A methodology for inexpensive GPS data storage and analysis

The increase in the use of tenders in Norwegian transportation research is forcing the research community to think in new ways. This paper looks into using open source software and consumer grade equipment for scientific purposes. The use of consumer grade data logger and open source hardware is a viable alternative. This paper documents the methods and the tools used for three research projects, 2 are close to finishing and one has just started. Vehicle speed and positional data was collected with inexpensive data loggers and data was stored and analyzed with open source tools. The tools proved to be more powerful, but they do not offer the same graphical user interfaces. The main way to analyze data is through the use of standard SQL. Both average speed calculations using a road network ana driver behavior analysis can be carried out we few lines of code for large amounts of data

Implementing new transport solutions in existing transport models

This paper looks at implementation of new transport solutions in existing transport models. PRT and CyberCar solutions are tested on specific transport problems in Trondheim. Implementation of new solutions, results and lessons learnt from the implementation phase are presented

Beliefs about development versus environmental tradeoffs in the Puget Sound region

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet outlines residents’ views about the importance of environmental protection as well as their opinions about energy development, protection of wild salmon, and land use regulation. Seventy-four percent of Puget Sound residents believe that protecting the environment should be a priority even if it means limiting economic growth. The majority of residents favor both increased use of renewable energy (82 percent) and protecting wild salmon (75 percent). Residents are more divided about curbing development, with those from rural areas being more apt to prioritize protecting private property rights over regulating land use. Read more about Communities and Coastal Restoration in the Puget Sound Region

Urban-rural differences in concern about the environment and jobs in the Puget Sound region

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet examines the severity of different environmental problems and compares the strength of concern about the lack of jobs and beliefs about the environment. Too few jobs and the loss of wildlife habitat were the two community issues most likely to be ranked as important problems among residents of Puget Sound. Environmental concern is higher among urban than rural residents, while those in rural areas are more likely than urbanites to believe the lack of jobs is a threat to their community. Read more about Communities and Coastal Restoration in the Puget Sound Region

Public perceptions of environmental management in the Puget Sound region

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet describes public perceptions of different environmental interventions. Puget Sound residents widely support a range of proposed interventions designed to protect and restore the marine environment. These proposals include restricting boating and shipping activities to protect marine mammals such as killer whales and sea lions; more strongly enforcing existing environmental rules and regulations; spending government money to restore the environment for fish and wildlife; and providing tax credits to businesses that voluntarily reduce their environmental impact. Residents are divided about whether existing environmental regulations have benefited their community. Read more about Communities and Coastal Restoration in the Puget Sound Region

Uniform Boundedness of S-Units in Arithmetic Dynamics

Let K be a number field and let S be a finite set of places of K which contains all the Archimedean places. For any f(z) in K(z) of degree d at least 2 which is not a d-th power in \bar{K}(z), Siegel's theorem implies that the image set f(K) contains only finitely many S-units. We conjecture that the number of such S-units is bounded by a function of |S| and d (independently of K and f). We prove this conjecture for several classes of rational functions, and show that the full conjecture follows from the Bombieri--Lang conjecture

Multi-level stakeholder engagement in flood risk management - A question of roles and power: Lessons from England

In the past years, stakeholder engagement has become more important in flood risk management. On the one hand stakeholder engagement is often declared as a better way of management, a more successful way to reach consensus in policy discussions. On the other hand is the implementation of increasing stakeholder engagement far away from being as positive, where stakeholder engagement often ends in diverse difficulties and conflicts between political leaders and stakeholder groups. This paper aims to highlight participatory governance in flood risk management to provide an overview of the potential contributions and challenges of a participatory and collaborative governance approach. In this paper, we discuss the role of national authorities and local stakeholders in English flood risk management in three different examples (Bridgwater, Cockermouth and Morpeth). The results show that the Cockermouth and Morpeth flood risk management scheme is characterised by a high level of local self-responsibility in the planning and decision-making process. The study sites with high local capacity (Cockermouth and Morpeth) show a strong leadership at local level and bottom-up concepts and ideas. The local involvement in the discussion and decision-process depends on the local capacity (capacity to act), such as resources (knowledge, financial, time), interest, social and cultural capital. It strongly depends on these aspects, if localities are able to ensure their interests and needs at national level.Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW)French National Research Agency (ANR)Ireland Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)Middlesex University, Londo

From single steps to mass migration: the problem of scale in the movement ecology of the Serengeti wildebeest

A central question in ecology is how to link processes that occur over different scales. The daily interactions of individual organisms ultimately determine community dynamics, population fluctuations and the functioning of entire ecosystems. Observations of these multiscale ecological processes are constrained by various technological, biological or logistical issues, and there are often vast discrepancies between the scale at which observation is possible and the scale of the question of interest. Animal movement is characterized by processes that act over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Second-by-second decisions accumulate to produce annual movement patterns. Individuals influence, and are influenced by, collective movement decisions, which then govern the spatial distribution of populations and the connectivity of meta-populations. While the field of movement ecology is experiencing unprecedented growth in the availability of movement data, there remain challenges in integrating observations with questions of ecological interest. In this article, we present the major challenges of addressing these issues within the context of the Serengeti wildebeest migration, a keystone ecological phenomena that crosses multiple scales of space, time and biological complexity. This article is part of the theme issue ’Collective movement ecology’

Clockwise Stellar Disk and the Dark Mass in the Galactic Center

Two disks of young stars have recently been discovered in the Galactic Center. The disks are rotating in the gravitational field of the central black hole at radii r=0.1-0.3 pc and thus open a new opportunity to measure the central mass. We find that the observed motion of stars in the clockwise disk implies M=4.3+/-0.5 million solar masses for the fiducial distance to the Galactic Center R_0=8 kpc and derive the scaling of M with R_0. As a tool for our estimate we use orbital roulette, a recently developed method. The method reconstructs the three-dimensional orbits of the disk stars and checks the randomness of their orbital phases. We also estimate the three-dimensional positions and orbital eccentricities of the clockwise-disk stars.Comment: Comments: 16 pages, 5 figures, ApJ, in pres