Artist Space Development: Making the Case

Based on case studies, discusses the challenges advocates of artist space development face, the arguments they make to garner support, the strategic approaches they take, and what they achieve in making artist space a priority in community development

The nature of medical evidence and its inherent uncertainty for the clinical consultation : qualitative study

Objective To describe how clinicians deal with the uncertainty inherent in medical evidence in clinical consultations. Design Qualitative study. Setting Clinical consultations related to hormone replacement therapy, bone densitometry, and breast screening in seven general practices and three secondary care clinics in the UK NHS. Participants Women aged 45-64. Results 45 of the 109 relevant consultations included sufficient discussion for analysis. The consultations could be categorised into three groups: focus on certainty for now and this test, with slippage into general reassurance; a coherent account of the medical evidence for risks and benefits, but blurring of the uncertainty inherent in the evidence and giving an impression of certainty; and acknowledging the inherent uncertainty of the medical evidence and negotiating a provisional decision. Conclusion Strategies health professionals use to cope with the uncertainty inherent in medical evidence in clinical consultations include the use of provisional decisions that allow for changing priorities and circumstances over time, to avoid slippage into general reassurance from a particular test result, and to avoid the creation of a myth of certainty

Cultural Vitality in Communities: Interpretation and Indicators

This report introduces a definition of cultural vitality that includes the range of cultural activity people around the country find significant. We use this definition as a lens to clarify our understanding of data necessary, as well as the more limited data currently available, to document arts and culture in communities in a consistent, recurrent and reliable manner. Specifically, we define cultural vitality as evidence of creating, disseminating, validating, and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday life in communities. We develop and recommend an initial set of arts and culture indicators derived from nationally available data, and compare selected metropolitan areas based on these measures. Policy and planning implications for use of the cultural vitality definition and related measures are discussed

From Survival to Livelihood in Mozambique

Summary Rehabilitation is an unserviced limbo in development. The paper provides a programme checklist, reviews the obstacles to rehabilitation and proposes an approach of ‘iterative flexibility’. In Mozambique, over half the population was forced out of production by war and drought, most as refugees or as internally displaced. There have been some successes, but the attempt to have a programme in being to meet and support ‘retornados’ has largely failed. Resumé Mozambique: de la survie simple aux moyens d'existence assurés C'est la réhabilitation démunie d'appui qui occupe, pour ainsi dire, les limbes du développement; comme base d'une approche caractérisée par la “souplesse itérative”, le présent article offre un programme pour le contrôle des actions, accompagné d'une revue des entraves qui menacent la réhabilitation. Au Mozambique les guerres et la sécheresse ont forcé plus de la moitié de la population à quitter la productivité active et à adopter le statut de réfugiés, ou de personnes déplacées dans ou hors de leur territoire. Malgré certains succès spécifiques, la tentative d'instaurer un programme qui puisse venir à l'encontre des “retornados” et à les aider, aurait rencontré l'échec plus ou moins total. Resumen De la supervivencia al sustento: Mozambique La rehabilitación es un área desatendida dentro del desarrollo. Este artículo provee una lista de control de programas, examina los obstáculos para la rehabilitación y propone un enfoque de ‘flexibilidad iterativa’. En Mozambique, más de la mitad de la población fue forzada a dejar de producir debido a la guerra o a la sequía; la mayoría de estas personas se convirtieron en refugiados o desplazados internos. A pesar de algunos éxitos aislados, el intento de establecer un programa de recepción y apoyo a los ‘retornados’ ha sido, en gran medida, un fracaso

Family health narratives : midlife women’s concepts of vulnerability to illness

Perceptions of vulnerability to illness are strongly influenced by the salience given to personal experience of illness in the family. This article proposes that this salience is created through autobiographical narrative, both as individual life story and collectively shaped family history. The paper focuses on responses related to health in the family drawn from semi-structured interviews with women in a qualitative study exploring midlife women’s health. Uncertainty about the future was a major emergent theme. Most respondents were worried about a specified condition such as heart disease or breast cancer. Many women were uncertain about whether illness in the family was inherited. Some felt certain that illness in the family meant that they were more vulnerable to illness or that their relatives’ ageing would be mirrored in their own inevitable decline, while a few expressed cautious optimism about the future. In order to elucidate these responses, we focused on narratives in which family members’ appearance was discussed and compared to that of others in the family. The visualisation of both kinship and the effects of illness, led to strong similarities being seen as grounds for worry. This led to some women distancing themselves from the legacies of illness in their families. Women tended to look at the whole family as the context for their perceptions of vulnerability, developing complex patterns of resemblance or difference within their families

Defect Induced Photoluminescence from Dark Excitonic States in Individual Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

We show that new low-energy photoluminescence (PL) bands can be created in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes by intense pulsed excitation. The new bands are attributed to PL from different nominally dark excitons that are "brightened" due to defect-induced mixing of states with different parity and/or spin. Time-resolved PL studies on single nanotubes reveal a significant reduction of the bright exciton lifetime upon brightening of the dark excitons. The lowest energy dark state has longer lifetimes and is not in thermal equilibrium with the bright state.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Play hard, shirk hard?:the effect of bar hours regulation on worker absence

The regulation of alcohol availability has the potential to influence worker productivity. This paper uses legislative changes in bar opening hours to provide a potential quasi-natural experiment of the effect of alcohol availability on working effort, focusing on worker absenteeism. We examine two recent policy changes, one in England/Wales and one in Spain that increased and decreased opening hours, respectively. We demonstrate a robust positive causal link between opening hours and absenteeism, although short-lived for Spain. The effect is long lasting for the UK where we provide evidence which suggests that increased alcohol consumption is a key mechanism

Household unpaid work by immigration status in Canada

This thesis looks at the ‘immigration status differentials’ in time allocation to household work, value of household work, and determinants of participation rate in household work. In determining the time allocated to household work by immigration status, the data provided by General Social Survey (GSS) Circle 12 Individual Information Survey, on time spent on household work in Canada 1998 with about 6,944 respondents was used. Two methods of valuation of household unpaid work were used which were opportunity cost (before and after tax) and replacement cost. In deciding which method is best I recommend the use of replacement cost of valuing household work since GNP itself measures actual output produced. In the study, I anticipated that an average immigrant spends more time in household work than an average Canadian and that an average female generally allocates more time to household work than an average male based on socio-economic factors determining household unpaid work as seen in Gronau (1977) and Becker (1965). As expected, the results show that an average female allocates more time to household work than an average male and the difference is statistically significant. An average immigrant and Canadian allocate the same amount of time to household work. However, in maintenance and repairs, the results show that males’ participation rate is higher than females’ and an average Canadian participation rate in maintenance and repairs is higher than the immigrant with statistically significant difference. When other variables were introduced into the model using probit method of estimation, it was observed that there is no significant difference in participation rates between Canadians and immigrants