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Objective: To assess the magnitude and factors associated with birth preparedness and complication readiness (BPCR) among pregnant women in Humbo district, Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia. Methods: A community‐based cross‐sectional study was conducted from August 1 to 30, 2020. A total of 506 pregnant women were randomly selected and interviewed using a questionnaire. Data were entered using EpiData version 4.6.0, and analysis was made using SPSS version 24. An adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated. Results: The magnitude of BPCR in the Humbo district was 26.0%. The odds of being prepared for birth and its complications were higher among women who had a history of obstetric complications (aOR 2.77; 95% CI 1.18–6.52), participated in pregnant women's conferences (aOR 3.84; 95% CI 2.13–6.93), received advice on BPCR (aOR 2.39; 95% CI 1.36–4.22), and were knowledgeable on labor and childbirth danger signs (aOR 2.64; 95% CI 1.55–4.49). Conclusion: The magnitude of birth preparedness and complication readiness was low in the study area. The healthcare provider should encourage the women to participate in conferences and provide continuous counseling during their prenatal care visits. Synopsis: Magnitude of birth preparedness and complication readiness (BPCR) indicates the need for further interventional activities; prenatal care conferences have good outcomes towards BPCR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vigilance allows animals to monitor their surroundings for signs of danger associated with predators or rivals. As vigilance is costly, models predict that it should increase when the risk posed by predators or rivals increases. In addition, vigilance is expected to decrease in larger groups that provide more safety against predators. Risk and group size are thus two key determinants of vigilance. Together, they could have additive or interactive effects. If risk and group size interacted, the magnitude of the group‐size effect on vigilance would vary depending on the level of risk experienced, implying that the benefits of sociality in terms of vigilance vary with risk. Depending on the model, vigilance is predicted to decrease more rapidly with group size at low risk or at high risk. Little work has focused directly on the interaction between risk and group size, making it difficult to understand under which conditions particular interactive effects arise and whether interactive effects are common in natural systems. I review the vast literature on vigilance in birds and mammals to assess whether interactive effects between risk and group size are common, and if present, which pattern occurs more frequently. In studies involving predation risk, the greatest proportion reported no statistically significant interactive effects. In other cases, vigilance decreased with group size more rapidly at low or high risk in a similar proportion of studies. In studies involving risk posed by rivals (social risk), most documented a more rapid decrease in vigilance with group size at low than at high risk, as predicted if the need to monitor rivals increases in larger groups. Low statistical power to detect interactive effects might have been an issue in several studies. The absence of interactive effects, on the other hand, might suggest constraints or limits on the ability of animals to adjust vigilance to current risk or group sizes. Interactive effects on vigilance have implications for the evolution of sociality and for our understanding of the phenotypic plasticity of predator‐ and competitor‐induced defences and deserve more attention in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess women's experience of group prenatal care in a rural Nigerian community.Methods: In an observational study, consenting pregnant women were enrolled in a group prenatal care program based on the CenteringPregnancy model from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, in Tsibiri, Nigeria. Women were interviewed before joining the group and postnatally. A predesigned pro forma was used to assess group behavior during sessions. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to data.Results: In total, 161 women enrolled, and 54 of 72 scheduled prenatal sessions took place. The average number of visits was three per woman, with good group interaction and cohesion. Mothers who could mention at least five out of eight danger signs of pregnancy increased from 1.4% (2) to 13.3% (14) (P<0.001, 95% CI 4.28-19.52), while mean knowledge score for danger signs increased from 31% to 47.8% (P<0.001, 95% CI 0.86-2.16). Commitment to birth preparedness plans was impressive. The mothers enjoyed the group sessions and shared the lessons they learned with others.Conclusion: Group prenatal care was feasible and acceptable to women in the present study setting. Comparative trials would be helpful to demonstrate the benefits of the tested model in low-income settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Disasters evolving from hazards are a persistent and deadly occurrence in the United States. Despite this, hazard alerts have remained spatially vague, temporally imprecise, and lack actionable information. These deficiencies indicate a divide between the status quo and what is possible given modern environmental models, geographic information systems (GIS), and smartphone capabilities. This work describes an alternative, prototype system, “FloodHippo,” which integrates operational model outputs, cloud‐based GIS, and expanded communication channels to provide personal and interactive disaster alerts for floods. The precepts and methods underpinning FloodHippo apply equally to other disasters that evolve over space and time, presenting the opportunity for a more intelligent disaster response system. The development of such a system would not only minimize current shortcomings in disaster alerts but also improve resilience through individual action, along with community, academic, and federal cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fished populations exist within complex ecosystems but are typically assessed using single-species models. It is often lamented that stock assessments rarely account for other ecosystem components explicitly, but in most fisheries there are clear difficulties in implementing data-intensive ecosystem-based assessment approaches. Addressing these competing challenges requires prioritizing investments in expanded assessment frameworks. To provide high-level conceptual guidance to such prioritization, here we use general analytical theory to identify (i) characteristics of fish stocks that tend to facilitate or inhibit the precision and accuracy of reference points from single-species assessments, (ii) characteristics of ecosystem components that introduce the greatest bias/imprecision into single-species reference points and (iii) warning signs within single-species frameworks that important ecosystem components may not be adequately accounted for. We synthesize and expand on theories from various branches of applied mathematics addressing analogous questions. Our theory suggests that (i) slow population dynamics (relative to the dynamics of other ecosystem components) and a wide range of abundance observations promote precision and accuracy of single-species reference points; (ii) ecosystem components that strongly influence the focal stock's growth, and change on similar timescales as the focal stock's abundance, introduce the greatest bias/imprecision to single-species reference points; and (iii) signs of potential challenges for single-species assessment include fast population dynamics, 'hydra effects' (i.e. abundance and fishing pressure simultaneously increase), and recently detected extinctions, invasions or regime shifts in closely connected ecosystem components. Our results generalize to other levels of abstraction and provide strategic insights complementing tactical simulation approaches such as management strategy evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) continues to play an important role in creating guidance for identifying and controlling hazards associated with combustible dusts. Five separate standards address hazards associated with wood-related materials, metals, agricultural products and foodstuffs, sulfur, and all other combustible dusts (e.g., paper, plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals). This article will address a number of developments in NFPA's initiatives addressing combustible dust hazards. Topics to be addressed include: The status of, and recent revisions to, NFPA's combustible dust standards;, NFPA's plans for a new combustible dust standard, which will address the common issues associated with controlling combustible dust hazards, leaving the commodity-specific standards to address the issues unique to their scope;, A new technical correlating committee, which will help ensure greater consistency between the approaches addressed in the various combustible dust standards;, The increasing inclusion of process safety management (PSM) principles in the combustible dust standards; and, The increasing allowance provided to users of NFPA standards for the use of risk-based decision-making in the selection of combustible dust hazard control options., Options exist for AIChE to provide technical support to a number of the above areas. The article will also preview a new Center for Chemical Process Safety project for providing tools for addressing combustible dust hazards. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 34: 24-30, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probabilistic hydrometeorological forecasting systems are becoming more and more an operational tool used by civil protection centres for issuing flood alerts. One of the most important requests of decision makers is related to the reliability of such systems and to the validation of their predictive performances. For these reasons, this work is devoted to the validation of a probabilistic flood forecasting system called Flood-PRObabilistic Operational Forecasting System (Flood-PROOFS). The system is operational in real time, since 2008, in Valle d'Aosta, an alpine Region of northern Italy. It is used by the Civil Protection regional service to issue warnings and by the local water company to protect its facilities. The system manages and uses both real-time meteorological and satellite data and real-time data on the operation of the control structures in dam and river, managed by the water company. It has proven a useful tool for flood forecasting and for managing complex situations, facilitating the dialogue between civil protection and the water company during crisis periods. The system uses both a limited area model forecast and a forecast issued by regional expert meteorologists. The main outputs are deterministic and probabilistic discharge forecasts in different outlet areas of the river network. The performance of the system has been evaluated on a 25 months period with different statistical methods such as Brier score and Rank histograms. The results highlight good performances of the system as support system for emitting warnings, but there is a lack of statistics especially for huge discharge events. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthesis The quickly expanding literature on early warning signals for critical transitions in ecosystems suggests that critical slowing down is a key phenomenon to measure the distance to a tipping point in ecosystems. Such work is broadly misinterpreted as showing that slowing down is specific to tipping points. In this contribution, we show why this is not the case. Early warning signals based on critical slowing down indicate a broader class of situations where a system becomes increasingly sensitive to perturbations. Ecosystem responses to external changes can surprise us by their abruptness and irreversibility. Models have helped identifying indicators of impending catastrophic shifts, referred to as 'generic early warning signals'. These indicators are linked to a phenomenon known as 'critical slowing down' which describes the fact that the recovery rate of a system after a perturbation decreases when the system approaches a bifurcation - such as the classical fold bifurcation associated to catastrophic shifts. However, contrary to what has sometimes been suggested in the literature, a decrease in recovery rate cannot be considered as specific to approaching catastrophic shifts. Here, we analyze the behavior of early warning signals based on critical slowing down in systems approaching a range of catastrophic and non-catastrophic situations. Our results show that slowing down generally happens in situations where a system is becoming increasingly sensitive to external perturbations, independently of whether the impeding change is catastrophic or not. These results highlight that indicators specific to catastrophic shifts are still lacking. More importantly, they also imply that in systems where we have no reason to expect catastrophic transitions, slowing down may still be used in a more general sense as a warning signal for a potential decrease in stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: To assess the level and determinants of awareness of the danger signs and symptoms of pregnancy complication among pregnant Jordanian women aged 15years and older. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study of 350 women attending prenatal care services was performed. Interviews were conducted at 4 public-health centers in Zarqa, Jordan, using a structured questionnaire. Awareness was defined as “knowing at least 4 danger signs and symptoms”. Results: Overall, 84.8% of the women interviewed were not aware of danger signs and symptoms of pregnancy complication. Sociodemographic factors—including duration of education and current employment; husband''s duration of education; family size; and whether women were given information about danger signs and symptoms—were associated with awareness in a binary analysis. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that education level of study participants, their husbands'' education level, and receiving information about danger signs and symptoms were all associated with awareness (P =0.02 for all associations). Conclusion: Awareness of danger signs and symptoms of pregnancy complication among women in Jordan is low. A need exists to provide prenatal care that includes sufficient information about pregnancy-related danger signs and symptoms to meet the need for safe motherhood, as pointed out by the Millennium Development Goals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Interview findings suggest perceived proximity to mapped hazards influences risk beliefs when people view environmental hazard maps. For dot maps, four attributes of mapped hazards influenced beliefs: hazard value, proximity, prevalence, and dot patterns. In order to quantify the collective influence of these attributes for viewers' perceived or actual map locations, we present a model to estimate proximity-based hazard or risk ( PBH) and share study results that indicate how modeled PBH and map attributes influenced risk beliefs. The randomized survey study among 447 university students assessed risk beliefs for 24 dot maps that systematically varied by the four attributes. Maps depicted water test results for a fictitious hazardous substance in private residential wells and included a designated 'you live here' location. Of the nine variables that assessed risk beliefs, the numerical susceptibility variable was most consistently and strongly related to map attributes and PBH. Hazard value, location in or out of a clustered dot pattern, and distance had the largest effects on susceptibility. Sometimes, hazard value interacted with other attributes, for example, distance had stronger effects on susceptibility for larger than smaller hazard values. For all combined maps, PBH explained about the same amount of variance in susceptibility as did attributes. Modeled PBH may have utility for studying the influence of proximity to mapped hazards on risk beliefs, protective behavior, and other dependent variables. Further work is needed to examine these influences for more realistic maps and representative study samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warning signals can shorten reaction time (RT) via either a top-down mechanism, temporal attention, or a bottom-up one, phasic arousal. The goal of this review article is to identify the locus at which these processes influence RT. Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence indicate that the chronometric locus for both modulatory effects lies mainly within a narrow window at the center of the stimulus–response interval. This interval presumably encompasses late perceptual, response selection, and early motor processes. Phasic arousal is theorized to reduce the threshold for response selection within a circuit involving the supramarginal gyrus. A blind-sight study indicates that conscious, cortical level processing is necessary for temporal attention, at least when the warning signal is visual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a haul truck alignment monitoring system that provides early warning signals to the operator when the truck is about to lose control. It is considered that a truck is in this condition when it crosses the center of the road or veers to the side of the road at speed in an uncontrolled manner. The system provides different levels of warnings to the driver and other haul trucks in visual contact. The system is based on a laser range and bearing sensor that measure the relative distance to standard polyvinyl chloride poles located at the side of the road. Using this approach, a high level of accuracy and reliability can be achieved with low cost since the installation and maintenance of the infrastructure does not require special expertise or expensive machinery. The system also logs raw sensor data and warning events generated by the truck. This information is downloaded using wireless interfaces to a base station for postprocessing purposes. This is essential to monitor the operation of the system and determine potential degradation of its components. Experimental results are shown demonstrating the robustness of the system. These results were obtained from actual data extracted from a database built with more that 12 months of continued operation of the system in two different mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a collision warning system that gives a warning to a driver by detecting a hazard during driving. This system has a configuration based on the fail-safe concept that gives a warning to the driver by determining the state of danger when a path that the vehicle cannot safely drive on cannot be found within a certain processing time. Furthermore, it proposes a road extraction VLSI processor for a highly safe vehicle based on the logic-in-memory architecture, which eliminates transfer bottlenecks by integrating the memory and the functional units. This VLSI processor uses a VLSI-oriented algorithm based on regular repetitions of local parallel processing of external three-dimensional coordinate information. A memory system that allows parallel accessing with a minimal amount of hardware is desirable in designing a VLSI processor. For this purpose, optimal memory allocation for parallel accessing designed for minimal memory capacity is important. In order to resolve the problem of increased search space for obtaining optimal allocation in global search, a method of limiting the search space by focusing on the periodicity of the three-dimensional coordinates of the memory module and the data stored in it is proposed. Evaluation of this VLSI processor reveals a significant reduction of the chip area under identical performance conditions. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 87(6): 49–57, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20094 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase of international trade and communications, the issue—whether people in different cultures similarly interpret and understand the extent implied by signal words and their associated panels in warning design—is getting more and more interesting and important. Two experiments were conducted to collect data on perception of arousal strength of signal words and surround shapes of the Chinese population and to determine whether those findings for Chinese are validated for Americans. A total of 120 Chinese mainland subjects were tested in each of the experiments. In Experiment 1, 16 Chinese signal words were tested for their arousal strength. The results indicated that the words could imply different levels of hazard for the Chinese population. The comparative results revealed that both the Chinese and the Americans perceived similar levels of hazard in a signal word. In Experiment 2, six signal words and five different shapes were factorally combined to receive ratings on the perceived hazard level. Data indicated that both surround shapes and their interaction with signal words could connote different levels of hazard by the Chinese population. Their rank ordering of the shapes was found to be almost consistent with that of the Americans. Strong gender, age, and career effects were found in the two experiments. In general, there is only a minor difference in the perceived hazard for signal words and surround shapes between Chinese and American participants. However, it is suggested that care should be taken when the warning signs in facilities are designed for different populations. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 14: 69–80, 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of a safety signal on the magnitude of anticipatory anxiety was investigated using the fear-potentiated startle reflex paradigm in humans. The amplitude of the acoustic startle reflex was measured during the anticipation of unpleasant electric chocks (‘threat’) and during ‘safe’ conditions. Threat and safe conditions were signaled by three different colored lights. Two lights signaled safe conditions (safe 1, safe 2) and the other light signaled the threat condition (threat). In phase I, the lights alternated, each presentation consisting of one colored light. In phase II, the lights were presented alone or in the two combinations of safe 1 (or safe 2) + threat and safe 1 + safe 2. In both phases, the contingency between the lights and the shock was explained to the subjects. It was emphasized that no shock could be administered when the safe 1 and threat light were simultaneously presented in phase II. Subjects' belief and understanding of the instructions were verified. In Phase I, startle was increased in the threat-alone compared to the safe-alone condition, reflecting increased anticipatory anxiety in the threat-alone condition. In phase II, startle in the safe + threat condition was smaller than in the threat-alone condition, but was larger than in the safe + threat. These results were interpreted as suggesting that the threat signal was still able to elicit anticipatory anxiety despite the fact that it was no longer associated with a threat Anxiety 1:13-21 (1994). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a field test of the hazard warning system used in rock climbing. The system is succinct; it differentiates between magnitudes of hazard; and it establishes a "warnings vocabulary." The empirical hazard response models include an "individuating factor," which influences the likelihood of injury, and the severity of injury as independent variables. The models indicate that climbers do assess a "personal" probability of injury and incorporate the hazard warning message when choosing climbing routes. Climbers of greater technical ability are more likely to climb hazardous routes, but they mitigate the likelihood of the hazardous outcome by reducing the technical difficulty of the hazardous route chosen. The response increases with the degree of hazard involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who work with chemicals such as chlorine should understand the hazards and take precautions to protect themselves, their co‐workers, utility facilities, and neighbors in the event of a leak or accident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an incident in an anaesthetic room, in which a circle breathing system with a standard adult 2-1 reservoir bag failed to ventilate the lungs of a patient following an intravenous induction. It says that the failure was due to a black plastic plug in the neck of the reservoir bag that caused the complete occlusion. Furthermore, a report in 2004 regarding this incidents with anaesthetic breathing systems recommends narrow bore components must have clear warning notices.