Sick leave certification: a unique perspective on frequency and duration of episodes - a complete record of sickness certification in a defined population of employees in Malta

BACKGROUND: In Malta, sickness certificates are needed from the first day of illness, and are issued by family physicians (FPs) either employed by the government primary health care system, self-employed in private practice, or employed by an employer for this purpose alone. The latter system, when applied by the employer, is compulsory. In order to contribute to the debate on the role of the FP in this context, electronic data collected by a group of company-employed FPs was used to study the phenomenon of sickness certification. This database is a complete record of the selected employees' sick leave certification during the study period. METHODS: Data collected by company-employed FPs from a defined population was used: all employees of selected Maltese companies served by a group of FPs. The database included episode-based data from home visits over three years (01/01/1997 – 31/12/1999), by 9 company-appointed FPs regarding 421 employees of five companies. RESULTS: 3015 episodes of sickness absenteeism, with an average duration of 2.9 days, were documented. Employees who did intensive manual work had relatively higher rates. Furthermore, a relatively higher incidence of work injury, sprains and strains, anxiety and depression and low back pain as found in manual workers, and in male workers. This trend was shown to be statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of sick-leave certification in Malta is comparable to that in other European countries, but the average duration of certificates is much less than reported in other studies that generally did not include data on short-term illness and certification. This has important implications on future research in the field. A number of common disorders were found to be significantly more prevalent causes of sickness certification in manual workers, amongst them anxiety and depression

The genome, transcriptome, and proteome of the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae: Evolutionary signatures of a pathogenic lifestyle

The entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae has been widely used for the biological control of insect pests. It shares a symbiotic relationship with the bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila, and is emerging as a genetic model to study symbiosis and pathogenesis. We obtained a high-quality draft of the nematode’s genome comprising 84,613,633 bp in 347 scaffolds, with an N50 of 1.24 Mb. To improve annotation, we sequenced both short and long RNA and conducted shotgun proteomic analyses. S. carpocapsae shares orthologous genes with other parasitic nematodes that are absent in the free-living nematode C. elegans, it has ncRNA families that are enriched in parasites, and expresses proteins putatively associated with parasitism and pathogenesis, suggesting an active role for the nematode during the pathogenic process. Host and parasites might engage in a co-evolutionary arms-race dynamic with genes participating in their interaction showing signatures of positive selection. Our analyses indicate that the consequence of this arms race is better characterized by positive selection altering specific functions instead of just increasing the number of positively selected genes, adding a new perspective to these co-evolutionary theories. We identified a protein, ATAD-3, that suggests a relevant role for mitochondrial function in the evolution and mechanisms of nematode parasitism

Evaluation of severe accident risks and the potential for risk reduction: Surry Power Station, Unit 1: Draft report for comment

The Severe Accident Risk Reduction Program (SARRP) has completed a rebaselining of the risks to the public from a particular pressurized water reactor with a subatmospheric containment (Surry, Unit 1). Emphasis was placed on determining the magnitude and character of the uncertainties, rather than focusing on a point estimate. The risk-reduction potential of a set of proposed safety option backfits was also studied, and their costs and benefits were also evaluated. It was found that the risks from internal events are generally lower than previously evaluated in the Reactor Safety Study (RSS). However, certain unresolved issues (such as direct containment heating) caused the top of the uncertainty band to appear at a level that is comparable with the RSS point estimate. None of the postulated safety options appears to be cost effective for the Surry power plant. This work supports the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's assessment of severe accidents in NUREG-1150

A qualitative study of the impact of the implementation of advanced access in primary healthcare on the working lives of general practice staff

Peer reviewe

Delivering and Assessing Music Reference Service

The nature of music collections and their use means that patrons have always required specialized guidance from librarians to access what they need. Currently, library patrons' expectations are growing as collections and their delivery modes evolve. Music reference services must adapt to effectively address these needs. This article examines the challenges to delivering effective music reference service, the basics of reference assessment, and how assessment models such LibQual+, the Wisconsin-Ohio Reference Evaluation Program, and the Reference Effort Assessment Data Scale can help librarians build patron-centered music reference services.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe