Development of a Cycling Policy for York Technical Report

In early 1983 York City Council and North Yorkshire County Council commissioned the Institute for Transport Studies to carry out a study of cycling in York. The terms of reference were to: Include an origin and destination survey of current movements by trip purpose and an assessment of future demand, indicating the likely mode from which any transfer will occur; Identify problem areas following discussions with various cycling groups and a study of accident statistics; Take into consideration any previous decisions of the City Council for investigation; Assess the appropriateness of the recommended standards for cycle facilities to a compact urban area; Propose various solutions to problems where appropriate, assess the effect on other road users, and formulate a basic cycling plan for York. Propose various solutions to problems where appropriate, assess the effect on other road users, and formulate a basic cycling plan for York. The Institute for Transport Studies at the Univeristy of Leeds was appointed to carry out the study with Professor A.D. May as the Director of the Study and Mr. D.A. Waring as Research Engineer. Work commenced on this project in June 1983 and was completd in May 1984. The recommendations arising from the study are contained in a separate Summary Report, available from the Institute as Working Paper 175

The Effects of Wheel Clamps in Central London: Result of the Before Survey

This report presents the results of a before study of some effects of the introduction of wheel clamps in Central London. Park and visit, vehicle following, registration number and business interview surveys were conducted in two areas of Central London: Mayfair in which wheel clamps were to be introduced, and Bloomsbury where they were not. The surveys were designed to determine the availability of parking spaces, the extent to which vehicles searched for parking spaces, the time spent doing so and gaining access to destinations, the level of through traffic, and the parking problems perceived by businesses. They were complementary to a series of surveys conducted by consultants for TRRL. The report describes the design and piloting of the surveys, presents the results of the surveys, identifies the levels of change which it will be possible statistically to detect and makes recommendations for the after surveys. In particular it recommends that the park and visit and vehicle following surveys be repeated, and also presents arguments in favour of repeating the business survey and conducting a survey on trade

Development of a Cycling Policy for York – Summary Report.

The purpose of the York Cycling study is to determine current and future levels of cycling in the city, to identify the problems for cyclists and arising from cycling, and to assess solutions to these problems. The terms of reference for the study are lisced in Appendix 1. This summary report presents the main findings of the study, and sets out our recommendations for action which the City Council may wish to pursue. A brief description of the study methodology and the survey results is followed by sections setting out recommendations in turn on - - treatment of problem locations - the development of a cycle route network - improvements to parking facilities The report is based on study findings which are set out in a technical report which has been made available to officers

A multilevel neo-institutional analysis of infection prevention and control in English hospitals: coerced safety culture change?

Despite committed policy, regulative and professional efforts on healthcare safety, little is known about how such macro-interventions permeate organisations and shape culture over time. Informed by neo-institutional theory, we examined how inter-organisational influences shaped safety practices and inter-subjective meanings following efforts for coerced culture change. We traced macro-influences from 2000 to 2015 in infection prevention and control (IPC). Safety perceptions and meanings were inductively analysed from 130 in-depth qualitative interviews with senior- and middle-level managers from 30 English hospitals. A total of 869 institutional interventions were identified; 69% had a regulative component. In this context of forced implementation of safety practices, staff experienced inherent tensions concerning the scope of safety, their ability to be open and prioritisation of external mandates over local need. These tensions stemmed from conflicts among three co-existing institutional logics prevalent in the NHS. In response to requests for change, staff flexibly drew from a repertoire of cognitive, material and symbolic resources within and outside their organisations. They crafted 'strategies of action', guided by a situated assessment of first-hand practice experiences complementing collective evaluations of interventions such as 'pragmatic', 'sensible' and also 'legitimate'. Macro-institutional forces exerted influence either directly on individuals or indirectly by enriching the organisational cultural repertoire

Sapling size influences shade tolerance ranking among southern boreal tree species

1 Traditional rankings of shade tolerance of trees make little reference to individual size. However, greater respiratory loads with increasing sapling size imply that larger individuals will be less able to tolerate shade than smaller individuals of the same species and that there may be shifts among species in shade tolerance with size. 2 We tested this hypothesis using maximum likelihood estimation to develop individual-tree-based models of the probability of mortality as a function of recent growth rate for seven species: trembling aspen, paper birch, yellow birch, mountain maple, white spruce, balsam fir and eastern white cedar. 3 Shade tolerance of small individuals, as quantified by risk of mortality at low growth, was mostly consistent with traditional shade tolerance rankings such that cedar > balsam fir > white spruce > yellow birch > mountain maple = paper birch > aspen. 4 Differences in growth-dependent mortality were greatest between species in the smallest size classes. With increasing size, a reduced tolerance to shade was observed for all species except trembling aspen and thus species tended to converge in shade tolerance with size. At a given level of radial growth larger trees, apart from aspen, had a higher probability of mortality than smaller trees. 5 Successional processes associated with shade tolerance may thus be most important in the seedling stage and decrease with ontogeny

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele