Effect of keyswitch design of desktop and notebook keyboards related to key stiffness and typing force.

This study aimed to compare and analyse rubber-dome desktop, spring-column desktop and notebook keyboards in terms of key stiffness and fingertip typing force. The spring-column keyboard resulted in the highest mean peak contact force (0.86N), followed by the rubber dome desktop (0.

British expert advice on diet and heart disease C. 1945-2000.

This chapter looks at the evolution over fifty years of government recommendations for reducing the risk of coronary heart disease amongst the British population. It also explores how non-governmental organisations such as the BMA established their own nutritional advice giving mechanisms and tried to influence such recommendations--and how networks of scientists constituted advisory committees. Scientists tended to favour recommendations which would lead to interventions within the scope of their own disciplines.

Coming up for air: experts, employers, and workers in campaigns to compensate silicosis sufferers in Britain, 1918-1939.

Government regulation of dangerous trades and the compensation of those injured by their work remains a matter of considerable debate among medical historians. Trade unions have frequently been criticized for pursuing financial awards for their members rather than demanding improvements in health and safety at the workplace. This article examines the neglected subject of silicosis injuries in Britain from the time when the first legislation was passed for compensation of those suffering from the harmful affects of silica dust in 1918 to the outbreak of war in 1939, when a major new study was under way which would transform the scientific understanding and the legal compensation of those who were diagnosed as being ill with pneumoconiosis.

A case of Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus? the BMA Nutrition Committee 1947-1950 and the political disengagement of nutrition science.

During spring 1947, there was a controversy about the consequences for health of food rationing in Britain; among the issues at stake being the accusation that government departments were failing to release relevant data. The British Medical Association (BMA) responded by establishing a Nutrition Committee to investigate the effects of rationing. Leading members of the BMA expected the committee to intervene decisively in the debate, presenting the medical profession as protectors of the people.