Search Results (4)

Roads represent very important infrastructure and play a significant role in economic, cultural, and social growth. Therefore, there is a critical need for many researchers to model crash injury severity in order to study how safe roads are. When measuring the cost of crashes, the severity of the crash is a critical criterion, and it is classified into various categories. The number of vehicles involved in the crash (NVIC) is a crucial factor in all of these categories. For this purpose, this research examines road safety and provides a prediction model for the number of vehicles involved in a crash. Specifically, learning vector quantization (LVQ 2.1), one of the sub-branches of artificial neural networks (ANNs), is used to build a classification model. The novelty of this study demonstrates LVQ 2.1’s efficacy in categorizing accident data and its ability to improve road safety strategies. The LVQ 2.1 algorithm is particularly suitable for classification tasks and works by adjusting prototype vectors to improve the classification performance. The research emphasizes how urgently better prediction algorithms are needed to handle issues related to road safety. In this study, a dataset of 564 crash records from rural roads in Calabria between 2017 and 2048, a region in southern Italy, was utilized. The study analyzed several key parameters, including daylight, the crash type, day of the week, location, speed limit, average speed, and annual average daily traffic, as input variables to predict the number of vehicles involved in rural crashes. The findings revealed that the “crash type” parameter had the most significant impact, whereas “location” had the least significant impact on the occurrence of rural crashes in the investigated areas. Full article

A devastating bluetongue (BT) epidemic caused by bluetongue virus serotype 3 (BTV-3) has spread throughout most of the Netherlands within two months since the first infection was officially confirmed in the beginning of September 2023. The epidemic comes with unusually strong suffering of infected cattle through severe lameness, often resulting in mortality or euthanisation for welfare reasons. In total, tens of thousands of sheep have died or had to be euthanised. By October 2023, more than 2200 locations with ruminant livestock were officially identified to be infected with BTV-3, and additionally, ruminants from 1300 locations were showing BTV-associated clinical symptoms (but not laboratory-confirmed BT). Here, we report on the spatial spread and dynamics of this BT epidemic. More specifically, we characterized the distance-dependent intensity of the between-holding transmission by estimating the spatial transmission kernel and by comparing it to transmission kernels estimated earlier for BTV-8 transmission in Northwestern Europe in 2006 and 2007. The 2023 BTV-3 kernel parameters are in line with those of the transmission kernel estimated previously for the between-holding spread of BTV-8 in Europe in 2007. The 2023 BTV-3 transmission kernel has a long-distance spatial range (across tens of kilometres), evidencing that in addition to short-distance dispersal of infected midges, other transmission routes such as livestock transports probably played an important role. Full article

Wild carnivore species infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus subtype H5N1 during the 2021–2022 outbreak in the Netherlands included red fox (Vulpes vulpes), polecat (Mustela putorius), otter (Lutra lutra), and badger (Meles meles). Most of the animals were submitted for testing because they showed neurological signs. In this study, the HPAI H5N1 virus was detected by PCR and/or immunohistochemistry in 11 animals and was primarily present in brain tissue, often associated with a (meningo) encephalitis in the cerebrum. In contrast, the virus was rarely detected in the respiratory tract and intestinal tract and associated lesions were minimal. Full genome sequencing followed by phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that these carnivore viruses were related to viruses detected in wild birds in the Netherlands. The carnivore viruses themselves were not closely related, and the infected carnivores did not cluster geographically, suggesting that they were infected separately. The mutation PB2-E627K was identified in most carnivore virus genomes, providing evidence for mammalian adaptation. This study showed that brain samples should be included in wild life surveillance programs for the reliable detection of the HPAI H5N1 virus in mammals. Surveillance of the wild carnivore population and notification to the Veterinary Authority are important from a one-heath perspective, and instrumental to pandemic preparedness. Full article

This study investigated the effect of the fusion-bonded dots of veil interleaves on the crack propagation path of the interlaminar fracture of continuous carbon fiber reinforced epoxy resin. Two thin fiber layers (i.e., nylon veil (NV) with fusion-bonded dots and Kevlar veil (KV) physically stacked by fibers) were used to toughen composites as interleaves. Result shows that the existence of fusion-bonded dots strongly influenced the crack propagation and changed the interlaminar fracture mechanism. The Mode I fracture path of the nylon veil interleaved composite (NVIC) could propagate in the plane where the dots were located, whereas the path of the Kevlar veil interleaved composite (KVIC) randomly deflected inside the interlayer without the pre-cracking of the dots. The improvement of Mode I toughness was mainly based on fiber bridging and the resulting fiber breakage and pull-out. Fiber breakage was often observed for NVIC, whereas fiber pull-out was the main mechanism for KVIC. For the Mode II fracture path, the fusion-bonded NV dots guided the fracture path largely deflected inside the interlayer, causing the breakage of tough nylon fibers. The fracture path of the physically stacked KVIC occurred at one carbon ply/interlayer interface and only slightly deflected at fiber overlapped regions. Moreover, the fiber pull-out was often observed. Full article