bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Work‐related social protection for informal workers
Authors: Lund Francie 
Published: October 2012

AbstractThe informal workforce is growing worldwide, and changes in the global structure of employment and in places of employment mean that work is a source of hazard and ill‐health for many poorer workers. Yet informal workers do not have access to work‐related social security. They face high work‐related risks, but have little or no access to reliable formal or informal social protection. Citizen‐focused social security programmes, such as cash transfers, do not give enough attention to the needs of able‐bodied adults who work. Further, informal workplaces are not covered by the traditional discipline and practice of occupational health and safety (OHS), which is a necessary component of overall work‐related social security. In particular, poorer informal workers are ill‐placed to make use of possible preventive interventions, as they may lead to loss of income in the short term. A more inclusive approach will require changes in the institutional arrangements governingOHS, and should involve especially local authorities and informal worker organizations, who are developing influential international sectoral networks. In this regard, promising examples of negotiated and inclusiveOHSpolicy reforms are presented. The broader challenge is to develop an expandedOHSthat specifically includes informal workers as “workers”, rather than as “vulnerable citizens” who qualify only for poverty‐oriented social protection programmes, and that explicitly addresses preventive measures.
The challenges of assessing and providing compensation for mental stress under Nigeria's 2010 Employee's Compensation Act
Authors: Atilola Olayinka 
Published: October 2012

AbstractNigeria has a predominantly youthful population and limited job opportunities in the formal labour market, which makes the search for formal employment difficult and can be conducive to the growth of exploitative working conditions. As one response to address the vulnerability of Nigerian workers, the Employee's Compensation Act was passed into law in December 2010. Of note, the Act includes provisions for compensation for mental health injuries, or “mental stress”, suffered in the course of employment. The article examines the strengths and weaknesses of the provisions, in particular the premise for mental health injury claims made in the Act. The wider policy implications of the Act as regards the development of compensation for mental health injuries in sub‐Saharan Africa are discussed and suggestions for the future review of the Act offered.
Strengthening the prevention of social insecurity
Authors: Sinfield Adrian 
Published: October 2012

AbstractAn important contribution to preventing social insecurity can be made by strong social security programmes that promote collective as well as personal security: in particular, they act as built‐in automatic stabilizers with social and political as well as economic benefits for the whole society. By contrast, weaker systems have a destabilizing effect built in that reduces their preventive effectiveness. The ways in which social security systems can contribute to preventing social and economic insecurity have become less effective in many countries. Reasons for the relative neglect of prevention are considered together with the changes that have weakened systems' preventive elements specifically. The structural context within which social security policies have to work, particularly the quality and quantity of employment as well as the interaction with other public programmes, has of course a major effect on their ability to prevent. There is still much that can be achieved by schemes with closer attention directed to what is needed to prevent insecurity. Proposals to strengthen the preventive contribution in social security programmes are offered to promote greater debate of these issues and to restore the goal of prevention as a central objective.
Why Educational Exchange Programmes Miss Their Mark: Cross‐Border Mobility, Education and European Identity*
Authors: KUHN THERESA 
Published: October 2012

AbstractCurrent research shows that participating in an Erasmus exchange does not strengthen European identity. However, this does not necessarily imply that transnational interactions are ineffective in fostering European identity. Rather, the Erasmus programme misses its mark by addressing university students who are already very likely to feel European. Due to a ceiling effect, their experience abroad cannot make a difference. In contrast, low‐educated individuals who might respond strongly to cross‐border mobility by adopting a European identity hardly participate in educational exchange because they leave school before these programmes take place. Analyses of Eurobarometer survey data support this hypothesis.
The EMU Debt Crisis: Early Lessons and Reforms*
Authors: BUTI MARCO , CARNOT NICOLAS 
Published: October 2012

AbstractThe economic and financial crisis and its aftermath have put economic and monetary union (EMU) to the test and exposed gaps in its initial policy architecture. Collective rules of fiscal discipline have proven difficult fully to enforce and excessive public indebtedness has been confirmed as a potential source of systemic instability. Broader economic and financial imbalances have also been shown to carry important risks for individual Member States' and area‐wide stability. Recent governance reforms have sought to address these shortcomings. In particular, the so‐called ‘Six‐Pack’ has brought changes strengthening the ability to prevent and correct economic and fiscal imbalances in the future. With the crisis not terminated, however, the debate over optimal policy arrangements continues and additional governance reforms have been put forward. This article reviews some lessons drawn from the crisis episode for the economic and budgetary framework of EMU and describes the governance reforms that have been undertaken as part of the comprehensive solution needed to underpin the single currency.
The Interplay of Economic Reforms and Monetary Policy: The Case of the Eurozone*
Authors: DRUDI FRANCESCO , DURRÉ ALAIN , MONGELLI FRANCESCO PAOLO 
Published: October 2012

AbstractThe world has been struck by a mutating systemic financial crisis that is unprecedented in terms of financial losses and fiscal costs, geographic reach, and speed and synchronization. The crisis from August 2007 to date can be divided into three main phases: the financial turmoil from August 2007 to the collapse of Lehman Brothers; the global financial crisis from September 2008 until spring 2010; and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis from spring 2010 to the current period. While each phase has brought significant challenges, the current sovereign debt crisis has been the most critical stage for the eurozone. It has brought unprecedented challenges for the monetary union and triggered extraordinary adjustments in both monetary policy and institutional arrangements at the eurozone level. The purpose of this article is to outline the features of each crisis phase, to describe the actions taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) during each phase and to explain the rationale for such measures. It also discusses the need to strengthen further the economic union in order to guarantee the sustainability of the monetary union of the eurozone. In this respect, it is argued that the recent institutional adjustments made at the European Union level would have been necessary independently of the financial crisis.
The Politics of ‘Norm Diffusion’ in Turkish European Union Accession Negotiations: Why It was Rational for an Islamist Party to be ‘Pro‐European’ and a Secularist Party to be ‘Anti‐European’*
Authors: BAUDNER JOERG 
Published: October 2012

AbstractThe article will suggest a bottom‐up approach to analyzing the impact of European Union (EU) conditionality on candidate countries. If requiring comprehensive reforms, EU accession negotiations offer domestic actors a legitimacy standard, external constraints and a focal point for electoral coalitions as resources in the domestic political arena. The Turkish case serves as a hypothesis‐generating case study suggesting that domestic actors who are disadvantaged in domestic resources in these dimensions embrace EU accession, whereas domestic actors who feel threatened in their domestic resources adopt an opposite strategy. It will be demonstrated that the two major Turkish political parties adopted a cost–benefit calculus in their position towards EU accession. The Turkish case is particularly intriguing because the positions adopted by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP), respectively, have been counter‐intuitive, and in fact both parties have drastically reversed earlier positions towards EU accession and done so in disregard of the preferences of their core electorate.
Nurses’ experiences of managing sick‐listing issues in telephone advisory services at primary health care centres
Authors: Lännerström Linda , Wallman Thorne , Söderbäck Maja 
Published: October 2012

IntroductionOver the last decade, Swedish health care has focused on improving the management of sick‐listing issues. At primary healthcare centres, sick listing is mainly dealt with by the patient's physician but when patients have requests related to sick listing and contact the telephone advisory service, nurses will be involved. The aim of this study was to describe nurses’ experiences of managing sick‐listing issues in telephone advisory services in a primary healthcare setting.MethodsThe study was a qualitative focus group study. Data collection was conducted in three focus group conversations in a county in central Sweden in 2009. The conversations were recorded, transcribed and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The study included fourteen nurses, purposively sampled as having current experience of telephone advisory services at primary healthcare centres.FindingsThe management of sick‐listing issues was described by the nurses as Nurses Actions that were affected by Enabling conditions and Obstructing conditions. The Nurses’ Actions included making an assessment for appropriate action, making an appointment and/or giving information and guidance to the patient and/or monitoring patient's rights. Enabling conditions included documentation, routines, supportive cooperation and training in insurance medicine. The obstructing conditions were related to patients’ expectations, cooperation with other professionals, lack of training and the nurses’ professional role.ConclusionThe nurses experienced stress and difficulties related to being gatekeepers and related to the act of balancing different demands from patients, co‐workers and the organisation. This in combination with the lack of training caused the nurses to state that they did not want responsibility for managing sick‐listing issues. Sufficient documentation, education, routines, support of and discussions with other professionals at the primary healthcare centre could be ways of improving nurses’ and other professionals’ management of sick‐listing issues.
A branch‐and‐bound algorithm for scheduling of new product development projects
Authors: Ranjbar Mohammad 
Published: October 2012

AbstractIn this paper, we consider scheduling problem in a new product development project. Each research and development project consists of a set of activities in which each activity may be executed in several ways. Each way of execution of an activity is a different technology, called an alternative technology, which may fail due to technical risks. In this work, we focus on alternative technologies for scheduling activities to maximize the expected net present value. We assume that the activity payoff is obtained as soon as any single technology is completed successfully. Therefore, we analyze the problem and develop a two‐phase solution procedure, consisting of a branch‐and‐bound algorithm and a recursive search procedure. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated on a set of randomly generated test instances.
Understanding Landscape Stewardship – Lessons to be Learned from Public Service Economics
Authors: Penker Marianne , Enengel Barbara , Mann Carsten , Aznar Olivier 
Published: October 2012

AbstractWe argue that public service economics provides a new perspective on landscape stewardship by explaining it as human‐to‐human transfer of partial property rights. These mutually linked exchanges involve rights to use, to access, or to control and allocate land, labour, skills or information. From the perspective of public service economics, we identify the actors involved in landscape stewardship and distinguish entrepreneurial strategies for service provision based on resource orientation, user orientation or competiveness orientation. The difficulties in evaluating the quality of services in general and landscape stewardship in particular result in substantial uncertainty. Three types of contracts that cope differently with this uncertainty can be distinguished: contracts focusing on the technical process, on the intended outcome or on the choice of suppliers based on trust and features of their performance potential. We conclude that a service economics perspective can add to the understanding of landscape stewardship. Due to the fact that ‘public service’ is already a well‐known and broadly acknowledged concept in society, public service economics could possibly provide more rapid progress towards a better co‐ordination of supply and demand for landscape qualities than other more novel concepts.
The Role of Risk Mitigation in Production Efficiency: A Case Study of Potato Cultivation in the Bolivian Andes
Authors: Larochelle Catherine , Alwang Jeffrey 
Published: October 2012

AbstractUsing a stochastic production frontier to model potato production in Bolivia, we quantify the costs of environmental and activity diversification (AD) in the form of efficiency losses and yield forgone. We find that efficiency decreases with the number of fields in a geographical cluster, distance between the dwelling and a particular field, discontinuity between fields, and off‐farm income. However, environmental diversification (ED) is more detrimental than AD. Using spatial analysis of field and household efficiency measures, we assess production vulnerability to climatic shocks and the potential of ED in mitigating shocks. We find important spatial clusters of low and high efficiencies at the field level suggesting that climatic shocks influence efficiency measures. Household‐level efficiency measures exhibit random spatial patterns suggesting that on average households can mitigate the adverse effects of shocks through ED.
Incidence of hepatitis C virus infection in patients on hemodialysis: A systematic review and meta‐analysis
Authors: Su Yingying , Norris Jessie L. , Zang Chunpeng , Peng Zhihang , Wang Ning 
Published: October 2012

AbstractHepatitis C virus infection is a perennial concern for hemodialysis units because the prevalence of hepatitis C is significantly higher there than in the general population. Through a systematic review and meta‐analysis, we aim to assess the incidence rate of hepatitis C virus infection in hemodialysis units and explore its potential risk factors. Five electronic databases were used to search articles from 1990 to 2012, including PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and Wanfang. A random‐effects analysis was used to estimate the overall incidence rate of hepatitis C virus infection. A subgroup analysis and meta‐regression analysis were conducted to explore factors associated with heterogeneity between studies. Twenty‐two eligible articles were found, including 23 incidence rate estimates. The overall incidence rate of hepatitis C virus infection was 1.47 per 100 patient‐years (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.14 to 1.80). In the subgroup analysis, the pooled incidence rate was 4.44 (CI 2.65, 6.23) per 100 patient‐years in the developing world and 0.99 (CI 0.66, 1.29) per 100 patient‐years in the developed world. [Correction added on 2 November 2012, after first online publication: Pooled incidence rate in the developed world has been changed.] In addition, in hemodialysis units with higher prevalence, the incidence rate of hepatitis C virus infection also tended to be higher. Meta‐regression analysis showed that the country's development level and initial HCV prevalence combined could explain 67.91% of the observed heterogeneity. The incidence rate of hepatitis C virus infection among patients on hemodialysis was significantly high. Efforts should be taken to control hepatitis C virus infection in hemodialysis units, especially in developing countries.
Specific immunotherapy with allergens: an important tool in the treatment of the allergic diseases
Authors: Zuberbier Torsten , Canonica Giorgio Walter , da Silva Barbara 
Published: October 2012

SummaryImmunotherapy was introduced 100 years ago and still is the only treatment that modifies the course of allergic diseases. The success of its use depends on correct indications, use of standardized extracts and monitoring the therapeutic response.
Evaluation of a blended learning model in geriatric medicine: A successful learning experience for medical students
Authors: Duque Gustavo , Demontiero Oddom , Whereat Sarah , Gunawardene Piumali , Leung Oliver , Webster Peter , Sardinha Luis , Boersma Derek , Sharma Anita 
Published: October 2012

BackgroundDespite the increasingly ageing population, teaching geriatric medicine at medical schools is a challenge due to the particularities of this subspecialty and the lack of student interest in this subject.MethodsWe assessed a blended system that combines e‐learning and person‐to‐person interaction. Our program offered the students a hands‐on learning experience based on self‐reflection, access to technology, interactive learning, frequent interaction with the multidisciplinary team, more exposure to patients, and regular feedback.ResultsOur results indicate that the students appreciate this system as a rich and effective learning experience demonstrated by their positive feedback and by their significant improvement in knowledge assessed at the end of their rotation.ConclusionImplementing an interactive blended system is a beneficial approach to teaching geriatric medicine in medical schools and to motivating medical students' interest in this important medical subspecialty.
Self‐reported hearing, vision and quality of life: Older people in New Zealand
Authors: Zhang Shiran , Moyes Simon , McLean Chris , Searchfield Grant , Welch David , Jacobs Robert , Kerse Ngaire 
Published: October 2012

AimTo establish associations between sensory‐related disability and quality of life (QOL).MethodsA total of 3817 people aged 75 years and older, including 173 Māori aged 61 years and older, were surveyed. Measures included: sociodemographic and health factors; World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL)‐BREF for QOL; and self‐rated hearing‐ and vision‐related disability.ResultsHearing disability was reported by 866 (51%) men and 736 (36%) women. A total of 974 (26% of all, 61% of hearing disabled) used hearing aids. A total of 513 (30%) men and 618 (30%) women reported vision disability. Vision and hearing disability were both independently associated with lower QOL, with hearing difficulty affecting physical and social domains more, and the environmental domain least. Vision difficulty impacted the environmental domain most and the social domain least. QOL impact was higher for those with both hearing and visual disability (631, 17%).ConclusionsHearing and vision disability are associated with poorer QOL.
Prevalence of physical activity behaviour in older people: Findings from the Dynamic Analyses to Optimise Ageing (DYNOPTA) project and Australian national survey data
Authors: Sims Jane , Birrell Carole L , Hunt Susan , Browning Colette , Burns Richard A , Mitchell Paul 
Published: October 2012

AimMany older people lead sedentary lives. National Health Survey physical activity prevalence data provide limited coverage of the ‘old old’ (≥75 years).MethodThe Dynamic Analyses to Optimise Ageing (DYNOPTA) project's dataset provided physical activity data for 13 420 participants. Physical activity (walking, moderate‐ and vigorous‐intensity activities in the previous week) was measured. Data were weighted and prevalence was calculated.ResultsThe frequency of walking in DYNOPTA was similar to that in the national sample. Walking remained relatively stable until a decline among persons aged 80 years and over; moderate and vigorous activity declined in all but a minority of persons aged 70 years and over. Although DYNOPTA participants reported more physical activity than those in the contemporary national survey, the rates of sedentary behaviour were high.ConclusionWe require more information about the ‘oldest old’ (85+ years). There is great scope for increasing physical activity, even walking, among older people.
Management of women with postmenopausal bleeding: evidence‐based review
Authors: Bakour Shagaf H , Timmermans Anne , Mol Ben Willem , Khan Khalid S 
Published: October 2012

Key content

Patients with postmenopausal bleeding (PMB) have a 10–15% chance of having endometrial carcinoma; they should therefore be seen within 2 weeks of referral. Cervical and vulval cancers remain important components of the differential diagnosis and can only be assessed by clinical examination.

There are well‐developed and evidence‐based strategies on how best to investigate women with PMB. These strategies are formulated in several guidelines.

Learning objectives

To understand that the completion of investigations of patients with PMB should include test performance and patient characteristics.

To be able to evaluate the various investigations for women with PMB.

To be able to describe the appropriate management of women with PMB on tamoxifen, and unscheduled PMB in women undergoing hormone replacement therapy.

Ethical issues

Incidental finding of thickened endometrium on transvaginal sonography (TVS) in asymptomatic individuals carries a management dilemma.

Approach to benign pathology: should subsequent evaluation for benign abnormalities be performed after malignancy has been ruled out?

Ongoing work and technology development will evolve our strategy in managing PMB.
Obstetric pelvic floor and anal sphincter injuries
Authors: Lone Farah , Sultan Abdul , Thakar Ranee 
Published: October 2012

Key content

Vaginal delivery, especially the first, contributes to the development of pelvic organ prolapse, and urinary and anal incontinence.

Although the effects of childbirth on the pelvic floor are commonly reported within 12 months of delivery, the peak presentation of symptoms occur some 2–3 decades later.

Vaginal childbirth, advancing maternal age and increasing body mass index are the most consistent risk factors.

Diagnosis of obstetric anal sphincter trauma can be improved by training and thereby minimising the risk of anal incontinence.

Further research, using pelvic floor imaging, may improve our understanding of the nature of pelvic floor and anal sphincter injuries.

Learning objectives

To review the effect of childbirth on pelvic organ function.

To identify and appropriately manage anal sphincter injuries following childbirth.

Ethical issues

There are inadequate long‐term data from well‐conducted longitudinal studies to make definitive recommendations in many aspects of pelvic organ dysfunction.