Determinants Of Unionisation For Part-Time Women Employees In Australian Banks

Against the declining trend of Australian employees to join unions, unionisation of part-time female employees in the banking industry is relatively strong. For the finance and insurance industry in 2001, 30.3% of total part-time female employees were unionised compared to 25% of full-time female employees and 17.2% of full-time male employees. Overall, 22.3% of employees from this industry were members (ABS, 2002). Under freedom of association, what can influence an individual's decision to unionise? A survey was conducted on three major Australian banks in August 2000. We use a binary choice regression model to analyse personal and union-organising characteristics that significantly influence individual's decision to unionise. Previous membership under union preference provisions and earning relatively high wages would lead to a higher probability to join the union. Union's role in enterprise bargaining and whether union did anything to recruit have significant impact on individual decisions. Thus, part-time female employees are not unwilling to join when they recognise the need for job protection.

Acoustic suppression of the coffee-ring effect

We study the influence of acoustic fields on the evaporative self-assembly of solute particles suspended inside sessile droplets of complex fluids. The self-assembly process often results in an undesirable ring-like heterogeneous residue, a phenomenon known as the coffee-ring effect. Here we show that this ring-like self-assembly can be controlled acoustically to form homogeneous disc-like or concentrated spot-like residues. The principle of our method lies in the formation of dynamic patterns of particles in acoustically excited droplets, which inhibits the evaporation-driven convective transport of particles towards the contact line. We elucidate the mechanisms of this pattern formation and also obtain conditions for the suppression of the coffee-ring effect. Our results provide a more general solution to suppress the coffee-ring effect without any physiochemical modification of the fluids, the particles or the surface, thus potentially useful in a broad range of industrial and analytical applications that require homogenous solute depositions

Effect of wheat production system components on food preference in rats

In the study presented the effects of two major system components - fertility management and crop protection - were tested in a rat preference test for the first time. Wheat samples produced under 4 combinations of these management factors: -a) organic fertility and crop protection management, b) organic fertility management and conventional crop protection c) conventional fertility management and organic crop protection and d) conventional fertility management and crop protection - generated in the Nafferton factorial systems comparison (NFSC) trial at Newcastle University, were used as experimental diets. Results showed that the organically fertilised wheat was preferred by rats (P = 0.001) while the organic crop protection resulted in reduced wheat consumption (not significant). This might indicate that the rats did not sense or did not select against possible traces of plant protection agents but responded more clearly to differences that were caused by the fertility management

Patient-centred care in general dental practice--a systematic review of the literature.

Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tReviewBACKGROUND: Delivering improvements in quality is a key objective within most healthcare systems, and a view which has been widely embraced within the NHS in the United Kingdom. Within the NHS, quality is evaluated across three key dimensions: clinical effectiveness, safety and patient experience, with the latter modelled on the Picker Principles of Patient-Centred Care (PCC). Quality improvement is an important feature of the current dental contract reforms in England, with "patient experience" likely to have a central role in the evaluation of quality. An understanding and appreciation of the evidence underpinning PCC within dentistry is highly relevant if we are to use this as a measure of quality in general dental practice. METHODS: A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to identify the features of PCC relevant to dentistry and ascertain the current research evidence base underpinning its use as a measure of quality within general dental practice. RESULTS: Three papers were identified which met the inclusion criteria and demonstrated the use of primary research to provide an understanding of the key features of PCC within dentistry. None of the papers identified were based in general dental practice and none of the three studies sought the views of patients. Some distinct differences were noted between the key features of PCC reported within the dental literature and those developed within the NHS Patient Experience Framework. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review reveals a lack of understanding of PCC within dentistry, and in particular general dental practice. There is currently a poor evidence base to support the use of the current patient reported outcome measures as indicators of patient-centredness. Further research is necessary to understand the important features of PCC in dentistry and patients' views should be central to this research.NIH

Patient-centred care in general dental practice--a systematic review of the literature.

BACKGROUND: Delivering improvements in quality is a key objective within most healthcare systems, and a view which has been widely embraced within the NHS in the United Kingdom. Within the NHS, quality is evaluated across three key dimensions: clinical effectiveness, safety and patient experience, with the latter modelled on the Picker Principles of Patient-Centred Care (PCC). Quality improvement is an important feature of the current dental contract reforms in England, with "patient experience" likely to have a central role in the evaluation of quality. An understanding and appreciation of the evidence underpinning PCC within dentistry is highly relevant if we are to use this as a measure of quality in general dental practice. METHODS: A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to identify the features of PCC relevant to dentistry and ascertain the current research evidence base underpinning its use as a measure of quality within general dental practice. RESULTS: Three papers were identified which met the inclusion criteria and demonstrated the use of primary research to provide an understanding of the key features of PCC within dentistry. None of the papers identified were based in general dental practice and none of the three studies sought the views of patients. Some distinct differences were noted between the key features of PCC reported within the dental literature and those developed within the NHS Patient Experience Framework. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review reveals a lack of understanding of PCC within dentistry, and in particular general dental practice. There is currently a poor evidence base to support the use of the current patient reported outcome measures as indicators of patient-centredness. Further research is necessary to understand the important features of PCC in dentistry and patients' views should be central to this research

Improving contemporary approaches to the master planning process.

Master-planning has had a strong revival in recent years. However, significant demographic and social changes are on-going amidst the constraints of the current economic stagnation, the policy of reduced public spending and the drive to respond to environmental imperatives. These conditions challenge the feasibility of the application of past master-planning practice. The way we conceive of master-planning now requires re-visiting. The traditional perspective of master-planning as a design-led activity concerned with the architectural form of buildings, spaces and infrastructures is out-dated and inadequate to coordinating the plural processes of negotiating sustainable place development which, in addition to realising a visually pleasing townscape, critically satisfies social, functional, economic and environmental requirements. Masterplanning requires both a business planning component, without which there is no delivery, and a governance component, without which the physical strategy has no legitimacy. A more adaptive master-planning approach is required. The paper proposes how a flexible master-planning process can provide a basis of a suitable approach for the development of sustainable settlements. Published in Proceedings of the ICE - Urban Design and Planning, Vol 167, Issue 1, October 2013. Permission is granted by ICE Publishing to print one copy for personal use. Any other use of this PDF file is subject to reprint fees.</p

A Bayesian method for evaluating and discovering disease loci associations

Background: A genome-wide association study (GWAS) typically involves examining representative SNPs in individuals from some population. A GWAS data set can concern a million SNPs and may soon concern billions. Researchers investigate the association of each SNP individually with a disease, and it is becoming increasingly commonplace to also analyze multi-SNP associations. Techniques for handling so many hypotheses include the Bonferroni correction and recently developed Bayesian methods. These methods can encounter problems. Most importantly, they are not applicable to a complex multi-locus hypothesis which has several competing hypotheses rather than only a null hypothesis. A method that computes the posterior probability of complex hypotheses is a pressing need. Methodology/Findings: We introduce the Bayesian network posterior probability (BNPP) method which addresses the difficulties. The method represents the relationship between a disease and SNPs using a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model, and computes the likelihood of such models using a Bayesian network scoring criterion. The posterior probability of a hypothesis is computed based on the likelihoods of all competing hypotheses. The BNPP can not only be used to evaluate a hypothesis that has previously been discovered or suspected, but also to discover new disease loci associations. The results of experiments using simulated and real data sets are presented. Our results concerning simulated data sets indicate that the BNPP exhibits both better evaluation and discovery performance than does a p-value based method. For the real data sets, previous findings in the literature are confirmed and additional findings are found. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that the BNPP resolves a pressing problem by providing a way to compute the posterior probability of complex multi-locus hypotheses. A researcher can use the BNPP to determine the expected utility of investigating a hypothesis further. Furthermore, we conclude that the BNPP is a promising method for discovering disease loci associations. © 2011 Jiang et al

A Novel, All-Optical Tool for Controllable and Non- Destructive Poration of Cells with Single-Micron Resolution

We demonstrate controllable poration within ≈1 µm regions of individual cells, mediated by a near-IR laser interacting with thin-layer amorphous silicon substrates. This technique will allow new experiments in single-cell biology, particularly in neuroscience. As our understanding of the fundamental mechanistic processes underpinning biology expands, so does the need for high-precision tools to allow the dissection of the heterogeneity and stochastic processes that dominate at the single- and sub-cellular level. Here, we demonstrate a highly controllable and reproducible optical technique for inducing poration within specific regions of a target cell’s plasma membrane, permitting localized delivery of payloads, depolarization and lysis experiments to be conducted in unprecedented detail. Experiments support a novel mechanism for the process, based upon a thermally-induced change triggered by the interactions of a near-IR laser with a biocompatible thin film substrate at powers substantially below that used in standard optoporation experiments

Macrophage-derived human resistin is induced in multiple helminth infections and promotes inflammatory monocytes and increased parasite burden.

Parasitic helminth infections can be associated with lifelong morbidity such as immune-mediated organ failure. A better understanding of the host immune response to helminths could provide new avenues to promote parasite clearance and/or alleviate infection-associated morbidity. Murine resistin-like molecules (RELM) exhibit pleiotropic functions following helminth infection including modulating the host immune response; however, the relevance of human RELM proteins in helminth infection is unknown. To examine the function of human resistin (hResistin), we utilized transgenic mice expressing the human resistin gene (hRetnTg+). Following infection with the helminth Nippostrongylus brasiliensis (Nb), hResistin expression was significantly upregulated in infected tissue. Compared to control hRetnTg- mice, hRetnTg+ mice suffered from exacerbated Nb-induced inflammation characterized by weight loss and increased infiltration of inflammatory monocytes in the lung, along with elevated Nb egg burdens and delayed parasite expulsion. Genome-wide transcriptional profiling of the infected tissue revealed that hResistin promoted expression of proinflammatory cytokines and genes downstream of toll-like receptor signaling. Moreover, hResistin preferentially bound lung monocytes, and exogenous treatment of mice with recombinant hResistin promoted monocyte recruitment and proinflammatory cytokine expression. In human studies, increased serum resistin was associated with higher parasite load in individuals infected with soil-transmitted helminths or filarial nematode Wuchereria bancrofti, and was positively correlated with proinflammatory cytokines. Together, these studies identify human resistin as a detrimental factor induced by multiple helminth infections, where it promotes proinflammatory cytokines and impedes parasite clearance. Targeting the resistin/proinflammatory cytokine immune axis may provide new diagnostic or treatment strategies for helminth infection and associated immune-mediated pathology