$ with $0< r< m_{0}$ and $1< n$ . (Here, various values for $n,m_{0}$ and $r$ may be chosen.) To this end, we generalize the previously proposed multiplication scheme for $x^{nm_{0}+1}+x^{k}+1$ into $x^{nm_{0}+r}+x^{k}+1$ . We evaluate the explicit complexity of the proposed multiplier. Specific comparisons show that the proposed multiplier achieves the lowest space complexity with the same or lower time complexity among hybrid multipliers. Compared to the fastest multipliers, the time complexity of the proposed multiplier costs only $T_{X}$ higher while its space complexity is much lower (it has roughly 40% reduced space complexity), where $T_{X}$ is the delay of one 2-input XOR gate.

Autonomous cars are indispensable when humans go further down the hands-free route. Although existing literature highlights that the acceptance of the autonomous car will increase if it drives in a human-like manner, sparse research offers the naturalistic experience from a passenger's seat perspective to examine the humanness of current autonomous cars. The present study tested whether the AI driver could create a human-like ride experience for passengers based on 69 participants’ feedback in a real-road scenario. We designed a ride experience-based version of the non-verbal Turing test for automated driving. Participants rode in autonomous cars (driven by either human or AI drivers) as a passenger and judged whether the driver was human or AI. The AI driver failed to pass our test because passengers detected the AI driver above chance. In contrast, when the human driver drove the car, the passengers’ judgement was around chance. We further investigated how human passengers ascribe humanness in our test. Based on Lewin's field theory, we advanced a computational model combining signal detection theory with pre-trained language models to predict passengers’ humanness rating behaviour. We employed affective transition between pre-study baseline emotions and corresponding post-stage emotions as the signal strength of our model. Results showed that the passengers’ ascription of humanness would increase with the greater affective transition. Our study suggested an important role of affective transition in passengers’ ascription of humanness, which might become a future direction for autonomous driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metra (Metropolitan Rail, the operator of commuter rail in Chicago area) is to receive the largest discretionary grant in its history: a US ${\$}$ 169.3 million federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) grant to buy battery-powered, zero-emission trainsets. Metra will be among the first in the nation to operate the innovative green technology. The CMAQ funding was approved by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Committee in October 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing the accuracy of traffic prediction relies on building a graph that effectively captures the intricate spatiotemporal correlations in traffic data. It is a widely observed phenomenon that different urban traffic activities exhibit an asymmetric mutual influence. However, existing methods for graph construction largely overlook this characteristic. To bolster prediction performance, this article introduces an attention mechanism based on transfer entropy (TE) to quantify the complex and asymmetric spatiotemporal correlations among traffic data. Subsequently, a graph attention network based on simplified TE calculation is devised to construct directed spatiotemporal graphs from heterogeneous traffic data. Finally, a directed spatiotemporal graph neural network is employed for training and prediction purposes. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach surpasses existing mainstream methods for spatiotemporal graph construction, leading to significant improvements in predicting heterogeneous traffic data. Further analysis reveals that TE exhibits higher sensitivity to asymmetric spatiotemporal influences in heterogeneous traffic environments compared to commonly used data dependency inference algorithms. This finding further validates the feasibility and advancement of our method in predicting heterogeneous traffic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alstom signed a contract for more than €500 million with the Royal Commission for AlUla for AlUla’s pioneering battery-powered tramway, the world’s longest catenary-free line. The fully integrated Alstom tramway system will feature 20 state-of-the-art Citadis B battery trams, as shown in. The 22.4-km line will encapsulate richness, history, and green mobility like no other, linking 17 strategically located stations, offering unmatched access to AlUla’s five core historical districts, including UNESCO World Heritage sites, such as AlUla Old Town (District 1), Dadan (District 2), Jabal Ikmah (District 3), Nabataean Horizon (District 4), and Hegra Historical City (District 5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 15 July, Tobu Railway Co., Ltd. began operating Hitachi Rail’s new Series N100, nicknamed SPACIA X, as shown in. The SPACIA X could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 40% compared to the current SPACIA, and would virtually replace all of the electricity used for operations with electricity from renewable sources, making CO2 emissions net zero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on public rail transportation projects that are being developed and launched around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]