National Academy of Sciences
Report: Driver shortage claim ‘spurious,’ fixation on efficiency causes turnover
Calling talk of a driver shortage “spurious,” a more than 170-page study on long-distance truckers from the National Academy of Sciences says the constant turnover in the ranks of drivers should be expected given the fundamental business practices of carriers.
Released earlier this month, the study – “Pay and Working Conditions in the Long-Distance Truck and Bus Industries: Assessing for Effects on Driver Safety and Retention” – looks at numerous safety, driver retention and driver pay issues...
FMCSA changing how it identifies unsafe carriers
WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration plans to change the way it evaluates trucking company safety by upgrading its current ranking model as opposed to installing a new one.
In a notice to be published Wednesday, FMCSA announced it has determined that an advanced statistical model known as Item Response Theory (IRT) — a model touted by the National Academy of Sciences — is “overly complex,” and therefore the agency would not be using it to regulate carrier safety.
Instead,...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/fmcsa-changing-how-it-identifies-unsafe-carriers
Why Plastic Bottles Wash Up On Inaccessible Island?
According to an article published in Discover Magazine, rafts of garbage, assembled by currents that swirl trash together, clog our oceans. But how did that material wind up adrift in the first place?
Why garbage washes on the remote island?A new study takes a look at the refuse that washes up on a remote island in the South Atlantic and arrives at a perhaps-unexpected answer: The trash is being dumped from ships.
The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...
http://mfame.guru/why-plastic-bottles-wash-up-on-inaccessible-island/