U.S. consumer crash test results and injury risk in police-reported crashes

Consumer crash test programs provide comparative information on the crashworthiness of new vehicles which, in turn, should predict the performance of the same vehicles in real-world crashes. However, the detail and quality of available information from tests and real-world crashes differ widely, so identifying meaningful relationships between crash test results and real-world crashworthiness can be difficult. Despite these data limitations, studies in the late 1980s and mid-1990s reported positive correlations between dummy injury measures from the U.S. New Car Assessment Program (USNCAP) and real-world fatality rates. More recent analyses of results from Australian crash tests and real-world crashes also have found positive correlations. This article considers relationships between recent U.S. frontal crash test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and USNCAP, and real-world crash injury risk estimates computed from police-reported crash data from three U.S. states. The frontal crash test results include dummy injury measures by body region from both IIHS offset tests and USNCAP full-width barrier tests plus measures of structural performance from the IIHS offset tests. Individually, results from the full-width and offset tests were not significantly correlated with the real-world injury risk estimates. Stronger relationships were found when a combination of overall ratings from the full-frontal and offset tests was used. However, the current results find only weak correlations between both full-front and offset frontal crash test performance and the real-world injury risk estimates. These weak relationships likely reflect the lack of detail and fundamental difference in injury information in police crash reports compared to that used in deriving crashworthiness ratings from the crash tests.     

Crops,cows or timber? Including carbon values in land use choices

Farm forestry is a very minor land use in the inland agricultural landscapes of Australia. The Australian Government intends to introduce a program to encourage landholders to trade the carbon sequestration value of plantations and this may change the relative profitability of plantations against other agricultural land uses. This research compares the returns from a timber and ‘carbon’ plantation, with those from grazing and a common crop rotation in the Kingaroy area of Queensland.Typical production patterns for all systems were developed from producer and expert knowledge and soil and vegetation sampling were used to estimate sequestration rates. The costs and benefits of all land use systems were converted into monetary terms and discounted to produce net present values. With a standard discount rate and average commodity prices based on recent history, cultivation is the most profitable option, followed by pasture and plantations. After the inclusion of carbon, plantations are the most profitable option, followed by pasture and cultivation. A number of qualifications of these findings are also discussed.     

Nexus between environment regulation,FDI, and green technology innovation in OECD countries

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - To achieve the goal of “sustainable development,” a crucial way is promoting green technology innovation. This paper examines the nexus...     

Sodium nitrate as a methanogenesis suppressor in earthen separator microbial fuel cell treating rice mill wastewater

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is one of the sustainable technologies, which alongside treating wastewater, can generate electricity. However, its...     

Recent Developments in Bacterial Nanocellulose Production and its Biomedical Applications

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Cellulose, the most abundant polysaccharide on earth, can be obtained from various sources including the cell wall of plants and woods, bacteria, algae,...     

Investigation on mercury flow and emission in integrated primary iron production process

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - The Minamata convention addresses the issue related to mercury poisoning and aim to reduce mercury pollution, as mercury is one of the major...     

Recycling of waste tire by pyrolysis to recover carbon black: an alternative reinforcing filler

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Thermal pyrolysis of waste tires is an industrially beneficial method for material and energy recovery. Pyrolytic carbon black (CBp) is considered...