22 research outputs found
Analysis of a Japan government intervention on the domestic agriculture market
We investigate an economic system in which one large agent - the Japan
government changes the environment of numerous smaller agents - the Japan
agriculture producers by indirect regulation of prices of agriculture goods.
The reason for this intervention was that before the oil crisis in 1974 Japan
agriculture production prices exhibited irregular and large amplitude changes.
By means of analysis of correlations and a combination of singular spectrum
analysis (SSA), principal component analysis (PCA), and time delay phase space
construction (TDPSC) we study the influence of the government measures on the
domestic piglet prices and production in Japan. We show that the government
regulation politics was successful and leaded (i) to a decrease of the
nonstationarities and to increase of predictability of the piglet price; (ii)
to a coupling of the price and production cycles; (iii) to increase of
determinism of the dynamics of the fluctuations of piglet price around the year
average price. The investigated case is an example confirming the thesis that a
large agent can change in a significant way the environment of the small agents
in complex (economic or financial) systems which can be crucial for their
survival or extinction.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures presented at APFA5, Torino, Italy,
29.06-01.07.200
Mental health care and resistance to fascism
Mental health nurses have a critical stake in resisting the right-wing ideology of British fascism. Particularly concerning is the contemporary effort of the British National Party (BNP) to gain credibility and electoral support by the strategic re-packaging of a racist and divisive political manifesto. Evidence that some public sector workers are affiliated with the BNP has relevance for nursing at a series of levels, not least the incompatibility of party membership with a requirement of the Professional Code to avoid discrimination. Progressive advances, though, need to account for deep rooted institutionalized racism in the discourse and practice of healthcare services. The anomalous treatment of black people within mental health services, alongside racial abuse experienced by ethnic minority staff, is discussed in relation to the concept of race as a powerful social category and construction. The murder of the mentally ill and learning disabled in Nazi Germany, as an adjunct of racial genocide, is presented as an extreme example where professional ethics was undermined by dominant political ideology. Finally, the complicity of medical and nursing staff in the state sanctioned, bureaucratic, killing that characterized the Holocaust is revisited in the context of ethical repositioning for contemporary practice and praxis