Cigarette characteristics,smoker characteristics,and the relationship to cigarette fires

Data were collected from eight cities on a wide range of cigarette and smoker characteristics for a sample of smokers. Of these, 564 smokers had had fires and were identified through fire department response to those fires, while the other 1,611 smokers had not had fires and were identified through a telephone sample survey of the communities. The characteristics analyzed included those that had shown evidence of a relationship to the risk of a cigarette-initiated fire, either in laboratory studies or in previous statistical analyses of fire experience.The smoker characteristics analyzed were household income, education, age, gender, and race. The cigarette characteristics analyzed were filter, tobacco column length, filter length, circumference, density, amount of tobacco, menthol, citrate, porosity, and pack type. In addition, a variable was used to control for the smoker's city.After controlling for all smoker characteristics and city, logistic regression modeling showed four cigarette characteristics to be significant: filter, filter length, porosity, and type of pack. Filter, filter length, and porosity all affect air intake, which, therefore, appears to be an important physical element in the combustion process associated with risk. Analysis limited to filtered cigarettes only showed the same characteristics to be significant, plus tobacco column length. Extension of the analysis to two-way interaction terms did not change any of the conclusions on which cigarette characteristics are important, but it did indicate that the role of pack type was different for men and women.Sensitivity analyses, shown in the appendix, supported the main conclusions that cigarette characteristics are significant after controlling for smoker characteristics and that the four specific cigarette characteristics—filter, filter length, porosity, and pack—are the ones that are significant. These analyses checked the impact of cluster sampling, sensitivity to missing data on smoker characteristics, and sensitivity to nonfire smoker cases with responses by people other than the smokers themselves.All this means that there are already cigarettes commercially available that exhibit a reduced propensity for ignition when one controls for smoker characteristics.This report was originally written as the final report in June 1993 as part of CPSC-P-91-1147 Contract Cigarette Fire Incident Study that the National Fire Protection Association conducted for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.Harwood, formerly with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is retired.     

A note on export openness and regional wage disparity in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper extends the empirical literature on the effects of trade liberalization on regional disparities within a country. Studying the case of the Central and Eastern European countries, we find significant convergence of real wages in Poland and Bulgaria, only. Furthermore, countries with a faster growing export openness in the period 1991–1998 experienced larger increases in their regional disparities. Especially, intermediate goods trade seems to have been a main driving force. Our estimates suggest that the long run impact of rising intermediate goods export openness in the last decade was a 23% increase in the average economys variance of real wages.Received: December 2002/Accepted: January 2004The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Precision of in-place concrete strenghts predicted using core strength correction factors obtained by weighted regression analysis

A two-step method for converting a concrete core compression test result to the in-place strength of the corresponding volume of concrete is presented. The strength of a non-standard core is first converted to the equivalent strength of a standard core, and then the standard core strength is converted to the equivalent in-place strength. Strength correction factors required for these conversions, obtained from weighted linear and nonlinear regression analyses presented elsewhere, are summarized. The accuracy of the predicted in-place strength is affected by the inherent error of the core strength measurement itself, and by the uncertainty of the various strength correction factors. It is shown that confidence intervals on the estimates of the strength correction factors obtained by regression analysis underestimate the true model error because the underlying models are imperfect. Instead, the accuracy of the strength correction factors is determined by a weighted regression analysis of ratios of observed-to-predicted values which accounts for the non-uniform variances of the dependent and independent variables. The coefficient of variation of the in-place strength predicted from a test of a 100 or 150 mm diameter core is between 4 and 5.5.%. If the in-place strength is predicted from a test of a 50 mm diameter core, the coefficient of variation of the predicted in-place strength is approximately 12.5%. These error estimates do not account for possible variation of in-place strength throughout the volume of the element being cored.     

Effect of Performance Model Accuracy on Optimal Pavement Design

In the first part of this paper, an analysis of the data collected during the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) road test, based on probabilistic duration modeling techniques, is presented. Duration techniques enable the stochastic nature of pavement failure time to be evaluated as well as censored data to be incorporated in the statistical estimation of the model parameters. The second part of this paper presents the use of economic optimization principles for determining the optimal design of flexible pavements. We study the effect of deterioration model accuracy on optimal design and lifecycle costs by comparing three models. The first is a simple regression model developed by the AASHO, which forms the basis of design standards in use today. The second is a regression model that was developed with the same AASHO data set, but that includes a correction for data censoring. The third model is the probabilistic model developed in the first part of this paper. The results show that the AASHO model, when used as an input to lifecycle cost minimization, produces a pavement structural number that is lower than that produced by using the other two deterioration models. This results in shorter pavement lives and higher costs due to more frequent resurfacing. The savings in lifecycle cost accrued by using optimal structural number are shown to be quite significant, offering a sound basis for revising current design practices.     

Spatial variation in nitrogen dioxide in three European areas

In order to estimate the spatial variation within well-defined study areas, nitrogen dioxide was measured with diffusion samplers (Palmes tube) in 40-42 sites each in Germany (Munich), the Netherlands and Sweden (Stockholm County). Each site was measured over four 2-week periods during 1 year (spring 1999 to summer 2000). In each country, one reference site was measured during all periods and the results were used to adjust for seasonal variability, to improve the estimates of the annual average. Comparisons between the chemiluminescence method (European reference method) and Palmes tube measurement indicated a good agreement in Germany (with a ratio of 1.0 for Palmes tube/chemiluminescence) but underestimation for Palmes tube measurement in the Netherlands and Sweden (0.8 for both countries). The r2 values were between 0.86 and 0.90 for all three countries. The annual average values for NO2 for different sampling sites were between 15.9 and 50.6 (mean 28.8 microg/m3) in Germany, between 12.1 and 50.8 (mean 28.9 microg/m3) in the Netherlands and between 6.1 and 44.7 (mean 18.5 microg/m3) in Sweden. Comparing spatial variation between similar sites in the three countries, we did not find any significant differences between annual average levels for urban traffic sites. In Sweden, annual average levels in urban background and suburban backgrounds sites were about 8 microg/m3 lower than comparable sites in Germany and the Netherlands. Comparing site types within each country only urban traffic sites and suburban background sites differed in Germany. In the Netherlands and Sweden, the urban traffic sites differed from all other sites and in Sweden also the urban background sites differed from the other background sites. The observed contribution from local traffic was similar in the Netherlands and Sweden (10 and 8 microg/m3, corresponding to 26-27% of the NO2 concentration found in the urban traffic sites). In Germany, the contribution from local traffic was only 3 microg/m3, corresponding to 9% of the NO2 concentration found in the urban traffic sites. The spatial variation was substantially larger for NO2 than the variation for PM2.5 and similar to PM2.5 absorbance, measured in the same locations.     

The Effects of Annealing After Equal Channel Angular Extrusion (ECAE) on Mechanical and Magnetic Properties of 49Fe-49Co-2V Alloy

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - Equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) of 49Fe-49Co-2V, also known as Hiperco® 50A or Permendur-2V, greatly improves the strength and ductility of...     

PLACE,COUNTRY, CHOROGRAPHY: Towards a Kinesthetic and Narrative Practice of Place

Mainstream practices of place are founded on visual notions of landscape, conveyed through Picturesque engagement with the environment. By contrast. Indigenous experiences of place concern country, not landscape. They are not primarily specular forms of engagement. Rather, they are chorographic—in the sense that they relate to space and place; and choreographic—inthesense that space and place are elaborated kinesthetically through practices of walking and speaking stories associated with country. These kinds of experiences of place—where topography and the body are encountered and gathered through narrative recollection and enunciation—suggest implications for the way the environment is encountered and addressed in architectural design.