The Links between Income Distribution and Poverty Reduction in Britain

human development, aid, trade, security

Who are temporary nurses?

Using data from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, the authors compare the characteristics of temporary and permanent registered nurses. They compare their findings for the nursing profession with characteristics of temporary and permanent workers in other occupations. They also look at the role of geography in a registered nurse’s decision to become a temporary worker.Nurses - Supply and demand ; Nurses - Statistics ; Temporary employees

Entertaining the Environment: Towards an Ethics of Art events.

Erin Manning’s concept of an art that ‘entertains the environment’, proposes a ‘minor’ practice that might be capable of provoking reconnection with a wide field of non-subjective forces. Rather than a concentration on a replicating of human/object hierarchies, it implies a focus on how various assemblages of human and nonhuman, concrete and abstract, virtual and actual forces have the potential to be realigned through the artistic process. Drawing on recent writing and artwork by Manning, this essay will propose the potential of such a shift in focus in the art event as a tactical approach towards development of a new conception of a political art. This might be seen as an ecological approach to art, which reconnects us with lively worlds and non-human agencies. This essay also explores the entertainment of the environment through an examination of Lygia Clark’s propositional art work  'Caminhando' (1963), concentrating on the transductive potential of the opening of the body to a wider field of distributed agency to produce a sensation of being ‘always more than’ a subject

Gathering Ecologies

What might an interactive artwork look like that enabled greater expressive potential for all of the components of the event? How can we radically shift our idea of interactivity towards an ecological conception of the term, emphasising the generation of complex relation over the stability of objects and subjects? Gathering Ecologies explores this ethical and political shift in thinking, examining the creative potential of differential relations through key concepts from the philosophies of A.N. Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon and Michel Serres. Utilising detailed examinations of work by artists such as Lygia Clark, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Nathaniel Stern and Joyce Hinterding, the book discusses the creative potential of movement, perception and sensation, interfacing, sound and generative algorithmic design to tune an event towards the conditions of its own ecological emergence

A thousand tiny interfacings: fertile acts of resistance.

This paper examines the process of interfacing between organic and technical objects and how this might be utilized as a tactic to promote invention within new media art events. Raphael Lozano-Hemmer's Relational Architecture is examined in relation to concepts of parasitic action and folding to show how the work develops a complex ecology of relation through interfacing

Hypofractionated breast radiotherapy for 1 week versus 3 weeks (FAST-Forward): 5-year efficacy and late normal tissue effects results from a multicentre, non-inferiority, randomised, phase 3 trial

Background: We aimed to identify a five-fraction schedule of adjuvant radiotherapy (radiation therapy) delivered in 1 week that is non-inferior in terms of local cancer control and is as safe as an international standard 15-fraction regimen after primary surgery for early breast cancer. Here, we present 5-year results of the FAST-Forward trial. Methods: FAST-Forward is a multicentre, phase 3, randomised, non-inferiority trial done at 97 hospitals (47 radiotherapy centres and 50 referring hospitals) in the UK. Patients aged at least 18 years with invasive carcinoma of the breast (pT1-3, pN0-1, M0) after breast conservation surgery or mastectomy were eligible. We randomly allocated patients to either 40 Gy in 15 fractions (over 3 weeks), 27 Gy in five fractions (over 1 week), or 26 Gy in five fractions (over 1 week) to the whole breast or chest wall. Allocation was not masked because of the nature of the intervention. The primary endpoint was ipsilateral breast tumour relapse; assuming a 2% 5-year incidence for 40 Gy, non-inferiority was predefined as ≤1·6% excess for five-fraction schedules (critical hazard ratio [HR] of 1·81). Normal tissue effects were assessed by clinicians, patients, and from photographs. This trial is registered at isrctn.com, ISRCTN19906132. Findings: Between Nov 24, 2011, and June 19, 2014, we recruited and obtained consent from 4096 patients from 97 UK centres, of whom 1361 were assigned to the 40 Gy schedule, 1367 to the 27 Gy schedule, and 1368 to the 26 Gy schedule. At a median follow-up of 71·5 months (IQR 71·3 to 71·7), the primary endpoint event occurred in 79 patients (31 in the 40 Gy group, 27 in the 27 Gy group, and 21 in the 26 Gy group); HRs versus 40 Gy in 15 fractions were 0·86 (95% CI 0·51 to 1·44) for 27 Gy in five fractions and 0·67 (0·38 to 1·16) for 26 Gy in five fractions. 5-year incidence of ipsilateral breast tumour relapse after 40 Gy was 2·1% (1·4 to 3·1); estimated absolute differences versus 40 Gy in 15 fractions were -0·3% (-1·0 to 0·9) for 27 Gy in five fractions (probability of incorrectly accepting an inferior five-fraction schedule: p=0·0022 vs 40 Gy in 15 fractions) and -0·7% (-1·3 to 0·3) for 26 Gy in five fractions (p=0·00019 vs 40 Gy in 15 fractions). At 5 years, any moderate or marked clinician-assessed normal tissue effects in the breast or chest wall was reported for 98 of 986 (9·9%) 40 Gy patients, 155 (15·4%) of 1005 27 Gy patients, and 121 of 1020 (11·9%) 26 Gy patients. Across all clinician assessments from 1-5 years, odds ratios versus 40 Gy in 15 fractions were 1·55 (95% CI 1·32 to 1·83, p<0·0001) for 27 Gy in five fractions and 1·12 (0·94 to 1·34, p=0·20) for 26 Gy in five fractions. Patient and photographic assessments showed higher normal tissue effect risk for 27 Gy versus 40 Gy but not for 26 Gy versus 40 Gy. Interpretation: 26 Gy in five fractions over 1 week is non-inferior to the standard of 40 Gy in 15 fractions over 3 weeks for local tumour control, and is as safe in terms of normal tissue effects up to 5 years for patients prescribed adjuvant local radiotherapy after primary surgery for early-stage breast cancer.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.JMB, JSH, MAS, and LS report grants from National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment and Cancer Research UK during the conduct of the study. JMB reports grants and non-financial support from Novartis (previously GlaxoSmithKline), AstraZeneca, Clovis Oncology, Janssen-Cilag, Merck Sharpe and Dohme, Puma Biotechnology, Pfizer, and Roche; and grants from Medivation, outside the submitted work. DAW reports travel grants from Roche Pharmaceuticals outside the submitted work. CCK reports personal fees from Roche Pharmaceutical outside the submitted work. All other authors declare no competing interests.published version, accepted version (12 month embargo

Innovation And Educational Leadership Challenge: A Developmental Approach

Background of the Problem Educators have been struggling for over twenty years to find the combination of approaches that will be most effective in leading schools, through periods of turbulence and change. Marzano (2003) discovered that in effective schools standardized test pass rates measure at 72.4% versus only 27.6% in schools found to be ineffective. Given such high stakes as these, and given its high impact, trustworthy leadership is a critical element of success in any organization (Avolio and Luthens, 2006) the importance of effective educational leadership has never been greater than at present. School failure is incredibly costly in economic, social, and human terms. Gladwell (2006) found that psychologists and other experts trained in specific aspects of human behavior were able to do what he refers to as ‘thin slicing’ a social, teaching or leadership situation. Thin slicing refers to being able to look at a short segment (a few minutes or less) of, say, a teaching situation, and determine with over 90% accuracy whether the instructor was a success or failure in his or her regular classroom setting. Finding the factors, which lie behind snap-insights like these and using this knowledge to enhance training has tremendous possibilities for the field of education. These insights are needed given the tremendous impact of leadership and its impact on school effectiveness

Ultra-relativistic geometrical shock dynamics and vorticity

Geometrical shock dynamics, also called CCW theory, yields approximate equations for shock propagation in which only the conditions at the shock appear explicitly; the post-shock flow is presumed approximately uniform and enters implicitly via a Riemann invariant. The nonrelativistic theory, formulated by G. B. Whitham and others, matches many experimental results surprisingly well. Motivated by astrophysical applications, we adapt the theory to ultra-relativistic shocks advancing into an ideal fluid whose pressure is negligible ahead of the shock, but one third of its proper energy density behind the shock. Exact results are recovered for some self-similar cylindrical and spherical shocks with power-law pre-shock density profiles. Comparison is made with numerical solutions of the full hydrodynamic equations. We review relativistic vorticity and circulation. In an ultrarelativistic ideal fluid, circulation can be defined so that it changes only at shocks, notwithstanding entropy gradients in smooth parts of the flow.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure