Understanding the Emergence of Policies - Revising Building Regulations in Light of the Three Pillars of Sustainability

The building regulations for the Norwegian construction industry (TEK10) undergo a major revision in 2015. The regulations have been subject for major critique, both in public media and by building specialists, often because of the increased building cost. Three-pillar sustainability is an explicit criterion for all development in Norway, and the study examines how this is reflected in the making of building policies. The scope in this study is narrowed, so that the case is limited only to the energy requirements in TEK10. The case study firstly examines to what degree social and economical consequences are taken in consideration when deciding environmental requirements in buildings. Secondly, it looks at the analysis and assessments that lay the basis for the decision of new requirements. The main research object of this paper is the reports and assessments that form the basis of the formal regulation of construction/housing in Norway. In addition to this documentation study, semi structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews with key actors in the building industry were conducted. An extensive literature review forms the analytic background of the work. The economical and social consequences of new building requirements are significant. The social and economical consequences are, however, found to be to a smaller degree taken in consideration than the environmental perspective. Higher requirements to energy use in buildings are expected to make houses more expensive, and therefore drive the housing market up. The interviews show a disagreement with some of the measures central to todays TEK10. The study reveals deficient alternative analysis and impact assessments, and concludes that policies rarely are discussed at a high principle level, and the official reports therefore regard the more practical measures. This might also be the case in other Norwegian policies

Enhanced CNN for image denoising

Owing to flexible architectures of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), CNNs are successfully used for image denoising. However, they suffer from the following drawbacks: (i) deep network architecture is very difficult to train. (ii) Deeper networks face the challenge of performance saturation. In this study, the authors propose a novel method called enhanced convolutional neural denoising network (ECNDNet). Specifically, they use residual learning and batch normalisation techniques to address the problem of training difficulties and accelerate the convergence of the network. In addition, dilated convolutions are used in the proposed network to enlarge the context information and reduce the computational cost. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the ECNDNet outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for image denoising.Comment: CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology[J], 201

Understanding the Emergence of Policies - Revising Building Regulations in Light of the Three Pillars of Sustainability

The building regulations for the Norwegian construction industry (TEK10) undergo a major revision in 2015. The regulations have been subject for major critique, both in public media and by building specialists, often because of the increased building cost. Three-pillar sustainability is an explicit criterion for all development in Norway, and the study examines how this is reflected in the making of building policies. The scope in this study is narrowed, so that the case is limited only to the energy requirements in TEK10. The case study firstly examines to what degree social and economical consequences are taken in consideration when deciding environmental requirements in buildings. Secondly, it looks at the analysis and assessments that lay the basis for the decision of new requirements. The main research object of this paper is the reports and assessments that form the basis of the formal regulation of construction/housing in Norway. In addition to this documentation study, semi structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews with key actors in the building industry were conducted. An extensive literature review forms the analytic background of the work. The economical and social consequences of new building requirements are significant. The social and economical consequences are, however, found to be to a smaller degree taken in consideration than the environmental perspective. Higher requirements to energy use in buildings are expected to make houses more expensive, and therefore drive the housing market up. The interviews show a disagreement with some of the measures central to todays TEK10. The study reveals deficient alternative analysis and impact assessments, and concludes that policies rarely are discussed at a high principle level, and the official reports therefore regard the more practical measures. This might also be the case in other Norwegian policies

Car ownership after having children: Exploring the impacts of income and public transport accessibility

Lunke, E. B. (2024). Car ownership after having children: Exploring the impacts of income and public transport accessibility. Urban Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241271003Mobility research and theory suggests that new parents often develop a car-dependent way of living that runs counter to prevailing climate policies. In this context, the current study investigates the influence of public transport accessibility on car ownership among first-time parents in the Oslo region. Specific attention is paid to how the effect of accessibility varies with different income levels. Linear probability and fixed-effects models are applied to parents and a control group of non-parents to explore these relationships. The results show that public transport accessibility reduces the likelihood of car ownership in the years after family formation, although with larger impacts for some income groups than for others. Households with a high income combine car ownership with high access, whereas others seem to sacrifice one for the other. These findings have several policy implications. First, urban regions with a combination of gentrification in the central city and increasing poverty in suburban areas face a potential conflict between environmental and social sustainability. Finding ways to increase central-city opportunities for low- and medium-income families is a difficult but important step towards greater overall sustainability. Second, the reduction of car ownership among high-income households appears to require supplementary measures. The article ends with a discussion of the findings in the context of broader urban policy development, particularly in relation to the prioritisation of collective consumption.Car ownership after having children: Exploring the impacts of income and public transport accessibilityacceptedVersio

Synesthetes are More Involved in Art — Evidence From the Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (ACDC)

Creativity is a multidimensional, multistage, and time-dependent process, which can be expressed in various artistic domains and sub-domains (e.g., visual arts, literature, music, and performing arts). The present study investigated the involvement of synesthetes in art, and whether the type of synesthesia determines the preferred artistic domain. We tested 709 participants with either grapheme-color, sound-color, or sequencespace synesthesia (monotypical synesthesia) or a combination thereof (multiple synesthesia) and nonsynesthete controls with the Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (ACDC). The ACDC measures the involvement in art on the three levels “interest,” “ability,” and performance” for the four domains “visual arts,” “literature,” “music,” and “performing arts.” Overall, the results showed that synesthetes have an affinity for all four artistic domains compared with non-synesthete controls. Moreover, the presence of multiple types of synesthesia affected the specific preference. Besides, compared with monotoypical synesthetes, the group of grapheme-color-sound-color-and-sequence-space synesthetes showed higher involvement in all artistic domains, most pronounced in visual arts. Overall, the study demonstrates that synesthesia is associated with higher interest, ability, and performance in art

Controlled population-based comparative study of USA and international adult [55-74] neurological deaths 1989-2014.

OBJECTIVES: A population-based controlled study to determine whether adult (55-74 years) neurological disease deaths are continuing to rise and are there significant differences between America and the twenty developed countries 1989-91 and 2012-14. METHOD: Total Neurological Deaths (TND) rates contrasted against control Cancer and Circulatory Disease Deaths (CDD) extrapolated from WHO data. Confidence intervals compare USA and the other countries over the period. The Over-75's TND and population increases are examined as a context for the 55-74 outcomes. RESULTS: Male neurological deaths rose >10% in eleven countries, the other countries average rose 20% the USA 43% over the period. Female neurological deaths rose >10% in ten counties, averaging 14%, the USA up 68%. USA male and female neurological deaths increased significantly more than twelve and seventeen countries, respectively. USA over-75s population increased by 49%, other countries 56%. Other countries TND up 187% the USA rose fourfold. Male and female cancer and CDD fell in every country averaging 26% and 21%, respectively, and 64% and 67% for CDD. Male neurological rates rose significantly more than Cancer and CCD in every country; Female neurological deaths rose significantly more than cancer in 17 countries and every country for CDD. There was no significant correlation between increases in neurological deaths and decreases in control mortalities. CONCLUSIONS: There are substantial increases in neurological deaths in most countries, significantly so in America. Rises in the 55-74 and over-75's rates are not primarily due to demographic changes and are a matter of concern warranting further investigation

Which Measures can Reduce Parental Driving to Sport Activities?

Lunke, Erik Bjørnson, and Susanne Nordbakke. 2024. “Which Measures Can Reduce Parental Driving to Sport Activities?” Findings, September. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.123350.We conducted a survey to investigate how parents evaluate the effect (on their own behaviour) of five measures to reduce driving of children to sport activities in the municipality of Bærum, Norway. We find that parents’ evaluation of the effect varies for each measure, where the largest (perceived) effect is found in providing buses to activities. Moreover, we find large disparities in potential effect between different sports. Carpooling and walking/cycling groups are more relevant for soccer and handball, activities that take place in children’s local area. For skiing and ice-skating, we find a stronger effect in providing the possibility to store gear at the activity location. The disparities in potential effects among type of activities are probably linked to differences of locations of activities or in amount of gear that has to be brought along.Which Measures can Reduce Parental Driving to Sport Activities?acceptedVersio

High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House Prices

Erik Bjørnson Lunke and Lars Böcker (2025). High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House Prices. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies, 5 (1). 1-13. https://doi.org/10.18261/njus.5.1.1In the context of sustainable mobility transitions in urban areas, there is a concern that low-income households lack access to areas where travel needs can be conducted without a car, for example because of housing affordability issues. This study investigates the association of public transport accessibility with house prices, estimating a hedonic price model with controls for spatial dependencies and temporal variations, using data on all house transactions in the Oslo urban region (Norway) from 2015 to 2020. We find that public transport accessibility contributes to substantial and significantly higher house prices, and that this price association has increased during the study period. Our findings imply that in their transition towards sustainable urban transport, cities should not overlook social sustainability. Mitigating measures include both securing affordable housing in areas where walkability, cyclability and public transport access is present, and investing in sustainable mobility in areas lacking such services.High-Quality Public Transport and its Association with House PricespublishedVersio

Public Transport Use on Trip Chains: Exploring Various Mode Choice Determinants

Lunke, Erik Bjørnson, and Øystein Engebretsen. 2023. “Public Transport Use on Trip Chains: Exploring Various Mode Choice Determinants.” Findings, April. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.74112. Authors must agree that the following will be binding upon article acceptance when submitting a manuscript to a Findings sections for consideration: I hereby grant to the journal the nonexclusive, royalty-free right to distribute, display, and archive this work in a digital and/or print format during the full term of copyright. I warrant that I have the copyright to make this grant to the journal unencumbered and complete. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted material from other sources. Following publication, the author’s rights will be protected under Creative Commons License Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license CC BY-SA 4.0.The purpose of the study is to explore the relative influence of different measures of accessibility, public transport quality and local density on trip chain mode choice. This study uses data from the National Travel Survey in Norway and develops a logistic regression model on the choice between public transport and car on daily trip chains. Results show that the most important factors in explaining the use of public transport are 1) the travel time competitiveness of public transport versus the car, 2) parking restrictions, 3) centrality of trip chain destinations, and 4) waiting time between departures.publishedVersio