A Note on the Influence of Rail Defects on the Risk Associated with Shipping Hazardous Materials by Rail

Existing approaches to routing hazardous material shipments by rail recognize that track condition is an important influence, but have not included it in the risk assessment and routing models. This note explores the influence of track condition based on predictions of internal defects in the rail. The method developed predicts the expected frequency of accidents and subsequent consequences in terms of the expected number of fatalities accounting for one aspect of track condition-internal defects. It is intended to indicate the magnitude and impact of track condition. The formulation integrates models of consequences and the risk of a hazardous spill found in the literature with the frequency of accidents as a function of the number of defects. The number of defects may be based on observations or predicted as a function of the cumulative traffic. The models are used to calculate the expected number of fatalities per year for a particular route. Application of the methodology to a hypothetical route shows that the risk associated with the transportation of hazardous material shipments varies significantly with the expected number of defects in the track. Therefore, risk not only varies from route to route but over time for any section of track as the condition deteriorates.     

Identifying the needs of parents with learning disabilities: A review

Despite the success of some programmes in raising the parental competency of parents who have learning disabilities, many services are still providing only minimal support to such families, often following crisis intervention. Recent legislative changes within the UK have meant that statutory services are now required to adopt a preventative approach to children and families in need. A review of the literature reveals that children of learning-disabled parents are particularly vulnerable to abuse/neglect and removal from their natural family. This article addresses the difficulties that many clinicians currently experience in the early identification of parents who have learning disabilities. It also emphasizes the need for a systematic approach in the assessment of these parents prior to the implementation of parental teaching programmes.     

Gut reactions to matters of the heart: reflections on rationality, irrationality and sexuality

The aim of this paper is to analyse tensions between the concepts of rationality and irrationality as they are deployed in modern discourses around heterosexuality. These discourses, we argue, are profoundly gendered and often contradictory. On the one hand, the pursuit of sexual pleasure is seen as a rational life goal, to be integrated into consciously constructed and commodified lifestyles and identity choices. On the other, sexuality is still seen as 'special’ and spontaneous – an intractable inner drive which is not amenable to rational management. We seek to trace the genealogy of these discourses, arguing that heterosexual relations have been subject to increased rationalisation from the nineteenth century onwards: a process we call‘the Taylorisation of sex'. In the process, rational sex has been defined largely in masculine terms. We consider whether this has changed and whether there has been a shift to‘post-Fordist’ forms of sexuality permitting greater diversity and flexibility. We conclude, however, that there has been no radical break, but rather an intensification of pre-existing trends in which sex, and increasingly emotions as well, continue to be subject to rational management while always threatening to exceed the bounds of manageability.     

Potential effects of antidepressant agents on the growth and development of children and adolescents

The regulatory bodies of both the United States and United Kingdom have issued cautionary statements about prescribing antidepressant medications to treat major depressive disorder (MDD) in children younger than age 18. Despite these cautions, antidepressant agents, particularly SSRIs and serotonin activators, are regularly used to treat MDD in this age group, and increasingly so in very young children. This article considers the possible effects of antidepressant agents on the growth and development of children younger than age 18 and provides recommendations for the use and careful monitoring of these medications, including screening for physiological effects, selfinjurious behavior, and suicidal ideation. Guidelines for use of antidepressant agents with these populations include incorporating medications into comprehensive, holistic treatment, assessing for onset of severe akathesia as a marker of increased risk for self-harm, and advocating for more clinical trials of these medications in different childhood age groupings.     

Measuring pathological gambling in children: The case of fruit machines in the U.K.

The alleged incidence of addiction to fruit machine gambling among children in the U.K. has highlighted the need for a measure to define and count pathological gambling in children. The DSM-IV criteria, which are being refined to diagnose pathological gambling in adults, was adapted for use with pre-adult gamblers. The resulting DSM-IV-J criteria were tested using a questionnaire survey on a sample of 467 schoolchildren aged between 11 and 16 years. Those children who were defined as probable pathological gamblers by the DSM-IV-J index were significantly more likely to be involved in behaviours hitherto associated with dependency, than were the control group. DSM-IV-J appears to be a major advance in the discrimination of pathological gambling in children.The author would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this work through a Research Studentship Grant. The author would also like to thank Henry Lesieur Ph.D. and Mark Dickerson Ph.D. for their helpful comments in the design stage of this research.     

From Policy to Practice: The Implementation and Negotiation of Technologies in Everyday Child Welfare

A central element of the Every Child Matters reforms in England are measures which aim at improving information sharing. Amongst these are the children’s database and the Common Assessment Framework, both representing technological solutions to long‐standing concerns about information sharing in child welfare. This article reports some findings from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)‐funded study which examined their introduction and use in everyday professional practice. Substantial differences in policy implementation, access to and use of the technologies, draw attention to the importance of the localised and situated contexts into which these technologies are being introduced, raising serious questions about their future development as national standard systems.     

The family and the business

The aim of this paper was to explore the attitudes of owner-managers to the conflicting pressures of family and business. Five hundred and thirty-four owner-managers responded to a questionnaire that asked about their attitudes to a range of issues including, for example, succession and equity, children′s involvement in the business, and the extent to which family should expect income from the business. There was common agreement on some issues such as the fact that children should be allowed to choose whether to join the business, and that family and business affairs should be kept separate. Beyond this, there were disagreements with three clear groups, or clusters, of attitudes emerging. We called these the Family-Business Jugglers, Family Rules, and Family Out groups.