Modelling urban public transit users’ route choice behaviour : a review and outlook

Public transport is one of the key promoters of sustainable urban transport. To encourage and increase public transport patronage it is important to investigate the route choice behaviours of urban public transit users. This chapter reviews the main developments of modelling urban public transit users’ route choice behaviours in a historical perspective, from the 1960s to the present time. The approaches re- viewed for this study include the early heuristic studies on finding the least-cost transit route and all-or- nothing transit assignment, the bus common lines problem, the disaggregate discrete choice models, the deterministic and stochastic user equilibrium transit assignment models, and the recent dynamic transit assignment models. This chapter also provides an outlook for the future directions of modelling transit users’ route choice behaviours. Through the comparison with the development of models for motorists’ route choice and traffic assignment problems, this chapter advocates that transit route choice research should draw inspiration from the research outcomes from the road area, and that the modelling practice of transit users’ route choice should further explore the behavioural complexities.

The use of visual analogue scales to assess motivation to eat in human subjects: a review of their reliability and validity with an evaluation of new hand-held computerized stsytems for temporal tracking of appetite ratings.

This present paper reviews the reliability and validity of visual analogue scales (VAS) in terms of (1) their ability to predict feeding behaviour, (2) their sensitivity to experimental manipulations, and (3) their reproducibility. VAS correlate with, but do not reliably predict, energy intake to the extent that they could be used as a proxy of energy intake. They do predict meal initiation in subjects eating their normal diets in their normal environment. Under laboratory conditions, subjectively rated motivation to eat using VAS is sensitive to experimental manipulations and has been found to be reproducible in relation to those experimental regimens. Other work has found them not to be reproducible in relation to repeated protocols. On balance, it would appear, in as much as it is possible to quantify, that VAS exhibit a good degree of within-subject reliability and validity in that they predict with reasonable certainty, meal initiation and amount eaten, and are sensitive to experimental manipulations. This reliability and validity appears more pronounced under the controlled (but more arti®cial) conditions of the laboratory where the signal : noise ratio in experiments appears to be elevated relative to real life. It appears that VAS are best used in within-subject, repeated-measures designs where the effect of different treatments can be compared under similar circumstances. They are best used in conjunction with other measures (e.g. feeding behaviour, changes in plasma metabolites) rather than as proxies for these variables. New hand-held electronic appetite rating systems (EARS) have been developed to increase reliability of data capture and decrease investigator workload. Recent studies have compared these with traditional pen and paper (P&P) VAS. The EARS have been found to be sensitive to experimental manipulations and reproducible relative to P&P. However, subjects appear to exhibit a signi®cantly more constrained use of the scale when using the EARS relative to the P&P. For this reason it is recommended that the two techniques are not used interchangeably

Are you a mindful driver? A review of the potential explanatory value of mindfulness in predicting speeding behaviour

Mindfulness is a concept which has been widely used in studies on consciousness, but has recently been applied to the understanding of behaviours in other areas, including clinical psychology, meditation, physical activity, education and business. It has been suggested that mindfulness can also be applied to road safety, though this has not yet been researched. A standard definition of mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose in the present moment and non-judgemental to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” [1]. Scales have been developed to measure mindfulness; however, there are different views in the literature on the nature of the mindfulness construct. This paper reviews the issues raised in the literature and arrives at an operational definition of mindfulness considered relevant to road safety. It is further proposed that mindfulness is best construed as operating together with other psychosocial factors to influence road safety behaviours. The specific case of speeding behaviour is outlined, where the psychosocial variables in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) have been demonstrated to predict both intention to speed and actual speeding behaviour. A role is proposed for mindfulness in enhancing the explanatory and predictive powers of the TPB concerning speeding. The implications of mindfulness for speeding countermeasures are discussed and a program of future research is outlined.

The peer-to-patent initiative : revitalizing patent examination with peer review

Every day we hear someone complain that this or that patent should not have been granted. People complain that the patent system is now a threat to existing business and innovation be- cause the patent office grants with alarming regularity patents for inventions that are neither novel nor non-obvious. People argue that the patent office cannot keep up with the job of examining the backlog of hundreds of thousands of patents and that, even if it could, the large volumes of prior art literature that need to be considered each time a patent application is received make the decision as to whether a patent should be granted or not a treacherous one.