The Digital Life of Walkable Streets

Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. That is why web and mobile services have been offering ways of computing walkability scores of individual street segments. Those scores are generally computed from survey data and manual counting (of even trees). However, that is costly, owing to the high time, effort, and financial costs. To partly automate the computation of those scores, we explore the possibility of using the social media data of Flickr and Foursquare to automatically identify safe and walkable streets. We find that unsafe streets tend to be photographed during the day, while walkable streets are tagged with walkability-related keywords. These results open up practical opportunities (for, e.g., room booking services, urban route recommenders, and real-estate sites) and have theoretical implications for researchers who might resort to the use social media data to tackle previously unanswered questions in the area of walkability.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2015

Exploring sex differences in pain manifestation of coronary artery disease through Mendelian randomization

Pain manifestation following coronary artery disease (CAD) disease differs between men and women. Here, we aimed to provide evidence favoring possible differences in pain manifestation between men and women following CAD using Mendelian randomization (MR). We used summary-level data from sex-stratified genome-wide association studies on CAD and self-reported and clinically diagnosed chest, neck and shoulder, back, and facial pain using data from the UK Biobank cohort (N > 450,000) followed by two-sample MR (sensitivity) analyses. We identified 32 and 19 independent genetic variants associated with CAD for men and women, respectively, as instrumental variables. Genetically influenced CAD was associated with a higher risk of self-reported chest pain in both men (OR: 1.27, CI: 1.2–1.33) and women (OR: 1.44, CI: 1.20–1.73), with similar results for clinically diagnosed chest pain (men OR: 1.22, CI: 1.17–1.26; women OR: 1.31, CI: 1.18–1.46). In addition, in women only, genetically influenced CAD was associated with a higher risk of back pain (OR: 1.35, CI: 1.03–1.66) and neck and shoulder pain (OR: 1.22, CI: 0.91–1.63) (p-values for interaction with men: 0.030 and 0.041, respectively). Sensitivity analysis did not indicate the results were biased by directional pleiotropy. We found evidence, based on genetic predisposition for CAD, for different pain manifestations of CAD in men and women. While CAD was associated with chest pain in both sexes, we only found evidence for a higher risk of back pain and neck and shoulder pain in women, supporting common notions that women may present more often with uncharacteristic anginal symptoms.Cardiolog

Measurement error in the estimation of intake from herbage patches by non-fistulated heifers on apparently uniform swards

International audienc

Exploring the Pedestrians Realm: An overview of insights needed for developing a generative system approach to walkability

Walking is an essential form of human mobility. In policy making, however, pedestrians are largely neglected. This dissertation explores how the system for pedestrians works and what steps authorities can take to improve conditions for pedestrians, walking and sojourning in public space. It outlines an effective and fair approach by redefining the domain. Methorst combines, triangulates and advances available information, data and statistics.TRAIL Thesis Series no. T2021/6, the Netherlands Research School TRAILTransport and Logistic

Pedestrians' performance and satisfaction

In the framework of the PQN project, assessments have been carried out to arrive at real figures on the pedestrians’ performance and satisfaction. The results regarding key figures are: • About 50% of the pedestrians have limited abilities and about 10% of the population has severe difficulties walking and sojourning in public space. • Pedestrian mobility concerns door-to-door trips (mono-modal walking) and trips to and from other modes (multi-modal trips); time spent in traffic and distances covered are about the same. • The normal action radius of a pedestrian is about 1 kilometre; an average (European) citizen walks 250 door-to-door trips per year and 1,800 times to and from other modes. In total, pedestrians cover about 300 kilometres and spend about 100 hours per person per year on walking. • Sojourning in public space is an important indicator for quality of public space; it encourages all kinds of activities that humans need for their well-being. The average amount of time spent on sojourning is about 300 hours per person per year. • Hospital data and medical assistance data show that single pedestrian accidents (falls) induce three to nine time as many casualties as pedestrian-vehicle crashes. • The total number of victims for Europe amounts to at least 1.6 million injured pedestrians per year in Europe (equals more than 3,000 casualties per million inhabitants). • The total number of pedestrians killed varies from 9 fatalities per million inhabitants in the Netherlands to (more than) 46 in Poland. In the Netherland the number of vehicle related fatalities per million inhabitants is 6; the number of fatalities from falls is 3. • The total incidence of pedestrian injuries is 320 per million inhabitants (over 175,000 severely injured Europeans). Of this, 250 per million casualties result from falls (135,000 Europeans) and 75 per million from pedestrian-vehicle collisions (27,000 Europeans). The elderly run extreme risk. • For security, the number of incidents is less normative than the fear and emotions it evokes. Compared to traffic accidents and falls, the actual risk of getting injured or killed in a criminal incident is low; the real number of criminal acts in public space is stable over the years. • Satisfaction is related to the fulfilment of one’s wishes, expectations, or needs, and it reflects the pleasure derived from this. There is little research carried out on pedestrian satisfaction. Major issues for policy making with regard to the pedestrian performance and satisfaction are: • Large numbers of people have real trouble performing ‘walking and sojourning’ tasks. Because of ageing of the population the numbers will increase substantially. • With regard to safety, particularly the prevention of falls is important; this is also an age related problem. • There is too little awareness that without walking transportation is not possible. • The vicious circle of no data – no awareness – no priority - no research – no data, needs to be broken. The lack of data/information on walking and sojourning is imminent; some crucial concepts and statistical units need to be redefined and internationally applied

Ekopluim nieuwsbrief nummer 9 - april 2005

Nummer 9 behandelt: proef 100% biologisch voer; studieclubs Ekopluim; bedrijfsbezoek in Duitsland; Droevendaalse veldhoenders; Hoe milieuvriendelijk is een kippenuitloop en electronisch huisarrest voor kippen

Drivers for differences in dairy farmers perceptions of farm development strategies in an area with nature and landscape as protected public goods

Nature and landscape are increasingly appreciated as public goods and community assets in need of protection. Policy schemes aiming to protect vulnerable nature and landscape assets affect options for farm development and thus the opportunities for farm income strategies. Farmers as small business owners need to counter an ongoing income squeeze in their strategic decision. Farmers’ perception of the options affects strategic decision making. In a case study with dairy farmers operating in a highly comparable biophysical and socio-economic context, farmers differed in the perception leading to three main income strategies: ‘maximising’ or ‘ending’ of milk production and ‘diversification of farm business’ with the most dominant strategy being ‘maximising’. Multiple regression analysis was used to explore the significance of seven drivers for the differences between farmers’ perception of farm development options. The ‘personal views and preference’ is the most significant explanatory driver for all three income strategies. ‘View on markets’ is of less significance and ‘view on urban-rural relation’ is not significant in explaining differences between farmers. ‘Maximising’ and ‘diversifying’ are opposites in their drivers. To increase the effectiveness of policy schemes and support programmes, personal views and preferences of farmers need to be taken into account

Measurement error in the estimation of intake from herbage patches by non-fistulated heifers on apparently uniform swards

International audienc