High Occupancy Research Articles

Erroneous High Occupancy Vehicle Lane Data: Detecting Misconfigured Traffic Sensors With Machine Learning

Quality data are vital to the planning and operation of traffic systems. High occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, for instance, must comply with federal performance standards. If an agency fails to meet the standards, the facility is considered to be “degraded” and the agency is required to undertake actions that would return the facility to satisfactory operation. This could include removing exempted vehicles (e.g., low-emission vehicles) or increasing toll prices and passenger occupancy limits. Such policy changes may be costly, and may affect related policy goals, such as promoting clean air vehicles. Owing to constant changes in the system (e.g., roadwork, system upgrades), some of the thousands of HOV sensors in California’s transportation system are misconfigured, such as being labeled as general-purpose lanes. In this situation, HOV lane data may be mistakenly aggregated with general-purpose lane data and vice versa, causing a HOV facility to be erroneously reported as degraded and requiring unnecessary policy action. Detecting these misconfigurations is challenging and labor-intensive to accomplish manually. The purpose of this research was to utilize machine learning techniques to detect sensor misconfigurations and to understand the extent to which they affect performance reporting of HOV lanes. The results for Caltrans District 7 (Los Angeles and Ventura counties) showed that about 5% to 8% of Performance Measurement System HOV sensors are misconfigured. Therefore approximately 27 to 44 mi of HOV lanes are erroneously measured, with approximately 10 to 16 mi (38%) of those reporting an erroneously high degradation rating.

Optimizing metal geometrical structure of transition metal phosphides/P doped g-C3N4 enabling boosted water splitting

Metal geometrical structure engineering of composite catalysts is powerful to boost their photocatalytic performance of hydrogen evolution. Herein, by rationally designing, transition metal phosphides (TMPs) have been loaded onto the P doped g-C3N4 (PCN) to construct catalysts TMPs/PCN. For the first time, the effect of geometrical structure of TMPs on the photocatalytic activity is optimized and a geometrical-site-dependent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution is experimentally determined. Tri-metallic FeCoNiP/PCN, having 59.6% occupancy of tetrahedral cobalt sites, gives hydrogen production rate of 205 μmol/g/h, better than that of mono-metallic (FeP, CoP, NiP), bi-metallic (FeCoP, CoNiP, FeNiP) TMPs/PCN, and even much superior to that of Pt/b-g-C3N4 and Pt/PCN. Trimetallic TMPs/PCN catalysts also show excellent OER performance. In addition to the efficient electron transfer between FeCoNiP and PCN, which can effectively improve the separation of photogenerated carriers, the high occupancy of tetrahedral cobalt sites of FeCoNiP as a co-catalyst promotes the formation of active intermediates, being the key to significantly improve the catalytic performance of ternary FeCoNiP/PCN. The findings in this work, especially about a link of the photocatalytic performance of TMPs/PCN composites and occupancy of tetrahedral cobalt site in co-catalysts TMPs, can open new occasion for creating novel composite catalysts and extending to other applications.

Assessing Indoor Environmental Quality in a Crowded Low-Quality Built Environment: A Case Study

Home heating, cooling and ventilation are a major concern for those living in low-quality built environments, particularly those with high occupancy rates (crowded houses). In New Zealand, both owner-occupiers and tenants can experience problems associated with poor Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), such as poor thermal comfort and dampness, when Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems are not installed, improperly installed or too expensive to run. Occupants of poorer households are the most affected by high installation or running costs of HVAC systems, and are also more likely to live in households with a higher level of crowding. Poor IEQ in housing is associated with adverse health outcomes, particularly respiratory illness. This paper outlines the IEQ problems experienced by households living in an area of New Zealand with higher levels deprivation and shows how an HVAC system could be employed to remedy poor IEQ. This report presents a case study of a house with poor IEQ that was selected from a survey conducted across 24 homes in the Manukau, Auckland region of New Zealand. The IEQ results are presented for this house, which performs poorly in terms of relative humidity, temperature and thermal comfort. This house is then analysed using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach in ANSYS CFX 2021R1 based on the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Airconditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standard 55-2017 and a model of temperature and air flow is created in the software, which can identify ways to improve these parameters in the house. These results are compared with the New Zealand Healthy Homes Standards 2019. The simulation showed the system was capable of lifting the indoor temperature to above 21 ℃, eliminating cold spots and improving thermal comfort, and reduced relative humidity to below 50%.

Exploring the gender gap in welfare attitudes: relational skills and perceptions of pay equity

AbstractThis article introduces a new aspect of skill profiles, ‘relational skills’, to examine how occupation-oriented relational skills can activate different perceptions of pay equity between genders and influence support for the welfare state. Relational skills refer to the degree of which a worker possesses skills pertaining to human interactions to those regarding the operation of machines or tools. We examine how relational skill ratio differently influences perceptions of justice in the pay system for men and women and how this shapes their welfare attitudes. By analyzing levels of support for redistribution in 30 OECD member countries targeted by the International Social Survey Program in 2009, we find the gender divide in social policy preferences to be the widest in high relational skill occupations. We argue that this divide is associated with the significant contrast between men and women in whether they perceive their pay to justly reflect their efforts and skills. Our findings suggest that women’s perceptions of discriminatory wage scales and support for the welfare state will be most prominent in occupations that present evaluation ambiguities or gender ascriptions that challenge women from breaking the glass ceiling.

HOT Lanes in Houston—Six Years of Experience

High occupancy/toll (HOT) lanes allow travelers to pay a toll to enter a high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane when they do not meet the minimum occupancy restrictions of the lane. In cases where HOV lanes are not utilized to their full capacity, this provides an effective, and controlled, use of that spare capacity along with a revenue source to offset expenses. Although this is a promising concept, and many cities around the United States are examining the potential development of a HOT lane, only four HOT lanes currently exist. This research documents the findings of six years of experience with two HOT lanes in Houston, Texas. This includes an examination of the daily number of paying customers on the HOT lanes, benefits of the HOT lanes, socioeconomic and commute characteristics of HOT lane users, and their mode of choice when electing not to use the HOT lane.

Impact of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lane Incentives for Hybrids in Virginia

This paper examines the impact of Virginia’s policy of exempting hybrid-electric vehicles from minimum occupancy requirements on state HOV lanes. Virginia registration statistics are used to compile hybrid market shares on a county level to compare the impact of HOV lane access to other socioeconomic variables. The HOV incentive is shown to have a significant impact in Northern Virginia, but not in the Hampton Roads area. The paper also addresses the criticisms and potential unintended consequences of the incentive policy, including whether it has impacted the “green” image of the hybrid in Virginia.

Where Land and Water Meet: Making Amphibian Breeding Sites Attractive for Amphibians

The protection of wetlands is a cornerstone in the conservation of pond-breeding amphibians. Because protected wetlands are rarely natural areas, but are often man-made, at least in Europe, it is important that they are well managed to fulfill their intended function. Appropriate management requires knowledge of the ecology of the species, particularly habitat requirements. Here, we combine species monitoring data and habitat mapping data in an analysis where our goal was to describe the factors that determine the occupancy of amphibian species in federally protected amphibian breeding sites. As expected, every species had its own habitat requirements, often a combination of both a terrestrial and aquatic habitat (i.e., landscape complementation). In most species, occupancy was strongly positively affected with the amount of aquatic habitat, but predicted occupancy probabilities were low because the amount of aquatic habitat was low in most sites. The area or proportion of ruderal vegetation also had positive effects on multiple species, while other types of terrestrial habitat (e.g., meadows) led to low occupancy probabilities. The total area of the protected breeding sites was never included in a final model and connectivity was important only for one species (Triturus cristatus). The latter finding implies that the quality of the landscape between breeding sizes is more important than distance per se, while the former implies that the area of some specific habitats within breeding sites is crucial for high occupancies. Thus, increasing the amount of aquatic habitats and likewise terrestrial habitats within protected areas would make them more likely to achieve their conservation objectives. Our study is an example of how the joint analysis of monitoring data and habitat data (based on mapping in the field) can lead to evidence-based suggestions on how to improve conservation practice.

Machine Learning Empowered Spectrum Sensing Under a Sub-Sampling Framework

Compressive sensing (CS) is a technique frequently adopted in wireless communications. By utilizing CS, a receiver could sense the state of channels with sub-Nyquist analog to digital converters when signals are sparse. Traditional CS methods struggle with non-sparse signals due to their intrinsic sparsity assumption. Therefore, we propose using deep learning (DL) to solve the vector support recovery problem with channels’ high occupancy. The simulation results show that the proposed CS framework powered by DL can perform better than a traditional CS analytical benchmark, both in high and low channel occupation regions. We also observe that the ML can work under a lower sampling rate than traditional CS methods. To process data sampled with high channel numbers, a divide and conquer tactic is implemented.

Performance of upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) system in learning environments: Effects of ventilation rate, UV fluence rate, and UV radiating volume

• We study performance of upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems. • Performance of upper-room UVGI system in a classroom varies with ventilation rate. • Non-uniform airflow pattern meaningfully influences the UVGI system performance. • UV radiating volume is more crucial for virus disinfection than UV fluence rate. • Doubling UV fluence rate from 25 to 50 μW∙cm-2 yields only moderate benefit. Previous studies show that upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems can help contain infectious airborne viruses indoors. However, there has been a lack of research on the performance of an upper-room UVGI system in learning environments such as a school classroom. Since classrooms are more vulnerable to airborne transmission of diseases due to high occupancy for long hours, airborne infection characteristics are different from other occupied indoor environments (e.g., offices and residences). The objective of this study is to investigate UVGI system performance in a classroom considering detailed effects of ventilation rate, UV fluence rate, and UV radiating volume. Two analytical models, a one-zone and a two-zone material balance model, along with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, were employed to analyze viral aerosol concentrations under a representative range of classroom operating conditions. The CFD results show that increasing ventilation rate from 1.1 h –1 to 5 h –1 yields about 85% of airborne disinfection while doubling UV radiating volume results in a 60% disinfection. However, increasing UV fluence rate from 25 μW∙cm –2 to 50 μW∙cm –2 yields a moderate additional disinfection of 18%. Overall, the study results reveal that operating a UVGI system in an occupied classroom can markedly disinfect airborne viruses up to 96%, which is as effective as increasing ventilation rate more than five times. Furthermore, the results suggest that the one-zone and two-zone analytical models used in several previous studies could result in notably meaningful errors in analyzing viral aerosol concentrations, especially in occupied rooms with a highly non-uniform airflow distribution.

First population estimates of two Critically Endangered frogs from an isolated forest plateau in Madagascar

AbstractIn the largely deforested areas of Madagascar, small forest fragments remain as last refuges for amphibian diversity. Isolated populations of the Critically Endangered Anodonthyla vallani and Anilany helenae persist in the fragmented forest of Ambohitantely but little information is available to inform their management and any conservation interventions. We generated estimates of population size and occupancy for both species in the largest fragment of Ambohitantely Special Reserve using acoustic survey data collected from 84 sites along 12 transects in December 2018. We used a single-season occupancy model to estimate detection and occupancy and a Royal–Nichols model to estimate abundance and population size. Anilany helenae and A. vallani had high occupancy rates (80 and 93%, respectively) whereas their detection rates differed (34 and 55%, respectively). Abundance and occupancy were best explained by vegetation structure whereas detection was influenced by time of survey and rainfall. For our sampled sites the estimated population sizes of males were 855 for A. vallani, with an estimated density of 52 individuals/ha, and 388 for A. helenae, with an estimated population density of 23 individuals/ha. Given their relatively low densities, small population sizes and restricted ranges, any further habitat loss could have drastic consequences for these populations. Our results provide guidance for future species-focused studies, and can inform conservation management at the local scale. Our work will help to improve species monitoring in Madagascar and elsewhere, especially for range-restricted non-charismatic amphibians.

Observational study of the clinical performance of a public-private partnership national referral hospital network in Lesotho: Do improvements last over time?

Public-private partnerships (PPP) may increase healthcare quality but lack longitudinal evidence for success. The Queen 'Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) in Lesotho is one of Africa's first healthcare PPPs. We compare data from 2012 and 2018 on capacity, utilization, quality, and outcomes to understand if early documented successes have been sustained using the same measures over time. In this observational study using administrative and clinical data, we assessed beds, admissions, average length of stay (ALOS), outpatient visits, and patient outcomes. We measured triage time and crash cart stock through direct observation in 2013 and 2020. Operational hospital beds increased from 390 to 410. Admissions decreased (-5.3%) while outpatient visits increased (3.8%). ALOS increased from 5.1 to 6.5 days. Occupancy increased from 82% to 99%; half of the wards had occupancy rates ≥90%, and Neonatal ward occupancy was 209%. The proportion of crash cart stock present (82.9% to 73.8%) and timely triage (84.0% to 27.6%) decreased. While overall mortality decreased (8.0% to 6.5%) and neonatal mortality overall decreased (18.0% to 16.3%), mortality among very low birth weight neonates increased (30.2% to 36.8%). Declines in overall hospital mortality are promising. Yet, continued high occupancy could compromise infection control and impede response to infections, such as COVID-19. High occupancy in the Neonatal ward suggests that the population need for neonatal care outpaces QMMH capacity; improvements should be addressed at the hospital and systemic levels. The increase in ALOS is acceptable for a hospital meant to take the most critical cases. The decline in crash cart stock completeness and timely triage may affect access to emergency treatment. While the partnership itself ended earlier than anticipated, our evaluation suggests that generally the hospital under the PPP was operational, providing high-level, critically needed services, and continued to improve patient outcomes. Quality at QMMH remained substantially higher than at the former Queen Elizabeth II hospital.

Study on Siphon Drainage Capacity of Slopes with Long-Horizontal Pipe Sections

Siphon drainage, which is applicable in engineering as one of the effective methods to maintain slope stability, has many advantages, including no additional power requirements, simple construction, and low construction cost. However, due to topographic constraints and high farmland occupation costs, most projects inevitably use pipes with a total length of more than 100 m and horizontal sections of more than 50 m for drainage. The increase in pipe length has serious adverse effects on the siphon drainage process, limiting its drainage capacity and long-term applicability. Therefore, in slope siphon drainage, drainage efficiency and long-term effectiveness are critical factors in determining whether a particular pipe size can be used effectively for slope drainage management. This paper investigates the performance of different pipe diameters in drainage capacity, flow regime, and restarting ability under different head and pipe length combinations through theoretical analysis and extensive foot-scale model tests. It was found that a 5 mm pipe diameter, as a transitional pipe diameter between capillary and typical pipe diameter, has both capillary and gravity-dominated characteristics under different capillary and Reynolds number conditions, which can form a stable segmental plug flow while maintaining the presence of liquid film and preventing increased frictional losses along the course.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Evaluation of Higher Education Learning Environments

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), particularly in educational facilities, is gainingconsiderable interest and is a synonymous indicator towards evaluatinghuman comfort. Factors such as CO2 concentration, temperature, andhumidity play crucial parts in determining an acceptable level of IAQ.Many studies have also demonstrated that the indoor air quality ofclassrooms affects students’ concentration and performance. Today withthe threat of a global pandemic, the demand of clean & fresh indoor airquality in education buildings is extremely intensive. This study focuseson investigating IAQ situations and changes in different typical functionalspaces of a higher education building in the UK. CO2, temperature, andhumidity data in various learning environment were monitored via dataloggers during the winter. Associated with data monitoring, a set ofquestionnaires surveys were carried out to evaluate the user’s experience.The results of this study show that temperature and CO2 concentrationin the classrooms was constantly higher than the government guidanceon a daily basis. The analysis also shows that temperature and humidityincreased with CO2 levels, but at a much lower rate. This study hasrevealed poor and concerning IAQ in higher education buildings in the UK,particularly in larger rooms with high occupancy. Along with the findings,this paper also identifies possible impact or factors and proposes solutionsto overcome these issues.

Importance of ventilation and occupancy to Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission rates in congregate settings

BackgroundVentilation rates are a key determinant of the transmission rate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other airborne infections. Targeting infection prevention and control (IPC) interventions at locations where ventilation rates are low and occupancy high could be a highly effective intervention strategy. Despite this, few data are available on ventilation rates and occupancy in congregate locations in high tuberculosis burden settings.MethodsWe collected carbon dioxide concentration and occupancy data in congregate locations and public transport on 88 occasions, in Cape Town, South Africa. For each location, we estimated ventilation rates and the relative rate of infection, accounting for ventilation rates and occupancy.ResultsWe show that the estimated potential transmission rate in congregate settings and public transport varies greatly between different settings. Overall, in the community we studied, estimated infection risk was higher in minibus taxis and trains than in salons, bars, and shops. Despite good levels of ventilation, infection risk could be high in the clinic due to high occupancy levels.ConclusionPublic transport in particular may be promising targets for infection prevention and control interventions in this setting, both to reduce Mtb transmission, but also to reduce the transmission of other airborne pathogens such as measles and SARS-CoV-2.

Animal husbandry neglected in occupational research for antibiotic resistance

Background and aim Antibiotic resistance entails a major threat to global health. Exposure to antibiotics and bacteria, potentially increases risks for workers in environments with high and prolonged exposure. The objective of this review is to assess the occupational risk of antibiotic resistance in high risk occupations. Methods This systematic literature reviews selected articles in MEDLINE (September 1964 - October 2021) and Embase (March 1988 - October 2021). Duplicates, articles without abstracts and non-English articles were removed before screening. Articles not related to antibiotic resistance and high-risk occupations, were excluded. Besides the medical sector, animal husbandry including aquaculture was considered as high risk. Animal husbandry here includes aquaculture and poultry farming, besides livestock farming such as pig and kettle farming and occupations were defined according to ISCO-08. Included articles were analyzed on occupations, methodology, bacteria, resistance and location. Results 117 Articles were found eligible for final analysis of the abovementioned risks, which is limited. Current research has a strong focus on the medical sector, with 80 articles describing the medical sector in general and a majority focusing on workers in hospital settings (over 60%) and around 70% of these articles focus on MRSA or Tuberculosis. 44 Studies were related to animal husbandry, with a strong focus on especially pig farming and abattoir workers (over 54%). MRSA was the predominant focus of the articles (52%) followed by S. Aureus (19%). With one study research on aquaculture is scarce. Conclusions The risks of antibiotic resistance in animal husbandry and more specifically aquaculture, seems to be neglected in current research. To truly address the issue of antibiotic resistance as a one health issue, other sectors need to be explored with integrated nationwide surveillance and specific occupational risk assessments. Keywords: AMR, antibiotic resistance, One Health, bacterial infections, occupational risk, animal husbandry, aquafarming.

A New Framework for Assessment of Offshore Wind Farm Location

Offshore wind energy has become a hot spot in new-energy development due to its abundant reserves, long power generation time, high unit capacity and low land occupation. In response to the current situation whereby wind energy, and natural and human factors have not been taken into account in the selection of sites for offshore wind-energy-resource development in the traditional “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” region, this paper intends to establish a new risk assessment framework that comprehensively considers the influence of wind resources, the natural environment, and the geopolitical and humanistic environment. The rationality of the new index system and weight determination methods are separately investigated. Some interesting results are obtained by comparing the new framework with traditional frameworks. The results show that the Persian Gulf, the Timor Sea in northern Australia, and the northern part of Sri Lanka in southern India are rich in wind-energy resources and have a low overall risk, making them recommended sites. In addition, unlike the results of previous studies, this paper does not recommend the Somali Sea as a priority area for wind-energy siting due to its high geographic humanity risks.

Green infrastructure can promote plant functional connectivity in a grassland species around fragmented semi‐natural grasslands in NW‐Europe

Species may benefit from green infrastructure, i.e. the network of natural and anthropogenic habitat remnants in human‐dominated landscapes, if it helps isolated populations in remaining habitat patches to be functionally connected. The importance of green infrastructure is therefore increasingly emphasized in conservation policy to counter biodiversity loss. However, there is limited evidence, particularly in plants, that green infrastructure promotes functional connectivity, i.e. supports the colonization of habitat patches across a landscape. We applied landscape genetics to test whether the green infrastructure supports structural and functional connectivity in the grassland perennial Galium verum, in 35 landscapes in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. We used multivariate genetic clustering techniques, nestedness analyses and conditional inference trees to examine landscape‐scale patterns in genetic diversity and structure of plant populations in the green infrastructure surrounding semi‐natural grasslands. Inferred functional connectivity explained genetic variation better than structural connectivity, yielding positive effects on genetic variation. The road verge network, a major structural component of the green infrastructure and its functional connectivity, most effectively explained genetic diversity and composition in G. verum. Galium verum ramets occupying the surrounding landscape proved to be genetic subsets of focal grassland populations, shaping a nested landscape population genetic structure with focal grasslands, particularly ancient ones, harbouring unique genetic diversity. This nested pattern weakened as road network density increased, suggesting road verge networks enable high landscape occupancy by increased habitat availability and facilitates gene flow into the surrounding landscape. Our study proposes that green infrastructure can promote functional connectivity, providing that a plant species can survive outside of core habitat patches. As this often excludes habitat specialist species, conservation practice and policy should primarily focus on ancient, managed semi‐natural grasslands. These grasslands both harbour unique genetic diversity and act as primary gene and propagule sources for the surrounding landscape, highlighting their conservation value.

Systematic analysis of low-affinity transcription factor binding site clusters in vitro and in vivo establishes their functional relevance

Binding to binding site clusters has yet to be characterized in depth, and the functional relevance of low-affinity clusters remains uncertain. We characterized transcription factor binding to low-affinity clusters in vitro and found that transcription factors can bind concurrently to overlapping sites, challenging the notion of binding exclusivity. Furthermore, small clusters with binding sites an order of magnitude lower in affinity give rise to high mean occupancies at physiologically-relevant transcription factor concentrations. To assess whether the observed in vitro occupancies translate to transcriptional activation in vivo, we tested low-affinity binding site clusters in a synthetic and native gene regulatory network in S. cerevisiae. In both systems, clusters of low-affinity binding sites generated transcriptional output comparable to single or even multiple consensus sites. This systematic characterization demonstrates that clusters of low-affinity binding sites achieve substantial occupancies, and that this occupancy can drive expression in eukaryotic promoters.

A Model to Compare International Hospital Bed Numbers, including a Case Study on the Role of Indigenous People on Acute 'Occupied' Bed Demand in Australian States.

Comparing international or regional hospital bed numbers is not an easy matter, and a pragmatic method has been proposed that plots the number of beds per 1000 deaths versus the log of deaths per 1000 population. This method relies on the fact that 55% of a person’s lifetime hospital bed utilization occurs in the last year of life—irrespective of the age at death. This is called the nearness to death effect. The slope and intercept of the logarithmic relationship between the two are highly correlated. This study demonstrates how lines of equivalent bed provision can be constructed based on the value of the intercept. Sweden looks to be the most bed-efficient country due to long-term investment in integrated care. The potential limitations of the method are illustrated using data from English Clinical Commissioning Groups. The main limitation is that maternity, paediatric, and mental health care do not conform to the nearness to death effect, and hence, the method mainly applies to adult acute care, especially medical and critical care bed numbers. It is also suggested that sensible comparison can only be made by comparing levels of occupied beds rather than available beds. Occupied beds measure the expressed bed demand (although often constrained by access to care issues), while available beds measure supply. The issue of bed supply is made complex by the role of hospital size on the average occupancy margin. Smaller hospitals are forced to operate at a lower average occupancy; hence, countries with many smaller hospitals such as Germany and the USA appear to have very high numbers of available beds. The so-called 85% occupancy rule is an “urban myth” and has no fundamental basis whatsoever. The very high number of “hospital” beds in Japan is simply an artefact arising from “nursing home” beds being counted as a “hospital” bed in this country. Finally, the new method is applied to the expressed demand for occupied acute beds in Australian states. Using data specific to acute care, i.e., excluding mental health and maternity, a long-standing deficit of beds was identified in Tasmania, while an unusually high level of occupied beds in the Northern Territory (NT) was revealed. The high level of demand for beds in the NT appears due to an exceptionally large population of indigenous people in this state, who are recognized to have elevated health care needs relative to non-indigenous Australians. In this respect, indigenous Australians use 3.5 times more occupied bed days per 1000 deaths (1509 versus 429 beds per 1000 deaths) and 6 times more occupied bed days per 1000 population (90 versus 15 beds per 1000 population) than their non-indigenous counterparts. The figure of 1509 beds per 1000 deaths (or 4.13 occupied beds per 1000 deaths) for indigenous Australians is indicative of a high level of “acute” nursing care in the last months of life, probably because nursing home care is not readily available due to remoteness. A lack of acute beds in the NT then results in an extremely high average bed occupancy rate with contingent efficiency and delayed access implications.

Staff attitudes and perceptions towards the use of coercive measures in psychiatric patients.

The failure of efforts to significantly reduce the use of physical coercive measures (PCMs) in psychiatric hospitals remains a global concern. There is a gap in the understanding of staff's characteristics that may affect their attitudes and perceptions towards PCMs. This study used a cross-sectional design to examine the attitudes and perceptions of staff working at a mental health centre in Israel regarding the use of PCMs and to explore whether staff attitudes differed depending on their professional and demographic background. This study also sought to explore staff willingness to accept a policy of reducing the use of PCMs. The data were collected from 149 staff members (nurses, physicians, and auxiliary staff) working at mental health centre, using a questionnaire developed for this study. The findings indicate a low degree of support for use of PCMs among participants who were older, female, more qualified psychiatric nurses, with longer duration of employment, and those who have not participated in coercive intervention in the past year. The majority of the sample reported a low willingness to reduce the use of PCMs, and a lack of institutional support after participating in a coercive event. High hospital occupancy and insufficient staffing were perceived as contributing factors to coercive incidents. Therefore, availability of trained and experienced staff, elimination of organizational barriers, along with creating and maintaining a safe clinical environment should be a priority. Alternative non-coercive interventions should further be taught and used for managing aggressive and violent behaviour in the psychiatric clinical settings.