(Re)Conceptualising inclusive education in New Zealand: listening to the hidden voices

This article explores the experiences of 14 students with severe and complex behaviour, their caregivers, and teachers/principals as the students transition from a disestablished residential school back to mainstream schools, with support from the Intensive Wraparound Service (IWS). Interviews were the primary source of data collection. Data were collated into 14 cases, and analysed using a general inductive approach. Two broad themes are addressed in the article: education and relationships/communication. The research found that the IWS is not living up to its rhetoric. Suggestions made for improvement are based on approaches that participants found worked for them.     

A Risk Assessment Framework for the Socioeconomic Impacts of Electricity Transmission Infrastructure Failure Due to Space Weather: An Application to the United Kingdom

Space weather phenomena have been studied in detail in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature. However, there has arguably been scant analysis of the potential socioeconomic impacts of space weather, despite a growing gray literature from different national studies, of varying degrees of methodological rigor. In this analysis, we therefore provide a general framework for assessing the potential socioeconomic impacts of critical infrastructure failure resulting from geomagnetic disturbances, applying it to the British high‐voltage electricity transmission network. Socioeconomic analysis of this threat has hitherto failed to address the general geophysical risk, asset vulnerability, and the network structure of critical infrastructure systems. We overcome this by using a three‐part method that includes (i) estimating the probability of intense magnetospheric substorms, (ii) exploring the vulnerability of electricity transmission assets to geomagnetically induced currents, and (iii) testing the socioeconomic impacts under different levels of space weather forecasting. This has required a multidisciplinary approach, providing a step toward the standardization of space weather risk assessment. We find that for a Carrington‐sized 1‐in‐100‐year event with no space weather forecasting capability, the gross domestic product loss to the United Kingdom could be as high as £15.9 billion, with this figure dropping to £2.9 billion based on current forecasting capability. However, with existing satellites nearing the end of their life, current forecasting capability will decrease in coming years. Therefore, if no further investment takes place, critical infrastructure will become more vulnerable to space weather. Additional investment could provide enhanced forecasting, reducing the economic loss for a Carrington‐sized 1‐in‐100‐year event to £0.9 billion.     

Methods for Detecting and Estimating Population Threshold Concentrations for Air Pollution–Related Mortality with Exposure Measurement Error

The association between daily fluctuations in ambient particulate matter and daily variations in nonaccidental mortality have been extensively investigated. Although it is now widely recognized that such an association exists, the form of the concentration–response model is still in question. Linear, no threshold and linear threshold models have been most commonly examined. In this paper we considered methods to detect and estimate threshold concentrations using time series data of daily mortality rates and air pollution concentrations. Because exposure is measured with error, we also considered the influence of measurement error in distinguishing between these two completing model specifications. The methods were illustrated on a 15-year daily time series of nonaccidental mortality and particulate air pollution data in Toronto, Canada. Nonparametric smoothed representations of the association between mortality and air pollution were adequate to graphically distinguish between these two forms. Weighted nonlinear regression methods for relative risk models were adequate to give nearly unbiased estimates of threshold concentrations even under conditions of extreme exposure measurement error. The uncertainty in the threshold estimates increased with the degree of exposure error. Regression models incorporating threshold concentrations could be clearly distinguished from linear relative risk models in the presence of exposure measurement error. The assumption of a linear model given that a threshold model was the correct form usually resulted in overestimates in the number of averted premature deaths, except for low threshold concentrations and large measurement error.     

Approximations for Estimating Change in Life Expectancy Attributable to Air Pollution in Relation to Multiple Causes of Death Using a Cause Modified Life Table

There is considerable debate as to the most appropriate metric for characterizing the mortality impacts of air pollution. Life expectancy has been advocated as an informative measure. Although the life‐table calculus is relatively straightforward, it becomes increasingly cumbersome when repeated over large numbers of geographic areas and for multiple causes of death. Two simplifying assumptions were evaluated: linearity of the relation between excess rate ratio and change in life expectancy, and additivity of cause‐specific life‐table calculations. We employed excess rate ratios linking PM_2.5 and mortality from cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ischemic heart disease, and lung cancer derived from a meta‐analysis of worldwide cohort studies. As a sensitivity analysis, we employed an integrated exposure response function based on the observed risk of PM_2.5 over a wide range of concentrations from ambient exposure, indoor exposure, second‐hand smoke, and personal smoking. Impacts were estimated in relation to a change in PM_2.5 from 19.5 μg/m³ estimated for Toronto to an estimated natural background concentration of 1.8 μg/m³. Estimated changes in life expectancy varied linearly with excess rate ratios, but at higher values the relationship was more accurately represented as a nonlinear function. Changes in life expectancy attributed to specific causes of death were additive with maximum error of 10%. Results were sensitive to assumptions about the air pollution concentration below which effects on mortality were not quantified. We have demonstrated valid approximations comprising expression of change in life expectancy as a function of excess mortality and summation across multiple causes of death.     

Fathers at Work: A Ghost in the Organizational Machine

This article first provides a review of fatherhood in the gender and organization literature on work and family, and the body and (in)visibility. It observes how organizational assumptions which frame fathers as breadwinners, ignoring their paternal role, remain extraordinarily persistent because policies (no matter how long established) do not necessarily change social attitudes and behaviours. The article then draws upon original qualitative data to demonstrate how while male workers may feel valued as employees, they often feel invisible at work in their paternal role. Fathers perceive that, while family‐friendly policies might in theory be available to ‘parents’ these are in practice targeted at working mothers. The article considers why working men's paternity is so often ignored, as though fathers are a ghost in the organizational machine. A recommendation for the establishment of a fatherhood and motherhood passport is made.     

Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in the U.S.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship of the carbon Kuznets curve. We discuss two potential flaws in past carbon Kuznets curve studies: one, the potential misspecification of energy consumption as a control variable; and, two, the use of vector error correction models as an empirical specification. Given these potential flaws we estimate a dynamic ordinary least squares model of monthly carbon dioxide emissions, personal income, and energy production in the U.S. from 1981 to 2003. Our results suggest that economic growth drives emissions intensities, not absolute emissions as is often implied in past studies.     

A Global Clan: Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century

Malcolm Cross, Migrant Workers in European Cities: Concentration, Conflict and Social Policy (Birmingham, SSRC Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, Working Paper on Ethnic Relations, No. 19, 1983). Pp. 31. £2.75.

John Solomos, The Politics of Black Youth Unemployment: A Critical Analysis of Official Ideologies and Policies (Birmingham, SRC Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, Working Paper on Ethnic Relations, No. 20, 1983). Pp. 23. £2.25.