Policy processes are affected by how policymakers assess public support for a policy. But is public support for a given policy itself affected by characteristics of the policy process, such as cooperation or confrontation amongst policy actors? Specifically, if different branches of government hold conflicting positions on a given policy, do clashes affect public support for the policy? To address this question, we exploit an unexpected clash amongst the executive and judiciary in New Delhi, between survey waves, over exemptions for women in the context of the odd–even rule, a policy intervention to reduce air pollution from transportation. We find that public support for the contested policy was not undermined by the executive–judiciary clash. However, the clash polarised public opinion by gender, based upon the policy exemptions. Our findings shed new light on the broader question of how conflicts amongst different parts of government influence mass public policy preferences.

Causal mechanisms of norovirus outbreaks are often not revealed. Understanding the transmission route (e.g. foodborne, waterborne, or environmental) and vehicle (e.g. shellfish or recreational water) of a norovirus outbreak, however, is of great public health importance; this information can facilitate interventions for an ongoing outbreak and regulatory action to limit future outbreaks. Towards this goal, we conducted a systematic review to examine whether published outbreak information was associated with the implicated transmission route or vehicle. Genogroup distribution was associated with transmission route and food vehicle, but attack rate and the presence of GII.4 strain were not associated with transmission route, food vehicle, or water vehicle. Attack rate, genogroup distribution, and GII.4 strain distribution also varied by other outbreak characteristics (e.g. setting, season, hemisphere). These relationships suggest that different genogroups exploit different environmental conditions and thereby can be used to predict the likelihood of various transmission routes or vehicles.

The displacements of a vehicle on a plane can be subject to constraints depending on the nature of the vehicle. One can, for instance, think of the existence of a smallest turning circle for a car.

In this paper our purpose is to show, on a simple example, how such constraints can be handled. We, in fact, consider the case of a vehicle the motions of which consist of a finite sequence of rotations, each rotation being subject to the following constraints.

1) The radius of the circles along which the displacements of the vehicle take place are larger than a critical radius.

2) The centers of the successive rotations are located along a straight line defined by the geometry of the vehicle.

The mathematical analysis of this problem relies on a suitable choice of frames of reference in which the expression of the constraints is particularly simple. It is then shown that, under the above constraints, an arbitrary displacement can always be achieved by three approriate rotations.

This paper addresses the problem of finding a nonholonomic path subject to a curvature restriction, to be tracked by a wheeled autonomous navigation vehicle. This robot is able to navigate in a structured environment, with obstacles modeled as polygons, thus constituting a model based system. The path planning methodology begins with the conditioning of the polygonal environment by offsetting each polygon in order to avoid the possibility of collision with the mobile. Next, the modified polygonal environment is used to compute a preliminary shortest path (PA) between the two extreme positions of the trajectory in the plane (x, y). This preliminary path (PA) does not yet consider the restrictions on the curvature and is formed only by straight line segments. A smoothing process follows in order to obtain a path (PS) that satisfies curvature restrictions which consist basically of joining the straight line segments by circular arcs of minimum radius R (filleting). Finally, the initial and final orientation of the vehicle are accounted for. This is done using a technique we have called the Star Algorithm, because of the geometric shape of the resulting maneuvers. A final complete path (PC) is thus obtained.

A basic problem in the development of an intelligent vehicle/highway system (IVHS), or an autonomous mobile robot system (AMRS) is to find suitable input controls which can be used to drive the vehicle between any two configurations. In this paper a trajectory generation problem for a four-wheel-steering tractor/semi-trailer system is investigated, and it is shown that this nonholonomic constraint problem can be converted into one of finding fitting-functions satisfying certain necessary boundary conditions. Proposals for control laws are presented and simulation results for a lane change manoeuvre are given.