The Role of Journey Purpose in Road Traffic Injuries: A Bayesian Network Approach

Road traffic injuries are now regarded as the eighth leading cause of death globally. For example, in 2016, 102,362 traffic injuries took place in Spain in which 174,679 drivers suffered injuries. These findings necessitated the development of the current study which focuses on the prime factors that cause this type of injuries. The aim of this study, therefore, is to explore the behavioral factors that entail a higher risk of suffering either a serious or a fatal injury for drivers. Methods. The findings are based on information and data provided by “Dirección General de Tráfico” (DGT) in Spain on traffic injuries that occurred in the year 2016. Reviewing a wide range of the literature, the authors identified the most influential variables and created a model using the Bayesian networks. The variables that define the model are grouped into four factors: vehicle factor, road factor, circumstantial factor and human factor. Results. The results suggest that the principal variables that determine a higher probability of serious or fatal injuries in traffic injuries are: lack of using appropriate safety accessories, high-speed violations, distractions as well as errors. Finally, the research shows the severity probability based on reason of displacement (“in itinere,” on business, or in leisure)

Stem pitting and seedling yellows symptoms of Citrus tristeza virus infection may be determined by minor sequence variants

The isolates of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV), the most destructive viral pathogen of citrus, display a high level of variability. As a result of genetic bottleneck induced by the bud-inoculation of CTV-infected material, inoculated seedlings of Citrus wilsonii Tanaka displayed different symptoms. All successfully grafted plants showed severe symptoms of stem pitting and seedling yellows, while plants in which inoculated buds died displayed mild symptoms. Since complex CTV population structure was detected in the parental host, the aim of this work was to investigate how it changed after the virus transmission, and to correlate it with observed symptoms. The coat protein gene sequence of the predominant genotype was identical in parental and grafted plants and clustered to the phylogenetic group 5 encompassing severe reference isolates. In seedlings displaying severe symptoms, the low-frequency variants clustering to other phylogenetic groups were detected, as well. Indicator plants were inoculated with buds taken from unsuccessfully grafted C. wilsonii seedlings. Surprisingly, they displayed no severe symptoms despite the presence of phylogenetic group 5 genomic variants. The results suggest that the appearance of severe symptoms in this case is probably induced by a complex CTV population structure found in seedlings displaying severe symptoms, and not directly by the predominant genomic variant