Understanding the diversity and dynamics of living with diabetes : a feasibility study focusing on the case

Despite growing evidence about treatments, many people living with diabetes have poor diabetes control even when healthcare is available. One difficult issue is how to apply medical evidence to individuals. This feasibility study explores change over time and the diversity of pathways to similar health outcomes, to understand how evidence can be tailored to the individual. Six people living with diabetes (two with type 1, and four with type 2) agreed to a series of interviews and diary-keeping. Reading the dataset for each individual reveals a person changing over time through interactions with people and their context. Identifying time as a theme is difficult, as it is ubiquitous. Outcome means little to those living with diabetes: they are living on through time. We developed attributes for each participant relevant to diabetes outcome, describing how they related to others and their environment, capturing emergent properties rather than detail. A similar health outcome could be achieved very differently. Comparison of patterns of attributes may be useful. However, the dynamic, relational nature of the attributes is easily lost from view. How people function in terms of time, change and interaction may be most important for tailoring interventions for improved health outcome

Transport on randomly evolving trees

The time process of transport on randomly evolving trees is investigated. By introducing the notions of living and dead nodes a model of random tree evolution is constructed which describes the spreading in time of objects corresponding to nodes. By using the method of the age-dependent branching processes we derive the joint distribution function of the number of living and dead nodes, and determine the correlation between these node numbers as a function of time. Also analyzed are the stochastic properties of the end-nodes; and the correlation between the numbers of living and dead end-nodes is shown to change its character suddenly at the very beginning of the evolution process. The survival probability of random trees is investigated and expressions are derived for this probability.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, published in Phys. Rev. E 72, 051101 (2005

Time use: the missing piece of economic development studies

The concern of this paper is to highlight time use as a valuable resource and important factor in the development process of Less Developed Countries. It propounds time use,that is neglected in Development studies, as an important factor in human development index. The role of time management as a crucial element in providing and developing the effective human skills in LDCs will be studied. Learning organizations are recommended to direct social attitudes change toward time management. Traditional way of living and weak socio-economic infrastructures, which result in time-waste society, will be discussed as obstacles to change in LDCs.time use; less developed countries; economic development; change; time management

Climate-friendly food

Climate change is without doubt one of the greatest challenges mankind has ever faced. This is not least due to the enormous consequences that climate change will have for the world’s ecosystems and for our living conditions. At the same time, climate change is a colossal political problem, in which the world’s democracies run the risk not being able to carry out the decisions that have to be made. The political and democratic problem builds on the very limited understanding that there is a connection between emissions of greenhouse gases, climate change and their impact on the living conditions of individual people. In reality, there is both a spatial and a temporal separation between emissions and effects. The world’s industrialised countries, which emit by far the largest amount of greenhouse gases, are in the first instance the least vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In addition, serious effects will first occur much later (decades to centuries) than the emissions. Therefore it can be very difficult to generate popular backing for serious initiatives against emissions of greenhouse gases. Agriculture and food production play an important role in this connection due to the importance of climate change for agriculture’s production basis and because it is one of the sectors emitting most greenhouse gases. For agriculture, the climate challenge is therefore double – it must both adapt to the changes and at the same time reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases

The Cost of \u27Basic Necessities\u27 Has Risen Slightly More Than Inflation Over the Last 30 Years

[Excerpt] Contracts often use an all-items index to ensure that payments are adjusted to account for overall consumer inflation in the economy. The CPI is designed to track the average change over time in the prices paid by either urban consumers or urban wage earners for a constant-quality market basket of goods and services. Cost-of-living adjustments that use the CPI for All Items are based on changes in the average level of prices across the broadest range of goods and services available in the consumer marketplace. However, one might be interested in price change across a more limited range of items. For example, one might wish to know how the price of a set of items that constitute “basic necessities” for daily living changes. A general consensus on the set of goods and services necessary for daily living is perhaps elusive; however, this Beyond the Numbers article constructs three pairs of experimental indexes for three different sets of goods and services that might reasonably be considered necessary for daily living. Each pair consists of a U.S. city average for the CPI-U and for the CPI-W. Thus, six indexes are presented for comparison

SEMANTIC SHIFT ON MALAY WORDS IN CLASSICAL MALAY TEXT HIKAYAT HANG TUAH COMPARE TO MODERN MALAY ( TO CULTURAL CONTEXT

Language—like many other aspects of life—changes over time. All living languages will experience changes. The slightest indication of language change can be seen in older and younger generation. The earlier generation of language user might speak differently from the younger generation and vice versa. Because language contains form and meaning, the changes are not only limited to the form, but also to the meaning. Indonesian language, as a living language, has its periodical changes and one of them is Classical Malay. Hikayat Hang Tuah is one of the most well-known classical Malay texts. Due to language change, there are some differences in Malay language written in Hikayat Hang Tuah and Modern Malay Based on the previous explanation, it is intriguing to analyze the semantic shift in words written in Hikayat Hang Tuah compare to Indonesian Language. However, there are multi-factors triggering the change of language, including culture. Therefore, this paper will not only describe the semantic shift on Malay words in Hikayat Hang Tuah, but also the cultural context affecting the change

Time allocation within the family: welfare implications of life in a couple

This paper analyzes the household decision-making process leading to the allocation of time and consumption in the family. We estimate, on the British Household Panel Survey, a collective model of demand for leisure generalized to the production of a household public good. For the first time in such a framework the sharing rule conditional on public expenditures is identified by woman's change of family status: from single-living to couple or from couple to single-living. Welfare implications are elaborated. Woman's share of household's private expenditures appears to be on average 45%.collective model, public good, domestic production, sharing rule identification

Owners\u27 Equivalent Rent and the Consumer Price Index: 30 Years and Counting

The objective of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is to measure the change in expenditures required to maintain a given standard of living. For expenditures on houses, this leads to a measurement objective that focuses on the shelter services provided by a house over a period of time. A house is a capital asset that provides a flow of services over a substantial period of time, not a one-time consumption item. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) explored two major approaches to determine how to estimate the cost of shelter services for owner-occupied dwellings. The first approach attempts to estimate the flow of shelter services for an owned dwelling from items related to living in it. This approach is called “user cost” and includes items such as real estate taxes, insurance, and an interest estimate based on the market value of the house. The second approach attempts to estimate the flow of services for an owner dwelling based on market rents for rented dwellings. This research led to a method referred to as “rental equivalence.” This method measures the rate of change in the amount an owner would need to pay in order to rent on the open market. It is based on actual market rents collected from a sample of renter-occupied housing units that are identified to be representative of owner-occupied housing. On October 27, 1981, Commissioner Janet Norwood announced that BLS would convert the CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) to a rental equivalence measure for homeowner costs, effective with data for January 1983. The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) would be converted to the new method, effective with the January 1985 data. This announcement was consistent with general BLS practice of giving at least 1-year’s notice before making a major methodological change. The change also meant that the CPI-U for 1983 and 1984—the first years the CPI was to be used in the escalation of personal income tax brackets and exemptions—would use the new methodology. The longer period of notice for the CPI-W was provided, because the CPI-W continued to be the primary index used in cost-of-living adjustments in collective bargaining agreements and in the escalation of government entitlement payments. It was felt that sufficient time needed to be provided for users to adapt to the change. The transition to the new method was smooth, in large part, owing to the open way it was done and the extensive public information effort

Trading Off Generations: Infinitely Lived Agent Versus OLG

The prevailing literature discusses intergenerational trade-offs in climate change predominantly in terms of the Ramsey equation relying on the infinitely lived agent model. We discuss these trade-offs in a continuous time OLG framework and relate our results to the infinitely lived agent setting. We identify three shortcomings of the latter: First, underlying normative assumptions about social preferences cannot be deduced unambiguously. Second, the distribution among generations living at the same time cannot be captured. Third, the optimal solution may not be implementable in overlapping generations market economies.climate change, discounting, infinitely lived agents, intergenerational equity, overlapping generations, time preference