In-situ strength assessment of concrete - The European Concrete Frame Building Project (Reprinted from Non-Destructive Testing Civil Engineering, April, pg 583-592, 2000)

A full-scale seven-storey in-situ advanced reinforced concrete building frame was constructed in the Building Research Establishment's Cardington laboratory encompassing a range of different concrete mixes and construction techniques. This provided an opportunity to use in-situ non-destructive test methods, namely Lok and CAPO tests, on a systematic basis during the construction of the building. They were used in conjunction with both standard and temperature-matched cube specimens to assess their practicality and their individual capabilities under field conditions. Results have been analysed and presented to enable comparisons of the performance of the individual test methods employed.

‘Supra-stewardship’: A Tool for Citizen Participation in European Union Pandemic Preparedness Planning

This article proposes developing the public bioethics aspect of stewardship and applying it to the EU as ‘supra-stewardship’, a tool for opening a discursive space for citizen participation in EU preparedness planning. With this in mind the article highlights some of the contours for engagement on the boundaries of responsibility and the production of governance distortions and failures brought out by attention to framing, distribution, vulnerability and learning. This should help citizens to tackle the complementary expert and public rationalities that undermine their involvement, contribute supplementary knowledge towards governance, and help promote institutional learning by the EU and resilience.

Association between participation in life situations of children with cerebral palsy and their physical, social, and attitudinal environment:A cross-sectional multicenter European study

Objective:
To evaluate how participation of children with cerebral palsy (CP) varied with their environment.

Design:
Home visits to children. Administration of Assessment of Life Habits and European Child Environment Questionnaires. Structural equation modeling of putative associations between specific domains of participation and environment, while allowing for severity of child's impairments and pain.

Setting:
European regions with population-based registries of children with CP.

Participants:
Children (n=1174) aged 8 to 12 years were randomly selected from 8 population-based registries of children with CP in 6 European countries. Of these, 743 (63%) agreed to participate; 1 further region recruited 75 children from multiple sources. Thus, there were 818 children in the study.

Interventions:
Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measure:
Participation in life situations.

Results:
For the hypothesized associations, the models confirmed that higher participation was associated with better availability of environmental items. Higher participation in daily activities—mealtimes, health hygiene, personal care, and home life—was significantly associated with a better physical environment at home (P<.01). Mobility was associated with transport and physical environment in the community. Participation in social roles (responsibilities, relationships, recreation) was associated with attitudes of classmates and social support at home. School participation was associated with attitudes of teachers and therapists. Environment explained between 14% and 52% of the variation in participation.

Conclusions:
The findings confirmed the social model of disability. The physical, social, and attitudinal environment of disabled children influences their participation in everyday activities and social roles.

Engaging with the European Union? Exploring the Europeanization of the British National Party

Hostility towards the process of European integration is generally considered to constitute one of the hallmarks of the far right ‘family’ in Europe. This article acknowledges such opposition but it also recognises that the rhetoric is often at odds with actual policy activities and aspirations. Not only have far right parties long advocated greater European inter-party co-operation but they are now actively pursuing engagement with the European Union, especially the European Parliament, as a means of advancing their own strategic interests and boosting their finances. This article focuses on one far right party, namely the British National Party (BNP) and examines the party's approach towards the EU, its activities within the EP and its efforts to boost pan European cooperation through the new Alliance of European National Movements (AENM). It argues that the party's engagement with the European Union may have allowed the BNP to take advantage of new political opportunity structures but in turn, opened it up to Europeanization and made it increasingly dependent on the EU.

Job Strain and Tobacco Smoking:An Individual-Participant Data Meta-Analysis of 166 130 Adults in 15 European Studies

BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking is a major contributor to the public health burden and healthcare costs worldwide, but the determinants of smoking behaviours are poorly understood. We conducted a large individual-participant meta-analysis to examine the extent to which work-related stress, operationalised as job strain, is associated with tobacco smoking in working adults. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We analysed cross-sectional data from 15 European studies comprising 166 130 participants. Longitudinal data from six studies were used. Job strain and smoking were self-reported. Smoking was harmonised into three categories never, ex- and current. We modelled the cross-sectional associations using logistic regression and the results pooled in random effects meta-analyses. Mixed effects logistic regression was used to examine longitudinal associations. Of the 166 130 participants, 17% reported job strain, 42% were never smokers, 33% ex-smokers and 25% current smokers. In the analyses of the cross-sectional data, current smokers had higher odds of job strain than never-smokers (age, sex and socioeconomic position-adjusted odds ratio: 1.11, 95% confidence interval: 1.03, 1.18). Current smokers with job strain smoked, on average, three cigarettes per week more than current smokers without job strain. In the analyses of longitudinal data (1 to 9 years of follow-up), there was no clear evidence for longitudinal associations between job strain and taking up or quitting smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that smokers are slightly more likely than non-smokers to report work-related stress. In addition, smokers who reported work stress smoked, on average, slightly more cigarettes than stress-free smokers.

RFID based Efficient Lighting Control

The Kyoto Protocol and the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive put an onus on governments
and organisations to lower carbon footprint in order to contribute towards reducing global warming. A key
parameter to be considered in buildings towards energy and cost savings is its indoor lighting that has a major
impact on overall energy usage and Carbon Dioxide emissions. Lighting control in buildings using Passive
Infrared sensors is a reliable and well established approach; however, the use of only Passive Infrared does not
offer much savings towards reducing carbon, energy, and cost. Accurate occupancy monitoring information can
greatly affect a building’s lighting control strategy towards a greener usage. This paper presents an approach for
data fusion of Passive Infrared sensors and passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based occupancy
monitoring. The idea is to have efficient, need-based, and reliable control of lighting towards a green indoor
environment, all while considering visual comfort of occupants. The proposed approach provides an estimated
13% electrical energy savings in one open-plan office of a University building in one working day. Practical
implementation of RFID gateways provide real-world occupancy profiling data to be fused with Passive
Infrared sensing towards analysis and improvement of building lighting usage and control.

Ancestral haplotype 8.1 and lung disease severity in European cystic fibrosis patients

The clinical course of cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease varies between patients bearing identical CFTR mutations. This suggests that additional genetic modifiers may contribute to the pulmonary phenotype. The highly conserved ancestral haplotype 8.1 (8.1AH), carried by up to one quarter of Caucasians, comprises linked gene polymorphisms on chromosome 6 that play a key role in the inflammatory response: LTA +252A/G; TNF -308G/A, HSP70-2 +1267A/G and RAGE -429T/C. As inflammation is a key component inducing CF lung damage, we investigated whether the 8.1AH represents a lung function modifier in CF.

Four new exotic red seaweeds on European shores

We report the occurrence of four red macroalgae new to Europe. Two species were unambiguously determined to the species level with a DNA barcoding approach, while the remaining two species could only be assigned to a genus. Gelidium vagum was found in the Oosterschelde estuary (the Netherlands). Gracilariopsis chorda, Chondracanthus sp. and Solieria sp. were found in the Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany (France); Solieria sp. was also subsequently observed in the Thau Lagoon (France). Gelidium vagum and Gracilariopsis chorda are species originating from the north-western Pacific, around the Japanese archipelago. Phylogenetic analyses also show a likely Pacific origin for Chondracanthus sp. and Solieria sp. Three of these species are likely to have been introduced after 2008, indicating some active transport pathways between the Pacific and the north-eastern Atlantic. These findings also underline the importance of consistent and continuous local expertise (versus rapid assessment) in early warning systems.

Regulatory or Regulating Publics? The European Union’s Regulation of Emerging Health Technologies and Citizen Participation

‘Citizen participation’ includes various participatory techniques and is frequently viewed as an unproblematic and important social good when used as part of the regulation of the innovation and implementation of science and technology. This is perhaps especially evident in debates around ‘anticipatory governance’ or ‘upstream engagement’. Here, we interrogate this thesis using the example of the European Union’s regulation of emerging health technologies (such as nanotechnology). In this case, citizen participation in regulatory debate is concerned with innovative objects for medical application that are considered to be emergent or not yet concrete. Through synthesising insights from law, regulatory studies, critical theory, and science and technology studies (STS), we seek to cast new light on the promises, paradoxes and pitfalls of citizen participation as a tool or technology of regulation in itself. As such we aim to generate a new vantage point from which to view the values and sociotechnical imaginaries that are both ‘designed-in’ and ‘designed-out’ of citizen participation. In so doing, we show not only how publics (do not) regulate technologies, but also how citizens themselves are regulated through the techniques of participation. © The Author [2012].