Heterogeneity in Alcohol Consumption: The Case of Beer, Wine and Spirits in Australia

This paper examines Australians participation in beer, wine and spirits consumption using a trivariate probit model and unit-record data from the National Drug Strategy Household Surveys. It estimates the effects of social, economic and demographic factors on an individuals decisions of alcohol participation. The trivariate probit formulation allows for the potential correlation across the demand for the three products through unobserved personal characteristics. All three beverages are shown to have negative own-price elasticities and to be substitutes in participation. An alarming proportion of young Australians are found to be drinking spirits regularly due to the increasing popularity of pre-mixed sweet drinks.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

What Do the Bingers Drink? Microeconometric Evidence on Negative Externatilities of Alcohol Consumption by Beverage Types

The recent debate on alcohol tax reform and recommendations from the Henry Tax Review in Australia have highlighted the need for quantifying externalities of excessive alcohol consumption by beverage types. This paper presents micro-level information from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys to examine the association between risky drinking behaviour, drinker characteristics, health and labour market status, and types of alcohol beverages consumed. Drinkers of regular strength beer (RSB) and RTDs in a can (RTDC) have the highest incidences of heavy bingeing, and low alcohol beer and fortified and bottled wine least likely. Bottled spirits (BS), RSB and RTDC are most likely linked to risky behaviour such as property damage and physical abuse under alcohol influence. All three spirit products are overwhelmingly the favourable drinks for the underage and young drinkers. Risky drinking behaviour is not found to be strictly associated with the alcohol strength of the products.Alcohol consumption, alcohol tax, binge drinking, beer, wine and spirits

Preserving the Linguistic Diversity of Uttarakhand: Role of Language and Education Policies

The People’s Linguistic Survey of India has listed at least 13 languages from Uttarakhand, none of which are a part of Indian Constitution’s Eight Schedule. However, two of them (Kumaoni and Garhwali) are a part of UNESCO’s list of endangered languages. Garhwali is spoken by 23 lakh people in Uttarkahnd, while Kumaoni is the native language of about 20 lakh people. More than 40% of the state's population communicate using native languages and yet Hindi is the only official language of Uttarakhand. This research article seeks to examine the language and educational policies at both state and national level, their goals, implementation, and effectiveness in supporting the regional languages of Uttarakhand

Seasonal status of density of phytoplanktons and zooplanktons in Gomti river of Lucknow (U.P.), India

Biodiversity of river Gomti is heavily affected by pollution. Planktons are important biological parameters to access the pollution level. Zooplanktons are the source of food for higher organism and phytoplankton play important role in biosynthesis of organic material and influence the river ecosystem, aquatic food chain and water characteristic. The biological productivity as ecological indicator to identify the ecological quality of river Gomti. The phytoplankton density fluctuated maximum in between the range of (140-900 In/l) during monsoon season and minimum (40-140 In/l) during winter season. Zooplanktons were reported to be highest (168-220 In/l) during winter and lowest (114-155 In/l) during summer season. During study period the total of phytoplanktons (17 sp.) and zooplanktons (10 sp.) were noticed during different seasons. Present study concluded that seasonal differences of planktons density will help in further planning of water management and their use for beneficial purpose like agricultural, drinking for mankind

Seasonal status of density of phytoplanktons and zooplanktons in Gomti river of Lucknow (U.P.), India

Biodiversity of river Gomti is heavily affected by pollution. Planktons are important biological parameters to access the pollution level. Zooplanktons are the source of food for higher organism and phytoplankton play important role in biosynthesis of organic material and influence the river ecosystem, aquatic food chain and water characteristic. The biological productivity as ecological indicator to identify the ecological quality of river Gomti. The phytoplankton density fluctuated maximum in between the range of (140-900 In/l) during monsoon season and minimum (40-140 In/l) during winter season. Zooplanktons were reported to be highest (168-220 In/l) during winter and lowest (114-155 In/l) during summer season. During study period the total of phytoplanktons (17 sp.) and zooplanktons (10 sp.) were noticed during different seasons. Present study concluded that seasonal differences of planktons density will help in further planning of water management and their use for beneficial purpose like agricultural, drinking for mankind

Cancer biotherapy resource

`Cancer Biotherapy\u27 - as opposed to cancer chemotherapy- is the use of macromolecular, biological agents instead of organic chemicals or drugs to treat cancer. Biotherapy is a treatment modality that blocks the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific, targeted molecules needed for carcinogenesis and tumor growth instead of simply interfering with rapidly dividing cells as in chemotherapy1. In light to the much higher selectivity of biological agents than chemical agents for cancer cells over normal cells, there is a much less toxic side effect in biotherapy as compared to chemotherapy. As solid tumor cancer continues to be analyzed as a chronic condition, there is an absolute need for long-term treatment with minimal side effects. The International Society for Biological Therapy of Cancer, being the only available information database for cancer biotherapy, lacks some crucial information about various cancer biotherapy regimens and the information presented seemed unorganized and unsystematic making it difficult to search for results. With the increasing rate of cancer deaths across the world and biotherapy studies, it is acutely necessary to have a comprehensive curetted cancer biotherapy database. The database accessible to cancer patients and also should be a sounding board for scientific ideas by cancer researchers. The database/web server has information about main families of cancer biotherapy regimens to date, namely, 1.) Protein Kinase Inhibitors, 2.) Ras Pathway Inhibitors, 3.) Cell-Cycle Active Agents, 4.) MAbs (monoclonal antibodies), 5.) ADEPT (Antibody-Directed Enzyme Pro-Drug Therapy), 6.) Cytokines (interferons, interleukins, etc.), 7.) Anti-Angiogenesis Agents, 8.) Cancer Vaccines (peptides, proteins, DNA), 9.) Cell-based Immunotherapeutics, 10.) Gene Therapy, 11.) Hematopoietic Growth Factors, and 12.) Retinoids 13.) CAAT. For each biotherapy regimen, we will extract the following attributes in populating the database: (a.) Cancer type, (b.) Gene/s and gene product/s involved, (c.) Gene sequence (GenBank ID), (d.) Organs affected (e.) Chemo treatment, (f.) Reference papers, (g.) Clinical phase/stage, (h.) Survival rate (chemo. Vs. biother.), (i.) Clinical test center locations, (j.) Cost, (k.) Patient blog, (l.) Researcher blog, (m.) Future work. The database accessible to public through a website and had FAQs for making it understandable to the laymen and discussion page for researchers to express their views and ideas. In addition to information about the biotherapy regimens, the website is linked to other biologically significant databases like structural proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics, and lipidomics web servers. Also, the websites presented the news in the field of biotherapy and other links which are relevant from biotherapy point of view. The database attributes would be regularly updated for novel attributes as discoveries would be made

Alcohol Consumption in Australia: An Application of the Ordered Generalised Extreme Value Model

The adverse effects of excessive alcohol consumption are well-known. Of great concern to policy makers is to understand the potentially different drivers for consumers of different levels of alcohol consumption. Using unit record data from the Australian Drug Strategy Household Surveys, this paper estimates an Ordered Generalised Extreme Value model to identify the factors that influence differing levels of alcohol consumption. Unlike previous studies using inflexible approaches such as Ordered Probits/Logits or Multinomial Logits, the OGEV model is both flexible and consistent with random utility maximization. The results suggest that important drivers are: age; income; education; gender; and own and cross-pricDrug consumption, discrete ordered data, Ordered Generalised Extreme Value model, random utility maximisation, rational addiction.

Guest Comment: Leukaemia & Lymphoma Awareness Month

Leukaemia & Lymphoma Awareness Month Guest Comment by Dr. Preety Gupta, Reader, Swami Devi Dyal Hospital and Dental College, Barwala, Panchkula, Haryana, Indi