Care theft: Family impacts of employer control in Australia's retail industry

Paid work promises pathways to financial security and wellbeing for families, yet variable scheduling and low pay can interfere with the routines and rhythms of family life, and contribute to caregiving challenges and stress. Using qualitative data from a survey of retail workers, this article shows how Australian employment policies have enabled flexibility practices to be strongly oriented around the needs of employers, reducing employees’ resources for care. We develop the concept of ‘care theft’ from employees’ accounts of the ways flexible scheduling and low pay converge to transform and deplete their temporal, financial and ethical resources for care. As an extension of ‘time theft’ and alternative to individualised notions of ‘work-family balance’, care theft helps make visible the ways employment practices strip resources for care from working people, and shift risk to low-income families and communities

High Ureteric Injury Following Multiorgan Recovery: Successful Kidney Transplant with Boari Flap Ureterocystostomy Reconstruction

Introduction: Despite increased utilization of marginal organs, there is still a marked disparity between organ supply and demand for transplantation. To maximize resources, it is imperative that procured organs are in good condition. Surgical damage at organ recovery can happen and organs are sometimes discarded as a result. We describe a damaged recovered kidney with high ureteric transection that was successfully transplanted using a primary Boari flap ureterocystostomy. Case report: The donor kidney was procured form a deceased donor and sustained damage by transection of the ureter just distal to the pelvi-ureteric junction at organ recovery. The recipient had been on the transplant waiting list for eight years and not accepting this kidney would have seriously jeopardized her chance of future transplantation. Several centers rejected the donor kidney. We assessed the kidney and decided to proceed with transplantation. The kidney was successfully transplanted. A primary Boari flap was constructed and the transplant ureter implanted onto the bladder. The post-operative course was complicated by urine leak that settled down after management by nephrostomy insertion and bladder catheterization. The patient made a good recovery and remained well at six monthly follow up with a serum creatinine of 1.7 mg/dl. Conclusion: Primary Boari flap ureterocystostomy is a viable option when the transplant surgeon is faced with a high ureteric injury in the procured kidney. Since most patients wait years for a suitable graft and some may never find an adequate match, every effort should be made to effectively utilize the scarce available resources to the fullest.Keywords: Kidney; Transplant; Ureter; Donor efficienc

An Unusual Antagonistic Pleiotropy in the Penna Model for Biological Ageing

We combine the Penna Model for biological aging, which is based on the mutation-accumulation theory, with a sort of antagonistic pleiotropy. We show that depending on how the pleiotropy is introduced, it is possible to reproduce both the humans mortality, which increases exponentially with age, and fruitfly mortality, which decelerates at old ages, allowing the appearance of arbitrarily old Methuselah's.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physica

Kinetic theory of age-structured stochastic birth-death processes

Classical age-structured mass-action models such as the McKendrick-von Foerster equation have been extensively studied but are unable to describe stochastic fluctuations or population-size-dependent birth and death rates. Stochastic theories that treat semi-Markov age-dependent processes using, e.g., the Bellman-Harris equation do not resolve a population's age structure and are unable to quantify population-size dependencies. Conversely, current theories that include size-dependent population dynamics (e.g., mathematical models that include carrying capacity such as the logistic equation) cannot be easily extended to take into account age-dependent birth and death rates. In this paper, we present a systematic derivation of a new, fully stochastic kinetic theory for interacting age-structured populations. By defining multiparticle probability density functions, we derive a hierarchy of kinetic equations for the stochastic evolution of an aging population undergoing birth and death. We show that the fully stochastic age-dependent birth-death process precludes factorization of the corresponding probability densities, which then must be solved by using a Bogoliubov-–Born–-Green–-Kirkwood-–Yvon-like hierarchy. Explicit solutions are derived in three limits: no birth, no death, and steady state. These are then compared with their corresponding mean-field results. Our results generalize both deterministic models and existing master equation approaches by providing an intuitive and efficient way to simultaneously model age- and population-dependent stochastic dynamics applicable to the study of demography, stem cell dynamics, and disease evolution

Analytic approach to the evolutionary effects of genetic exchange

We present an approximate analytic study of our previously introduced model of evolution including the effects of genetic exchange. This model is motivated by the process of bacterial transformation. We solve for the velocity, the rate of increase of fitness, as a function of the fixed population size, $N$. We find the velocity increases with $\ln N$, eventually saturated at an $N$ which depends on the strength of the recombination process. The analytical treatment is seen to agree well with direct numerical simulations of our model equations

Quality jobs quality care toolkit

This toolkit will help you to change work practices in your organisation to improve job quality and care quality. Worksheets, practical how-to advice and real-life case studies are included to support you along the way - all based on the most current research findings. Follow these six steps to start making a difference in aged care today. (This toolkit was prepared as part of the research project 'Quality jobs and quality care: Improving work practices to deliver quality aged care jobs and aged care services for older Australians'. This three-year project is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the Aged Care Service Improvement and Healthy Ageing Grants Fund. The project is a collaboration between the Centre for Workplace Excellence at University of South Australia, RMIT University, Flinders University, and four aged care industry partners: Brightwater, HammondCare, Helping Hand and United Voice

Effects of placebos without deception compared with no treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Aim Our aim was to address the clinical efficacy of open-label placebos compared with no treatment by systematic review, and meta-analysis where possible. Methods We searched the Cochrane Injuries Group's Specialised Register, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Ovid MEDLINE(R) In-Process & Other NonIndexed Citations (OvidSP), EMBASE (OvidSP), and clinical trials registers and screened reference lists. We ran the most recent search on April 27 2015. All randomised controlled trials of any medical condition, which had both open-label placebo and no-treatment or treatment as usual groups were included. Two authors independently applied the selection criteria and extracted data. The risk of bias of included studies was assessed using the Cochrane criteria. We used random-effects model for meta-analysis. Results After removing duplicates we screened 348 publications, assessed 24 articles for eligibility and identified 5 trials (260 participants) that met our inclusion criteria. The clinical conditions were: irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), depression, allergic rhinitis, back pain and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The overall risk of bias was moderate. All 5 trials were eligible for meta-analysis. We found a positive effect for non-deceptive placebos (standardized mean difference (SMD) 0.88, 95% CI 0.62 to 1.14, P<0.00001, I2= 1%). Conclusions Open-label placebos appear to have favorable clinical outcomes, compared to no treatment or no additional treatment. Caution is warranted when interpreting the results due to the limitations including the small number of trials and lack of blinding. Larger definitive trials are now warranted to explore the potential patient benefit of open-label placebos

Using Meta-Ethnography to Synthesize Relevant Studies: Capturing the Bigger Picture in Dementia with Challenging Behavior within Families

In understanding the range and depth of people’s experiences, it is important to include the wide range of approaches which capture the richness within a given knowledge base. However, systematic reviews using quantitative data alone risk missing findings that can contribute to a better understanding of a research question. In response, meta-ethnography has emerged as a potentially useful method to synthesize and integrate both qualitative and quantitative data from different perspectives using qualitative methodology. In this case study, we describe how we have used meta-ethnography to better understand how families experience dementia. We address a particular issue of selecting the highest quality evidence across a range of epistemologies

Recombination dramatically speeds up evolution of finite populations

We study the role of recombination, as practiced by genetically-competent bacteria, in speeding up Darwinian evolution. This is done by adding a new process to a previously-studied Markov model of evolution on a smooth fitness landscape; this new process allows alleles to be exchanged with those in the surrounding medium. Our results, both numerical and analytic, indicate that for a wide range of intermediate population sizes, recombination dramatically speeds up the evolutionary advance

Time evolution of the Partridge-Barton Model

The time evolution of the Partridge-Barton model in the presence of the pleiotropic constraint and deleterious somatic mutations is exactly solved for arbitrary fecundity in the context of a matricial formalism. Analytical expressions for the time dependence of the mean survival probabilities are derived. Using the fact that the asymptotic behavior for large time $t$ is controlled by the largest matrix eigenvalue, we obtain the steady state values for the mean survival probabilities and the Malthusian growth exponent. The mean age of the population exhibits a $t^{-1}$ power law decayment. Some Monte Carlo simulations were also performed and they corroborated our theoretical results.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, 1 postscript figure, published in Phys. Rev. E 61, 5664 (2000