Feature Channels: Travel and Transportation

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A new mobile virtual reality system helps children learn to cross streets safely.

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Professor Matthias Preindl recently won an NSF CAREER grant to support his work reimagining how power converter technology operates. Inspired by virtualization that has become common in computer science, Preindl is designing virtual power converter systems with interchangeable converter modules and a software layer that controls the converter function. The result should increase reliability and speed up onboard charging for electric vehicles and cut costs.

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Students in the College of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago now have the option of traveling to Vietnam, which was added last year to the list of more than 40 study abroad countries by the UIC Exchange Program.

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A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has found an explicit link between the colour of a taxi and its accident rate. An analysis of 36 months of detailed taxi, driver and accident data from two fleets of yellow and blue taxis in Singapore suggested that yellow taxis have fewer accidents than blue taxis. The higher visibility of yellow makes it easier for drivers to avoid getting into accidents with yellow taxis, leading to a lower accident rate.

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The trucking industry loses billions of dollars each year sitting idle in traffic. Helping drivers avoid congestion would increase productivity and improve safety, says a team of researchers. The team has identified a solution using big data technology.

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When Stockholm, Sweden, introduced a “congestion tax” to discourage driving in the center of town, traffic eased and the pollution level dropped by between 5 and 10 percent. The rate of asthma attacks among local children decreased by nearly 50 percent, according to a Johns Hopkins University economist’s study of the tax and its impact.

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The University of Virginia Health System is teaming up with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to study novice drivers with autism to determine if they would benefit from specialized training to help them become better, safer drivers and feel more comfortable behind the wheel. Researchers will use a high-tech driving simulator and on-road driving to compare the driving performance of novice drivers with autism with those of novice drivers without autism.

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New Mexico State University is a member of a consortium of universities that have received a nearly $2.5 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant to establish a regional transportation research center.

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About the size of a tablet, a portable device that could be used in a host of environments like a busy airport or even a remote location in South America, may hold the key to detecting the dreaded Zika virus accurately, rapidly and inexpensively using just a saliva sample. For about $2 and within 15 minutes, researchers hope to accurately determine whether or not an individual has an active infection.

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When is an internal combustion engine not an internal combustion engine? When it’s been transformed into a modular reforming reactor that could make hydrogen available to power fuel cells wherever there’s a natural gas supply available.

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Passengers could soon be using their mobile phones to help rail companies around the globe improve the ride quality on their trains, thanks to new research.

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If the last blast of winter has you longing for sun-soaked beaches in tropical locales, be sure to stop at the drug store for sunscreen and insect repellant before leaving for spring vacation.

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Experts from the Stony Brook University Trauma Center share some tips that go beyond the usual winter safety driving advice and touch upon those often overlooked inconveniences that winter storms leave behind in order to decrease injuries and major accidents.

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The effects a concussion has on driving a vehicle may continue to linger even after the symptoms disappear, according to a new study by University of Georgia researchers.

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The University of Washington's AccessMap project has launched a new online travel planner offering customizable suggestions for people who need accessible or pedestrian-friendly routes when getting from point A to B in Seattle. The team is also developing pedestrian accessibility standards to expand the effort to other cities.

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Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have developed state-of-the-art simulation tools which will help to improve the safety of the latest generation of carbon fibre airplanes, formula one racing cars and future lightweight family cars.

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A research team led by the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) worked with a major United States multinational corporation to investigate employee perceptions of road risks and strategies to reduce road traffic injuries. This research was conducted in two Indian cities with some of the highest road traffic injury rates worldwide that are also centers for multinational corporations in the software and technology sectors.

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Earth Day Texas will host the kickoff as part of an inaugural one-day alternative fuel vehicle summit, coordinated by the NAFTC.

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In a preliminary study, University at Buffalo engineers found that as subway use swells during events that draw big crowds, so too does the number of tweets at these events. The results suggest that data from Twitter, and possibly other social media platforms, can be used to improve event planning, route scheduling, crowd regulations and other subway operations.

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In determining how much lead time a driver needs before taking over control of the automation in both critical and noncritical situations, system designers should not limit their focus to average time to respond.

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Alcohol use can be found in suicide deaths and unintentional deaths due to injuries such as those from motor vehicle collisions (MVCs). The authors of this study argue that it is important to distinguish between the roles that alcohol may play in the two different types of deaths. Consequently, they compared postmortem toxicology results for alcohol and other drugs, alone and in combination, in suicide and MVC deaths.

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A Northwestern University study of how jet lag affects Major League Baseball players traveling across just a few time zones found that when players travel in a way that misaligns their internal 24-hour clock with the natural environment and its cycle of sunlight, they suffer negative consequences. The researchers found that jet lag negatively affects the base running of home teams but not away teams and that home and away pitchers both give up more home runs when jet-lagged.

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Irvine, Calif., Jan. 23, 2017 – The University of California, Irvine is poised to be the first college campus in the nation to convert its buses to an all-electric fleet. The student-funded and -operated Anteater Express shuttle service is acquiring 20 buses from BYD (Build Your Dreams) for $15 million.The vehicles are being built at the company’s Lancaster plant to roll onto campus for the 2017-18 academic year, joining a hydrogen electric bus to provide more than 2 million pollution-free rides annually.

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Driverless car expert Tim Chapin, interim dean of the College of Social Science and Public Policy at Florida State University and professor of urban and regional planning, believes that it may finally be time to start taking this technology seriously. Chapin, whose current research interests revolve around how Florida’s demographic trends influence urban patterns and transportation systems in the state, believes that forward thinking tech companies will be agents for dramatic change in an industry that, for decades, has been largely defined by slow and iterative progress.

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Using medical data collected by trauma experts at the University of Michigan, elderly and obese dummies are being used to help car manufacturers create safer vehicles for today's drivers.

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As commuters shimmy past large, lumbering trucks on the road, they may glance over and wonder, “How safe is that driver next to me?” If the truck driver is in poor health, the answer could be: Not very. Commercial truck drivers with three or more medical conditions double to quadruple their chance for being in a crash than healthier drivers, reports a new study led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

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Thanks to West Virginia University Teaching Assistant Professor Pete Gall, the problem of pilot integration when airlines merge may be coming to an end for the world’s largest airline group.

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Scientists at Fermilab and CERN considered many options for delivering fragile components of the CMS detector to Geneva. Their answer? Buy a seat for the component on a commercial airline.

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Researchers have developed a new tool for cities to optimize electric bus systems, which has now been used in Sweden’s first wireless charging bus system, launched in December.

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Driving while impaired (DWI) causes more than 10,000 deaths per year in the United States. Although enforcing criminal sanctions for DWI is the traditional response, the success of these measures has been inconsistent. This study looked at risk perceptions as a method of reducing the frequency of DWI - in other words, whether the threat of being apprehended for DWI can deter people from engaging in this behavior.

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State laws requiring ignition interlocks for all drunk driving offenders appear to reduce the number of fatal drunk driving crashes, a new study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Colorado School of Public Health researchers suggests.