Perception of the Risks Associated with Impaired Driving and Effects on Driving Behavior

This research studies the perception of the risks associated with impaired driving-probability of being apprehended or of having an accident-and the relation between the perception of risks and driving behavior. The most important determinants of perceptual biases are age, an accumulation of violations in the year preceding the survey, being a non-drinker, knowledge of the legal alcohol limit for driving, opinion about zero tolerance for impaired driving, and family income. Perceptual biases are shown to influence driving behavior, as captured by drivers' accumulated violations, demerit points and bodily injury accidents, in the years preceding and in the year following the survey. In conclusion, we analyze the results in terms of public policy for road safety.Risk perception, impaired driving, driving behavior, traffic violation, road accident, regulation, public policy

Analysis of the Workforce and Workplace for Rheumatology, and the Research Activities of Rheumatologists Early in Their Careers

[Excerpt] The scope and scale of clinical research is unknown for any medical or surgical specialty beyond snapshots of the broad aims and expenditures of research programs sponsored by federal agencies or the pharmaceutical industry. As a consequence, the workforce and workplace for clinical investigation is enigmatic and unexamined even after explicit warnings that an essential arm for advancing clinical practice has been disabled. The present study was designed to assess the workforce and workplace for rheumatology, and the extent and type of research prevailing among rheumatologists early in their careers. Our findings provide fresh insights about the workforce and the workplace for rheumatology, and justify interventions to address gaps in both the scope and scale of clinical research in arthritis and rheumatism

The Scope and Scale of Clinical Research Accomplished by Rheumatologists Early in Their Careers

[Excerpt] The scope and scale of clinical research is unknown for any medical or surgical specialty beyond snap shots of the broad aims and expenditures of research programs sponsored by federal agencies or the pharmaceutical industry. As a consequence, the workforce and workplace for clinical investigation is enigmatic and unexamined even after explicit warnings that an essential arm for advancing clinical practice is disabled. The present study was designed to examine the nature and extent of investigative activity prevailing among rheumatologists early in their careers. This assessment provides a lens on: i) the fraction of early career rheumatologists who engage in investigative rheumatology, ii) the scope and scale of research in musculoskeletal diseases, iii) funding available for investigative work, iv) the impact of research-intensive institutions, and NIH-K-series awards on research, and v) the demographic backgrounds of early career rheumatologists. The results provide important new insights about the early career workforce for discovery and innovation in rheumatology. The findings integrate demographic, normative, and predictive data to provide the first estimate of the scope and scale of clinical investigation within rheumatology. The results also justify interventions for promoting investigative work, and ultimately advancing the clinical practice of rheumatology

La sécurité alimentaire durable au Nunavik : les enjeux juridiques de la commercialisation de la viande de caribou et de ses sous-produits par les Inuits

Le régime alimentaire des Inuits du Nunavik s’est modifié considérablement au cours des dernières décennies. Leur alimentation traditionnelle, constituée de viande et de poisson, a évolué vers un régime composé majoritairement de produits alimentaires importés du Sud, bien que l’apport en protéines demeure largement basé sur la consommation de gibier et de poisson. En raison du coût important lié à cette nouvelle forme d’alimentation, la transformation des habitudes alimentaires des Inuits modifie l’état de la sécurité alimentaire au Nunavik. Parce qu’elle permettrait de générer des revenus supplémentaires aux Inuits, la commercialisation de la viande de caribou et de ses sous-produits pourrait contribuer à renforcer l’accessibilité économique des Inuits aux produits du Sud et ainsi participer à l’atteinte d’une sécurité alimentaire durable au Nunavik. La Convention de la Baie-James et du Nord québécois et ses conventions complémentaires, qui établissent le régime de chasse des Inuits, permettent effectivement à ces derniers de pratiquer la chasse commerciale du caribou tout en leur assurant un accès sécurisé à cette ressource faunique dans une perspective de développement durable. Toutefois, certaines dispositions de ces conventions posent problème, principalement en cas de diminution importante des populations de caribous. De plus, des difficultés sont prévisibles quant au respect des règles nationales et internationales liées au commerce des produits alimentaires, notamment en ce qui a trait aux règles d’innocuité et de salubrité.Over the past decades, the food patterns of the Inuit of Nunavik have undergone substantial changes. Their traditional diet, mainly of meat and fish, has evolved towards a regimen made up largely of food products imported from the south, despite the fact that their intake of proteins is mainly based on the consumption of game animals and fish. Owing to the high cost of their new eating habits, the change in diet among the Inuit has modified food security in Nunavik. Since this enables the Inuit to generate extra income, the marketing of caribou meat and its derivative products could contribute to reinforcing Inuit economic access to products from the south and thereby participate in the attainment of sustainable food security for Nunavik. The Agreement concerning James Bay and Northern Québec and its complementary agreements, which establish the Inuit hunting regime, do in effect allow them to practice commercial hunting while ensuring for themselves secure access to this wildlife resource with a view to sustainable development. Nonetheless, some provisions of these agreements are problematical, especially in the case of a significant decline in caribou populations. Moreover, difficulties are foreseen regarding compliance with national and international rules relevant to the marketing of food products, particularly with regard to rules of safety and health

Dissecting the Workforce and Workplace for Clinical Endocrinology, and the Work of Endocrinologists Early in Their Careers

[Excerpt] No national mechanism is in place for an informed, penetrating, and systematic assessment of the physician workforce such as that achieved by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the periodic evaluation of the nation’s scientists and engineers. Likewise, knowledge of the workforce for clinical research is enigmatic and fragmentary despite the serial recommendations of “blue-ribbon” panels to establish a protocol for the recurrent assessment of clinical investigators early in their careers. Failure to adopt a national system for producing timely, high-quality data on the professional activities of physicians limits the application of improvement tools for advancing clinical investigation and ultimately improving clinical practice. The present study was designed as a pilot project to test the feasibility of using Web-based surveys to estimate the administrative, clinical, didactic, and research work of subspecialty physicians employed in academic, clinical, federal, and pharmaceutical workplaces. Physician members of The Endocrine Society (TES) were used as surrogate prototypes of a subspecialty workforce because of their manageable number and investigative tradition. The results establish that Web-based surveys provide a tool to assess the activities of a decentralized workforce employed in disparate workplaces and underscore the value of focusing on physician work within the context of particular workplaces within a subspecialty. Our report also provides a new and timely snapshot of the amount and types of research performed by clinically trained endocrinologists and offers an evidenced-based framework for improving the investigative workforce in this medical subspecialty

Normal mode decomposition and dispersive and nonlinear mixing in stratified fluids

Motivated by the analysis of the propagation of internal waves in a stratified ocean, we consider in this article the incompressible Euler equations with variable density in a flat strip, and we study the evolution of perturbations of the hydrostatic equilibrium corresponding to a stable vertical strati-fication of the density. We show the local well-posedness of the equations in this configuration and provide a detailed study of their linear approximation. Performing a modal decomposition according to a Sturm-Liouville problem associated to the background stratification, we show that the linear approximation can be described by a series of dispersive perturbations of linear wave equations. When the so called Brunt-Vais{\"a}l{\"a} frequency is not constant, we show that these equations are coupled, hereby exhibiting a phenomenon of dispersive mixing. We then consider more specifically shallow water configurations (when the horizontal scale is much larger than the depth); under the Boussinesq approximation (i.e. neglecting the density variations in the momentum equation), we provide a well-posedness theorem for which we are able to control the existence time in terms of the relevant physical scales. We can then extend the modal decomposition to the nonlinear case and exhibit a non-linear mixing of different nature than the dispersive mixing mentioned above. Finally, we discuss some perspectives such as the sharp stratification limit that is expected to converge towards two-fluids systems

Las interacciones entre el derecho estatal y la certificación comercio justo fairtrade: garantía de una mejor protección de los derechos de los trabajadores y del medio ambiente

El régimen de certificación Comercio Justo Fairtrade International es unmodelo de certificación de RSE interesante por su interacción con elderecho estatal porqué sus disposiciones y su funcionamiento favorecenuna mejor aplicación. La referencia al derecho estatal es un medio deincorporarlo al corpus normativo de la certificación Comercio JustoFairtrade. La reiteración de la obligación que tienen los productores derespetar la legislación nacional constituye igualmente un medio deasegurar que la certificación no tenga como consecuencia una nivelacióna la baja de las exigencias aplicables a los productores. La referencia a lalegislación y a las prácticas nacionales permite, inversamente, noimponer tampoco obligaciones desproporcionadas a los productores. Alinsistir sobre la necesidad de deber conformarse tanto a las normassurgidas de los estándares como a aquellas que provienen del derechoestatal, se favorece igualmente un mejor conocimiento del derechoestatal. A pesar de estas ventajas, la incorporación de normas de derechonacional es sin embargo portadora de un cierto riesgo que variará enintensidad en función a la manera en la que se lleva a cabo

Contribution à l'analyse critique de la certification du commerce équitable depuis une perspective juridique : l'exemple du secteur viticole

Cette thèse s’attache à définir la certification équitable depuis une perspective juridique. Tant l’analyse de sa dimension formelle que matérielle permettent de conclure qu’elle est caractérisée par un dualisme face au droit étatique. Elle entretient à la fois une relation d’autonomie et d’hétéronomie à l’égard des ordres juridiques étatiques. Sur le plan formel, le caractère autonome du régime équitable est révélé par l’existence d’un ordre juridique distinct des ordres étatiques. En effet, les institutions du régime équitable jouent le rôle de tiers neutre et désintéressé remplissant des fonctions législatives, exécutives et judiciaires à l’égard des parties constituantes que sont les producteurs du Sud et les acheteurs du Nord. Le rapport d’hétéronomie se manifeste par l’intervention d’éléments provenant d’ordres juridiques étatiques au sein du régime. D’une part, les relations entre les producteurs et le certificateur sont soumises au droit allemand par le biais des contrats de certification et de licence. D’autre part, les relations salarié/employeur et acheteur/vendeur, centrales dans le commerce équitable, font intervenir le droit de la consommation des pays consommateurs et le droit du travail des pays producteurs. L’intervention d’éléments relevant d’autres ordres juridiques contribue à sécuriser et à bonifier le régime équitable. Sur le plan matériel, l’autonomie du régime se traduit par des dispositions inédites. Bien qu’originales par rapport aux normes d’origine étatique, l’analyse de ces normes montre qu’elles ne se placent cependant pas en situation de concurrence face à celles-ci. Elles interviennent plutôt comme complément dans des sphères où il s’avère difficile pour les normes d’origine étatique d’intervenir, principalement en raison des limites intrinsèques du droit national et international. Les standards de la certification équitable ne comportent cependant pas que des normes inédites. Plusieurs reprennent textuellement des dispositions d’instruments juridiques internationaux et nationaux d’origine étatique, alors que d’autres les traduisent dans un langage plus accessible et adapté au contexte de leurs destinataires. Dans ces deux cas, il s’agit de réitérer le droit en vigueur plutôt que de s’y opposer. Son principal attrait réside dans le fait qu’elle ne se limite pas à le répéter mais à faciliter sa connaissance et sa mise en œuvre par des mesures concrètes

Does Early Mismatched Nutrition Predispose to Hypertension and Atherosclerosis, in Male Mice?

BACKGROUND: A link between early mismatched nutritional environment and development of components of the metabolic syndrome later in life has been shown in epidemiological and animal data. The aim of this study was to investigate whether an early mismatched nutrition produced by catch-up growth after fetal protein restriction could induce the appearance of hypertension and/or atherosclerosis in adult male mice. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Wild-type C57BL6/J or LDLr-/- dams were fed a low protein (LP) or a control (C) diet during gestation. Catch-up growth was induced in LP offspring by feeding dams with a control diet and by culling the litter to 4 pups against 8 in controls. At weaning, male mice were fed either standard chow or an obesogenic diet (OB), leading to 4 experimental groups. Blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) were assessed in conscious unrestrained wild-type mice by telemetry. Atherosclerosis plaque area was measured in aortic root sections of LDLr-/- mice. We found that: (1) postnatal OB diet increased significantly BP (P<0.0001) and HR (P<0.008) in 3-month old OB-C and OB-LP offspring, respectively; (2) that maternal LP diet induced a significant higher BP (P<0.009) and HR (P<0.004) and (3) an altered circadian rhythm in addition to higher plasma corticosterone concentration in 9 months-old LP offspring; (4) that, although LP offspring showed higher plasma total cholesterol than control offspring, atherosclerosis assessed in aortic roots of 6-mo old mice featured increased plaque area due to OB feeding but not due to early mismatched nutrition. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results indicate a long-term effect of early mismatched nutrition on the appearance of hypertension independently of obesity, while no effect on atherosclerosis was noticed at this age