bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“Talking to India”: George Orwell’s Work at the BBC, 1941-1943
Authors: Paczulla Jutta
Published: December 2016

In August 1941 George Orwell joined the BBC to work as Talks Producer for the Indian Section of the BBC’s Eastern Service. For two years, which Orwell later considered “wasted years,” he was involved in broadcasting British propaganda to the Indian subcontinent, aimed at strengthening Indian support for the British war effort. This article discusses the tensions between Orwell’s wartime service for the BBC and his position on behalf of Indian independence, a stance he had adopted earlier in his career. Orwell attempted to reconcile these contradictions by elevating the demands of what he conceived of as an anti-fascist war to the highest importance. Exploring these and related issues, the author draws on Orwell’s own writings, both publicized and private, available in The Complete Works of George Orwell.
The Uses of Resipiscere in the Latin of Erasmus: In the Gospels and Beyond
Authors: Cook Brendan
Published: December 2016

The subject of this paper is the conflict over language and meaning which surrounded Erasmus of Rotterdams attempt to create a new Latin translation of the New Testament. In the 1519 edition of the Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus chose to translate a Greek verb rendered almost universally in English as repent with the Latin resipiscere. In part, this was controversial simply because Erasmus had replaced the traditional Latin poenitentiam agere, one the chief scriptural sanctions for the sacrament of penitence. But the debate over penitence is only a beginning. Taking contemporary responses to the translation as a starting point, this paper explores the larger role of resipiscere in Erasmuss prose. In his educational works, satires, and correspondence, Erasmus employs resipiscere in contexts that give the word a burden of meaning much broader than anything in either medieval or classical standards of usage. Where Cicero and Livy use resipiscere to describe a recovery from an irrational state of mind or even from unconsciousness, Erasmus goes beyond this. In Erasmus’s prose, resipiscere characterizes a recovery from active deception and a process of questioning authority which tests the boundaries of the classical usage. By comparing the range of values Erasmus bestows on resipiscere, this paper demonstrates how his distinctly humanist approach to language reflects much more than his re-evaluation of classical Latin. It sets Erasmus’s use of the word in the larger context of his tendency to equate sin with error and refer to the teachings of Christ as a sort of heavenly wisdom or divine philosophy.
Liberal Nationalism and the Decline of the British Liberal Party: Three Case Studies
Authors: Dutton David
Published: December 2016

This article seeks to consider the impact of the Liberal National breakaway on the fortunes of the mainstream Liberal Party after 1931. It does so by looking at three case studies  the very different constituencies of Walsall in the West Midlands, Eddisbury in Cheshire, and Bradford South in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In each, events followed a subtly different course, but the long-term consequences were very similar. It is suggested that the impact upon Liberalism amounted to far more than the defection of a sitting MP. The party suffered the effective loss of its organizational infrastructure, while an existing pattern of voter allegiance was disrupted with lasting implications for its hopes of recovery.
Grasping at the Whirlwinds of Change: Transitional Leadership in Comparative Perspective. The Case Studies of Mikhail Gorbachev and F.W. de Klerk
Authors: MacKinnon Elaine
Published: December 2016

This article makes a comparative analysis of transitional leadership through the case studies of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and F.W. de Klerk in South Africa. It examines through the prism of their political memoirs how each were able to initiate monumental change in their respective systems, but then could not hold onto power in the new political environments they helped to create. Each thought that he could construct a system that could blend old and new without negating the entire legacy of the past. Yet, each reached a point where the momentum of change pushed beyond the limits of his outlook and experience. What made Gorbachev and de Klerk able to launch change in the first place eventually made it difficult for them to function as leaders for the new age and made it difficult for people to accept them as such. Their memoirs provide poignant insight into the factors that not only enabled both of these men to become reformers, but also inhibited their capacity to become true revolutionaries.
Broken Cups, Men’s Wrath, and the Neighbours’ Revenge: The Case of Thomas and Alice Dey of Alverthorpe (1383)
Authors: Wright Sharon
Published: December 2016

In the fourteenth-century manorial courts at Wakefield (West Yorkshire) reports of husbands beating their wives were extremely rare. This article examines the case of Thomas and Alice Dey and, based on the contemporary representation of domestic anger in moral and expositive treatises, speculates that the community's motives for reporting Thomas for drawing Alice’s blood had little or nothing to do with protecting her but was a form of communal vendetta.
“The bells, too, are fighting”: The Fate of European Church Bells in the Second World War
Authors: Freeman Kirrily
Published: December 2016

During the Second World War, almost 150,000 church bells from towers all over Europe were melted down to support the Nazi war effort. These bells, taken from the Third Reich itself as well as from the occupied territories, were processed in the great refineries at Hamburg, labelled the Belsen of Bells by British observers in the postwar period. The bell confiscation campaign  though effective in providing valuable non-ferrous metals for German armaments production  proved challenging and controversial, not only during the war years, but also in the immediate postwar period.
Lawyers and the Early Modern State: Regulation, Exclusion, and Numerus Clausus
Authors: Finlay John
Published: December 2016

This article investigates the ways in which entry to the legal profession in early modern Europe was regulated and the nature of the various interests, from the state to the judges and societies of lawyers, who sought to limit the size of the practising bar and also the lower branch of the legal profession. In part exclusionary categories were universal, having been inherited from the tradition of the ius commune, but some were very specific to particular courts and regulated at the local or national level. At the same time, such limitations and exclusions as were maintained had an effect in directing law graduates away from legal practice and towards employment in other spheres, including the butgeoning bureaucracies of western Europe. This was particularly exacerbated during periods when the level of litigation in the courts fell, as it seems to have done in a number of jurisdictions in the early eighteenth century. The tendency of lawyers to combine to protect their interests is reflected in the monopolies that sometimes arose in relation to practice in particular courts. Sometimes a highly restricted number of advocates or procurators had the right to practise in a court, and this could create practical problems which, it was argued, affected the quality of the legal decisions produced.
Reagan, Regulation, and the FDA: The US Food and Drug Administration's Response to HIV/AIDS, 1980-90
Authors: Richert Lucas
Published: December 2016

The beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s placed tremendous strain on the Food and Drug Administration, regulator of one quarter of the domestic US economy and protector of the nation's drug supply. Much has already been written on the AIDS epidemic, and this body of literature continues to expand, but careful consideration of this subject matter is of crucial significance to understanding the interaction between regulatory agencies, the executive branch, industry, and the public. Periodically, the FDA has gone through phases in which various priorities dominated. At one point or another it has distinguished itself as a regulatory agency, law enforcement agency, and science agency, depending on the political party in power, the ideology of the FDA Commissioner, and the influence of external stakeholders. The AIDS epidemic, which gave rise to a new and robust coalition of AIDS activists, reformers, and libertarians, tested the agency's institutional identity. To some commentators, the FDA’s management of the AIDS crisis was a serious blunder, akin to the Reagan administration’s failure. This paper contends, however, that despite the absence of presidential leadership, the FDA succeeded in rising to the challenge of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s by refashioning its existing regulatory rules, reaching out to the AIDS movement and the pharmaceutical industry, and maintaining its strong commitment to consumer protection.
The Politics of Diffuse Authority in an Early Modern Small Town
Authors: Postles Dave
Published: December 2016

Although more attention has recently been directed to English small towns, particularly in the early modern era, the number of intensive studies of this urban phenomenon remains small. Some general observations have been made about the political structure of these places, but the processes of those politics have not been examined in detail. Here, an attempt is made to dissect the political organization and the practical implications in Loughborough, elucidating how the urban and rural elements interacted.
Geography is Better than Divinity: The Bible and Medieval Geographical Thought
Authors: Raiswell Richard
Published: December 2016

This article examines the role of the Christian Bible in forging a distinctly medieval geographical consciousness. Though the sacred text had little explicit to say about basic issues of cosmography or even about the location of places beyond the bounds of the Holy Land, the fact that God's act of creation marked not just the beginning of time but also of space, meant that many of the exegetical assumptions and techniques honed to shed light upon the unfolding of Providence from the perspective of people mired in temporality could just as readily be applied to comprehending space; clearly, particular evidence for the direction of God's plan was written across the face of the earth as much as it was in past events. But as a corollary, the Bible could also be seen as providing a series of unassailable deductive premises that made the whole world readily knowable  and even known. The result is that through the Middle Ages a discourse about space developed that was at once confident and resilient, echoes of which continued to reverberate in the thinking of some of the major geographical figures of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Russian Compassion: The Russian Society for the Protection of Animals  Founding and Contexts, 1865-75
Authors: Bonhomme Brian
Published: December 2016

This essay explores the 1865 founding and subsequent early operation of the Russian Society for the Protection of Animals (Rossiiskoe obshchestvo pokrovitel'stva zhivotnym or ROPZh). It provides an overview of early organization, operations, personnel, and goals. Particular emphasis is given to the ROPZh's place within multiple social and intellectual contexts, including the contemporary international movement in favor of animal welfare, the 1861 Emancipation of the Russian peasantry and other Great Reforms carried out by Tsar Alexander II, ongoing Westernization, and the emergence of voluntary associations, public opinion, and civic engagement in late Imperial Russia.
Expanding the Frontiers of Western Jamaica through Minor Atlantic Ports in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Hunt Nadine
Published: December 2016

This article focuses on the role of minor ports in eighteenth-century Jamaica. It examines the island’s western ports of Montego Bay, Lucea, and Savanna-la-mar. In 1766, the British Parliament passed the Free Port Act of Jamaica, which resulted in an increase in sailing traffic from neighbouring Caribbean colonies and other colonies and kingdoms in the Atlantic world. By mid-eighteenth century, western Jamaica experienced a significent amount of growth in its commercial, agricultural, and communication sectors. In addition, enslaved Africans and Scottish emigrants arrived directly from West Africa and Scotland to minor ports in western Jamaica.
“An issue that could tear us apart”: Race, Empire, and Economy in the British (Welfare) State, 1968
Authors: Longpré Nicole
Published: December 2016

Literature on immigration and race relations in 1960s Britain has consistently emphasized legislation of this period as “racist” in intent. Insufficient attention has been paid to the deconstruction of the language surrounding anti-immigration sentiment. In the context of the 1968 Kenyan Asians crisis, Commonwealth Immigrants Act, and Race Relations Act, popular anti-immigrant sentiment was not couched in singularly definable terms of racism. However, much opposition to immigration was expressed in a manner that suggested a defensive and exclusive sense of British national identity, described in terms that reflected concerns about the appendages of the postwar welfare state. This language suggests that anti-immigration sentiment ought to be placed in a broader context of economic and socio-political decline in Britain, rather than read exclusively as an expression of some objectively definable notion of “racism.”
Sacred People, Sacred Spaces: Evidence of Parish Respect and Contempt toward the Pre-Reformation Clergy
Authors: Butler Sara M .
Published: December 2016

Conflicts between parish clergy and parishioners in late medieval England have been described as acts of both anticlericalism and proclericalism (that is, an attempt to compel clergy into living up to the parishioners’ increasingly high expectations of them). This paper hopes to expand our knowledge of parish conflict by turning to an oft-neglected source. In his 2002 book Selling the Church, Robert Palmer contended that we must turn to the king’s courts to better understand conflicts with the church, because both the clergy and the laity frequently preferred the king’s justice to the church’s. This paper also turns to the king’s courts, this time to the courts of equity. Examining a sampling of cases involving parish violence this paper hopes to offer a greater appreciation for the variety of sentiment existing in England prior to the Reformation.
Entre monde atlantique et Jeune République: Charles Mame et la librairie française à New York au début du 19ème siècle
Authors: Villerbu Tangi
Published: December 2016

Charles Mathieu Mame a tenté entre 1815 et 1817 de faire vivre une librairie française à New York. On sait peu de choses de son itinéraire personnel et professionnel, mais ce seul cas, reconstitué à la manière d’une enquête policière, permet une plongée croisée dans plusieurs univers : dans le New York commercial des lendemains de la Guerre de 1812 et des Guerres napoléoniennes, dans celui des migrants français dont le nombre et la variété apparaissent dès lors au grand jour, et dans celui du livre français. Mame n’étant qu’un élément d’une vaste nébuleuse en la matière en ce début de 19ème siècle. Charles Mame devient ainsi une porte d’entrée qui permet de repenser la Jeune République au sein du monde atlantique jusque dans les premières décennies du 19ème siècle.
God's Hat and the Highwayman's Shoes: A Gestural and Sartorial History of Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century English Trial and Execution
Authors: McKenzie Andrea
Published: December 2016

This essay examines a wide range of print sources in order to flesh out and to explicate those visual elements of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trial and execution so central to understanding the ways in which authority could be contested, either passively or actively. Defiant courtroom and gallows sartorial gestures are situated both in the context of broader early modern beliefs regarding social hierarchy and legitimate authority and the burgeoning recent scholarship on the carnivalesque, weapons of the weak and the performative turn. The degree to which these counter-gestures constitute agency remains an open question; however, the ways in which such challenges were framed and expressed not only sheds light on larger legitimating social ideals but suggests a gradual but significant shift over the course of the long eighteenth century from a vertical to a more horizontal construction of authority.
Jeu de Tarot et jeux corporels « fin de siècle ». Les bambochades civilisées des cartes d'atout du Tarot Grimaud
Authors: Vivier Christian , Guillain Jean-Yves
Published: December 2016

Les cartes à jouer dotées de scènes de genre entrent dans la catégorie de l'imagerie populaire. Elles n'ont jamais fait l'objet d'une investigation de type historique dans le domaine du sport en dépit des nombreuses saynètes exhibant des pratiques d'exercices physiques. Ce type de représentations s'apparente pourtant à un miroir original que la société tend à elle-même et constitue donc une source originale qui mérite considération. Parmi les jeux de cartes, le « Tarot Nouveau » est intéressant à étudier. Héritier des tarots à sujets allégoriques du XVe siècle, le Tarot du cartier français Grimaud s'impose à la fin du XIXe siècle. Ses saynètes sont restées quasi inchangées depuis. Postulant une fonction de régulation sociale jouée par cette forme d'imagerie, cette étude sémio-historique montre que le Tarot Nouveau restitue un ordre bourgeois et civilisé hésitant entre modernité et tradition. Ces bambochades sportives sont révélatrices de cette période « fin de siècle », empreinte de vigueur républicaine et d'esprit d'entreprise, ambivalente face à un progrès multiforme, conduisant à vouloir entretenir un lien avec la société d'antan.
Vínland and Wishful Thinking: Medieval and Modern Fantasies
Authors: Jakobsson Sverrir
Published: December 2016

This article discusses the evidence for the journeys of several Norsemen to a place called Vínland around the year 1000. In hindsight, the stories of the unsuccessful attempt to settle Vínland have been enduringly linked to the consequent discoveries of the American continents, which occurred five centuries later. However, as there are no contemporary, or near-contemporary, written records of journeys to Vínland and the nearby islands, all reconstructions of those events spring from later texts, some of them written down 300 years or more after the fact. Yet what may, or may not, have happened has gradually been granted the status of a real event. Reevaluating the wishful reality of the Vínland islands requires that the stories of the Vínland journeys be squarely situated in the context of the world geographic system adopted by those who told those stories. This article examines how information about the newly encountered lands intersected with the dominant system of defining and classifying knowledge. It thus sheds light on the worldview, now obsolete, in which that system was embedded. A careful dissection of the narrative of the Vínland journeys makes it possible to understand the morphology of this worldview, its epistemic underpinnings, and the spell it continues to cast on the Western imagination.
Imperial Networks, Imperial Defence, and Perceptions of American Influence on the British Empire in the Interwar Period: The Case of the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres
Authors: Kennedy Greg
Published: December 2016

The role of influence — what constitutes it, how it works and who exercises it — is the subject of much research on British foreign and defence policy making in the twentieth century. This article introduces a possible new character to the interwar British imperial defence policy making system, the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres. The focus of the article is on the Imperial, as well as the British, nature of that system, emphasizing the informal nature of the information flows which influenced and created strategic policy. As well, the article places the Anglo-American strategic relationship at the heart of the imperial defence system, showing the connectivity required within the system to deal with issues presented by the growing importance of America to the British system of Imperial Defence, not only in the Atlanticist context, but in the global/imperial sphere.
Jacobitism and the Historian: Some Neglected Sources on the Jacobite Insurrections of 1715 and 1745
Authors: Schweizer Karl
Published: December 2016

Jacobitism — under the impact of new perspectives in political thought, religion, culture, and society — remains a contested subject of British historiography. The present article examines various aspects of this academic debate and warns against a monolithic view of the discord that fueled Jacobite disaffection. It shows that Jacobitism — whether Scottish, English, or Welsh — was riddled with ethnic and sectarian divisions that made collective, cooperative measures all but impossible. The paper also draws attention to fresh manuscript material that gives greater precision to the myriad forces shaping the agenda and direction of Jacobite activism.
Asleep by a Frozen Sea or a Financial Innovator? The Hudson’s Bay Company, 1714-63
Authors: Wagner Mike
Published: December 2016

‘Asleep by a frozen sea’ is a description of the early history of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) that has persisted since the mid-eighteenth century. The management of the company prior to the Seven Years War (1756-63) has received decidedly mixed reviews. In particular, the company has been criticized for a lack of initiative in North America relative to its French rivals. This article re-assesses the operations of the company from the perspective of its British managers. It examines what they sought to achieve as well as how they generated revenues, controlled costs and managed their cash flow. This analysis reveals that, far from being ‘driven to the wall’ by its French competitors, the HBC, through careful control of costs and an innovative approach to financial management, protected the interests of its shareholders while ensuring considerable operational flexibility in North America.
Win Friends or Make Enemies: Team Canada’s 1978 Diplomatic Mission to Czechoslovakia
Authors: Jesenský Marcel
Published: December 2016

The Canadian government’s role in funding and managing amateur sports increased dramatically as part of the expansion of the postwar social welfare state. A case study of the government’s involvement in Team Canada’s participation at the 1978 World Hockey Championship reveals the deliberate attempt by Canadian hockey players, government officials, diplomats, and embassies, to improve Canada’s image abroad after it had been damaged by the team’s unsportsmanlike behaviour at the same championship the previous year. Ottawa’s portrayal of this 1978 “charm offensive” as successful helped it justify its role in operating the Canadian national team. This article situates the government’s role in the 1978 World Championship in the context of trends that began in the 1960s, when the government became more involved in sports, and charts a growing awareness of the potential for sport — and especially hockey in the case of Canada — to function not only as an important component of collective identity, but also as an integral part of the nation’s foreign relations strategy.
Nonadditive Public Transit Fare Pricing Under Congestion with Policy Lessons from a Case Study in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Authors: Chin Anchor , Lai Andy , Chow Joseph Y. J.
Published: December 2016

With increasing urbanization and the development of technologies that support automated fare collection, policy makers need decision-support tools to evaluate differentiated public transit fare pricing policies. However, the state-of-the-art tools that consider congestion effects account only for additive fares. A stochastic user equilibrium model with elastic demand was extended to handle nonadditive station-to-station–based fares and was solved by using a method of successive averages. In this paper, an illustrative example is used to show how simple price elasticities alone are not enough to predict the effects of a fare on demand within even a simple eight-node congested network. The first case study of a fare pricing policy was conducted in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; in this case, a distance-based policy was used for the Toronto Transit Commission subway system with respect to downtown and nondowntown subpopulations. The analysis found that compared with the base scenario of a Can$3 fixed fare, there are Pareto-improving fare policies (e.g., fixed rate of Can$2 and variable rate of Can$0.06/km), but the same policy might not be Pareto-improving for all subpopulations. These findings call for more sophisticated fare pricing policies for Toronto (e.g., zone-based) that can cater to specific needs of subpopulations.
Rail Transit Ridership: Station-Area Analysis of Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Authors: Chen Szu-han , Zegras Chris
Published: December 2016

This paper examines factors associated with transit ridership in Boston, Massachusetts. With the use of automated fare card data and boarding counts, this paper specifies and estimates direct-demand models of station-level ridership for Boston’s urban rail system during different time periods (e.g., a.m. peak and off-peak). The models include transit infrastructure and service characteristics, such as number of bus connections, as well as station-area characteristics aiming to represent economic activity, the built environment, and socioeconomics and demographics. The results show that population and employment are important drivers of overall daily demand and also show the importance of street design characteristics, various transit levels of service indicators, transit network accessibility, and station location relative to the central business district. Some variation in influencing factors was detected across different time periods and for weekday versus weekend boardings. The models reasonably replicate total observed boardings, but important under- and overpredictions at particular stations suggest areas for additional research. Applying the model to a light rail extension currently under development in the region predicts total weekday ridership up to 47% higher than official forecasts. The paper concludes with areas for future research.
Use of Mobile Device Wireless Signals to Determine Transit Route-Level Passenger Origin–Destination Flows: Methodology and Empirical Evaluation
Authors: Mishalani Rabi G. , McCord Mark R. , Reinhold Ted
Published: December 2016

Directly observing stop-to-stop origin–destination (O-D) flows for transit passengers by onboard surveys is time-consuming and costly. While the use of automatic passenger count (APC) and automatic fare collection data to infer transit O-D flows has undergone important developments lately, the value of directly observing O-D movements remains of interest in light of inference errors. The increasing use of personal mobile devices and the corresponding reliance on wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) communications in public spaces allow for the prospect of using the detected anonymous Wi-Fi signals of mobile devices carried by transit passengers to extract O-D movements. An empirical study is conducted when O-D movements determined directly from Wi-Fi signal data and from a combination of Wi-Fi and APC data are compared to extensive, directly observed high-fidelity ground truth data obtained from an onboard survey. While O-D flows determined directly from the Wi-Fi data for a specific bus trip do not correspond well to the ground truth flows, the results demonstrate the promise of using Wi-Fi signal data for O-D flow determination when the data are aggregated across multiple bus trips for a time-of-day period, especially when used in conjunction with APC data.
Modeling Evaluation of Eco–Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control in Vicinity of Signalized Intersections
Authors: Ala Mani Venkat , Yang Hao , Rakha Hesham
Published: December 2016

Vehicle stops caused by traffic signals reduce vehicle fuel economy ratings along arterial roadways. Eco–cooperative adaptive cruise control (eco-CACC) systems are being developed in an attempt to improve vehicle fuel efficiency in the vicinity of signalized intersections. These eco-CACC systems utilize traffic signal phasing and timing data received through vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, together with vehicle queue predictions, to compute fuel-optimum vehicle trajectories that are continuously updated as the vehicle travels in the vicinity of signalized intersections. The algorithm computes a desired speed for the vehicle that is either displayed to the driver or directly integrated into the vehicle’s adaptive cruise control system. In this paper, the INTEGRATION microscopic traffic assignment and simulation software is used to evaluate the performance of a proposed eco-CACC algorithm to assess its networkwide energy and environmental impacts. A simulation sensitivity analysis demonstrates that as the market penetration rate of CACC-equipped vehicles increases, the energy and environmental benefits also increase, and that the overall savings in fuel consumption are as high as 19% when the market penetration rate is 100%. On multilane roads, the algorithm may produce networkwide increases in the fuel consumption level when the market penetration rate is less than 30%. The analysis also demonstrates that the length of control segments, the signal phasing and timing plan, and the traffic demand levels significantly affect the algorithm performance. The study further demonstrates that the algorithm may produce increases in fuel consumption levels when the network is oversaturated; thus, further work is needed to enhance the algorithm for these conditions.
Bionic Lane Driving of Autonomous Vehicles in Complex Urban Environments: Decision-Making Analysis
Authors: Chen Xuemei , Tian Geng , Chan Ching-Yao , Miao Yisong , Gong Jianwei , Jiang Yan
Published: December 2016

A tactical-level lane-driving and decision-making model that considers multisource information in a complex and dynamic urban environment is critical for the development of autonomous vehicles. A key challenge in operating an autonomous vehicle robustly in the real world is to deal with dynamic and uncertain information. In the real world, drivers are capable of making accurate and timely decisions that should also be required of autonomous vehicles. In this work, the authors describe the development of an algorithm for autonomous lane change functions in which information was extracted from the decision-making process of human drivers to support the decision making of autonomous vehicles. First, a virtual urban traffic environment was built with PreScan, which is a simulation environment for the development of advanced driver assistant systems and intelligent vehicle systems. The vehicle dynamics were simulated by a dynamic model, with 6 degrees of freedom, based on Simulink, and driver decision rules were extracted through the concept of rough set theory. After that, an algorithm was presented for lane-driving decision making at the tactical level when velocity control operation was desirable and feasible. The development of the algorithm was based on driver experience, safety thresholds, and acceptable gap theory. The algorithm was proved to provide satisfactory velocity control actions as well as to safely decide whether to change lanes in a real urban environment. Finally, the reliability and effectiveness of the model was validated by both simulations and real road experiments. The findings from this study can provide a theoretical basis for the in-depth study of driving decision making in complex and uncertain environments.
Effect of Traffic Modeling on Control of Traffic Networks
Authors: Xue Zhengui , Chiabaut Nicolas , Leclercq Ludovic
Published: December 2016

A study of the literature on macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD)-based traffic control revealed an impractical assumption on the homogeneity of large urban networks during dynamic control processes. This finding motivated the work described in this paper on the optimal control of a two-region traffic network to evaluate the effect of traffic modeling on control. A cost function with adjustable weighting factors to specify the protection priority of the two regions is proposed. Two modeling approaches were used to describe the traffic network. They included a cell transmission modeling approach, which can properly describe traffic dynamics, and a bin modeling approach under the assumption on traffic homogeneity in the control process. Simulation results revealed that the designed control and the resulting control performance highly depend on system modeling.
Identifying Latent Classes of Pedestrian Crowd Evacuees
Authors: Haghani Milad , Sarvi Majid
Published: December 2016

The tactical decision making of humans when they exit crowded built environments was investigated. Recent studies have shown that the relative weights and priorities that pedestrian evacuees associate with different factors contributing to their choice of exit vary significantly from person to person, yet this heterogeneity is not explainable by the demographics of the decision makers, such as gender. Hence, it is assumed that the choice could be attributable to the presence of latent classes (latent types of behavior) unassociated with observable demographic characteristics. The standard latent class and the random coefficient latent class choice models were implemented with data on stated exit choices to explore this. The latter model accommodated coefficient heterogeneity within each class by allowing the coefficients associated with each class to vary randomly. Data analyses showed that exit choice heterogeneity did not necessarily need to be represented by continuous distributions and could have been accommodated in a finite number of discrete categories. In fact, only two classes of evacuees (congestion avoiders and distance avoiders) could be identified. The terminology derived from the fact that the chief difference in evacuation behavior of the two classes was associated with their perception of crowding-related factors (i.e., exit density and directional density). The modeling results suggested that congestion avoiders outnumbered distance avoiders. The analyses also showed that the within-class heterogeneity faded into insignificance once the binary discrete classification was imposed: evacuees’ decision-making heterogeneity was sufficiently reducible into two discrete categories with negligible inner-class variation. This finding provides a more tangible interpretation of exit choice heterogeneity than the continuous mixture approach. The finding also simplifies the way in which the modeler deals with decision heterogeneity when the exit choice model is implemented for prediction purposes.
Longitudinal Vehicle Transaction Model: Assessment of Lead and Lagged Effects of Longer-Term Changes and Life-Cycle Events
Authors: Fatmi Mahmudur Rahman , Habib Muhammad Ahsanul
Published: December 2016

This paper presents a dynamic vehicle transaction model developed with data from a retrospective survey conducted in Halifax, Canada. The study investigated four types of vehicle transaction decisions, including first-time vehicle purchase, vehicle acquisition, vehicle disposal, and vehicle trade. A panel-based latent segment logit (PLSL) model was developed to account for repeated transaction decisions and to capture unobserved heterogeneity among the sample households. The study took a life-oriented approach by examining the lead and lagged effects of longer-term changes and life-cycle events. The PLSL model was estimated for two latent segments, and the model results suggest that profound heterogeneity exists, as evident in parametric values of the two segments. The life-cycle event represented by the birth of a child might trigger vehicle acquisition in Segment 1. In contrast, that life-cycle event might deter an acquisition decision in Segment 2. The model confirmed historical deposition effects of key life events. For instance, a 2-year lagged effect on vehicle acquisition was seen with the birth of a child. Moreover, the model results revealed that first-time vehicle purchase behavior was considerably different from the decision to acquire a vehicle. For example, for the longer-term change represented by the addition of a job, significant heterogeneity across the two segments for a first-time vehicle purchase decision was seen and a 3-year lagged effect was confirmed. A positive relationship for the decision to acquire a vehicle in both segments was found for the same variable, and a 1-year lagged effect was confirmed. Finally, the study provided important behavioral insights for targeting specific groups of the population to promote sustainable travel behavior.
Perception of Mode-Specific Travel Time Reliability and Crowding in Multimodal Trips
Authors: Li Hao , Gao Kun , Tu Huizhao , Ding Yueming , Sun Lijun
Published: December 2016

The underutilization of public transit in Shanghai, China, calls for studies to better understand travelers’ mode choice behavior in multimodal networks. This paper presents a comprehensive study of mode choice behavior and differences in the perception of travel time reliability (TTR) and crowding for different modes, particularly in multimodal networks. A two-stage stated preference survey was carried out to consider four commonly used modes, including combined-mode travel with park-and-ride, in conjunction with four key factors. The aim of the first stage was to obtain and quantify travelers’ perceived TTR in relation to different levels of delay for different modes. In the second stage, an experimental design that used the utility balance theory was performed for a stated preference survey to investigate mode choice behavior and differences in perception of TTR and crowding. Results from the first stage survey showed that travelers do have different levels of tolerance regarding the longest accepted delay for different modes. Their perceived TTR in terms of a certain delay differed by mode. The results from the second stage survey provided further evidence of significant perceived differences in TTR and crowding for different modes. Mode-specific perceptions of TTR and crowding have a great impact on travelers’ mode choice behavior and should be considered when forecasting models related to mode share in a multimodal network are being developed. The values of travel time, TTR, and crowding derived from this study could be used in demand forecasting and project appraisals in multimodal networks.
Smartphone-Based Survey for Real-Time and Retrospective Happiness Related to Travel and Activities
Authors: Raveau Sebastián , Ghorpade Ajinkya , Zhao Fang , Abou-Zeid Maya , Zegras Christopher , Ben-Akiva Moshe
Published: December 2016

Understanding and incorporating measures of travel and activity well-being in transportation research are critical for the design and evaluation of policies. In recent years, several efforts have been made to quantify travelers’ subjective well-being by using a self-reported state of happiness during participation in various activities or travel patterns. The inadequacies of these conventional survey methods in collecting uninterrupted and comprehensive information have restricted the number of such studies. In this study, a smartphone-based sensing platform was adapted to collect mobility information and measure happiness. Two surveys were conducted with respondents from five continents. Real-time and retrospective happiness measures are compared and explained. Results indicate that different cognitive biases affect the levels of happiness reported by the individuals. In comparison with staying at home, performing work and education activities tends to result in lower levels of happiness, while performing other activities tends to result in higher levels of happiness. Activity duration has a significant effect on real-time happiness but is less significant for retrospective happiness.
Analysis of Road User Behavior and Safety During New York City’s Summer Streets Program
Authors: Hussein Mohamed , Popescu Bianca , Sayed Tarek , Kim Lee
Published: December 2016

Automated computer vision video analysis techniques were used to analyze video data during the operation of New York City’s Summer Streets Program at a major signalized intersection. The main objectives of this study were to diagnose pedestrian and cyclist safety issues during the shared space operation and to demonstrate the feasibility of the automatic extraction of road user data (e.g., pedestrian, runner, rollerblader, or cyclist) required for microscopic behavior analysis. Road users’ speeds and pedestrian gait parameters (step frequency and step length) were automatically extracted and analyzed. Results show that pedestrian walking speed was highest during the Summer Streets operation (1.49 ± 0.54 m/s) because pedestrians had more street space to use and slowest during normal operations (1.30 ± 0.22 m/s). Bike speeds were low during the Summer Streets event (3.62 ± 0.97 m/s), likely because of interaction with pedestrians, but these speeds increased during normal traffic operations. Pedestrians and cyclists moving in groups tended to be slower and confirmed results found in previous studies. The safety analysis was conducted with traffic conflict techniques. It was observed that the lowest rate of conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists and between cyclists was found to be during Summer Streets operations. In addition, an analysis of spatial violations showed that some road users were not observing traffic rules in the transition period after Summer Streets ceased to operate.
Clinical profile of cardiac myxoma: 11 years experience of 90 cases
Authors: Rahman Md Toufiqur , Ali Md Zulfikar , Kabir Md Humayun , Azam STM Abu , Majumder AAS , Rahman Afzalur , Haque Syed Azizul
Published: December 2016

Introduction: Cardiac myxoma is a benign neoplasm that represents the most common primary tumour of the heart. Because of nonspecific symptoms, early diagnosis may be a challenge. Although the left atrium is the most commonly involved site of origin in 75% of cases, it can arise from any of the cardiac chambers. Symptoms from a cardiac myxoma are more pronounced when the myxomas are left-sided, racemosus, and over 5 cm in diameter. Symptoms are produced by mechanical interference with cardiac function or embolization. Being intravascular and friable, myxomas account for most cases of tumor embolism. The site of embolism is dependent upon the location (left or right atrium) and the presence of an intracardiac shunt. Most atrial myxomas are benign and can be removed by surgical resection.Objectives: To see clinical presentation and echocardiographic profile of cardiac myoxomas.Methods: 90 cardiac myxoma patients who admitted both in cardiology and cardiac surgery departments of National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Dhaka from August 2003 to July, 2014 were studied clinically and by echocardiogram. Clinical histories were reviewed, noting age, gender, and clinical presentation.Results: There were 30 males and 60 females, ages ranged from 17 to 76 years. The commonest clinical feature was dyspnoea (94.44%), followed by palpitation (76.67%), chest discomfort (74.44%), constitutional symptoms (50%), pedal oedema (20%), syncope (14.44%), and embolization (7.7%). The mean duration of symptoms was 09.7 months.Conclusion: The clinical presentation of cardiac myxoma is often nonspecific, so high index of clinical suspicion is important for its early and correct diagnosis. The size and appearance of the myxomas correlated with the presenting symptoms.Bangladesh Heart Journal 2016; 31(1) : 18-22
Apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a review of presentation, pathophysiology, diagnosis and natural course of the disease
Authors: Malik Ali Osama , Devabhaktuni Subodh , Abela Oliver , Diep Jimmy , Ahsan Chowdhury H , Malik Arhama Aftab
Published: December 2016

Apical Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is an uncommon phenotype of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. We present a review of best evidence on presentation, pathophysiology, diagnosis, outcomes and management for patients with apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.Bangladesh Heart Journal 2016; 31(1) : 29-36
Forecasting Aus Rice Area and Production in Bangladesh using Box-Jenkins Approach
Authors: Rahman NMF , Hasan MM , Hossain MI , Baten MA , Hosen S , Ali MA , Kabir MS
Published: December 2016

Forecasting of rice area and production is an essential procedure in supporting policy decision regarding food security and environmental issues. The main aim of this paper is to forecast Aus rice area and production in Bangladesh. Box-Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time-series methodology is considered for modeling and forecasting country's Aus rice area and production data commencing from 1971-72 to 2013-14. It was observed that ARIMA (1, 1, 5) and ARIMA (1, 1, 4) model were performed better than the other ARIMA models for forecasting Aus area and production respectively. The Aus rice areas were forecasted 1041.12 and 499.31 thousand hectares and for production it was 2059.642 and 1781.545 thousand metric tons in 2014-15 and 2023-24 respectively. The forecasted Aus rice area and production both were showed a decreasing trend. Government should create an enabling environment to develop HYV rice varieties for Aus rice crop to ensure ongoing food security by increasing cultivated area and production.Bangladesh Rice j. 2016, 20(1): 1-10
Estimating Area and Production of Rice under Different Crop-cut Methods in Bangladesh
Authors: Kabir MS , Paul DNR , Hossain MI , Rahman NMF
Published: December 2016

Crop-cut is a widely used and well accepted procedure for estimating rice yield. This yield is then multiplied by the area planted under rice cultivation to determine rice production of the country. In Bangladesh, crop-cut is used to estimate transplanted rice yield. Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) as the public agencies provide estimate on area and production of rice but they use different methods of crop-cut. The estimates of these two agencies on area and production of rice are different posing a question to the users on the reliability of the estimates. An attempt has been made with the objective to formulate a protocol that provides reliable and unique estimates on rice area and production. It is suggested to make at least three cuts in each plot to minimize the chance of over or under estimation of the whole plot yield and the radius of the circle should be 178.5cm so that the cut area becomes 10 m2 in order to easy conversion of the crop-cut yield to t ha-1.Bangladesh Rice j. 2016, 20(1): 11-16