Traffic Demand Management In Three Historic Cities: Results Of A Multivariate Analysis of Business Attitudes.

The problem of traffic congestion and pollution in cities has become a major focus of UK transport policy in recent years. The government consultation paper, Breaking the Logjam (DETR, 1998), considered two specific traffic demand management policies: road user charges (RUC) and workplace parking levies (WPL). Legislation is now before Parliament to allow local authorities to introduce these policies. A major issue affecting the introduction of traffic demand management policies is the possible economic impacts on the urban business sector. There has been little research on the link between transport factors and urban business performance. There is general evidence that firms located in conurbations tend to perform more poorly than firms located in other areas (see, for example, Moore et al., 1980; Fothergill and Gudgin, 1982; Fothergill et al., 1984). There is also evidence that inner city firms perform more poorly than those in outer city locations. For example, Dobson and Gerrard (1991) find that engineering firms located in the inner Leeds area tend to have a lower level of profitability than engineering firms located in the outer Leeds area. Transport problems are one possible important cause of these location effects on business performance. This is supported directly by evidence that transport factors are an important influence on commercial location decisions (Nelson et al., 1994). Of all of the possible business reactions to the introduction of traffic demand management policies in urban areas, the potentially most important in economic terms is the relocation of businesses out of the urban core. Any significant degree of business evacuation of the urban core would have a profound impact on the ability of the urban economy to support the local population. In addition, any spatial restructuring of the local economy would have implications for traffic flows, shifting the locations of major traffic attractors from the urban core to the periphery. Although this may alleviate congestion in the urban core, it may serve only to create congestion elsewhere rendering traffic demand management policies somewhat counter-productive in the long run. The objective of this paper is to report the results of a multivariate analysis of business perceptions of current transport conditions and attitudes to traffic demand management policies based on a survey of firms in three historic cities - Cambridge, Norwich and York. A key component of the survey is the information provided on whether firms are currently considering relocation and the likely impact of the introduction of RUC and WPL on the next location decision. Basic data analysis of the survey responses indicates that the overwhelming majority of firms would definitely or possibly consider relocation as a response to the introduction of traffic demand management. The multivariate analysis seeks to identify those factors that have a statistically significant effect on the probability of relocation as a response. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly outlines the methodology of the multivariate analysis. Section 3 provides details of the data set used for the multivariate analysis. Section 4 presents the results of the multivariate analysis of the factors influencing the perception of acute transport problems, current relocation considerations, and relocation as a response to RUC and WPL. The final section provides a summary of the findings and a discussion of the policy implications

Programming matrix optics into Mathematica

The various non-linear transformations incurred by the rays in an optical system can be modelled by matrix products up to any desired order of approximation. Mathematica software has been used to find the appropriate matrix coefficients for the straight path transformation and for the transformations induced by conical surfaces, both direction change and position offset. The same software package was programmed to model optical systems in seventh-order. A Petzval lens was used to exemplify the modelling power of the program.Comment: 15 page

Prevailing Academic View on Compliance Flexibility under § 111 of the Clean Air Act

No colons in abstractsource category, existing sources, state implementation plan, new sources, tradable performance standards

Ideal kink instability of a magnetic loop equilibrium

The force-free coronal loop model by Titov & D\'emoulin (1999} is found to be unstable with respect to the ideal kink mode, which suggests this instability as a mechanism for the initiation of flares. The long-wavelength ($m=1$) mode grows for average twists \Phi\ga3.5\pi (at a loop aspect ratio of $\approx$ 5). The threshold of instability increases with increasing major loop radius, primarily because the aspect ratio then also increases. Numerically obtained equilibria at subcritical twist are very close to the approximate analytical equilibrium; they do not show indications of sigmoidal shape. The growth of kink perturbations is eventually slowed down by the surrounding potential field, which varies only slowly with radius in the model. With this field a global eruption is not obtained in the ideal MHD limit. Kink perturbations with a rising loop apex lead to the formation of a vertical current sheet below the apex, which does not occur in the cylindrical approximation.Comment: Astron. Astrophys. Lett., accepte

Transverse Shifts in Paraxial Spinoptics

The paraxial approximation of a classical spinning photon is shown to yield an "exotic particle" in the plane transverse to the propagation. The previously proposed and observed position shift between media with different refractive indices is modified when the interface is curved, and there also appears a novel, momentum [direction] shift. The laws of thin lenses are modified accordingly.Comment: 3 pages, no figures. One detail clarified, some misprints corrected and references adde

Development of low-cost multi-wavelength imager system for studies of aurora and airglow

This paper introduces a new system that can monitor aurora and atmospheric airglow using a low-cost Watec monochromatic imager (WMI) equipped with a sensitive camera, a filter with high transmittance, and the non-telecentric optics. The WMI system with 486-nm, 558-nm, and 630-nm band-pass filters has observable luminosity of about ~200–4000 Rayleigh for 1.07-sec exposure time and about ~40–1200 Rayleigh for 4.27-sec exposure time, for example. It is demonstrated that the WMI system is capable of detecting 428-nm auroral intensities properly, through comparison with those measured with a collocated electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD) imager system with narrower band-pass filter. The WMI system has two distinct advantages over the existing system: One makes it possible to reduce overall costs, and the other is that it enables the continuous observation even under twilight and moonlight conditions. Since 2013 a set of multi-wavelength WMIs has been operating in northern Scandinavia, Svalbard, and Antarctica to study meso- and large-scale aurora and airglow phenomena. Future development of the low-cost WMI system is expected to provide a great opportunity for constructing a global network for multi-wavelength aurora and airglow monitoring

Chromatin Profiles of Chromosomally Integrated Human Herpesvirus-6A

Human herpesvirus-6A (HHV-6A) and 6B (HHV-6B) are two closely related betaherpesviruses that are associated with various diseases including seizures and encephalitis. The HHV-6A/B genomes have been shown to be present in an integrated state in the telomeres of latently infected cells. In addition, integration of HHV-6A/B in germ cells has resulted in individuals harboring this inherited chromosomally integrated HHV-6A/B (iciHHV-6) in every cell of their body. Until now, the viral transcriptome and the epigenetic modifications that contribute to the silencing of the integrated virus genome remain elusive. In the current study, we used a patient-derived iciHHV-6A cell line to assess the global viral gene expression profile by RNA-seq, and the chromatin profiles by MNase-seq and ChIP-seq analyses. In addition, we investigated an in vitro generated cell line (293-HHV-6A) that expresses GFP upon the addition of agents commonly used to induce herpesvirus reactivation such as TPA. No viral gene expression including miRNAs was detected from the HHV-6A genomes, indicating that the integrated virus is transcriptionally silent. Intriguingly, upon stimulation of the 293-HHV-6A cell line with TPA, only foreign promoters in the virus genome were activated, while all HHV-6A promoters remained completely silenced. The transcriptional silencing of latent HHV-6A was further supported by MNase-seq results, which demonstrate that the latent viral genome resides in a highly condensed nucleosome-associated state. We further explored the enrichment profiles of histone modifications via ChIP-seq analysis. Our results indicated that the HHV-6 genome is modestly enriched with the repressive histone marks H3K9me3/H3K27me3 and does not possess the active histone modifications H3K27ac/H3K4me3. Overall, these results indicate that HHV-6 genomes reside in a condensed chromatin state, providing insight into the epigenetic mechanisms associated with the silencing of the integrated HHV-6A genome

Vaccination with DNA plasmids expressing Gn coupled to C3d or alphavirus replicons expressing Gn protects mice against rift valley fever virus

Background: Rift Valley fever (RVF) is an arthropod-borne viral zoonosis. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is an important biological threat with the potential to spread to new susceptible areas. In addition, it is a potential biowarfare agent. Methodology/Principal Findings: We developed two potential vaccines, DNA plasmids and alphavirus replicons, expressing the Gn glycoprotein of RVFV alone or fused to three copies of complement protein, C3d. Each vaccine was administered to mice in an all DNA, all replicon, or a DNA prime/replicon boost strategy and both the humoral and cellular responses were assessed. DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn elicited high titer neutralizing antibodies that were similar to titers elicited by the live-attenuated MP12 virus. Mice vaccinated with an inactivated form of MP12 did elicit high titer antibodies, but these antibodies were unable to neutralize RVFV infection. However, only vaccine strategies incorporating alphavirus replicons elicited cellular responses to Gn. Both vaccines strategies completely prevented weight loss and morbidity and protected against lethal RVFV challenge. Passive transfer of antisera from vaccinated mice into naïve mice showed that both DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn elicited antibodies that protected mice as well as sera from mice immunized with MP12. Conclusion/Significance: These results show that both DNA plasmids expressing Gn-C3d and alphavirus replicons expressing Gn administered alone or in a DNA prime/replicon boost strategy are effective RVFV vaccines. These vaccine strategies provide safer alternatives to using live-attenuated RVFV vaccines for human use. © 2010 Bhardwaj et al

【《国際ワークショップ》報告】Legal Issues Faced by Island Nations Threatened by Sea Level Rise

論文http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_579