Comparison of Injury Patterns between Electric Bicycle, Bicycle and Motorcycle Accidents

Background: Electric bicycles (E-bikes) are an increasingly popular means of transport, and have been designed for a higher speed comparable to that of small motorcycles. Accident statistics show that E-bikes are increasingly involved in traffic accidents. To test the hypothesis of whether accidents involving E-bikes bear more resemblance to motorcycle accidents than conventional bicyclists, this study evaluates the injury pattern and severity of E-bike injuries in direct comparison to injuries involving motorcycle and bicycle accidents. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, the data of 1796 patients who were treated at a Level I Trauma Center between 2009 and 2018 due to traffic accident, involving bicycles, E-bikes or motorcycles, were evaluated and compared with regard to injury patterns and injury severity. Accident victims treated as inpatients at least 16 years of age or older were included in this study. Pillion passengers and outpatients were excluded. Results: The following distribution was found in the individual groups: 67 E-bike, 1141 bicycle and 588 motorcycle accidents. The injury pattern of E-bikers resembled that of bicyclists much more than that of motorcyclists. The patients with E-bike accidents were almost 14 years older and had a higher incidence of moderate traumatic brain injuries than patients with bicycle accidents, in spite of the fact that E-bike riders were nearly twice as likely to wear a helmet as compared to bicycle riders. The rate of pelvic injuries in E-bike accidents was twice as high compared with bicycle accidents, whereas the rate of upper extremity injuries was higher following bicycle accidents. Conclusion: The overall E-bike injury pattern is similar to that of cyclists. The differences in the injury pattern to motorcycle accidents could be due to the higher speeds at the time of the accident, the different protection and vehicle architecture. What is striking, however, is the higher age and the increased craniocerebral trauma of the E-bikers involved in accidents compared to the cyclists. We speculate that older and untrained people who have a slower reaction time and less control over the E-bike could benefit from head protection or practical courses similar to motorcyclists. Keywords: E-bike injuries; polytrauma; outcome; injury pattern compariso

Konzipierung und Evaluation des Certificate of Advanced Studies Lehrer/-in Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache

Mit dem Zertifikatslehrgang Lehrer/-in Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache (CAS DaF/DaZ), durchgeführt vom ISBB Institut für Sprache in Beruf und Bildung der ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, wird angehenden oder bereits praktizierenden DaF/DaZ-Lehrpersonen die Möglichkeit zu einer qualifizierten Aus- und Weiterbildung auf Hochschulstufe angeboten. Der hier vorliegende Forschungsbericht stellt die Ergebnisse der Bedarfsanalyse, das darauf aufbauende Konzept, und erste Ergebnisse der Evaluation nach Abschluss von zwei Durchgängen des Zertifikatslehrgangs dar

Einblicke in Forschung & Entwicklung 2008-2009 des ISBB Institut für Sprache in Beruf und Bildung

Die im vorliegenden Bericht zusammengestellten Texte gewähren den Leserinnen und Lesern Einblicke in die Vielfalt der Forschungs- und Entwicklungsaktivitäten im ISBB Institut für Sprache in Beruf und Bildung in der Berichtsphase 1.1.2008 – 30.6.2009. Inhaltlich sind die Projekte in die vier Forschungsschwerpunkte Mehrsprachigkeit in Beruf und Bildung (FSP 1), Sprachandragogik und Integration (FSP2), Sprachliche Diversität im inter-, intra- und transkulturellen Kontext (FSP3) und Kommunikation in Organisationen (FSP4) gruppiert. Für alle Projekte werden die Fragestelllungen, das methodische Vorgehen und, falls schon vorhanden, Ergebnisse übersichtsartig vorgestellt. Ebenso werden die Finanzierung und Kooperationspartner benannt. Bei den vorgestellten Projekten handelt es sich zum einen um intern finanzierte, zum anderen um mit Drittmitteln ermöglichte Forschungsaktivitäten. In den Projekten werden sowohl empirische Untersuchungen durchgeführt als auch, theorie- und forschungsgeleitet, Instrumente und didaktische Konzepte entwickelt. Einige der Projekte befinden sich in der Phase der Konzeptentwicklung und –antragsstellung, andere sind schon weit fortgeschritten oder nahezu abgeschlossen. Entsprechend unterschiedlich sind die kleineren und grösseren Texte im Bericht gestaltet. Die AutorInnen sind Projektleitende aus dem Team Forschung & Entwicklung des ISBB wie auch Dozierende aus den Fachgruppen L1 (Kommunikation Deutsch), L2 (Englisch und Französisch) und des Zentrums Deutsch als Fremdsprache DaZ/DaF

Linguistic diversity in cooperative work processes of task-oriented teams

Due to the internationalisation of companies and the immigration into Switzerland, Swiss companies today employ people from different backgrounds and with different mother tongues on all hierarchy levels. Thus, multilingual teams are becoming more common. The lingua franca, or common working language in these teams is often English or German; for many team members these are foreign or second languages. So far, research has paid too little attention to the linguistic challenges multilingual teams face and to the strategies they employ to efficiently master their communicative tasks. Even though several studies within organisational psychology and small group research look at the relationship between cultural diversity and group performance, they limit interculturality to values and ethnicity without or only implicitly taking into account language, thus neglecting its impact. On the other hand, communication in teams is being researched linguistically, but not from the angle of communicative efficiency and teamwork optimisation. Consequently, language diversity and strategies of coping with language diversity in team communication are mostly absent in psychological research and communicative efficiency is only a minor subject in organisational psychology. The main goal is to analyse how communicative efficiency in multilingual company-internal teams is attained. Our research question is whether communicative efficiency depends on the team’s ability to manage its diversity of languages, i.e. to master specific linguistic and communicative challenges in the company appropriately. Since the project is at the intersection of linguistic communication and team performance in organisations, it calls for an approach that combines linguistic methods with methods of organisational psychology and that is based on action theory and functional-pragmatic communication analysis as a common framework, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. The data from two partner companies serve as case studies which are compared in a contrastive design. The findings of the study will help our partners in practice to foster multilingual teams and to establish a best-practice model that may be adapted for the use with other teams. This contrastive design with two partners in practice each having their own specific linguistically diverse work groups, enables an exemplary approach to linguistically diverse work groups, which are most common in this form in a large number of Swiss companies. As contrastive case studies they therefore help to gain new insights into the research area.Sowohl durch die zunehmende Internationalisierung als auch durch Migrationsbewegungen in die Schweiz arbeiten Teams in Unternehmen auf allen hierarchischen Stufen vermehrt in sprachdiversen Konstellationen. Oftmals werden Deutsch oder Englisch als lingua franca zur Verständigung verwendet. In dem vorliegenden Projekt wird untersucht, welche kommunikativen Probleme sich durch die Sprachdiversität von Teams ergeben und welche Bewältigungsstrategien diese entwickeln, um die kommunikative Effizienz in Teamsitzungen sicherzustellen. Diese Fragestellungen werden sowohl aus linguistischer Perspektive als auch aus organisationspsychologischer Sicht bearbeitet. In zwei betrieblichen Fallstudien werden in einem transdisziplinären Design Teamsitzungen mit funktional-pragmatischen Methoden analysiert und mit organisationalen Rahmenbedingungen sowie individuellen Bewältigungsstrategien in Beziehung gesetzt. Erste Ergebnisse zeigen, dass in Abhängigkeit von der individuellen Erfahrung in der Zusammenarbeit in sprachdiversen Teams, von der Teamkonstellation und in Abhängigkeit von der Sprachpolitik des Unternehmens Mitarbeitende Kommunikationsstrategien entwickeln, welche zum einen zur kommunikativen Effizienz beitragen. Dazu gehören z.B. das Aushelfen mit Vokabeln, mehrmaliges Erklären oder fehlertolerantes Verhalten. Zum anderen verursachen sie aber auch dysfunktionale Effekte wie unsachgemässe Vereinfachungen, ungenaue Auftragsvergabe durch Moderator/innen und fehlende Partizipation der Mitarbeitenden an Sitzungen und Entscheidungen. Durch den transdisziplinären Ansatz können komplexe Zusammenhänge und positive und negative Effekte der kommunikativen Strategien aufgezeigt werden. Funktionierende Strategien sollen den Praxispartnern und weiteren Betrieben als Best-Practice Modelle dienen.Due to the internationalisation of companies and the immigration into Switzerland, Swiss companies today employ people from different backgrounds and with different mother tongues on all hierarchy levels. Thus, multilingual teams are becoming more common. The lingua franca, or common working language in these teams is often English or German; for many team members these are foreign or second languages. So far, research has paid too little attention to the linguistic challenges multilingual teams face and to the strategies they employ to efficiently master their communicative tasks. Even though several studies within organisational psychology and small group research look at the relationship between cultural diversity and group performance, they limit interculturality to values and ethnicity without or only implicitly taking into account language, thus neglecting its impact. On the other hand, communication in teams is being researched linguistically, but not from the angle of communicative efficiency and teamwork optimisation. Consequently, language diversity and strategies of coping with language diversity in team communication are mostly absent in psychological research and communicative efficiency is only a minor subject in organisational psychology. The main goal is to analyse how communicative efficiency in multilingual company-internal teams is attained. Our research question is whether communicative efficiency depends on the team’s ability to manage its diversity of languages, i.e. to master specific linguistic and communicative challenges in the company appropriately. Since the project is at the intersection of linguistic communication and team performance in organisations, it calls for an approach that combines linguistic methods with methods of organisational psychology and that is based on action theory and functional-pragmatic communication analysis as a common framework, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. The data from two partner companies serve as case studies which are compared in a contrastive design. The findings of the study will help our partners in practice to foster multilingual teams and to establish a best-practice model that may be adapted for the use with other teams. This contrastive design with two partners in practice each having their own specific linguistically diverse work groups, enables an exemplary approach to linguistically diverse work groups, which are most common in this form in a large number of Swiss companies. As contrastive case studies they therefore help to gain new insights into the research area

IMPROVING THE ACCURACY OF LOW-COST GNSS BY FUSION WITH INERTIAL AND MAGNETIC SENSORS IN ALPINE SKI RACING

For analysing performance in alpine ski racing, an accurate estimation of the skier's centre of mass trajectory and speed is indispensable. However, the sole use of low-cost GNSS might not be accurate enough to detect meaningful differences. The aim of this study was to introduce a new system that can improve the accuracy of a low-cost GNSS to an acceptable level. To this end, the data obtained by low-cost GNSS was fused with data form inertial sensors and position information of permanent magnets buried into the snow surface along the ski track. This fusion improved the system's accuracy from 2m to 0.5m. Despite the added sensing technologies, the system remained simple and was easy to use. Further improvements are possible and a technical validation of the system could be a major aim for the future

Heart Rate Dynamics Identification and Control in Cycle Ergometer Exercise: Comparison of First- and Second-Order Performance

Background: Accurate and robust feedback control of human heart rate is important for exercise testing and prescription. Feedback controllers can be designed using first-order, linear, time-invariant models of heart rate dynamics, but it remains to investigate whether second-order models lead to better identification and control performance. The distinguishing contribution of this research is the direct employment of established physiological principles to determine model structure, and to focus the feedbackdesign goals: cardiac physiology proposes a two-phase second-order response, delineated into fast and slow components; the natural phenomenon of broadspectrum heart-rate variability motivates a novel feedback design approach that appropriately shapes the input-sensitivity function. Aim: The aim of this work was to compare the fidelity of first- and second-order models of heart rate response during cycle-ergometer exercise, and to compare the accuracy and dynamics of feedback controllers that were designed using the two model structures. Methods: Twenty-seven participants each took part in two identification tests to generate separate estimation and validation data sets, where ergometer work rate was a pseudorandombinary sequence and in two feedback tests where controllers were designed using the first- or second-order models. Results: Second-order models gave substantially and significantly higher model fit (51.9 % vs. 47.9 %, p < 0.0001; second order vs. first order) and lower root-mean-square model error (2.93 bpm vs. 3.21 bpm, p < 0.0001). There was modest improvement in tracking accuracy with controllers based on second-order models, where mean root-mean-square tracking errors were 2.62 bpm (second order) and 2.77 bpm (first order), with p = 0.052. Controllers based on second-order models were found to be substantially and significantly more dynamic: mean values of average control signal power were 9.61 W^2 and 7.56 W^2, p < 0.0001. Conclusion: The results of this study confirm the hypotheses that second-order models of heart-rate dynamics give better fidelity than first-order models, and that feedback compensator designs that use the additional dynamic mode give more accurate and more dynamic closed-loop control performance

Sprachliche Kommunikation, Alter und Migration

Die vorliegende explorative Studie untersucht die Sprachsituation, die kommunikativen Schwierigkeiten und die Sprachlernbedürfnisse von älteren italienisch- und albanischsprachigen MigrantInnen hinsichtlich des Deutschen oder des Schweizerdeutschen. Die Ergebnisse sollen Grundlagen für die Entwicklung von Sprachkursen für ältere MigrantInnen im Hochdeutsch bzw. im Schweizerdeutsch dienen. Mittels Gruppendiskussionen mit älteren italienisch- und albanischsprachigen MigrantInnen sowie Interviews mit Expertinnen konnten erste Erkenntnisse gewonnen werden. Zwar haben sich die meisten MigrantInnen in Hinblick auf die Kommunikation in der Bewältigung des Alltags weitgehend arrangiert; die meisten bedauern aber, nicht besser Deutsch gelernt zu haben. Während die italienischen MigrantInnen häufig die Möglichkeit haben, auf ihre Muttersprache zurückzugreifen, steht diese Ressource den albanischsprachigen MigrantInnen nicht zur Verfügung. Für beide Gruppen stellt die diglossische Situation in der Schweiz gleichermassen ein Problem dar. Schweizerdeutsch zu verstehen wird in den mündlichen Situationen häufig als Hindernis erlebt, das in der direkten Begegnung ad hoc und ohne Hilfe bewältigt werden muss. Aus der Pilotstudie ergeben sich Hinweise darauf, dass ein Bedarf an Deutschkursen für ältere MigrantInnen besteht und dass diese thematisch über die Arbeitswelt hinaus neue Felder abdecken sollten (z. B. soziale Beziehungen, Gesundheit). Der Handlungsbedarf für MigrantInnen aus dem ehemaligen Jugoslawien ist grösser als für die italienischsprachigen MigrantInnen. Unter den MigrantInnen gibt es Personengruppen, die kaum über Deutschkenntnisse verfügen. Diese sind sozial isoliert und dadurch für Kursangebote sehr schlecht erreichbar. Es müssen somit spezifische Konzepte, Kursformen und Marketingstrategien entwickelt werden, die den sprachlichen Bedürfnissen der verschiedenen MigrantInnengruppen Rechnung tragen. Bei der Entwicklung von Angeboten empfiehlt es sich, die zeitlichen und finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen der MigrantInnen zu beachten

Sidecut radius and the mechanics of turning—equipment designed to reduce risk of severe traumatic knee injuries in alpine giant slalom ski racing.

Background: There is limited empirical knowledge about the effect of ski geometry, particularly in the context of injury prevention in alpine ski racing. We investigated the effect of sidecut radius on biomechanical variables related to the mechanics of turning. Methods: During a field experiment, six European Cup level athletes skied on three different pairs of giant slalom (GS) skis varying in sidecut radii (30 m, 35 m and 40 m). Using a video-based three-dimensional (3D) kinematic system, a 22-point body segment model of the athletes was reconstructed in 3D, and the variables ground reaction force, centre of mass (COM) speed, COM turn radius, ski turn radius, edge angle, fore/aft position and skid angle were calculated. Results: While steering out of the fall line after gate passage, ground reaction force significantly differed between the 30 m and 40 m skis and between the 35 m and 40 m skis. These differences were mainly explainable by larger COM turn radii when skiing on the 40 m ski. During the same turn phase, significant differences in ski turn radius also were found, but there were no differences in edge angle, fore/aft position and skid angle. Summary: The sidecut-induced reduction in ground reaction force and the sidecut-induced increase in centre of mass and ski turn radius observed in this study provides indirect evidence of reduced self-steering of the ski. Self-steering plays a central role in the mechanism of anterior cruciate ligament rupture in alpine ski racing