The local transport collision rate per particle is given by [16] where 〈O〉 = (1 /n $^{)}$∫ d Γ$_{1}$ f$_{1}$ ( x, p$_{1}$ ) O and C$_{i}$ [ f ], i = gg → gg, gg → ggg, ggg → gg , denotes the respective collision term [16]. The transport collision rate per particle quantifies the time scale of thermal equilibration [16]. Because the angle θ$_{1}$ in p 2 z $_{1}$/E 2 1 = cos $^{2}$θ$_{1}$ enters both the gain and loss term of C$_{i}$ [ f ], the larger the mean momentum deflection in each collision, the larger is the transport collision rate and the faster is the momentum isotropization. The latter leads to a faster buildup of the pressure gradient and thus to a larger elliptic flow. Therefore, the transport collision rate, rather than the collision rate, relates more closely to the buildup of the elliptic flow v$_{2}$ , as demonstrated in Fig. 2 in relation with Fig. 1. The resulting smaller difference in the total transport collision rates than that in the total collision rates (when varying d$_{G}$ from 16 to 40) stems from the time evolution of the screening mass m$_{D}$ [see Eq. (6)], which determines not only the cross sections σ$_{gg}$$_{→}$$_{gg}$ , σ$_{gg}$$_{→}$$_{ggg}$ , and I$_{ggg}$$_{→}$$_{gg}$ , but also the collision angle in these processes. As mentioned after Eq. (5), the choice of m$_{D}$ is physically reasonable, because the dynamics at the early stage is dominated by gluons. On the other hand, m$_{D}$ is overestimated at the late times, when “quarks” have considerable fraction of the whole parton system. Thus, the cross sections and the rates at the late times shown in Fig. 2 are somewhat smaller than their true values, when the fully realistic quark dynamics is considered. In Fig. 3 we show the final elliptic flow v$_{2}$ within | y | < 1 for various mean numbers of participating nucleons 〈 N$_{part}$ 〉 (equivalently impact parameters b [11]). The open squares (or the solid curves) in Fig. 3 and all the following figures depict the results from the calculations with d$_{G}$ = 16, which have already been presented in Ref. [11]. The open circles show the new results with d$_{G}$ = 40, which are slightly smaller than the values calculated with d$_{G}$ = 16 (as also seen in Fig. 1), and are still comparable with the experimental data at RHIC [29, 30]. Figure 4 presents the final transverse energies at midrapidity. If quarks are included in the initial condition for the parton cascade calculations, the results would be closer to the experimental data [31]. Comparing the results obtained in the calculations with d$_{G}$ = 40 to those with d$_{G}$ = 16, we find a tiny difference. This implies the same decrease of the 9 R tr i = ∫ d Γ$_{1}$ p 2 z 1 E 2 1 C$_{i}$ [ f ] − 〈 p 2 z 1 E 2 1 〉 ∫ d Γ$_{1}$ C$_{i}$ [ f ] n ( 1 3 − 〈 p 2 z 1 E 2 1 〉 ) , (16)