Grid-enabled Workflows for Industrial Product Design

This paper presents a generic approach for developing and using Grid-based workflow technology for enabling cross-organizational engineering applications. Using industrial product design examples from the automotive and aerospace industries we highlight the main requirements and challenges addressed by our approach and describe how it can be used for enabling interoperability between heterogeneous workflow engines

Trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in adolescence: ethnic and socioeconomic differences

Objective: To assess developmental trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in British adolescents in relation to sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES).Design: A 5-year longitudinal study of a diverse cohort of students aged 11 - 12 years at baseline in 1999.Setting: 36 London schools sampled using a stratified random sampling procedure.Participants: A total of 5863 students categorised as white, black or Asian, and stratified for SES using the Townsend Index.Main outcome measures: Number of days per week of vigorous activity leading to sweating and breathing hard. Hours of sedentary behaviour, including watching television and playing video games. Data were analysed using multilevel, linear, mixed models.Results: Marked reductions in physical activity and increases in sedentary behaviour were noticed between ages 11 - 12 and 15 - 16 years. Boys were more active than girls, and the decline in physical activity was greater in girls (46% reduction) than in boys (23%). Asian students were less active than whites, and this was also true of black girls but not boys. Black students were more sedentary than white students. Levels of sedentary behaviour were greater in respondents from lower SES. Most differences between ethnic and SES groups were present at age 11 years, and did not evolve over the teenage years.Conclusions: Physical activity declines and sedentary behaviour becomes more common during adolescence. Ethnic and SES differences are observed in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in British youth that anticipate adult variations in adiposity and cardiovascular disease risk. These are largely established by age 11 - 12 years, so reversing these patterns requires earlier intervention

Building producer loyalty in Malaysia's fresh milk supply chain

The paper presents results from a survey of 133 dairy producers in Malaysia, and identifies how Malaysian milk buyers can build a loyal customer base with their suppliers as a means to secure uninterrupted milk supplies. A structural equation model was conducted to test the conceptual model using AMOS 17.0 software. The results show that whereas timely and collaborative communication, price satisfaction and cultural fit influence positively suppliers’ contractual and competence trust in their buyers, power dependency negatively influences competence trust. Furthermore, suppliers’ trust in their buyers will eventually lead to loyalty. The principal implication is that milk processors and other buyers need to engage in collaborative communication with the dairy farmers to ensure continuous and uninterrupted supply.dairy, Malaysia, customer base, competence trust, suppliers trust, collaborative communication, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Industrial Organization, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Accessing Patient Records in Virtual Healthcare Organisations

The ARTEMIS project is developing a semantic web service based P2P interoperability infrastructure for healthcare information systems that will allow healthcare providers to securely share patient records within virtual healthcare organisations. Authorisation decisions to access patient records across organisation boundaries can be very dynamic and must occur within a strict legislative framework. In ARTEMIS we are developing a dynamic authorisation mechanism called PBAC that provides a means of contextual and process oriented access control to enforce healthcare business processes. PBAC demonstrates how healthcare providers can dynamically share patient records for care pathways across organisation boundaries

Developing a questionnaire to assess community severance, walkability, and wellbeing: results from the Street Mobility Project in London

This working paper describes the development of the survey questionnaire component of the toolkit designed to measure community severance, and assess its potential associations with transport and health. We discuss the cognitive testing and piloting of the questionnaire in two contrasting case study areas in inner London, and present results from the survey data