This paper reports the findings from a study aimed at examining the effectiveness of shoulder rumble strips in reducing run-off-the-road (ROR) crashes on two-lane rural highways using the empirical Bayes (EB) before-and-after analysis method. Specifically, the study analyzed the effects of traffic volume, roadway geometry and paved right shoulder width on the effectiveness of shoulder rumble st...

this paper presents a hybrid approach to developing a short-term traffic flow prediction model. in thisapproach a primary model is synthesized based on neural networks and then the model structure is optimized throughgenetic algorithm. the proposed approach is applied to a rural highway, ghazvin-rasht road in iran. the obtainedresults are acceptable and indicate that the proposed approach can i...

The paper discusses the institutional reforms for rural electrification (RE) in Thailand and Bangladesh and analyses the impacts of private sector participation in electricity generation and tariff reforms on the poor in Thailand. RE program in Thailand, initiated in 1977, increased electricity access by rural households from 7% in early 70s to 97% by 2000. In Bangladesh the RE program, initiat...

Socioeconomic trends and developments within the U.S. healthcare system have challenged rural hospitals' ability to maintain adequate operating margins and offer needed services. However, some hospitals have fared better in this negative environment than have others. To clarify factors that distinguish the most viable rural Catholic hospitals from the least viable, our study identified a group ...

The New South Wales Department of Health (NSW Health) wishes to make appropriate use of casemix data as inputs to the determination of funding levels for small rural hospitals. However, other factors such as hospital size and degree of isolation might need to be taken into account. The study reported here involved correlation of actual expenditures with those predicted by use of a casemix model...

Given the current number of road accidents, the aim of many road safety analysts is to identify the main factors that contribute to crash severity. To pinpoint those factors, this paper shows an application that applies some of the methods most commonly used to build decision trees (DTs), which have not been applied to the road safety field before. An analysis of accidents on rural highways in ...

BACKGROUND Impaired driving is a recognized cause of major injury. Contemporary data are lacking on exposures to impaired driving behaviours and related injury among young adolescents, as well as inequities in these youth risk behaviours. METHODS AND FINDINGS Cycle 6 (2009/10) of the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey involved 26,078 students enrolled in 436 Canadian schools. We ...

Infrastructure development is the bane of any economy and it is an important factor for the improvement of wellbeing and quality of life. Many nations are struggling with meeting the increasing demands for infrastructure while devising different approaches to meeting supply. However, the focus of the Nigerian government is more towards the development of the urban and rural areas while the subu...