Federal government relief programs for grain farmers: rewards for the late adjusters?

Non-Peer ReviewedThe Canadian Federal Government has introduced several major ad hoc relief programs for prairie farmers in the last fifty years, in response to various agricultural crises. Each of these programs has rewarded late adjusters – farmers who contributed to the crises by not responding appropriately to market or environmental conditions. Early adjusters who quickly and innovatively responded have been treated indifferently or penalized by the programs. The 1941 Wheat Acreage Reduction (WAR) program and 1970 Lower Inventory for Tomorrow (LIFT) favoured farmers who grew large acreages of wheat in the preceding years despite high levels of Canadian and world wheat stocks. Farmers who had cut production or diversified received less program money than the late adjusters. The Special Canadian Grains Program (SCGP) of 1986, introduced to offset low world prices in traditional crops, made no payments to special crop producers in its first year. Producers who cultivated below average quality land in a township or who planted traditional rotations regardless of, sometimes in spite of, climatic conditions in 1988 received much of the benefit of the Canadian Crop Drought Assistance Program (CCDAP). The 1989 Permanent Cover Program of the Canada-Saskatchewan Agreement on Soil Conservation will reward, at least in part, late adjusters who brought marginal land under cultivation, some as recently as July 1987, without regard for environmental consequences. Throughout the last fifty years, the delivery quota system, based on the number of acres farmed, has encouraged extensive farming techniques and the cultivation of marginal land. Farmers who practiced annual cultivation of export crops may have maximized short run economic returns given the combined economic and policy signals which were received. Farmers who have tried to farm according to the best long-term agronomic practices have not been rewarded through policy initiatives. Ad hoc programs which have tried to move producers away from traditional prairie crops and cultivation methods, especially wheat production, often have been poorly designed, underfunded and limited in scope. Fundamental federal government policies for Prairie agriculture, including the Homestead Act, the Land Survey, and the Crow Rate/Western Grain Transportation Act (WGTA) have consistently pushed Prairie land use in a single direction, encouraging annual cultivation and the production of grain, especially wheat, for export at the expense of most other types of agricultural production. A precarious cyclical economy has been one result, especially in Saskatchewan. Deterioration of a significant portion of the land base has been another. The provincial land assessment and property taxation system may have institutionalized this land degradation. The "Wheat is King" tradition is still alive and well on the prairies and in the minds of policy planners. Wheat will remain a major crop. However, governments which are serious about diversification in Prairie agriculture must begin to reward early adjusters – those who innovate and respond appropriately to markets and the physical environment. Federal Government legislation for the prairie region should be enabling, not disabling legislation

Exploring facilitators and barriers to nurses’ uptake of postgraduate education in Australia

Background Nursing education is designed to prepare competent nurses to meet the current and future healthcare needs of society. Nurses require advanced education to increase their ability to influence patient care positively (Cotterill-Walker, 2012), deliver optimal care (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2013) and improve patient outcomes (Girot & Albarran, 2012). Therefore, it is important to understand registered nurses’ attitudes towards postgraduate education. To advance the profession and provide excellent patient care, barriers that hinder nurses from undertaking advanced education should be identified and then properly addressed. Identifying the facilitators that influence nurses to advance their education will help healthcare organisations and healthcare educators to develop programs that will promote an environment that supports education advancement. Aim The primary aim of this research was to explore registered nurses’ attitudes towards postgraduate education in Australia. Methods This research followed a sequential mixed-methods approach design that included development of an instrument (questionnaire- Nurses Attitudes towards Postgraduate Education [NATPGE]), an online survey and telephone interviews. Phase One comprised a survey, the Nurses’ Attitudes Towards Postgraduate Education (NATPGE) instrument developed for this research, which was given to a sample of registered nurses in Australia to explore the barriers to and facilitators of postgraduate specialty education. Phase Two comprised an interpretative study, which took a translational research approach in which qualitative data were collected through telephone interviews with registered nurses to contextualise the Phase One survey findings. The planned and deliberate synthesis of the findings, through discussion, from these two phases has direct implication to postgraduate education for specialty practice in Australia. Results Phase One (survey) was the final stage of the instrument development that used data-reduction techniques and the results of the survey showing the nurses’ attitudes towards postgraduate education. Principal Component Analysis was performed on all 14 NATPGE items. Accounting for 52.5% of the variance of the scale, the analysis identified a three-factor solution for 14 items: ‘facilitators’; ‘barriers’; and ‘professional recognition’. Qualitative analysis of the data from Phase Two, the interpretative study, showed three broad conceptualisations of registered nurses’ attitudes towards postgraduate education: ‘facilitators’; ‘barriers’ and ‘professional recognition’. Conclusion Understanding the factors that affect registered nurses’ attitudes towards postgraduate education will help educators identify areas for change to attract registered nurses to pursue postgraduate education. The overall results from this research provide a composite understanding of the facilitators of and barriers to postgraduate education for Australian nurses

Exploring the association between anxiety and conduct problems in a large sample of twins aged 2-4

Anxiety and conduct problems covary, yet studies have not explored the genetic and environmental origins of this association.We analyzed parent-reported anxiety and conduct problems in 6,783 pairs of twins at 2-, 3-, and 4-years of age. As anxiety and conduct problems were fairly stable across the three ages (average 1-year correlation was .53), ratings from all three were combined. The aggregate anxiety and conduct ratings correlated .33 for boys and .30 for girls. Bivariate genetic analyses indicated fairly low genetic correlations (.31 for boys, .16 for girls), and high shared environmental correlations (1.0 for boys and 0.99 for girls) between anxiety and conduct problems. Most of the phenotypic correlation was accounted for by shared environmental mediation (65% for boys and 94% for girls), indicating that many of the same family environmental factors are responsible for the development of both anxiety and conduct problems

Associations between diurnal preference, sleep quality and externalizing behaviours: a behavioural genetic analysis

Background - Certain aspects of sleep co-occur with externalizing behaviours in youth, yet little is known about these associations in adults. The present study: (1) examines the associations between diurnal preference (morningness versus eveningness), sleep quality and externalizing behaviours; (2) explores the extent to which genetic and environmental influences are shared between or are unique to these phenotypes; (3) examines the extent to which genetic and environmental influences account for these associations. Method - Questionnaires assessing diurnal preference, sleep quality and externalizing behaviours were completed by 1556 young adult twins and siblings. Results - A preference for eveningness and poor sleep quality were associated with greater externalizing symptoms [r=0.28 (95% CI 0.23–0.33) and 0.34 (95% CI 0.28–0.39), respectively]. A total of 18% of the genetic influences on externalizing behaviours were shared with diurnal preference and sleep quality and an additional 14% were shared with sleep quality alone. Non-shared environmental influences common to the phenotypes were small (2%). The association between diurnal preference and externalizing behaviours was mostly explained by genetic influences [additive genetic influence (A)=80% (95% CI 0.56–1.01)], as was the association between sleep quality and externalizing behaviours [A=81% (95% CI 0.62–0.99)]. Non-shared environmental (E) influences accounted for the remaining variance for both associations [E=20% (95% CI −0.01 to 0.44) and 19% (95% CI 0.01–0.38), respectively]. Conclusions - A preference for eveningness and poor sleep quality are moderately associated with externalizing behaviours in young adults. There is a moderate amount of shared genetic influences between the phenotypes and genetic influences account for a large proportion of the association between sleep and externalizing behaviours. Further research could focus on identifying specific genetic polymorphisms common to both sleep and externalizing behaviours

A decade of Australian Rural Clinical School graduates: Where are they and why?

Introduction: The Australian Rural Clinical School (RCS) initiative has been addressing the rural medical workforce shortage at the medical education level for over a decade. A major expectation of this initiative is that it will improve rural medical workforce recruitment and subsequent retention through a rurally based undergraduate clinical training experience. The longitudinal nature of these workforce initiatives means that definitive evidence of its impact on the shortage of rural doctors is yet to be provided; however, to date cross-sectional studies are accumulating a measure of efficacy for these initiatives by monitoring early career factors such as internship location choice and speciality choice of RCS graduates. This article reports on a study in one RCS that is monitoring the impact of rural undergraduate clinical training on trends in workforce participation patterns of its graduates as long as 9 years in the workforce. Career location and speciality choice are reported as well as perspectives on early career intentions and the reality of making career and life decisions as a doctor in the medical workforce

Evaluating the impact of the graduate fellowship programme of the International Livestock Research Institute. A tools and process report

Post graduate research projects are an effective method for building new research capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) offers a graduate fellowship programme for scientists from developing and developed countries. This is done in partnership with universities in African and Asian countries, Europe, Australia and North America. To date such programmes have not been adequately assessed to find the impact on national research capacity, the graduate fellows and the partner institutions. To assess the value of this training, ILRI conducted an impact study of its graduate fellows in Kenya and Ethiopia between 1978 and 1997. This report presents the tools and methods used in this study. Others may use these freely, but appropriate acknowledgement of the source will be appreciated. Future users may modify these instruments for their own impact studies; and indeed are encouraged to do so. We recognise that many improvements could be made and request feedback from others on how they have accomplished this. This report also presents part of the results to enable those interested in future impact studies in Ethiopia or Kenya to use the data as a benchmark

Диагностика патриотической культуры студентов

В статье раскрываются основные структурные компоненты патриотической культуры личности: гностический, мотивационный, эмоционально-волевой, поведенческий и нормативно-оценочный. Описывается алгоритм измерения сформированности патриотической культуры личности на основе шкалы суждений. Для обработки результатов опроса использован шкалограммный анализ Л. Гутмана

Structural role of the tyrosine residues of cytochrome c

The tertiary structures of horse, tuna, Neurospora crassa, horse [Hse65,Leu67]- and horse [Hse65,Leu74]-cytochromes c were studied with high-resolution 1H n.m.r. spectroscopy. The amino acid sequences of these proteins differ at position 46, which is occupied by phenylalanine in the horse proteins but by tyrosine in the remaining two, and at positions 67, 74 and 97, which are all occupied by tyrosine residues in horse and tuna cytochrome c but in the other proteins are substituted by phenylalanine or leucine, though there is only one such substitution per protein. The various aromatic-amino-acid substitutions do not seriously affect the protein structure

Association between symptoms of sleep apnea and problem behaviors in young adult twins and siblings

Background: Sleep apnea is one of the most common sleep disorders and it is related to multiple negative health consequences. Previous studies have shown that sleep apnea is influenced by genetic factors. However, studies have not investigated the genetic and environmental influences of symptoms of sleep apnea in young adults. Furthermore, the underpinnings of the relationship between apnea symptoms and internalizing/externalizing problems are unknown. The objectives of this study were to estimate the magnitude of: 1) genetic and environmental influences on self-reported apnea symptoms; 2) the relationship between self-reported apnea symptoms and internalizing/externalizing traits; 3) genetic and environmental influences on the associations between self-reported apnea symptoms, internalizing behaviors and externalizing behaviors. Methods: In a twin/sibling study, univariate and multivariate models were fitted to estimate both individual variance and sources of covariance between symptoms of sleep apnea and internalizing/externalizing behaviors. Results: Our results show that genetic influences account for 40% the variance in sleep apnea symptoms. Moreover, there are modest associations between depression, anxiety and externalizing behaviors with apnea symptoms (ranging from r = .22 to .29). However, the origins of these associations differ. For example, whereas most of the covariation between symptoms of depression and sleep apnea can be explained by genes (95%), there was a larger role for the environment (53%) in the association between symptoms of anxiety and sleep apnea. Conclusions: Genetic factors explain a significant proportion of variance in symptoms of apnea and most of the covariance with depression