Global Public Goods and Global Health

The repair rate on electron beam welded diaphragm hasn’t been at the desired level at Siemens SIT for several years. An improvement program the past five years has reduce the repair rate from 60% to 12-15% but the goal of 5% repair rate hasn’t been met. Collection of diaphragm weld and repair data started in the fall 2011 and in this thesis the material composition of the materials used for the production will be analysed from a statistical perspective. The thesis includes a comprehensive research of the nonparametric statistical methods suitable for non normally distributed, highly kurtotic and skewed data. Unfortunately a lot of statistical tests loose their power to correctly reject a false hypothesis with this kind of data. All of the elements in the material composition and the mechanical properties were analysed individually. In some of the cases it was possible to use statistical methods but in other it was not possible to conclude anything with statistics. Every case of outliers was evaluated individually. The main conclusions are that in all of the four materials there are some elements and mechanical properties outside of the material specifications. A number of cases also had outliers inside of the material specification and in most cases those were causing the variability in the data and had higher repair rates than the overall repair rate. Some trends were found, for example the weld quality was better for lower yield strength in all materials and higher chromium content in material A produced better quality. The first steps to improvement for Siemens are to find out why materials outside of the material specifications are getting all the way to the production without anyone noticing. A simple material process control chart could visually notify if a material is outside of the specification limits or even just outside of the usual. Knowing exactly how the material is before starting the production will give time and space for preventive measures if they are necessary and could improve lead times and decrease costs.För några år har Siemens hatt kvalitetsproblem med Electron Beam svetsing av mellanväggar. Förbättringsprojekt har reducerat reparationer intensivt men fortfarande finns det problemer med svetsningen. Inga mellanväggar lämnar produktionen utan att ha bra kvalitet så att förbättringarna ska fokusera på att reducera produktionskostnader och ledtider. Hösten 2011 började Siemens att samla reparation data för mellanväggarna och i det examens arbetet blir materialsamansättningen analyserad med statistiska metoder. Arbetet innehåller övergripande analysis på non-parametriska statistiska metoder och hur dom funkerar på skevat data med hög kurtosis. Tyvärr finns det inte många metoder som har hög chans att förkasta falska hypoteser när man jobbar med sånt data. Alla elementer och mekaniska egenskaper av materialet blev analyserade, men tyvärr inte alltid med statistiska metoder. Alla extremvärden blev analyserade individuellt. I alla fyra materialer finns det elementer och mekaniska egenskaper utan förmaterialets specifikationer. I vissa fall finns det outliers inom materialets specifikationer men som har högre reparation procent än det vanliga och orsakar variationen i datat. Vissa tendenser kunne hittas, till exempel att det går bättre att svetsa materialer med lägre sträckgräns och högre kromhalt går bättre för material A. Simpelt processstyrningdiagram skulle kunna visa om material är utanför material specifikationen men också om materialet är utanför det ”vanliga”. Att veta exact hur materialet är innan produktion kan sjunka ledtider och produktionskostnader

Private Investment and Public Health

Related to Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law Conference: The New Roles of Corporations in Global Governanc

Whither tobacco product regulation?

Despite decades of industry innovation and regulatory efforts, the harmfulness of conventional cigarettes has not changed. There are several pitfalls in this area, including the long time lag before health impacts of product regulatory changes become apparent, the danger of consumers deriving false reassurance of lesser harm in the interim period, the lack of relevant expertise and the lack of an internationally agreed and evidencebased strategic approach. Articles 9 and 10 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control provide the potential for such a global strategy, and knowledge and research has increased significantly over recent years. However, there are huge opportunity costs in implementing product disclosure and regulatory strategies: most national regulators have very limited human and financial resources, which should be focused on other evidence-based tobacco control interventions. We believe therefore that it is now time to abandon the notion of safe or safer cigarettes while moving consumers towards cleaner nicotine products as soon as possible. In parallel to this, we recommend a number of other strategies be implemented including: reducing the appeal of all tobacco products, forbidding new tobacco products or brand variants being marketed without evidence of reduced harm, appeal or addictiveness, and developing a tobacco industry resourced, but industry independent, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control global repository to assist national regulators in understanding and regulating the products on their markets

Demographic and socioeconomic inequalities in the risk of emergency hospital admission for violence: cross-sectional analysis of a national database in Wales

Objectives To investigate the risk of emergency hospital admissions for violence (EHAV) associated with demographic and socioeconomic factors in Wales between 2007/2008 and 2013/2014, and to describe the site of injury causing admission. Design Database analysis of 7 years’ hospital admissions using the Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW). Setting and participants Wales, UK, successive annual populations ∼2.8 million aged 0–74 years. Primary outcome The first emergency admission for violence in each year of the study, defined by the International Classification of Diseases V.10 (ICD-10) codes for assaults (X85-X99, Y00-Y09) in any coding position. Results A total of 11 033 admissions for assault. The majority of admissions resulted from head injuries. The overall crude admission rate declined over the study period, from 69.9 per 100 000 to 43.2 per 100 000, with the largest decrease in the most deprived quintile of deprivation. A generalised linear count model with a negative binomial log link, adjusted for year, age group, gender, deprivation quintile and settlement type, showed the relative risk was highest in age group 18–19 years (RR=6.75, 95% CI 5.88 to 7.75) compared with the reference category aged 10–14 years. The risk decreased with age after 25 years. Risk of admission was substantially higher in males (RR=4.55, 95% CI 4.31 to 4.81), for residents of the most deprived areas of Wales (RR=3.60, 95% CI 3.32 to 3.90) compared with the least deprived, and higher in cities (RR=1.37, 95% CI 1.27 to 1.49) and towns (RR=1.32, 95% CI 1.21 to 1.45) compared with villages. Conclusions Despite identifying a narrowing in the gap between prevalence of violence in richer and poorer communities, violence remains strongly associated with young men living in areas of socioeconomic deprivation. There is potential for a greater reduction, given that violence is mostly preventable. Recommendations for reducing inequalities in the risk of admission for violence are discussed

Human ANKLE1 is a nuclease specific for branched DNA

All physical connections between sister chromatids must be broken before cells can divide, and eukaryotic cells have evolved multiple ways in which to process branchpoints connecting DNA molecules separated both spatially and temporally. A single DNA link between chromatids has the potential to disrupt cell cycle progression and genome integrity, so it is highly likely that cells require a nuclease that can process remaining unresolved and hemi-resolved DNA junctions and other branched species at the very late stages of mitosis. We argue that ANKLE1 probably serves this function in human cells (LEM-3 in Caenorhabditis elegans). LEM-3 has previously been shown to be located at the cell mid-body, and we show here that human ANKLE1 is a nuclease that cleaves a range of branched DNA species. It thus has the substrate selectivity consistent with an enzyme required to process a variety of unresolved and hemi-resolved branchpoints in DNA. Our results suggest that ANKLE1 acts as a catch-all enzyme of last resort that allows faithful chromosome segregation and cell division to occur. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd

Does selective migration alter socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in Wales? : a record-linked total population e-cohort study

Funding for this work was received from Public Health Wales NHS Trust as part of a report on migration and health. Support for the report was also received from the National Centre for Population Health and Wellbeing Research (NCPHWR). Andrea Gartner is funded through the NCPHWR and David Fone, Shantini Paranjothy and Daniel Farewell are members of the NCPHWR team in Cardiff University, School of Medicine. Neither funder bears any responsibility for the analysis or interpretation of the data presented here. We used data from the CHALICE project, which was originally funded by the National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research (NIHR PHR) Programme (project number 09/3007/02). The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIHR PHR Programme or the Department of Health. We would like to thank Jenny Morgan for her work on data cleaning and validation of the original dataset.Peer reviewedPublisher PD