Trials and tribulations: understanding motivations for clinical research participation amongst adults with cystic fibrosis

In the context of understanding motivations for clinical research participation, many authors consider issues such as informed consent and how patients perceive the research method and process. However, many investigations focus only on one method of research, most commonly the randomised controlled trial. Understanding how chronically ill members of one specific patient group respond to all requests for research participation are rare. Cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic condition whereby those affected are used to taking a wide array of treatments and attending a specialist care centre over many years, and are generally knowledgeable about their condition, represents an ideal case for investigating how staff requests for clinical research participation are accepted or declined. Using Bloor's systems of relevance framework for risk behaviour and risk reduction, specialist CF centre patients' motivations for participation or non-participation in clinical research can be understood. The framework takes into account two sets of conceptual oppositions: habituation and calculation, constraint and volition. These oppositions represent a range along a continuum of risk behaviour rather than being absolute distinctions. Decisions to participate are influenced mainly by the patient's state of health at the time of request, the nature of the trial and the social context within which sufferers are placed. Understanding why chronically ill patients refuse some requests and yet accept others may assist researchers in designing protocols that take these factors into account and achieve the desired numbers of participants whilst protecting those in vulnerable positions. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The Effects of Combined Movement and Storytelling Intervention on Motor Skills in South Asian and White Children Aged 5–6 Years Living in the United Kingdom

Early motor development has an important role in promoting physical activity (PA) during childhood and across the lifespan. Children from South Asian backgrounds are less active and have poorer motor skills, thus identifying the need for early motor skill instruction. This study examines the effect of a movement and storytelling intervention on South Asian children’s motor skills. Following ethics approval and consent, 39 children (46% South Asian) participated in a 12-week movement and storytelling intervention. Pre and post, seven motor skills (run, jump, throw, catch, stationary dribble, roll, and kick) were assessed using Children’s Activity and Movement in Preschool Study protocol. At baseline, South Asian children had poorer performance of motor skills. Following the intervention, all children improved their motor skills, with a bigger improvement observed for South Asian children. Early intervention provided remedial benefits to delays in motor skills and narrowed the motor skills gap in ethnic groups

Sensing Danger - Challenges in Supporting Health and Safety Compliance in the Field

Many workers operate in environments that are inherently hazardous and that are subject to strict health and safety rules and regulations. We envisage a world in which physical work artefacts such as tools, are augmented with intelligent mobile nodes that are able to observe the working activities taking place, evaluate compliance with health and safety regulations and assist or actively enforce compliance with these regulations. This vision creates a new field of work in the area of health and safety aware intelligent mobile sensor networks. In this paper we describe a number of new challenges faced when developing mobile systems for compliance with health and safety regulations

Experiences of designing and deploying intelligent sensor nodes to monitor hand-arm vibrations in the field

The NEMO project is exploring the use of mobile sensor nodes toaugment physical work artefacts in order to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations. In this paper we present our experiences of designing and deploying the NEMO Hand Arm Vibration (HAV) monitoring system. Long term exposure to hand arm vibration can lead to serious health conditions and the NEMO HAV monitoring system offers an integrated architecture for capturing HAV exposure data in the field, providing feedback about exposure levels both in the field and as input to a back-end database. Our design allows health and safety regulations specified at the enterprise level to be embedded within the wireless sensor nodes allowing them to operate without any infrastructural support. The system has been the subject of a two week field trial that took place with the collaboration of a British construction and maintenance company. During the field trial, the NEMO HAV system was deployed to a roa dmaintenance patching gang and data were collected on HAV exposure caused by hydraulic drills. The paper reports on the results of the field trial and the lessons learned through the real deployment of the system

Proximity sensing using IEEE 802.15.4 radios

Accurately determining the location of devices is a key challenge in contextual smart sensing. This poster describes how IEEE 802.15.4 radios can be used for accurate proximity sensing of co-located devices. In particular, the effect of low noise amplifiers on the estimation accuracy are discussed

Network Interrupts: supporting delay sensitive applications in low power wireless control networks

The importance in maintaining energy efficient communications in low power networks such as sensor and actuator networks is well understood. However, in recent years, a growing number of delay sensitive and interactive applications have been discovered for such networks, that are no longer purely limited to the data gathering model of sensor networks. Providing support application requiring low latency interaction in such environments without negatively affecting energy efficiency remains a challenging problem. This paper outlines the importance of this emerging class of application, discusses problems involved in supporting them in energy challenged environments, proposes a combined hardware and software mechanism based on heterogeneous wireless networking which works toward solving this problem, and goes on to evaluate this mechanism through experimental analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the mechanism to typical application scenarios

Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Versions of research Citation for published version Mark (2007) Experiences of Designing and Deploying Intellignent Sensor Nodes to Monitor Hand-Arm Vibrations in the Field. In: ACM Experiences of Designin

ABSTRACT The NEMO project is exploring the use of mobile sensor nodes to augment physical work artefacts in order to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations. In this paper we present our experiences of designing and deploying the NEMO Hand Arm Vibration (HAV) monitoring system. Long term exposure to hand arm vibration can lead to serious health conditions and the NEMO HAV monitoring system offers an integrated architecture for capturing HAV exposure data in the field, providing feedback about exposure levels both in the field and as input to a back-end database. Our design allows health and safety regulations specified at the enterprise level to be embedded within the wireless sensor nodes allowing them to operate without any infrastructural support. The system has been the subject of a two week field trial that took place with the collaboration of a British construction and maintenance company. During the field trial, the NEMO HAV system was deployed to a road maintenance patching gang and data was collected on HAV exposure caused by hydraulic drills. The paper reports on the results of the field trial and the lessons learned through the real deployment of the system