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The existing studies concerning the influence of weather on public transport have mainly focused on the impacts of average weather conditions on the aggregate ridership of public transit. Not much research has examined these impacts at disaggregate levels. This study aims to fill this gap by accounting for intra-day variations in weather as well as public transport ridership and investigating the effect of weather on the travel behavior of individual public transit users. We have collected smart card data for public transit and meteorological records from Shenzhen, China for the entire month of September, 2014. The data allow us to establish association between the system-wide public transit ridership and weather condition on not only daily, but also hourly basis and for each metro station. In addition, with the detailed trip records of individual card holders, the travel pattern by public transit are constructed for card holders and this pattern is linked to the weather conditions he/she has experienced. Multivariate modeling approach is applied to analyze the influence of weather on public transit ridership and the travel behavior of regular transit users. Results show that some weather elements have more influence than others on public transportation. Metro stations located in urban areas are more vulnerable to outdoor weather in regard to ridership. Regular transit users are found to be rather resilient to changes in weather conditions. Findings contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between everyday weather and public transit travels and also provide valuable information for short-term scheduling in transit management.

We used immunohistochemical staining to assess protein over-expression of glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and its RET receptor tyrosine kinase in patients with pancreatic cancer and benign pancreatic neoplasm, and assessed correlations with clinicopathological features and prognosis. Surgically resected pancreatic cancer patients (40/58, 68.9%) showed positive GDNF immunostaining, a significantly higher frequency than in patients with benign pancreatic tumour (3/11, 27.3%). Intrapancreatic neural invasion by cancer cells was significantly related to over-expression of GDNF. Strongly positive expression of GDNF was significantly more frequent than lesser grades of expression in patients with severe back pain before and 12 months after surgery. Expression of RET was significantly related to lymphatic invasion, survival rate after tumour resection and degree of tumour cell differentiation. We conclude that GDNF may be important in pancreatic cancer proliferation and metastasis, especially in patients with perineural invasion. Strongly positive expression of GDNF may be an indication for early intensified radiotherapy.RET expression in pancreatic cancer tissues may be a useful prognostic marker.