Extending parental mentoring using an event-triggered video intervention in rural teen drivers

Teen drivers are at high risk for car crashes, especially during their first years of licensure. Providing novice teen drivers and their parents with a means of identifying their risky driving maneuvers may help them learn from their mistakes, thereby reducing their crash propensity. During the initial phase of learning, adult or parental supervision often provides such guidance. However, once teens obtain their license, adult supervision is no longer mandated, and teens are left to themselves to continue the learning process. This study is the first of its type to enhance this continued learning process using an event-triggered video device. By pairing this new technology with parental feedback in the form of a weekly video review and graphical report card, we extend parents' ability to teach their teens even after they begin driving independently. Twenty-six 16- to 17-year-old drivers were recruited from a small U.S. Midwestern rural high school. We equipped their vehicles with an event-triggered video device, designed to capture 20-sec clips of the forward and cabin views whenever the vehicle exceeded lateral or forward threshold accelerations. Preliminary findings suggest that combining this emerging technology with parental weekly review of safety-relevant incidents resulted in a significant decrease in events for the more at-risk teen drivers. Implications for how such an intervention could be implemented within GDL are also discussed.     

Traffic safety in the U.S.: re-examining major opportunities

INTRODUCTION: This article examines five major road-safety risk factors: exceeding posted speed limits, not using safety belts, driving while intoxicated, nighttime driving, and young drivers. METHOD: The importance of each of these factors is documented, known effective countermeasures (both policy and technology based) are discussed, and impediments to the implementation of these countermeasures in the United States are examined. RESULTS: Based on current understanding of the five major risk factors, and of the available countermeasures, there appear to be a variety of opportunities to make substantial gains in road safety using existing knowledge. The limited implementation of a variety of known countermeasures therefore appears to be inconsistent with high-level, strategic goals to improve road safety. Consequently, a recommendation is made to comprehensively re-examine the balance between the countermeasures discussed in this article and economic, mobility, and privacy concerns. IMPACT ON PUBLIC SAFETY: Such a re-examination is likely to result in broad support for these countermeasures, with a consequent major improvement in road safety.     

Quantitative Appraisement on Ecological Carrying Capacity in Coastal Rapid Developing Region of Hainan Province

The ecological carrying capacity, an important indicator to evaluate the sustainable development of the ecosystem, means the potential ability of the natural ecosystem to carry socioeconomic development while the ecosystem is healthy. It is limited by the carrying capacity of natural resources and environment and the elasticity of the ecosystem. It will be greatly significant to study the ecological carrying capacity of Hainan Province, the first ecological province admitted by the State Environmental Protection Administration in China. Not only is the natural ecosystem reflected, but also the effects of human activities are emphasized by integrating the ecosystem health analysis into the ecological carrying capacity research. The research results, using the Factor Analysis tools of software SPSS, indicate that the ecological carrying capacity of Hainan Province fluctuated obviously from 1996 to 2005. The level of the ecological carrying capacity of Hainan Province was relatively high in 1996, and reached into trough from 1997 to 1999. It has steadily ascended to be above the middle level since the 21st century. The results also show that policy factors, especially the implementation of the ＇Ecological Province＇ strategy, were important driving forces to influence the ecological carrying capacity. With the population rapidly increasing, the land and water resources per capita have decreased quickly. The amount of the ecological carrying capacity was promoted remarkably by socioeconomic development especially economic growth and technology applications. All of these will provide useful suggestions to establish and enact regional development policies, especially for protecting and reconstructing the ecology and environment of Hainan Province.     

Ranking Canadian universities: a quantitative approach for sustainability assessment using uD-SiM

This paper introduces a model that enables a comparison between universities based on sustainability indicators related to environmental, economic, social and educational aspects. The proposed model is based on a driving force-pressure-state-exposure-effect-action (DPSEEA) framework and is called uncertainty-based DPSEEA-Sustainability index Model (uD-SiM). The uD-SiM applies the concept of causality and develops sustainability index (SI), which is an outcome of nonlinear relationships of sustainability indicators in different stages of DPSEEA. In this paper, this fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making model is used to evaluate the sustainability of five Canadian universities, namely the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, the McGill University and the Memorial University. The final ranking results are compared with the Green report card ranking for 2010 through SI. The application of various actions and strategies that can be applied to different stages of the framework to improve sustainability in higher education institutions is also discussed.     

若尔盖湿地沙漠化成因分析及对策探讨

本文旨在对若尔盖湿地退化、草原沙漠化的驱动因素进行分析。找出导致湿地退化、草原沙漠化的主导因素，并寻求合理对策。在前人已有研究和野外实地考察的基础上。对获得的数据资料进行对比分析，分析结果显示近几十年来若尔盖地区人口激增、挖沟排水、过度放牧等人为因素对湿地退化、草原沙漠化的影响明显．而气温升高、降雨减少等自然因素影响较弱。分析表明．若尔盖湿地沙漠化在于人类活动干扰和自然因素的双重作用。自然因素是湿地沙漠化发生的大环境，是大空间、大跨度造成湿地沙漠化的自然环境背景．为生态环境恶化、湿地沙漠化提供一种可能性；而近几十年来人类强烈的破坏性活动才是该地区生态环境恶化、湿地沙漠化的主导因素。在遵循自然客观规律的基础上．有针对性地制定切实有效的保护和恢复措施很有必要。     

江苏省耕地资源动态变化及驱动力研究

根据江苏省不同来源耕地数据差异,适当修正得到1949~2006年耕地数据序列,引入耕地变化率、耕地分布重心等指标,研究江苏省近60年来耕地资源动态变化的基本过程及其空间差异,然后运用相关分析和因子分析初步探讨了耕地数量变化的主要驱动力,并建立耕地数量变化的多元回归模型。研究表明,江苏省耕地面积经历了由增加→急剧减少→缓慢减少→快速减少的变化过程;苏北滨海平原区、中部里下河浅洼平原区及宁镇扬低山丘岗区耕地有所增加,而苏南长江三角洲平原区耕地则急剧减少,耕地重心呈现向后备资源丰富、人地矛盾较为缓和的地区移动的趋势;人口增长与农业科技进步、经济发展和农业结构调整是耕地面积变化的主要驱动因子;预测2020年江苏省耕地总量45449×104 hm2,人均耕地0053 hm2;要保护有限的耕地资源,江苏省必须转变土地利用方式,并实行严格的耕地保护政策。     

江苏省13城市土地利用集约度时空变异及驱动因素

城市土地的高效集约化利用是城市可持续发展的客观要求。从城市土地集约利用的内涵入手,依据城市土地集约利用评价的原则,从土地利用投入水平、土地利用程度、土地利用效率、土地利用生态环境质量等方面构建了一个具有三级层次结构的城市土地集约利用度评价的指标体系,并在此基础上采用多因素综合评价,秩相关系数和聚类分析的方法以江苏省13个地级市为例进行了实证分析,结果表明：（1）1997～2006年,江苏省13城市土地利用集约度都得到了提高,但是提高的幅度和方式不同;（2）不同城市,苏南、苏中和苏北之间城市土地利用集约度呈现出明显的城市和地域差异,其中,省会南京最高,苏北的宿迁最低。最后,对造成这种时空差异的现象从区域经济环境、经济发展水平、城市性质职能与规模等方面进行了驱动力分析。     

无锡市城市扩张的空间特征及驱动力分析

以无锡市1991、1996、2001和2005年的Landsat TM/ETM+影像为数据源,采用改进后的波段组合阈值提取法对无锡市城市建成区空间信息进行提取,并参照太湖流域土地利用分类图对提取的信息进行修正;通过影像叠加分析,研究 1991~2005年无锡市城市扩张的空间分布规律,认为无锡市城市总体扩张呈现出不断增加的态势,尤其是2000年以后,城市扩展出现快速发展。同时无锡市城市空间扩张呈现出不均匀性,主要包括集中连片发展和轴向扩展两种典型的扩展模式,而城市扩展方向主要集中在常州 无锡 苏州城市中心线沿线和环太湖方向,其中以东南部和东部扩展最为迅速;结合无锡市 1991~2005年社会经济以及人文数据,分析了人口及经济发展对城市扩张的影响,结果表明：人口的增加和城市的经济发展是影响无锡市城市扩展的两个重要因素。     

三峡库区生态经济区用地结构演变及驱动机制——以梁平县为例

根据1999～2007年土地利用统计、社会经济资料,借助信息熵原理及马尔科夫转移矩阵模型对梁平县土地利用结构动态演变进行了实例分析。结果表明,梁平县土地利用结构信息熵H经历了3个阶段：1999～2002年持续上升阶段、2002～2003年急速回落阶段及 2003～2007年波动阶段,土地利用结构无序程度发展态势不明显,均衡度变化与信息熵相似。用地类型主要由耕地转向林地、交通用地、居民点及工矿用地。定性分析了影响该县用地结构动态演变的政治经济政策,并利用主成分分析法对经济社会主要驱动因子进行了分析与探讨,得出影响该县用地结构动态演变的主要驱动力为：政治经济政策、经济发展。最后依据分析结果对梁平县未来发展做出定位：特色农业县--重点发展农林产品加工及文化生态旅游。     

汶川8.0级地震灾后响应研究——以灾后学生响应为例

基于网络信息,以学生群体对汶川8.0级地震响应为研究对象,通过对搜集到的复杂网络信息的分类和分级,刻画出非灾区学生群体的灾害响应能力,探讨了学生灾后响应主要类型、强度的空间分异及灾后响应的驱动力。结果表明：①学生灾后响应的主要类型是学生自发捐款、中小学异地复课等;②造成学生灾后响应空间差异的主要因素不是交通条件,而是空间距离导致心理疏离;③学生灾后响应的驱动力随时间的变化特征不同,其中满足自我强化需要的响应速度快但持续性较低,而满足灾源地的需要的响应速度慢但持续性高。