Trouble in Toyland: The 23rd Annual Toy Safety Survey

Details findings on deaths and injuries from and toxic chemicals in toys, with a focus on lead and phthalates. Includes tips for consumers and recommendations for policy makers and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Lists potentially dangerous toys

Parent Resource Packet - A Guide for New Parents

PDF pages: 8

Has the time come for an older driver vehicle?

The population of the world is growing older. As people grow older they are more likely to experience declines that can make operating a personal automobile more difficult. Once driving abilities begin to decline, older adults are often faced with decreased mobility. Due to the preference for and pervasiveness of the personal automobile for satisfying mobility needs, there is a global necessity to keep older adults driving for as long as they can safely do so. In this report we explore the question: Has the time come for an older driver vehicle? Great gains in safe mobility could be made by designing automobiles that take into account, and help overcome, some of the deficits in abilities common in older people. The report begins by providing a background and rationale for an older driver vehicle, including discussions of relevant trends, age-related declines in functional abilities, and the adverse consequences of decreased mobility. The next section discusses research and issues related to vehicle design and advanced technology with respect to older drivers. The next section explores crashworthiness issues and the unique requirements for older adults. The following section discusses the many issues related to marketing a vehicle that has been designed for older drivers. The report concludes that there is a clear global opportunity to improve the safety, mobility, and quality of life of older adults by designing vehicles and vehicle technologies that help overcome common age-related deficits. The marketing of these vehicles to older consumers, however, will be challenging and will likely require further market research. The development of vehicle design features, new automotive technologies, and crashworthiness systems in the future should be guided by both knowledge of the effects of frailty/fragility of the elderly on crash outcomes, as well as knowledge of common drivingrelated declines in psychomotor, visual, and cognitive abilities. Design strategies that allow for some degree of customization may be particularly beneficial. It is clear that training and education efforts for using new vehicle features will need to be improved.The University of Michigan Sustainable Worldwide Transportationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89960/1/102821.pd

Non-Destructive Evaluation: Science and Technology

I shall make a review of the status of "Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) : Science and Technology". I am aware that this is a very mixed audience. There are the techn-icians and scientists of the laboratory; we have also members of the public, students and the media; so I would spend a few minutes explaining for the benefit of the uninitiated as to what non-destructive techniques are. The best way to carry the point home to all of you is to talk about the application of these techniques in medicine and physiology. I am sure all of you know about X-rays or most of you have been X-rayed sometime or the other when it was suspected that your human skeleton structure, bone structure, has undergone fracture due to an accident. Bones are opaque to x-rays, and if there is a fracture you are able to identify this in a two-dimensionalpicture, in a film or in a screen. There are similar other techniques. When we do computer aided scanning using X-rays, we use principles of mathematics to re-construct a three dime-nsional picture of the object that is being scanned; this is the technique of CATSCAN or computer aided tomograph

Baby Soothing Device

This document is the official final design review for the Baby Soothing Device. This product is intended to help families sleep throughout the night by allowing a baby to be soothed back to sleep without constant and direct parental interaction. It is maintained by Mechanical Engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo for Dustin Yoder, the project sponsor. The purpose of this document is to present the design process from ideation to finished design in great enough detail that its manufacturing procedure may be replicated if desired. This document further explains all the research, testing, and benchmarks used to determine that our design meets our engineering specifications. Key components of this document include our Scope of Work, Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, and Final Design Review. Furthermore, in the appendices, this document contains our Manufacturing Procedure, Bill of Materials, Project Budget, Source Code, Safety Review, User Manual, full Drawing Package and more