No abstract

The design and implementation of effective transport policies to reduce car use in urban areas requires a deep comprehension of the factors that influence travel behavior. In this context, psychological factors play an important role in explaining travel-related decisions. The purpose of this paper is to present a study on the effects of cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes towards the use of walking and cycling on both intentions and real use of cars, public transport, bicycles, and walking. The data used was obtained from an on-line survey carried out in 2017. Analyses included reliability and validity of the questionnaire, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation models. Results indicate that cycling and walking are evaluated differently in terms of feelings of freedom, pleasure, and relaxation. Positive evaluation of elements related to past walking behavior are negatively associated to both the intention to walk and actual walking. Transport policies to encourage cycling should be different from those with the aim of promoting walking. Positive attitudes towards walking are not enough to increase real walking.

Universities are showing a growing interest in becoming green institutions and improving campus open space management. Well-designed urban landscapes guided by green criteria integrate eco-friendly infrastructure which may be effective in facing urban challenges in the context of climate change. Student preferences and uses of campus outdoor environment should draw the attention of campus landscape planners. This study aims to analyse how the university community perceives landscape services provided by the Spanish Universitat Politècnica de València’s campus open space. An online questionnaire was sent to the university community to check its opinions, level of satisfaction, and their demands related to the current situation of the outdoor areas. Campus open spaces with different urban green infrastructure have a high potential to provide cultural, provisioning, and regulation landscape services. Respondents perceive the main benefits provided by campus open spaces to be that they are a place to relax, meet friends, and pass through. Their needs related to the welfare of outdoor areas and their preferences differ according to age, occupation, and time spent at the campus. This paper intends to help the university to meet environmental guidelines and to help other universities in their endeavour to reach sustainability and ensure the university community’s well-being.

We previously showed that the increase in nitric oxide (NO) levels and NO synthase (NOS) expression correlate with the progression of reactive astrocytosis and demyelination in the brains of 6-month-old taiep rats. Increased levels of NO can result in high concentration of peroxynitrite and thus cause tissue damage, which consists of lipoperoxidation of the cytoplasmic membrane, such as the myelin, and of apoptotic and necrotic cell-death. On this basis, we studied whether the increased NO production is associated with lipoperoxidation and cell death in the cerebellum and brainstem over the age (1, 3, 6, and 8 months) of taiep rats. The results were compared with those obtained in matched Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. We measured the levels of nitrites (NO production), malonyldialdehyde, and 4-hydroxyalkenal (lipoperoxidation) in brain tissue homogenates. The three NOS isoforms and cleaved caspase-3 were evaluated by using ELISA and immunostaining techniques. Our results showed that NO production and lipoperoxidation increased in the cerebellum and brainstem as the age of the taiep rats increased compared to SD rats. The overexpression of nNOS and iNOS were in the Purkinje cells, magnocellular neurons, and in oligodendrocytes, whereas the glial cells showed strong cleaved-caspase-3 immunoreactivity. In summary our results suggest that NO plays a role in the demyelination and cell death in the taiep rat

Qualitative methodology is extensively used in a wide range of scientific areas, such as Sociology and Psychology, and it is been used to study individual and household decision making processes. However, in the Transportation Planning and Engineering domain it is still infrequent to find in the travel behavior literature studies using qualitative techniques to explore activity-travel decisions. The aim of this paper is first, to provide an overview of the types of qualitative techniques available and to explore how to correctly implement them. Secondly, to highlight the special characteristics of qualitative methods that makes them appropriate to study activity-travel decision processes. Far from been an unempirical or intuitive methodology, using qualitative methods properly implies a strong foundation on theoretical frameworks, a careful design of data collection and a deep data analysis. For such a purpose, a review of the scarce activity-travel behavior literature using qualitative methods, or a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, is presented. The use of qualitative techniques can play a role of being a supplementary way of obtaining information related to activity-travel decisions that otherwise it would be extremely difficult to find. This work ends with some conclusions about how qualitative research could help in making progress on activity-travel behavior studies.