A Survey of Parental Knowledge of Asthma

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of parents\u27 knowledge regarding asthma. Twenty-five parents of children who have asthma were interviewed during their child\u27s hospitalization for status asthmaticus. Adequate knowledge about environmental control and medication was noted in the majority of the subjects but over half were unable to explain the pathological changes which caused wheezeing. While most parents appear to have adequate knowledge of medications and environmental control on which to base their decisions about their child’s care there appears to be a need for more information regarding the pathophysiology

Inequalities in self-report road injury risk in Britain: A new analysis of National Travel Survey data, focusing on pedestrian injuries

In 2007, Britain's (since 2013 England's) National Travel Survey started asking respondents about experiences of ‘road accidents’. This paper conducts new injury analysis using NTS data from 2007-15. The resultant dataset contains 147,185 adult individuals (weighted), of whom 17,990 reported experiencing one or more ‘road accidents’ in the three years prior to the survey date. This dataset includes incidents involving other road users and those that did not, less likely in general to be included in police injury data, and not at all in the case of pedestrian falls. The paper firstly compares this self-report injury data with police data, including comparisons for different user groups such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. Most studies of under-reporting focus on deaths and serious injuries, due to lack of other data on slight injuries. Self-report data enables a focus on that majority of injuries which are slight but may impact people's experiences of travel. The paper then compares the frequency of different types of pedestrian injury incident and finds that collisions in which a cyclist injures a pedestrian remain in this dataset very infrequent compared either to falls or to pedestrian injuries involving motor vehicles. Finally, characteristics of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles and in falls are examined. A binary logistic regression analysis examines odds of being injured as a pedestrian either by a motor vehicle, or in a fall, controlling for self-report walking frequency. Disabled pedestrians, those living in low-income households, and in London are at higher risk of being injured by a motor vehicle, while older and disabled pedestrians and women are at higher risk of being injured in a fall. Implications for policy and research are discussed

Cycling near misses: their frequency, impact, and prevention

This paper explores cyclists’ experiences of non-injury incidents, arguing that these are important for cycling experience and uptake as well as for injury prevention. It discusses different types of non-injury incident collected in a recent survey of UK cyclists. These are everyday occurrences that in some cases have a substantially negative impact on cycling experiences. This article explores the impact of different incident types on people cycling both immediately and in the future. It analyses what near misses tell us about cyclists’ experience of problems related to road user behaviour and culture, and infrastructural conditions for cycling. The paper explores what cyclists experiencing near misses think might have prevented them. Based on this and on a comparison with common types of injury incidents, summary recommendations are made for policy and future research

Biodiversity Quality: a paradigm for biodiversity

The internationally accepted definition of biodiversity creates difficulty in measuring difference and change. The authors suggest that well-sampled data can be used to generate a range of numerical indices reflecting species group characteristics/functionality (Species Richness, Simposons Index, Population Density, Biomass and Species Conservation Value) that can be viewed in combination to create a picture of biodiversity quality. This overall approach has considerable advantages over the currently accepted Convention on biological Diversity definition based on the "variability" of genes, species and ecosystems, since the numerical expression of the indices allows the probability of difference between biodiversity quality trends and values over time and between sites or taxonomic groups, to be assessed for statistical inference

Who caused that congestion? Narrating driving and cycling in a changing policy context

This paper analyses attitudes to cycling and driving, using qualitative survey data from 2128 participants in a study examining impacts of active travel schemes in Outer London. London has seen some success in reducing driving and increasing active travel; but progress remains patchy. Results show cycling attracted more support than driving, and fewer negative comments, although with differences between sub-groups. Views were more polarised in boroughs with major active travel interventions planned and under way. Car owners were more supportive of driving and less supportive of cycling than non-car owners. The use of a ‘place’ rather than movement frame elicited more negative comments about driving, however, such critiques were often ambivalent or ambiguous. More generally, discourses critiquing driving remain weak, despite widespread awareness of negative impacts of car use. For instance, narratives of congestion highlight the potential for problems associated with car use to be re-framed in support of driving. Comparison of comments on poor driving and poor cycling highlighted the persistence of cycling stigma. Cycling stigma combines with the weakness of anti-car narratives to reinforce controversy obstructing active travel policies. Challenging these twin barriers may prove essential to accelerating mode shift in London and elsewhere

GLADNET: Promise and Legacy

[Excerpt] The Global Applied Disability Research and Information Network on Employment and Training (GLADNET) was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1995, in cooperation with over 50 social policy research centres, governmental and non- governmental organizations involved in disability-related employment programmes from over thirty countries around the world. Major organizations of persons with disabilities were also represented – the World Blind Union, the World Federation of the Deaf, Inclusion International (formerly the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap (ILSMH)) and Disabled Peoples International (DPI). GLADNET’s lifespan was little more than a generation (1995 – 2018). What’s of interest is that it survived beyond its first few years of existence. It could easily have died early on, given a significant change in nature of support from its initiating body. That it didn’t speaks to the aspirational nature and relevance of the vision prompting its formation. It’s in pursuit of that vision where GLADNET left its mark. This document focuses on its legacy, beginning with a brief review of context within which it was initiated

Anomalous behavior of the Debye temperature in Fe-rich Fe-Cr alloys

Debye temperature, $\Theta_D$, of Fe-rich Fe$_{100-x}$Cr$_x$ disordered alloys with $0\le x \le 22.3$ was determined from the temperature dependence of the central shift of M\"ossbauer spectra recorded in the temperature range of 60 -- 300 K. Its compositional dependence shows a maximum at $x \approx 5$ with a relative increase of $\sim 30$% compared to a pure iron. The composition at which the effect occurs correlates well with that at which several other quantities, e. g. the Curie temperature and the spin-wave stiffness coefficient, $D_0$, show their maxima, but the enhancement of $\Theta_D$ is significantly greater and comparable with the enhancement of the hyperfine field (spin-density of itinerant $s$-like electrons) in the studied system. The results suggest that the electron-phonon interaction is important in this alloy system