1,721,803 research outputs found
Which technology for urban public transport?
Full text linkThe merits of alternative urban and inter-urban public transport systems have been the subject of some debate, particularly since the publication of the UK’s 1998 transport policy White Paper A New Deal for Transport. This current paper aims to assess some of the conflicting empirical evidence in the UK and abroad in order to allow an objective assessment of the policy implications. Section 2 presents an overview of technical and financial characteristics of mainly urban public transport systems, including capital and operating costs
of recent light rail, guided bus, bus priority and suburban rail systems. Section 3 explores the evidence on the wider costs and benefits of systems in the UK, including wider environmental and socio-economic
impacts. Although more expensive to build (under similar conditions), light rail systems often carry more passengers than ‘intermediate’ bus-based systems such as guided bus and segregated busways. There is not much between public transport systems on the basis of
operating costs per passenger-km, except metro systems, which are twice as expensive to run as busbased systems. When comparing revenues and operating costs directly, all modes except suburban
regional rail appear capable of covering operating costs overall, with light rail and some of London’s suburban rail services providing a marginal surplus of revenue. Average speeds of light rail and bus-based systems are comparable. In heavily congested corridors, new light rail systems can reduce journey times significantly, but
such reductions are lower for bus-based systems, mainly because of the relatively limited amount of segregated right of way and priority at traffic signals. This highlights the fact that bus priority systems act primarily as ‘congestion busters’ at hot spots, which can be implemented more flexibly and gradually than for railbased systems. Currently, electric propulsion appears to be the best option to mitigate air pollution and noise. However, new clean vehicle technologies will soon be in a position to play a major role in reducing emissions, in
particular for bus-based systems. In terms of external costs per bus/train-km, environmental costs appear higher than accident costs, but lower than congestion externalities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
TEST - A tool for evaluating strategically integrated public transport
No full textThe Tools for Evaluating Strategically Integrated Public Transport (TEST) project has developed an innovative software tool to assess the most appropriate public transport technology for particular urban and inter-urban corridors. The working objectives of this research were: – to assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of different types of public transport technologies, including guided buses and other hybrid systems, both within urban areas and on inter-urban corridors; – to develop an integrated evaluation software tool that can help determine the most appropriate public transport technology (or technologies) for different public transport corridors on the basis of Total Social Costing; – to summarise this work in a Manual of Advice entitled The Supply of Public Transport.The research involved a detailed desktop review and field studies of 10 public transport systems, involving more than 50 organisations and key experts. The case sites included: Cardiff, Croydon, Edinburgh, Heathrow, Ipswich, Karlsruhe (Germany), Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford. The evidence collected was used to develop a stand-alone spreadsheet model that calculates total social costs (TSC) as the sum of total operator costs (TOC), total user costs (TUC) and total external costs (TEC which includes accidents and environmental impacts).This spreadsheet model was linked with a public transport network model (VIPS/3) and highway network models (CONTRAM8, SATURN) to form the full integrated TEST model. The appraisal outputs are compatible with the Department for Transports software tool TUBA (Transport Users Benefit Appraisal). Through an iterative process, this permitted transport demand to be treated as part of the modelling system. This tool has been applied to a case study of a then proposed guided bus system on the Kidlington-Oxford-Abingdon corridor. This demonstrated the ability of the TEST model to provide strategic appraisal of different public transport options. We believe the TEST model represents an important practical and academic advance on existing software.The generalised, stand-alone model suggests that, up to around 40,000 passengers a day, bus modes are the most socially efficient forms of public transport, with rail based modes then becoming the most efficient at demand levels above this. There appears to be only limited scope for intermediate public transport technologies such as guided bus and light rail.The full TEST model showed, for our Oxford case study, that the general results of the stand-alone model can be changed by specific circumstances. The application of the full TEST model suggested that guided bus was not socially efficient for an urban and short-distance inter-urban corridor with around 30,000 passengers per annum but could be potentially socially efficient if longer distance inter-urban services also used the infrastructure
Variational models for the interaction of surfactants with curvature – existence and regularity of minimizers in the case of flexible curves
No full textExistence and regularity of minimizers for a geometric variational problem is shown. The variational integral models an energy contribution of the interface between two immiscible fluids in the presence of surfactants and includes a Helfrich type contribution, a Frank type contribution and a coupling term between the orientation of the surfactants and the curvature of the interface. Analytical results are proven in a one–dimensional situation for curves
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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