Impacts of policy instruments to reduce congestion and emissions from urban transportation : the case of Sao Paulo, Brazil

This study examines impacts on net social benefits or economic welfare of alternative policy instruments for reducing traffic congestion and atmospheric emissions in São Paulo, Brazil. The study shows that expanding road networks, subsidizing public transit, and improving automobile fuel economy may not be as effective as suggested by economic theories because these policies could cause significant rebound effects. Although pricing instruments such as congestion tolls and fuel taxes would certainly reduce congestion and emissions, the optimal level of these instruments would steeply increase the monetary cost of travel per trip and are therefore politically difficult to implement. However, a noticeable finding is that even smaller tolls, which are more likely to be politically acceptable, have substantial benefits in terms of reducing congestion and emissions. Among the various policy instruments examined in the study, the most socially preferable policy option for São Paulo would be to introduce a mix of congestion toll and fuel taxes on automobiles and use the revenues to improve public transit systems.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Climate Change Economics,Roads&Highways,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Transport and Environment

Lock-in effects of road expansion on CO2 emissions : results from a core-periphery model of Beijing

In the urban planning literature, it is frequently explicitly asserted or strongly implied that ongoing urban sprawl and decentralization can lead to development patterns that are unsustainable in the long run. One manifestation of such an outcome is that if extensive road investments occur, urban sprawl and decentralization are advanced and locked-in, making subsequent investments in public transit less effective in reducing vehicle kilometers traveled by car, gasoline use and carbon dioxide emissions. Using a simple core-periphery model of Beijing, the authors numerically assess this effect. The analysis confirms that improving the transit travel time in Beijing’s core would reduce the city’s overall carbon dioxide emissions, whereas the opposite would be the case if peripheral road capacity were expanded. This effect is robust to perturbations in the model’s calibrated parameters. In particular, the effect persists for a wide range of assumptions about how location choice depends on travel time and a wide range of assumptions about other aspects of consumer preferences.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Roads&Highways,Energy and Environment,Environment and Energy Efficiency,Economic Theory&Research,Urban Transport

An analysis of various policy instruments to reduce congestion, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in Beijing

Using a nested multinomial logit model of car ownership and personal travel in Beijing circa 2005, this paper compares the effectiveness of different policy instruments to reduce traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. The study shows that a congestion toll is more efficient than a fuel tax in reducing traffic congestion, whereas a fuel tax is more effective as a policy instrument for reducing gasoline consumption and emissions. An improvement in car efficiency would also reduce congestion, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions significantly; however, this policy benefits only richer households that own a car. Low-income households do better under the fuel tax policy than under the efficiency improvement and congestion toll policies. The congestion toll and fuel tax require the travel cost per mile to more than triple. The responsiveness of aggregate fuel and CO2 are, approximately, a 1 percent drop for each 10 percent rise in the money cost of a car trip.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Airports and Air Services,Roads&Highways,Transport and Environment,Transport in Urban Areas,Urban Transport

Switched Order Statistics CFAR Test for Target Detection

In this paper we introduce a new switched order statistics CFARtest (SW-OS) for detecting a radar target in the presence ofnonhomogeneous clutter and/or multiple interfering targets situation. Whereas a switching CFAR test (S-CFAR) was recently proposed in the literature for addressing a similar background scenario, unlike the S-CFAR test, the test proposed here does not utilize the test cell statistic in classifying the cells surrounding the test cell as homogeneous or not. The SW-OS test has some similarity to the selection and estimation (SE) test, which was co-authored by the second author ofthis paper, but is simpler to design. Probability of detection performance results obtained for Rayleigh clutter and Rayleigh target indicate that the SW-OS performs nearly as good as an order statistic test (OS) in the homogeneous background condition and performs much better than OS under the presence of many interfering targets. When compared to S-CFAR, SW-OS performs slightly worse in the homogeneous background, but performs better under the condition of many interfering targets

Information Technology Readiness and the Assessment and Adoption of Information Technology Innovativeness

Government Information Technology Innovativeness defined as notion of openness to new information technology ideas in the government as an aspect of an organizational culture. In adopting the information technology innovativeness, information technology readiness plays a crucial effect. Misunderstood organizational characteristic within information technology innovativeness may generate unrealistic or inaccurate outcomes. Unfortunately, the effect of organizational context is nearly ignored in information technology innovativeness literature. In response, using the Resources based view (RBV) and Diffusion-Innovation-Theory (DIT), this paper argues on the interaction between the influence of organizational characteristic (information technology readiness), so as to explain information technology innovativeness. This proposition could improve understanding the information technology innovativeness and help to resolve inconsistency of findings in the literature. Keywords: Information Technology Readiness; Information Technology Innovativeness, Public Sector DOI: 10.7176/ALST/90-04 Publication date: November 30th 202

information technology innovativeness: the roles of management supports, information technology readiness and government's strategy in Palestine public sector

Information technology innovativeness has great potential to extend an ordinary organization’s competency and efficiency, and this applies to governmental intuitions in particular. As such, Palestine has an objective to increase the diffusion of technology. Despite extensive government efforts, the adoption of innovativeness in the information technology sector is still limited. Consequently, there have been extensive efforts to better understand the phenomenon. However, literature review regarding the determinants of innovativeness are not altogether consistent. To provide more insight, this study aimed to develop a research model utilizing the organizational context framework to identify the determinants of the government’s propensity to adopt information technology innovativeness. Since information technology innovativeness is an inter-organizational phenomenon supporting transactions of organizations and institutions, this study emphasizes the context of cultural characteristics. Grounded in inter-organizational theories, this study hypothesized that organizational culture had a moderating role in organizational motivating factors. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed online by Google Forms to the managers in 21 ministries in the local government in the Gaza Strip. The responses were analysed using the partial least squares approach. The results revealed that government strategy has an insignificant effect on government information technology innovativeness; however, management support and IT readiness have a positively significant effect. Moreover, the results showed that the moderating organizational culture was pronounced. Meanwhile, the moderating role was partially unsupported. These findings demonstrate how the organizational culture in governmental institutions may change the innovativeness motivations. It was importance of considering the views of the governmental institutions for the innovativeness to be done successfully

Integrative of Perceived Management Support on Information Technology Innovativeness

Government Information Technology Innovativeness defined as notion of openness to new information technology ideas in the government as an aspect of an organizational culture. In adopting the information technology innovativeness, management support plays a crucial effect. Misunderstood organizational characteristic within information technology innovativeness may generate unrealistic or inaccurate outcomes. Unfortunately, the effect of organizational context is nearly ignored in information technology innovativeness literature. In response, using the Resources based view (RBV) and Diffusion-Innovation-Theory (DIT), this paper argues on the interaction between the influence of organizational characteristic (management support), so as to explain information technology innovativeness. This proposition could improve understanding the information technology innovativeness and help to resolve inconsistency of findings in the literature. Keywords: Management Support; organizational characteristics; information technology innovativeness DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-19-02 Publication date:October 31st 2021

Adaptive Processing of Spatial-Keyword Data Over a Distributed Streaming Cluster

The widespread use of GPS-enabled smartphones along with the popularity of micro-blogging and social networking applications, e.g., Twitter and Facebook, has resulted in the generation of huge streams of geo-tagged textual data. Many applications require real-time processing of these streams. For example, location-based e-coupon and ad-targeting systems enable advertisers to register millions of ads to millions of users. The number of users is typically very high and they are continuously moving, and the ads change frequently as well. Hence sending the right ad to the matching users is very challenging. Existing streaming systems are either centralized or are not spatial-keyword aware, and cannot efficiently support the processing of rapidly arriving spatial-keyword data streams. This paper presents Tornado, a distributed spatial-keyword stream processing system. Tornado features routing units to fairly distribute the workload, and furthermore, co-locate the data objects and the corresponding queries at the same processing units. The routing units use the Augmented-Grid, a novel structure that is equipped with an efficient search algorithm for distributing the data objects and queries. Tornado uses evaluators to process the data objects against the queries. The routing units minimize the redundant communication by not sending data updates for processing when these updates do not match any query. By applying dynamically evaluated cost formulae that continuously represent the processing overhead at each evaluator, Tornado is adaptive to changes in the workload. Extensive experimental evaluation using spatio-textual range queries over real Twitter data indicates that Tornado outperforms the non-spatio-textually aware approaches by up to two orders of magnitude in terms of the overall system throughput

Tanggap Tanaman Kedelai terhadap Inokulasi Rhizobium dan Asam Indol Asetat (IAA) pada Ultisol Darmaga

Some of rhizobacteria have been known to stimulate the growth of some crops through their fitohormon (IAA = indole acetic acid). Those rhizobacteria can stimulate the development of epidermis cells formation at root hair site and increase the infection sites to increase the nodulation and N2 fixation. The aims of this study were to study the effect of Rhizobium strains inoculation and indole acetic acid (IAA) application on crop growth, root nodulation. and N, P uptake of soybean on the Ultisols. The greenhouse experiment used Completely Randomize Design (CRD) with four replications. The treatments were: I) Without inoculation (blank), 2) 100 ppm N application, 3) 0.4 ppm IAA application, 4) Inoculation of Rhizobium 1004 (106), 5) Inoculation of Rhizobium 1004 (I05) + IAA, 6) Inoculation of Rhizobium RD-20 (104), 7) Inoculation of Rhizobium RD-20 (106), 8) Inoculation of Rhizobium SNI-2 (106). 9) Inoculation of Rhizobium SNI-2 106 + IAA. Result of the experiment indicated that inoculation of Rhizobium and IAA application increased crop growth, nodulation, and nutrient uptake of soybean. Inoculation of Rhizobium I004(106). RD-20(104)R, D-20(I06),S NI-2(I06), and IAA 0.4 ppm increased dry weight of crop by 33.5%,37.8,17.3%,35.1%,and 3.8% respectively compared to blank. Application of IAA at Rhizobium inoculation treatment of SNI-2(106) and 1004(106i)n creased dry nodule weight on soybean 40.9%, and 55.7 % respectively compared to without IAA application

Clinical profile and risk factors associated in patients of mucormycosis in COVID-19 pandemic: a study in a tertiary centre

Background: The objective of this study was to determine the clinical profile and risk factors associated in patients of mucormycosis in COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: It was a prospective observational study conducted at a tertiary care centre in the month of May and June 2021. It involved all patients of mucormycosis mainly involving paranasal sinuses and orbit. The clinical profile and associated risk factors leading to mucormycosis were studied.Results: Thirty patients of mucormycosis mean age 56.62 years out of them 25 (83.33%) male and 5 (16.66%) female were studied. Twenty-four patients (80%) had COVID-19 infection, out of them 7 (29.2%) were active and 17 (70.8%) had recovered within 4 weeks. Five (16.6%) patients were suspected as they had symptoms of COVID-19 previously   but never got tested. One   patient had no history of COVID infection. All the patients were diabetic at the time of presentation, out of them 26 (86.6%) of patients were known diabetic and 4 (13.3%) became diabetic after COVID-19 infection. The ethmoids were the most common sinuses affected. Intra-orbital extension was seen in 13 (43.3%) of cases   while intracranial extension was seen in 4 (13.3%) patients. Twenty-eight (93.3%) patients gave history of steroids intake. Antibiotics were taken by 76.6% patients while zinc supplement was used by 83.3% patients. Oxygen was used 10 (33.3%) patients, 80% of them using face mask or canula and 4 of them requiring mechanical ventilatory support.  Conclusions: The risk factors associated with mucormycosis in COVID pandemic must be given serious consideration as there is sudden increase in the case and mortality is very high. Uncontrolled diabetes and over use of steroids in COVID management are two main aggravating factors, however other factors must also be studied thoroughly