Community Perspectives Toward a Marine Reserve: A Case Study of San Felipe,Yucatán,México

San Felipe marine reserve, in Yucatán, México, is unique, and particularly suited for a case study because the local community created it without a mandate from higher levels of government. This article presents the results of a survey of local interest groups using the method of paired comparisons and rank correlation analysis, to reveal local judgments about the severity of damages to coastal habitats and the level of impacts of activities that cause the damages. The results show that fishers differ significantly from other interest groups in their rankings of the severity of damages to habitats and of impacting activities. These findings suggest that despite the overlapping interests in protecting the resources and the critical habitats, the different perspectives of local interest groups about the severity of damages must be considered in the management of San Felipe marine reserve.     

Collection, spillback, and dissipation in pedestrian evacuation: A network-based method

We present a method of predicting pedestrian route choice behavior and physical congestion during the evacuation of indoor areas with internal obstacles. Under the proposed method, a network is first constructed by discretizing the space into regular hexagonal cells and giving these cells potentials before a modified cell transmission model is employed to predict the evolution of pedestrian flow in the network over time and space. Several properties of this cell transmission model are explored. The method can be used to predict the evolution of pedestrian flow over time and space in indoor areas with internal obstacles and to investigate the collection, spillback, and dissipation behavior of pedestrians passing through a bottleneck. The cell transmission model is further extended to imitate the movements of multiple flows of pedestrians with different destinations. An algorithm based on generalized cell potential is also developed to assign the pedestrian flow.     

Rapid first-stage tests of on-ship infection

Protection against on-ship infectious disease—whether due to mishap or to harmful purpose—faces special situational problems. Sometimes, when infection levels on board have reached threshold levels, emergency actions are required. Often, the most thorough strategies for responding to threat are not feasible. A rapid first-stage test (RFT) is a fast, minimally invasive procedure used to rule out from possible infection a large percentage of an infection-threatened group. Prevention and control of on-ship infection need to combine various interconnected tactics. When timely criterion tests are not possible, the medical team must adopt fast alternative measures. The methods used to summarize protection against on-ship infectious agents included a scientific literature review and a web search. The fields of the review were maritime, health, and technology sources. Special attention was paid to material dealing with risks and threats of on-ship penetration by infectious agents, on-ship infection prevalence thresholds, and rapid diagnostic screens. The Bayes rule and the law of large numbers were applied to the analysis, for large on-ship populations, of RFT indications of crossing of an infection prevalence threshold. The increasing risk of serious on-ship infection—either accidental or purposeful—calls for a multi-layered protection approach. RFTs are a key part of the outer layer of such a defense. Well-designed and well-administered RFTs provide several advantages for defense against on-ship infection: low-cost, non-invasive, fast, and focuses on a drastically smaller number of infection possibilities.     

Haptic steering support for driving near the vehicle’s handling limits; skid-pad case

Current vehicle dynamic control systems from simple yaw control to high-end active steering support systems are designed to primarily actuate on the vehicle itself, rather than stimulate the driver to adapt his/her inputs for better vehicle control. The driver though dictates the vehicle’s motion, and centralizing him/her in the control loop is hypothesized to promote safety and driving pleasure. Exploring the above statement, the goal of this study is to develop and evaluate a haptic steering support when driving near the vehicle’s handling limits (Haptic Support Near the Limits; HSNL). The support aims to promote the driver’s perception of the vehicle’s behaviour and handling capacity (the vehicle’s internal model) by providing haptic (torque) cues on the steering wheel. The HSNL has been evaluated in (a) driving simulator tests and (b) tests with a vehicle (Opel Astra G/B) equipped with a variable steering feedback torque system. Drivers attempted to achieve maximum velocity while trying to retain control in a circular skid-pad. In the simulator (a) 25 subjects drove a vehicle model parameterised as the Astra on a dry skid-pad while in (b) 17 subjects drove the real Astra on a wet skid-pad. Both the driving simulator and the real vehicle tests led to the conclusion that the HSNL assisted subjects to drive closer to the designated path while achieving effectively the same speed. With the HSNL the drivers operated the tires in smaller slip angles and hence avoided saturation of the front wheels’ lateral forces and excessive understeer. Finally, the HSNL reduced their mental and physical demand.     

The Evaluation of the 2nd Ocean Plan in Korea: Focused on the Implementing Power of the Plan

There seem to be two types of ocean planning system in the world. First, the federal or united government suggests a basic framework of the plan which is followed by states, countries or areas as shown in the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia, and so on. Second, a powerful central government prepares a basic ocean plan that guides the following sector plans of the relevant ministries. These cases are shown in Japan, Korea, and China. In Korea, the 2nd Ocean and Fishery Development Plan (OK21, 2011–2020) was made as a comprehensive ocean plan reflecting recent natural and social changes including global warming. The OK21 is declarative in its nature, and so evaluated by its sector plans, which have some specific implementing means such as budgets and manpower, organization, and so on, by the relevant laws. The 2nd OK21 is supported by 21 legally binding sector plans, 14 more than in the 1st plan, thus guaranteeing more effective implementation than in the 1st plan. In addition, most of sector plans are planned to be carried out through the well-coordinated system among the related ministries, thus showing a high degree of implementing efficiency of the plan. Every marine area in the plan, including marine environment, is being supported by more sector plans than before, indicating the equitable development of marine areas in the future. In sum, the 2nd OK21 is expected to show more implementing power due to the well-organized sector plans than in the 1st plan.     

National road mortality reduction targets under European Union road safety policy: 2011–2020

The European Union (EU) has proposed renewing the target for halving the number of road fatalities in the period 2011–2020. In this paper, a nonlinear distribution method for dynamic fatality reduction targets is applied for the purpose of finding individual national mortality reduction targets for each of the 27 member countries in the EU. Weighting is undertaken for four scenarios based on the following indicators: road mortality rates, fatality rates, fatality risks, and fatality density. Results are presented for four proposals to reduce the number of fatalities in each Member State, based on the original situation of the indicators considered in the study. The results seek to provide policy-makers with a broader vision with regard to the achievement of the goals of EU road safety policy.     

Certificateless message recovery signatures providing girault’s level-3 security

A digital signature with message recovery is a signature that the message itself (or partial of the message) is not required to be transmitted together with the signature. It has the advantage of small data size of communication comparing with the traditional digital signatures. In this paper, combining both advantages of the message recovery signatures and the certificateless cryptography, we propose the first certificatelss signature scheme with message recovery. The remarkable feature of our scheme is that it can achieve Girault’s Level-3 security while the conventional certificateless signature scheme only achieves Level-2 security. The security of the scheme is rigorously proved in the random oracle model based on the hardness of the k bilinear Diffie-Hellman inverse (k-BDHI) problem.     

On the degradation of performance for traffic networks with oblivious users

We consider the problem of characterizing user equilibria and optimal solutions for routing in a given network. We extend the known models by considering users oblivious to congestion in the following sense: While in the typical user equilibrium setting the users follow a strategy that minimizes their individual cost by taking into account the (dynamic) congestion due to the current routing pattern, an oblivious user ignores congestion altogether; instead, he or she decides his routing on the basis of cheapest routes on a network without any flow whatsoever. These cheapest routes can be, for example, the shortest paths in the network without any flow. This model tries to capture the fact that a certain percentage of travelers base their route simply on the distances they observe on a map, without thinking (or knowing, or caring) about the delays experienced on this route due to their fellow travelers. In this work we study the effect of such users using as the measure of network performance its price of anarchy, i.e., the ratio of the total latency experienced by the users (oblivious or not) at equilibrium over the social optimum.     

Characteristics of premium transit services that affect mode choice

This research seeks to improve the understanding of the full range of determinants for mode choice behavior and to offer practical solutions to practitioners on representing and distinguishing these characteristics in travel demand forecasting models. The principal findings were that the representation of awareness of transit services is significantly different than the underlying assumption of mode choice and forecasting models that there is perfect awareness and consideration of all modes. Furthermore, inclusion of non-traditional transit attributes and attitudes can improve mode choice models and reduce bias constants. Additional methods and analyses are necessary to bring these results into practice. The work is being conducted in two phases. This paper documents the results of Phase I, which included data collection for one case study city (Salt Lake City), research and analysis of non-traditional transit attributes in mode choice models, awareness of transit services, and recommendations for bringing these analyses into practice. Phase II will include data collection for two additional case study cities (Chicago and Charlotte) with minor modifications based on limitations identified in Phase I, additional analyses where Phase I results indicated a need, and a demonstration of the research in practice for at least one case study city.