Public Transportation: Resources Demand And Mobility - Impact On Companies In Boston, USA And Munich, Germany

This project researches the impact of access to public transportation on companies and their employees through a comparison between Boston, Massachusetts and Munich, Germany. Long commutes to work together with the traffic problems in the inner cities and the huge environmental impact of single occupancy vehicles, show the increasing importance of public transportation. After analyzing online sources through a literature review, interviews with representatives of different companies in both cities were conducted along with an online survey among the employees about their usage and opinion of the importance of public transportation system to their employer. In addition, to further the research, politicians’ perspectives on public transportation were included. The results revealed that companies and employees in Munich significantly rely on public transportation. Furthermore, accessibility to public transit influences the location decision of companies and employers. In Boston, on the other hand, public transit is not as widely used as many of the employees stated, that it is not suitable to their work schedule or they do not have access to it. Analyzing both public transportation networks for differences, the research unveiled that the city of Munich has a more advanced and modern public transportation system than the city of Boston. To convince companies and employees in Boston to increase their usage of the public transportation system, improvements to the schedule, accessibility, affordability and reliability should be made. A good public transportation system provides immense benefits to the community by improving the environment and quality of life, as well as attracting companies, creating jobs and increasing tax incomes

Minimal Noise-Induced Stabilization of One-Dimensional Diffusions

The phenomenon of noise-induced stabilization occurs when an unstable deterministic system of ordinary differential equations is stabilized by the addition of randomness into the system. In this paper, we investigate under what conditions one-dimensional, autonomous stochastic differential equations are stable, where we take the notion of stability to be that of global stochastic boundedness. Specifically, we find the minimum amount of noise necessary for noise-induced stabilization to occur when the drift and noise coefficients are power, polynomial, exponential, or logarithmic functions

“Inspiring Imps”: programme evaluation of a football intervention targeting mentally ill health services users through a professional football club

The Active People survey (2010) shows that only 6.5% of disabled individuals participate in sport and exercise 3 times per week, compared with 16.5% of able bodied adults in the UK. Individuals with recognised disabilities have long been excluded from mainstream society. Particularly in sport, disability athletes can be afforded minority status and are treated as such (Nixon, 2000: In Handbook of Sports Studies, edited by J. Coakley and E. Dunning. London: Sage). This stigmatisation can be particularly acute among participants with diagnosed mental or psychological disabilities. Previous research concluded that sport can have positive psychological and social benefits, including improved well-being, motivation and social confidence (Crone and Guy, 2008: International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. 17, 197-207.). The aim of the present study was to investigate the feasibility of a 6 week exercise programme targeting mental ill health service users aged 16+. A weekly 2 hour session of football was introduced to promote health and wellbeing in the target group. Partners included county Football Association and a professional football club. The project enhanced local partnerships and partnerships with other professional football clubs. The key remaining aim is to ensure a sustainable “legacy” is achieved to ensure the continuation delivery of the project. The feasibility of the present study will be assessed using programme evaluation. Programme evaluation uses programme theory to produce a structured framework for assessment of the project (Rossi et al 2004; Evaluation: A systematic Approach. London, Sage). This allows a clear and logical progression from planning to implementation. Participant attrition rates and attendance records will be collected. These data will be supplemented with semi-structured interviews with participants and project stakeholders to assess programme development. The expected overall project outcome is to produce shared learning practice on similar interventions nationwide

Assessment of Farmer Preferences for Cattle Traits in Cattle Production Systems of Kenya

The urgent need to improve livestock productivity in sub-Saharan Africa in order to keep pace with expected increases in demand for meat and milk is very topical. Breed improvement provides key entry points for increasing productivity in cattle populations. However, there are tendencies for breed improvement programs to focus on single, market driven traits such as milk or meat production in isolation of environmental constraints and broader livestock system functions which cattle assume in developing countries. This potentially leads to genotypes that are not well adapted to the environment and not capable of performing the multiple roles that cattle assume in cattle production systems of developing countries. In developing countries, many important functions of livestock are embedded in non-tradable traits that are neither captured in economic analysis nor considered in livestock improvement programs. This study evaluates preferences of cattle keepers in pastoral and crop- livestock systems of selected sites in Kenya for various cattle traits, focusing attention on trypanotolerance and employing choice modelling techniques. These systems are characterized by low input management, harsh environmental conditions and prevalence of various cattle diseases. Trypanosomosis is a serious disease constraint in these systems. The results indicate that farmer preferences for cattle traits are influenced by various factors including cultural practices, production system characteristics and environmental conditions, especially in relation to disease prevalence and availability of cattle feeds.cattle production system, trait preferences, choice experiment, Kenya, Livestock Production/Industries, D11, C35, Q26,

Frequency pulling and mixing of relaxation oscillations in superconducting nanowires

Many superconducting technologies such as rapid single flux quantum computing (RSFQ) and superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) rely on the modulation of nonlinear dynamics in Josephson junctions for functionality. More recently, however, superconducting devices have been developed based on the switching and thermal heating of nanowires for use in fields such as single photon detection and digital logic. In this paper, we use resistive shunting to control the nonlinear heating of a superconducting nanowire and compare the resulting dynamics to those observed in Josephson junctions. We show that interaction of the hotspot growth with the external shunt produces high frequency relaxation oscillations with similar behavior as observed in Josephson junctions due to their rapid time constants and ability to be modulated by a weak periodic signal. In particular, we use a microwave drive to pull and mix the oscillation frequency, resulting in phase locked features that resemble the AC Josephson effect. New nanowire devices based on these conclusions have promising applications in fields such as parametric amplification and frequency multiplexing

Association between clinical presentations before myocardial infarction and coronary mortality: a prospective population-based study using linked electronic records.

BACKGROUND: Ischaemia in different arterial territories before acute myocardial infarction (AMI) may influence post-AMI outcomes. No studies have evaluated prospectively collected information on ischaemia and its effect on short- and long-term coronary mortality. The objective of this study was to compare patients with and without prospectively measured ischaemic presentations before AMI in terms of infarct characteristics and coronary mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS: As part of the CALIBER programme, we linked data from primary care, hospital admissions, the national acute coronary syndrome registry and cause-specific mortality to identify patients with first AMI (n = 16,439). We analysed time from AMI to coronary mortality (n = 5283 deaths) using Cox regression (median 2.6 years follow-up), comparing patients with and without recent ischaemic presentations. Patients with ischaemic presentations in the 90 days before AMI experienced lower coronary mortality in the first 7 days after AMI compared with those with no prior ischaemic presentations, after adjusting for age, sex, smoking, diabetes, blood pressure and cardiovascular medications [HR: 0.64 (95% CI: 0.57-0.73) P < 0.001], but subsequent mortality was higher [HR: 1.42 (1.13-1.77) P = 0.001]. Patients with ischaemic presentations closer in time to AMI had the lowest seven day mortality (P-trend = 0.001). CONCLUSION: In the first large prospective study of ischaemic presentations prior to AMI, we have shown that those occurring closest to AMI are associated with lower short-term coronary mortality following AMI, which could represent a natural ischaemic preconditioning effect, observed in a clinical setting. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT01604486