Work related road safety: Age, length of service and changes on crash risk

Age and experience are known to be major factors in road traffic collisions (Maycock et al., 1996) and are commonly used as predictors of crash frequency (Evans and Courtney, 1985). But age and experience are difficult to separate when investigating crash risk (Brown, 1982; Ryan et al., 1998; Mayhew and Simpson, 1990; Bierness, 1996). Experience is closely related to age but independently influences crash risk. For age, mileage-adjusted crash risk declines with age but then rises for drivers over 65 (Maycock et al., 1991). This is thought to be due to physical and cognitive declines in older people and to increased risk-taking in younger drivers (Chipman et al., 1992; Clarke et al., 1998; McGwin and Brown, 1999). For experience, even limited driving experience has a major effect on road safety. For example, there is a disproportionately higher crash rate during the first year of driving, particularly in the first few months after licensure (Sagberg, 1998). For age and experience, Mayhew et al. (2003) found larger decreases in crash risk amongst younger novices compared with older novices during the first few months of driving. This was interpreted as due to greater initial risk-taking amongst younger novices, with on-road driving experience facilitating a more rapid learning rate compared with older novices. They suggest that this was an appropriate point at which to provide training intervention. There is reasonable literature on the effects of age and experience on accident involvement, but little is known about whether these effects can be generalised to professional drivers, especially since professional drivers differ substantially from the general population of drivers

Design and development of a bus simulator for bus driver

The bus industry is plagued by high accident costs and risks of passenger injuries. A bus simulator may offer a method of reducing accident rates by delivering targeted training to bus drivers who are most at risk. The first part of this thesis describes the design of the UK's first bus simulator, the fidelity of which was based on a thorough analysis of bus crashes. The second part describes the first studies in a multi-staged method to evaluate the training effectiveness of the simulator: face validity, effects of bus driver experience and stress on simulated performance and simulator sickness. This approach ensured that the ABS has a reasonable level of fidelity, is capable of eliciting behaviourally valid responses from bus drivers and is the first step is achieving training transfer effectiveness. The final study investigated the occurrence of self-bias in bus drivers. The conclusions drove the design of simulated scenarios to be used for bus driver training. Keywords: Bus, Simulator, Fidelity, Validity, Accidents, Driving, Stress, TrainingEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Exploring a Process: Using Technology to Define Firefighter Glove Fit Preference

The aim of this study was to develop methodologies for a replicable process to scan bare and gloved hands and evaluate the fit of a structural firefighter glove model using a Human Solutions Vitus Head scanner. Our analysis was grounded in a literature review and findings from two focus groups of fire fighters in New York State. In our charge to deliver a replicable process to generate 3D anthropometric data, the study identified changes to the current glove model that could be implemented immediately to improve dexterity, and future areas to research for long-term enhanced fit and sizing of this glove model

A PageRank-based Reputation Model for VGI Data

AbstractQuality of data is one of the key issues in the domain of Volunteered geographic information (VGI). To this purpose, in literature VGI data has been sometime compared with authoritative geospatial data. Evaluation of single contributions to VGI databases is more relevant for some applications and typically relies on evaluating reputation of contributors and using it as proxy measures for data quality. In this paper, we present a novel approach for reputation evaluation that is based on the well known PageRank algorithm for Web pages. We use a simple model for describing different versions of a geospatial entity in terms of corrections and completions. Authors, VGI contributions and their mutual relationships are modeled as nodes of a graph. In order to evaluate reputation of authors and contributions in the graph we propose an algorithm that is based on the personalized version of PageRank

A comparison of temporal and location-based sampling strategies for GPS-triggered electronic diaries

Self-reporting is a well-established approach within the medical and psychological sciences. In order to avoid recall bias, i.e. past events being remembered inaccurately, the reports can be filled out on a smartphone in real-time and in the natural environment. This is often referred to as ambulatory assessment and the reports are usually triggered at regular time intervals. With this sampling scheme, however, rare events (e.g. a visit to a park or recreation area) are likely to be missed. When addressing the correlation between mood and the environment, it may therefore be beneficial to include participant locations within the ambulatory assessment sampling scheme. Based on the geographical coordinates, the database query system then decides if a self-report should be triggered or not. We simulated four different ambulatory assessment sampling schemes based on movement data (coordinates by minute) from 143 voluntary participants tracked for seven consecutive days. Two location-based sampling schemes incorporating the environmental characteristics (land use and population density) at each participant’s location were introduced and compared to a time-based sampling scheme triggering a report on the hour as well as to a sampling scheme incorporating physical activity. We show that location-based sampling schemes trigger a report less often, but we obtain more unique trigger positions and a greater spatial spread in comparison to sampling strategies based on time and distance. Additionally, the location-based methods trigger significantly more often at rarely visited types of land use and less often outside the study region where no underlying environmental data are available

HD 213885b: a transiting 1-d-period super-Earth with an Earth-like composition around a bright (V = 7.9) star unveiled by TESS

We report the discovery of the 1.008-d, ultrashort period (USP) super-Earth HD 213885b (TOI-141b) orbiting the bright (V = 7.9) star HD 213885 (TOI-141, TIC 403224672), detected using photometry from the recently launched TESS mission. Using FEROS, HARPS, and CORALIE radial velocities, we measure a precise mass of 8.8 ± 0.6 M⊕ for this 1.74 ± 0.05 R⊕ exoplanet, which provides enough information to constrain its bulk composition – similar to Earth’s but enriched in iron. The radius, mass, and stellar irradiation of HD 213885b are, given our data, very similar to 55 Cancri e, making this exoplanet a good target to perform comparative exoplanetology of short period, highly irradiated super-Earths. Our precise radial velocities reveal an additional 4.78-d signal which we interpret as arising from a second, non-transiting planet in the system, HD 213885c, whose minimum mass of 19.9 ± 1.4 M⊕ makes it consistent with being a Neptune-mass exoplanet. The HD 213885 system is very interesting from the perspective of future atmospheric characterization, being the second brightest star to host an USP transiting super-Earth (with the brightest star being, in fact, 55 Cancri). Prospects for characterization with present and future observatories are discussed

Diagnostic implications of genetic copy number variation in epilepsy plus

OBJECTIVE: Copy number variations (CNVs) represent a significant genetic risk for several neurodevelopmental disorders including epilepsy. As knowledge increases, reanalysis of existing data is essential. Reliable estimates of the contribution of CNVs to epilepsies from sizeable populations are not available. // METHODS: We assembled a cohort of 1255 patients with preexisting array comparative genomic hybridization or single nucleotide polymorphism array based CNV data. All patients had "epilepsy plus," defined as epilepsy with comorbid features, including intellectual disability, psychiatric symptoms, and other neurological and nonneurological features. CNV classification was conducted using a systematic filtering workflow adapted to epilepsy. // RESULTS: Of 1097 patients remaining after genetic data quality control, 120 individuals (10.9%) carried at least one autosomal CNV classified as pathogenic; 19 individuals (1.7%) carried at least one autosomal CNV classified as possibly pathogenic. Eleven patients (1%) carried more than one (possibly) pathogenic CNV. We identified CNVs covering recently reported (HNRNPU) or emerging (RORB) epilepsy genes, and further delineated the phenotype associated with mutations of these genes. Additional novel epilepsy candidate genes emerge from our study. Comparing phenotypic features of pathogenic CNV carriers to those of noncarriers of pathogenic CNVs, we show that patients with nonneurological comorbidities, especially dysmorphism, were more likely to carry pathogenic CNVs (odds ratio = 4.09, confidence interval = 2.51-6.68; P = 2.34 × 10-9 ). Meta-analysis including data from published control groups showed that the presence or absence of epilepsy did not affect the detected frequency of CNVs. // SIGNIFICANCE: The use of a specifically adapted workflow enabled identification of pathogenic autosomal CNVs in 10.9% of patients with epilepsy plus, which rose to 12.7% when we also considered possibly pathogenic CNVs. Our data indicate that epilepsy with comorbid features should be considered an indication for patients to be selected for a diagnostic algorithm including CNV detection. Collaborative large-scale CNV reanalysis leads to novel declaration of pathogenicity in unexplained cases and can promote discovery of promising candidate epilepsy genes