Beyond Neo-Liberalism:The Trade Union Act 2016 and the Authoritarian State

The Trade Union Act 2016 marks a historically significant realignment in the ideological politics of trade union regulation. It represents a more authoritarian style of Conservative ideology and statecraft in the sphere of trade union regulation, and this is reflected in three main characteristics: (i) a repressive strategy of de-democratisation, undermining political resistance and stifling dissent in the democratic process; (ii) heavier reliance on direct State coercion, including the techniques of criminalisation, alongside the empowerment of employers to use civil law remedies against trade unions and workers in industrial action situations; (iii) the elevation of social order in the regulation of strike activity. The article then considers the likely prospects of the legislation, and the wider ideological significance of this turn towards authoritarianism for Conservative political thought ‘beyond neo-liberalism’

Decision-making role preferences and information needs: a comparison of colorectal and breast cancer

Objective: An exploratory study has been carried out to examine decision-making role preferences and information needs for a sample of people with colorectal cancer (n = 48). The work replicated a larger study carried out for women with breast cancer (n = 150), and this paper compares and contrasts findings for both disease groups. Design: A cross-sectional design was employed, involving structured interviews. The main variables investigated were decision-making preference (using a decisional role preference card sort), perceived decisional role and information need (using an information needs questionnaire). Results: The majority (78%) of the colorectal cancer patients preferred to play a passive role in decision making, in contrast to 52% of women with breast cancer in previous work. Eighty per cent of the colorectal sample and 61% of the women with breast cancer perceived that the doctor had made treatment decisions. Priority information needs for both groups related to cure, spread of disease and treatment options. Conclusions: The two most striking findings from the comparison between the two disease groups relate to the differences in decision-making role preferences and the similarities in information needs. The process of involving people with colorectal cancer in treatment decision making warrants further investigation. The similarity in information needs of the two disease groups has implications for health care professionals providing information to people with cancer

The Five Factor Model of personality and evaluation of drug consumption risk

The problem of evaluating an individual's risk of drug consumption and misuse is highly important. An online survey methodology was employed to collect data including Big Five personality traits (NEO-FFI-R), impulsivity (BIS-11), sensation seeking (ImpSS), and demographic information. The data set contained information on the consumption of 18 central nervous system psychoactive drugs. Correlation analysis demonstrated the existence of groups of drugs with strongly correlated consumption patterns. Three correlation pleiades were identified, named by the central drug in the pleiade: ecstasy, heroin, and benzodiazepines pleiades. An exhaustive search was performed to select the most effective subset of input features and data mining methods to classify users and non-users for each drug and pleiad. A number of classification methods were employed (decision tree, random forest, $k$-nearest neighbors, linear discriminant analysis, Gaussian mixture, probability density function estimation, logistic regression and na{\"i}ve Bayes) and the most effective classifier was selected for each drug. The quality of classification was surprisingly high with sensitivity and specificity (evaluated by leave-one-out cross-validation) being greater than 70\% for almost all classification tasks. The best results with sensitivity and specificity being greater than 75\% were achieved for cannabis, crack, ecstasy, legal highs, LSD, and volatile substance abuse (VSA).Comment: Significantly extended report with 67 pages, 27 tables, 21 figure

Knowledge and attitude on maternal health care among rural-to-urban migrant women in Shanghai, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In China, with the urbanization, women migrated from rural to big cities presented much higher maternal mortality rates than local residents. Health knowledge is one of the key factors enabling women to be aware of their rights and health status in order to seek appropriate health services. This study aims to assess the knowledge and attitude on maternal health care and the contributing factors to being knowledgeable among rural-to-urban migrant women in Shanghai.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was conducted in a district center hospital in Shanghai where migrants gathered. Totally 475 rural-to-urban migrant pregnant women were interviewed and completed the self-administered questionnaire after obtaining informed consent.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean score of knowledge on maternal health care was 8.28 out of 12. However, only 36.6% women had attended the required 5 antenatal checks, and 58.3% of the subjects thought financial constrains being the main reason for not attending antenatal care. It was found that higher level of education (OR = 3.3, 95%CI: 1.8–3.8), husbands' Shanghai residence (OR = 4.0, 95%CI: 1.3–12.1) and better family income (OR = 3.3, 95%CI: 1.4–8.2) were associated with better knowledge.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Rural-to-urban migrant women's unawareness of maternal health service, together with their vulnerable living status, influences their utilization of maternal health care. Tailored maternal health education and accessible services are in demands for this population.</p

Trait Conscientiousness and the Personality Meta-Trait Stability are Associated with Regional White Matter Microstructure

Establishing the neural bases of individual differences in personality has been an enduring topic of interest. However, while a growing literature has sought to characterize grey matter correlates of personality traits, little attention to date has been focused on regional white matter correlates of personality, especially for the personality traits agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. To rectify this gap in knowledge we used a large sample (n > 550) of older adults who provided data on both personality (International Personality Item Pool) and white matter tract-specific fractional anisotropy (FA) from diffusion tensor MRI. Results indicated that conscientiousness was associated with greater FA in the left uncinate fasciculus (β = 0.17, P < 0.001). We also examined links between FA and the personality meta-trait ‘stability’, which is defined as the common variance underlying agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism/emotional stability. We observed an association between left uncinate fasciculus FA and stability (β = 0.27, P < 0.001), which fully accounted for the link between left uncinate fasciculus FA and conscientiousness. In sum, these results provide novel evidence for links between regional white matter microstructure and key traits of human personality, specifically conscientiousness and the meta-trait, stability. Future research is recommended to replicate and address the causal directions of these associations

Indian community health insurance schemes provide partial protection against catastrophic health expenditure

BACKGROUND: More than 72% of health expenditure in India is financed by individual households at the time of illness through out-of-pocket payments. This is a highly regressive way of financing health care and sometimes leads to impoverishment. Health insurance is recommended as a measure to protect households from such catastrophic health expenditure (CHE). We studied two Indian community health insurance (CHI) schemes, ACCORD and SEWA, to determine whether insured households are protected from CHE. METHODS: ACCORD provides health insurance cover for the indigenous population, living in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu. SEWA provides insurance cover for self employed women in the state of Gujarat. Both cover hospitalisation expenses, but only upto a maximum limit of US$23 and US$45, respectively. We reviewed the insurance claims registers in both schemes and identified patients who were hospitalised during the period 01/04/2003 to 31/03/2004. Details of their diagnoses, places and costs of treatment and self-reported annual incomes were obtained. There is no single definition of CHE and none of these have been validated. For this research, we used the following definition; "annual hospital expenditure greater than 10% of annual income," to identify those who experienced CHE. RESULTS: There were a total of 683 and 3152 hospital admissions at ACCORD and SEWA, respectively. In the absence of the CHI scheme, all of the patients at ACCORD and SEWA would have had to pay OOP for their hospitalisation. With the CHI scheme, 67% and 34% of patients did not have to make any out-of-pocket (OOP) payment for their hospital expenses at ACCORD and SEWA, respectively. Both CHI schemes halved the number of households that would have experienced CHE by covering hospital costs. However, despite this, 4% and 23% of households with admissions still experienced CHE at ACCORD and SEWA, respectively. This was related to the following conditions: low annual income, benefit packages with low maximum limits, exclusion of some conditions from the benefit package, and use of the private sector for admissions. CONCLUSION: CHI appears to be effective at halving the incidence of CHE among hospitalised patients. This protection could be further enhanced by improving the design of the CHI schemes, especially by increasing the upper limits of benefit packages, minimising exclusions and controlling costs