1,720,995 research outputs found
Estimating blast exposures from the 2020 Beirut explosion and examining correlation with blast injuries
No full textOn 4th August 2020, approximately 2750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate stored in the port of Beirut ignited, causing a huge explosion that damaged large parts of the city, causing more than 200 deaths and over 7,000 injuries. Injured victims’ locations at the time of the explosion were previously unreported and unknown due to improper documentation. Without such knowledge, a victim’s degree of blast exposure cannot be estimated, preventing further understanding of how blast loading contributed to injury outcomes.As a large, city-scale explosion, a victim’s blast exposure will have been significantly influenced by their location, including distance from the port detonation, their elevation, and proximity to buildings. In the absence of pressure measurements, engineering models can estimate and provide useful insight into the blast conditions likely to have occurred at different distances from the blast epicentre. This paper reports on findings from a first-of-kind forensic study of the 2020 Beirut port explosion that aimed to investigate the relationship between victims’ blast injury patterns and predicted blast exposure based on their location. Patients were selected from existing Beirut blast injury databases and invited to participate in this study. Over 300 participants completed a structured interview administered by telephone which acquired information on the participants’ exact location at the time of the blast, their circumstances, and self-reported injuries alongside clinical records from prior injury databases. Participant locations were determined as precisely as possible and recorded using Google My Maps to obtain corresponding latitude and longitude coordinates. For each location, estimated blast loading parameters were calculated assuming an idealised, hemispherical surface detonation at the port using equivalent charge mass estimates in the literature. Estimated blast loading conditions were analysed against participants’ injury severity scores and reported injury patterns to examine correlation between loading intensity and injury outcomes.Results from this study highlight the capacity and limitations of blast modelling approaches for injury prediction through examination of a real-world urban blast case study. New knowledge can be used to inform disaster management and guide the protection of civilians exposed to urban blasts.<br/
Spatial and contextual factors influencing injury patterns and severity resulting from the 2020 Beirut blast
No full textThis cross-sectional study investigated the factors influencing injury characteristics and outcomes following the 2020 Beirut Blast. Blast victims (n = 310) were identified from hospital registries in Beirut. Soft tissue injuries predominated (N = 276; 88.2%), with most patients struck by objects (N = 261, 84.2%). Minor injuries were common (70.3%), with significant associations noted for eye and internal injuries. Victims were primarily situated 500-1700 m from the blast epicentre (71%), indoors (81%), often in residential dwellings (48%), near windows. Severe injuries, especially musculoskeletal, were more frequent outdoors. Significant associations were found between indoor positioning facing the port and soft tissue injury incidence, and with proximity to windows. A standing posture significantly correlated with musculoskeletal and soft tissue injuries, as well as being struck by objects. A cluster of severe injuries was noted at 600-1400 m radial distance from the blast epicentre. The study underscores the role of spatial and contextual factors in injury patterns post-blast, emphasizing the importance of targeted interventions for disaster preparedness and urban resilience to mitigate the impact of future similar events on affected populations.</p
The influence of obstacle geometric fidelity on blast wave propagation: a reduced-scale case study examining the role of the grain siloes in the 2020 Beirut explosion
Full text linkIn the field of blast protection engineering, it remains challenging to validate large, complex numerical models and the implications of modelling assumptions relating to how structures are represented (e.g., geometric fidelity) are not well understood. This paper presents experimental work addressing these two issues, in the context of the 2020 Beirut explosion, which remains an important case study for understanding urban blast effects. A series of reduced-scale (1:250) blast tests examined shielding effects caused by the Beirut grain siloes and investigated the influence of the siloes’ geometric fidelity on blast loading. Rigid obstacles were constructed at two geometric fidelities: “rectangular” (i.e., cuboid), and “accurate”, with closer resemblance to the siloes. Pressure gauges were mounted at multiple locations but at fixed blast scaled distances to examine blast-obstacle interaction behaviour. Additionally, Viper::Blast was used to perform computational fluid dynamics analyses of the tests. Experimental findings confirmed significant shielding (reduced pressure and specific impulse) locally behind the siloes (Z<3 m/kg1/3), although models indicated that these effects ceased further afield (Z>5 m/kg1/3). Overall, blast wave parameters did not exhibit significant differences between the rectangular and accurate representation of the siloes geometry, except for minor differences (+/-10%) in peak overpressures in localised zones. Numerical models confirmed that these discrepancies were caused by differing blast wave scattering, diffraction and superposition behaviour attributed to the siloes outer geometry. The results suggest that city-scale blast loading analyses can yield reliable results through idealising structures as simplified, cuboidal obstacles. These findings will be of direct relevance to blast protection practitioners and researchers concerned with modelling urban blast scenarios
Collaborative Visual Analytics for public health: facilitating problem solving and supporting decision-making
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Understanding Health Challenges, Response And Recovery: The 2020 Beirut Blast And Mass Casualty Blast Events. Workshop Report.
No full textThis report gives an overview of our workshop on understanding the health challenges, response, and recovery of the health system to the 2020 Beirut Blast and other mass casualty blast events. This workshop aimed to examine how the health response to the 2020 Beirut blast was managed and coordinated, looking at the immediate care of the injured and how the health systems were affected, how they coped, and how those injured were managed over the following two and half years. We aimed to draw out lessons from the health system response to the Beirut blast to help inform future preparedness planning and system reconstitution. Through shared understanding, we identified opportunities for increasing health system resilience, and the long-term rehabilitation and management of those affected by the blast.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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