The Self-reported Health of Immigrant Groups in Switzerland

Background: More than 20% of people living in Switzerland are immigrants, defined as people with foreign nationality. This study examines health disparities between the main immigrant groups in Switzerland and the majority Swiss population. Methods: Epidemiological analysis of the 2002 Swiss Health Survey (SHS): the SHS contains health-related information about 19,706 people who were randomly sampled from among people living in Switzerland. Bi-variate and multivariate analyses of six variables on self-reported health were performed. Findings: The data from the 2002 Swiss Health Survey provide some evidence of health disparities between Swiss people and immigrants. Although the self-reported health of "Northern immigrants” (people from Germany and France) does not differ significantly from that of the majority Swiss population, "Southern immigrants” (people from Italy, Former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Spain and Turkey) report lower levels of health in several areas. Lower levels of health are particularly likely to be reported by Italian men and women. Conclusion: The self-reported health of immigrants is currently inferior to that of the Swiss. If it is the position of the Swiss health care system to ensure equal health provision for all Swiss residents, including immigrant groups, and to strive for equal health outcomes for all, self-reported ill health among immigrants is a useful basis for health policy and plannin

What do language barriers cost? An exploratory study among asylum seekers in Switzerland

Language barriers have a major impact on both the quality and the costs of health care. While there is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of language barriers on the quality of health care provision, less is known about their impact on costs. This purpose of this study was to investigate the association between language barriers and the costs of health care

Photophoretic Strength on Chondrules. 2. Experiment

Photophoretic motion can transport illuminated particles in protoplanetary disks. In a previous paper we focused on the modeling of steady state photophoretic forces based on the compositions derived from tomography and heat transfer. Here, we present microgravity experiments which deviate significantly from the steady state calculations of the first paper. The experiments on average show a significantly smaller force than predicted with a large variation in absolute photophoretic force and in the direction of motion with respect to the illumination. Time-dependent modeling of photophoretic forces for heat-up and rotation show that the variations in strength and direction observed can be well explained by the particle reorientation in the limited experiment time of a drop tower experiment. In protoplanetary disks, random rotation subsides due to gas friction on short timescales and the results of our earlier paper hold. Rotation has a significant influence in short duration laboratory studies. Observing particle motion and rotation under the influence of photophoresis can be considered as a basic laboratory analog experiment to Yarkovsky and YORP effects

Analysis of Berlin's taxi services by exploring GPS traces

With current on-board GPS devices a lot of data is being collected while operating taxis. This paper focuses on analysing travel behaviour and vehicle supply of the Berlin taxi market using floating car data (FCD) for one week each in 2013 and 2014. The data suggests that there is generally a demand peak on workday mornings and a second peak over a longer time in the afternoon. On weekends, the demand peaks shift towards the night. On the supply side, drivers seem to adapt to the demand peaks very efficiently, with fewer taxis being available at times of low demand, such as during midday. A spatial analysis shows that most taxi trips take place either within the city centre or from/to Tegel Airport, the city's largest single origin and destination. Drivers spend a large amount of their work time on waiting for customers and the taxi rank at Tegel Airport is the most popular one

Internationalisierung, Unternehmensgröße und Konzernsteuerquote

Als Steuerbelastungsindikator findet die Konzernsteuerquote trotz ihrer methodischen Schwächen zunehmend Verbreitung. Aus steuerlicher Sicht stellt sich die Frage, ob die quantitative Messung der vollständigen und realitätsnahen unternehmerischen Steuerbelastung mit Hilfe der Konzernsteuerquote branchenindividuell schwankt und welche Faktoren für diese möglichen Schwankungen ursächlich sind. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden erstmals die Internationalisierung und die Unternehmensgröße als branchenindividuelle Einflussfaktoren der Konzernsteuerquote ausgewählter deutscher Konzerne empirisch analysiert. Die Studie legt den Schluss nahe, das allgemeingültige und damit zeitpunkt- und branchenunabhängige Aussagen über die Wirkung der untersuchten Einflussfaktoren auf die Steuerbelastung nicht gewonnen werden können. -- Despite its well-known shortcomings, scientists and analysts frequently employ the effective tax rate as an indicator of the tax burden. From a tax perspective, the question arises whether the total and realistic corporate tax burden measured by the effective tax rate varies with sectors and, if so, which are the underlying factors of this variation. For the first time, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of internationalization and business size of selected German groups on the effective tax rate. Our findings suggest that no unequivocal statements regarding the effects of these sector-dependent parameters on the corporate tax burden can be made.Brancheneffekte,Empirie,Konzernsteuerquote,Steuerbelastungsindikator,Unternehmensbesteuerung,business taxation,effective tax rate,empirical analysis,industry effects,tax reconciliation

Les facteurs d'accessibilité aux services d'interprétarait dans la prise en charge infirmière des patients allophones atteints de diabète: une revue de littérature

La prévalence du diabète augmente dans la population migrante. De plus, le niveau de qualité de la prise en charge des migrants est moins élevé que celui des autochtones. Les personnes migrantes ne disposent souvent pas de connaissances suffisantes pour pouvoir adopter des comportements favorables à la santé et sont fréquemment confrontés à des difficultés de communication. Etablir un partenariat entre les patients migrants allophones et les infirmiers-ières dans les soins chroniques paraît compliqué sans l'intervention d'un interprète professionnel, un acteur clé pour une prise en charge optimale et centrée sur le patient

Health and ill health of asylum seekers in Switzerland: an epidemiological study

Background: Although the focus of health care for people seeking asylum in Western European countries is usually on communicable diseases, there is little data about the general health care need of this population. In this study, we investigated the actual burden of disease among asylum seekers. Methods: Data were collected from a Swiss Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO; a type of managed care organization in which physicians act as gate keepers) that was set up specifically to provide health care for asylum seekers. The data included socio-demographic characteristics, international classification of diseases (ICD-10) diagnoses and number of clinic visits. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the types of health problems and the number of clinic visits. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine whether age, gender or country or region of origin was predictive in terms of incidence of disease as diagnosed by using ICD classifications. Results: The total number of asylum seekers (mean age 22 years; 38% women) enrolled in the HMO from 2000 through 2003 was 979. Half of this group came from the former country of Yugoslavia. The remainder came primarily from sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, Iraq and Sri Lanka. The most common health problems encountered in the population included musculoskeletal diseases, respiratory diseases, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The prevalence of all disease clusters was significantly associated with age. One-fifth of the population did not request health care at all during the time they were enrolled in the HMO. It is not known whether those who did not visit the medical clinic did not require health care or just chose not to request clinic services. Conclusions: The most frequent health problems encountered in the study population were chronic medical conditions, not communicable acute diseases. Although health care services provided to asylum seekers usually focus on episodic acute care, what this group actually needs is continuity of car

A Transfer Function Method to Calculate the Outcome of Radiation Measurements of a Buck Converter

Radiation measurements are performed in fully or semi-anechoic chambers or GTEM cells and are usually costly and time-consuming. In addition, most manufacturers of electronic devices do not have the capability to perform such measurements quickly by themselves. The transfer function approach aims at simplifying this problem: once the characteristics of the measurement setup are captured in a transfer function, the conducted characterization of the device under test (DUT) is sufficient to calculate the results of a radiation measurement. This is justified by the assumption that the radiation is mainly generated by the currents on the supply cables and the DUT is small compared to the smallest wavelength considered. Additionally, the DUT should behave linearly. In previous work [2] it was shown that a characterization of the DUT as a Norton equivalent source together with the scattering parameters of the measurement setup are sufficient to calculate the voltage at the received antenna in an anechoic chamber. In this work, the method is applied to a buck converter for both a GTEM cell and a fully-anechoic chamber setup

Access to Healthcare Interpreter Services: Where Are We and Where Do We Need to Go?

Due to international migration, health care professionals in Switzerland increasingly encounter language barriers in communication with their patients. In order to examine health professionals’ attitudes and practices related to healthcare interpreting, we sent a self-administered questionnaire to heads of medical and nursing departments in public healthcare services in the canton of Basel-Stadt (N = 205, response rate 56%). Strategies used to communicate with foreign-language speaking patients differed, depending on the patient’s language. While nearly half of respondents relied on patients’ relatives to translate for Albanian, Tamil, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Portuguese and Turkish, a third did so for Spanish, and a fourth did so for Arabic. Eleven percent relied on professional interpreters for Spanish and 31% did so for Tamil and Arabic. Variations in strategies used appear to mainly reflect the availability of bilingual staff members for the different languages. Future efforts should focus on sensitizing health professionals to the problems associated with use of ad hoc interpreters, as well as facilitating access to professional interpreters