The Development of a Comprehensive Database for Accident Analysis.

The Road Safety Code of Good Practice states that highway authorities should consider obtaining supplementary road safety data, to give a better assessment of the level of under-reporting and to improve the safety studies they undertake. This paper examines the extra sources of data that are available and used by highway authorities. It shows an improved system of linking police and hospital injury data and assesses the potential for the use of other such data. A questionnaire survey of all highway authorities in Britain was undertaken which showed that data sources such as traffic flows were used regularly, whereas others such as hospital data were rarely used. It was also found that when attempts were made to combine data much of the work was done manually. One of the most useful supplementary sources of information on accidents is hospital casualty data. A method of linking this with police reported casualty data by using, among other things, the name and address of the casualty has been shown to produce a considerably improved match than that in studies previously undertaken. This has thus been used to evaluate under-reporting and the nature of specific injuries to those involved in accidents. This study looks at the possibilities of including other data sources which could be used to assist authorities in validating accident forms and aiding in the selection of accident sites suitable for remedial treatmen

A Comparison of Local Authority Procedures in Road Safety.

It has been recognised that there are large differences in the working practices of safety teams amongst the highway authorities of Great Britain. This study was undertaken to assist the development of short courses in safety and accident analysis for (amongst others) road safety staff and traffic engineers. The main objective of the study was to discern differences in working practices between three different kinds of highway authority. The study also enabled University and local authority personnel to work together to identify more precisely the teaching objectives in certain proposed courses in safety; and to identify and provide appropriate course material, within the overall aim of making such courses relevant to a wider range of audience

A Linked Police and Hospital Road Accident Database for Humberside.

The current system used to collect road accident statistics provides no detailed information on the injuries sustained, nor does it account for all the road accidents and casualties resulting from them. Other studies have attempted to link hospital casualty data to that contained on the police reports but with limited success. The method outlined here matches 97.3% of casualty records that should be matched with only 1.4% error. This will therefore provide a effective model to test the reporting rates of various groups and the injuries sustained by them

The Use of Road Safety Data in Highway Authorities

The Road Safety Code of Good Practice (1989) suggested that highway authorities should collect supplementary information in addition to STATS 19 records and that there should be moves towards developing coordinated strategies for road safety planning. It finds that traffic flows, letters from the public, population statistics, police reported damage-only accidents and highway and land development sources are used most often. Shire Counties tend to collect more sources of data than other authorities. All have meetings with the Police, but the Shire Counties and the Non-English Authorities have more meetings with the hospitals compared to the Metropolitan Authorities and the London Boroughs. Only twenty-two Authorities had any evidence of under-reporting, of which only six provided any figures. The location of accidents was the STATS 19 variable considered to have the most number of errors

The Identification of Mistakes in Road Accident Records – Part Two.

It has been acknowledged that there are many mistakes in the casualty variables on the police accident report forms. This study shows how a computer based linkage of police and hospital records can be used to routinely identify the mistakes for the variables of casualty age, gender and severity. The level of omissions and mis-identifications were 0.4 per cent for gender, 13.3 per cent for severity and 15.7 per cent for age. The number of records that had age omitted or coded incorrectly were not significantly greater for seriously injured casualties than for those that were slightly injured. The system could be effectively used to code casualty severity using medical information instead of relying on police judgement

Contact lens prescribing patterns in Abuja, Nigeria

Purpose: To determine contact lens prescribing patterns among optometrists in Abuja, Nigeria. Methods: One hundred and twenty registered optometrists were randomly selected from practices in Abuja and were surveyed about contact lenses prescribing patterns in their practices from January to December 2016. Demographic data for each patient prescribed with contact lenses were taken. In addition, data relating to lens type, design, replacement methods and the care regime advised to each patient were recorded. The data collected were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results: The optometrists that participated were 38% males and 62% females. A total of 321 contact lens were fitted among patients aged 15 to 55 years with a mean age of 27.3 ± 6.6 years by the optometrists. Two hundred and ninety-two (91%) patients were females and 29 (9%) were males. A good number of the patients (86.6%) were between 20 to 40 years and most (91.8%) contact lenses prescribed were daily wear. Conventional sort contact lenses (96.9%) and 3 month replacement modality (70%) were the most prescribed contact lens and modality of wear respectively. Majority (78.4%) of the contact lenses prescribed were spherical contact lenses and a good number (62.5%) were refits. Most (78.2%) contact lenses fitted were for refractive purposes. Multipurpose lens care system was the most (98.2%) prescribed lens care system. Conclusion: This survey showed that contact lens prescribing pattern in Abuja follows the global trend of contact lens prescribing.Keywords: Contact lens, prescribing pattern, Abuja, Nigeri

Variability in the area, energy and time costs of wintering waders responding to disturbance

Birds’ responses to human disturbance are interesting due to their similarities to anti-predator behaviour, and understanding this behaviour has practical applications for conservation management by informing measures such as buffer zones to protect priority species. To understand better the costs of disturbance and whether it will impact on population size, studies should quantify time-related responses as well as the more commonly reported flight initiation distance (FID). Using waders wintering on an estuarine area, we experimentally disturbed foraging birds on the Wash Embayment, UK, by walking towards them and recording their responses (FID, alert time, time spent in flight, time taken to resume feeding, and total feeding time lost). We present data for 10 species of conservation concern: Curlew Numenius arquata, Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus, Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica, Grey Plover Pluvialis squatarola, Redshank Tringa totanus, Knot Calidris canutus, Turnstone Arenaria interpres, Ringed Plover Charadrius hiaticula, Sanderling Calidris alba and Dunlin Calidris alpina. Larger species responded more strongly, response magnitude was greater under milder environmental conditions, and responses varied over both small and large spatial scales. The energetic costs of individual responses, however, were low relative to daily requirements and disturbance events were unlikely to be frequent enough to seriously limit foraging time. We suggest, therefore, that wintering wader populations on the Wash are not currently significantly negatively impacted by human disturbance during the intertidal foraging period. This is also likely to be the case at other estuarine sites with comparable access levels, visitor patterns, invertebrate food availability and environmental conditions

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters