Assessing Infection Control Measures for Pandemic Influenza

We construct a mathematical model of aerosol (i.e., droplet-nuclei) transmission of influenza within a household containing one infected and embed it into an epidemic households model in which infecteds occasionally infect someone from another household; in a companion paper, we argue that the contribution from contact transmission is trivial for influenza and the contribution from droplet transmission is likely to be small. Our model predicts that the key infection control measure is the use of N95 respirators, and that the combination of respirators, humidifiers, and ventilation reduces the threshold parameter (which dictates whether or not an epidemic breaks out) by ≈20% if 70% of households comply, and by ≈40% if 70% of households and workplaces comply (≈28% reduction would have been required to control the 1918 pandemic). However, only ≈30% of the benefits in the household are achieved if these interventions are used only after the infected develops symptoms. It is also important for people to sleep in separate bedrooms throughout the pandemic, space permitting. Surgical masks with a device (e.g., nylon hosiery) to reduce face-seal leakage are a reasonable alternative to N95 respirators if the latter are in short supply.     

Maternal Differential Treatment and Child Adjustment: A Multi-informant Approach

The study aimed to replicate previous links with children's adjustment as well as using children's reports of maternal differential treatment (MDT) to test whether difference scores or favouritism scores demonstrate stronger links with child outcome. Finally, it tested for a unique prediction of children's adjustment from distinct aspects and informants of MDT. The sample consisted of 173 working- and middle-class English families with two children aged four to eight years. Mothers provided reports of the mother–child relationship, and both mothers and fathers provided reports of the children's problematic behaviour. The children also provided reports of parent–child relationships and perceived favouritism via a puppet interview. Results confirmed moderate links between MDT and children's adjustment and showed that difference scores provided a better prediction of adjustment than did the favouritism scores. Finally, the results showed that mothers' reports of differential positive feelings were the most salient aspect of MDT for older siblings whereas mothers' reports of negative feelings and positive discipline were the most salient aspects of MDT for younger siblings.     

The Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program: Who Benefits?

Public Organization Review - The objective of the (U.S.) Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program (AIP) is “to help in developing a nationwide system of public-use airports...     

Class and cuisine in contemporary Britain: the social space,the space of food and their homology

Thirty‐five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions – a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic foods on the other – and located their generative principles in differences of volume of capital and composition of capital respectively. Deploying a correspondence analysis of similar data using the 2010 Living Costs and Food Survey, supplemented by data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey and the 2003 Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Survey, we seek to examine whether comparable differences in expenditure and preferences are observable in contemporary Britain and, consequently, to illuminate the current structure of the food space and its homology with class. Ultimately, we conclude that Bourdieu's general model is essentially transposable from 1960s France to the UK at the dawn of the 21st century, though we put additional emphasis on the ethical dimension of food consumption, and reflect on the prevalent instances of symbolic violence it underpins.     

Voices from the Valleys: Researching lone mothers talk

This paper focuses upon an interdisciplinary research project the authors are currently engaged in, specifically designed to address the inattention paid so far to lone mothers voices in the Rhondda Valleys in Mid Glamorgan, South Wales. This is an area characterised by high unemployment, community restructuring and fragmenting kinship patterns and, according to analysis of the 1991 Census data, Mid Glamorgan ranks ninth highest in the UK in terms of the incidence of lone parents as a percentage of total households with dependent children. Given the political sensitivity of the issue of lone parenting, and the attempts of dominant discourses to pathologise lone mothers in particular, this paper explores some of the issues involved in responsibly accessing situated accounts of lone mothers subjectivities. The particular representations of self and status that these women offer in their own accounts, and how they articulate those representations in different contexts, is bound up with complex political, ethical and methodological concerns. In addressing these concerns, this paper seeks to interrogate some of the tensions at play in research on marginalise? groups living in communities which have been defined as spatially isolated and economically deprived. The paper thus centres for discussion the problems and possibilities that inevitably surface when undertaking research of this kind. We conclude that research which reveals talk which manages, disrupts and reworks contested representations of otherness needs to be carefully and self-reflexively accessed, collected and disseminated, even and perhaps especially when such research is supposedly informed by critical feminist awareness.     

Genetic risk and reproduction

Research was conducted with women who had experience of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (Duchenne) in the family. Intensive, qualitative interviews were conducted with a two-generational sample of women. This paper concentrates on the reported experiences of women who became pregnant while being aware of medically defined genetic carrier risk. Three types of reproductive decision-making are identified: risk-taking, risk-refusing and risk modifying. It is argued that there is no simple relationship between women's genetic risk and their subsequent reproductive actions. Of more significance is the women's prior biographical experience, their interpretation of the information available to them, their definition of the situation, and their reproductive expectations. Genetic risk information, transmitted in the genetic counselling discourse, does not determine women's actions, which are accounted for in terms of an interpretative perspective.