Road Trip Research Articles

The Microbial Road Trip: Are We Nearing the Golden Era of Orthopaedics?

The Microbial Road Trip: Are We Nearing the Golden Era of Orthopaedics?

Collaborative Route Planning of Road Trips in Regional Central Cities of China: An Approach Based on E-CARGO Model

Collaborative Route Planning of Road Trips in Regional Central Cities of China: An Approach Based on E-CARGO Model

Mapping Shadows of the Bight: a road trip residency

ABSTRACT In August 2023, a collective of arts and humanities scholars undertook a mobile residency on the Far West Coast of South Australia, along the Great Australian Bight. Moving through deeply storied country that is largely marginal and neglected in the cultural and political imaginary, and negotiating our relation to this displacement as settler-colonial scholars with the privilege of mobility, the residency sought creative and critical approaches to self, place and others that might build capacity for shared reparative futures. Encounter, embodiment and entanglement – modes of staying with shadows cast by global forces of capitalism, industrialization, colonization and climate change and, just as importantly, staying clear of research methods that rehearse epistemic violence – formed the core of our intentionally indeterminate methodology. In keeping with a framework that accepts the contingency of knowledge and knowledge production, we offer not findings but seekings: invitations to engage in pursuing new collaborations, methods and politics for expanding imaginaries of materiality and connection, resistant to the dematerialization, dissociation and disregard inherent to the contemporary global order.

Cuba and Chile: Revolutionary Dialogues for Latin America

This article analyses the structural challenges of the Latin American revolution in the early 1970s, which echoed from Fidel Castro’s extensive road trip around Chile during the Salvador Allende administration in November 1971. Castro’s presence promoted massive mobilizations of Chilean workers and peasants who came in droves to listen to his speeches. By then, an interesting dialogue between the Cuban and Chilean revolutionary paths had developed on a mass-collective basis, considering the dialogical skills of both leaders, Castro and Allende, who participated together in many mass demonstrations during the 24 days that the Cuban leader spent in Chile. While Cuba experienced an insurrection and guerrilla war, Chile was promoting a “peaceful road to socialism” through electoral victories. This article investigates the relations between the two revolutionary processes through the dialogues during this visit. This article is based on press materials from those days, Castro’s and Allende’s speeches and other primary sources. It concludes that the Cuban and Chilean Revolutions were more complementary than antagonistic, contrary to the historiography that emphasizes rivalry between them.

Searching for John Knox: Heritage Entanglements in Gamilaroi Country

ABSTRACT This essay discusses a road trip through Gamilaroi Country in regional New South Wales, “in search of” Pte. John Knox, an Aboriginal serviceman who is buried at Singapore’s Kranji War Cemetery. It shares insights into Australia’s multilayered heritage “entanglements” learned while travelling with his grandson, Les Knox, to their hometown, the Toomelah Aboriginal Community on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. Written collaboratively as an account of places encountered episodically during this shared journey, the essay describes the many suppressed layers of First Peoples’ memory and memorialisation that are drawn to the surface by storytelling. They are obscured by the more visible and prominent settler heritage of war memorials and ex-military migrant camps. The first part of this article traces John Knox’s training in Australia and service in Malaya through maps conjectured using various sources. The second part of the essay focuses on three key physical sites: The Toomelah War Memorial, the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial Site and the 1965 Freedom Ride, where this heritage manifests. It raises deeper questions on the “politics of sharing:” how we define and commemorate “conflict,” how and when we acknowledge Aboriginal service people and whether we connect to the Asia Pacific region.

Driving While Brown: The American Road Trip in H.M. Naqvi’s Home Boy

ABSTRACT H.M. Naqvi’s novel Home Boy features three men of Pakistani background who embark on a cab ride from New York City to Westbrook, Connecticut. They wish to check on an elusive character, Mohammed Shah (a.k.a. the Pakistani Gatsby or the Shaman), who is missing after 9/11. I analyze this journey, known as the “Shaman Run,” as an American road trip. For critical analysis, I synthesize Nancy Leong’s concepts of “open road” and “traffic stop narratives,” highlighting the racialization of American roads, with Sarah Sharma’s notion of “Brown Space” regarding the post-9/11 criminalization of cabdrivers with ties to the Global South. I argue that the Shaman Run begins as an open road narrative but is transformed into a traffic stop narrative overlaid with Brown Space, leading to a reconsideration of the possibilities of open road narratives. Naqvi incorporates elements of road trip fiction in Home Boy to recount how certain Americans did not regard Muslims as fellow mourners in the aftermath of 9/11. Writers and filmmakers from Pakistan and the Pakistani Diaspora have depicted the othering of Muslims in post-9/11 America, but Naqvi is distinctive in foregrounding this theme by repurposing a well-known genre of American literature.

A Road Trip of Acceptance and Love

The author reviews Amber McBride’s 2021 young adult novel Me (Moth), providing a brief summary, potential classroom audiences and instructional strategies, and similarly-themed texts.

Driving in Cars with Noise

Driving in Cars with Noise

The Great Canadian (Electric) Road Trip: Evaluating EV Use in National Park Tourism

As part of its 2050 net zero emission commitment, Canada has a mandate to transition to electric vehicles (EVs) to decarbonize transportation. While the EV charging infrastructure is expanding in urban areas, the infrastructure for inter-city and nature-based tourism has not been assessed. This study combined four metrics of feasibility and convenience into an EV readiness index to evaluate 94 road trip itineraries associated with Canada’s iconic national parks. Index scores ranged from not possible (0) to equal to the travel experience of internal combustion vehicle (20). With the summer range, the average one-day route score was 19.2, as 82% of one-day itineraries could be completed without requiring additional charging. Multi-day routes scored lower (14.0), with 24% being highly inconvenient or impossible due to gaps between charging stations. With a reduced winter EV range, average index scores for one- and multi-day trips declined as charging needs increased (18.4 and 13.2, respectively). Across the 94 travel routes, EVs were estimated to produce only 17% of the carbon dioxide emissions of internal combustion vehicles (this was much lower in some provinces). The findings also highlight key regional differences in tourism EV readiness and where infrastructure is needed to provide equitable access to Canada’s national parks for tourists seeking to decarbonize their holiday travel.

Reading and Listening to Lost Children Archive: Audiobooks as Oral History

Abstract Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (2019) explores how to find “lost children” who are forced to migrate and interrogates relationships among works of literature, archives, and archiving. Taking place contemporaneously with its publication, the novel follows Ma, Pa, and their two children who are stepsiblings on a road trip from New York City to the US Southwest. Along the way, characters take photographs, and, more unusually, record their own voices and the sounds of the environments they pass through. This article extends explorations of how sound works in the novel to how sound works as the novel by comparing the written text with the audiobook version. After situating the novel among discussions of how literature can contribute to archive making, employing Anne Gilliland and Michelle Caswell's notion of “impossible archival imaginaries” and Erica Johnson's notion of the “neo-archive,” the article shows that readers and audiobook listeners ultimately experience a different narrative. This comparison exposes a third layer of information that prompts questions about what can — and can't — be learned from written and oral records on their own. The article concludes proposing that this third layer of information suggests new possibilities for how literature can contribute to understandings of how archives can include the experiences of marginalized communities with more nuance and complexity.

Co-Optimization of Speed Planning and Power Management for Automated HEVs in Unstructured Road Scenarios

With the development of intelligent and connected vehicle technology, the simultaneous optimization of powertrain performance and vehicle motions provides an unprecedented perspective to further explore the energy-saving potential of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). However, it is still very challenging because of the complex driving environment and large computational burdens, and hence, the co-optimization strategy under unstructured scenarios has rarely been studied. For unstructured road driving scenarios, this paper proposes a hierarchical optimal control system combing speed planning and energy management for an autonomous HEV. In the first layer, a vehicle stability constraints system is designed with consideration of both external road characteristics and vehicle dynamics to limit the longitudinal speed, preventing the vehicle from excessive yaw, sideslip, and rollover during a complex, unstructured road trip. Then, the improved gray wolf optimizer is designed to efficiently generate optimal speed and SOC trajectories to guide the vehicle motion behavior and power split while ensuring driver safety. In the second layer, a mechanical implementation system is applied to fulfill the control system framework. Finally, the performance of proposed co-optimization is comprehensively verified in terms of fuel economy, vehicle maneuverability, computational effectiveness, and adaptability. Compared with the sequential optimization, the improvements by co-optimization range from 9.38% to 13.03% in fuel economy and from 0.31% to 3.15% in vehicle maneuverability under different test cycles, while ensuring real-time capability.

Review: Road Trip to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters the Counterculture, by Jon Lewis

Review: <i>Road Trip to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters the Counterculture</i>, by Jon Lewis

Making Home, Unmaking Domesticity: Love, Joy, and Other-than-Human Worlds in Kamloopa

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story by Kim Senklip Harvey (Syilx and Tsilhqot’in) which won the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language drama, has been discussed by critics and scholars especially regarding Harvey’s decision not to invite critics to write formal reviews of the recent production in Toronto and to only invite “love letters” from Indigenous women for the premier production in Vancouver. This article offers a reading of Kamloopa that unpacks how Harvey’s refusal and radically different kind of invitation to engage is in continuation with the world of Kamloopa. It focuses on celebrations of love and joy as assertions of cultural and bodily sovereignty rooted in Indigenous women’s love for each other and their relationships with the more-than-human world. Following the three women characters who leave their “white” apartment in East Vancouver to go on a road trip to the largest powwow on the West Coast, the article studies how Kamloopa disavows the politics of the colonial domestic as it relates to the history of violence on Indigenous women in residential schools and the MMIWG2S crisis. It discusses how the women in Kamloopa also reject confinement in colonial narratives of violence that are tied with the material confinement of domesticity. The article argues that Harvey’s refusal of formal theatre reviews is in continuity with the play’s resistance of settler colonial “domestication” of Indigenous women’s lives, relations, and art.

Neon Road Trip by John Barnes (review)

Neon Road Trip by John Barnes (review)

Editorial: Road trip from mild to severe asthmatic inflammation: the traffic lights of biomarkers in asthma management

Editorial: Road trip from mild to severe asthmatic inflammation: the traffic lights of biomarkers in asthma management

Literature, mobility, and the archive

In 2019 Mexican-born Valeria Luiselli penned Lost Children Archive, which inaugurates her writing in English, and tells the interwoven stories of a blended family, as they take a road trip across America, and of the hardships of children travelling on foot to the US border.&#x0D; The narrative is a poetic representation of lives in transit, and mobility informs it semantically and structurally: it is organized in four parts, each divided up in small sections, and includes manifold documents. In the narrative, the notion and the experience of the archive are of great importance, emerging out of multiple displacements. This being-in-transit conjures up a literal – it discusses the movement of people –, and figurative – it embraces multiple entanglements, renouncing completeness – translatedness.&#x0D; While Lost Children Archive is a tour the force, and adds a layer of complexity her writing, Luiselli’s oeuvre, in Spanish and English, has always been characterized by an interpenetration of languages, texts, places, people – a close-knit interweaving of trajectories and memories. This results in an understanding of literature as assemblage, a ground in which to tentatively document existence. As such, it lends itself to an examination of the ways translation shapes the literary in a post-colonial, global(ized) world.

Abstract 15913: Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, is It Preventable?

Introduction: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TCM) is a reversible type of heart failure that occurs mostly in postmenopausal women. There are no definitive preventive measures in literature for this condition. Case: A 75-year-old female with a past medical history of hypertension presented with a new intermittent pressure-like chest pain and dyspnea right after a 1000-miles road trip. she reported that she had been feeling sad after her best friend died. Physical exam showed bilateral lower lung lobes crepitation and hypoxia. Lab work up revealed troponin of 1522 ng/L trending up to 2400 ng/L on serial measurements and elevated BNP. EKG showed ST changes and inverted T wave. Chest x-ray showed pulmonary vascular congestion and small bilateral pleural effusion. TTE showed LVEF 25-30% and mid and apical LV hypokinesis. Chest CT angiography was normal. Left heart catheter showed nonoccluded coronary arteries. LV angiogram portrayed mid and apical hypokinesis. Serology and PCR of EBV, Coxsackie B virus, CMV, HSV, influenza A and B, adenovirus and parvo virus were negative. She was started on a diuretic, a Beta blocker and an ACE inhibitor. Her symptoms improved. A follow up echocardiogram after 1 month showed improved ejection fraction and resolution of LV mid and apical hypokinesis. Recent combined emotional and physical stress of driving a long distance were thought to be the cause of stress cardiomyopathy. Discussion: Approximately 1-2% of patients presenting with symptoms of MI meet the criteria for TCM. A recent systematic review by Nyman et al on triggers of TCM found that physical factors are more common than emotional factors. However, some cases had both emotional and physical stressors. This patient had combined psychological and physical stressors, which may have precipitated TCM. postmenopausal women with recent emotional stressors should be advised to avoid physical stress until emotional issues have been resolved.

Psychogeography, Nostalgia and Heroic Metamorphosis in Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons

Literary psychogeography is one of the concepts that deals with the impact of certain geographical places on the human psyche. It is an interdisciplinary approach that connects psychology, geography, and literature. The aim of this research paper is to examine the theory of literary psychogeography on Leila Aboulela’s fifth novel, Bird Summons (2019) within the theoretical framework of Catherina Loffler. It deals with three female heroines who have decided to go on a road trip to the Scottish Highlands to visit the grave of Lady Evelyn Cobbold. Aboulela explores the three women’s struggle with their personal choices and commitments in life. She skilfully deals with their psychologies, their lost dreams, nostalgia, and their heroic metamorphosis. The women’s psychogeographical voyages at the forest along with their nostalgia lead to their physical metamorphosis to experience heroic transformation of their souls to achieve self-actualization in life.

Transnational Migration in the Moldovan- German Context, or: My Totul va fi bine (Road)trip

A research Report of Jana STÖXEN (Germany), Transnational Migration in the Moldovan- German Context, or: My Totul va fi bine (Road)trip

The post-COVID-19 road-based tourism market: Negotiation of travel constraints

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) not only transformed people’s choice of travel mode but also resulted in travel constraints and related behaviour. This study investigated travel constraints and constraint negotiation in post-COVID-19 road-based tourism in Indonesia. An online questionnaire survey was administered to Indonesian road tourists including self-drive tourists between May to July 2022. The resulting 510 completed questionnaires were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. Road trips were more popular than flights during the recovery stage of COVID-19. Intrapersonal travel constraints were the largest problem for road-based tourism. This research advances the understanding of road trip travel behaviour in Indonesia and travel constraints after a crisis. The study applies the constraint negotiation model in a road-based travel context. Our study is among the first to combine road tourism psychology and tourism crisis/disaster management in the context of road-based tourism, which may be useful to policymakers and to tourism industry stakeholders in general.