Safe streets for cyclists? Quantifying the causal impact of cycling infrastructure interventions on safety.

London's Cycle Superhighways (CS) form a network of cycle routes connecting central London to outer boroughs, introduced in 2010 to promote cycling and improve safety. This paper examines their causal impact on cycling volume and safety using detailed road traffic and road safety data from the UK's Department for Transport. To estimate these effects, we employ propensity score-matched difference-in-differences and panel outcome regression models, comparing two distinct infrastructure types: segregated and non-segregated CS.

Carboxybetaine zwitterionic coatings on kidney dialyzer components: Surface characterization and blood interactions.

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects a significant portion of the population, leading to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). ESRD is most often addressed by hemodialysis treatment, however, clinically significant interactions can occur between blood components, the dialysis membranes and the entire dialysis circuit. Zwitterionic compounds, such as polycarboxybetaine (PCB), are known for their ability to prevent blood protein adsorption and reduce platelet and complement activation.

Evaluation of the causal impact of recreational marijuana legalisation on traffic safety in the US.

Since the legalisation of recreational marijuana in certain US states, traffic fatalities involving drivers testing positive for marijuana have markedly increased, thereby prompting the need to understand how this policy change affects road safety. While marijuana is well-known to impair driving, determining if its recreational use directly causes more traffic fatalities remains contentious due to challenges in roadside impairment testing. Additional challenges arise because (i) Simulations may not accurately replicate driver impairment and road conditions, (ii) Estimation based on observational data must adjust for (unobserved) confounding factors, requiring an innovative model to generate causal inference, and (iii) The dynamic, evolving nature of the process requires capturing temporal relationships.

Diamine Surface Passivation and Postannealing Enhance the Performance of Silicon-Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells.

We show that the use of 1,3-diaminopropane (DAP) as a chemical modifier at the perovskite/electron-transport layer (ETL) interface enhances the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.7 eV band gap mixed-halide perovskite containing formamidinium and Cs single-junction cells, primarily by increasing the open-circuit voltage () from 1.06 to 1.

Influences of weather on pedestrian safety perception at mid-block crossing: A CAVE-based study.

Reckless crossing behaviour is one of the major contributing factors to pedestrian crashes and injuries. The relationship between perceived risk and actual behaviour of pedestrians was examined. However, influences of weather conditions, which is a significant crash contributory factor, on the pedestrian safety perception are less studied.

Local halide heterogeneity drives surface wrinkling in mixed-halide wide-bandgap perovskites.

Compositional heterogeneity in wide-bandgap (1.8 - 2.1 eV) mixed-halide perovskites is a key bottleneck in the processing of high-quality solution-processed thin films and prevents their application in efficient multijunction solar cells.

Dynamic assessment of titanium surface oxides following mechanical damage reveals only partial passivation under inflammatory conditions.

Motivated by clinical problems of titanium implant degradation, we developed a workflow that enabled assessment of surface oxide dynamics as a function of clinical interventions and inflammation conditions. We found that mechanical damage led to decrease of stoichiometric TiO ratio in the passivation oxide film and further resulted in accelerated degradation under inflammatory anaerobic conditions. This method can be employed for the assessment of surface oxides to monitor implant safety.

Impacts of Parental Food Choice Values on Children's Restaurant Eating Behavior Among Regular Restaurant Consumers With Low Income: A Latent Class Analysis.

Objective: To identify subgroups of parents' food choice value systems and evaluate associations with restaurant eating behaviors of children.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Participants: Parents with low income and children aged 2-11 years who were frequent restaurant visitors before the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic (n = 1,146).

ToF-SIMS analysis of ultrathin films and their fragmentation patterns.

Organic thin films are of great interest due to their intriguing interfacial and functional properties, especially for device applications such as thin-film transistors and sensors. As their thickness approaches single nanometer thickness, characterization and interpretation of the extracted data become increasingly complex. In this study, plasma polymerization is used to construct ultrathin films that range in thickness from 1 to 20 nm, and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry coupled with principal component analysis is used to investigate the effects of film thickness on the resulting spectra.

Using Explainable Machine Learning to Interpret the Effects of Policies on Air Pollution: COVID-19 Lockdown in London.

Activity changes during the COVID-19 lockdown present an opportunity to understand the effects that prospective emission control and air quality management policies might have on reducing air pollution. Using a regression discontinuity design for causal analysis, we show that the first UK national lockdown led to unprecedented decreases in road traffic, by up to 65%, yet incommensurate and heterogeneous responses in air pollution in London. At different locations, changes in air pollution attributable to the lockdown ranged from -50% to 0% for nitrogen dioxide (NO), 0% to +4% for ozone (O), and -5% to +0% for particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM), and there was no response for PM.

The Relationship Between Stress and Sleep Sufficiency in the Context of Varied Workplace Social Support.

Objective: Sufficient sleep is essential for well-being. We examined the relationship between work-related social support, work stress, and sleep sufficiency, predicting that workers with higher social support would report higher sleep sufficiency across varying levels of work stress.

Methods: The data set analyzed in the present study included 2213 workers from approximately 200 small (<500 employees) businesses in high, medium, and low hazard industries across Colorado.

Back to the basics of time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry data analysis of bio-related samples. II. Data processing and display.

This is the second half of a two-part Tutorial on the basics of the time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) analysis of bio-related samples. Part I of this Tutorial series covers planning for a ToF-SIMS experiment, preparing and shipping samples, and collecting ToF-SIMS data. This Tutorial aims at helping the ToF-SIMS user to process, display, and interpret ToF-SIMS data.

An evaluation framework for operational interventions on urban mass public transport during a pandemic.

Decision making in a rapidly changing context, such as the development and progression of a pandemic, requires a dynamic assessment of multiple variable and competing factors. Seemingly beneficial courses of action can rapidly fail to deliver a positive outcome as the context changes. In this paper, we present a flexible data-driven agent-based simulation framework that considers multiple outcome criteria to increase opportunities for safe mobility and economic interactions on urban transit networks while reducing the potential for Covid-19 contagion in a dynamic setting.

Back to the basics of time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry of bio-related samples. I. Instrumentation and data collection.

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is used widely throughout industrial and academic research due to the high information content of the chemically specific data it produces. Modern ToF-SIMS instruments can generate high mass resolution data that can be displayed as spectra and images (2D and 3D). This enables determining the distribution of molecules across and into a surface and provides access to information not obtainable from other methods.

Modelling the propagation of infectious disease via transportation networks.

The dynamics of human mobility have been known to play a critical role in the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. In this paper, we present a simple compact way to model the transmission of infectious disease through transportation networks using widely available aggregate mobility data in the form of a zone-level origin-destination (OD) travel flow matrix. A key feature of our model is that it not only captures the propagation of infection via direct connections between zones (first-order effects) as in most existing studies but also transmission effects that are due to subsequent interactions in the remainder of the system (higher-order effects).

Road traffic casualties in Great Britain at daylight savings time transitions: a causal regression discontinuity design analysis.

Objective: To determine whether daylight savings time (DST) transitions have an effect on road traffic casualties in Great Britain using causal regression discontinuity design (RDD) analysis. We undertake aggregate and disaggregate spatial and temporal analyses to test the commonly referenced sleep and light hypotheses.

Design: The study takes the form of a natural experiment in which the DST transitions are interventions to be evaluated.

Preferences for using the London Underground during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted people's travel behaviour and introduced uncertainty in the demand for public transport. To investigate user preferences for travel by London Underground during the pandemic, we conducted a stated choice experiment among its pre-pandemic users (N = 961). We analysed the collected data using multinomial and latent class logit models.

Surfactants influence polymer nanoparticle fate within the brain.

Drug delivery to the brain is limited by poor penetration of pharmaceutical agents across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), within the brain parenchyma, and into specific cells of interest. Nanotechnology can overcome these barriers, but its ability to do so is dependent on nanoparticle physicochemical properties including surface chemistry. Surface chemistry can be determined by a number of factors, including by the presence of stabilizing surfactant molecules introduced during the formulation process.

Quantifying responses to changes in the jurisdiction of a congestion charge: A study of the London western extension.

This paper quantifies behavioural responses to changes in the jurisdiction of a congestion charge, with a successive focus on (i) an extension and (ii) a reduction in the size of the charging zone. We exploit the unanticipated nature of both the implementation and removal of London's Western Expansion Zone (WEZ) as quasi-natural experiments to test whether individual responses to policies are asymmetric. We use the UK Department of Transport Annual Average Daily Flow (AADF) data, which records traffic flows for seven transport modes (including cars, buses, bicycles, heavy and light goods vehicles).

Social distancing in public transport: mobilising new technologies for demand management under the Covid-19 crisis.

Dense urban areas are especially hardly hit by the Covid-19 crisis due to the limited availability of public transport, one of the most efficient means of mass mobility. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, public transport operators are experiencing steep declines in demand and fare revenues due to the perceived risk of infection within vehicles and other facilities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of implementing social distancing in public transport in line with epidemiological advice.

Evaluating the speed camera sites selection criteria in the UK.

Introduction: Speed cameras have been implemented to improve road safety over recent decades in the UK. Although the safety impacts of the speed camera have been estimated thoroughly, the criteria for selecting camera sites have rarely been studied. This paper evaluates the current speed camera sites selection criteria in the UK based on safety performance.

Exploring Social Ecological Determinants of Physical Activity Among Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer.

Adult survivors of childhood cancer (ASCCs) are at high risk for cardiovascular disease from chemotherapy- and radiation therapy-related cardiotoxicity. Physical activity (PA) can reduce this risk, but the majority of ASCCs do not engage in sufficient PA. The purpose of this study was to identify barriers, facilitators, and resources for PA among ASCCs using the ecological model of physical activity (EMPA) as a theoretical framework.

Surface analysis tools for characterizing biological materials.

Surfaces represent a unique state of matter that typically have significantly different compositions and structures from the bulk of a material. Since surfaces are the interface between a material and its environment, they play an important role in how a material interacts with its environment. Thus, it is essential to characterize, in as much detail as possible, the surface structure and composition of a material.

Tailor-Made Amino Acids and Fluorinated Motifs as Prominent Traits in Modern Pharmaceuticals.

Structural analysis of modern pharmaceutical practices allows for the identification of two rapidly growing trends: the introduction of tailor-made amino acids and the exploitation of fluorinated motifs. Curiously, the former represents one of the most ubiquitous classes of naturally occurring compounds, whereas the latter is the most xenobiotic and comprised virtually entirely of man-made derivatives. Herein, 39 selected compounds, featuring both of these traits in the same molecule, are profiled.

Are multiple speed cameras more effective than a single one? Causal analysis of the safety impacts of multiple speed cameras.

Most previous studies investigate the safety effects of a single speed camera, ignoring the potential impacts from adjacent speed cameras. The mutual influence between two or even more adjacent speed cameras is a relevant attribute worth taking into account when evaluating the safety impacts of speed cameras. This paper investigates the safety effects of two or more speed cameras observed within a specific radius which are defined as multiple speed cameras.