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As a form of social movement aiming to effect social change, protests could bring about unintended impacts on all walks of life. In other words, the cost of protests can be incurred by those who might not be protesters. The protests triggered by an extradition bill in Hong Kong since 2019 are no exception. This paper focuses on the impacts on the ridership of the metro system on protest days. It synthesizes and hypothesizes factors influencing the distribution of the ridership changes and conducts an empirical study in the context of Hong Kong to study the possible influences and spatial dependence. It is found that, across metro stations, political orientation (percentage of votes to pro-democracy camp in the 2019 Election of District Councils), law enforcement (permission from the police to protest), land use type (especially for commercial and open space), population age and income, as well as transit/road network characteristics and intermodal connectivity, significantly influence the ridership of metro stations during protest days. In addition, the mixed regressive spatial autoregressive model has higher explanatory power than the ordinary least square model, suggesting the need for a spatial lag and error specification. The results could also have significant implications for policy and planning for operating metro services and managing metro stations before, during, and after social shocks.

Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy provides multifaceted capabilities for observing low-energy responses of macromolecules, cells and tissues, understanding THz biophysical effects, and expecting to realize the application of THz technology in biomedicine. However, its high-frequency characteristics of limited penetration depth and strong absorption of water in the body comparable to microwaves are impeding the proliferation of THz spectroscopy. Here we show that THz spectroscopy makes possible the observation of THz anisotropy phenomena for the first time in fascia and lean tissue. Through optical microscopy, we infer that the microscopic mechanism of THz anisotropy comes from the periodic stripe structure of the biological tissue. The above related experimental findings may be expected to promote the application of THz technology in biomedicine.

Interpersonal modality, bifurcating modalization and modulation, is an important construct of interpersonal meaning in the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics. By meticulously reviewing relevant studies from the perspectives of traditional modality and modality’s semantic map, three respects with respect to the system of interpersonal modality have been supplemented. Firstly, modalization, being subcategorized into possibility and usuality, is suggested to entertain evidentiality from the traditional sense. Secondly, considering the delicacy of the system of interpersonal modality, possibility in modalization should be further categorized into epistemic and root possibility; necessity as one subtype of modulation, superseding the original obligation in modulation, is subclassified into obligation and permission; inclination, being the other subtype of modulation, should be specified as the superordinate of volition and ability. Thirdly, the shifting of modal meanings from root possibility to epistemic possibility in modalization and from inclination to necessity in modulation should be clearly specified as far as language evolvement is concerned.

In this article, we address the public transportation system’s resilience in social movements, which has been under-explored in transportation scholarship. On the one hand, public transportation enables mass mobilization of people and materials and large-scale public engagement in political/social events in transit-reliant cities like Hong Kong. On the other hand, public transportation can be an instrument for both the government and event participants—the former interferes with the public transportation service provision to manage and mitigate the adverse impacts of social movements it perceives on society, whereas the latter disrupt public transportation services or vandalize and damage related facilities to express their discontent and to put pressure on the former. The dynamic resilience of the public transportation system against the above backdrop warrants more in-depth exploration. We incorporate both supply and demand shocks to theorize resilience as a public transportation system’s capability to return to a new equilibrium between the supply and demand after a disturbance. The theoretical approach is illustrated using empirical data and publicly available materials concerning the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement in Hong Kong.

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, meanings in semantic stratum could be realized by congruent/premetaphorical, metaphorical, or demetaphorical/post-metaphorical expressions in lexico-grammatical stratum. This paper, evidenced from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), explores the specific pathway from metaphorical expressions to post-metaphorical ones guided by principles of Context-first and AS IF and the principle of double functionality. The findings show that grammatical postmetaphorization is mainly realized by post-metaphor of ideation and that of modality. The former finds its expressions from common nouns to proper nouns (e.g. from securityto Security), or from uncountable nouns to countable nouns (e.g. from securityto securities), and the latter is evidenced by expressions shifting from explicit objective orientation to its explicit subjective counterpart (e.g. from it is possible thatto it might be possible that), or by modal probability of I thinktype shifting from clausal initial position to clausal medial or final position (e.g. I thinkin the medial or final position of the clause).

Cross-cultural design requires designers to understand other foreign cultures, selecting suitable cultural elements, and finally incorporate them into product design. Traditionally, this process is time-consuming and relies to a significant extent on designers’ cultural awareness and design skills. This article proposes a new tool for designers to select and integrate cultural elements in the cross-cultural design process. The proposed approach utilizes state-of-the-art deep learning techniques, which begins by automatically selecting the most suitable style image from all cultural image candidates. Then, the deep-learning-based style transfer technique is introduced to automatically produce a design image that has the same content as the uploaded design content image, and also has the cultural style of the selected style image. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that extends deep learning techniques to facilitate cross-cultural design. The tool received positive feedback in a usability evaluation. The empirical results show that our approach can effectively increase designers’ cultural awareness in respect of four cultural element dimensions (color, material, pattern and form). It is an innovative and efficient tool to help designers with idea generation and fast prototyping, although some participants argued that the tool would only assist designers, rather than replace humans.

Vibrancy is one of the most desirable outcomes of transit-oriented development (TOD). The vibrancy of a metro station area (MSA) depends partially on the MSA’s built-environment features. Predicting an MSA’s vibrancy with its built-environment features is of great interest to decision makers as these features are often modifiable by public interventions. However, little has been done on MSAs’ vibrancy in existing studies. On the one hand, seldom has the vibrancy of MSAs been explicitly explored, and measuring the vibrancy is essential. On the other hand, because MSAs are interconnected, one MSA’s vibrancy depends on the MSA’s features and those of relevant MSAs. Hence, selecting a suitable metric that quantifies spatial relationships between MSAs can better predict MSAs’ vibrancy. In this study, we identify four single-dimensional vibrancy proxies and fuse them into an integrated index. Moreover, we design a two-layer graph convolutional neural network model that accounts for both the built-environment features of MSAs and spatial relationships between MSAs. We employ the model in an empirical study in Shenzhen, China, and illustrate (1) how different metrics of spatial relationships influence the prediction of MSAs’ vibrancy; (2) how the predictability varies across single-dimensional and integrated proxies of MSAs’ vibrancy; and (3) how the findings of this study can be used to enlighten decision makers. This study enriches our understandings of spatial relationships between MSAs. Moreover, it can help decision makers with targeted policies for developing MSAs towards TOD.

With the development of digital technology and the popularity of human-centered concepts in museum exhibition design, the user experience of VR (virtual reality)-based museum exhibition (VRME) is gradually being emphasized. There are still many problems that need to be solved in the integration of technology and interaction in today’s VRME design. However, the existing museum exhibition design framework does not combine the characteristics of virtual reality technology to solve the problems unique to VRME in a targeted manner. Based on the traditional user experience framework, this paper summarizes the three levels of user experience (LoUX) in a museum exhibition and proposes the unique “creation level” experience of VRME, which constitutes the closed-loop of the VRME experience. Then, this paper analyzes the relevant researches in recent years through a literature review and summarizes the trends of technology application and the different interaction problems arising from each LoUX. Based on the results of literature analysis, this paper proposes a “rose model” of VRME. This model summarizes the relationship between exhibition technology, sensory types, LoUX, and human-exhibition interaction factors, which has certain guiding significance for VRME design. Finally, this paper discusses the results of the literature review and the interaction design insights brought by the model.

Excess commuting, which concerns the differences between the actual commute and the optimal (minimum) commute afforded by a given distribution of jobs and housing, i.e., urban form, has been extensively studied across disciplines. In the existing excess commuting framework, the optimal commute considers commuting efficiency but overlooks commuting equity, which is defined as the variation in commuting cost across workers before and after the optimisation. The framework also overlooks the variation in commuting frequency across workers for a period of interest, which also affects the overall commuting cost for the period. In this paper, we propose a novel excess commuting framework using a Greedy-Initialisation-based Genetic Algorithm, where the optimal commute accounts for commuting efficiency and equity and commuting-frequency variation simultaneously. We illustrate and calibrate the framework using one-month metro smart card data in Shanghai. Comparing with two other existing models, the Greedy-Initialisation-based Genetic Algorithm can generate a commuting pattern that balances commuting efficiency and commuting equity, which the existing commuting framework and corresponding algorithms cannot.

•Migrants in Xiamen travel less and rely more on active/public transport than locals.•For locals, most sociodemographic and built-environment variables are significant determinants.•Population density, diversity, and shorter distance to commercial centers are positively related to sustainable travel modes of locals.•Trip frequency of migrants is more affected by sociodemographic variables than built environment variables.

The excess commuting framework has advanced a series of metrics through which a city or a region’s jobs-housing balance and commuting efficiency can be measured. This study seeks to add to the conceptual development and extension of the excess commuting framework. Specifically, it considers the carrying capacity (of links) and related congestion issues in the excess commuting framework and demonstrates that overlooking these characteristics has important implications for excess commuting metrics. Drawing on an empirical case study, it shows that when carrying capacity and traffic congestion are accounted for, the observed commute is longer than otherwise. Excess commuting tends to be higher than its counterparts in previous excess commuting studies. The findings suggest that future excess commuting studies should take account of carrying capacity and congestion in determining excess commuting metrics. Moreover, high-quality connections (preferably via public transport) between jobs and housing allied with sufficient carrying capacity of popular links/routes for commuters are crucial preconditions for cities and regions to harvest the full benefits of jobs-housing balance policies targeted at the reduction of the average commute distance and vehicle miles travelled.

Job accessibility measures the ease of accessing potential job opportunities from a given locale, such as a traffic analysis zone (TAZ). In principle, improved job accessibility of a locale should lead to better employment outcomes for job seekers residing there. However, the extent to which residents of a locale can secure jobs within its isochrone by a specific mode of travel has rarely been investigated in the existing scholarship. In this article, we define “accessible jobs” as all the jobs within an isochrone of a locale by a specific travel mode, and “secured jobs” as the subset of these accessible jobs that are actually obtained by residents of the locale. Using a high-resolution location-based service data set, we calculate the secured jobs and accessible jobs of different TAZs by the 15-, 30-, and 45-min isochrones by transit or automobile in Shanghai, China. We investigate (a) the spatial patterns of the secured jobs and accessible jobs, and (b) besides the accessible jobs, what can predict the secured jobs, controlling for travel time and mode of travel. We find that the secured jobs vary across the TAZs, mode of travel, and isochrones but are often spatially autocorrelated at the TAZ level. The accessible jobs are always positively related to the secured jobs, regardless of mode of travel and travel time. This relationship is more salient for those workers by transit. The secured jobs could be predicted by a few TAZ- and isochrone-level indicators concerning land use, transport, and socioeconomic attributes. Our findings indicate that (a) accessible jobs should be considered in tandem with secured jobs, controlling for isochrones by mode of travel and travel time, and (b) both transport-land use and socioeconomic attributes at the TAZ and isochrone levels should be accounted for when planning for secured jobs and accessible jobs.

Using multiday continuous smartcard data in 2020, we investigate group-based travel in Hong Kong metro system by identifying metro riders intentionally traveling in groups (ITGs). ITGs serve as our proxies for citywide physical social interactions. Considering ITG members are interrelated through group-based trips, we construct a social network (an ITG network) formed by ITGs to explore the network properties and structures of ITG activities. Examining ITGs both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we measure the spatial patterns of ITGs and their dynamics across locales and over time. We find that the degree of the ITG network follows a heavy-tailed distribution. The network size and interconnections vary across time. Some ITG members are more influential vertices than others in maintaining the networks’ topological properties. We illustrate how new data and methods can be used to explore in-person interactions and social activity patterns in transit-reliant cities.

ABSTRACTDevelopment zones in China are planned as self-contained communities in order to achieve a locally balanced distribution of jobs and homes. Yet the plans are often defied by the market, leading to jobs-housing imbalance as an undesired consequence. In this paper, we examine the case of Suzhou Industry Park (SIP) to explore what has actually happened within a Chinese development zone. Our study reveals the de facto qualitative jobs-housing imbalance within SIP notwithstanding the de jurequantitative balance as envisaged in the local land-use plan. This finding explains why most workers within SIP have to search for homes far away from their workplaces. The qualitative imbalance is attributable to a series of interrelated factors, including (a) the oversupply of industrial land vis-à-vis the undersupply of land for public facilities and residential amenities, (b) the unaffordable house price for local workers, and (c) the increased use of automobiles by commuters. On top of its policy implications, this paper also reflects on the fundamental relationship between planning and market as a broader intellectual perspective to study urban China’s mobility, housing and social issues.

This area-based study explores the relationship between automobile-involved pedestrian crash frequency versus risk and various built environment factors such as road network and land use. The methodology involves the use of Bayesian hierarchical intrinsic conditional autoregressive model, which accounts for unobserved heterogeneities and spatial autocorrelations. The city of Seattle is selected for this empirical study, and the geospatial unit of analysis is traffic analysis zone. The primary data were obtained from collision profiles available at the Seattle Department of Transportation. The major findings of this study include: (1) the densities of 4-way intersections and more than 5-way intersections and land use mixture are positively correlated with the pedestrian crash frequency and risk; (2) sidewalk density and the proportion of steep areas are negatively associated with the pedestrian crash frequency and risk; (3) areas with a higher bus stop density are likely to have more pedestrian crashes; (4) areas with a greater proportion of industrial land use have lower pedestrian crash frequency; (5) areas with an averagely higher posted speed limit has higher pedestrian crash risk; (6) areas with a higher employment density has lower pedestrian crash risk; (7) the mode share of walking and the total number of trips are positively correlated with the pedestrian crash frequency, and the total number of trips is negatively correlated with the pedestrian crash risk. These findings provide support for planning policy-making and road safety programs. Local authorities should improve walkability by providing more sidewalks and separate travel lanes for motorized traffic and pedestrians in areas with different land use purposes. Compact development should be encouraged to support building a safe walking environment.

Investment casting based on stereolithography (SL) has the characteristics of short production cycle and low cost, which is especially suitable for fabricating complex aeronautical parts without metal dies. But there are some problems during the fabrication process, such as low surface accuracy caused by the staircases of resin prototype, shell cracking caused by higher thermal stress during the sintering process and so on. Taking an engine turbine stator as a fabrication example, the surface accuracy of resin prototype under the effect of coating method was investigated using the laser confocal microscopy; what’s more, both theoretical analysis and finite element analysis (FEA) were combined and compared to reveal the thermal stress field of ceramic shell during pyrolyzing and sintering process under different situation. It was founded that the surface staircases of the resin prototype was eliminated and the surface quality was improved after coating process, the thermal stress was decreased and shell cracking was avoided by sintering the ceramic shell with the inner hollow resin prototype under the heating rate of 5°C/min. The result showed that, the metal turbine stator had high dimensional accuracy of CT4-CT6 and had a good surface finish within Ra3.2.

Jobs-housing studies have rarely used smart card data provided by public transportation agencies or focused on bus commuters. In this study, massive smart card data were used to estimate 216,844 bus commuters’ workplace and residence locations in Beijing. These data enabled a jobs-housing study of bus commuters in the metropolis with a much larger sample size than in most other studies. The study found that Beijing's bus commuters had a shorter actual required commute (ARC) and a shorter minimum required commute (MRC) than commuters in four other auto-dependent Western cities with comparable population and land use size. The study also indicated that Beijing's bus commuters had a longer ARC and a longer MRC than commuters of all modes in Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China half the size of Beijing. Consultations with local experts, field surveys, and information provided by online housing search engines were used to supplement the smart card data. The study established five land use prototypes of jobs-housing imbalance and proposed countermeasures to address the imbalance.

This paper reviews the research, policy proposals and recommendations, implemented policies, and programs on sustainable transportation since 2000, with regional focus on the US, using the UK (related to the European Union if appropriate), and Canada as references. The paper finds that the concept of sustainable transportation has been given increased attention in all places. There are significant variances between the research, policy proposal, and implementation. Efforts made towards sustainable transportation, and the focus of the efforts at entities within and outside the US also vary notably. As a whole, the US did more research on sustainable transportation than the reference countries and it even undertook several studies of sustainable transportation practices in West Europe. The US federal government is less aggressive than its foreign counterparts in marketing and implementing sustainable transportation. This is evidenced by a lack of overarching federal policy (mandate) on and a universal working definition for sustainable transportation, and absence of a gateway and dedicated website to market and disseminate the idea of sustainable development in general and sustainable transportation in particular.

This study reports on a social experiment conducted in summer 2008 to convert solo drivers to transit. During a 3-month period, which was a time of rising gas prices, drivers were offered a no-cost bus pass if they turned in their commuter parking permits. At the end of 3 months, participants could either regain their parking permits or purchase regular bus passes, which were subsidized at 50%. Of the 381 enrolled in the experiment, 70% continued to use transit (or alternative transportation) after the trial. Only 114 (30%) returned to parking, even as gasoline prices started to moderate. The experiment built on the experience of social marketing programs and other campaigns that have explicitly tried to change habitual driving habits. Typically, these studies track changes in participants' attitudes and behaviors. Researchers measured the attitudes and behaviors of participants, as well as changes in those who sought information but did not sign up and those who did sign up but later retreated to solo driving. Heuristically, these groups were labeled seekers, keepers, and retreaters. The three groups were compared and contrasted to identify factors that facilitate or reduce the likelihood of choosing to commute by public transit. Further applications of the social experiment are warranted because it effectively recruited new transit riders and it also provided insights about the process of changing travel modes.

Abstract: The downslope movement of detached rock blocks along steep slopes is an important process endangering the safety of infrastructure along the foot of a slope and on the valley bottom, but only limited knowledge is available on the influence of various factors on the velocity and distance of movement of such blocks. We discuss the influence of the mass and shape of the rock blocks, the steepness of the slope, and the thickness of the overburden on the slope, on the distance of movement of rock blocks which was observed in 256 field experiments with differently shaped blocks from 3 different positions on the slope with a height of 176 m. The statistical evaluation of the results of the field tests shows that the slope condition of gradient and overburden is the main factor, the form of rock masses is the second factor, and the mass is the third of the influencing factors. It is the maximum average acceleration for movement of rock masses when the mass of rock masses is 15≤m<27 kg, the form of rock masses is flake, the condition of gradient is on average 59.6° and the overburden is basic exposed bedrock and a small quantity of gravel-soil in the experiment condition. It is the minimum average acceleration for movement of rock masses when the mass of rock masses is 9.5≤m<15 kg, the form of rock masses is rectangular, the condition of gradient is on average 39° and the overburden is gravel-soil and cinder. Then, the foundation for impact energy is provided and the new feasible methods to prevent potential unstable rock masses are put forward.

This paper reports the results of a nationwide survey on transportation planning topics taught at U.S. universities. The survey gathered a comprehensive inventory of courses, documented variations in curricula, and determined the variations among those curricula in how they emphasized different transportation topics. This paper also includes a literature review to trace the evolution of transportation classes and education over time. Along with the survey on course content, the manuscript presents an analysis of the spatial distribution of transportation courses and in particular of transportation planning courses. The study finds that educational opportunities in transportation planning are widely distributed across the nation and that students are able to take advantage of the opportunities. However, some planning programs stand out for offering a wider variety of relevant topics, and those programs are concentrated on the coasts. Relatively little is known about the affect of geography on the allocation of resources in transportation education. Transportation educators have multiple opportunities for exploring new topics and methods, such as by including globalization and comparative study, promoting transportation planning knowledge across different educational levels, and continuing to monitor and evaluate higher education and training programs.

This paper reports the results of a nationwide survey on transportation planning topics taught at U.S. universities. The survey gathered a comprehensive inventory of courses, documented variations in curricula, and determined the variations among those curricula in how they emphasized different transportation topics. This paper also includes a literature review to trace the evolution of transportation classes and education over time. Along with the survey on course content, the manuscript presents an analysis of the spatial distribution of transportation courses and in particular of transportation planning courses. The study finds that educational opportunities in transportation planning are widely distributed across the nation and that students are able to take advantage of the opportunities. However, some planning programs stand out for offering a wider variety of relevant topics, and those programs are concentrated on the coasts. Relatively little is known about the affect of geography on the allocation of resources in transportation education. Transportation educators have multiple opportunities for exploring new topics and methods, such as by including globalization and comparative study, promoting transportation planning knowledge across different educational levels, and continuing to monitor and evaluate higher education and training programs.

This paper reports on a nationwide survey that was conducted from November 2004 through April 2005. The survey is part of a project titled the National Transportation Planning Course Syllabus and Associated Case Studies, funded by the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship program at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The primary objective of the survey was to determine what topics are currently being covered and their level of emphasis. The secondary objective was to identify topics for which educators would use case studies and references provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Instructors of transportation planning courses from 47 universities were chosen for the survey, and they returned 32 completed survey instruments. On the basis of the survey efforts, it was found that, first, the survey and the project that it serves can be useful in improving transportation planning instruction at U.S. universities; second, the survey and the project were welcomed by most universities and educators surveyed; third, the survey results can potentially be used for multiple purposes; fourth, not having a list of the institutions offering a transportation planning course(s) posed challenges for sample selection for the survey and validation of the survey results; and fifth, it is difficult to design a survey instrument for a discipline such as transportation planning, which is dynamic and ever changing.