The Effectiveness of Iowa's Automated Red Light Running Enforcement Programs, 2007

The Federal Highway Administration estimates that red light running causes more than 100,000 crashes and 1,000 fatalities annually and results in an estimated economic loss of over $14 billion per year in the United States. In Iowa alone, a statewide analysis of red light running crashes, using crash data from 2001 to 2006, indicates that an average of 1,682 red light running crashes occur at signalized intersections every year. As a result, red light running poses a significant safety issue for communities. Communities rarely have the resources to place additional law enforcement in the field to combat the problem and they are increasingly using automated red light running camera-enforcement systems at signalized intersections. In Iowa, three communities currently use camera enforcement since 2004. These communities include Davenport, Council Bluffs, and Clive. As communities across the United States attempt to address red light running, a number of communities have implemented red light running camera enforcement programs. This report examines the red light running programs in Iowa and summarizes results of analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of such cameras.

Planning-Level Guidelines for Modern Roundabouts, 2008

This technical memorandum provides preliminary planning-level guidance to engineers, technicians, planners, and policymakers who may be considering a modern roundabout at an existing or proposed intersection in Iowa.

Iowa's Maternal Health, Child Health and Family Planning Business Plan, January 2014

• Promotes access to regular preventive health care services for children through contracts with 22 agencies covering all of Iowa’s 99 counties • Fosters age appropriate growth and development by promoting early identification of children’s health concerns and referral for diagnosis and treatment • Assists families to establish medical and dental homes for their children • Targets low income families – children on Medicaid and those who are uninsured and under insured • Strives to meet family needs and remove barriers to accessing health care by linking families to community-based, culturally appropriate services

Automated Lesion Detection-Based Symptome Mapping In Patients With Sensory Deficits

The human brain is the most complex structure known. With its high number of cells, number of connections and number of pathways it is the source of every thought in the world. It consumes 25% of our oxygen and suffers very fast from a disruption of its supply. An acute event, like a stroke, results in rapid dysfunction referable to the affected area. A few minutes without oxygen and neuronal cells die and subsequently degenerate. Changes in the brains incoming blood flow alternate the anatomy and physiology of the brain. All stroke events leave behind a brain tissue lesion. To rapidly react and improve the prediction of outcome in stroke patients, accurate lesion detection and reliable lesion-based function correlation would be very helpful. With a number of neuroimaging and clinical data of cerebral injured patients this study aims to investigate correlations of structural lesion locations with sensory functions.

Juvenile Justice System Planning Data Iowa’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Council Three Year Comprehensive Plan with Additional Juvenile Justice System Information, November 2015

This report provides key juvenile justice system planning data, most of which are taken from Iowa’s 2015 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Three Year Plan. The data and related descriptions serve as an overview of decision making for major juvenile justice system processing points, and also assist state and local officials with policy and practice. Included in the report are school discipline data and data related to juvenile in the adult criminal justice system.

Juvenile Justice System Planning Data Iowa’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Council Three Year Comprehensive Plan with Additional Juvenile Justice System Information, November 2015

This report provides key juvenile justice system planning data, most of which are taken from Iowa’s 2015 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Three Year Plan. The data and related descriptions serve as an overview of decision making for major juvenile justice system processing points, and also assist state and local officials with policy and practice. Included in the report are school discipline data and data related to juvenile in the adult criminal justice system.

Watershed Planning Advisory Council 2015 Annual Report, December 10, 2015

The Watershed Planning Advisory Council (WPAC) was established by the Iowa Legislature (see Appendix A: Iowa Code 466B.31) to assemble a diverse group of stakeholders to make recommendations to state and federal agencies to protect water resources in Iowa. In 2015, WPAC prioritized the seven areas for recommendations outlined in 466B.31, and small work groups drafted recommendations for approval by the full membership.

Organization and Coordination of the Highway Planning Function in Iowa, HR-150, 1971

The Engineering Research Institute at Iowa State University studied the organization and procedures for highway planning by all levels of government and the coordination among various state agencies and local governments in Iowa. Study information was derived from interviews, questionnaires, and a review of the literature. Representatives from state transportation or highway organizations in all states responded to questionnaires. Additionally, selected upper and intermediate level personnel from highway organizations in seven other states were interviewed and a visit was made to one state transportation department. Within Iowa, employees were interviewed in the Highway Commission, Office for Planning and Programming, Development Commission, Commerce Commission, Conservation Commission, and Highway Patrol. Nearly 600 officials of local governments in Iowa contributed factual data and opinions through questionnaires and interviews. Private citizens and consultants also provided input to the investigation through their responses to questionnaires. Twelve recommendations to improve highway planning in Iowa were formulated as a result of this study.

Improved Employment Data for Transportation Planning, 1998

Transportation planners typically use census data or small sample surveys to help estimate work trips in metropolitan areas. Census data are cheap to use but are only collected every 10 years and may not provide the answers that a planner is seeking. On the other hand, small sample survey data are fresh but can be very expensive to collect. This project involved using database and geographic information systems (GIS) technology to relate several administrative data sources that are not usually employed by transportation planners. These data sources included data collected by state agencies for unemployment insurance purposes and for drivers licensing. Together, these data sources could allow better estimates of the following information for a metropolitan area or planning region: · Locations of employers (work sites); · Locations of employees; · Travel flows between employees’ homes and their work locations. The required new employment database was created for a large, multi-county region in central Iowa. When evaluated against the estimates of a metropolitan planning organization, the new database did allow for a one to four percent improvement in estimates over the traditional approach. While this does not sound highly significant, the approach using improved employment data to synthesize home-based work (HBW) trip tables was particularly beneficial in improving estimated traffic on high-capacity routes. These are precisely the routes that transportation planners are most interested in modeling accurately. Therefore, the concept of using improved employment data for transportation planning was considered valuable and worthy of follow-up research.

A fast automated screening method for the detection of blood transfusion in sports.

Currently, there is no simple direct screening method for the misuse of blood transfusions in sports. In this study, we investigated whether the measurement of iron in EDTA-plasma can serve as biomarker for such purpose. Our results revealed an increase of the plasma iron level up to 25-fold 6 h after blood re-infusion. The variable remained elevated 10-fold one day after the procedure. A specificity of 100% and a sensitivity of 93% were obtained with a proposed threshold at 45 µg/dL of plasma iron. Therefore, our test could be used as a simple, cost effective biomarker for the screening for blood transfusion misuse in sports. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Transjugular liver biopsy: prospective evaluation of the angle formed between the hepatic veins and the vena cava main axis and modification of a semi-automated biopsy device in cases of an unfavorable angle.

In cases of transjugular liver biopsies, the venous angle formed between the chosen hepatic vein and the vena cava main axis in a frontal plane can be large, leading to technical difficulties. In a prospective study including 139 consecutive patients who underwent transjugular liver biopsy using the Quick-Core biopsy set, the mean venous angle was equal to 49.6 degrees. For 21.1% of the patients, two attempts at hepatic venous catheterization failed because the venous angle was too large, with a mean of 69.7 degrees. In all of these patients, manual reshaping of the distal curvature of the stiffening metallic cannula, by forming a new mean angle equal to 48 degrees , allowed successful completion of the procedure in less than 10 min.

The CerdàPlan for the Extension of Barcelona: A Constructivist Analysis of a Town-planning Controversy

Peer-reviewed

Automated segmentation of multiple red blood cells with digital holographic microscopy.

We present a method to automatically segment red blood cells (RBCs) visualized by digital holographic microscopy (DHM), which is based on the marker-controlled watershed algorithm. Quantitative phase images of RBCs can be obtained by using off-axis DHM along to provide some important information about each RBC, including size, shape, volume, hemoglobin content, etc. The most important process of segmentation based on marker-controlled watershed is to perform an accurate localization of internal and external markers. Here, we first obtain the binary image via Otsu algorithm. Then, we apply morphological operations to the binary image to get the internal markers. We then apply the distance transform algorithm combined with the watershed algorithm to generate external markers based on internal markers. Finally, combining the internal and external markers, we modify the original gradient image and apply the watershed algorithm. By appropriately identifying the internal and external markers, the problems of oversegmentation and undersegmentation are avoided. Furthermore, the internal and external parts of the RBCs phase image can also be segmented by using the marker-controlled watershed combined with our method, which can identify the internal and external markers appropriately. Our experimental results show that the proposed method achieves good performance in terms of segmenting RBCs and could thus be helpful when combined with an automated classification of RBCs.