Identifying Alternative Stops for First and Last Mile Urban Travel Planning

As we move into an increasingly connected world for urban travel planning, we need to expand our concept of itinerary planning to meet the multimodal and diverse needs of today\u27s traveler. Often, urban itinerary planning applications seek to minimize route travel time between two specific places at a certain time. Our approach provides travelers with a set of optimal nearby stops that presents a number of traveler preferences in an easily comprehensible and quickly calculable manner. We display first and last mile stops that fall on a Pareto front based on multiple criteria such as travel time, number of transfers, and frequency of service. Our algorithm combines stop and routebased information to quickly present the traveler with numerous nearby quality options for their itinerary decision-making. We expand this algorithm to include multimodal itineraries with the incorporation of free-floating scooters to investigate the change in stop and itinerary characteristics. We then analyze the results on the star-shaped urban transit network of Göttingen, Germany, to show what advantages stops on the Pareto front have as well as demonstrate the increased effect on frequency and service lines when incorporating a broadened multimodal approach

Smart Steaming: A New Flexible Paradigm for Synchromodal Logistics

Slow steaming, i.e., the possibility to ship vessels at a significantly slower speed than their nominal one, has been widely studied and implemented to improve the sustainability of long-haul supply chains. However, to create an efficient symbiosis with the paradigm of synchromodality, an evolution of slow steaming called smart steaming is introduced. Smart steaming is about defining a medium speed execution of shipping movements and the real-time adjustment (acceleration and deceleration) of traveling speeds to pursue the entire logistic system’s overall efficiency and sustainability. For instance, congestion in handling facilities (intermodal hubs, ports, and rail stations) is often caused by the common wish to arrive as soon as possible. Therefore, smart steaming would help avoid bottlenecks, allowing better synchronization and decreasing waiting time at ports or handling facilities. This work aims to discuss the strict relationships between smart steaming and synchromodality and show the potential impact of moving from slow steaming to smart steaming in terms of sustainability and efficiency. Moreover, we will propose an analysis considering the pros, cons, opportunities, and risks of managing operations under this new policy

Constructing digital literary texts: A case study of six year 5 children

Children’s lives have changed due to the increased access to, and focus on, information technology in contemporary western cultures. These new technologies enable children to access new forms of content, and they provide them with opportunities to contribute their own digital texts. Despite this, there have been few studies conducted that explore the literacy practices children require to construct digital texts, and fewer that have focused on the construction of digital literary texts, a significant expectation in Australian Curriculum English policy documents. This inquiry examines the literacy practices of six Year 5 children during the construction of their own digital literary texts. It draws on two events – the children’s deconstruction of two digital literary texts, and the subsequent construction of their own digital literary texts. It explores the literacy practices associated with the children’s experiences, writing practices and resource selections. Ethnographic principles and collective case study were used in this qualitative inquiry. Data were collected from six Year 5 children and their classroom teacher in a primary school in New South Wales, Australia. The data were collected over a six-week period from interviews, observations, work samples and artefacts. Two complementary theoretical frames inform this qualitative inquiry; literacy as social practice and new literacies. Together these theoretical orientations recognise how literacy can be mediated by digital technologies and how, as a consequence, new social literacy practices may be needed. The findings of this inquiry show how the previous literacy experiences of the participants invited particular forms of literate practices. Further how digital literary text construction often demands new and dynamic literacy practices that vary according to circumstances and the context of an evolving digital environment