Search Results (4,044)

This paper introduces a detailed approach to boosting the functioning and finances of public transport in Greater Cairo. The research depends on multicriteria analysis, econometric forecasting, mathematical optimization, and comparison with other countries to judge how efficiently standard buses, minibuses, and special services make money, reduce costs, and fill seats. When ARIMA was boosted with Fourier terms, it forecasted revenue trends with an error of less than 5%. Both Monte Carlo simulations and Sobol sensitivity indices pointed out that changes in fuel prices had the highest impact on uncertainty. It was shown through optimization that a slight fare raise and adjustment in a few trips could increase net revenue by 6.2% while still respecting capacity and equity. The results encourage changing prices for special services, maintenance improvement based on forecasts, development of updated passenger information services, and better coordination between different types of transport. The research proposes a roadmap that can be applied to cities lacking data but with intense travel needs and boosts global focus on urban sustainability in developing countries. Full article

As large common areas, cruise ship atriums affect passenger comfort and HVAC efficiency. Due to their complexity and high occupancy, maintaining a suitable thermal environment is difficult. Experimental measurements, thermal load analysis, and CFD simulation are used to assess and improve the atrium’s summer thermal climate. Experimental data supported the use of the RNG $k$-$\epsilon$ turbulence model to forecast airflow and temperature. To meet the cooling demand of 28,784 W, a supply air volume of 10,742 m³/h was required. Various air-supply methods were evaluated for temperature distribution, airflow velocity, PMV, and air age. Larger diffusers and better air dispersion increased temperature homogeneity, air age, and comfort. Redistributing airflow to corridors reduced localized overheating but raised core temperatures, whereas adding diffusers without boosting supply volume caused interference. The configuration with larger diffuser areas and equilibrated airflow maintained a temperature of 21–23 $°\mathrm{C}$, a PMV of −0.1 to 0.1, an air velocity of 0–0.3 $\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$, and an average air age of 350 s. The findings provide theoretical and engineering guidance for energy-efficient HVAC systems in cruise ship atriums and other large public spaces. Full article

Uneven distribution of passenger flows across metro entrances/exits is prevalent. Previous studies primarily examined built-environment factors influencing established exit-level flow disparities from an objective perspective. This study, however, incorporates passengers’ subjective preferences to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the environment–behavior mechanisms shaping entrance/exit choice. A visual stated preference method was employed to construct choice scenarios with 12 environmental attributes grouped into two complementary dimensions of path accessibility and environmental quality. Multinomial logit models were then applied to estimate passengers’ entrance/exit choice preferences, and the results informed a two-dimensional exit-level evaluation framework, demonstrated through a case study of Xujiahui Station in Shanghai. Compared with empirical studies, this study employs a discrete choice experiment, which circumvents the modeling challenges posed by the limited number of entrances/exits at individual stations and systematically integrates a range of station-internal and urban environmental attributes into a unified utility-based framework to evaluate their contributions. The results reveal the relative importance of various environmental attributes, together with their varying levels, in shaping passengers’ entrance/exit choices and indicate that path accessibility exerts a stronger influence on decision-making than environmental quality. The proposed exit-level evaluation framework also serves as a practical tool for assessing resource allocation status at individual station areas, providing a foundation for policy formulation to support more human-centered, equitable, and fine-grained station-area governance. Full article

Fatal pediatric vehicular heatstroke occurs when a driver accidentally leaves a child in a vehicle, leading to death by overheating. Most such accidents are caused by simple cognitive errors. One aspect of these events, described anecdotally, is false memories: the driver has a conscious recollection of removing the child, despite knowing that, tragically, it did not happen. We systematically examined media reports of all cases in the USA over a five-year period, involving 164 separate incidents in which 166 children died. Although for many incidents insufficient information was available, with rigorous criteria, we identified cases that likely involved false memories. Tentatively, we suggest that these appear to be more common when a male child dies, and when more than one child dies, hinting that the severity of psychological trauma is a factor in their emergence. Possible explanations for these false memories are explored, with script/schema theory emerging as a reasonable explanation. This suggests that drivers fill in gaps in their memory for the journey, based on routine journey schemata. An example would be a memory gap filled with a default value of dropping the child at daycare, when in fact, they know they did not. In turn, this schema approach provides a framework for better understanding the reason that drivers sometimes experience cognitive slips, with fatal consequences for child passengers. Full article

This study develops an integrated bi-level operations–assignment model to optimise express service on the Gyeongin Line, a core corridor connecting Seoul and Incheon. The upper level jointly selects express stops and time-of-day headways under coverage constraints—a minimum share of key stations and a maximum inter-stop spacing—while the lower level assigns passengers under user equilibrium using a generalised time function that incorporates in-vehicle time, 0.5× headway wait, walking and transfers, and crowding-sensitive dwell times. Undergrounding and alignment straightening are incorporated into segment run-time functions, enabling the co-design of infrastructure and operations. Using automatic-fare-collection-calibrated origin–destination matrices, seat-occupancy records, and station-area population grids, we evaluate five rail scenarios and one intermodal extension. The results indicate substantial system-wide gains: peak average door-to-door times fall by approximately 44–46% in the AM (07:00–09:00) and 30–38% in the PM (17:30–19:30) for rail-only options, and by up to 55% with the intermodal extension. Kernel density estimation (KDE) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) analyses show a leftward shift and tail compression (median −8.7 min; 90th percentile (P90) −11.2 min; ≤45 min share: 0.0% → 47.2%; ≤60 min: 59.7% → 87.9%). The 45-min isochrone expands by ≈12% (an additional 0.21 million residents), while the 60-min reach newly covers Incheon Jung-gu and Songdo. Backcasting against observed express/local ratios yields deviations near the ±10% band (PM one comparator within and one slightly above), and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) statistic and Mann–Whitney (MW) test results confirm significant post-implementation shifts. The most cost-effective near-term package combines mixed stopping with modest alignment and capacity upgrades and time-differentiated headways; the intermodal express–transfer scheme offers a feasible long-term upper bound. The methodology is fully transparent through provision of pseudocode, explicit convergence criteria, and all hyperparameter settings. We also report SDG-aligned indicators—traction energy and CO₂-equivalent (CO₂-eq) per passenger-kilometre, and jobs reachable within 45- and 60-min isochrones—providing indicative yet robust evidence consistent with SDG 9, 11, and 13. Full article

The growing demand for air connectivity, coupled with the forecasted increase in passengers by 2040, implies an exigency in the aviation sector to adopt sustainable approaches for net zero emission by 2050. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is currently the most promising short-term solution; however, ensuring its overall sustainability depends on reducing the life cycle carbon footprints. A key challenge prevails in hydrogen usage as a reactant for the approved ASTM routes of SAF. The processing, conversion and refinement of feed entailing hydrodeoxygenation (HDO), decarboxylation, hydrogenation, isomerisation and hydrocracking requires substantial hydrogen input. This hydrogen is sourced either in situ or ex situ, with the supply chain encompassing renewables or non-renewables origins. Addressing this hydrogen usage and recognising the emission implications thereof has therefore become a novel research priority. Aside from the preferred adoption of renewable water electrolysis to generate hydrogen, other promising pathways encompass hydrothermal gasification, biomass gasification (with or without carbon capture) and biomethane with steam methane reforming (with or without carbon capture) owing to the lower greenhouse emissions, the convincing status of the technology readiness level and the lower acidification potential. Equally imperative are measures for reducing hydrogen demand in SAF pathways. Strategies involve identifying the appropriate catalyst (monometallic and bimetallic sulphide catalyst), increasing the catalyst life in the deoxygenation process, deploying low-cost iso-propanol (hydrogen donor), developing the aerobic fermentation of sugar to 1,4 dimethyl cyclooctane with the intermediate formation of isoprene and advancing aqueous phase reforming or single-stage hydro processing. Other supportive alternatives include implementing the catalytic and co-pyrolysis of waste oil with solid feedstocks and selecting highly saturated feedstock. Thus, future progress demands coordinated innovation and research endeavours to bolster the seamless integration of the cutting-edge hydrogen production processes with the SAF infrastructure. Rigorous techno-economic and life cycle assessments, alongside technological breakthroughs and biomass characterisation, are indispensable for ensuring scalability and sustainability. Full article

This paper presents numerical simulation results on the nonlinear features of railway vehicles moving in transition curves at velocities close to the critical velocity. It examines six objects representing railway vehicles: three 2-axle bogies, two 2-axle freight cars, and a 4-axle passenger car. The paper aims to show how systematic variation in motion conditions, such as initial conditions, vehicle velocity, and curve radius, influences nonlinear features of the vehicle’s dynamics. Results indicate that initial conditions do not affect stable solutions, increasing velocity leads to more systematic patterns of behaviour across straight, circular, and transition curves, while increasing curve radius leads to a partly systematised picture of solutions. The findings also emphasise certain exceptions to these general trends. Full article

In dense crowds and complex electromagnetic environments of metro stations, UWB-based seamless payment suffers from limited positioning accuracy and insufficient stability. A promising solution is to incorporate the vision modality, thereby enhancing localization robustness through cross-modal trajectory alignment. Nevertheless, high similarity among passenger trajectories, modality imbalance between vision and UWB, and UWB drift in crowded conditions collectively pose substantial challenges to trajectory alignment in metro stations. To address these issues, this paper proposes a multi-modal trajectory progressive alignment algorithm under modality imbalance. Specifically, a progressive alignment mechanism is introduced, which leverages the alignment probabilities from previous time steps to exploit the temporal continuity of trajectories, thereby gradually increasing confidence in alignments while mitigating the uncertainty of individual matches. In addition, contrastive learning with the InfoNCE loss is employed to enhance the model’s ability to learn from scarce but critical positive samples and to ensure stable matching on the UWB modality. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method consistently outperforms baseline approaches in both off-peak and peak periods, with its matching error rate reduced by 68% compared to the baseline methods during peak periods. Full article

When a highway overlies a goaf, the cracking and subsidence of the highway subgrade seriously threaten the safe operation and maintenance of highways, including passenger safety. In this study, subgrade subsidence in the operation period of the G0611 Zhangye–Wenchuan Expressway from Biandukou to Menyuan was analyzed. First, the main factors influencing this kind of subsidence were analyzed using theoretical analysis, field investigation, and field detection. Then, an index system for these factors was constructed, composed of one target-layer, five criterion-layer, and seventeen indicator-layer indexes. The ANP and CRITIC methods were used to calculate the subjective and objective weights of each influencing factor index. The combined weights were obtained based on game theory, and the contribution degree of each index was determined. The primary and secondary relationships of the influencing factors of subgrade subsidence were inferred. The research results indicate that the foundation of the analyzed expressway section contains goaf areas, with poor filling performance, failure to fill in layers according to regulations, and poor drainage being the main reasons for subgrade subsidence. Based on the contribution degree of the indicator-layer influencing factors, high-energy-level dynamic compaction can be used to ram goafs so as to ensure the operational safety of the expressway. Full article

To meet the increasing demands for structural lightweighting in electric vehicles (EVs), carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) has been gradually introduced to reduce weight and enhance passenger safety in automotive engineering. The battery-pack enclosure is a key structural component for EVs, as it significantly influences the driving distance, safety, and road handling of EVs. This study presents a top-down design approach and topology optimization for a lightweight CFRP battery pack enclosure reinforced with cross-shaped stiffeners. The main objective is to develop an efficient composite enclosure that meets performance targets while accommodating the demands of cost-effective mass production. The composite battery pack enclosure was fabricated using the compression molding process. Topology optimization was carried out in the preliminary design stage on the structural shape and geometric parameters following a top-down design approach. Experimental tests recorded maximum deformations of 0.56 mm and 10.33 mm under in-plane and lateral loads, respectively. The final prototype product achieved a total mass of 4.78 kg with a rapid curing cycle of 10–15 min. In conclusion, a lightweight composite battery-pack enclosure with cross-shaped stiffeners was successfully manufactured, integrating a top-down design approach with topology optimization. This study demonstrates an effective design approach to achieving an optimal balance of lightweight, cost-effectiveness, and production efficiency for EV battery-pack enclosures. Full article

The article examines the use of hydrogen fuel as an alternative to traditional diesel fuel for internal combustion engines (ICE) in railway applications. The main objective of the study is to analyze the operational consumption of hydrogen fuel based on the mathematical modeling of the working cycle of the EMD 12-645E3C engine installed on CIE 071 locomotives used in freight and passenger service. The article provides information on the design features of the EMD 12-645E3C engine, its technical parameters, and the results of bench tests. The indicator parameters of the engine at various controller positions are determined and analyzed, and the results of mathematical modeling of its operation on hydrogen fuel are presented. Particular attention is paid to changes in indicator parameters, including the maximum combustion pressure and the peak gas temperature in the cylinder, as well as comparing the mass consumption of diesel and hydrogen fuel. The study results demonstrate that the use of hydrogen allows the engine to maintain effective power across all operational modes while simultaneously reducing energy costs up to 8%. In this case, the pressure and temperature of the gases in the cylinder increased by 3–6% and 5–8%. Recommendations are also provided regarding technical challenges associated with transitioning to hydrogen fuel, including the modernization of the combustion chamber, fuel system, and safety system. Full article

India’s aviation sector, crucial for connectivity, economic growth, and national integration, faces sustainability measurement challenges focused solely on carbon emissions. This study proposes the Aviation Sustainability Performance Index (ASPI-India), spanning four pillars: Environmental Stewardship, Social Responsibility, Governance Maturity, and Economic Resilience. Measurable indicators are derived from regulatory filings, commercial flight databases, geospatial tracking, and targeted surveys. Data sources include DGCA safety audits, AAI operational statistics, ADS-B flight path data, and passenger satisfaction surveys from 2010 to 2024. Fixed-effects panel models link ASPI-India to operational and financial outcomes like load factor stability, CASK, and credit rating resilience. Quasi-experimental designs exploit policy shocks through difference-in-differences estimation. Factor analysis validates the four-pillar structure, and robustness checks compare entropy, PCA, and equal weighting. Results show that a one-standard-deviation increase in ASPI-India improves load factor stability, ancillary revenue share, and credit terms, especially for carriers with diversified route networks. The framework provides actionable insights for airlines, regulators, and investors to embed sustainability in aviation management. Full article

This research addresses the complex challenge of integrating modern public transport into historic medieval city centers. These unique urban environments are characterized by narrow streets, protected heritage status, and topographical constraints, which are incompatible with conventional transit vehicles. The introduction of standard bus routes often aggravates traffic congestion and fails to meet the specific mobility needs of residents and visitors. This paper suggests that autonomous electric buses represent a viable and sustainable solution, capable of navigating these constrained environments while aligning with modern energy efficiency goals. The central challenge lies in the optimal selection of an autonomous electric bus that can operate safely and efficiently within the tight streets of historic city centers while satisfying the travel demands of passengers. To address this, a comprehensive study was conducted, analyzing resident mobility patterns—including key routes and hourly passenger loads—and the specific geometric constraints of the road network. Based on this empirical data, a vehicle dynamics model was developed in Matlab^®. This model simulates various operational scenarios by calculating the instantaneous forces (rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag, inertial forces) and the corresponding power required for different electric bus configurations to follow pre-established speed profiles. The core of this research is an optimization analysis, designed to identify the balance between minimizing total energy consumption and maximizing the quality of passenger service. The findings provide a quantitative framework and clear procedures for urban planners to select the most suitable autonomous transit system, ensuring that the chosen solution enhances mobility and accessibility without compromising the unique character of historic cities. Full article

Endothelial cell proliferation, migration, and intercellular interactions for blood vessel formation require coordinated signaling by a myriad of molecules. Following endothelial cell activation by growth factors and cytokines, a variety of signaling molecules are activated on the surface and transported intracellularly by TM4SF1-enriched microdomains (TMEDs), 100–300 nm diameter protein–lipid complexes recruited by the transmembrane protein TM4SF1. TMEDs internalize via microtubules from the cell surface toward the microtubule-organizing center (MTOC) and then enter the nucleus via nuclear pores (see Graphic Illustration). This internalization pathway permits delivery of activated proteins and other signaling molecules from the cell surface to the nucleus, which directly translates extracellular stimuli to modulation of gene expression. Molecules transported by this route include phospholipase C, gamma 1 (PLCγ1), histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6), and importins. In the absence of TMEDs, endothelial cells lose the ability to divide into cultures in vitro and to support blood vessel formation in mouse embryos in vivo. We liken TMEDs to cable cars, which take in passengers at the cell surface, travel along microtubule cables, and deliver their passengers to various locations, including the “city center”, the nucleus. This commentary aims to elucidate the functions of TMEDs in endothelial cells, to show that cells, like busy cities, need efficient transport systems to deliver molecules to the destinations where they perform their cellular functions. TMEDs offer a novel and curated transport system providing selected molecules with access to the nucleus. Full article

The dynamic development of autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies has intensified the need to understand the factors influencing their acceptance. This study aims to develop user profiles reflecting different levels of enthusiasm toward autonomous buses in Warsaw. A quantitative research design was employed, using a survey of 385 residents collected via CAPI, CATI, and CAWI methods. Cluster analysis (k-means method) identified distinct user profiles based on attitudes toward autonomous buses and general trust in technology: Cluster 1—Enthusiastic Adopters, Cluster 2—Sceptical Opponents, and Cluster 3—Cautious Optimists. The study confirmed that demographic characteristics (age, gender, education level, occupational status) significantly influence the level of enthusiasm for autonomous buses. Younger, highly educated, and professionally active individuals showed highest levels of acceptance. Furthermore, a higher level of general trust in technology was positively associated with greater acceptance of autonomous buses. The research highlights important implications and recommends focusing on districts with a higher concentration of Enthusiastic Adopters and targeted communication strategies for Sceptical Opponents and Cautious Optimists. However, study limitations include the geographic restriction to Warsaw and the absence of data capturing changes in attitudes over time. Future research should be expanded to other cities, exploring ongoing dynamics of trust and acceptance. Despite limiting the research to one specific city, the research tool used and the research itself can be applied to similar cities regardless of their geographical location or size. Full article