abstract: The effects of aging on muscular efficiency are controversial. Proponents for increased efficiency suggest that age-related changes in muscle enhance efficiency in senescence. Exercise study results are mixed due to varying modalities, ages, and efficiency calculations. The present study attempted to address oxygen uptake, caloric expenditure, walking economy, and gross/net cycling efficiency in young (18-59 years old) and older (60-81 years old) adults (N=444). Walking was performed at three miles per hour by 86 young (mean = 29.60, standard deviation (SD) = 10.50 years old) and 121 older adults (mean = 66.80, SD = 4.50 years old). Cycling at 50 watts (60-70 revolutions per minute) was performed by 116 young (mean= 29.00, SD= 10.00 years old) and 121 older adults (m = 67.10 SD = 4.50 years old). Steady-state sub-maximal gross/net oxygen uptake and caloric expenditures from each activity and rest were analyzed. Net walking economy was represented by net caloric expenditure (kilocalories/kilogram/min). Cycling measures included percent gross/net cycling efficiency (kilo-calorie derived). Linear regressions were used to assess each measure as a function of age. Differences in age group means were assessed using independent t-tests for each modality (alpha = 0.05). No significant differences in mean oxygen uptake nor walking economy were found between young and older walkers (p>0.05). Older adults performing cycle ergometry demonstrated lower gross/net oxygen uptakes and lower gross caloric expenditures (p< 0.05). / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Exercise and Wellness 2014

Det finns tydliga synergier mellan transportsystemet, klimatpåverkan och folkhälsa. Detta skulle transportplaneringen kunna använda till sin fördel för en mer hållbar planering för att åstadkomma en förflyttning från personbilen till hållbara och aktiva transporter i linjer med uppsatta globala och nationella målsättningar. Trots detta kritiseras transportplaneringen för att inte beakta folkhälsa i tillräckligt stor utsträckning, med risk för försämrad välfärd, ökade samhällsklyftor och försämrad folkhälsa som konsekvens. Den här uppsatsen har kartlagt hur kommunala och regionala aktörer arbetar för en förflyttning till aktiva transporter, vilken roll folkhälsoperspektivet har i planeringen samt hur aktörerna förhåller sig till planeringsverktyg och hälsoekonomiska beräkningar för att synliggöra och beakta transportsystemets hälsoeffekter.  Fallen Lidingö stad tillsammans med Region Stockholm och Lunds kommun tillsammans med Region Skåne har studerats genom en intervju- och dokumentstudie. Resvanedata har analyserats för att förstå nuvarande omfattning samt potential för aktiva transporter. Vidare har det samhällsekonomiska värdet av aktiva transporter beräknats som konsekvens av den ökade fysisk aktivitet som genererats. Detta har beräknats med hjälp av Världshälsoorganisationens Health Economic Assessment Tool.  Uppsatsen visar att det finns utrymme att öka andelen aktiva transporter på kortare resor då personbilen utgör 11–22 procent av färdmedelsfördelningen på resor upp till 2,5 kilometer och 49–55 procent på resor mellan 2,5–8 kilometer. Antal sparade liv genom aktiva resor, skulle kunna öka med 45–100 procent om en fullständig förflyttning skulle ske, motsvarande ett betydande samhällsekonomiskt värde.  Kartläggningen visar även att synergierna mellan transportsystemet, klimatpåverkan och folkhälsa inte tas tillvara fullt ut idag och att det finns möjlighet att bredda förståelsen för hållbar transportplanering genom att koppla denna till folkhälsa. Dagens planering uppvisar flera brister när det gäller att beakta folkhälsoperspektivet och missar möjligheter att stärka folkhälsans roll. Bristerna skulle kunna elimineras genom utvecklade målsättningar med ett holistiskt förhållningssätt, utvecklade tvärsektoriella samarbeten samt genom ökad involvering. För att beakta hälsoeffekter i planeringsprocessen behöver planeringsverktyg tas fram och implementeras samt behöver kunskapsnivån om effektsambanden stärkas för att beslutsfattare också ska våga agera utifrån ett folkhälsoperspektiv. / There are clear synergies between the transport system, climate change, and public health. This could be used as an advantage in transport planning for more sustainable planning in order to achieve a major shift from the passenger car to sustainable and active transportation in line with global and national goals. Transport planning is however criticized for not taking public health into account to a sufficient extent with subsequent deteriorating welfare, increasing societal gaps, and deteriorating public health as consequences. Therefore, this thesis has investigated how municipal and regional actors work to achieve a shift toward active transportation, what role the public health perspective has in the planning process, and what the actors think of including planning tools and health economic assessments in order to take health effects of the transport system into account.  The cases of Lidingö municipality together with the region of Stockholm and Lunds municipality together with the region of Skåne have been studied through an interview and document study. Travel habit data have been analyzed to understand the current scope and potential for active transportation. Furthermore, the socio-economic value of active transportation has been calculated on the basis of the level of physical activity it generates. This has been done by using the World Health Organization’s Health Economic Assessment Tool.  The thesis shows that there is room to increase the proportion of active transport on shorter trips, as the passenger car makes up 11–22 percent of trips up to 2,5 kilometers and 49–55 percent for trips between 2,5–8 kilometers. The number of lives saved through active transportation could increase by 45–100 percent if a complete shift was to take place, corresponding to a significant socio-economic value.  The thesis also shows that the synergies between the transport system, climate change, and public health are not fully utilized today and that there is possible to broaden the understanding of sustainable transport planning by linking this to public health. Today’s planning also shows several shortcomings considering the public health perspectives and missing opportunities to strengthen the role of public health. The shortcomings could be eliminated through further developed objectives with a holistic approach, developed cross-sectional collaborations, and increased involvement. In order to take health effects into account in the planning process, planning tools need to be developed and implemented, and the knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect needs to be strengthened so that decision-makers to an increased degree could act from a public health perspective.

Indian cities are currently facing various transportation issues like congestion, pollution, urban inequity, high fatality rate due to accidents etc. because of an increase in the ownership of private motor vehicles and their usage. This has prompted many policy makers to search for alternate modal options that are more sustainable than motorized modes. Non Motorized Transport (NMT), which includes mainly walking and cycling in an urban context, do not produce many of the issues associated with motorized modes like congestion, pollution, fatal accidents etc. But, promotion of NMT requires a clear-cut planning strategy, with a lucid understanding of various strategies and their effect on the NMT usage. Present study tries to answer certain pertinent questions, particularly with respect to walking and cycling, which can arise while preparing a plan for promoting NMT in Indian cities. The following are the questions that the author seeks to answer in the present study. 1) Which are the areas inside a city that a planner shall target for promotion of NMT?2) Where shall a planner locate the infrastructures for NMT in these areas?3) What may be the possible impacts of providing these NMT facilities?4) What may be the possible effect of built environment factors on the choice of NMT? Providing NMT infrastructures requires knowledge of location characteristics such as the trip distance of NMT. Present study tries to elicit the existing distance characteristics of walking and cycling in terms of an acceptable trip distance. The household travel data of Bangalore city, for the year 2009, are used in the study. First, a description and a statistical analysis of the walking and cycling trip distances across the subcategories of socio-demographic and regional factors is done. Secondly, the acceptable distance is computed from the cumulative trip length distribution based on the results of the statistical analysis. The socio-demographic and regional factors used in the study include purpose, age, gender, educational level, occupational status, and motor vehicle ownership. The major results include a significant difference between the mean trip distances on foot for the subcategories of variables such as gender (z value, 4.94), whether the respondent owned a private vehicle (z value, -21.2), and whether the trip was made inside the Central Business District (CBD) (z value, -3.93). One of the major implications of this study pertains to requirement of a footpath around main activity centers like bus stations, at least up to a distance of 1385 meters (maximum value for walking as the main mode) and around the bus stops, at least up to a distance of 750 meters (maximum value for walking as the access mode). Next, the present study analyzes the influence of built environment factors –density and diversity -on the mode choice and trip distance of the residents in the Bangalore city. The built environment factors are analyzed, for their marginal effects in the presence of various socio-demographic and alternative attributes, for the two segments -respondents owning at least a personal vehicle and respondents not owning any personal vehicle. The density used is the total density, which was the sum of population density in a zone and employment density in a zone. The diversity index, which was an explainer of the land-use mixture, was set such that, when a zone with small area had employment opportunities comparable with its population, the diversity index would be high. When tested on a holdout sample other than the ones used in the estimation of the mode choice model, for the vehicle-owning group, the model estimated produced a validation accuracy of 93% and 91% respectively for two-wheelers and walking. For the vehicle non-owning group, the prediction success rate was highest for walking (97%), and lowest for public transit (84%). For the vehicle non-owning group, an increase in the density increased the trip distance (parameter values of 0.016 for total density at origin and 0.002 for total density at destination) and decreased the NMT usage (parameter values of -0.036 and 0.038 respectively for cycling and walking for total density at origin, and -0.092 and 0.073 respectively for cycling and walking for total density at destination), but for the vehicle-owning group, the inverse was true. The results for the vehicle non-owning group highlighted the requirement of a policy framework to control the employment and housing location of them in order to reduce their trip distance. In the mode choice model for the personal vehicle-owning group, the similarity between the parameters of the built environment factors across the two-wheeler and NMT reflected the need for adopting policies that would change the attitude of people towards NMT. Also, the trip distance model determined that females preferred a shorter working distance, with a parameter value -0.109 for the vehicle-owning group and -0.04 for the vehicle non-owning group, when compared with males. Lastly, the study develops a methodological framework to determine the sustainability impact on providing NMT infrastructures using a Composite Sustainability Index (CSI). More specifically, the study develops a methodological framework to determine the variation in the CSI on providing NMT -walking and cycling – infrastructure. The methodology establishes a link between the proposed NMT infrastructures and the CSI using two explanatory indicators: 1) number of motorized vehicles and 2) vehicle-kilometers travelled by the motorized modes. The main components of the framework include the estimation of a mode choice model for a study area, calculation of the explanatory indicators for the scenarios before and after providing NMT infrastructures, and determination of the sustainability impact. The proposed framework, along with the acceptable distance determined in the earlier step, is then used to determine the sustainability impact on providing NMT facilities, for a future scenario, inside the CBD of Bangalore and around the bus stops carrying trips to the CBD. Three case studies are presented with the first one considering only intra zonal (CBD) trips, the second one considering only inter zonal trips having CBD as destination, and the third one considering both above mentioned the trips. The results of all the three case studies found an increase in the CSI (0.002 for the first case study, 0.076 for the second case study, and 0.100 for the third case study) for the peak-hour trips inside the CBD, on providing NMT infrastructures. This increase showed an improvement in the sustainability. Further, for the case study 1, which consisted of high percentage of short distance trips, the major beneficiaries of the NMT infrastructures were the low-income group. There was a reduction in public transport trips, of which the main contributors were the low-income group, from 142706.2 to 96410.2.

The growth in the interdependence and complexity of socio-technical systems requires the development of tools and techniques to aid in the formulation of better policies. The efforts of this research focus towards developing methodologies and support tools for better policy design and formulation. In this thesis, a new framework and a systematic approach for the formulation of policies are proposed. Focus has been directed to the interactions between policy measures, inspired by concepts in process design and network analysis. Furthermore, we have developed an agent-based approach to create a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages and test the effects of changes and uncertainties while formulating policies. By developing systematic approaches for the formulation and analysis of policies it is possible to analyse different configuration alternatives in greater depth, examine more alternatives and decrease the time required for the overall analysis. Moreover, it is possible to provide real-time assessment and feedback to the domain experts on the effect of changes in the configurations. These efforts ultimately help in forming more effective policies with synergistic and reinforcing attributes while avoiding internal contradictions. This research constitutes the first step towards the development of a general family of computer-based systems that support the design of policies. The results from this research also demonstrate the usefulness of computational approaches in addressing the complexity inherent in the formulation of policies. As a proof of concept, the proposed framework and methodologies have been applied to the formulation of policies that deal with transportation issues and emission reduction, but can be extended to other domains.