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Traffic engineering (transportation)

Traffic engineering is a branch of civil engineering that uses engineering techniques to achieve the safe and efficient movement of people and goods. It focuses mainly on research and construction of the immobile infrastructure necessary for this movement, such as roads, railway tracks, bridges, traffic signs and traffic lights. Increasingly however, instead of building additional infrastructure, dynamic elements are also introduced into road traffic management. These use sensors to measure traffic flows and automatic, interconnected guidance systems (for example traffic signs which open a lane in different directions depending on the time of day) to manage traffic especially in peak hours. The relationship between lane flow (Q) (vehicles per hour) maximum speed (V) (kilometers per hour) and density (K) (vehicles per kilometer) is Q = KV. Observation on limited access facilities suggests that up to a maximum flow, speed does not decline while density increases, but above a critical threshold, increased density reduces speed, and beyond a further threshold, increased density reduces flow as well.

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March 18, 2026

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A team of physicists has experimentally confirmed a long-predicted sequence of exotic magnetic phases in an atomically thin material. When cooled, the material forms tiny magnetic vortices before transitioning into a second ordered magnetic ...
A new ultrathin photodetector from Duke University can sense light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and generate a signal in just 125 picoseconds, making it the fastest pyroelectric detector ever built. The breakthrough could power ...
Scientists at the University of Tokyo have captured something never seen before: a frame-by-frame view of how electron spins flip inside an antiferromagnet, a material once thought to be magnetically “invisible.” By firing ultrafast electrical ...
Researchers at the University of Basel and the ETH in Zurich have succeeded in changing the polarity of a special ferromagnet using a laser beam. In the future, this method could be used to create adaptable electronic circuits with ...

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