Stuck in the slow lane: reconceptualising the links between gender, transport and social exclusion

This article draws upon primary research undertaken with over 3,000 women in the North East of England to explore the links between women, transport and the labour market. The research, funded by the ESF, advances the idea of spatiality as a social construction and builds on seminal studies relating to women and poverty to consider the way in which a gender division of transport constrains women's mobility and restricts their employment opportunities. It is likely to contribute to important debates, concerning strategies to tackle worklessness and the most effective spatial level at which to configure public transport networks

Amorphous silica studied by high energy x-ray diffraction

The use of hard X-rays (60–300 keV) for diffraction studies of disordered materials has several advantages: higher resolution in direct space, smaller correction terms, removal of truncation effects, the possibility for operating in extreme environments and for direct comparison between X-ray and neutron data. A feasibility study of amorphous silica has been performed at 95 keV, using a wiggler synchrotron beam-line at HASYLAB and a cylindrical sample, 3 mm in diameter. The range of Q between 0.8 and 32 Å−1 was covered. A thorough discussion of the experimental challenges is given. The resulting systematic error intrinsic to the scattering process (not including errors in the form-factors) is found to be of the order of 0.2%. The data have been analyzed in terms of a model of the short-range order. The OSiO bond angle distribution is found to be nearly Gaussian, centered around 109.3(3)° with a rms value of 4.2(3)°. For the SiOSi bond angle, several types of distribution V(α) = V1(α) sin(α) were investigated. Best fits were obtained for rather broad distributions with V having its maximum at 147° and V1 at 180°