Informing a Pilot: Preparing the Pre-launch Survey for the Davis Amtrak Station Access Program

This study investigates barriers to accessing the Davis Amtrak Station and will inform a pilot program to increase access to the station with on-demand alternatives. The program aims to decrease private vehicle use to access the station and for travel to locations outside of Davis. Currently, the Davis station has the third highest passenger usage along the Capitol Corridor and ridership is increasing, but potential ridership is limited by parking availability. The city has limited interest in or ability to add new parking capacity, however pricing will be introduced to the lot in the future. In addition, the city will introduce a pilot program to support the use of on-demand alternatives and other modes to access the Davis station. The goal of this phase of the study was to develop surveys for Davis residents and current Capital Corridor riders that will assess barriers to use of the station. Such factors likely include limited vehicle and bicycle parking, limited local bus service hours, last mile challenges at the other end of the trip, and the convenience of driving for regional travel. The results of this survey will offer insights into the key factors influencing the use of the Capitol Corridor regional rail, and the importance of station access among those factors. Further, this phase of the study will inform the development and implementation of the city’s pilot program

Partnerships between Ridehailing Companies and Public Transit Agencies: An Exploration of Inter-agency Learning about Pilot Programs

In early 2016 the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority implemented a pilot program in partnership with Uber and United Taxi (a local company) to provide subsidized travel for trips to and from specified public transportation stops (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority). Since that time, similar pilots have sprung up throughout the US. Presumably, the proliferation of these pilots is due to early successes; likely measured by cost savings, increased ridership, expanded service areas, improved first/last mile connections, and increased visibility of ridehailing services. We would expect the outcomes of these pilots to be shared among public transportation operators, resulting in improvements as they are implemented in new locations over time. However, much of the information that might be used to evaluate these programs is confidential or proprietary, creating challenges for public transportation operators to discuss details with others. This project aims to identify the factors informing the implementation of these pilots and the pathways by which relevant information is shared among public transportation operators. Key questions are: Do transit agencies gather information independently; from one another, academic sources, or policy experts, or others? Are transit agencies primarily informed by potential ridehailing industry partners as they consider these partnerships and programs? And how do these different pathways impact the partnerships transit agencies form with ridehailing companies and the programs they launch

Digital learning for prison students: the state of play

Education is seen as one of the puzzle pieces in any strategy to improve reintegration and reduce recidivism. However, education providers are increasingly turning to the online provision of course materials and activities. This excludes prisoners from participating in transformative education as the internet is often prohibited. Given this fundamental mismatch between online education and access to internet in prisons, universities are increasingly looking for ways to ensure effective digital delivery of their courses. This paper outlines innovative solutions from two higher education institutions on opposite sides of the world, both with a track record of providing higher education to prisoners. The OU's 'walled garden' and Open Educational Resources with the UK's Virtual Campus and the Australian internet-independent LMS coupled with tablet computers, are just some of the technologies being trialled which could be repackaged for other contexts and countries

Intervention strategies for preventing excessive gestational weight gain: systematic review and meta‐analysis

Background Interventions relevant to energy intake to prevent excessive gestational weight gain in pregnant overweight and obese women are important but scarce. This review synthesized healthy eating and physical activity strategies and their effects on excessive gestational weight gain prevention. Methods Twenty‐three randomized controlled trials that included healthy eating and/or physical activity as an intervention in healthy pregnant overweight or obese adult women and gestational weight gain as a primary or secondary outcome were reviewed. Findings Heathy eating and/or physical activity (21 studies, n = 6,920 subjects) demonstrated 1.81 kg (95% CI: −3.47, −0.16) of gestational weight gain reduction favouring intervention. Healthy eating (−5.77 kg, 95% CI: −9.34, −2.21, p = 0.02) had a larger effect size than combined healthy eating/physical activity (−0.82 kg, 95% CI: −1.28, −0.36, p = 0.0005) in limiting gestational weight gain. Physical activity did not show a significant pooled effect. Healthy eating with prescribed daily calorie and macronutrient goals significantly limited gestational weight gain by 4.28 kg and 4.23 kg, respectively. Conclusion Healthy eating and/or physical activity are effective in gestational weight gain control. Healthy eating with calorie and macronutrient goals are especially effective in limiting excessive gestational weight gain among pregnant overweight and obese women

Water by truck in Mexico City

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-96).Supply of water to urban households by tanker truck in developing and advanced developing countries is often associated with early stages of urbanization or with the private markets on which water vendors serve households not connected to the piped network. Despite Mexico City's high household network coverage rate and recent improvements in billing, collection, and network maintenance and upgrading, the public sector supplies bulk water to households by truck in response to persistent water scarcity and insufficient network service levels in some areas. Analysis of the public trucked water delivery services in two of Mexico City's sixteen delegations-or districts-shows two distinct paths to improved trucked service performance in a shared new environment of democratic governance. Although both delegation administrations are led by the same political party, in one delegation officials pursue accountability in the public trucked water service through an evolving set of new internal business practices. In the other delegation, organized residents and elected politicians support service accountability through co- production with delegation authorities and external oversight. This thesis asks how and why two distinct models of accountability in trucked water service delivery operate across two Mexico City delegations, and asks what the implications of the distinct accountability models are for improved household access to water.by Jill Pike.M.C.P

TRIPPy: Trailed Image Photometry in Python

Photometry of moving sources typically suffers from reduced signal-to-noise (SNR) or flux measurements biased to incorrect low values through the use of circular apertures. To address this issue we present the software package, TRIPPy: TRailed Image Photometry in Python. TRIPPy introduces the pill aperture, which is the natural extension of the circular aperture appropriate for linearly trailed sources. The pill shape is a rectangle with two semicircular end-caps, and is described by three parameters, the trail length and angle, and the radius. The TRIPPy software package also includes a new technique to generate accurate model point-spread functions (PSF) and trailed point-spread functions (TSF) from stationary background sources in sidereally tracked images. The TSF is merely the convolution of the model PSF, which consists of a moffat profile, and super sampled lookup table. From the TSF, accurate pill aperture corrections can be estimated as a function of pill radius with a accuracy of 10 millimags for highly trailed sources. Analogous to the use of small circular apertures and associated aperture corrections, small radius pill apertures can be used to preserve signal-to-noise of low flux sources, with appropriate aperture correction applied to provide an accurate, unbiased flux measurement at all SNR.Comment: 8 Figures, 11 Pages, Accepted to the Astronomical Journa

The science of cathedral studies : exploring the demographic profile, motivational intentions, and perceived impact among those attending the Holly Bough service in Liverpool Cathedral

The Holly Bough service is a unique pre-Christmas event, combining musical excellence and theological depth, crafted by the founding dean of Liverpool Cathedral in the early twentieth century for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Located within the developing science of cathedral studies, this paper analyses the demographic profile, motivational intention (drawing on religious orientation theory) and perceived impact on spiritual wellbeing (drawing on Fisher’s four dimensional model) among 564 participants who completed a detailed survey at the service held in 2019. The data demonstrated a mix of ages, a sense of Anglican commitment to this form of event-belonging by those who return year-on-year and invite friends to join them, and a perceived beneficial impact on all four dimensions of spiritual wellbeing

Comparisons of substitution, insertion and deletion probes for resequencing and mutational analysis using oligonucleotide microarrays

Although oligonucleotide probes complementary to single nucleotide substitutions are commonly used in microarray-based screens for genetic variation, little is known about the hybridization properties of probes complementary to small insertions and deletions. It is necessary to define the hybridization properties of these latter probes in order to improve the specificity and sensitivity of oligonucleotide microarray-based mutational analysis of disease-related genes. Here, we compare and contrast the hybridization properties of oligonucleotide microarrays consisting of 25mer probes complementary to all possible single nucleotide substitutions and insertions, and one and two base deletions in the 9168 bp coding region of the ATM (ataxia telangiectasia mutated) gene. Over 68 different dye-labeled single-stranded nucleic acid targets representing all ATM coding exons were applied to these microarrays. We assess hybridization specificity by comparing the relative hybridization signals from probes perfectly matched to ATM sequences to those containing mismatches. Probes complementary to two base substitutions displayed the highest average specificity followed by those complementary to single base substitutions, single base deletions and single base insertions. In all the cases, hybridization specificity was strongly influenced by sequence context and possible intra- and intermolecular probe and/or target structure. Furthermore, single nucleotide substitution probes displayed the most consistent hybridization specificity data followed by single base deletions, two base deletions and single nucleotide insertions. Overall, these studies provide valuable empirical data that can be used to more accurately model the hybridization properties of insertion and deletion probes and improve the design and interpretation of oligonucleotide microarray-based resequencing and mutational analysis

The Mode is not the Methods: Assessing Changes in Biking, Walking and Transit in California using the 2012 CHTS and 2017 NHTS

Caltrans 65A0686 Task Order 042USDOT Grant 69A35This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Please cite this article as: Pike, Susie, and Susan Handy. 2022. \u201cThe Mode Is Not the Methods: Assessing Changes in Biking, Walking and Transit in California Using the 2012 CHTS and 2017 NHTS.\u201d Findings, August. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.37777Data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) and the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) suggest that biking, walking, and transit use in California decreased over this five-year period. In light of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and State Transportation Agency (CalSTA)'s goal of tripling walking and doubling biking and transit use in their most recent strategic plan, these unanticipated results raised concerns about whether these decreases stem from methodological differences and choices about analysis between the two surveys. In this study, we evaluate numerous differences between the two surveys to assess whether the changes are likely to be real, or the result of methodological differences between the CHTS and the NHTS. We find that overall, the use of biking, walking and transit decreased over this time period, and these results are generally consistent across methodological differences and analysis choices

Col-OSSOS: Colors of the Interstellar Planetesimal 1I/`Oumuamua

The recent discovery by Pan-STARRS1 of 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua), on an unbound and hyperbolic orbit, offers a rare opportunity to explore the planetary formation processes of other stars, and the effect of the interstellar environment on a planetesimal surface. 1I/`Oumuamua's close encounter with the inner Solar System in 2017 October was a unique chance to make observations matching those used to characterize the small-body populations of our own Solar System. We present near-simultaneous g$^\prime$, r$^\prime$, and J photometry and colors of 1I/`Oumuamua from the 8.1-m Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, and $gri$ photometry from the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope. Our g$^\prime$r$^\prime$J observations are directly comparable to those from the high-precision Colours of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (Col-OSSOS), which offer unique diagnostic information for distinguishing between outer Solar System surfaces. The J-band data also provide the highest signal-to-noise measurements made of 1I/`Oumuamua in the near-infrared. Substantial, correlated near-infrared and optical variability is present, with the same trend in both near-infrared and optical. Our observations are consistent with 1I/`Oumuamua rotating with a double-peaked period of $8.10 \pm 0.42$ hours and being a highly elongated body with an axial ratio of at least 5.3:1, implying that it has significant internal cohesion. The color of the first interstellar planetesimal is at the neutral end of the range of Solar System $g-r$ and $r-J$ solar-reflectance colors: it is like that of some dynamically excited objects in the Kuiper belt and the less-red Jupiter Trojans.Comment: Accepted to ApJ