Women Miners\u27 Fight for Parental Leave

[Excerpt] In the late 1970s, for the first time in our nation\u27s history, coal miners started getting pregnant. In many cases, the mother had spent years fighting to get her coal mining job, fought against sexual harassment and discrimination in the mines, and worked hard to prove her competence and gain acceptance as a miner. For some, pregnancy forced them to quit their jobs, give up their seniority and lose their health insurance just when they needed it most. For others, pregnancy meant worries about the potential effects of mining on the fetus. In response to this problem and to the dramatic need of their union brothers, a small band of women miners—constituting less than 2% of the United Mine Workers of America— developed a campaign for parental leave as a formal employee benefit. At a minimum, parental leave would allow mothers and fathers to safeguard their jobs and insurance coverage while taking adequate time off to safely bring children into the world and to care for them during serious illnesses. The women miners have focused their campaign on two fronts simultaneously — building support for a parental leave clause in the UMWA contract and for federal legislation that would affect all working parents. Both approaches build on each other and connect with the efforts of women in other unions as momentum is gathering for a new approach to the relationship of family and work

A Time Geography Approach to Understanding the Impact of Gasoline Price Changes on Traffic Safety.

The impact of gasoline price changes on traffic safety has received increasing attention in empirical studies. However, this important relationship has not been explained within a conceptual or theoretical framework. In this study, we examine this relationship within a time geography framework in an attempt to understand the effect of time-varying fluctuations in gasoline prices and their relationship to traffic safety in a case study of Mississippi from April 2004 to December 2008. We further extend this work by examining the degree to which this relationship is differential in impact by age, gender, and race. The results suggest that changes in gasoline prices have immediate effects on reducing total traffic crashes and crashes of younger drivers, women, and whites. However, changes in gasoline prices do not affect total crashes of older drivers, men, or blacks. Within the theoretical framework of time geography, we understand gasoline prices as one type of capability constraint of the space-time path and space- time prism. As gasoline prices increase (that is, as the capability constraint becomes stronger), traffic crash rates will decrease. However, the effects vary by age, gender, and race because the capability constraint of gasoline prices differs across demographic groups.gasoline prices, traffic incidents, traffic safety, age, gender

Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation.

The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers' shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university-Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts

Gasoline Prices and Their Relationship to Drunk-Driving Crashes

his study investigates the relationship between changing gasoline prices and drunk-driving crashes. Specifically, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on drunk-driving crashes in Mississippi by age, gender, and race from 2004Ð2008, a period experiencing great fluctuation in gasoline prices. An exploratory visualization by graphs shows that higher gasoline prices are generally associated with fewer drunk-driving crashes. Higher gasoline prices depress drunk- driving crashes among younger and older drivers, among male and female drivers, and among white, black, and Hispanic drivers. The statistical results suggest that higher gasoline prices lead to lower drunk-driving crashes for female and black drivers. However, alcohol consumption is a better predictor of drunk-driving crashes, especially for male, white, and older drivers.Drunk-driving crashes, gasoline prices, alcohol consumption, Mississippi

Probable changes in lake chemistry in Canada's Atlantic Provinces under proposed North American emission reductions

International audienceAtlantic Canada, located in the extreme north-eastern portion of North America, receives acid precipitation from all major acid emission sources on the eastern part of the continent. The region was glaciated and has thin soils over a generally poorly acid buffering bedrock. Because of regional topography, large groupings of lakes occur in a number of regions. Environment Canada and the Government of New Brunswick have operated lake sampling networks in trend detection studies and have concentrated their work on these lake groupings. The MAGIC model has been applied to these lakes and their catchments to see: a) what initial water chemistry conditions existed before acidification began, b) what the chemistry was like during the worst of regional acid deposition, and c) what it would be like under deposition conditions predicted for new Canadian and US emission reduction proposals. While pH, sulphate, acid neutralisation capacity (ANC) and the sum of the base cations (SBC) of all lakes have been significantly affected by acid deposition, water chemistry conditions are now considerably better than they were in 1975, at the worst of the deposition. However, a 50% reduction in acid deposition from Year 2000 deposition amounts will not return water chemistry to original conditions in most of the region. Keywords: Atlantic Canada, monitoring networks, acidification, predictions, MAGI

Diagnosing Acute Heart Failure in Patients With Undifferentiated Dyspnea: A Lung and Cardiac Ultrasound (LuCUS) Protocol

Objectives The primary goal of this study was to determine accuracy for diagnosing acutely decompensated heart failure (ADHF) in the undifferentiated dyspneic emergency department (ED) patient using a lung and cardiac ultrasound (LuCUS) protocol. Secondary objectives were to determine if US findings acutely change management and if findings are more accurate than clinical gestalt. Methods This was a prospective, observational study of adult patients presenting to the ED with undifferentiated dyspnea. The intervention consisted of a 12-view LuCUS protocol performed by experienced emergency physician sonographers. The primary objective was measured by comparing US findings to the final diagnosis independently determined by two physicians blinded to the LuCUS result. Acute treatment changes based on US findings were tracked in real time through a standardized data collection form. Results Data on 99 patients were analyzed; ADHF was the final diagnosis in 36%. The LuCUS protocol had sensitivity of 83% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 67% to 93%), specificity of 83% (95% CI = 70% to 91%), positive likelihood ratio of 4.8 (95% CI = 2.7 to 8.3), and negative likelihood ratio of 0.20 (95% CI = 0.09 to 0.42). Forty-seven percent of patients had changes in acute management, and 42% had changes in acute treatment. Observed agreement for the LuCUS protocol was 93% between coinvestigators. Overall, accuracy improved by 20% (83% vs. 63%, 95% CI = 8% to 31% for the difference) over clinical gestalt alone. Conclusions The LuCUS protocol may accurately identify ADHF and may improve acute clinical management in dyspneic ED patients. This protocol has improved diagnostic accuracy over clinical gestalt alone

Variation and Uncertainty in Evaporation from a Subtropical Estuary: Florida Bay

Variation and uncertainty in estimated evaporation was determined over time and between two locations in Florida Bay, a subtropical estuary. Meteorological data were collected from September 2001 to August 2002 at Rabbit Key and Butternut Key within the Bay. Evaporation was estimated using both vapor flux and energy budget methods. The results were placed into a long-term context using 33 years of temperature and rainfall data collected in south Florida. Evaporation also was estimated from this long-term data using an empirical formula relating evaporation to clear sky solar radiation and air temperature. Evaporation estimates for the 12-mo period ranged from 144 to 175 cm yr21, depending on location and method, with an average of 163 cm yr21 (6 9%). Monthly values ranged from 9.2 to 18.5 cm, with the highest value observed in May, corresponding with the maximum in measured net radiation. Uncertainty estimates derived from measurement errors in the data were as much as 10%, and were large enough to obscure differences in evaporation between the two sites. Differences among all estimates for any month indicate the overall uncertainty in monthly evaporation, and ranged from 9% to 26%. Over a 33-yr period (1970–2002), estimated annual evaporation from Florida Bay ranged from 148 to 181 cm yr21, with an average of 166 cm yr21. Rainfall was consistently lower in Florida Bay than evaporation, with a long-term average of 106 cm yr21. Rainfall considered alone was uncorrelated with evaporation at both monthly and annual time scales; when the seasonal variation in clear sky radiation was also taken into account both net radiation and evaporation were significantly suppressed in months with high rainfall