The Relationship Between Collision History and a Computerized Assessment of Visual and Cognitive Skills in a Sample of School Bus Drivers

The objective of this study was to explore whether measures of visual and cognitive performance in a safe computerized driving environment were associated with collision involvement and the cost of collisions in a sample of professional motor vehicle operators. One hundred and nine (109) school bus drivers in a large metropolitan area were asked to take a 15-minute interactive computer-based driving assessment. The skills included visual target identification, scanning in four directions, divided-attention, reaction time, steering smoothness, false positive responses, and evasive maneuvers. An overall score validated in previous research summarized each driver’s performance. Each driver’s collision history over the last three years was then compared to the driving assessment scores. Collision data included collision type, frequency, and damage cost associated with each incident. Drivers with collisions (n = 27) were compared to drivers with no collisions (n = 82). Drivers with collisions had significantly lower overall scanning and steering smoothness scores than drivers without collisions. Drivers with collisions also had significantly higher braking and target false-positive scores, indicating disorientation. The total cost of collisions for the lower 40th percentile test scores was $42,261, whereas the cost for the upper 60th percentile was$10,314. The results indicate that drivers who are prone to become disoriented and overwhelmed in a high-demand computerized assessment were more likely to have had collisions on the road. The relationship between collision cost/incidence and test scores suggests that a sufficiently complex and rapidly paced computerized assessment has utility in identifying drivers who would benefit from remedial training

The Relationship Between Collision History and a Computerized Assessment of Visual and Cognitive Skills in a Sample of School Bus Drivers

The objective of this study was to explore whether measures of visual and cognitive performance in a safe computerized driving environment were associated with collision involvement and the cost of collisions in a sample of professional motor vehicle operators. One hundred and nine (109) school bus drivers in a large metropolitan area were asked to take a 15-minute interactive computer-based driving assessment. The skills included visual target identification, scanning in four directions, divided-attention, reaction time, steering smoothness, false positive responses, and evasive maneuvers. An overall score validated in previous research summarized each driver’s performance. Each driver’s collision history over the last three years was then compared to the driving assessment scores. Collision data included collision type, frequency, and damage cost associated with each incident. Drivers with collisions (n = 27) were compared to drivers with no collisions (n = 82). Drivers with collisions had significantly lower overall scanning and steering smoothness scores than drivers without collisions. Drivers with collisions also had significantly higher braking and target false-positive scores, indicating disorientation. The total cost of collisions for the lower 40th percentile test scores was $42,261, whereas the cost for the upper 60th percentile was$10,314. The results indicate that drivers who are prone to become disoriented and overwhelmed in a high-demand computerized assessment were more likely to have had collisions on the road. The relationship between collision cost/incidence and test scores suggests that a sufficiently complex and rapidly paced computerized assessment has utility in identifying drivers who would benefit from remedial training

The Impact of Conformance and Experiential Quality on Healthcare Cost and Clinical Performance

The quality of operational processes is an important driver of performance in hospitals. In particular, processes that reliably deliver both evidence-based and patient-centered care, which we call conformance and experiential quality, respectively, have been argued to result in better clinical outcomes. However, hospitals, in general, struggle to perform well on these quality dimensions. Operations management theory suggests that this may be due to the cost involved in combining these dimensions. In other words, there may be a tradeoff between clinical and financial performance. To investigate this issue in detail, we use longitudinal data from 3458 U.S. acute care hospitals and examine the relationships between conformance and experiential quality and two important dimensions of hospital performance: cost efficiency and clinical outcomes. We find that hospitals with high levels of both conformance and experiential quality demonstrate better clinical outcomes as measured by length of stay and readmissions, but have worse performance with regard to cost efficiency. This may result in hospitals inability to invest in both conformance and experiential quality due to the greater financial burden. We conclude by highlighting that although hospitals may need to persevere through a short term financial hardship to achieve high levels of both conformance and experiential quality, financial performance benefits are likely to emerge in the longer term. Our results have implications for researchers and policy makers investigating the operational processes, clinical outcomes, and financial performance of hospitals

Are the impacts of land use on warming underestimated in climate policy?

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Environmental Research Letters 12 (2017): 094016, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa836d.While carbon dioxide emissions from energy use must be the primary target of climate change mitigation efforts, land use and land cover change (LULCC) also represent an important source of climate forcing. In this study we compute time series of global surface temperature change separately for LULCC and non-LULCC sources (primarily fossil fuel burning), and show that because of the extra warming associated with the co-emission of methane and nitrous oxide with LULCC carbon dioxide emissions, and a co-emission of cooling aerosols with non-LULCC emissions of carbon dioxide, the linear relationship between cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and temperature has a two-fold higher slope for LULCC than for non-LULCC activities. Moreover, projections used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the rate of tropical land conversion in the future are relatively low compared to contemporary observations, suggesting that the future projections of land conversion used in the IPCC may underestimate potential impacts of LULCC. By including a ‘business as usual’ future LULCC scenario for tropical deforestation, we find that even if all non-LULCC emissions are switched off in 2015, it is likely that 1.5 ◦C of warming relative to the preindustrial era will occur by 2100. Thus, policies to reduce LULCC emissions must remain a high priority if we are to achieve the low to medium temperature change targets proposed as a part of the Paris Agreement. Future studies using integrated assessment models and other climate simulations should include more realistic deforestation rates and the integration of policy that would reduce LULCC emissions.We would like to acknowledge the support from grants NSF-ATM1049033, NSF-CCF-1522054, NSFAGS- 1048827 and DOE-SC0016362, DOE Office of Science Biogeochemical Cycles Feedbacks and ACME Science Focus Areas as well as assistance from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Futur

Trace Gas Measurements in Nascent, Aged, and Cloud-Processed Smoke from African Savanna Fires by Airborne Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (AFTIR)

[1] We measured stable and reactive trace gases with an airborne Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (AFTIR) on the University of Washington Convair-580 research aircraft in August/September 2000 during the SAFARI 2000 dry season campaign in Southern Africa. The measurements included vertical profiles of CO2, CO, H2O, and CH4 up to 5.5 km on six occasions above instrumented ground sites and below the TERRA satellite and ER-2 high-flying research aircraft. We also measured the trace gas emissions from 10 African savanna fires. Five of these fires featured extensive ground-based fuel characterization, and two were in the humid savanna ecosystem that accounts for most African biomass burning. The major constituents that we detected in nascent smoke were (in order of excess molar abundance) H2O, CO2, CO, CH4, NO2, NO, C2H4, CH3COOH, HCHO, CH3OH, HCN, NH3, HCOOH, and C2H2. These are the first quantitative measurements of the initial emissions of oxygenated volatile organic compounds (OVOC), NH3, and HCN from African savanna fires. On average, we measured 5.3 g/kg of OVOC and 3.6 g/kg of hydrocarbons (including CH4) in the initial emissions from the fires. Thus, the OVOC will have profound, largely unexplored effects on tropical tropospheric chemistry. The HCN emission factor was only weakly dependent on fire type; the average value (0.53 g/kg) is about 20 times that of a previous recommendation. HCN may be useful as a tracer for savanna fires. ΔO3/ΔCO and ΔCH3COOH/ΔCO increased to as much as 9% in \u3c1 h of photochemical processing downwind of fires. Direct measurements showed that cloud processing of smoke greatly reduced CH3OH, NH3, CH3COOH, SO2, and NO2 levels, but significantly increased HCHO and NO