Determining the influence of high volumes of bicycle traffic on motorized traffic at signalized intersections in Germany – conceptual approach

Bicycle traffic may have a significant influence on motorized traffic at signalized intersections. For instance, motorized vehicles carrying out right-turning maneuvers have to wait for bicyclists riding straight across the intersection. For this reason, infrastructure design (e.g. bicycle paths and lanes and queuing areas) and signalization of bicycle traffic at intersections is of essential importance, not only to ensure the safety of bicyclists, but also to protect performance aspects of motorized traffic. Currently, little is known about how different infrastructure design and signalization of bicycle traffic influence the motorized traffic or about the limitations these designs and signalizations. In this presentation, a conceptual approach is described for analyzing the effects of different bicycle infrastructure designs and signalization and for obtaining detailed knowledge to improve the quality of traffic flow while maintaining safety of all traffic participants. The approach can be divided into empirical and simulative analyses. In the empirical part, trajectory data from motorized vehicles and bicyclists will be analyzed to obtain empirical information about traffic flow related variables, e.g. journey times and waiting times, and traffic behavioral variables, e.g. accelerating, following and decelerating. Based on the results of the empirical analysis, an existing bicycle simulation model will be calibrated and validated in order to conduct several simulation experiments under various conditions, e.g. increasing traffic demand. The results of the empirical and simulative analyses will be used to develop a novel calculation method of traffic flow taking into account high volumes of bicycle traffic at signalized intersections as well as different infrastructure design and signalization

Pragmatic randomised controlled trial to evaluate guidelines for the management of infertility across the primary care-secondary care interface

Objective: To investigate the effect of clinical guidelines on the management of infertility across the primary care-secondary care interface. Design: Cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting: General practices and NHS hospitals accepting referrals for infertility in the Greater Glasgow Health Board area. Participants: All 221 general practices in Glasgow; 214 completed the trial. Intervention: General practices in the intervention arm received clinical guidelines developed locally. Control practices received them one year later. Dissemination of the guidelines included educational meetings. Main outcome measures: The time from presentation to referral, investigations completed in general practice, the number and content of visits as a hospital outpatient, the time to reach a management plan, and costs for referrals from the two groups. Results: Data on 689 referrals were collected. No significant difference was found in referral rates for infertility. Fewer than 1% of couples were referred inappropriately early. Referrals from intervention practices were significantly more likely to have all relevant investigations carried out (odds ratio 1.32, 95% confidence interval 1.00 to 1.75, P=0.025). 70% of measurements of serum progesterone concentrations during the midluteal phase and 34% of semen analyses were repeated at least once in hospital, despite having been recorded as normal when checked in general practice. No difference was found in the proportion of referrals in which a management plan was reached within one year or in the mean duration between first appointment and date of management plan. NHS costs were not significantly affected. Conclusions: Dissemination of infertility guidelines by commonly used methods results in a modest increase in referrals having recommended investigations completed in general practice, but there are no detectable differences in outcome for patients or reduction in costs. Clinicians in secondary care tended to fail to respond to changes in referral practice by doctors. Guidelines that aim to improve the referral process need to be disseminated and implemented so as to lead to changes in both primary care and secondary care

SUMO 2016 – Traffic, Mobility, and Logistics

Dear reader, You are holding in your hands a volume of the series „Reports of the DLR-Institute of Transportation Systems“. We are publishing in this series fascinating, scientific topics from the Institute of Trans- portation Systems of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. – DLR) and from his environment. We are providing libraries with a part of the circulation. Outstanding scientific contributions and dissertations are here published as well as projects reports and proceedings of conferences in our house with different contributors from science, economy and politics. With this series we are pursuing the objective to enable a broad access to scientific works and results. We are using the series as well as to promote practically young researchers by the publication of the dissertation of our staff and external doctoral candidates, too. Publications are important milestones on the academic career path. With the series „Reports of the DLR-Institute of Transportation Systems / Berichte aus dem DLR-Institut für Verkehrssystemtechnik“ we are widening the spectrum of possible publications with a building block. Beyond that we understand the communication of our scientific fields of research as a contribution to the national and international research landscape in the fields of automotive, railway systems and traffic management. With this volume we publish the proceedings of the SUMO Conference 2016 which was held from 23rd to 25th May 2016 with a focus on traffic, mobility, and logistics. SUMO is an open source tool for traffic simulation that provides a wide range of traffic planning and simulation functionalities.The conference proceedings offer an overview of the applicability of the SUMO tool suite as well as its universal extensibility due to the availability of the source code. The major topic of this fourth edition of the SUMO conference are the different facets of moving objects occurring as personal mobility and freight delivery as well as communicating networks of intelligent vehicles. Several articles cover heterogeneous traffic networks, junction control and new traffic model extensions to the simulation. Subsequent specialized issues such as disaster management aspects and applying agile development techniques to scenario building are targeted as well. At the conference the international user community exchanged their experiences in using SUMO. With this volume we provide an insight to these experiences as inspiration for further projects with the SUMO suite