Understanding the impacts of commuting: research report for stakeholders

This research report summarises the key findings of a project that is investigating the impacts of commuting on people’s lives. This project is the first of its kind to explore how commutes are changing people; how commutes are impacting on people’s work and home lives; how commutes are impacting on people’s longer term plans; and how the negative impacts of commuting are responded to by a range of diverse stakeholders. There are important economic productivity and public health reasons for understanding how commutes are impacting on people’s lives. However, improving the wellbeing of city workers and their families is an important objective in itself. Research was conducted with commuters and stakeholders in Sydney, Australia. It aims to be useful for those involved in making cities better for their inhabitants. The findings of this project increase our understanding of how life in our cities is undergoing change. They will be used to engage key industry stakeholders, policymakers and politicians on current issues of urban transportation.The Project was supported by The Australian National University and The Australian Research Council

Mobile bodies : train travel and practices of movement

This thesis investigates experiences of railway travel from a passenger perspective by looking at how passengers move through and dwell within spaces of the railway journey. It responds to a lack of attention to diverse processual enactments and theorisations of processes and practices that constitute these flows. Challenging both the theory that this particular 'space of flows' constitutes a non-place that is characterised by placelessness, and theories that rely on aggregate models of movement that serve to pacify the body, this thesis speaks to the neglected transient experience that acknowledges how the railway journey is continually brought into being by passengers through practice rather than given a-priori. It is based on in-depth empirical research that focuses on long-distance, intercity journeys as a particular space of flows. It develops a descriptive, multi-method approach to investigate what a travelling body is and how a body becomes a travelling body; how and to what extent travel-time is planned, organised, used and valued; and how the experience of time and space transform over the duration of a journey. For many, and contrary to economically-productivist studies, the railway journey is not a wasted time, but is valued and put to use in a variety of different ways that fold through and are integrally-linked to the commitments, motivations and obligations of other time-spaces. The resulting heterogeneity of practices within the confined space of the railway carriage also has significant implications for the sociality and forms of responsibility that develop. However, certain parts of the journey are more valuable than others and within this space of flows are many durations of immobility and passivity. Nevertheless, and contrary to other practice-based studies that privilege the body-in-action, passivity does not necessarily constitute a weak form of inhabiting the world. This research demonstrates how multiple configurations of passivity come into play at different points during the railway journey to assist in making the process of travel easier. In sum, this thesis mobilises new ways of looking at transient spaces which attempt to move beyond a sedentary metaphysics of space

Transforming commuting mobilities: the memory of practice

This paper examines how nonrepresentational theories of practice can expand our understanding of the ways in which mobility transformations take place. It argues that we need to attend more sensitively to the different ways in which mobility practices self-transform through their ongoing, repeated enactment. Its central claim is that commuting practices are always evolving, adapting, and elaborating. This is because of the different ways that the past coexists with and complicates action in the present. The first part of the paper shows how mobility transformations are most frequently evaluated according to linear, chronological understandings of temporality. In response, it shows how an attunement to duration, using conceptualisations of the virtual, provides a way of understanding the complex temporal folds through which the past inheres in the present, transforming its course. Pivoting around three interview encounters with commuters in Sydney, Australia, the second part of the paper shows how the virtuality of the past inheres in and becomes actualised in the present through movements, events, and milieus—flagging the significance of habit memory, recollection memory, and tertiary memory, respectively. These virtual potentials underscore not only the complexity and excessiveness of the present, but also the openness and the indeterminacy of the future. The paper questions what constitutes a mobility transformation; it expands our comprehension of the agencies of transformation affecting life in this sphere; and it challenges us to rethink the ontological unit upon which macropolitical interventions are usually focused

A Study of the Effects of Special Rape Interview and Sensitivity Techniques Training on Police Officer\u27s Self-Reported Attitude and Self-Reported Behavior

Rape is one of the most serious, frightening and violent of all crimes against women. Rapes occur at any hour of any day in any season. Victims find the experience painful, debasing, and emotionally disturbing. In statistical evidence published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it was shown that in 1974, over 55,000 forcible rapes were reported in the United States (Uniform Crime Report, 1974). According to the FBI and many criminologists, the figures relating to reported rapes are only a fraction of the actual number of rapes. Some estimates for actual rapes run 200% to 300% higher than the reported figures (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967)

Regular Routes:Deep Mapping a Performative Counterpractice for the Daily Commute

This article offers a textual “deep map” of a series of experimental commutes undertaken in the west of Scotland in 2014. Recent developments in the field of transport studies have reconceived travel time as a far richer cultural experience than in previously utilitarian and economic approaches to the “problem” of commuting. Understanding their own commutes in these terms—as spaces of creativity, productivity and transformation—the authors trace the development of a performative “counterpractice” for their daily journeys between home and work. Deep mapping—as a form of “theory-informed story-telling”—is employed as a productive strategy to document this reimagination of ostensibly quotidian and functional travel. Importantly, this particular stage of the project is not presented as an end-point. Striving to develop an ongoing creative engagement with landscape, the authors continue this exploratory mobile research by connecting to other commuters’ journeys, and proposing a series of “strategies” for reimagining the daily commute; a list of prompts for future action within the routines and spaces of commuting. A range of alternative approaches to commuting are offered here to anyone who regularly travels to and from work to employ or develop as they wish, extending the mapping process to other routes and contexts

Polarity determination in breast tissue: desmosomal adhesion, myoepithelial cells, and laminin 1

In all epithelial organs, apicobasal polarity determines functional integrity and contributes to the maintenance of tissue and organ specificity. In the breast, the functional unit is a polar double-layered tube consisting of luminal epithelial cells surrounded by myoepithelial cells and a basement membrane. It is far from clear how this double-layered structure is established and how polarity is maintained. Two recent papers have shed some light onto this intriguing problem in mammary gland biology. The results point to desmosomes and laminin 1 as having crucial roles. However, some questions remain

Open resources for case studies and assignments

Resources not designed for educational use can be successfully used educationally. For example, publications by bodies such as the United Nations or government departments can be rich resources for case studies and assignments in an educational context. Such resources are often freely available on the web, and so can be considered open educational resources. The use of this type of resource for case studies and assignments is considered in the context of two related level-3 modules (final year undergraduate) produced by the UK Open University. Both modules are concerned with digital technology, and both situate the technology in a wider social context. Both courses are also concerned with developing students’ skills of independent investigation. The prime benefits of this type of resource are shown to be their authenticity and authority. In using these resources, students are dealing with materials that are often produced and used by professional practitioners. However, there are potential pitfalls: students often need a great deal of help to make good use of these resources, and the resources are liable to change or disappear from the web unpredictably. The paper concludes that using this type of open educational resource should not be seen as a time-saver or an easy option for course designers. Instead, as with other open educational resources, using these resources can present course designers with problems of location, selection and incorporation. That is, where can suitable resources be found, which parts can be used successfully, and how can these resources be incorporated into resources created by the course designers themselves

Informal cross border trading and poverty reduction in the Southern Africa development community: the case of Zimbabwe

This study investigates the impact of informal cross border trading on poverty reduction in Zimbabwe. In the context of this study, the term Informal Cross Border Trade (ICBT), is used to describe the activities of small entrepreneurs who are involved in buying and selling across national borders. The study focuses on whether the stated activities are lifting those participating out of poverty. The research problem is examined through an assessment of the income levels, assets acquirement, expenditures patterns, food security and family relations. The hypotheses tested in the research are that, “The extent of ICBT is significant in Zimbabwe; ICBT in the Southern Africa region is mainly dominated by women; and that ICBT contributes positively to poverty reduction”. In this context, poverty reduction is said to have occurred when informal cross border trading would have resulted in an improvement in the socio-economic wellbeing of traders‟ households. The Poverty Datum Line (PDL) is used as the measure of households‟ well-being. To assess the impact of ICBT on well-being, a survey was conducted whereby in-depth interviews using the questionnaire method were used to collect primary data. Secondary information was obtained from documentary searches at institutions and also using internet searches. From this study it has been found that ICBT has both positive and negative impacts with regard to social welfare. With regard to economic welfare, based on poverty indicator measures used in the study, ICBT contributes positively to Poverty Reduction. Thus the analysis revealed that informal cross border trade plays an important role in alleviating economic hardships, reducing poverty and enhancing welfare and human development in Zimbabwe

Teaching International Students in their Home Country: Challenges and Approaches

The American College of Management and Technology was established in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 1995 as a two-year program in hotel and travel leading to the AAS degree. The Croatian government wanted to develop their long coastline and historical cities to attract Western tourists, and sought an American University to educate the Croatians. A BS program was first offered in 1997. The cultural and physical challenges of teaching students in their home country are described, with emphasis on the challenges of teaching students for whom a culture of ‘helping” each other is the normal pattern. The challenge is to create and encourage situations where helping is a positive (as on projects) and not a negative (as on exams). Classes are large (four sections of 40 – 50 students each), classrooms are small, and facilities are limited or shared with another school. In addition, since many RIT faculty teach their classes partially or completely on line, methods of encouraging communication and learning are described