Engineering Commons^™

Covid-19 And Traffic Safety: Exploring Exposure, Crash Frequency And Severity, And Roadway And Network Design, Nicholas N. Ferenchak Ph.D

Data

Early COVID-19 lockdowns in the first half of 2020 largely kept people at home, thereby reducing motor vehicle traffic levels. Theoretically, reduced traffic exposure should have resulted in reduced motor vehicle crashes. However, a variety of factors may have complicated this relationship. In order to better understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on traffic safety outcomes, we explore fatalities, injuries, and total crashes before and during the lockdowns on both the national and state levels. We provide descriptive statistics and create negative binomial regressions exploring the role of vehicle, user, and built environment factors on traffic safety outcomes. Findings suggest …

Covid-19 And Traffic Safety: Exploring Exposure, Crash Frequency And Severity, And Roadway And Network Design, Nicholas N. Ferenchak Ph.D

Publications

Early COVID-19 lockdowns in the first half of 2020 largely kept people at home, thereby reducing motor vehicle traffic levels. Theoretically, reduced traffic exposure should have resulted in reduced motor vehicle crashes. However, a variety of factors may have complicated this relationship. In order to better understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on traffic safety outcomes, we explore fatalities, injuries, and total crashes before and during the lockdowns on both the national and state levels. We provide descriptive statistics and create negative binomial regressions exploring the role of vehicle, user, and built environment factors on traffic safety outcomes. Findings suggest …

Mapping Modeled Exposure Of Wildland Fire Smoke For Human Health Studies In California, Patricia Koman, Michael Billmire, Kirk Baker, Ricardo De Majo, Frank Anderson, Sumi Hoshiko, Brian Thelen, Nancy H. F. French

Michigan Tech Publications

Wildland fire smoke exposure affects a broad proportion of the U.S. population and is increasing due to climate change, settlement patterns and fire seclusion. Significant public health questions surrounding its effects remain, including the impact on cardiovascular disease and maternal health. Using atmospheric chemical transport modeling, we examined general air quality with and without wildland fire smoke PM_2.5. The 24-h average concentration of PM_2.5 from all sources in 12-km gridded output from all sources in California (2007–2013) was 4.91 μg/m³. The average concentration of fire-PM_2.5 in California by year was 1.22 μg/m³ (~25% …

Fiber Element Simulation Of Interaction Behavior Of Local And Global Buckling In Axially Loaded Rectangular Concrete-Filled Steel Tubular Slender Columns Under Fire Exposure, Ghanim Mohammed Kamil, Qing Quan Liang, Muhammad N. S Hadi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Slender rectangular thin-walled concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns in composite building structures exposed to fire may experience the interaction of local and global buckling. Numerical investigations on the interaction buckling responses of such columns under fire exposure have been rarely reported. This paper describes a fiber-based computational model for the prediction of the fire-resistance and interaction responses of local and global buckling of concentrically-loaded slender CFST columns made of rectangular sections exposed to fire. The thermal analysis is undertaken to calculate the distribution of temperatures in the column cross-section considering the effects of the air gap between concrete and steel, …

Cell Stimulation And Calcium Mobilization By Picosecond Electric Pulses, Iurii Semenov, Shu Xiao, Dongkoo Kang, Karl H. Schoenbach, Andrei G. Pakhomov

Bioelectrics Publications

We tested if picosecond electric pulses (psEP; 190 kV/cm, 500 ps at 50% height), which are much shorter than channel activation time, can activate voltage-gated (VG) channels. Cytosolic Ca²⁺ was monitored by Fura-2 ratiometric imaging in GH3 and NG108 cells (which express multiple types of VG calcium channels, VGCC), and in CHO cells (which express no VGCC). Trains of up to 100 psEP at 1 kHz elicited no response in CHO cells. However, even a single psEP significantly increased Ca²⁺ in both GH3 (by 114 +/- 48 nM) and NG108 cells (by 6 +/- 1.1 nM). Trains of …

N-Nitrosamine Rejection By Reverse Osmosis: Effects Of Membrane Exposure To Chemical Cleaning Reagents, Takahiro Fujioka, Stuart Khan, James Mcdonald, Annalie Roux, Yvan Poussade, Jorg Drewes, Long Nghiem

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

No abstract provided.

Identity-Based Chameleon Hashing And Signatures Without Key Exposure, Xiaofeng Xiaofeng Chen, Fangguo Zhang, Willy Susilo, Haibo Tian, Jin Li, Kwangjo Kim

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The notion of chameleon hash function without key exposure plays an important role in designing secure chameleon signatures. However, all of the existing key-exposure free chameleon hash schemes are presented in the setting of certificate-based systems. In 2004, Ateniese and de Medeiros questioned whether there is an efficient construction for identity-based chameleon hashing without key exposure. In this paper, we propose the first identity-based chameleon hash scheme without key exposure based on the three-trapdoor mechanism, which provides an affirmative answer to the open problem. Moreover, we use the proposed chameleon hash scheme to design an identity-based chameleon signature scheme, which …

Slides: Air Monitoring And Litigation Update, John Jacus

Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Gas Development (January 27)

Presenter: John Jacus, Partner, Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP, reviews recent litigation aimed at oil and gas development activities with respect to air emissions impacts, and also several recent and ongoing studies and ambient monitoring efforts focused upon air emissions from oil and gas activities

23 slides

Slides: Hydrofracking: Air Issues And Community Exposure, Debra A. Kaden

Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Gas Development (January 27)

Presenter: Debra Kaden, Ph.D., Toxicologist, ENVIRON International Corporation, discusses air concentrations of chemicals of potential health concern surrounding oil and gas development activities, as well as temporal and spatial patterns of these chemicals in the ambient environment. Such information is necessary to evaluate possible health impacts of the drilling process on air in surrounding communities.

19 slides

Behaviour Of Frp Confined Concrete Cylinders Under Different Temperature Exposure, Muhammad N. S Hadi, B A. Louk Fanggi

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

Bridge structures are exposed to the elements with a high variation in temperature. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of different high temperatures on the behaviour of concrete cylinders wrapped with Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP). Twelve concrete cylinders made of 60 MPa having 100 mm diameter and 200 mm height were cast and tested. The cylinders were divided into four groups: cylinders wrapped with a single CFRP layer, cylinders wrapped with two CFRP layers, cylinders wrapped with a single GFRP layer, and cylinders wrapped with two GFRP layers. Each group was exposed to temperatures of 20°C, …

The Behaviour Of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer Confined Concrete Cylinders Under High Temperature Exposure, Butje Alfonsius Louk Fanggi, Muhammad N. S Hadi

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

This study investigates the effect of temperature on the behaviour of concrete cylinders wrapped with Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP). The study used nine concrete cylinders in three groups; the first group was exposed to room temperature of approximately 20ºC, the second group was exposed to a cyclic temperature with a temperature range of 20ºC to 70ºC, and the third group was exposed to a prolonged temperature of 70ºC. All cylinders were then tested to failure. The study indicated that ultimate strength of cylinders wrapped with one and two layers of CFRP are significantly unchanged after being exposed to 20ºC …

Development Of A New Marine Exposure Site On The Atlantic North-West Coast Of Ireland, Niall Holmes, L. Basheer, S. Nanukuttan, S. Srinivasan, Pam Basheer, J. Mccarter, M. Chrisp

Conference papers

This paper presents a new marine exposure site being developed on the North-west Atlantic coastline of Ireland in Co. Donegal by the Centre for Built Environment Research at Queen’s University Belfast. The site will initially contain a number of large precast concrete stems, each 1.5m high, 1.5m wide and 1m thick placed on concrete plinths poured in-situ. The concrete stems will be placed at three levels to achieve different exposure conditions outlined in EN 206, namely atmospheric (XS1), a splash or spray zone (XS3) and a tidal zone (XS3) where the stems will be submerged by the incoming tide twice …

Radiation Exposure And Mission Strategies For Interplanetary Manned Missions, C Cougnet, N Crosby, C Foullon, D Heynderickx, S Eckersley, V Guarnieri, C Lobascio, S Masiello, P Parodi, M A. Perino, R Rampini, Susanna Guatelli, Maria G. Pia, A Holmes-Siedle, P Nieminen, G Parisi, V Tamburini, P Spillantini, E Tracino

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

Cosmic radiation is an important problem for human interplanetary missions. The ‘‘Radiation Exposure and Mission Strategies for Interplanetary Manned Missions–REMSIM’’ study is summarised here. They are related to current strategies and countermeasures to ensure the protection of astronauts from radiation during interplanetary missions, with specific reference to: radiation environment and its variability; radiation effects on the crew; transfer trajectories and associated fluences; vehicle and surface habitat concepts; passive and active shielding concepts; space weather monitoring and warning systems.