Is there a role for workplaces in reducing employees' driving to work? Findings from a cross-sectional survey from inner-west Sydney, Australia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The role of workplaces in promoting active travel (walking, cycling or using public transport) is relatively unexplored. This study explores the potential for workplaces to reduce employees' driving to work in order to inform the development of workplace interventions for promoting active travel.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An analysis of a cross-sectional survey was conducted using data from parents/guardians whose children participated in the Central Sydney Walk to School Program in inner-west Sydney, Australia. A total of 888 parents/guardians who were employed and worked outside home were included in this analysis. The role of the workplace in regards to active travel was assessed by asking the respondents' level of agreement to eight statements including workplace encouragement of active travel, flexible working hours, public transport availability, convenient parking, shower and change rooms for employees and whether they lived or worked in a safe place. Self-reported main mode of journey to work and demographic data were collected through a self-administrated survey. Binary logistic regression modelling was used to ascertain independent predictors of driving to work.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sixty nine per cent of respondents travelled to work by car, and 19% agreed with the statement, "My workplace encourages its employees to go to and from work by public transport, cycling and/or walking (active travel)." The survey respondents with a workplace encouraging active travel to work were significantly less likely to drive to work (49%) than those without this encouragement (73%) with an adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of 0.41 (95% CI 0.23-0.73, P = 0.002). Having convenient public transport close to the workplace or home was also an important factor that could discourage employees from driving to work with AOR 0.17 (95% CI 0.09-0.31, P < 0.0001) and AOR 0.50 (95% CI 0.28-0.90, P = 0.02) respectively. In contrast, convenient parking near the workplace significantly increased the likelihood of respondents driving to work (AOR 4.6, 95% CI 2.8-7.4, P < 0.0001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>There is a significant inverse association between the perception of workplace encouragement for active travel and driving to work. Increases in the number of workplaces that encourage their employees to commute to work via active travel could potentially lead to fewer employees driving to work. In order to make active travel more appealing than driving to work, workplace interventions should consider developing supportive workplace policies and environments.</p

Why do women invest in pre-pregnancy health and care? A qualitative investigation with women attending maternity services

Background Despite the importance attributed to good pre-pregnancy care and its potential to improve pregnancy and child health outcomes, relatively little is known about why women invest in pre-pregnancy health and care. We sought to gain insight into why women invested in pre-pregnancy health and care. Methods We carried out 20 qualitative in-depth interviews with pregnant or recently pregnant women who were drawn from a survey of antenatal clinic attendees in London, UK. Interviewees were purposively sampled to include high and low investors in pre-pregnancy health and care, with variation in age, partnership status, ethnicity and pre-existing medical conditions. Data analysis was conducted using the Framework method. Results We identified three groups in relation to pre-pregnancy health and care: 1) The “prepared” group, who had high levels of pregnancy planning and mostly positive attitudes to micronutrient supplementation outside of pregnancy, carried out pre-pregnancy activities such as taking folic acid and making changes to diet and lifestyle. 2) The “poor knowledge” group, who also had high levels of pregnancy planning, did not carry out pre-pregnancy activities and described themselves as having poor knowledge. Elsewhere in their interviews they expressed a strong dislike of micronutrient supplementation. 3) The “absent pre-pregnancy period” group, had the lowest levels of pregnancy planning and also expressed anti-supplement views. Even discussing the pre-pregnancy period with this group was difficult as responses to questions quickly shifted to focus on pregnancy itself. Knowledge of folic acid was poor in all groups. Conclusion Different pre-pregnancy care approaches are likely to be needed for each of the groups. Among the “prepared” group, who were proactive and receptive to health messages, greater availability of information and better response from health professionals could improve the range of pre-pregnancy activities carried out. Among the “poor knowledge” group, better response from health professionals might yield greater uptake of pre-pregnancy information. A different, general health strategy might be more appropriate for the “absent pre-pregnancy period” group. The fact that general attitudes to micronutrient supplementation were closely related to whether or not women invested in pre-pregnancy health and care was an unanticipated finding and warrants further investigation.This report is independent research commissioned and funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme Pre-Pregnancy Health and Care in England: Exploring Implementation and Public Health Impact, 006/0068

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

This study explores how consumers evaluate co-branding alliances between dissimilar partner firms. Customers are well aware that different firms are behind a co-branded product and observe the partner firms’ characteristics. Drawing on signaling theory, we assert that consumers use organizational characteristics as signals in their assessment of brand fit and for their purchasing decisions. Some organizational signals are beyond the control of the co-branding partners or at least they cannot alter them on short notice. We use a quasi-experimental design and test how co-branding partner dissimilarity affects brand fit perception. The results show that co-branding partner dissimilarity in terms of firm size, industry scope, and country-of-origin image negatively affects brand fit perception. Firm age dissimilarity does not exert significant influence. Because brand fit generally fosters a benevolent consumer attitude towards a co-branding alliance, the findings suggest that high partner dissimilarity may reduce overall co-branding alliance performance

The Hubble Constant

I review the current state of determinations of the Hubble constant, which gives the length scale of the Universe by relating the expansion velocity of objects to their distance. There are two broad categories of measurements. The first uses individual astrophysical objects which have some property that allows their intrinsic luminosity or size to be determined, or allows the determination of their distance by geometric means. The second category comprises the use of all-sky cosmic microwave background, or correlations between large samples of galaxies, to determine information about the geometry of the Universe and hence the Hubble constant, typically in a combination with other cosmological parameters. Many, but not all, object-based measurements give $H_0$ values of around 72-74km/s/Mpc , with typical errors of 2-3km/s/Mpc. This is in mild discrepancy with CMB-based measurements, in particular those from the Planck satellite, which give values of 67-68km/s/Mpc and typical errors of 1-2km/s/Mpc. The size of the remaining systematics indicate that accuracy rather than precision is the remaining problem in a good determination of the Hubble constant. Whether a discrepancy exists, and whether new physics is needed to resolve it, depends on details of the systematics of the object-based methods, and also on the assumptions about other cosmological parameters and which datasets are combined in the case of the all-sky methods.Comment: Extensively revised and updated since the 2007 version: accepted by Living Reviews in Relativity as a major (2014) update of LRR 10, 4, 200

Incidence rates and management of urinary tract infections among children in Dutch general practice: results from a nation-wide registration study

BACKGROUND: We aimed to investigate incidence rates of urinary tract infections in Dutch general practice and their association with gender, season and urbanisation level, and to analyse prescription and referral in case of urinary tract infections. METHOD: During one calendar year, 195 general practitioners in 104 practices in the Netherlands registered all their patient contacts. This study was performed by the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL) in 2001. Of 82,053 children aged 0 to 18 years, the following variables were collected: number of episodes per patient, number of contacts per episode, month of the year in which the diagnosis of urinary tract infection was made, age, gender, urbanisation level, drug prescription and referral. RESULTS: The overall incidence rate was 19 episodes per 1000 person years. The incidence rate in girls was 8 times as high as in boys. The incidence rate in smaller cities and rural areas was 2 times as high as in the three largest cities. Throughout the year, incidence rates varied with a decrease in summertime for children at the age of 0 to 12 years. Of the prescriptions, 66% were in accordance with current guidelines, but only 18% of the children who had an indication were actually referred. CONCLUSION: This study shows that incidence rates of urinary tract infections are not only related to gender and season, but also to urbanisation. General practitioners in the Netherlands frequently do not follow the clinical guidelines for urinary tract infections, especially with respect to referral

Assessment and Implication of Prognostic Imbalance in Randomized Controlled Trials with a Binary Outcome – A Simulation Study

Chance imbalance in baseline prognosis of a randomized controlled trial can lead to over or underestimation of treatment effects, particularly in trials with small sample sizes. Our study aimed to (1) evaluate the probability of imbalance in a binary prognostic factor (PF) between two treatment arms, (2) investigate the impact of prognostic imbalance on the estimation of a treatment effect, and (3) examine the effect of sample size (n) in relation to the first two objectives.We simulated data from parallel-group trials evaluating a binary outcome by varying the risk of the outcome, effect of the treatment, power and prevalence of the PF, and n. Logistic regression models with and without adjustment for the PF were compared in terms of bias, standard error, coverage of confidence interval and statistical power.For a PF with a prevalence of 0.5, the probability of a difference in the frequency of the PF≥5% reaches 0.42 with 125/arm. Ignoring a strong PF (relative risk = 5) leads to underestimating the strength of a moderate treatment effect, and the underestimate is independent of n when n is >50/arm. Adjusting for such PF increases statistical power. If the PF is weak (RR = 2), adjustment makes little difference in statistical inference. Conditional on a 5% imbalance of a powerful PF, adjustment reduces the likelihood of large bias. If an absolute measure of imbalance ≥5% is deemed important, including 1000 patients/arm provides sufficient protection against such an imbalance. Two thousand patients/arm may provide an adequate control against large random deviations in treatment effect estimation in the presence of a powerful PF.The probability of prognostic imbalance in small trials can be substantial. Covariate adjustment improves estimation accuracy and statistical power, and hence should be performed when strong PFs are observed

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente