775 research outputs found
Should directors be pursued for insolvent trading where a company has entered into a deed of company arrangement?
This article examines the tension in Australia between the insolvent trading prohibition and the voluntary administration regime provided for in the Corporations Act. The tension exists since the former seeks to prosecute
directors for incurring debts that the company cannot pay whereas the latter provisions seek to allow a company in financial distress to resolve the means of dealing with financial difficulty with its creditors and move forward
on an agreed basis. The case of John Elliott is the first case in Australian corporate law history concerning the relevant provisions where an agreement was made with creditors, after which the director was prosecuted pursuant to the insolvent trading prohibition
From disability to capability: sex and relationship learning for children and young people with a learning disability
This study focuses on sex and relationships learning and is concerned with the securing of sexual rights for people with learning disabilities. The intent is to identify the characteristics of effective sex and relationship learning as well as address the broader role that adults can play to enable safe, happy and fulfilling personal relationships for children and young people with learning disabilities. What will result is an understanding of what social justice means in the lives of people with a learning disability and how this might be applied to personal and sexual relationships. What will be claimed is the right to (and the experience of) relationships lived as an integral part of a life lived with human dignity
Bayesian Inference of Recursive Sequences of Group Activities from Tracks
We present a probabilistic generative model for inferring a description of
coordinated, recursively structured group activities at multiple levels of
temporal granularity based on observations of individuals' trajectories. The
model accommodates: (1) hierarchically structured groups, (2) activities that
are temporally and compositionally recursive, (3) component roles assigning
different subactivity dynamics to subgroups of participants, and (4) a
nonparametric Gaussian Process model of trajectories. We present an MCMC
sampling framework for performing joint inference over recursive activity
descriptions and assignment of trajectories to groups, integrating out
continuous parameters. We demonstrate the model's expressive power in several
simulated and complex real-world scenarios from the VIRAT and UCLA Aerial Event
video data sets.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, in Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'16), Phoenix, AZ, 201
Evaluating an online support package delivered within a disability unemployment service: study protocol for a randomised controlled feasibility study
Background
Mental health problems such as anxiety and depression are known to be higher in those who are unemployed. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a recognised support for people with such problems and can improve the ability of people to get back to work.<p></p>
Methods/design
Participants with symptoms of low mood will be recruited from the disability employment service, Remploy. Participants will receive either immediate or delayed access to an online CBT-based life skills intervention, the “Living Life” package. The primary end point will be at 3 months when the delayed group will be offered the intervention. This feasibility study will test the trial design and assess recruitment, retention, acceptability and adherence, as well as providing efficacy data.<p></p>
Discussion
The study will inform the design and sample size for a future full randomised controlled trial (RCT) which will be carried out to determine the effectiveness of the online package in improving mood and employment status.<p></p>
Congenital Heart Disease in Down Syndrome
Down syndrome remains the most common chromosomal abnormality in live-born infants in the world today. The association between Down syndrome and congenital heart disease (CHD) is well known, and it is widely recognized that CHD contributes significantly to the morbidity of children with Down syndrome. The reported incidence of CHD in Down syndrome patients is between 40 and 60%. The most commonly described defect is complete atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD), which comprises 30–40% of all cardiac defects. Complex genetic factors are involved. Routine cardiac screening of all newborn babies with Down syndrome is recommended. Expert groups suggest that the cardiac status of all children with Down syndrome should be established by 6 weeks of age to permit appropriate and timely treatment avoiding the establishment of irreversible pulmonary vascular disease that would make corrective surgery impossible
From single steps to mass migration: the problem of scale in the movement ecology of the Serengeti wildebeest
A central question in ecology is how to link processes that occur over
different scales. The daily interactions of individual organisms ultimately
determine community dynamics, population fluctuations and the functioning
of entire ecosystems. Observations of these multiscale ecological
processes are constrained by various technological, biological or logistical
issues, and there are often vast discrepancies between the scale at which
observation is possible and the scale of the question of interest. Animal
movement is characterized by processes that act over multiple spatial and
temporal scales. Second-by-second decisions accumulate to produce
annual movement patterns. Individuals influence, and are influenced by,
collective movement decisions, which then govern the spatial distribution
of populations and the connectivity of meta-populations. While the
field of movement ecology is experiencing unprecedented growth in the
availability of movement data, there remain challenges in integrating
observations with questions of ecological interest. In this article, we present
the major challenges of addressing these issues within the context of the
Serengeti wildebeest migration, a keystone ecological phenomena that
crosses multiple scales of space, time and biological complexity.
This article is part of the theme issue ’Collective movement ecology’
Systemic inflammation predicts all-cause mortality: a Glasgow Inflammation Outcome Study
Introduction:
Markers of the systemic inflammatory response, including C-reactive protein and albumin (combined to form the modified Glasgow Prognostic Score), as well as neutrophil, lymphocyte and platelet counts have been shown to be prognostic of survival in patients with cancer. The aim of the present study was to examine the prognostic relationship between these markers of the systemic inflammatory response and all-cause, cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality in a large incidentally sampled cohort.<p></p>
Methods:
Patients (n = 160 481) who had an incidental blood sample taken between 2000 and 2008 were studied for the prognostic value of C-reactive protein (>10mg/l, albumin (>35mg/l), neutrophil (>7.5Ă—109/l) lymphocyte and platelet counts. Also, patients (n = 52 091) sampled following the introduction of high sensitivity C-reactive protein (>3mg/l) measurements were studied. A combination of these markers, to make cumulative inflammation-based scores, were investigated.<p></p>
Results:
In all patients (n = 160 481) C-reactive protein (>10mg/l) (HR 2.71, p<0.001), albumin (>35mg/l) (HR 3.68, p<0.001) and neutrophil counts (HR 2.18, p<0.001) were independently predictive of all-cause mortality. These associations were also observed in cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular mortality before and after the introduction of high sensitivity C-reactive protein measurements (>3mg/l) (n = 52 091). A combination of high sensitivity C-reactive protein (>3mg/l), albumin and neutrophil count predicted all-cause (HR 7.37, p<0.001, AUC 0.723), cancer (HR 9.32, p<0.001, AUC 0.731), cardiovascular (HR 4.03, p<0.001, AUC 0.650) and cerebrovascular (HR 3.10, p<0.001, AUC 0.623) mortality.
Conclusion
The results of the present study showed that an inflammation-based prognostic score, combining high sensitivity C-reactive protein, albumin and neutrophil count is prognostic of all-cause mortality
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