Stepping Stone Research Articles

A unified equilibrium framework of new shared mobility systems

Modeling congestion effects arising from multiple travel modes, shared mobility modes in particular, is non-trivial because of the complex interactions among diverse agents and distinct traffic flow compositions. This research aims to provide a theoretical framework of generic traffic network equilibria to unify these services and hopefully become a step stone to modeling shared mobility services in congested road network. In the proposed framework, we mainly focus on three modes: driving solo, ridesharing, and e-hailing service. The four types of traffic flows are: personal vehicle drivers, e-hailing drivers, ridesharing riders, and e-hailing passengers. The first two flows contribute to traffic congestion while the latter two do not. To capture their interactions, a super extended network is created with four copied networks each of whom represents one type of traffic flow. The equilibrium of new mobility systems can then be reformulated as a quasi-variational inequality and solution existence is discussed. The numerical results are tested in both Braess network and Sioux Falls network to illustrate the impact of different parameters on equilibrium outcomes, including modal cost, system travel time and deadhead miles. The results of this model will help assist transportation planners in making policy and regulation decisions regarding shared mobility services.

Factors associated with young people's attendance at an IPV prevention intervention in informal settlements in South Africa: A prospective analysis

ABSTRACTUnderstanding factors shaping attendance at behavioural interventions is critical for programmatic planning. Through the Stepping Stones and Creating Futures intervention trial amongst young (18-30) women and men to reduce intimate partner violence and strengthen livelihoods, we prospectively assessed factors associated with intervention attendance. Baseline data were collected between September 2015 and September 2016 among 677 women and 675 men. For women, in multinomial models, compared to high attenders, medium (β = −0.04, p = 0.001) and low (β = −0.05, p = 0.003) attenders had lived less time in the community, medium attenders were more likely to have children (β = 0.97, p = 0.001), and low attenders had less gender-equitable attitudes (β = −0.57, p = 0.035). For men, in multinomial models, compared to high attenders, medium attenders were more likely to have completed secondary school (β = 1.48, p = 0.011) and to have worked in the past three months (β = 0.64, p = 0.021). Low attenders had lived for a shorter period in the community (β = −0.06, p = 0.005), and were more likely to have worked in the past three months (β = 0.66, p = 0.041) compared to high attenders. Attendance was shaped by structural factors, and gender-specific factors, and these need to be incorporated into future interventions.

Comparative transcription analysis of photosensitive and non-photosensitive eggplants to identify genes involved in dark regulated anthocyanin synthesis

BackgroundLight is a key environmental factor in regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. Through a large number of bagging screenings, we obtained non-photosensitive eggplants that still have decent amount of anthocyanin synthesized after bagging. In the present study, transcriptome was made to explore the molecular mechanism of dark-regulated anthocyanin synthesis in non-photosensitive eggplant.ResultsThe transcriptome of the pericarp at 0 h, 0.5 h, 4 h, and 8 h after bag removal were sequenced and analyzed. Comparison of the sequencing data with those of photosensitive eggplant for the same time period showed that anthocyanin synthesis genes had different expression trends. Based on the expression trends of the structural genes, it was discovered that 22 transcription factors and 4 light signal transduction elements may be involved in the anthocyanin synthesis in two types of eggplants. Through transcription factor target gene prediction and yeast one-hybrid assay, SmBIM1, SmAP2, SmHD, SmMYB94, SmMYB19, SmTT8, SmYABBY, SmTTG2, and SmMYC2 were identified to be directly or indirectly bound to the promoter of the structural gene SmCHS. These results indicate that the identified 9 genes participated in the anthocyanin synthesis in eggplant peel and formed a network of interactions among themselves.ConclusionsBased on the comparative transcription, the identified 22 transcription factors and 4 light signal transduction elements may act as the key factors in dark regulated anthocyanin synthesis in non-photosensitive eggplant. The results provided a step stone for further analysis of the molecular mechanism of dark-regulated anthocyanin synthesis in non-photosensitive eggplant.

Researchers Use Cell Phones to Help Homeless Youth

Researchers Use Cell Phones to Help Homeless Youth

Time, Place and Home: Exploring Meanings of Home in Vancouver

Building on recent studies emphasizing how structural and contextual forces shape notions of home, I explore how the experience of home is related to the concepts of time and place. Using 46 interviews with 23 individuals, I investigate how home is defined and experienced by younger and older adults in relationship to Vancouver's particular cultural, geographic, and historical contexts. I find three main ways in which respondents established a sense of home in a city concomitantly known for its livability and unaffordability: the stepping–stone home (a future–oriented sense of home), the despatialized home (a present–oriented sense of home), and the extended home in time (a past–oriented perspective) and in place (a sense of home extended onto the natural environment). My study contributes toward comprehensive understandings of home with new empirical material showing how a taken–for–granted experience results from an interplay between structural, contextual, and individual factors.

Solving a Fuzzy Transportation Problem by Stepping Stone Method

Solving a Fuzzy Transportation Problem by Stepping Stone Method

A Step Too Far? Rethinking the Stepping Stone Approach to Officers’ Liability

In recent years, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has placed considerable emphasis on the stepping stone approach as a device to establish officers’ liability in respect of corporate contraventions of the law. The approach represents a novel interpretation of the general duties of officers under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (‘ CA’). Despite the seriousness of the consequences for an officer that may follow from a finding of liability, the content and boundaries of the approach remain undefined. Critically, the courts’ heightened receptiveness to the approach and the judicial expansion of its scope departs from earlier judicial statements of caution sounded against using the general statutory duties as a mechanism to secure corporate compliance with the law. At a more fundamental level, it is doubtful whether the approach represents a legitimate interpretation of the general statutory duties, to the extent that it subverts several existing routes to officers’ liability and remedies under the CA. It is incumbent on the legislature to correct these inconsistencies by recalibrating the role envisaged for officers under the CA in line with contemporary expectations.

Abstract #20: Neuroscience Curriculum Development based on Neuromodulation as a Stepping Stone Towards Modernizing K-12 Education and Outreach Efforts to Bring Public Awareness of Emerging Neuromodulation Technologies

Abstract #20: Neuroscience Curriculum Development based on Neuromodulation as a Stepping Stone Towards Modernizing K-12 Education and Outreach Efforts to Bring Public Awareness of Emerging Neuromodulation Technologies

A Method of Untethering by Skipping the Area of Positive Responses on Electrical Stimulation During Surgery of Lumbosacral Lipomatous Malformation: “Hopping on a Stepping Stone”

In complex lumbosacral lipomatous malformation or retethering, "crotch" dissection, an incision on the dura or lipoma at the site lateral to the lipoma-cord fusion line saving underlying roots, is often not easy. Attempts of this dissection in complex and obscured conditions may cause damage to the spinal cord or nerve roots. A method for caudal extension of untethering while positive areas on electrical stimulation were encountered during the crotch dissection of lumbosacral lipomatous malformation is described. After thinning out the negative-response area just caudal to the positive-response area, a small perforation is made at the negative-response area skipping the positive-response area with probing the dissection direction through the subarachnoid space by an inside-out fashion. Subsequently, the procedure is continued caudally from the perforation site. Safe caudal extension of untethering is possible using this method. Illustrative operative photographs are shown. By using this method, safe untethering can be achieved avoiding root injuries in complicated lipomas such as chaotic or retethering cases.

Does Solo Self-employment Serve as a 'Stepping Stone' to Employership?

This paper examines the extent to which solo self-employment serves as a vehicle for job creation. Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a dynamic multinomial logit model of transitions between labour market states is estimated. The empirical strategy closely follows that used in a previous study employing household data from Germany by Lechmann and Wunder (2017). Estimates of true cross-state dependence between solo self-employment and employership are obtained that are relatively small. Further, our results imply that the probability of a male remaining an employer just two years after transitioning out of solo self-employment is only 2% (and among women, it is virtually zero). The extent of both true cross-state dependence and true state dependence in employership is, however, much greater among individuals who have demonstrated a preference for self-employment in the past. This implies that pro-entrepreneurial policies that target more ‘entrepreneurial’ individuals will have more pronounced and long-term effects in stimulating job creation.

Does Solo Self-Employment Serve as a 'Stepping Stone' to Employership?

This paper examines the extent to which solo self-employment serves as a vehicle for job creation. Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a dynamic multinomial logit model of transitions between labour market states is estimated. The empirical strategy closely follows that used in a previous study employing household data from Germany by Lechmann and Wunder (2017). Estimates of true cross-state dependence between solo self-employment and employership are obtained that are relatively small. Further, our results imply that the probability of a male remaining an employer just two years after transitioning out of solo self-employment is only 2% (and among women, it is virtually zero). The extent of both true cross-state dependence and true state dependence in employership is, however, much greater among individuals who have demonstrated a preference for self-employment in the past. This implies that pro-entrepreneurial policies that target more 'entrepreneurial' individuals will have more pronounced and long-term effects in stimulating job creation.

Opinion piece: ensuring an effective higher engineering provision for STEM engaged applicants

ABSTRACTThis paper is positioned at the junction between the requirements of the manufacturing industry for a significantly increased number of professionally registered engineers in the UK employment pool and the excellent work which is ongoing in and around the education sector to encourage more young people to follow a career in this field. Higher Education (HE) is a natural stepping stone between these two stakeholder areas of the skills pipeline and has an opportunity to make a unique contribution to ensure an effective HE engineering provision for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) engaged applicants.

The Alpine Campaign of 1799 as a Stepping Stone to a Doctrine of Mountain Warfare

The Russian Imperial Army fought for the first time in the mountains in 1799, when Alexander Suvorov led his corps from Italy across the Swiss Alps to join the Russian forces at Zurich and expel the French Army from Switzerland. His soldiers were skilled professionals who had won an impressive series of battles in Italy against the French. Suvorov did not anticipate problems in the Alps, being convinced that he would easily sweep away the small French garrisons deployed on his way. Yet, because of inexperience in mountain warfare, Suvorov’s corps struggled against enormous strategic, tactical, and logistical chal- lenges, lost half of its manpower and failed to attain its goals. The Swiss trek shows that mountain warfare defies amateurism, dilettantism and spontaneity. Even though mountains are located on the verges of Rus- sia, the Russian and then Soviet armies ignored the peculiarities of mountain warfare and fought every new campaign in the mountains the same way they would fight on the plains, with predictably dire consequences.

Effectiveness of the Stepping Stones Triple P Group Parenting Program as an Additional Intervention in the Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Effects on Parenting Variables.

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often are faced with the challenges of difficult parenting situations. We explored the effectiveness of the Stepping Stones Triple P (SSTP) group parent training as an additional intervention in the treatment of ASD. Parents (n = 23) went through a waiting period and participated afterwards in the training program. We assessed parenting variables via self-report measures. After the intervention, there was a significant reduction of over-reactive parenting behaviors, role restriction and an increase in parental self-efficacy. At follow-up, the effects remained stable and we additionally found a reduction of laxness and less parenting stress. Effect sizes were high (η2: 0.18-0.24). The SSTP, offered as an additional intervention in the treatment of ASD, proved to be effective in enhancing parenting.

Water at the Centre of Poverty Reduction: Targeting Women as a Stepping Stone in the Nadowli District, Ghana

Poverty reduction has been a challenge in developing countries, pushing many development partners to devise strategies to tackle it. One of such strategies is the provision of water services. Although there has been much focus on water provision, the practice and benefits of integrating multiple-use water services in the design and implementation have been underexplored. This paper argues for the role of multiple-use water services in reducing rural poverty, especially among women. This is based on a case study that was conducted in two communities in the Upper West Region where multipleuse water services have been provided. Data was collected using focus groups discussion mainly with water user associations who are made up of women only, survey of 26 households, and physical observations of the water infrastructure and activities around the infrastructure. We found that access to water services saved time in water collection and contributed to increase household productive hours. Consequently, this resulted in increased output in their economic activities with positive ripple effects on other sectors of the rural economy, leading to poverty reduction as indicated by the participants. It is argued that investing in multiple-use water services is a major way of empowering women to actively engage in multiple streams of income and thus a great potential for achieving the sustainable development goals.Keywords: Multiple-use Water Services, Household Livelihood, Rural Women, Poverty, Ghana

Host functional connectivity and the spread potential of Lyme disease

In the ecology of Lyme disease emergence, it remains unclear to what extent spread of the tick vector (Ixodes scapularis) and the pathogen (Borrelia burgdorferi) are dependent upon the dispersal of vertebrate hosts in spatially heterogeneous landscapes. Yet, empirical measure of these complex ecologically driven spread processes present conceptual and methodological challenges despite important public health implications. To examine the relationship between landscape characteristics and tick-borne disease spread, we modeled the influence of landscape connectivity for a simplified vertebrate host community (white-footed mouse—Peromyscus leucopus, American robin—Turdus migratorius, white-tailed deer—Odocoileus virginianus) on the potential spread of the tick population compared to the pathogen in a spatially-structured landscape. We parameterized a hybrid demographic-dispersal connectivity model by combining a series of reported host dispersal and tick burden estimates with empirically-measured tick abundance and pathogen prevalence sampled from a Lyme-endemic island landscape in Thousand Islands National Park (Ontario, Canada) and simulated several tick- and pathogen-spread scenarios. The extent of tick spread by mice [amount of reachable habitat (ARH) = 18.0%] is considerably similar to that of robins (ARH = 18.7%), while deer support the greatest tick spread extent (ARH = 82.0%). Infected mice carrying ticks support the highest pathogen spread (ARH = 19.8%). Short-distance pathogen spread and long-distance tick spread were facilitated by intermediate stepping stone habitat fragments. We provide evidence that host functional connectivity mediates tick spread differently than pathogen spread, and depends strongly on landscape configuration. Our study therefore emphasizes the importance of landscape spatial heterogeneity on the ecological processes that influence regional tick-borne disease spread.

Gaming as a Stepping Stone to Understanding Complexity

Gaming as a Stepping Stone to Understanding Complexity

Older Adults’ Perspectives on Volunteering in an Activity-Based Social Program for People with Dementia

ABSTRACTThis qualitative study explored older adults’ perspectives on volunteering in an activity-based social program for community-dwelling people with dementia (PwD), called Stepping Stones. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight older adults who had volunteered in the Stepping Stones program. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to support in-depth exploration of interviews. Six main themes emerged, including (1) Meaning of volunteering in the program; (2) Benefits of volunteering in the program on themselves; (3) Enjoyment involving satisfaction and social relationships; (4) We are a team; (5) Emotional closeness and relationship; and (6) Volunteers’ other dementia-related experiences and volunteering experiences. The present study found that volunteering in the Stepping Stones program met older volunteers’ desires of helping PwD and in learning about dementia. This desire might be stronger in older adults who were the relatives or friends of PwD. Volunteering in an activity-based social program for community-dwelling PwD also may provide older adults with opportunities to have meaningful social relationships with others while feeling enjoyment and a sense of satisfaction, and may also help older adults have a more positive outlook on and more tolerance for themselves and others when they or their spouses experience memory changes in their daily lives.

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee

A regression approach to estimate the relative roles of pollen- versus seed-mediated gene flow under an isolation by distance model

Abstract In the present work, a new estimator to be known as rIBD is pro­posed. The proposed estimator indirectly quantifies the relati­ve role of gene flow mediated by pollen in relation to the gene flow mediated by seeds in hermaphrodite angiosperm species when an isolation by distance model is assumed. The proposed estimator complements the well-known estimator proposed by Ennos, which is appropriate for studies under the island model. In the present work, the proposed rIBD index was used to analyze microsatellite data from uni- and biparentally inherited genomes generated by simulations, as well as for the analysis of an empirical data set obtained from public databases of forest tree species. The differences in median values of the pro­posed rIBD index for simulated data using the Stepping Stone Model and Truncated Pareto Distribution Model coincided with the magnitude expected in terms of differences between levels of pollen and seed dispersion previously established in the simulations. In empirical data, the proposed rIBD index shows lower levels of gene flow by seed versus gene flow by pollen, the ratio between them being three times lower than the ratio obtained by the Ennos index estimated under the island model. From the analyses carried out, it is feasible to consider the rIBD index as a suitable estimator of the role of gene flow by seeds in relation to gene flow by pollen under iso­lation by distance.