Is there a link between children's motor abilities and unintentional injuries?

PROBLEM: The common view is that clumsy children experience unintentional injury more frequently. Empirical evidence supporting this position is mixed. METHOD: One hundred 6- and 8-year-olds completed a battery of nine tasks designed to assess motor ability. Mothers completed a lifetime injury history measure about their children and families completed a 2-week injury diary assessing frequency and severity of daily injuries. RESULTS: Internal reliability for the motor ability battery was good. Correlations between motor ability measures and injury risk were nonsignificant and near zero. DISCUSSION: Motor ability does not appear to be directly related to injury risk. Possible explanations include: (a) coordinated and clumsy children engage in hazardous activities with differing frequency; or (b) other individual difference factors may interact with motor ability to explain children's injury risk. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Children's motor abilities do not appear to be directly linked to rate of unintentional injury, but instead may influence risk for injury in conjunction with other factors. Results could have implications to the engineering of children's toys and playground equipment and to the design of appropriate supervision strategies for children engaging in potentially dangerous activities.     

Driving disability and dizziness

PROBLEM: People with dizziness caused by vestibular (i.e., inner ear) disorders complain of difficulty driving. Physicians occasionally warn their patients with vestibular disorders not to drive. Few studies have asked patients about their driving performance, so little data are available. METHOD: Using the Driving Habits Questionnaire, the authors did structured interviews with people with several different vestibular disorders and with normal subjects. The self-reported crash rate and rate of citations for moving violations did not differ between the subject groups. RESULTS: Patients report reduced driving skills, particularly in situations when visual information is reduced, rapid head movements are used, and specific path integration or spatial navigation skills are needed.     

高速公路交通事故分析及预防对策研究

利用济青高速公路 1998～ 1999年发生的 10 85起交通事故数据 ,在资料收集、处理和统计分析的基础上 ,对影响高速公路交通事故的人、车辆、道路环境、天气和交通量等主要因素进行了分析 ,并与国外的统计结果进行对比研究 ,预测出随着高速公路交通量的增长 ,事故率将会增加。此外 ,笔者针对影响高速公路事故因素提出了主动性、被动性预防对策 ,这些对策的实施将会减少高速公路事故的发生     

Wildfire effects on hiking and biking demand in New Mexico: a travel cost study

We use a travel cost model to test the effects of wild and prescribed fire on visitation by hikers and mountain bikers in New Mexico. Our results indicate that net benefits for mountain bikers is $150 per trip and that they take an average of 6.2 trips per year. Hikers take 2.8 trips per year with individual net benefits per trip of $130. Both hikers' and mountain bikers' demand functions react adversely to prescribed burning. Net benefits for both groups fall as areas recover from prescribed burns. Because both visitation and annual recreation benefits decrease to these two types of visitors, this gives rise to multiple use costs associated with prescribed burning. With respect to wildfire, hikers and mountain bikers both exhibit decreased visitation as areas recover from wildfires, however, only hikers indicate an increase in per trip net benefits. Bikers' demand effectively drops to zero. These results differ from previous findings in the literature and have implications for efficient implementation of the National Fire Plan and whether prescribed burning is a cost effective tool for multiple use management of National Forests. Specifically, that fire and recreation managers cannot expect recreation users to react similarly to fire across recreation activities, or different geographic regions. What is cost effective in one region may not be so in another.     

Prioritizing Wetland Restoration for Sediment Yield Reduction: A Conceptual Model

In a climate of limited resources, it is often necessary to prioritize restoration efforts geographically. The synoptic approach is an ecologically based tool for geographic prioritization of wetland protection and restoration efforts. The approach was specifically designed to incorporate best professional judgment in cases where information and resources are otherwise limited. Synoptic assessments calculate indices for functional criteria in subunits (watersheds, counties, etc.) of a region and then rank the subunits. Ranks can be visualized in region-scale maps which enable managers to identify areas where efforts optimize functional performance on a regional scale. In this paper, we develop a conceptual model for prioritizing watersheds whose wetlands can be restored to reduce total sediment yield at the watershed outlet. The conceptual model is designed to rank watersheds but not individual wetlands within a watershed. The synoptic approach is valid for applying the sediment yield reduction model because there is high demand for prioritizing disturbed wetlands for restoration, but there is limited, quantitative, accurate information available with which to make decisions. Furthermore, the cost of creating a comprehensive database is prohibitively high. Finally, because the model will be used for planning purposes, and, specifically, for prioritizing based on multiple decisions rather than optimizing a single decision, the consequence of prioritization errors is low. Model results cannot be treated as scientific findings. The conclusions of an assessment are based on judgement, but this judgement is guided by scientific principles and a general understanding of relevant ecological processes. The conceptual model was developed as the first step towards prioritizing of wetland restoration for sediment yield reduction in US EPA Region 4.     

Environmental Water-Quality Zones for Streams: A Regional Classification Scheme

Various approaches have been used to classify large geographical areas into smaller regions of similar water quality or extrapolate water-quality data from a few streams to other unmonitored streams. A combination of some of the strengths of existing techniques is used to develop a new approach for these purposes. In this new approach, referred to here as SPARTA (SPAtial Regression-Tree Analysis), environmental characteristics for each monitored stream are first quantified using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and then regression-tree analysis is used to determine which characteristics are most statistically important in describing the distribution of a specific water-quality constituent. GIS coverages of only the most statistically significant environmental characteristics are then used to subdivide the area of interest into relatively homogeneous environmental water-quality zones. Results from the regression-tree analysis not only define the most important environmental characteristics, but also describe how to subdivide the coverage of the specific characteristic (for example, areas with <26% or ≥26% soil clay content). The resulting regionalization scheme is customized for each water-quality constituent based on the environmental characteristics most statistically related to that constituent. SPARTA was used to delineate areas of similar phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment concentrations (by including land-use characteristics) and areas of similar potential water quality (by excluding land-use characteristics). The SPARTA approach reduced the variability in water-quality concentrations (phosphorus, total nitrogen, Kjeldahl nitrogen, and suspended sediment) within similarly classified zones from that obtained using the US Environmental Protection Agency's nutrient ecoregions.     

EMMC process for combined removal of organics, nitrogen and an odor producing substance

In order to improve the process performance regarding the removal of organics, nitrogen, and an odor-causing compound (sulfide) contained in domestic wastewater, an entrapped-mixed-microbial cell (EMMC) with and without humic substances for both fixed and moving carrier reactors and conventional suspended growth culture (i.e. conventional activated sludge process) were investigated simultaneously. Both synthetic (simulated to the organics concentration of general domestic sewage) and actual domestic wastewater were investigated under operational conditions of 12 h of hydraulic retention time (HRT) with 1 h of aeration and 1 h of non-aeration, and 6 h of HRT with continuous aeration, at a room temperature of 25 +/- 2 degrees C. It was found that entrapping humic substances in the EMMC carriers had no impact on the removal of organics, nitrogen, and the odor-producing compound. Additionally, the performance of the EMMC moving carrier system for the removal of these pollutants is similar to that of the EMMC fixed carrier system. In general, the EMMC associated systems which provide high solids retention time achieve a better removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), nitrogen, and the odor-producing substance than the suspended growth system for both HRTs of 6 h (continuous aeration) and 12 h (1 h of aeration and 1 h of non-aeration). Both the fixed and moving carrier EMMC processes, therefore, have the potential for improvement or replacement of the existing conventional activated sludge process with regard to improving the effluent qualities (such as COD, nitrogen and odor-producing compound) for reuse/disposal.     

A participatory approach to ecosystem conservation: fuzzy cognitive maps and stakeholder group analysis in Uluabat Lake,Turkey

Fuzzy cognitive mapping was used to develop a participatory ecosystem management plan for Uluabat Lake, Turkey. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders belonging to six different groups. Lake pollution was the most central and most mentioned variable for stakeholders. Stakeholder groups agree that lake pollution is negatively affecting ecosystem health and thereby local economies. Thus, reducing lake pollution was chosen as the overall goal for the management plan. Possible ways to reduce lake pollution and increase ecosystem health were seen differently by the different groups. Hunters, factory managers, NGO personnel, and local people thought industry was the main cause of lake pollution, while officials from the government and local municipalities thought roads and urban development contributed the most to lake pollution. Generally the stakeholder groups did not perceive their own actions as affecting the lake as strongly as other groups thought. For example, factory managers viewed factory pollution as negatively affecting the lake but less strongly than the other groups did. According to policy option simulations, reducing lake pollution had positive effects on all variables, especially fish, birds, animal husbandry, irrigation, agriculture, and the ecological balance of the lake. Results of this analysis were used to facilitate meetings among stakeholder groups and to develop a participatory ecosystem management plan. The analysis was useful for pointing out the similarities as well as the differences among the groups. It also helped the facilitators understand the focus of each stakeholder group and enabled them to suggest activities in which each group would want to participate.     

Application of Multiattribute Decision-Making Methods for the Determination of Relative Significance Factor of Impact Categories

A relative significance factor (f _i ) of an impact category is the external weight of the impact category. The objective of this study is to propose a systematic and easy-to-use method for the determination of f _i . Multiattribute decision-making (MADM) methods including the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the rank-order centroid method, and the fuzzy method were evaluated for this purpose. The results and practical aspects of using the three methods are compared. Each method shows the same trend, with minor differences in the value of f _i . Thus, all three methods can be applied to the determination of f _i . The rank order centroid method reduces the number of pairwise comparisons by placing the alternatives in order, although it has inherent weakness over the fuzzy method in expressing the degree of vagueness associated with assigning weights to criteria and alternatives. The rank order centroid method is considered a practical method for the determination of f _i because it is easier and simpler to use compared to the AHP and the fuzzy method.