Suomalaisten päivittäiset toiminnot ja liikkumistarpeet

320034

Editorial

Environmental and social impact assessment are default elements of transport policypreparation and transport project appraisal in many OECD countries. In the recent pasthowever, it has been realised that such an approach does not suffice. Instead of representingpossible limiting factors, the aims and principles of sustainable development are to beregarded as the very point of departure for formulating transport policies, as is for exampleformulated in the European Commission White Paper on Transport (COM, 2001). This hasconsequences not only for policy formulation, but also for theresearch that is used to buildthe evidence about the actual and potential impacts of transport systems

The adequate integration of sustainability into transport policy

In this paper we discuss to what extent transport policy fails to integrate five types of external effects, and what kind of research needs follow from the objective to make transport sustainable. The discussion is a synthesis of the findings collected and synthesized in the framework of Focus Group 4 of the STELLA project. The assignment of Focus Group 4 was to draw up a set of recommendations for future transport policy-oriented research dealing with external effects, on the basis of a series of specialist workshops. Five different kinds of so-called external effects of transport were identified beforehand, being environment, safety and security, public health, land use and congestion. Safety and security as well as congestion are external effects in the sense that they are not ‘internalised’ in the price of the transport service, but they do affect predominantly others within the transport system. This means that with some delay the transport market still reacts to changes in the intensity of these effects, albeit biased or insufficient. The public goods character of both externalities however implies that public intervention is needed to attain better performance of these external effects, partly via internalisation of the external effects and partly via planning (i.e. by evaluating the trade-offs ex ante). The other external effects, however, are not only insufficiently internalised in the transport price, but they are also predominantly affecting parties outside the transport system. Consequently, changes in the intensity of these effects do not feed back directly into the transport market. In that case public intervention has even a more complicated task, since it takes more time and is more complicated to learn what are actually the right balances for the trade-offs between adequate access and, in turn, sustainability, spatial quality, and public health

The Effects of Genetic Background for Diurnal Preference on Sleep Development in Early Childhood

Purpose: No previous research has examined the impact of the genetic background of diurnal preference on children´s sleep. Here, we examined the effects of genetic risk score for the liability of diurnal preference on sleep development in early childhood in two population-based cohorts from Finland. Participants and methods: The primary sample (CHILD-SLEEP, CS) comprised 1420 infants (695 girls), and the replication sample (FinnBrain, FB; 962 girls) 2063 infants. Parent-reported sleep duration, sleep-onset latency and bedtime were assessed at three, eight, 18 and 24 months in CS, and at six, 12 and 24 months in FB. Actigraphy-based sleep latency and efficiency were measured in CS in 365 infants at eight months (168 girls), and in 197 infants at 24 months (82 girls). Mean standard scores for each sleep domain were calculated in both samples. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) were used to quantitate the genetic risk for eveningness (PRSBestFit) and morningness (PRS10kBest). Results: PRSBestFit associated with longer sleep-onset latency and later bedtime, and PRS10kBest related to shorter sleep-onset latency in CS. The link between genetic risk for diurnal preference and sleep-onset latency was replicated in FB, and meta-analysis resulted in associations (P<0.0005) with both PRS-values (PRSBestFit: Z=3.55; and PRS10kBest: Z=-3.68). Finally, PRSBestFit was related to actigraphy-based lower sleep efficiency and longer sleep latency at eight months. Conclusion: Genetic liability to diurnal preference for eveningness relates to longer sleep-onset during the first two years of life, and to objectively measured lowered sleep efficiency. These findings enhance our understanding on the biological factors affecting sleep development, and contribute to clarify the physiological sleep architecture in early childhood.Peer reviewe

Human Engineering in Studying Residents and Housing

When studying the housing quality measured by residents' experiences of it, two different research traditions are faced: the humanistic and that of natural sciences. On one hand, housing research studies human beings and on the other hand man-made objects. The context of human engineering is introduced as a framework for the different study approaches of multidisciplinary housing research. The multidisciplinary approach of housing research makes to solve such matters as: how to combine several research paradigms, the selection of parameters and their relationships, the defining the concept of human engineering, that of demand driven housing and other related concepts and methods to be lent to serve the purposes of housing research, trust on end user evaluation, the roles of the expertise and experts in research. The right answers can follow only after the right questions have been made and thus some important questions are raised of the use of human engineering approach in housing research.<br/

Human Engineering in Studying Residents and Housing

When studying the housing quality measured by residents' experiences of it, two different research traditions are faced: the humanistic and that of natural sciences. On one hand, housing research studies human beings and on the other hand man-made objects. The context of human engineering is introduced as a framework for the different study approaches of multidisciplinary housing research. The multidisciplinary approach of housing research makes to solve such matters as: how to combine several research paradigms, the selection of parameters and their relationships, the defining the concept of human engineering, that of demand driven housing and other related concepts and methods to be lent to serve the purposes of housing research, trust on end user evaluation, the roles of the expertise and experts in research. The right answers can follow only after the right questions have been made and thus some important questions are raised of the use of human engineering approach in housing research.<br/