Specific Hazards Research Articles

A need to improve the assessment of environmental hazards for falls on stairs and in bathrooms: results of a scoping review.

BackgroundFalls occurring on stairs or in bathrooms are associated with a high risk of injuries among older adults. Home environmental assessments are frequently used to guide fall-prevention interventions. The aims of this review were to describe how, where, by whom, and for whom environmental hazard checklists are used, and to examine the characteristics of environmental hazard assessment checklists with specific attention to features of bathrooms and stairs/steps assessed in them.MethodsStudies published before January 5, 2018, were identified using several databases. Publications reporting the use and/or evaluation of environmental hazard checklists were eligible if they assessed bathrooms or stairs/steps in homes of older adults (≥65 years). Content analysis was conducted on publications that provided a complete list of specific environmental hazards assessed. Checklist items related to bathrooms and stairs/steps were extracted and categorized as structural or non-structural and as objective or subjective.Results1119 studies were appraised. A pool of 136 published articles and 4 checklists from the grey literature were included in this scoping review. Content analysis was conducted on 42 unique checklists. There was no widely used checklist and no obvious consensus definition of either environmental hazards overall or of single hazards listed in checklists. Checklists varied greatly with respect to what rooms were assessed, whether or not outdoor stair/steps hazards were assessed, and how responses were coded. Few checklists examined person-environment fit. The majority of checklists were not oriented towards structural hazards in bathrooms. Although the majority of checklists assessing stair/steps hazards evaluated structural hazards, most features assessed were not related to the construction geometry of stairs/steps. Objective features of bathrooms and stairs/steps that would deem them safe were rarely specified. Rather, adequacy of their characteristics was mostly subjectively determined by the evaluator with little or no guidance or training.ConclusionThe lack of standard definitions and objective criteria for assessing environmental hazards for falls is limiting meaningful cross-study comparisons and slowing advances in this field. To inform population health interventions aimed at preventing falls, such as building code regulations or municipal housing by-laws, it is essential to include objectively-assessed structural hazards in environmental checklists.

The effects of repetitive presentation of specific hazards on eye movements in hazard perception training, of experienced and young-inexperienced drivers

Recent evidence shows that compared to experienced drivers, young-inexperienced drivers are more likely to be involved in a crash mainly due to their poor hazard perception (HP) abilities. This skill develops with experience and may be developed through training. We assumed that as any other skill, HP developed through implicit learning. Nevertheless, current training methods, rely on deliberate learning where young-inexperienced drivers are instructed what hazards that they should seek and where they might be located. In this exploratory study, we investigated the effectiveness of a novel training procedure, in which learners were repeatedly exposed to target video clips of driving scenarios embedded within filler scenarios. Each of the target videos included scenarios of either a visible hazard, a hidden materialized hazard or hidden unmaterialized hazard. Twenty-three young-inexperienced drivers and 35 experienced drivers participated in training session followed by a learning transference testing session and 24 additional young-inexperienced drivers participated only in the transference testing session with no training, during which participants were shown novel hazards video clips. Participants responded by pressing a button when they identified a hazard. Eye movement was also tracked using fixations patterns as a proxy to evaluate HP performance. During training, young-inexperienced drivers gradually increased their focus on visible materialized hazards but exhibited no learning curve with respect to hidden hazards. During the learning transference session, both trained groups focused on hazards earlier compared to untrained drivers. These results imply that repetitive training may facilitate HP acquisition among young-inexperienced drivers. Patterns concerning experienced drivers are also discussed.

Fire Safety Protection Assessment of Industrial Technologies

An accident in petrochemical industry can cause serious damages to human and animal health, property, environment and economy. That was proved by many accidents in the past. National laws, regulations, national, European or international standards or accepted protection principles define minimal requirements for safety and security protection of technologies. This restriction defines specific protections and periodical personal controls. Companies in petrochemical industry are often split in branches with specific types of technologies – pumping stations, storages, distribution lines, etc. Each of these technologies represents specific hazards for employees, environment, surrounding area or economy (national, organizational). Especially oil storages and farms represent strategical importance for national safety and continuity.Increasing of protection is often organized individually in specific branches of the organizations. It can cause that the same organization has different protection of the same technology. That is the reason why many organizations design safety policy on higher level than is legally requested by insurance companies or by internal safety policy. The increase of policy is connected to increase of number of personal controls which can be implemented up to every hour per day, or to application technical protection. The technical protection can include leakage sensors, sprinkler systems, emergency reservoirs, process monitoring (pressure, temperature, mass flow, etc.) or CCTV systems. The uniform protection within the organization on the same technologies can increase employees working time efficiency, increase level of protection and decrease financial losses. For these purposes the evaluation of technical protection with impact on number of personal controls have been designed and described in this paper.Presented system of assessment evaluates specific hazards and possible impact including possible damages to human health, property or environment with considered type of technology. Moreover, the building and technological protection is considered, as well as the fire protection systems, alarm systems, and monitoring cameras systems. Final number of personal controls of technology is based on type of organization, hazards and protection. A resulting recommended number is compared with required legal number of controls.Main benefits of screening assessment are:1) Allow planning of flat investments and development of technologies and its protection2) Increasing efficiency of workforce3) Defining critical areas for technical development – application of CCTV, modern detection systems, etc.4) Increasing efficiency of working time of employees – e.g. replacement personal screening by CCTV systems5) Decreasing costs of control and service actions

Overpressure induced by fires in airtight buildings

The need for sustainability and smaller ecological footprint leads to the construction of more airtight building envelopes with better thermal insulation in order to reduce the pollution and increase the energy efficiency, according to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD 2010/31/EU).The specific fire hazards possibly associated with such structures raised questions amongst fire community in Belgium. Consequently, in 2010 the Belgian Ministry of Interior funded a study about the fire hazards possibly associated with Passive Houses in comparison to traditional houses. The University of Mons and ISSeP used zone modelling for investigating how much the characteristics of a passive house such as airtightness, ventilation and thermal insulation could affect the fire development. A significant difference in pressure rise (due to thermal expansion of fumes) was observed because of the airtightness in the passive house. However, due to a lack of validation from experimental data at large scale, the scientific monitoring committee of the project decided to not mention the potential problem that the forces of pressure could block the occupants during a certain period due to inwards-opening doors.It was decided in 2015 to build a full-scale experimental facility in the region of Mons with the support of the KCC centrum and the Régie Provinciale du Hainaut. This facility was designed with the support of the Ghent University. The inner dimensions of the construction are the same as the inner dimensions of a 40-foot shipping container, but the outer shell consists of 20 cm concrete blocks and the inner shell is made of plaster board. The volume is divided into two rooms, which simulate two different rooms of a passive house. In one room air is extracted, while in the other one fresh air is supplied.In this study, we present the tests carried out in this facility by burning pallets stack and wood cribs. Two different ventilation duct configurations were tested: one with mechanical ventilation on, the other with the ducts closed with an airtight metal cap (the mechanical ventilation being off). Measurements were made for gas pressure, mass loss rate, gas temperature, volumetric flow rate in the ducts and for some tests O2, CO2, CO and THC concentrations were also quantified. Over pressure peaks from 850 to 2035 Pa were measured without mechanical ventilation (ducts closed), while values from 420 to 750 Pa were observed with the mechanical ventilation on. Both the reverse flow of the fan supplying fresh air and the extra flow rate of fumes in the extraction duct due to the overpressure inside the apartment were not sufficient to prevent overpressure inside the rooms. These tests confirm there may be problems of overpressure in very airtight houses such as passive houses in case of fire. Especially, the occupants may not succeed in escaping during a period of several minutes due to the impossibility to open inward opening doors. This experimental study confirms the observations carried out during the reconstruction of the fire which occurred during the night of the 5 February 2013 in an passive apartment in Cologne, the occupant being blocked for about 2 minutes.This experimental campaign was also used for validating the zone model CFAST predictive capability. The way to take into account the effective leakage which depends on the overpressure inside the building as well as the mechanical ventilation in CFAST for obtaining satisfactory simulation results are briefly presented in this paper. The use of validated software could be helpful to take into account the fire-induced overpressure in confined dwellings in fire safety design.

Public perceptions and worry about food safety hazards and risks in Ghana

Food safety has become an important public health concern and many governments have put in place measures to manage the risks. Most often however, people's attitudes to health and food safety and how they respond to such information depend on their level of concern about the risks. This study assessed public level of concern about specific food safety hazards and risks to provide better insights into food safety issues that the public is most concerned about, the possible drivers of the concerns as well as interventions that could be designed to manage the concerns. Upon receiving ethical approval, a cross-sectional survey was conducted in Accra to gather data on public perceptions and concerns about twelve microbiological and chemical hazards and risks. Findings showed that majority of the public was either extremely or very worried about all the twelve hazards and risks. Also, when people worried about one risk they were also likely to worry about all the other risks. However, the level of concern about unhygienic selling, cooking and serving environments was significantly more severe than concern for all other risks while statistically the same level of concern was expressed about chemical hazards such as excess artificial food flavours and colours, Sudan dye in palm oil, pesticides residues, and leaked contaminants from plastic packages. Furthermore, the public was relatively least worried about safety of foods produced around mining sites and aflatoxin contamination as compared to other food safety risks. The degree of concern about food safety risks was influenced by gender and possibly people's level of knowledge and awareness about the risks. In conclusion, public institutions should continuously interact with the public and share relevant information on food safety hazards and risks including preventive and mitigation measures to minimise their concerns.

The small airway epithelium as a target for the adverse pulmonary effects of silver nanoparticle inhalation

Experimental modeling to identify specific inhalation hazards for nanomaterials has in the main focused on in vivo approaches. However, these models suffer from uncertainties surrounding species-specific differences and cellular targets for biologic response. In terms of pulmonary exposure, approaches which combine ‘inhalation-like’ nanoparticulate aerosol deposition with relevant human cell and tissue air–liquid interface cultures are considered an important complement to in vivo work. In this study, we utilized such a model system to build on previous results from in vivo exposures, which highlighted the small airway epithelium as a target for silver nanoparticle (AgNP) deposition. RNA-SEQ was used to characterize alterations in mRNA and miRNA within the lung. Organotypic-reconstituted 3D human primary small airway epithelial cell cultures (SmallAir) were exposed to the same spark-generated AgNP and at the same dose used in vivo, in an aerosol-exposure air–liquid interface (AE-ALI) system. Adverse effects were characterized using lactate, LDH release and alterations in mRNA and miRNA. Modest toxicological effects were paralleled by significant regulation in gene expression, reflective mainly of specific inflammatory events. Importantly, there was a level of concordance between gene expression changes observed in vitro and in vivo. We also observed a significant correlation between AgNP and mass equivalent silver ion (Ag+) induced transcriptional changes in SmallAir cultures. In addition to key mechanistic information relevant for our understanding of the potential health risks associated with AgNP inhalation exposure, this work further highlights the small airway epithelium as an important target for adverse effects.

When Socio-Economic Plans Exacerbate Vulnerability to Physical Coastal Processes on the South East Coast of India

Industrial and urban development along the coast may exacerbate the changes induced by oceano-climatic processes to such an extent that the coast becomes uninhabitable. This paper presents a baseline study carried out on the 360 km long Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu's (TN) Bay of Bengal coast, Southeast India. About 30% of the 72 million inhabitants of the state of TN live in low-lying coastal areas within a variety of ecosystems such as sandy beaches and dunes, wetlands, mudflats and mangroves. Exponential demographic growth combines with dense urban agglomerations, ever-growing industrial and harbour areas, aquaculture and luxury tourism expansion increasing vulnerabilities to coastal erosion and extreme meteorological events. We report here how very high spatial resolution satellite (VHSRS) images, freely provided by Google Earth engine or from the public database offered by GIS software, may be used to impartially and significantly survey coastal land cover (LC) transformations at fine scales over a number of years using preliminary visual interpretation. The study also gathered demographic data, historical records on strength and trajectories of the cyclones that have hit the TN coast since 1900, and decadal series of daily ERA-InterimiLCMWF waves and Mercator-Ocean oceanic currents. Our results demonstrate a tangle of environmental and human activities and situations subject to specific coastal hazards, particularly severe during the Northeast monsoon season. The potential risks for coastal ecosystems and local communities are finally discussed.

Biosecurity measures on cattle farms

The aim of implementing biosecurity measures on cattle farms is: a) to preserve a high health status of animals by protecting them from new and existing pathogens and b) to ensure the production of safe food. General biosecurity measures should be implemented in any farm regardless of any specific problem. In "open" herds, where cattle have contact with animals from different farms (purchase of breeding animals, participation in cattle shows, common pastures etc) more strict biosecurity measures (i.e., isolation of in-coming animals, clinical examinations, laboratory tests, vaccinations) should be implemented. Therefore, "closed" herds present significant advantages in terms of health management. Moreover, all farms must apply control-restriction measures for visitors and vehicles as well as control and protection measures for feedstuffs and water. Animals of other species (farm or companion animals) should not be kept on the farm, whereas the entry of stray and wild animals must be prevented. Planned control measures for insects, rodents and wild birds are imperative. Management practices, such as grouping according to the age of cattle, but avoiding mixing young with older animals, should be combined with high housing standards, including proper ventilation and frequent manure removal. The implementation of the "all-in, all-ouf principle, whenever possible, as well as proper disinfections, are necessary to eliminate the distribution of pathogens within the farm. Dangerous chemicals and veterinary products must be kept in designated areas. Appropriate nutrition and avoidance of stress will boost the immune system of cattle. On the other hand, genetic selection, based on specific genetic indexes, will increase disease resistance. Moreover, proper manure handling and storage reduces the danger of disease transmission. The aim of specific biosecurity programmes is to confront specific health hazards on farm. Such programmes are developed according to the risk analysis methodology, which comprises risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Both veterinarians and farmers give priority to problems that are related with farm profitability, public health and animal welfare. Grouping health problems by some of their common characteristics, allows a simultaneous approach, without extra effort. Overall, the lack of professional attitude by farmers, the defective design and development, as well as the inadequate organization of Greek cattle farms, are the main obstacles in implementing biosecurity measures. But, part of the responsibility lies on the veterinary profession as well; lack of training and motivation is the most probable explanation.

Exposure to agricultural hazards among children who visit farms.

Children are commonly injured on farms, yet no studies provide evidence about exposures that leave rural children visiting farms at risk. The objectives of this study were to study (a) how frequently rural nonfarm children are exposed to farms, farm work and associated activities; and (b) the safety conditions and practices on farms being visited. A cross-sectional survey was administered in Saskatchewan, Canada to rural parents during 2014. Participation included reports on 458 farms visited by rural children, and then 549 children from 312 families who had been exposed to a farm in the past year. Child-level indicators included age, sex, farm safety education and training, engagement in farm work and play activities and exposure to specific farm safety hazards. Farm-level indicators included self-perceived safety conditions, and child supervision practices. One-third of the children sampled (n=549) had been exposed to a farm in the past year. Safety conditions, practices and supervision varied by demographic subgroup. Farm safety education and agriculture training were most common in the oldest age group (13 to 17 years; 24.7% and 9.2%, respectively) of which 40.8% had worked on a farm previously, averaging 10 hours/week (interquartile range 3 to 20) during summer months. Mechanized and nonmechanized work was observed for children of both sexes and rose with age. Physical hazards were reported both proximally (≤100 yards) and distally (>300 yards) to farm homes. Children who visit farms are potentially exposed to risk, and these risks increase with age as children take on formal work roles, leaving them vulnerable to farm injury.

Laboratory scale reproduction and analysis of the behaviour of iron ore fines under cyclic loading to investigate liquefaction during marine transportation

Specific hazards come with the transportation of solid bulk cargoes on bulk carriers. One unexpected hazard is the liquefaction of the cargo. Liquefaction is a phenomenon whereby cyclic or shock loading causes a commonly loose saturated material to flow like a liquid. Over the past 30 years, there have been 23 incidents in which liquefaction of the solid bulk cargo was the suspected cause of a bulk carrier foundering. The result from performing the Modified Proctor/Fagerberg Test (MPFT) on iron ore fines provides what is referred to as the Transportable Moisture Limit (TML). The TML is a safe moisture content under which a cargo is considered unable to liquefy while undergoing marine transportation. The objective of this study is to design and construct a scale model to test the conditions under which iron ore fines may liquefy, and to monitor the changes that occur within the material that may adversely affect the stability of the cargo during marine transportation. The parameters that are believed to influence the liquefaction potential of iron ore fines, including pore air and water pressures, moisture migration, segregation as well as other changes in physical properties, are monitored and compared to the behaviour at the TML determined from the MPFT. This study concludes that moisture migration, caused by an increase in the pore pressure within the material, also causes segregation of the material to occur. This process creates portions of the sample that are much more likely to liquefy than the sample as a whole. The moisture content where this begins takes place is 1.5% less than the resulting MPFT TML. Overall, it is considered that the TML as a parameter to indicate liquefaction is inadequate, as liquefaction is much more complicated and cannot be simplified in this manner.

Nitration Using Fuming HNO3 in Sulfolane: Synthesis of 6-Nitrovanillin in Flow Mode

We report herein an improved synthesis of 6-nitrovanillin, an important building block used in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. The key step in this sequence is the nitration of O-Bn vanillin, which was carried out using fuming HNO3. Sulfolane emerged as the solvent of choice for this transformation due to its high stability toward strongly acidic and oxidizing conditions. The specific hazards of this reaction were studied, and the nitration was efficiently and safely conducted leveraging flow conditions.

Abstract P3-09-06: Predicting cardiovascular versus cancer mortality in a cohort of breast cancer survivors

Abstract Background: Given improved survival after breast cancer diagnosis for women with non-metastatic disease, many will likely survive their disease and ultimately die from causes other than breast cancer, the most frequent being cardiovascular disease. There are numerous risk prediction models, such as the Framingham risk score, to identify persons who are at high risk for a cardiovascular event or death. However, these models have been developed for use in the general population and have not been validated in any cohorts of cancer survivors, who are at increased risk for competing causes of death. We evaluated commonly used risk models for cardiovascular events on a contemporary cohort of breast cancer survivors, and developed a new risk model to simultaneously predict the likelihood of death from breast cancer or cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods: We included all women diagnosed with stage I-III breast cancer between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2010 in Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) with follow-up through April 30, 2015. Specifically, we extracted from KPNC clinical and other databases: breast cancer characteristics, cardiovascular risk factors (cholesterol, blood pressure (BP), diabetes, BP lowering medication, smoking status), cardiovascular events, and cause of death. We assessed discrimination for the Framingham, CORE and SCOREOP cardiovascular risk models using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), and calibration by comparing the observed to the expected events. We used a multi-state model based on Cox cause specific hazards (CSH) to jointly model the risk of cardiovascular death and breast cancer death, while accounting for all other causes. Results: In this population of 20,462 KPNC breast cancer survivors with a median follow-up of 7.5 years, there were 695 cardiovascular and 842 breast cancer deaths. The existing cardiovascular risk models discriminated adequately (AUCs ranging 0.64 – 0.78), though models predicting cardiovascular mortality tended to over-predict, while those predicting non-fatal events tended to under-predict. Models developed to predict in a shorter time frame (<5 years), performed slightly better (E/O ratios of 1.08 and 1.18 for Framingham predicting events in the next 2 and 4 years, respectively). In our multi-state model, many of the traditional cardiovascular risk factors were no longer statistically significant (diabetes, BP) in predicting cardiovascular mortality, while the breast cancer characteristics (grade, tumor size, nodal involvement), as well as a prior history of CVD, were most useful in predicting cause of death. The model performed well, with AUCs of 0.85 (95% CI 0.83, 0.86) for 5-year risk of cardiovascular death and 0.85 (95% CI 0.84, 0.87) for breast cancer death. Conclusion: If replicated in an independent cohort, our model suggests that breast cancer characteristics can help predict overall mortality as well as cardiovascular death. Given the risk of cardiovascular death in the population of breast cancer survivors, joint modeling of breast and cardiovascular mortality is warranted. Citation Format: Leoce NM, Terry MB, Jin Z, Kushi LH, Roh JM, Laurent CA. Predicting cardiovascular versus cancer mortality in a cohort of breast cancer survivors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2017 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P3-09-06.

Identification of influential observations in high-dimensional cancer survival data through the rank product test

BackgroundSurvival analysis is a statistical technique widely used in many fields of science, in particular in the medical area, and which studies the time until an event of interest occurs. Outlier detection in this context has gained great importance due to the fact that the identification of long or short-term survivors may lead to the detection of new prognostic factors. However, the results obtained using different outlier detection methods and residuals are seldom the same and are strongly dependent of the specific Cox proportional hazards model selected. In particular, when the inherent data have a high number of covariates, dimensionality reduction becomes a key challenge, usually addressed through regularized optimization, e.g. using Lasso, Ridge or Elastic Net regression. In the case of transcriptomics studies, this is an ubiquitous problem, since each observation has a very high number of associated covariates (genes).ResultsIn order to solve this issue, we propose to use the Rank Product test, a non-parametric technique, as a method to identify discrepant observations independently of the selection method and deviance considered. An example based on the The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) ovarian cancer dataset is presented, where the covariates are patients’ gene expressions. Three sub-models were considered, and, for each one, different outliers were obtained. Additionally, a resampling strategy was conducted to demonstrate the methods’ consistency and robustness. The Rank Product worked as a consensus method to identify observations that can be influential under survival models, thus potential outliers in the high-dimensional space.ConclusionsThe proposed technique allows us to combine the different results obtained by each sub-model and find which observations are systematically ranked as putative outliers to be explored further from a clinical point of view.

Growing at the Margins: Adaptation to Severe Weather in the Marginal Lands of the British Isles

AbstractWith the problem of severe weather events having significant impacts on harvests in Britain, this study has looked at how small-scale food producers use agroecology to adapt to adverse weather conditions; 23 sites growing food using agroecology across the British Isles in areas severely disadvantaged to agriculture were investigated. Because the climate in these areas is generally hostile to horticulture (often in combination with other factors such as land quality), all the participants have to adapt to the prevailing weather conditions and frequent severe weather events. Through detailed interviews, a range of adaptations to specific weather hazards, and their impacts, has been recorded. The adaptations have been grouped into nine different responses types and then analyzed. Results show that the biggest driver for a change in adaptation responses has been drought, and the most consistent adaptation response has been to problems associated with heavy rainfall. With participants showing a varying level of adaptation to severe weather hazards, this study indicates that growers’ experience and ingenuity are factors influencing adaptation and consequently resilience to severe weather. The study acts as a useful scoping study for the potential of the various methods collected in a knowledge base to be reviewed by stakeholders for scaling up for wider adoption by farmers willing to adapt to climate variability.

Explosion hazards of aluminum finishing operations

Metal dust deflagrations have become increasingly common in recent years. They are also more devastating than deflagrations involving organic materials, owing to metals' higher heat of combustion, rate of pressure rise, explosion pressure and flame temperature.Aluminum finishing operations offer a particularly significant hazard from the very small and reactive aluminum particles generated, and thus require high attention to details of operation and explosion safety management.This paper presents available statistics on metal dust explosions and studies the specific explosion hazards of aluminum finishing operations. The analysis of seven case studies shows that the proper design, monitoring and maintenance of dust collection systems are particularly important. Furthermore, the isolation of deflagrations occurring in dust collection systems, as well as good housekeeping practices in buildings, are critical safeguards to avoid the occurrence of catastrophic secondary explosions.

Implementation of Food Safety Management System in Food Production and Handling in Northern Serbia

HACCP means a prevention-based food safety system that identifies and monitors specific food safety hazards which can adversely affect the safety of food products. Food business companies in northern Serbia have worked on the implementation of HACCP systems for 10 years. This paper analyzes degree of implementation of HACCP, degree to which workers in production understand the importance of HACCP and how the food business companies are applying HACCP procedures in practice. The study was conducted through a survey that included 642 employees in 191 food business companies in northern Serbia. Efficiency of food safety management system application, such as, knowledge about food safety management systems, benefits of implementing food safety management system, barriers for implementation of food safety management systems, priorities of companies for implementation of food safety management systems etc). Results presented in this paper are the results of surveys conducted in food businesses in northern Serbia.

Performance and risk to light-framed wood residential buildings subjected to tornadoes

Light-framed residential wood buildings constitute the majority of residential construction in the U.S. These buildings seldom are engineered for specific hazards. As a result, they may be inadequate to ensure life safety, let alone continued functionality during and after a severe natural hazard. The aims of this study are twofold: to assess the performance of light-frame wood residential buildings under tornado hazards, and to link performance of individual building components to building system performance so that the effect of implementing improved construction techniques can be quantified. These goals were realized through the development of detailed finite element models to capture individual building component behavior and building system performance under tornado wind pressure loading. Based on the data acquired from the finite element models, tornado wind fragilities (damage state probabilities) were developed for several building archetypes. First, typical construction quality was considered to establish a frame of reference; subsequently various improved construction techniques were considered in an effort to meet community resilience performance targets provided from concurrent research. The study shows that, while current construction practices fail to meet risk-informed building performance criteria needed to achieve community resilience goals, these goals can be achieved by modest improvements to existing construction techniques.

Use of wildlife camera traps to aid in wildlife management planning at airports

Wildlife incidents with aircraft cost airports and operators worldwide an average of US$1.28bn annually. In Canada, Airport Wildlife Management Plans (AWMPs) are designed to provide an outline of specific wildlife hazards at airports and recommend countermeasures to minimise strike risk. Wildlife incident reports are a key component in the development of such plans. Here, wildlife incident reports were compiled and compared to data collected using newly-installed digital wildlife camera trap technology at the Prince George International Airport. Seven camera traps were monitored for a total of 2,426 sampling days (9,228 camera days) between 2009 and 2016 and recorded a total of 3,046 animals within 16 different animal species/groups. Airport personnel recorded 4,640 animals and 23 different species/ groups during the same period. Camera traps recorded almost five times as many animals (n = 2,525) on days when no wildlife incident reports were filed than days when wildlife incident reports were filed (n = 521) and camera traps recorded no images. Z-test for proportions analyses indicated that birds (ie flocks) were more commonly observed and reported by airport personnel than were captured by camera traps, while mammals such as moose (Alces alces), black bears (Ursus americanus) and snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) were more commonly recorded by camera traps. These findings suggest that data from camera traps can help in the development of more informed AWMPs.

Assessment of Social Vulnerability to Floods in the Floodplain of Northern Italy

AbstractPractices for reducing the impacts of floods are becoming more and more advanced, centered on communities and reaching out to vulnerable populations. Vulnerable individuals are characterized by social and economic attributes and by societal dynamics rooted in each community. These indicators can magnify the negative impacts of disasters together with the capacity of each individual to cope with these events. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) provides an empirical basis to compare social differences in various spatial scenarios and for specific environmental hazards. This research shows the application of the SoVI to the floodplain of northern Italy, based on the use of 15 census variables. The chosen study area is of particular interest for the high occurrence of flood events coupled with a high level of human activity, landscape transformations, and an elevated concentration of assets and people. The analysis identified a positive spatial autocorrelation across the floodplain that translates into the spatial detection of vulnerable groups, those that are likely to suffer the most from floods. In a second stage, the output of the index was superimposed on the flood hazard map of the study area to analyze the resulting risk. The Piemonte and Veneto regions contain the main areas prone to flood “social” risk, highlighting the need for a cohesive management approach at all levels to recognize local capacities and increase communication, awareness, and preparedness to mitigate the undesirable effects of such events.

Associations between statin use and progression in men with prostate cancer treated with primary androgen deprivation therapy

Introduction: In several observational studies, statin use has been associated with reduced risk of progression and mortality in men with prostate cancer (PCa). The study aim was to investigate the association between statin use at time of PCa diagnosis and time to PCa progression in men with advanced or metastatic PCa receiving androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) as primary treatment.Patients and methods: The study population consisted of all men receiving ADT as primary therapy at two Danish Urological Departments in 2007–2013. The primary outcome was time to progression defined as castration-resistant PCa (CRPC) or PCa death. Survival analyses were conducted with Kaplan-Meier analyses, cause specific Cox proportional hazards models, and competing risk analyses.Results: A total of 537 men were included, of whom 141 were statin users at time of diagnosis. The median follow-up time was 5.7 years (95% CI: 5.1–6.2). No significant difference in progression-free survival between statin users and non-statin users was observed at 5 years; 29% for statin users (95% CI: 19–40%) and 28% (95% CI: 23–34%) for non-statin users, p = 0.31. In multivariable Cox analyses, there was no significant association between statin use and risk of progression, HR 0.98 (95% CI: 0.72–1.32). In competing risk analyses the 5-year cumulative incidence of progression was 55% (95% CI: 46–64%) for statin users and 62% (95% CI: 57–67%) for non-statin users, p = 0.11.Conclusion: In the current study, statin use at time of PCa diagnosis was unrelated to time to progression in men primarily treated with ADT.