Parent stress and satisfaction with early intervention services for children with disabilities – a longitudinal study from Germany

This study assessed parent–child and family-related stress at two points of time and analysed relationships between stress, child and family characteristics and parent satisfaction with early intervention services. In Germany, 125 parents of young children with intellectual disabilities, hearing impairment or visual impairment responded to a questionnaire. Eighty-seven parents agreed to participate in the second survey. Results indicated that (a) perceived parenting competence is associated with general self-efficacy and satisfaction with professional support, (b) parent–child interactional stress increased with time, specifically in families with children with intellectual disability or visual impairment, (c) the level of satisfaction with amount and quality of family support was low in a considerable subgroup of parents, (d) regression analyses support predictive relationships among parent–child stress, family-related stress, perceived parenting competence and satisfaction with early intervention services.     

Threats to Individual Privacy and Enterprise Security and Experiences with Internet Insafety and Insecurity

As security and safety requirements were not considered during the creation of networks, there is a growing number of threats for individuals, enterprises, government agencies and organizations. This paper reviews these threats and the difficulties of dealing with them now. The Internet, as a consequence, is hardly adequate for processing sensitive information, because it can be protected neither by technology nor by law. In this situation, future “information societies” will be more risk-oriented than today: individual rights will be less significant and traditional legal instruments will need to be adapted to different sets of values.     

Frequency and aetiology of injury in cross‐country skiing

A comparative analysis was carried out on 1263 injured downhill skiers and 85 cross‐country skiers with regard to risk of injury, diagnosis, localization and age distribution. While 48% of the injuries to crosscountry skiers involved the upper extremities, 77% of the injuries to downhill skiers involved lesions of the leg. Contusions accounted for 31.8% in the case of cross‐country skiers, while 37.8% of downhill skiers suffered distortions, 22.8% sustained torn ligaments and 22.2% suffered fractures.

A total of 57% of downhill skiers are under the age of thirty, while 87% of cross‐country skiers are at least 30 years of age. Female cross‐country skiers tend to suffer more injuries. The chief causes are falls on downhill slopes, but also on the level usually on icy or well‐trodden courses. Another course is the ski getting caught. Good equipment, a good state of fitness and preparation, protection against hypothermia, appropriate choice of cross‐country courses and cross‐country skiing lessons are ways of preventing injuries.     

Staying Tuned: TV News Audiences in the Netherlands 1988–2010

The “prestige factor” has been known to social scientists for many‐years. It shows up in the “over‐reporting” that occurs whenever people are asked, to tell an interviewer their income, or the amount of schooling they have had—or the amount of viewing of an educational television station they do. The management of ETV stations is well aware that their audience often isn't as large as reported, and that the same “prestige factor” prevents them from receiving sufficient data from their audience as to the reason why they do or do not view ETV. In the present study, an experimental approach was made. Three different kinds of appeal were used in a promotional campaign designed to cause people to watch an ETV station more often. The results, of each appeal were compared to a group of ETV viewers and non‐viewers who were not exposed to the promotional material.

These data were derived from the Oregon Educational Television Project, which was financed in part by a grant from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. John Shepherd received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and is presently Associate Professor of Speech and Director of the Division of Broadcast Services and Televised Instruction at the University of Oregon.     

Perspectives of information and communication technologies for engineering education

The information and communication technologies of today and tomorrow are characterized by: the Internet and its related technological networks; mobile telecommunication systems; video-based multimedia application for communication and information; and speech recognition/automated speech output. They are developing into embedded systems with invisible PC-free interfaces and into new breeds of robots and Multi-Agent Systems. These systems have started to change the technical and organizational structure of all human-machine-systems and their control tasks. In this paper, some aspects of these changes are described in view of the future roles of engineers within society. The paper is based on the memorandum which was drafted by an international expert group to be presented at the Congress on Information and Communication during the First World Engineers' Convention, 19-21 June 2000, Hannover, Germany. Subsequently this memorandum was discussed and agreed on by the participants of the Congress workshops. These participants were several hundred engineers from all over the world. Their ideas and concepts have been integrated into this paper.