Distracted walking: cell phones increase injury risk for college pedestrians

Introduction

Distraction on cell phones jeopardizes motor-vehicle driver safety, but few studies examine distracted walking. At particular risk are college students, who walk frequently in and near traffic, have increased pedestrian injury rates compared to other age groups, and frequently use cell phones. Method: Using an interactive and immersive virtual environment, two experiments studied the effect of cell phone conversation on distraction of college student pedestrians. In the first, we examined whether pedestrians would display riskier behavior when distracted by a naturalistic cell phone conversation than when undistracted. We also considered whether individual difference factors would moderate the effect of the distraction. In a second experiment, we examined the impact of three forms of distraction on pedestrian safety: (a) engaging in a cell phone conversation, (b) engaging in a cognitively challenging spatial task by phone, and (c) engaging in a cognitively challenging mental arithmetic task by phone. Results: Results revealed that cell phone conversations distracted college pedestrians considerably across all pedestrian safety variables measured, with just one exception. Attention to traffic was not affected by the naturalistic phone conversation in Experiment 1, but was altered by the cognitively-demanding content of some types of conversation in Experiment 2. The content of the conversation did not play a major role in distraction across other variables; both mundane and cognitively complex conversations distracted participants. Moreover, no significant associations between individual difference factors and susceptibility to distraction emerged. Impact on Industry: Results may inform researchers, policy makers, and pedestrians themselves. Educational campaigns might discourage telephone conversations in pedestrian environments.     

Values and willingness-to-pay for sustainability-certified mobile phones

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether endorsement of personal values is associated with willingness to pay more for mobile phones with an environmental or social sustainability label. Participants were students in Sweden, Norway and Germany. A self-report inventory was used to measure willingness to pay and the importance attached to values of Schwartz’s circular model. In Sweden and Norway, participants were willing to pay, on average, 18% extra for a mobile phone with labels for environmental or social sustainability. In Germany, the corresponding share was 12%. To strive for self-enhancement values, that is, social status and prestige, as well as control and dominance over people and resources, was associated with a lower willingness to pay for mobile phones with labels for environmental or social sustainability in all three countries. Furthermore, women were willing to pay more than men for mobile phones with both kinds of sustainability labels. In Sweden and Norway, participants were, on average, willing to pay more for a mobile phone with a label for social sustainability compared to a mobile phone with a label for environmental sustainability.     

楼顶式移动基站电磁辐射污染调查

对南通市楼顶式移动基站电磁辐射污染进行了调查。结果表明,南通市418个楼顶站基站周边地面50 m范围内电磁辐射功率密度值均能满足《电磁环境控制限值》(GB 8702—2014)的要求;楼顶美化天线、集束天线和景观塔等建设较晚的楼顶塔形地面电磁辐射强度相对较小,楼顶角钢塔、拉线塔和抱杆等建设较早的塔形地面电磁辐射强度相对较大;楼顶塔所在楼顶平台监测值存在轻度超标的情况。提出,应严格控制楼顶塔所在楼顶的人员可达性,即基站电磁辐射防护区应高出楼顶2 m以上,避免公众进入基站电磁辐射防护区内,受到基站天线的过量辐射影响。     

Abundance of antibiotic resistance genes and their association with bacterial communities in activated sludge of wastewater treatment plants: Geographical distribution and network analysis

Wastewater treatment plants(WWTPs) are deemed reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes(ARGs). Bacterial phylogeny can shape the resistome in activated sludge. However, the co-occurrence and interaction of ARGs abundance and bacterial communities in different WWTPs located at continental scales are still not comprehensively understood. Here, we applied quantitative PCR and Miseq sequence approaches to unveil the changing profiles of ARGs(sul1, sul2, tet W, tet Q, tet X), int I1 gene, and bacterial communities in 18 geographically distributed WWTPs. The results showed that the average relative abundance of sul1 and sul2 genes were 2.08 × 10~(-1) and 1.32 × 10~(-1) copies/16 S rRNA copies, respectively. The abundance of tet W gene was positively correlated with the Shannon diversity index(H′), while both studied sul genes had significant positive relationship with the int I1 gene. The highest average relative abundances of sul1, sul2, tet X, and int I1 genes were found in south region and oxidation ditch system. Network analysis found that 16 bacterial genera co-occurred with tet W gene. Co-occurrence patterns were revealed distinct community interactions between aerobic/anoxic/aerobic and oxidation ditch systems. The redundancy analysis model plot of the bacterial community composition clearly demonstrated that the sludge samples were significant differences among those from the different geographical areas,and the shifts in bacterial community composition were correlated with ARGs. Together,these findings from the present study will highlight the potential risks of ARGs and bacterial populations carrying these ARGs, and enable the development of suitable technique to control the dissemination of ARGs from WWTPs into aquatic environments.     

成都地区移动通信基站电磁辐射影响与水平

通过对成都地区典型移动通信基站的电磁环境监测,分析了移动通信基站的电磁环境规律及程度,明确其产生电磁环境影响在10-2W/m2等级,满足国标公众照射限值0.4W/m2的要求,并提出移动通信基站选址需要考虑的问题。     

Recent advances and perspectives towards emission inventories of mobile sources: Compilation approaches, data acquisition methods, and case studies

In recent years, great efforts have been devoted to reducing emissions from mobile sources with the dramatic growth of motor vehicle and nonroad mobile source populations. Compilation of a mobile source emission inventory is conducive to the analysis of pollution emission characteristics and the formulation of emission reduction policies. This study summarizes the latest compilation approaches and data acquisition methods for mobile source emission inventories. For motor vehicles, a high-resolution emission inventory can be developed based on a bottom-up approach with a refined traffic flow model and real-world speed-coupled emission factors. The top-down approach has advantages when dealing with macroscale vehicle emission estimation without substantial traffic flow infrastructure. For nonroad mobile sources, nonroad machinery, inland river ships, locomotives, and civil aviation aircraft, a top-down approach based on fuel consumption or power is adopted. For ocean-going ships, a bottom-up approach based on automatic identification system (AIS) data is adopted. Three typical cases are studied, including emission reduction potential, a cost-benefit model, and marine shipping emission control. Outlooks and suggestions are given on future research directions for emission inventories for mobile sources: building localized emission models and factor databases, improving the dynamic updating capability of emission inventories, establishing a database of emission factors of unconventional pollutants and greenhouse gas from mobile sources, and establishing an urban high temporal-spatial resolution volatile organic compound (VOC) evaporation emission inventory.     

RF Exposure Health Risk Perception—A Field Study on the Egyptian Public

Summary This work addresses one of the crucial problems regarding the confusion between the existence of any actual health hazard as documented and the public perception of this hazard. The wide spread use of Radio Frequency (RF) fields in general and in mobile communication in particular has warranted a careful assessment of the public response especially in developing nations. This study comes in response to the growing penetration rate of about 10% of mobile phones in Egypt, which almost exceeds the current rate of fixed lines. It is based on a survey conducted in 2003 and includes different age groups, different levels of education, sex and standard of living. The proposed work discusses the misconceptions and health concerns of the public as far as the spread of mobile communication is concerned and compare it with similar surveys in different countries and calibrate the results with established scientific facts.     

上海市空气中NOx的污染现状及分担率

借鉴国外计算模型和方法，结合调查统计与现场测试，开展了上海市NOx排放的系统研究。结果表明：1998年上海市各类固定源和流动源共排放NOx37.7万t，其中工业固定源排放占总量的71%；在中心城区，机动车排放已成为NOx污染的主要来源，占该地区机动车和固定源排放总量的74%。     

Mobile phone use while driving: Predicting drivers’ answering intentions and compensatory decisions

The current study considered, for the first time, compensatory decisions within the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to explain why people use mobile phones while driving. The effects of age, gender, and mobile phone mode on respondents’ answering intentions and compensatory decisions were mainly examined. A series of questions were administered to 333 drivers (ages 25-59), which included (1) demographic measures, (2) scales that measured prior mobile use activities in both driving and ordinary contexts, (3) a question to measure drivers’ perceptions of the safety of hands-free phones, and (4) TPB measures, which measured answer intention and two compensatory behavioural decisions (i.e., reminding the caller that he/she is driving, limiting the length of a conversations (including perceived its limits)), along with predictive variables. Drivers reported a moderate likelihood of answering intention and a strong tendency to engage in the two compensatory behaviours. Answering intention and compensatory decisions, perceived behavioural control, perceived risk, and usage frequency were more dependent on mobile phone mode and age group than gender. The regression models explained 64% and 67% of the variance in answering intention in the handheld and hands-free scenario separately. Attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural risk and control (PBRC), and prior answering behaviour emerged as common predictors. The predictive models explained 31% and 37% of the variance for perceived limits of a conversation length in handheld and hands-free scenarios, respectively. Answering intention and PBRC consistently predicted most of the variance (handheld: 28%; hands-free: 32%) for this compensatory perception limits. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Metagenomic insights into the profile of antibiotic resistomes in sediments of aquaculture wastewater treatment system

To meet the rapidly growing global demand for aquaculture products, large amounts of antibiotics were used in aquaculture, which might accelerate the evolution of antibioticresistant bacteria(ARB) and the propagation of antibiotic genes(ARGs). In our research, we revealed the ARGs profiles, their co-occurrence with mobile genetic elements(MGEs), and potential hosts in sediments of a crab pond wastewater purification system based on metagenomic analysis. The residual antibiotic seems to increase ...