Swedish consumers' cognitive approaches to nutrition claims and health claims

Introduction and Aim: Studies show frequent use of nutrition claims and health claims in consumers’ choice of food products. The aim of the present study was to investigate how consumers’ thoughts about these claims and food products are affected by various types of food-related experiences. Material and Methods: The data collection comprised 30 individual interviews among Swedish consumers aged 25 to 64 years. Results: The results indicated that participants who expressed special concern for their own and their families’ health were eager to find out the meaning of concepts and statements made. A lack of understanding and lack of credibility of concepts and expressions often caused suspicion of the product. However, in some cases this was counterbalanced by confidence in manufacturers, retailers, and/or the Swedish food legislation. Discussion and Conclusion: To achieve effective written communication of food products’ health-conducive properties on food labels, there is a need to consider the importance many consumers attach to understanding the meaning of concepts and expressions used and the importance of credibility in certain expressions. Consumers’ varying cognitive approaches are suggested as a basis for pre-tests of nutrition claims and health claims

Critical accident scenarios for cyclists and how they can be addressed through ITS solutions

It is recognised that ITS applications have been relatively successful in improving road safety primarily through technology applications the vehicle and infrastructure. However, Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) have not received as much benefit as other road users. The EC-funded VRUITS project places the VRU road user at the centre, assesses the impact of current and upcoming ITS applications on the safety and mobility of VRUs, identifies how the usability and efficiency of ITS applications can be improved and recommends which actions have to be taken at a policy level to improve ITS safety and mobility. A major focus of the VRUITS project involves the safety of cyclists within the EU as a target VRU group. To provide the evidence-base for ITS applications, data were analysed to determine critical scenarios for cyclists and these data included national data in Spain, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This analysis was matched to analysis of the European CARE data to determine the consistency between the national and European databases. The main findings from the data analysis are as follows; • The majority of cycling accidents in the accident analysis were found to occur at junctions/intersections. • One of the most common scenarios involved vehicles pulling out into the path of the oncoming cyclist at an intersection • CARE data suggests that the most common scenario involves both cyclist and vehicle heading in the same direction but the vehicle then turns into the cyclist’s path • Overall, males are over-represented in the data. • The majority of the accidents occur in fine dry weather during daylight hours • The majority occur in urban areas at relatively on roads with relatively low speed limits Data from this phase of the VRUITS project will be used to determine the ITS solutions that are relevant to the scenarios determined through accident analysis. Subsequent phases of the project will look at the feasibility of implementation of theses countermeasures which is likely to include some pilot testing of specific applications

A headway to improve PTW rider safety within the EU through three types of ITS

Introduction: The current safety situation for Powered Two Wheelers (PTW) within the EU is alarming. According to EU statistics, PTW riders account for 17% of all fatal road injuries in the region and twice as many fatalities per hundred thousand registered vehicles compared with occupants of cars. In recent years, too little attention has been given to Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), including PTW users, in the development of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Therefore, ITS should be developed that consider PTW riders an integral part of traffic; we focus on three systems that we believe have the potential to improve safety among PTW riders, namely Intersection Safety (INS), the Powered Two Wheeler oncoming vehicle information system (PTW2V), and the Vulnerable road user Beacon System (VBS). The present study aims to estimate quantitatively the safety impacts of the selected ITS for PTW riders in the EU-28, once the systems are fully adopted and meet selected future scenarios for 2020 and 2030. Method: An ex-ante method suggested by Kulmala [1] was further developed and applied to assess the safety impacts of ITS specifically designed for VRUs. As suggested by the method, the analysis started by determining the impact mechanisms through which the selected ITS systems affect the safety of PTW riders. Results: According to the main results, all the systems we studied have a positive impact on PTW rider safety by preventing fatalities and injuries. The greatest effects, based on 2012 accident data and full penetration, could be attained by implementing PTW2V (283 fewer yearly fatalities) and INS (261 fewer yearly fatalities). The weakest effect was found with VBS (216 fewer yearly fatalities). Forecasts for 2030, also based on estimated accident trends and penetration rates, confirm an expected edge for INS and PTW2V in terms of safety

Are intelligent transport systems effective in improving the safety of vulnerable road users?

This paper presents the results of safety impact assessment, providing quantitative estimates of the safety impacts of ten ITS which were designed to improve safety, mobility and comfort of VRUs. The evaluation method originally developed to assess safety impacts of ITS for cars was now adapted for assessing safety impacts of ITS for VRUs. The main results of the assessment showed that nine services included in the quantitative safety impact assessment affected traffic safety in a positive way by preventing fatalities and injuries. At full penetration the highest effects were obtained for the systems PCDS+EBR, VBS and INS. The estimates for PCDS+EBR showed the maximum reduction of 7.5% on all road fatalities and 5.8% on all road injuries, which came down to an estimate of over 2,100 fatalities and over 62,900 injuries saved per year in the EU-28 when exploiting the 2012 accident levels adjusted with the estimated accident trends

MRD codes with maximum idealizers

Left and right idealizers are important invariants of linear rank-distance codes. In the case of maximum rank-distance (MRD for short) codes in $\mathbb{F}_q^{n\times n}$ the idealizers have been proved to be isomorphic to finite fields of size at most $q^n$. Up to now, the only known MRD codes with maximum left and right idealizers are generalized Gabidulin codes, which were first constructed in 1978 by Delsarte and later generalized by Kshevetskiy and Gabidulin in 2005. In this paper we classify MRD codes in $\mathbb{F}_q^{n\times n}$ for $n\leq 9$ with maximum left and right idealizers and connect them to Moore-type matrices. Apart from generalized Gabidulin codes, it turns out that there is a further family of rank-distance codes providing MRD ones with maximum idealizers for $n=7$, $q$ odd and for $n=8$, $q\equiv 1 \pmod 3$. These codes are not equivalent to any previously known MRD code. Moreover, we show that this family of rank-distance codes does not provide any further examples for $n\geq 9$.Comment: Reviewers' comments implemented, we changed the titl