960 research outputs found
Work-related road safety risk assessment: utilisation of self-report surveys to predict organisational risk
Work-related driving safety is an emerging concern for Australian and overseas organisations. Research has shown that road crashes are the most common cause of work-related fatalities, injuries and absences from work. This study's objectives were to identify driver characteristics which pose potential risks to work-related driving safety within the organisation, as well as determining the value of such self-reported data to predict crash involvement and general aberrant driving behaviours. This paper reports on a study examining the predictive utility of predominant self-report questionnaires to identify individuals involved in work-related crashes within an Australian organisational fleet setting (N = 4195). Survey questionnaires included the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ), Driver Attitude Questionnaire (DAQ), Safety Climate Questionnaire â Modified for Drivers (SCQ-MD) and Risk Taking. The tools were distributed through the companyâs internal mail system to employees who volunteered to participate in the study. An important finding to emerge was that a potential fleet "speeding culture" was identified from univariate analyses. For example, drivers were most likely to report engaging in speeding behaviours and also believed that speeding was more acceptable compared to drink driving, following too closely or engaging in risky overtaking manoeuvres. However, multivariate analysis determining factors associated with self-reported crash involvement revealed that increased work pressure and driving errors were predictive of crash risk, even after controlling for exposure on the road. This paper highlights the major findings of the study and discusses the implications and difficulties associated with utilising driver behaviour measurement tools within contemporary organisational fleet settings
Perceptions of Work-Related Road Safety - Safety Versus Savings
In Douglas Adamâs "The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy", published in the 1970s, a computer is confronted with the intriguing question: "What is the meaning of life?" After elaborate and tedious number crunching, the computer returns: "The answer to your question is 42". It is obvious, that the monetary valuation of road safety is not an easy task either. In fact, it implies answering an equally difficult and intriguing question â What is the statistical value of a human life? Although various methods and approaches have been put forward to estimate the statistical cost of a road fatality, some scholars argue that valuing fatal injuries and hence human life is virtually impossible. They maintain that people do not nearly have sufficiently accurate preferences to make a sensible trade-off between road safety and money. The (perceptions of) changes in risk levels are so small that making the trade-off is very difficult, if not impossible (Hauer, 1994). However, other road safety costs can be statistically determined and initiatives developed to reduce the burden to both organisations and individuals. Therefore, the topic of this paper is to determine what factors contribute to work-related road incidents and how economic costs to industry organisations could be reduced
The Influence of Occupational Driver Stress on Work-related Road Safety: An Exploratory Review
Research has identified a number of stressors that could impact on the occupational driver by increasing stress levels and, for some individuals, causing adverse behaviour and effects, for example, aggressive behaviour, fatigue, inattention/distraction, and substance abuse. For safety professionals and employers, one way to reduce the effects of occupational driver stress is to change perceptions so that management and drivers recognise that work-related driving is as important as other work-related tasks. This article explores relevant literature in relation to driver stress and suggests additions to risk management processes and safety procedures/policies, including assigning sufficient basic resources to target occupational stress (particularly occupational driver stress)
Harmony, Dissonance, or Harm? The Psychological and Spiritual Promises and Perils of Gay Christian Celibacy
Identity conflicts between sexuality and spirituality faced by religious lesbian and gay people have been described in literature, along with various methods to resolve such conflicts, including sexual orientation change efforts and identity integration. But a dearth of literature exists regarding celibacy as a means of resolving identity conflict. This study employed grounded theory to investigate the psychological and spiritual wellbeing of 12 current and former gay Christian celibates (GCCs). Results revealed how celibacy could harmonize sexuality and Christian spirituality, benefiting some celibates by providing them peace, satisfaction, and spiritual vibrancy. However, for many others, celibacy instigated dissonance between their beliefs and their sexual desires and behaviors, leading to substantial challenges and harms that negatively affected their wellbeing. Participants, especially ex-celibate participants, described psychological, emotional, social, sexual, and spiritual harms. Implications for mental health practitioners working with clients struggling with conflicts between sexual and spiritual identities are discussed
Using the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire to predict crashes and demerit point loss: Does it get better with larger sample sizes?
The Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) continues to be the most widely utilised self-report scale globally to assess crash risk and aberrant driving behaviours among motorists. However, the scale also attracts criticism regarding its perceived limited ability to accurately identify those most at risk of crash involvement. This study reports on the utilisation of the DBQ to examine the self-reported driving behaviours (and crash outcomes) of drivers in three separate Australian fleet samples (N = 443, N = 3414, & N = 4792), and whether combining the samples increases the toolâs predictive ability. Either on-line or paper versions of the questionnaire were completed by fleet employees in three organisations. Factor analytic techniques identified either three or four factor solutions (in each of the separate studies) and the combined sample produced expected factors of: (a) errors, (b) highway-code violations and (c) aggressive driving violations. Highway code violations (and mean scores) were comparable across the studies. However, across the three samples, multivariate analyses revealed that exposure to the road was the best predictor of crash involvement at work, rather than DBQ constructs. Furthermore, combining the scores to produce a sample of 8649 drivers did not improve the predictive ability of the tool for identifying crashes (e.g., 0.4% correctly identified) or for demerit point loss (0.3%). The paper outlines the major findings of this comparative sample study in regards to utilising self-report measurement tools to identify âat riskâ drivers as well as the application of such data to future research endeavours
Missouri Hunger Atlas 2016
AtlasThis atlas assesses the extent of food insecurity in the state of Missouri. It also gauges how well public programs are doing
in meeting the needs of those of our fellow citizens who have difficulty acquiring sufficient amounts and qualities of food. The concept of food security, as the Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program within the United States Department of Agriculture defines it, refers to âaccess by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food insecurity in this country is normally due to insufficient resources for food purchases, and the majority of food insecure households avoid hunger by relying on a more narrow range of foods or acquiring food through private and public assistance programs
Semi-supervised Learning for Photometric Supernova Classification
We present a semi-supervised method for photometric supernova typing. Our
approach is to first use the nonlinear dimension reduction technique diffusion
map to detect structure in a database of supernova light curves and
subsequently employ random forest classification on a spectroscopically
confirmed training set to learn a model that can predict the type of each newly
observed supernova. We demonstrate that this is an effective method for
supernova typing. As supernova numbers increase, our semi-supervised method
efficiently utilizes this information to improve classification, a property not
enjoyed by template based methods. Applied to supernova data simulated by
Kessler et al. (2010b) to mimic those of the Dark Energy Survey, our methods
achieve (cross-validated) 95% Type Ia purity and 87% Type Ia efficiency on the
spectroscopic sample, but only 50% Type Ia purity and 50% efficiency on the
photometric sample due to their spectroscopic follow-up strategy. To improve
the performance on the photometric sample, we search for better spectroscopic
follow-up procedures by studying the sensitivity of our machine learned
supernova classification on the specific strategy used to obtain training sets.
With a fixed amount of spectroscopic follow-up time, we find that deeper
magnitude-limited spectroscopic surveys are better for producing training sets.
For supernova Ia (II-P) typing, we obtain a 44% (1%) increase in purity to 72%
(87%) and 30% (162%) increase in efficiency to 65% (84%) of the sample using a
25th (24.5th) magnitude-limited survey instead of the shallower spectroscopic
sample used in the original simulations. When redshift information is
available, we incorporate it into our analysis using a novel method of altering
the diffusion map representation of the supernovae. Incorporating host
redshifts leads to a 5% improvement in Type Ia purity and 13% improvement in
Type Ia efficiency.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Extraordinary optical transmission with coaxial apertures
Recently it has been predicted that âcylindricalâ surface plasmons (CSPâs) on cylindrical interfaces of coaxial ring apertures produce a different form of extraordinary optical transmission that extends to ever increasing wavelengths as the dielectric ring narrows. This letter presents experimental confirmation of this CSP assisted extraordinary transmission. Nanoarrays of submicron coaxial apertures are fabricated in a thin silverfilm on a glass substrate and far-field transmission spectra are measured. The experimental spectrum is in close agreement with predictions from finite-difference time-domain simulations and CSP dispersion theory. The role of cylindrical surface plasmons in producing extraordinary transmission is thus confirmed.This work was partially supported by the Office of Naval
Research. Computations were carried out under the Department
of Defense High Performance Computation Modernization
Project. The support of the Australian Research
Council through its Centers of Excellence, Federation Fellow
and Discovery programs is gratefully acknowledged
Higher order mode conversion via focused ion beam milled Bragg gratings in Silicon-on-Insulator waveguides
We report the first Bragg gratings fabricated by Focused Ion
Beam milling in optical waveguides. We observe striking features in the
optical transmission spectra of surface relief gratings in silicon-on-insulator
waveguides and achieve good agreement with theoretical results obtained
using a novel adaptation of the beam propagation method and coupled mode
theory. We demonstrate that leaky Higher Order Modes (HOM), often
present in large numbers (although normally not observed) even in
nominally single mode rib waveguides, can dramatically affect the Bragg
grating optical transmission spectra. We investigate the dependence of the
grating spectrum on grating dimensions and etch depth, and show that our
results have significant implications for designing narrow spectral width
gratings in high index waveguides, either for minimizing HOM effects for
conventional WDM filters, or potentially for designing devices to capitalize
on very efficient HOM conversion
Characterizing photonic crystal waveguides with an expanded k-space evanescent coupling technique
We demonstrate a direct, single measurement technique for
characterizing the dispersion of a photonic crystal waveguide (PCWG)
using a tapered fiber evanescent coupling method. A highly curved fiber
taper is used to probe the Fabry-PĂ©rot spectrum of a closed PCWG over a
broad k-space range, and from this measurement the dispersive properties of
the waveguide can be found. Waveguide propagation losses can also be
estimated from measurements of closed waveguides with different lengths.
The validity of this method is demonstrated by comparing the results
obtained on a âW1â PCWG in chalcogenide glass with numerical
simulation
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