Monthly Archives: April 2019

The future of freight transport

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Cathy Macharis & Silvio Nocera

The challenges faced by the freight transport sector—in the current context of climate change, pollution and congestion—are enormous. Demand is increasing dramatically and issues caused by e-commerce and city distribution will have to be tackled. On the other hand, new technologies can bring disruptive business models and cause different social impacts. In a special issue in the European Transport Research Review, Cathy Macharis and Silvio Nocera bring together six studies that discuss the future of freight transport from different perspectives.

Offline biases in online platforms

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Giacomo Livan, Licia Capra, Weihua Li & Victoria Koh

Online booking platforms such as Airbnb or Uber present themselves as and strive to be inclusive, but there is an increasing amount of both anecdotal and scientific evidence of discriminatory behavior among their users. In a study published in EPJ Data Science, researchers at University College London set out to evaluate interaction patterns within Airbnb, in an effort to understand the extent to which offline human biases affects their users.

How did Hokusai intend to depict Mount Fuji? Determining the sequence of impressions of the ‘Red Fuji’ Japanese woodblock print

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Dr Capucine Korenberg

Japanese woodblock prints, albeit not considered ‘proper’ art, were very popular during the Edo Period. Designs often evolved over time and were printed in different colour schemes. Due to the plethora of individual prints, it is very difficult to find out which one was the ‘original’ colour scheme as envisioned by the artist. Dr Capucine Korenberg has developed a method to do just that and presents her findings on the famous ‘red Fuji’ print.