Too Good to be True?: The Opportunity and Cost of the $1 Building

A study commissioned by The Kresge Foundation's Arts & Culture Program finds that arts organizations have experienced a wide range of outcomes when acquiring low-cost or free buildings, also known as "$1 buildings." In many cases, the actual costs of acquiring such buildings were much higher than organizations anticipated, according to the study, conducted by Boston-based Technical Development Corp

Are Female Baby Boomers Ready for Retirement?

Due to their life-course socio-economic conditions, many female boomers may suffer large decreases in well-being as they head into retirement. Pension reforms which increase retirement age will disproportionately disadvantage those already in low income. While changes to the CPP will reduce losses from poor or sporadic labour force participation, these changes are too late to help the early boomer women. Likewise, while research suggests that improving retirement outcomes must begin with improved labour market conditions, inequitable conditions persist. Therefore, any current policy change will miss helping the early boomers. Finally, with increasing rates of chronic disease and longer lifespans, policy must aim toward health and wellness promotion, providing a wider range of integrated care options, and clear estimates of added costs so that Canadians can adequately prepare for retirement

Policy Brief No. 24 - Are Female Baby Boomers Ready for Retirement?

Due to their life-course socio-economic conditions, many female boomers may suffer large decreases in well-being as they head into retirement. Pension reforms which increase retirement age will disproportionately disadvantage those already in low income. While changes to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) will reduce losses from poor or sporadic labour force participation, these changes are too late to help the early boomer women. Likewise, while research suggests that improving retirement outcomes must begin with improved labour market conditions, inequitable conditions persist. Therefore, any current policy change will miss helping the early boomers. Finally, with increasing rates of chronic disease and longer lifespans, policy must aim toward health and wellness promotion, providing a wider range of integrated care options, and clear estimates of added costs so that Canadians can adequately prepare for retirement

Characterisation of Algal Derived Organic Nitrogen

The molecular level characterisation of compounds comprising the dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) pool is an important task for chemical oceanographers wishing to understand its role in the marine N cycle. Low DON concentrations, problems with saline matrices and a lack of pre-concentration methods have all contributed to DON being ignored and disregarded, until recently. Sub units of DON have been analysed as bulk parameters within which the low molecular weight (LMW; < 1,500 Da) fraction has been proposed to drive regenerated production within the oceans. The largest producers of these compounds are phytoplankton. Dissolved combined amino acids (DCAAs) are proposed to be the largest identifiable component of the LMW fraction. Peptides were chosen as the starting point for this study on DON characterisation, due to their unrivalled detection when analysed via liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC/MS). A method was developed for the characterisation of low molecular weight peptides, released either actively or passively from the axenically-cultured phytoplankton Phaeodactylum tricornutum. Methods for the separation (high performance liquid chromatography; HPLC), detection (mass spectrometric; MS), de-salination and pre-concentration (solid phase extraction; SPE), of analytes present in the culture water sampled during the period of maximum DON, were developed. The successful chromatographic separation of LMW peptides was achieved using a Phenomenex® Gemini Gig column in conjunction with mobile phases of acidified MeOH and water. The SPE method was developed on a Hamilton PRP-1 column containing a polystyrene divinylbenzene stationary phase (PSDVB). During the extraction process the increased hydrophobicity of the PS-DVB phase was predicted to yield increased recoveries of peptides, when compared to analogous d g phase cartridges. The method was transferred to extraction cartridges (500 mg, StrataX). Further investigations were then carried out into the affects of salt and dissolved organic matter on the extraction process. Samples were prepared by applying the extraction method to 1 L supernatants of culture water samples. The HPLC protocol was used to separate the components of the complex sample prior to data acquisition in both full MS mode and in the data dependent mode (DDMS). Mass spectra and chromatograms of ions unique to the cultured waters were identified. Further instrument manipulation allowed interfering ions to be diverted away from the mass analyser and consequently multistage mass spectrometry (MS²) to be carried out on unique ions that exceeded the threshold intensity of 1 x 105. Unique ions identified in the axenic cultures were two amino acids TYR and a modified structure isomerically/isobarically related to TYR. Seven peptides were partially sequenced. These were H-(VAL, THR, Xxx)-OH, H-(GLN/LYS, ALA, ASN, Xxx)-OH, H-(ASN, ALA, GLU, Xxx)-OH, H-(VAL, GLU, Xxx)-OH, H-(SER, HIS, Xxx)-OH, H- (PRO, XLE,HIS, GLN/LYS, GLY, Xxx)-OH and H-(Xxx, XLE, GLN/LYS, XLE, GLU)- OH. One whole peptide was tentatively proposed as H-TRP-PHE-OH. A significant loss of data was observed between the unique peptide ions identified in the MS analysis and the ions that underwent CID during the DDMS analysis, because they were below the threshold ion count or co-eluted with a more dominant ion. The method development carried out through this study has enabled the successful analysis of samples previously considered incompatible with LC/MS instrumentation. The method can be applied to all aquatic environment samples for both contaminant removal and preconcentration requirements and can be seen as an initial step from which many different avenues of future work may be explored

Research Brief No. 23 - Exiting Poverty in Canada

This study investigates the determinants of poverty duration in Canada, and examines which factors may affect women and men differently. It specifically focuses on poverty exit destinations: exits to just above the poverty line versus exits to further above the poverty line. Results show that nearly 25% of poverty spells end within 110% of the poverty line, meaning near poverty. The study also indicates that receiving social assistance, being an immigrant, being disabled, and having pre-school aged children are strongly associated with both a lower probability of exiting poverty, and a lower probability of exiting to higher income levels. Finally, gender differences in the probability of exiting poverty spells appear mainly in terms of education, employment, and changes in marital status

A 10-year review of child injury hospitalisations, health outcomes and treatment costs in Australia

Background: Childhood injury is a leading cause of hospitalisation, yet there has been no comprehensive examination of child injury and survival over time in Australia. To examine the characteristics, temporal trend and survival for children who were hospitalised as a result of injury in Australia. Method: A retrospective examination of linked hospitalisation and mortality data for injured children aged 16 years or less during 1 July 2001 to 30 June 2012. Negative binomial regression examined change in injury hospitalisation trends. Cox proportional hazard regression examined the association of risk factors on 30-day survival. Results: There were 686409 injury hospitalisations,with an age-standardised rate of 1489 per 100000 population (95%CI 1485.3 to 1492.4) in Australia. Child injury hospitalisation rates did not change over the 10-year period. For every severely injured child, there are at least 13 children hospitalised with minor or moderate injuries. The total cost of child injury hospitalisations was $A2.1billion (annually$A212million). Falls (38.4%) were the most common injury mechanism. Factors associated with a higher risk of 30-day mortality were: child was aged ≤10 years, higher injury severity, head injury, injured in a transport incident or following drowning and submersion or other threats to breathing, during self-harm and usual residence was regional/remote Australia. Conclusions: Childhood injury hospitalisation rates have not reduced in 10 years. Children’s patterns of injury change with age, and priorities for injury prevention alter according to developmental stages. The development of a national multisectorial childhood injury monitoring and prevention strategy in Australia is long overdue

Incidence of depression, anxiety and stress following traumatic injury: A longitudinal study

Background: Traumatic injury and mental health disorders are co-associated. Early identification of depression, anxiety and stress following injury, and subsequent preventive intervention, may reduce the long-term symptoms and negative impacts associated with depression and anxiety. The purpose of the study was to determine the incidence, severity and predictors of depression, anxiety and stress in injured patients in the acute phase of care, and at six months following injury, as well as the effectiveness of an in-hospital screening tool. Methods: This descriptive longitudinal study of trauma patients was conducted at a Level 1 Metropolitan Trauma Centre in Australia over 14 months. Participants were interviewed using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale short-form version (DASS-21) during hospital admission then at 3 and 6 months after injury. Descriptive statistics were performed to evaluate participant characteristics and incidence of depression, anxiety and stress. Correlations and logistic regression were conducted to investigate the ability of the DASS-21 to predict symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress and to investigate factors associated with depression, anxiety and stress 6 months after injury. Results: 201 participants ranging in age (18–94 years) and injury severity participated in the baseline interview and 109 completed all 3 interviews over 6 months. Over half (54%) reported above normal scores for depression, anxiety and/or stress in at least one of the 3 time points. Intensive care unit admission and high levels of depression, anxiety and stress at 3 months post injury were predictors for high levels of depression, anxiety and stress at 6 months. Low scores for depression, anxiety and stress during admission were correlated with low scores for depression, anxiety and stress at 3 and 6 months. Conclusion: Depression, anxiety and stress in patients hospitalised following injury is common and should be anticipated in patients who have had an intensive care admission. Screening at 3 months following injury identifies patients at risk of long-term symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress

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Storytelling and/as resilience

Storytelling implications have been under-explored in LIS. Storytelling involves a teller, an audience, and a story that emerges in the dynamic exchange--laughter, gasps, suspenseful silence--so that each storytelling moment creates a unique version of the story. This panel expands pedagogical and theoretical understandings of the value of storytelling as tradition, practice, and means of cultivating resilience. This panel brings together experts in storytelling, resilience, and storytelling as resilience to demonstrate that storytelling deserves conceptual prominence in LIS. The panel format will be focused on a question-and-answer response, asking each panelist to introduce their work briefly and then engage the questions including: Why is storytelling important to LIS, and what makes it a worthwhile strategy? How has the LIS tradition of storytelling contributed to community resilience? What stories are missing, underrepresented, devalued, suppressed, oppressed, or written out of LIS storytelling? How might LIS education benefit from taking seriously the relationships between teller, audience, and story in both practice and theory? Dr. Nicole Cooke’s work on storytelling, from autoethnography to fake news, brings together the urgent necessity of developing greater LIS cultural competence in services to diverse populations with the potential power of storytelling for positive social change. Her research engages the importance of telling untold stories, including those that challenge racism as status quo, and bringing everyday lived experiences of racism to light in order to change LIS professionals and support the resilience of those minoritized by the field. Dr. Cooke also engages storytelling as a tool for understanding information behavior and enacting social justice. Her recent book, Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era (ALA Editions. 2018), examines how some stories operate as information threat and suggests paths toward resistance and resilience for information professionals. Her teaching engages storytelling as pedagogy in teaching cultural competence and, as Augusta Baker Chair, leads an annual community-focused storytelling festival celebrating Augusta Baker’s legacy as a leading storyteller in the history of LIS. Dr. Janice Del Negro is a nationally acclaimed storyteller and a professor at the School of Information Studies at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where she teaches storytelling and related graduate and doctoral courses. Her research interests coalesce around the examination of storytelling in three arenas: the history of library storytelling, the contemporary storytelling revival, and the library story told through narrative. Dr. Del Negro, as both insider and observer in these communities, has written extensively on these topics; she collaborated with Dr. Ellin Greene on the fourth edition of the classic storytelling textbook, Storytelling: Art &Technique (2010, fully revised fifth edition forthcoming in Fall 2021). Recently Dr. Del Negro’s research interests focus on an examination of storytelling during COVID, in both the contemporary storytelling community for adults and in youth services programming in libraries. How do pandemic considerations alter the delivery of oral narrative programming? What is the relationship between storytelling, storytellers, and resilience? How do story deliverers understand the relationship between storytelling and technology? Does the delivery mechanism alter the presentation and reception of stories? The surprisingly effective move from face-to-face to virtual storytelling created new connections between tellers and listeners as a strong example of the power of story as well as the resilience of storytellers, librarians, and listeners. Dr. Beth Patin’s work on resilience draws on concepts of storytelling during extreme events and crises. “We know ourselves only through stories” (Justice, 2018 p. 34). Narratives tell the stories of a community and after a disaster or crisis, they preserve the experiences of the community for those in the future. Recently, in response to the protests about police brutality and systemic racism in the United States, many information organizations are examining their historical relationship with racism and how this has in turn affected their collections and whose voices we amplify in our libraries and through storytelling. Who gets to be deemed literary? Who does not? And how does that impact students who are told that their stories do not count? Through the exploration of storytelling and narrative after disasters and trauma-related experiences, Dr. Patin examines how we might use digital humanities tools to help preserve, amplify, and foster engagement with the next generation, especially for minoritized communities whose stories largely have been untold. Doctoral Candidate Curtis Tenney teaches digital storytelling, and their research on libraries, LGBTQ+ issues, and community resilience is grounded in a research agenda inspired by the contemporary importance of exploring contentious phenomena by interrogating documents and exploring what might be learned from the experiences of people involved. This goal is focused to inquire: What stories do public storytelling programming tell? Their dissertation work titled, LGBTQ+ Representation in Public Library Programming: Investigating Drag Storytime Events, investigates drag storytime event documentation and the experiences of public librarians and drag performers involved in drag storytime events. This research goal seeks to explore how LGBTQ+ representation is documented and how public librarians and drag performers plan drag storytime events and how information behavior is enacted, engaging storytelling as pedagogy through early experiences teaching digital storytelling and storytelling for information professionals. In this panel, Curtis will draw from preliminary research findings and teaching experiences to share perspectives of LIS work intersections of storytelling and resilience. Panel organizer Dr. Kate McDowell’s work on storytelling engages fundamental LIS concepts to argue that storytelling provides a critical lens for understanding collective information. Her work asserts that story is a fundamental but overlooked form of information, and that rigorous analysis of storytelling processes and practices demonstrate that the default conceptualization of information as an individual experience excludes a wide range of collective information practices. Based on over a decade of teaching storytelling, running the student-focused Storytelling Festival at Illinois, and four years of co-teaching data storytelling, her research spans theoretical definitions and practical applications of storytelling. In this panel, she will argue that igniting LIS research on story as a fundamental information form has implications for understanding collective information experiences, how information and story contribute to belief and belonging, and story as misinformation that threatens societal resilience

Hygiene in the home: relating bugs and behaviour.

Much infectious intestinal disease (IID) arises in the home environment. If programmes to prevent infection are to be effective it is essential to both identify the particular practices that risk disease transmission, and to understand the reasons for these practices. An in-depth, multidisciplinary study of carer and child hygiene in the domestic environment in the Wirral, UK, employed structured observation, surface swabbing for polio vaccine virus and enteric marker organisms, semi-structured interviews, projective interviews and focus group discussions. Observations revealed that child carers washed hands with soap after changing a dirty nappy on 42% of occasions, and that one in five toilet users did not wash hands with soap afterwards. Microbiological samples were taken from household surfaces at sites thought likely to be involved in the transfer of faecal material. 15% of bathroom samples showed contamination with polio vaccine virus. Nappy changing took place mainly in living rooms. Contact with living room surfaces and objects during nappy changing was frequent and evidence of faecal contamination was found in 12% of living room samples. Evidence of faecal contamination was also found in kitchens, again on surfaces thought likely to be involved in the transmission of faeces (taps and soap dispensers). Key factors motivating hygiene were the desire to give a good impression to others, protection of the child and aesthetics. In this setting, the particular risk practices to be addressed included washing hands with soap after stool and nappy contact and preventing the transfer of pathogenic organisms to the kitchen. The occasion of the birth of a child may be a privileged moment for the promotion of safer home hygiene practices. Using polio vaccine virus as an indicator of faecal contamination produces results that could be used in large-scale studies of household disease transmission. A better understanding of the household transmission of the agents of IID using multidisciplinary methods is needed if effective hygiene promotion programmes are to be designed