Road Safety Audit (RSA) Guidelines of Selected Nations – a Comparative Review

One of the proactive preventive strategies for the global issue of road crashes is the Road Safety Audit (RSA). There are many advantages to using RSA, however, country-specific regulations often apply when it comes to conducting RSAs. The goal of this study was to compare the content of regulations in a sample of seven countries. Crucial indicators were examined and compared. The term ‘RSA’ was defined differently in each set of guidelines. Different project phases in various nations required the RSA methodology. The contents and coverage of the accompanying checklists or forms also varied. The documents unevenly stressed the team's needs or the auditors’ qualifications. The legal liability issues received no attention from three of the seven guideline publications. The documents of two countries lacked any examples of RSA reports or case studies. The documents of some countries placed a strong focus on certain criteria but fell short in other areas. There was no RSA guideline document which may be referred to as best practice that accounted for the local circumstances and requirements. Improvements to guideline documents are suggested. This study, updated as of October 2023, will assist the road safety community, including transport officials, world banks, highway practitioners, road safety auditors, policymakers, urban planners and research scholars

Nasolabial Cyst: A Diagnostic Clarity or Conundrum?

Nasolabial cyst is a unique, rare, non odontogenic cyst occurring in nasal alar region. It has a predeliction for females with the left side being more affected than the right. Patients generally present with a painless slow growing swelling in the alar region without significant radiographic abnormality. This paper discusses a case of nasolabial cyst in a 45 year old female patient. cyst, klestadt's cyst, nasolabial cys

Search for intermediate-mass black hole binaries in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

International audienceIntermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) span the approximate mass range 100−105 M⊙, between black holes (BHs) that formed by stellar collapse and the supermassive BHs at the centers of galaxies. Mergers of IMBH binaries are the most energetic gravitational-wave sources accessible by the terrestrial detector network. Searches of the first two observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo did not yield any significant IMBH binary signals. In the third observing run (O3), the increased network sensitivity enabled the detection of GW190521, a signal consistent with a binary merger of mass ∼150 M⊙ providing direct evidence of IMBH formation. Here, we report on a dedicated search of O3 data for further IMBH binary mergers, combining both modeled (matched filter) and model-independent search methods. We find some marginal candidates, but none are sufficiently significant to indicate detection of further IMBH mergers. We quantify the sensitivity of the individual search methods and of the combined search using a suite of IMBH binary signals obtained via numerical relativity, including the effects of spins misaligned with the binary orbital axis, and present the resulting upper limits on astrophysical merger rates. Our most stringent limit is for equal mass and aligned spin BH binary of total mass 200 M⊙ and effective aligned spin 0.8 at 0.056 Gpc−3 yr−1 (90% confidence), a factor of 3.5 more constraining than previous LIGO-Virgo limits. We also update the estimated rate of mergers similar to GW190521 to 0.08 Gpc−3 yr−1.Key words: gravitational waves / stars: black holes / black hole physicsCorresponding author: W. Del Pozzo, e-mail: [email protected]† Deceased, August 2020

Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are monitoring the sky and collecting gravitational-wave strain data with sufficient sensitivity to detect signals routinely. In this paper we describe the data recorded by these instruments during their first and second observing runs. The main data products are gravitational-wave strain time series sampled at 16384 Hz. The datasets that include this strain measurement can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at http://gw-openscience.org, together with data-quality information essential for the analysis of LIGO and Virgo data, documentation, tutorials, and supporting software