Why Proper Technique Works: An Insight into Scientific Principles that Make Skating Possible

As a figure skater and a premed student, I have found that my understanding of science and interest in the human body has helped me better understand certain aspects of the sport and recommendations by coaches. Recent advancements in figure skating have led to questions about the impacts of quadruple jumps on young female athletes. My project aimed at providing coaches with some science background about concepts related to figure skating and correct technique to not only help them with injury prevention, but also to help foster an interest in science in a unique population. After doing research and interviewing figure skating coaches and exercise science experts, I created a brochure, shown in the video, that highlighted key science topics related to figure skating. I planned to distribute this brochure to local ice rinks, but was unable to do so because of the COVID pandemic. I instead chose to electronically deliver the brochure using club email lists, and will distribute the brochure at a later time. I additionally created a blog post, shown in the video, that can be published on Stem-o-sphere that added some off-ice elements to my content since skaters were confined to this training during the pandemic

Chasing sustainability: Do new TOD residents adopt more sustainable modes of transportation?

It is suggested that one of the solutions for mitigating the detrimental effect of motor vehicles on 3 society is to implement Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). This type of development is 4 intended to reduce automobile use and urban sprawl as well as to provide communities with more 5 socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable neighborhoods that offer a variety of 6 mobility choices. This paper attempts to find out whether new TOD residents adopt more 7 sustainable modes of transportation after their relocation. The analysis determines which factors 8 influence travel mode switching decisions by specifying a multilevel multinomial logistic 9 regression model. Data for the analysis are drawn from a travel behavior survey conducted on 10 residents in seven different North American TODs in 2013. Our results show that TOD 11 newcomers adopt more sustainable travel modes for amenities and leisure trips, whereas they are 12 less likely to do so for work and shopping trips. To encourage more sustainable travel modes, our 13 findings suggest that transit incentives coupled with workplace parking charges need to be 14 considered. Awareness of the environmental impact of each travel mode, walkability of the 15 neighborhood and availability of various destinations as well as proximity to transit stops are 16 factors that increase the probability of switching to a more sustainable mode of transportation for 17 new TOD residents. However, larger household size and becoming a homeowner, as well as the 18 addition of a new car, have a negative impact. Findings from this research provide new insights 19 into TOD planning and its link to travel behavior that can be of benefit to planners, engineers and 20 policy makers adopting this approach of development with the goal of mitigating car usage. 21 2

Spatial accessibility and social inclusion: The impact of Portugal's last health reform

Health policies seek to promote access to health care and should provide appropriate geographical accessibility to each demographical functional group. The dispersal demand of health‐careservices and the provision for such services atfixed locations contribute to the growth of inequality intheir access. Therefore, the optimal distribution of health facilities over the space/area can lead toaccessibility improvements and to the mitigation of the social exclusion of the groups considered mostvulnerable. Requiring for such, the use of planning practices joined with accessibility measures. However,the capacities of Geographic Information Systems in determining and evaluating spatial accessibility inhealth system planning have not yet been fully exploited. This paper focuses on health‐care services planningbased on accessibility measures grounded on the network analysis. The case study hinges on mainlandPortugal. Different scenarios were developed to measure and compare impact on the population'saccessibility. It distinguishes itself from other studies of accessibility measures by integrating network data ina spatial accessibility measure: the enhanced two‐stepfloating catchment area. The convenient location forhealth‐care facilities can increase the accessibility standards of the population and consequently reducethe economic and social costs incurred. Recently, the Portuguese government implemented a reform thataimed to improve, namely, the access and equity in meeting with the most urgent patients. It envisaged,in terms of equity, the allocation of 89 emergency network points that ensured more than 90% of thepopulation be within 30 min from any one point in the network. Consequently, several emergency serviceswere closed, namely, in rural areas. This reform highlighted the need to improve the quality of the emergencycare, accessibility to each care facility, and equity in their access. Hence, accessibility measures becomean efficient decision‐making tool, despite its absence in effective practice planning. According to anapplication of this type of measure, it was possible to verify which levels of accessibility were decreased,including the most disadvantaged people, with a larger time of dislocation of 12 min between 2001 and 2011

Cyclists in shared bus lanes: could there be unrecognised impacts on bus journey times?

This paper contributes to debates around improving the modelling of cycles, through an exploratory case study of bus–cycle interactions in London. This case study examines undocumented delays to buses caused by high volumes of cyclists in bus lanes. It has generally been assumed that cyclists do not noticeably delay buses in shared lanes. However, in many contexts where cyclists routinely share bus lanes, cyclist numbers have historically been low. In some such places, bus lanes are now seeing very high volumes of cyclists, far above those previously studied. This may have implications for bus – and cycle – journey times, but traditionally traffic modelling has not represented the effects of such interactions well. With some manipulation of parameters taken from models of other cities, the model described here demonstrates that cycles can cause significant delays to buses in shared lanes, at high cycling volumes. These delays are likely to become substantially larger if London's cycling demographic becomes more diverse, because cyclist speeds will decline. Hence bus journey time benefits may derive from separating cycles from buses, where cycle flows are high. The project also suggests that microsimulation modelling software, as typically used, remains problematic for representing cyclists

Urban access across the globe: an international comparison of different transport modes

ABSTRACT: Access (the ease of reaching valued destinations) is underpinned by land use and transport infrastructure. The importance of access in transport, sustainability, and urban economics is increasingly recognized. In particular, access provides a universal unit of measurement to examine cities for the efficiency of transport and land-use systems. This paper examines the relationship between population-weighted access and metropolitan population in global metropolitan areas (cities) using 30-min cumulative access to jobs for 4 different modes of transport; 117 cities from 16 countries and 6 continents are included. Sprawling development with the intensive road network in American cities produces modest automobile access relative to their sizes, but American cities lag behind globally in transit and walking access; Australian and Canadian cities have lower automobile access, but better transit access than American cities; combining compact development with an intensive network produces the highest access in Chinese and European cities for their sizes. Hence density and mobility co-produce better access. This paper finds access to jobs increases with populations sublinearly, so doubling the metropolitan population results in less than double access to jobs. The relationship between population and access characterizes regions, countries, and cities, and significant similarities exist between cities from the same country

Network Structure and City Size

Network structure varies across cities. This variation may yield important knowledge about how the internal structure of the city affects its performance. This paper systematically compares a set of surface transportation network structure variables (connectivity, hierarchy, circuity, treeness, entropy, accessibility) across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. A set of scaling parameters are discovered to show how network size and structure vary with city size. These results suggest that larger cities are physically more inter-connected. Hypotheses are presented as to why this might obtain. This paper then consistently measures and ranks access to jobs across 50 US metropolitan areas. It uses that accessibility measure, along with network structure variables and city size to help explain journey-to-work time and auto mode share in those cities. A 1 percent increase in accessibility reduces average metropolitan commute times by about 90 seconds each way. A 1 percent increase in network connectivity reduces commute time by 0.1 percent. A 1 percent increase in accessibility results in a 0.0575 percent drop in auto mode share, while a 1 percent increase in treeness reduces auto mode share by 0.061 percent. Use of accessibility and network structure measures is important for planning and evaluating the performance of network investments and land use changes