Big Road Research Articles

Communities in infrastructure habitats are species rich but only partly support species associated with semi‐natural grasslands

Abstract Biodiversity linked to traditionally managed semi‐natural grasslands is declining, despite conservation efforts. At the same time, the area of novel grassland habitats along linear infrastructure, such as road verges and power line corridors, is increasing and in some regions surpass the area of semi‐natural grasslands. An open question is to what extent these novel grasslands can complement or even replace traditionally managed grasslands as habitat for grassland species. We compared the alpha (species richness) and beta (abundance‐based dissimilarities) diversity of plants, bumblebees and butterflies among semi‐natural pastures, verges of small and big roads, power line corridors and uncultivated field borders nested within 32 landscapes (2 × 2 km squares). Landscapes had either high or low road density and were with or without power line corridors. Across landscapes there was also a gradient in the area of semi‐natural pastures. Alpha diversity of all three species groups was as high in power line corridors and verges of small roads as in semi‐natural pastures, regardless of landscape composition. Although all habitat types shared a large proportion of species, community composition differed among habitats for all three species groups. The beta diversity of plants and butterflies was driven primarily by the replacement of species (turnover), while the beta diversity of bumblebees was driven by a rarer occurrence of certain species in road verges (nestedness). This means that linear infrastructure habitats cannot fully replace the role of semi‐natural grasslands for plant and pollinator diversity. The area of road verges, power line corridors and semi‐natural pastures in the landscape influenced community composition of plants and butterflies, but not the similarity in community composition among habitats within landscapes. Policy implications. Although novel grasslands along linear infrastructures have high numbers of grassland species, they only support a part of the biodiversity found in traditionally managed semi‐natural grasslands. Therefore, protecting and restoring semi‐natural grasslands should continue to be a priority for the conservation of grassland biodiversity. However, especially in landscapes where the area of semi‐natural grasslands is low, road verges and power line corridors can be important habitats for a number of grassland plants and insects and should be managed to promote biodiversity.

Phosphorus, stable isotopes and fatty acids of soils as tools for recognizing a Bronze Age droveway in the Valli Grandi Veronesi (North Italy)

This study focuses on the surroundings of the terramara of Castello del Tartaro in the lowland of Valli Grandi Veronesi (North Italy) outside a Bronze Age village enclosed by channels and embankments, where two groups of double parallel side drainage ditches running from northwest to southeast were found. This evidence has been interpreted as a “Big Road” and more precisely a droveway, possibly used for the passage of cattle. The road was sampled along a section, at 4 different levels of depth, and the content in inorganic and organic phosphorous was assessed. In the sampled section the content of phosphorus shows the presence of discontinuities and strong phosphorus accumulation in the layers under the arable land. The analysis of the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen attests to traces of herbivores, while the comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography analysis identified a high number of significant fatty acids suggesting the presence of fats from ruminant animals. The results, as a whole, corroborate the hypothesis of a droveway. This hypothesis agrees with both paleobotanical and zooarcheological data from the territory around the embanked settlements. This study thus underlines the importance of cattle husbandry within the complex commercial relationships that characterized the Bronze Age.

愚直一徹，大道無門:～西澤潤一先生の思い出～

愚直一徹，大道無門:～西澤潤一先生の思い出～

Turbulent travel speeds in nonlinear vehicle dynamics

Quarter car models of vehicles rolling on wavy roads lead to limit cycles of travel speed and acceleration with period doublings and bifurcation effects for appropriate driving force parameters. In case of narrow-banded road excitations, speed jumps occur, additionally. This has the consequence that the driving speed becomes turbulent. Bifurcation and jump effects vanish with growing vehicle damping. The same happens for increasing bandwidth of road excitations when, e.g., on flat highways there are no big road waves but only small noisy slope processes generated by rough road surfaces. The paper derives a new stability condition in mean. Numerical time integrations are stabilized by means of polar coordinates. Equivalently, Fourier series expansions are introduced in the angle domain. Phase portraits of travel speed and acceleration show new period-doublings of limit cycles when speed gets stuck before resonance. The paper extends these investigations to the stochastic case that road surfaces are random generated by filtered white noise. By means of Gaussian closure, a nonlinear mean speed equation is derived which includes the extreme cases of wavy roads and road noise.

Modeling Interstation Travel Speed of Hybrid Bus Rapid Transit within A Bayesian Framework

Interstation travel speed is an important indicator of the running state of hybrid Bus Rapid Transit and passenger experience. Due to the influence of road traffic, traffic lights and other factors, the interstation travel speeds are often some kind of multi-peak and it is difficult to use a single distribution to model them. In this paper, a Gaussian mixture model charactizing the interstation travel speed of hybrid BRT under a Bayesian framework is established. The parameters of the model are inferred using the Reversible-Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach (RJMCMC), including the number of model components and the weight, mean and variance of each component. Then the model is applied to Guangzhou BRT, a kind of hybrid BRT. From the results, it can be observed that the model can very effectively describe the heterogeneous speed data among different inter-stations, and provide richer information usually not available from the traditional models, and the model also produces an excellent fit to each multimodal speed distribution curve of the inter-stations. The causes of different speed distribution can be identified through investigating the Internet map of GBRT, they are big road traffic and long traffic lights respectively, which always contribute to a main road crossing. So, the BRT lane should be elevated through the main road to decrease the complexity of the running state.

Role of Dracaena marginata plants as absorbent of lead (Pb) pollutants in city park of Surabaya: a preliminary study

Plants Dracaena marginata is a plant that is often used as a plant landscape in the city Park of Surabaya. Dracaena marginata plant is expected to absorb well air pollutants. Air pollutants come from motor vehicles.One of the harmful pollutants that can be absorbed by plants is heavy metal lead (Pb).The aim of this research is to know the role of Dracaena marginata which acts as a landscape plant and its role as absorbant of Pb metal pollutant. The aim of this research is to know the role of Dracaena marginata which acts as a landscape plant and its role as absorbent of Pb metal pollutant. The method used in this research is observational, that is identifying, measuring density and descriptive plant Dracaena marginata. The study sample was taken in two places, namely the city park which is near the big road (lots of pole) and in the park which is small, in the city parks in Surabaya. It also measured the content of Pb metal on leaves by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS) method. From the research results obtained data that found two varieties Dracaena marginata, namely, varieties of green and red. Dracaena marginata is a good plant to absorb Pb pollutants. Dracaena marginata can absorb many Pb metals, but the growth and development of the body is not disturbed (grows well). The conclusions of this study are (1) there are two kinds of Dracaena marginata green var and Dracaena marginata red var (2) Dracaena marginata is a bioindicator can absorb many metal Pb.

Social network analysis for better understanding of influenza.

The objective of this study is to improve the understanding of spatial spreading of complicated cases of influenza that required hospitalizations, by creating heatmaps and social networks. They will allow to identify critical hubs and routes of spreading of Influenza, in specific geographic locations, in order to contain infections and prevent complications, that require hospitalizations. Data were downloaded from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) - SID, New York State database. Patients hospitalized with flu complications, between 2003 and 2012 were included in the research (30,380 cases). A novel approach was designed, by constructing heatmaps for specific geographic regions in New York state and power law networks, in order to analyze distribution of hospitalized flu cases. Heatmaps revealed that distributions of patients follow urban areas and big roads, indicating that flu spreads along routes, that people use to travel. A scale-free network, created from correlations among zip codes, discovered that, the highest populated zip codes didn't have the largest number of patients with flu complications. Among the top five most affected zip codes, four were in Bronx. Demographics of top affected zip codes were presented in results. Normalized numbers of cases per population revealed that, none of zip codes from Bronx were in the top 20. All zip codes with the highest node degrees were in New York City area. Heatmaps identified geographic distribution of hospitalized flu patients and network analysis identified hubs of the infection. Our results will enable better estimation of resources for prevention and treatment of hospitalized patients with complications of Influenza. Analyses of geographic distribution of hospitalized patients with Influenza and demographic characteristics of populations, help us to make better planning and management of resources for Influenza patients, that require hospitalization. Obtained results could potentially help to save many lives and improve the health of the population.

Traffic-generated changes in the elemental profile of urban coarse dust at a highway and crossroads

Based on literature data, the percentage contribution of road traffic to concentrations of particulate matter (PM) and PM-bound elements, separately for PM2.5-10 and PM10-100 fractions were assessed. The data on the PM2.5-10 and PM10-100 concentrations examined simultaneously at two locations (the 1st outside the direct impact of the road emission; the 2nd next to a crossroads or highway) were used in the analysis. There were clear differences in the concentrations of PM and its components between these locations (a crossroads vs. background; highway vs. background). Both PM concentrations and concentrations of the majority of the PM2.5-10- and PM10-100-bound elements had higher values in the traffic site. The percentage increase of PM concentrations was in the range from 25 (PM2.5-10; highway) to 606% (PM10-100; crossroads). The highest percentage increase in the concentration of elements was noted at the crossroads, where concentrations of PM10-100-bound Si, Sc, Fe and Pb were 12, 22, 25 and 71 times higher than at the urban background site, respectively. The measurable results of this paper are elemental profiles of two coarse fractions of PM in the vicinity of the road and crossroads and at sites far apart from the big road traffic sources. The collected information can be an important source of knowledge in identifying the origin of PM in the receptor.

The Trail of ’98 (Clarence Brown, 1928) and the Klondike Gold Rush: The Last Big road show of Hollywood’s Silent Film Era

This paper consists in a study of The Trail of ’98 (1928), a film directed by Clarence Brown for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, whose plot deals with the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada, in 1898. Although this was one of the last great epic films produced by Hollywood in the late 1920s, it remains Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s biggest commercial failure to date. As a result, it is largely unknown and still undocumented today. This paper will aim to create a historical reconstruction of the shooting, establishing its chronology and researching the extreme circumstances of its location shooting. It will also scrutinise the merits of a new, albeit short-lived, widescreen process called Fantom Screen that was used specifically for its exhibition, and its distribution under the concept of road show. Finally, it will analyse the reasoning behind the film’s structure and the specific Hollywood context that led to its commercial failure.

Landscape selection by migratory geese: implications for hunting organisation

Over the last decades, many wild goose populations have increased significantly and are now causing conflicts with socioeconomic and biological interests. To mitigate impacts of rapid population increases, population control by increasing harvest has been attempted. In this study we seek to guide the design of a regional autumn goose hunting organisation in agricultural landscapes by identifying areas suitable for hunting, which have high probability of occurrence of pink‐footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus and/or a short return time by geese to fields subject to hunting. To identify areas suitable for hunting in Nord‐Trøndelag County, mid‐Norway, we used species distributions models (SDMs), a broadly accepted tool in conservation planning for spatial refuge organisation. The prediction was that the highest probability of goose occurrence exists for large fields, away from small roads and near water bodies serving as safe roosting sites. Additionally, return time was predicted to be shortest for large fields near roosting sites and away from big roads. A combined map of goose occurrence and return time showed similar prediction for high goose occurrence and short return time; hence areas most suitable for hunting are large fields, close to roost sites and away from roads. If hunters and landowners are willing to coordinate goose hunting at a landscape level, they can use the prediction maps as guidance, with the likely benefit that they collectively can shoot more geese. Such local and regional organisation can become a powerful tool in the harvest management of geese.

A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE FOR ROAD SURFACE MODELLING

Road surface survey is critical for road engineers to determine the needs of maintenance and rehabilitation for both network and project level study. This paper reviews the road surface survey methods, including image based, photogrammetric and stereo-vision, and mobile mapping systems. The merits and demerits of each method are outlined. The goal of this study is to develop simple software for facilitating the generation of the necessary road surface and distresses maps using surveying data from different sources. The software output has compatibility with known CAD/GIS packages to widen its scope of applications. Methodologies, examples and demonstration related to the use of the developed software and laser scanning data in road mapping for a case study are described. The results showed the flexibilities of the developed software and the proposed method for generating the necessary maps and data for road distresses such as longitudinal cracks, transverse cracks, patch deterioration, potholes, and ravelling. However, the present work shows that using terrestrial laser scanning technologies for modelling the road surface has advantages such as surveying speed, big roads, highways and tunnels. Also it provides the safety for surveyors and the absence of a disruption to traffic. The developed software and methodology are suitable for universities, academic centres and are of great interest to small engineering firms for the generation of road surface maps.

초량 이바구길의 공공디자인에 나타난 장소정체성 표현특성

This study aims to identify the characteristics of expression of place identity shown in public design of Choryang Ibagugil in Dong-gu, Busan and analyze them from physical aspects and from psychological ones. Choryang Ibagugil has special historicity indicating that it is a hillside road(Sanbokdoro) dwelling site created after the 6.25 Korean War and the quintessence of Busan. In addition, the site is a good example that used the topographic characteristics as they were and used the road for movement called as `gil` to design public environment. Ibagugil connected to Sanbokdoro (i.e. Mangyang-ro) starting from the big road (Busan Station) where there was a large floating population represented the regional identity to public design by the medium of `gil.` As a result of analyzing the characteristics of expression of place identity based on the current status discovered, our conclusions could be drawn as follows: First, place forms identity under interpersonal relationships and there is a story on the lives of people in the contexts between place and identity. Second, place identity is an independent specialty of a certain place and expression of place identity into public design makes the place more place-like. Ibagugil expressed its identity while adapting to the topographic characteristics of hillside road(Sanbokdoro). Third, adjacent public buildings were included into Ibagugil, thus highlighting the placeness, although it is considered that it is ambiguous to determine it as public design in the current-status analysis. Fourth, from the public value aspect, slumized hillside road(Sanbokdoro) was improved, which led to improvement in quality of environment and improvement in pride of local residents. Resultingly, it can be said that the place identity appeared in the public design of Choryang Ibagugil were the stories that happened in this place. Moreover, the indication of future image of how the place will be developed in the future makes the value of the place more significant. Therefore, in public design for expressing place identity, utilization of independent speciality of the site is considered to be an important factor. By doing so, `place becomes a real place` and `place can get an independent identity.` Going further, it comes to get the characteristics of `being the place as it is.`

Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States by Jan L. Logemann (review)

Reviewed by: Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States by Jan L. Logemann Els De Vos (bio) Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States. By Jan L. Logemann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, Pp. xvi+300. $45. European postwar consumer societies often are depicted as places where the “Americanization” of consumption has taken place, with American types of mass-scale consumption replacing a more bourgeois mode. Recently, however, that generalization has been challenged. For example, in the framework of the European Science Foundation–funded project European Ways of Life in the American Century: Mediating Consumption and Technology in the Twentieth Century, several (mainly European) researchers question the extent to which the European postwar modes of consumption and material cultures were “Americanized.” In the project’s just-published synthesizing book, they shed light on processes of transforming, ignoring, or resisting American influences that took place in various countries (see Per Lundin and Thomas Kaiserfeld, eds., The Making of European Consumption). Jan L. Logemann’s Trams or Tailfins fits this new approach. Logemann, a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., compares the postwar American consumer society with the West German one. While the suburban house, supermarket, fully equipped kitchen, and individual’s car were dominating the American consumer landscape, West German consumers preferred urban living, trams, and the local grocery store within walking distance. Logemann looks for explanations in the following areas: public policy, social norms, and the geographical environment. As a result, the book is divided into three parts. The first maps the public policy attitudes toward public and private consumption in West Germany and the United States. The higher level of private spending in the United States can be attributed to the higher purchasing power of Americans, less state intervention in the free market, and less public spending. This last point is very interesting, as consumption history has focused mainly on private consumption, with public consumption remaining out of sight. Nevertheless, the investments in areas such as public transport and social provisions were crucial in the formation of the European welfare states. They cultivated an urban culture. [End Page 283] The second part focuses on consumer aspirations and the social meaning of consumption. Logemann argues that American citizens bought more durable goods because they saw doing so as a way to increase their social status, while in West Germany, social stratification dominated consumption patterns. That might be mistaking cause for effect, however: as incomes increased in the United States, possession of certain material goods became a measure of social status. In this vein, Logemann notes that the easy accessibility of mortgage loans accelerated private U.S. consumption. The last part discusses how consumption reconfigured space, while space reinforced certain consumption patterns. In the United States, large-scale suburbanization took place, which encouraged (and depended on) car ownership to reach the workplace. Car use was a catalyst for supermarkets situated near big roads and surrounded by large parking lots. The long distance to the city center led people to invest more in leisure activities at home, which contributed to the disinvestment in public provisions such as the theater, cinema, or public transport. Logemann convincingly outlines the developments of the consumer societies in the two countries. Instead of the Americanization of West Germany, he shows how the country took lessons from the developments in the United States. The West Germans did not blindly adore the U.S. system; its policymakers worked to maintain lively and compact cities with small shops. West German consumers remained critical toward American products. They preferred sound, durable goods instead of fancy objects. Certain “American” evolutions were present in Germany, such as suburbanization, the rise of car ownership, and the emergence of supermarkets. However, these were guided and regulated much more in favor of public interests. The case of West Germany illustrates how the “soft power” of the United States was quite successfully resisted and transformed in Europe. Despite his interest in the role of public policy, Logemann pays little attention to a set of influential actors. In Europe, many organizations and institutions, including state agencies...

Social indicators are predictors of airborne outdoor exposures in Berlin

Exposure by airborne pollutants adversely affects human health and well-being. Particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOX, NO2) are two of the most important airborne pollutants in Germany. Epidemiological studies found that these pollutants significantly increase morbidity and mortality by cardiovascular, respiratory and other diseases. Inner-urban differences of human exposure are often higher than mean differences between cities. Therefore it is necessary to investigate the inner-urban spatial distributions of human exposures. Additionally the question arises if the social situation of population is also related to airborne outdoor exposures.On the example of Berlin the spatial distribution of airborne exposures of PM2.5 and NO2 was determined for the 447 Berlin planning areas (PLAs), each characterized by about 7500 inhabitants, rather unique structure of buildings, big roads, and certain social structure. In this study we also investigated the combined exposure by PM2.5 and NO2. Because both types of air pollutants are traffic related, traffic parameters were included into the assessment.In order to investigate the socio-spatial distribution of PM2.5 and NO2 at the planning area level the air pollution was statistically and spatially correlated with the development index of the Berlin Social Urban Development Monitoring and other social indices. Generally, but also in Berlin, there exists a strong tendency that decreasing social indicators are related to increasing human exposures. About 10% of Berlin's population live in PLAs with a very low or low development index and with very high or high air pollution levels and thus are discriminated twice. The lower the development index in a PLA, the higher is the share of population exposed to high air pollution and vice versa.

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trail-blazers Who Created the American Superhighways

Review of: Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, by Earl Swift.

The Korean Valentino: Jin Yan (Kim Yŏm), Sino-Korean Unity, and Shanghai Films of the 1930s

This essay examines the involvement of Korean-born ethnic star Kim Yŏm (Chinese name: Jin Yan) in Shanghai’s left-wing, resistance film movement during the 1930s. In addition to reading Kim’s persona as an ideal screen embodiment of “athletic, modern youth,” which was being promoted by the official screen policy during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937), the author offers a close analytical interpretation of director Sun Yu’s masterpiece The Big Road ( Da Lu , 1934). In this film, Kim plays a revolutionary martyr who leads a group of construction workers building new roads for the Chinese army resisting the invasion of Japanese imperialists. Employing a transnational star studies paradigm, the author interprets The Big Road as an allegory of Sino-Korean unity, one that was founded upon a common resistance against the Japanese Empire at the time of the film’s release.

Proposal and Application of a New Method for Bicycle Network Planning

Responding to the recent increase of cyclists, improvement and development of bicycle road network are being planned in many cities in Japan, and cycling environments are gradually being improved. The routes connecting facilities with many bicycles coming in and leaving are often selected as candidates in selecting suitable routes with high potential demand during the investigation of the bicycle network. There are, however, a lot of unexpected routes with large volumes of bicycle traffic because bicycles can pass through various types of routes from big roads to narrow streets. To create a bicycle road network with safety, consistency and immediacy, demand characteristics of bicycle paths including traffic demand of bicycles and route choice behavior of cyclists in the whole area need to be clarified accurately. This study proposes a way to do it precisely and easily (OLIVE method). This study also shows the panorama of the whole bicycle network and finds the problems in it by applying this method to downtown of Takamatsu City in Japan.

The big roads: the untold story of the engineers, visionaries, and trailblazers who created the American superhighways

The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways is the largest public works project in history. In this fascinating history of the creation of these Big Roads the author reveals how Americans changed dirt tracks to expressways in less than a century. The story includes the profiles of those who played major roles in this process, including Carl Fisher, Thomas MacDonald, Lewis Mumford, and Joe Wiles. The story also includes the unwanted and unforeseen consequences of these Big Roads such as the slow death of small-town main streets and the rise of sprawl and edge cities; the unbroken chain of chain restaurants and box stores that highways helped to forge; the disruptive effect of freeways on urban life; ordinary citizens at the mercy of a governmental road-building juggernaut; and the environmental effects these routes continue to have. All of this and more can be found in the four parts of this book, entitled (I) Out of the Mud, (II) Connecting the Dots, (III) The Crooked Straight, the Rough Places Plain, and (IV) The Human Obstacle.

NFL bettor biases and price setting: further tests of the Levitt hypothesis of sportsbook behaviour

Empirical support for the Levitt hypothesis of sportsbook behaviour, where sportsbooks set prices to maximize profits, not to clear the market, is shown using data from actual sportsbooks. Betting percentages on favourites and underdogs (pointspread market) and overs and unders (totals market) were obtained using actual dollars bet (www.sportsbook.com) and percentage of bets made (www.sportsinsights.com). Both data sets reinforce the idea that sportsbooks are not setting prices to attract even betting dollars on both sides of the proposition. Big favourites, road favourites and overs on high totals are all shown to attract a significantly higher percentage of bets in both samples. Betting against public sentiment is shown to be statistically profitable for the National Football League pointspread market, but not in the market for totals.

Driving Deadhead off the Big Road: Pre-interstate Representations of the American Trucker in Raoul Walsh'sThey Drive By Nightand Jules Dassin'sThieves' Highway

Driving Deadhead off the Big Road: Pre-interstate Representations of the American Trucker in Raoul Walsh's<i>They Drive By Night</i>and Jules Dassin's<i>Thieves' Highway</i>