Protocol: A randomised controlled trial evaluation of Cancer Focus NI’s ‘Dead Cool’ smoking prevention programme in post-primary schools

This paper presents a research protocol for a randomised controlled efficacy trial of the ‘Dead Cool’ smoking prevention programme. Dead Cool is a three to four-hour programme designed to be used by teachers with Year 9 students in Northern Ireland. The main outcome of the programme is to prevent students from starting to smoke. The protocol reports a research design intended to test the efficacy of the programme in 20 post-primary school settings. Selected schools included those from secondary /grammar/integrated/single sex/coeducational, rural and urban schools from both the maintained and controlled state sector and independent sector schools. Outcome measures include self-reported behaviours, monitoring of carbon monoxide (CO) in exhaled breath and focus groups designed to assess implementation fidelity and opinions on efficacy in intervention schools and explore the ‘counterfactual’ potential treatments in control schools.

Los puestos de libros en las gradas de San Felipe el Real de Madrid en el siglo XVIII

During the Eighteenth Century, the loggia or gradas of the Church of San Felipe el Real in Madrid combined its traditional character as a popular market-place for leaflets, broadsides and flyers with a new commercial space for a motley variety of works responding to the diverse changes in mentality parallel to the creation of a new, independent, public opinion. The study of the works sold in these very dynamic book stalls, a true commercial crossroads of the old and the new, could serve as a seismograph of the significant collision between ideas and ways of life that took place under the apparent stability of the last century of the ancien regime.

Dental erosion among 12-14 year old school children in Khartoum:A pilot study

Objectives: To investigate dental erosion among 12-14 year old Sudanese school children and evaluate the associated risk factors. Basic Research Design: Cross sectional survey in secondary schools in Khartoum city, Sudan. Method and Participants: A sample of 157 school children was obtained from both private and public schools. Erosion on the labial and palatal surfaces of maxillary incisors was measured by criterion based on the Smith and Knight Tooth Wear Index. Dietary intake and other related factors were assessed using a questionnaire. Results: The overall erosion prevalence in this group was 66.9%, of which 45.2% was mild and 21.7% was moderate erosion. A strong association was found between erosion and private schooling (higher socioeconomic groups), carbonated drinks, herbal hibiscus drink and traditional acidic food consumption. Conclusion: There was a high prevalence of dental erosion among Sudanese school children which was mild to moderate in severity and was strongly associated with acidic dietary intake © BASCD 2007.

Rationale for and implementation of age-neutral HRM in divergent institutional contexts–examples from Britain and Germany

Owing to demographic change as well as international and national pressures,
organisations will have to abandon oftentimes prevalent youth-centric HRM practices in favour of age-neutral HRM that is inclusive of the entire workforce, regardless of age. In order to do so, organisations turn to ‘best practice’ guides. These, however, do not tend to differentiate recommendations by country and/or sector. Based on research in eight case study organisations in the chemical, steel and retail sectors as well as in public schools in Germany and Britain, this chapter argues that the rationale for and the implementation of age-neutral HRM practices differ by national institutional and sectoral context as well as by the relative influence of social partners. Hence, organisations planning to implement age-neutral HRM should take organisational, institutional and sectoral peculiarities into account when doing so.