Multimodal infrastructure Investment Decision Making: An Institutional and Funding Perspective

This paper presents a case analysis of multimodalism in transportation investment decision making as it relates to other policy decisions, including infrastructure ownership structures, geographic scales, and revenue sources. This allows a more complete understanding of multimodalism’s benefits, drawbacks, and opportunities. Private infrastructure developers are more likely to evaluate and select investments in a multimodal fashion than either the public sector or public-private partnerships. Decentralized, municipal decision making tends to reduce barriers to multimodalism, although with reduced capacity for large-scale project implementation. Experience suggests that the source of transportation revenues is a less important influence on multimodalism than the organizations collecting them

Simulating the Impact of Strategy Development Frameworks on Transportation Infrastructure System Performance

This paper develops, through a simulation model, a deeper understanding of the relationship between transportation infrastructure strategy development frameworks and system performance. A strategy development framework for transportation can be characterized by the infrastructure ownership structures, cross-modal and cross-sectoral linkages, revenue sources, resource allocation decision-making processes, and geographic scales of the organizations responsible for making infrastructure investments. Taking the dimensions of a strategy development framework as inputs, the model simulates investments in an infrastructure network over time—in this paper, the national intercity roadway network of Portugal. The results demonstrate the value of using simulation models of complex transportation systems to inform the decisions of not only planners but also of stakeholders who design strategy development frameworks. Such a tool is particularly important given the ongoing reorganizations of the Portuguese transportation sector, including increasing reliance on concession agreements, highway tolls, and sub-national government participation

Technology-Enabled Strategy Development Alternatives for Surface Transportation

This paper examines strategy development processes in surface transportation systems. In the U.S., transportation organizations typically develop strategy through a formal planning process; however, planning is not the only approach for developing strategy. Other approaches include, for example, negotiation, visioning, learning, and consensus-building. Regardless of the particular approach or combination of approaches, strategy development processes have several elements in common. We identify four such elements of particular importance in surface transportation – revenue sources, information sources, temporal scales, and spatial scales – and analyze the impact that advancements in transportation technology have had on each element. While new technologies (e.g. Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS) have been applied extensively to improve transportation operations, they have not been used to enable innovative strategy development processes. By understanding more fully the relationships between strategy and technology, organizations may consider adoption of innovative strategy development processes, such as improvements to the planning process or alternatives to planning altogether

Exploration of alternative frameworks for transportation infrastructure strategy development

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis introduces the notion of a strategy development framework for transportation infrastructure systems. A strategy development framework has several dimensions: the organizations that own.infrastructure, the ownership structure employed, the type and quantity of revenues generated, the revenue allocation methods for re-investing in the infrastructure, the degree of integration across transportation modes and other sectors, and the geographic scales controlled. We analyze the behavior of a range of alternative frameworks through a combined quantitative-qualitative approach, using Portugal's highway transportation system as the context. Drawing on strategy literature from the management field, we begin by defining and characterizing a range of alternative strategy development frameworks for transportation infrastructure systems. Next, we analyze these frameworks quantitatively using an agent-based model which simulates the evolution of Portugal's intercity highway network over time and space. By varying the frameworks' dimensions (e.g., type of revenue, revenue allocation method, geographic scale of control), we observe differences in the resulting investment decisions for the network. We evaluate the performance of these investment decisions according to a range of metrics in order to determine which frameworks lead to desirable outcomes. The simulation, however, cannot fully capture the relationship between a framework and investment outcomes for the highway system, so we complement the model with a qualitative analysis which combines empirical cases and predicted stakeholder dynamics. The integrated quantitative-qualitative evaluation allows us to explain a wider range of trade-offs associated with each alternative framework. The contributions of this research are threefold: (1) we offer the notion of strategy development, which allows for recognition and inclusion of emergent outcomes, as an alternative to the narrower concept of transportation planning; (2) we determine the influence of advanced transportation technologies (typically studied for their operational benefits) on strategy development; and (3) we explore the consequences of fundamental changes to the strategy development framework, notably along the dimension of geographic scale. While our theory and methods are applied to the case of Portugal's highway system-and we strive to produce results of value to that nation-we believe they can be profitably applied in other transportation contexts as well.by Travis P. Dunn.Ph.D

An Electrochemical Study of Frustrated Lewis Pairs: A Metal-free Route to Hydrogen Oxidation

[Image: see text] Frustrated Lewis pairs have found many applications in the heterolytic activation of H(2) and subsequent hydrogenation of small molecules through delivery of the resulting proton and hydride equivalents. Herein, we describe how H(2) can be preactivated using classical frustrated Lewis pair chemistry and combined with in situ nonaqueous electrochemical oxidation of the resulting borohydride. Our approach allows hydrogen to be cleanly converted into two protons and two electrons in situ, and reduces the potential (the required energetic driving force) for nonaqueous H(2) oxidation by 610 mV (117.7 kJ mol(–1)). This significant energy reduction opens routes to the development of nonaqueous hydrogen energy technology

The impacts of environmental warming on Odonata: a review

Climate change brings with it unprecedented rates of increase in environmental temperature, which will have major consequences for the earth's flora and fauna. The Odonata represent a taxon that has many strong links to this abiotic factor due to its tropical evolutionary history and adaptations to temperate climates. Temperature is known to affect odonate physiology including life-history traits such as developmental rate, phenology and seasonal regulation as well as immune function and the production of pigment for thermoregulation. A range of behaviours are likely to be affected which will, in turn, influence other parts of the aquatic ecosystem, primarily through trophic interactions. Temperature may influence changes in geographical distributions, through a shifting of species' fundamental niches, changes in the distribution of suitable habitat and variation in the dispersal ability of species. Finally, such a rapid change in the environment results in a strong selective pressure towards adaptation to cope and the inevitable loss of some populations and, potentially, species. Where data are lacking for odonates, studies on other invertebrate groups will be considered. Finally, directions for research are suggested, particularly laboratory studies that investigate underlying causes of climate-driven macroecological patterns

Occipital gamma activation during Vipassana meditation

Long-term Vipassana meditators sat in meditation vs. a control rest (mind-wandering) state for 21 min in a counterbalanced design with spontaneous EEG recorded. Meditation state dynamics were measured with spectral decomposition of the last 6 min of the eyes-closed silent meditation compared to control state. Meditation was associated with a decrease in frontal delta (1–4 Hz) power, especially pronounced in those participants not reporting drowsiness during meditation. Relative increase in frontal theta (4–8 Hz) power was observed during meditation, as well as significantly increased parieto-occipital gamma (35–45 Hz) power, but no other state effects were found for the theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), or beta (12–25 Hz) bands. Alpha power was sensitive to condition order, and more experienced meditators exhibited no tendency toward enhanced alpha during meditation relative to the control task. All participants tended to exhibit decreased alpha in association with reported drowsiness. Cross-experimental session occipital gamma power was the greatest in meditators with a daily practice of 10+ years, and the meditation-related gamma power increase was similarly the strongest in such advanced practitioners. The findings suggest that long-term Vipassana meditation contributes to increased occipital gamma power related to long-term meditational expertise and enhanced sensory awareness

Developmental expression of COE across the Metazoa supports a conserved role in neuronal cell-type specification and mesodermal development

The transcription factor COE (collier/olfactory-1/early B cell factor) is an unusual basic helix–loop–helix transcription factor as it lacks a basic domain and is maintained as a single copy gene in the genomes of all currently analysed non-vertebrate Metazoan genomes. Given the unique features of the COE gene, its proposed ancestral role in the specification of chemosensory neurons and the wealth of functional data from vertebrates and Drosophila, the evolutionary history of the COE gene can be readily investigated. We have examined the ways in which COE expression has diversified among the Metazoa by analysing its expression from representatives of four disparate invertebrate phyla: Ctenophora (Mnemiopsis leidyi); Mollusca (Haliotis asinina); Annelida (Capitella teleta and Chaetopterus) and Echinodermata (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). In addition, we have studied COE function with knockdown experiments in S. purpuratus, which indicate that COE is likely to be involved in repressing serotonergic cell fate in the apical ganglion of dipleurula larvae. These analyses suggest that COE has played an important role in the evolution of ectodermally derived tissues (likely primarily nervous tissues) and mesodermally derived tissues. Our results provide a broad evolutionary foundation from which further studies aimed at the functional characterisation and evolution of COE can be investigated

GPI Spectra of HR8799 C, D, and E in H-K Bands with KLIP Forward Modeling

We demonstrate KLIP forward modeling spectral extraction on Gemini Planet Imager coronagraphic data of HR8799, using PyKLIP. We report new and re-reduced spectrophotometry of HR8799 c, d, and e from H-K bands. We discuss a strategy for choosing optimal KLIP PSF subtraction parameters by injecting fake sources and recovering them over a range of parameters. The K1/K2 spectra for planets c and d are similar to previously published results from the same dataset. We also present a K band spectrum of HR8799e for the first time and show that our H-band spectra agree well with previously published spectra from the VLT/SPHERE instrument. We compare planets c, d, and e with M, L, and T-type field objects. All objects are consistent with low gravity mid-to-late L dwarfs, however, a lack of standard spectra for low gravity late L-type objects lead to poor fit for gravity. We place our results in context of atmospheric models presented in previous publications and discuss differences in the spectra of the three planets

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio