Each year, roughly 11,000 firefighters are injured as a result of slips, trips and falls, which account for over 25% of all fireground injuries. Wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) can increase risk of fall-related injuries due to its weight, restrictiveness, and increased heat stress. Modification of PPE may serve to mitigate firefighter injuries related to loss of balance and falls. We examined the effects of choosing ‘enhanced’ protective clothing (lightweight, breathable, and less restrictive compared to typical firefighting PPE) and simulated firefighting tasks (18-min bout over four activities) on subsequent gait performance. To assess the effect of wearing protective clothing and firefighting activity, seven gait parameters and three movement errors were assessed during level and obstacle-crossing walking tasks. Forty-four firefighters wore one of two types of PPE (‘Standard’, ‘Enhanced’) during three testing conditions (baseline in station uniform, pre-firefighting activity in PPE, and post-firefighting activity in PPE). The effect of donning any PPE was found to significantly impair gait performance. Fatigue may impact effective mobility since more movement errors were observed during post-activity than pre-activity assessments. Although the Enhanced PPE did not lead to any significant differences in gait parameters compared to Standard PPE, participants in Enhanced PPE made twice as many movement errors, potentially attributed to lack of familiarity with the gear. These results suggest that wearing firefighting PPE and heat-stress induced fatigue are associated with reduced gait performance and increased risk for tripping over obstacles. 相似文献
Policies aiming at improving biodiversity often consist of costly agri-environmental schemes, i.e. subsidized grazing or mowing of semi-natural areas. However, these practices have widely been found to be insufficient to mitigate biodiversity loss. Rewilding, i.e. restoring natural processes in self-sustaining biodiverse ecosystems, has been proposed as an alternative and is hypothesized to be a more cost-efficient approach to promote biodiversity conservation. Rewilding requires the availability of large natural areas which are not allocated for farming, forestry, and infrastructure to avoid potential conflicts over the use of the area. We perform an ex-ante private cost–benefit analysis of the establishment of four large nature reserves for rewilding in Denmark. We analyse the economic effects of changing from summer grazing in nature areas in combination with cultivated fields and forestry to the establishment of nature reserves in four case areas. We consider two scenarios involving conversion of agriculture and forestry areas into natural areas in combination with either extensive year-round cattle grazing or rewilding with wild large herbivores. In two case areas, it appears possible to establish large nature areas without incurring extra costs. Additionally, rewilding further reduces costs compared to year-round cattle grazing. Two opposing effects were dominant: increased economic rent occurred from the shift from summer grazing to year-round grazing or rewilding, while cessation of agriculture and forestry caused opportunity costs. 相似文献
Morphological changes within the porous architecture of laboratory scale zero valent iron (ZVI) permeable reactive barriers (PRBs), after exposure to different groundwater conditions, have been quantified experimentally for different ZVI/sand ratios (10%, 50% and 100%, W/W) with the aim of inferring porosity changes in field barriers. Column studies were conducted to simulate interaction with different water chemistries, a synthetic groundwater, acidic drainage and deionised (DI) water as control. Morphological changes, in terms of pore size and distribution, were measured using X-ray computed tomography (CT). CT image analysis revealed significant morphological changes in columns treated with different water chemistries. For example, 100% ZVI (W/W) columns had a higher frequency of small pores (0.6 mm) was observed in ZVI grains reacted with typical groundwater, resulting in a porosity of 27%, compared to 32% when exposed to DI water. In comparison, ZVI grains treated with the acidic drainage had higher porosity (44%) and larger average pore size (2.8 mm). 10% ZVI PRB barrier material had the highest mean porosity (56%) after exposure to any water chemistry whilst 100% ZVI (W/W) columns always had the lowest (34%) with the 50% ZVI (W/W) in between (40%). These results agree with previously published PRB field data and simultaneously conducted geochemical monitoring and mass balance calculation, indicating that both the geochemical and hydraulic environment of the PRB play an important role in determining barrier lifespan. This study suggests that X-ray CT image analysis is a powerful tool for studying the detailed inter pores between ZVI grains within PRBs. 相似文献
Most research on animal contests has focused on the factors that influence the intensity and outcome of aggressive contests
within nonsocial species, while relatively little is known about contests in social taxa. Here, we examine contests among
queens of the social paper wasp, Polistes dominulus. Queens use multiple reproductive strategies, including nesting alone, usurping established colonies, and cooperatively joining
other queens. We stage contests between a nesting queen and a challenger to test how resource value (RV) and resource holding
potential (RHP) influence (a) who occupies the nest at the end of the contest and (b) the extent of conflict between the queen
and challenger. We found that RHP, as measured by individuals’ facial patterns and body size, influenced the outcome of the
contest. Challengers with high RHP were more likely to successfully usurp the nest than challengers with low RHP. Interestingly,
queens with relatively high RHP were more likely to form a cooperative association with the challenger than queens with lower
RHP, suggesting that queens may evict individuals that are an aggressive threat. RV influenced the intensity of conflict.
There was more aggressive conflict over large nests than over small nests. Overall, social taxa have complex contest dynamics
with important parallels to contests in nonsocial taxa. Studying contests in social taxa provides an important perspective
on the factors that influence individual decisions about conflict versus cooperation. 相似文献
The frequency of Aeromonas spp in three wastewater-treatment plants (WWTPs) and two drinking-water plants (DWPs) in México City was determined. Samples were taken throughout a year by the Moore's swab technique. A total of 144 samples were obtained from WWTPs and 96 from DWPs of both incoming and outflowing water. Aeromonas spp was isolated in 31% of the samples, from both kinds of sources. The technique used for the isolation of the pathogen was suitable for samples with high associate microbiota content and for those with a scarce microbial content. The presence of mesophilic-aerobic, coliform, and fecal-coliform organisms was investigated to determine whether there was any correlation with the presence of Aeromonas spp. Most samples from WWTP, which did not comply with the Mexican standards, had the pathogen, and some of the samples from the outflow of the DWP, which were within the limits set by the Mexican standards, also had Aeromonas spp. Most samples containing Aeromonas spp. had concentrations below 0.1 ppm residual chlorine, and the strains were resistant to 0.3 ppm, which supports the recommendation to increase the residual chlorine concentration to 0.5 to 1.0 ppm, as recommended by the Mexican standards. 相似文献
Objective: Real-world driving studies, including those involving speeding alert devices and autonomous vehicles, can gauge an individual vehicle's speeding behavior by comparing measured speed with mapped speed zone data. However, there are complexities with developing and maintaining a database of mapped speed zones over a large geographic area that may lead to inaccuracies within the data set. When this approach is applied to large-scale real-world driving data or speeding alert device data to determine speeding behavior, these inaccuracies may result in invalid identification of speeding. We investigated speeding events based on service provider speed zone data.
Methods: We compared service provider speed zone data (Speed Alert by Smart Car Technologies Pty Ltd., Ultimo, NSW, Australia) against a second set of speed zone data (Google Maps Application Programming Interface [API] mapped speed zones).
Results: We found a systematic error in the zones where speed limits of 50–60 km/h, typical of local roads, were allocated to high-speed motorways, which produced false speed limits in the speed zone database. The result was detection of false-positive high-range speeding. Through comparison of the service provider speed zone data against a second set of speed zone data, we were able to identify and eliminate data most affected by this systematic error, thereby establishing a data set of speeding events with a high level of sensitivity (a true positive rate of 92% or 6,412/6,960).
Conclusions: Mapped speed zones can be a source of error in real-world driving when examining vehicle speed. We explored the types of inaccuracies found within speed zone data and recommend that a second set of speed zone data be utilized when investigating speeding behavior or developing mapped speed zone data to minimize inaccuracy in estimates of speeding. 相似文献
There has recently been a return in climate change risk management practice to bottom‐up, robustness‐based planning paradigms introduced 40 years ago. The World Bank's decision tree framework (DTF) for “confronting climate uncertainty” is one incarnation of those paradigms. In order to better represent the state of the art in climate change risk assessment and evaluation techniques, this paper proposes: (1) an update to the DTF, replacing its “climate change stress test” with a multidimensional stress test; and (2) the addition of a Bayesian network framework that represents joint probabilistic behavior of uncertain parameters as sensitivity factors to aid in the weighting of scenarios of concern (the combination of conditions under which a water system fails to meet its performance targets). Using the updated DTF, water system planners and project managers would be better able to understand the relative magnitudes of the varied risks they face, and target investments in adaptation measures to best reduce their vulnerabilities to change. Next steps for the DTF include enhancements in: modeling of extreme event risks; coupling of human‐hydrologic systems; integration of surface water and groundwater systems; the generation of tradeoffs between economic, social, and ecological factors; incorporation of water quality considerations; and interactive data visualization. 相似文献