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Daily Archives: February 3, 2014

DOT Announces Roadway Safety Smart Car Program Using Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

“The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced today that it will begin taking steps to enable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology for light vehicles. This technology would improve safety by allowing vehicles to “talk” to each other and ultimately avoid many crashes altogether by exchanging basic safety data, such as speed and position, ten times per second. “Vehicle-to-vehicle technology represents the next generation of auto safety improvements, building on the life-saving achievements we’ve already seen with safety belts and air bags,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “By helping drivers avoid crashes, this technology will play a key role in improving the way people get where they need to go while ensuring that the U.S. remains the leader in the global automotive industry.” DOT research indicates that safety applications using V2V technology can address a large majority of crashes involving two or more motor vehicles. With safety data such as speed and location flowing from nearby vehicles, vehicles can identify risks and provide drivers with warnings to avoid other vehicles in common crash types such as rear-end, lane change, and intersection crashes. These safety applications have been demonstrated with everyday drivers under both real-world and controlled test conditions. The safety applications currently being developed provide warnings to drivers so that they can prevent imminent collisions, but do not automatically operate any vehicle systems, such as braking or steering. NHTSA is also considering future actions on active safety technologies that rely on on-board sensors. Those technologies are eventually expected to blend with the V2V technology. NHTSA issued an Interim Statement of Policy in 2013 explaining its approach to these various streams of innovation. In addition to enhancing safety, these future applications and technologies could help drivers to conserve fuel and save time.”

The Capital and Loss Assessment under Stress Scenarios (CLASS) Model

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports – Beverly Hirtle, Anna Kovner, James Vickery, and Meru Bhanot: “The CLASS model is a top-down capital stress testing framework that projects the effect of different macroeconomic scenarios on U.S. banking firms. The model is based on simple econometric models estimated using public data and also on assumptions about loan loss provisioning, taxes, asset… Continue Reading

Immigration: America’s Demographic Edge

Bipartisan Policy Center – Immigration Task Force: “Many nations, especially those with advanced economies, face significant demographic challenges. Due primarily to declining fertility rates, the populations of these countries are stagnating and, in some cases, even shrinking. In addition, most developed countries are “graying,” with seniors accounting for an increasingly larger share of their overall populations. In the… Continue Reading

Surveillance for Viral Hepatitis – United States, 2011

“As part of CDC’s National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS), viral hepatitis case-reports are received electronically from state health departments via CDC’s National Electronic Telecommunications System for Surveillance (NETSS), a computerized public health surveillance system that provides CDC with data regarding cases of nationally notifiable diseases on a weekly basis. Although surveillance infrastructure is in… Continue Reading

Rand Study – Intolerance in Western Europe

Intolerance in Western Europe – Analysis of trends and associated factors, by Jennifer Rubin, Jirka Taylor, Alexandra Pollitt, Joachim Krapels, Mafalda Pardal “This study, commissioned by the Open Society Foundations, aimed to situate the widely-shared perception of rising intolerance in Western Europe in the context of empirical evidence on high-level trends in intolerant attitudes in Western Europe. Through analysis of European datasets,… Continue Reading

2014 Poverty Guidelines

2014 Poverty Guidelines – One Version of the [U.S.] Federal Poverty Measure [ Federal Register Notice, January 24, 2013 — Full text ] [ Prior Poverty Guidelines and Federal Register References Since 1982 ] [ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ] [ Further Resources on Poverty Measurement, Poverty Lines, and Their History ] [ Computations for the 2014 Poverty Guidelines ] Continue Reading

The Consumer Benefits of Increasing the Fuel Economy of Medium and Heavy-Duty Trucks

“In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama called for improved fuel efficiency in the millions of semi-trucks, large vans, buses, and other large trucks – known as “medium and heavy-duty trucks” – that ply America’s highways. A new report from the Consumer Federation of America finds that new efficiency improvements for big… Continue Reading

Pew – 6 new facts about Facebook

Aaron Smith – “Facebook turns 10 tomorrow and reaches that milestone as the dominant social networking platform, used by 57% of all adults and 73% of all those ages 12-17.  Adult Facebook use is intensifying: 64% of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis, up from 51% of users who were daily users in… Continue Reading

WHO World Cancer Report 2014

“The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World  Health Organization, is today launching World Cancer Report 2014, a collaboration of over 250 leading scientists from more than 40 countries, describing multiple aspects of cancer research and control. Based on the latest statistics on trends in cancer incidence and… Continue Reading

Why More Educated Workers Enjoy Greater Employment Stability

Human Capital and Unemployment Dynamics: Why More Educated Workers Enjoy Greater Employment Stability, by Isabel Cairo and Tomaz Cajner, 2014-09. “Why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility? A closer look at the data reveals that these workers have similar job finding rates, but much lower and less volatile separation rates than… Continue Reading