For once in a while

Generally speaking, the sort of academic papers that I want to look at - perhaps read - can be downloaded from the Internet for free. Perhaps not quite as good as the real thing, but usually quite good enough for my purposes. Old papers are sometimes available at the Internet Archive, to which I do pay a modest subscription. Academia and ResearchGate are two other good sources, which often crop up in searches. And if one is really really keen, academic libraries such as the British Library and the SOAS library mostly seem to welcome amateurs these days.

Just occasionally, I have resort to the original publisher of a paper, who generally charge a good deal for such amateur access - a matter noticed recently at reference 1.

Today, for once in a while, I coughed up. The occasion was an interest in traffic lights, sparked by their appearance in reference 3,  a book which will be noticed more substantially in due course.

The paper was about traffic lights in China, reference 4, and the only people offering a copy, apart from Elsevier, were Scribd, the people at reference 5, whom I think operate a paying-for version of the Academia service, and whom I have steered clear of, at least so far. The best I could do for free was the first few pages of the book as a whole, the beginning of which is snapped above. My paper being chapter 11.

Perhaps it was the heat, but I decided to give Elsevier a go, just to see how it would go. They can be found at references 6 and 7. Maybe I was unconsciously influenced by the fact that BH owns a very modest number of shares in the parent RELX, a fact which only returned to consciousness when I took a look at reference 7, that is to say, some hours after my buy decision.

Not having an institutional login - which may well have given me access for free - presumably one of the many things that all those student loans go to pay for -  nor any other kind of login, I opted for guest purchase, priced in a moderate number of US dollars, exclusive of applicable taxes, taxes which in the event added some 20% to the bill.

To make all this work, they sent an activation code to my email account, through which I was able to do the business - and earned me a security alert from Google. Much harder work than buying something from Amazon or Abebooks, although to be fair, I do have accounts with both of these last. Or Waitrose or Sainsbury's for that matter, although these last do need a delivery address. Email address is not enough - not that I would want my email address to be easily linked to my home address. Which Google appear to know anyway, while Ordnance Survey - with whom I also have an account - do not. At least they don't drop a pin on our house on this laptop. Their app on my telephone does know my position, but that is not quite the same thing. Not very accurate either.

One bit of better news, was that the price included download as well as 48 hour access, which was not clear before I hit the green button.

More important, the chapter has made interesting reading so far, giving me some insight into what the deployment of traffic signals in such a large country, changing at such a pace, involves. Furthermore, they do not do lights in quite the same way as we do, although they build on the same foundation of a row of red, amber and green lights. One difference is that they seem keen on countdowns for cars as well as pedestrians - while I have only seen countdowns for pedestrians here at Epsom. Seems like a good idea to me. Much talk of the pros and cons of the various ways of doing things, useful tutorial for me. So, on this occasion, I have had my money's worth. A sample diagram is included above.

And it does bear on what Leach and (by extension) what Lévi-Strauss have to say about these lights.

PS 1: I now know that RELX shares have had a bad year, although Bing now marks them as a strong buy. Maybe I will go so far as to look into the matter.

PS 2: Two snippets for Friday morning. First, I am getting on better with Edge with reference 4 than with Acrobat. In particular, Edge has line by line scrolling - the little chevrons top and bottom right - which seems to be missing from Acrobat, which wants to scroll in much bigger chunks. Which seems to mean in turn that I keep losing my place. Maybe I am missing something, but for the moment Acrobat is out and Edge is in.

Second, the upstairs thermometer reads 85°F, despite the cooling breeze coming in through the open window and my telephone claiming 17°C (63°F) for Epsom. Maybe I should have gone for a digital model, which start at much the same price, say around a fiver. 

I ask Gemini, and he offers all kinds of reasons why my thermometer might be behaving in the way that it is. I am reminded that temperature is quite a tricky concept, with lots of things potentially affecting a spot reading indoors, where air mixing might not be that great. The start of his response to a supplementary is snapped above. Various things to try, before moving up-market. A project to keep me busy while I remain largely stuck indoors...

References

Reference 1: https://archive.org/.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/puffer-fish.html.

Reference 3: Lévi-Strauss – Leach E R – 1970, 1985.

Reference 4: Global Practices on Road Traffic Signal Control: Fixed-Time Control at Isolated Intersections: Chapter 11: China – Keshuang Tang, Keping Li, Meng Li, Dongbo Liu – 2019. 

Reference 5: https://www.scribd.com/.

Reference 6: https://www.elsevier.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier.