The importance of psychological well-being in organisational settings: moving beyond the pleasure principle

In contrast to the emphasis on affective states as components of Subjective Well-Being (SWB), the Psychological Well-Being (PWB) approach considers the role of personal resources, such as mastery and efficacy beliefs, a sense of autonomy, positive relatedness with others, and self acceptance. This study of 679 high-school teachers was based on the Organisational Health Research Framework and compared the contribution of PWB, personality and organisational climate to the prediction of SWB and organisational well-being. PWB was identified as a significant predictor of SWB even after controlling for demographic characteristics, organisational climate and personality variables with 46% of the variance in PA and 47% of the variance in NA explained. In addition, PWB contributed uniquely to the prediction of school morale and school distress with the overall set of predictors accounting for 69% of the variance in school morale and 66% of the variance in school distress. Individual interventions which promote PWB components would appear to be a most important avenue by which to improve employee SWB, while organisational interventions that focus on improving the organisational climate should have greater impact on organisational well-bein

Deriving prevalence estimates of depressive symptoms throughout middle and old age in those living in the community

BACKGROUND: There is considerable debate about the prevalence of depression in old age. Epidemiological surveys and clinical studies indicate mixed evidence for the association between depression and increasing age. We examined the prevalence of probable depression in the middle aged to the oldest old in a project designed specifically to investigate the aging process. METHODS: Community-living participants were drawn from several Australian longitudinal studies of aging that contributed to the Dynamic Analyses to Optimise Ageing (DYNOPTA) project. Different depression scales from the contributing studies were harmonized to create a binary variable that reflected "probable depression" based on existing cut-points for each harmonized scale. Weighted prevalence was benchmarked to the Australian population which could be compared with findings from the 1997 and 2007 National Surveys of Mental Health and Well-Being (NSMHWB). RESULTS: In the DYNOPTA project, females were more likely to report probable depression. This was consistent across age levels. Both NSMHWB surveys and DYNOPTA did not report a decline in the likelihood of reporting probable depression for the oldest old in comparison with mid-life. CONCLUSIONS: Inconsistency in the reports of late-life depression prevalence in previous epidemiological studies may be explained by either the exclusion and/or limited sampling of the oldest old. DYNOPTA addresses these limitations and the results indicated no change in the likelihood of reporting depression with increasing age. Further research should extend these findings to examine within-person change in a longitudinal context and control for health covariates.NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia

Circadian Variation of Brain Histamine in Goldfish

Teleosts may make an excellent model to study brain histamine function. Fishes are phylogenetically closer to the basic vertebrate blueprint than higher vertebrates. They appear to have a simpler histaminergic system in terms of central nervous system distribution and, contrary to higher vertebrates, brain histamine appears to be strictly neuronal. In this preliminary study, we examined circadian variation of brain histamine in goldfish, Carassius auratus, as this neurotransmitter correlates with circadian behavior of some mammals. Two groups of juvenile goldfish were held in 24 60L aquaria, six fish per aquarium, on reversed photoperiods; L:D 12:12 with light onset either at 0700 or 1900 h. Fish were sampled every 4 h. At a sampling time, all the fish in a tank were taken; each sampling, for both groups, was done in replicate. Brain histamine was determined by immunoassay. There was a significant circadian variation in histamine on both photoperiod regimes with the highest levels during the photophase. These results support the hypothesis of an early phylogenic role for histamine in vertebrate circadian physiology

Do Hospitals Cross-Subsidize?

Despite its salience as a regulatory tool to ensure the delivery of unprofitable medical services, cross-subsidization of services within hospital systems has been notoriously difficult to detect and quantify. We use repeated shocks to a profitable service in the market for hospital-based medical care to test for cross-subsidization of unprofitable services. Using patient-level data from general short-term hospitals in Arizona and Colorado before and after entry by cardiac specialty hospitals, we study how incumbent hospitals adjusted their provision of three uncontested services that are widely considered to be unprofitable. We estimate that the hospitals most exposed to entry reduced their provision of psychiatric, substance-abuse, and trauma care services at a rate of about one uncontested-service admission for every four cardiac admissions they stood to lose. Although entry by single-specialty hospitals may adversely affect the provision of unprofitable uncontested services, these findings warrant further evaluation of service-line cross-subsidization as a means to finance them

Global epidemiology of vasculitis.

The many forms of vasculitis are characterized by inflammation of blood vessels, leading to potentially long-term sequelae including vision loss, aneurysm formation and kidney failure. Accurate estimation of the incidence and prevalence has been hampered by the absence of reliable diagnostic criteria and the rarity of these conditions; however, much progress has been made over the past two decades, although data are still lacking from many parts of the world including the Indian subcontinent, China, Africa and South America. Giant cell arteritis occurs in those aged 50 years and over and seems to mainly affect persons of northern European ancestry, whereas Takayasu arteritis occurs mainly in those aged under 40 years. By contrast, Kawasaki disease mainly occurs in children aged under 5 years and is most common in children of Asian ancestry, and IgA vasculitis occurs in children and adolescents. Although much less common than giant cell arteritis, the different forms of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis are being increasingly recognized in most populations and occur more frequently with increasing age. Behçet syndrome occurs most commonly along the ancient silk road between Europe and China. Much work needs to be done to better understand the influence of ethnicity, geographical location, environment and social factors on the development of vasculitis

B794: Weight Characteristics of Maine Adults

Obesity is an issue of state and national magnitude. Obesity is a form of malnutrition in which the total contribution of calories from the diet exceeds the body\u27s needs to such a degree that the physiological mechanism for food intake control (appetite/hunger) becomes imprecise and allows too much food to be consumed (overcompensation of energy intake). This report expresses height and weight characteristics of Maine adults on a county basis (weighted means) for use locally. Weight distributions are compared according to both ideal weights and average weights of the national population. Comparisons are also made with respect to grouped urban and rural counties.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1114/thumbnail.jp

Do Hospitals Cross Subsidize?

Cross-subsidies are often considered the principal mechanism through which hospitals provide unprofitable care. Yet, hospitals’ reliance on and extent of cross-subsidization are difficult to establish. We exploit entry by cardiac specialty hospitals as an exogenous shock to incumbent hospitals’ profitability and in turn to their ability to cross-subsidize unprofitable services. Using patient-level data from general short-term hospitals in Arizona and Colorado before and after entry, we find that the hospitals most exposed to entry reduced their provision of services considered to be unprofitable (psychiatric, substance- abuse, and trauma care) and expanded their admissions for neurosurgery, a highly profitable service.

WORKPLACE ORGANIZATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES: THE RETAIL FOOD INDUSTRY

Most retail food firms adhere to traditional human resources management practices, with employees enjoying little involvement in decision-making and little participation in company financial returns. More than one tenth of non-food firms have innovative human resources systems, with much individual and group involvement in decision-making and financial returns, but only a minuscule proportion of food firms have such systems. At the other end of the spectrum, more than one-fifth of food stores and eating and drinking places (and nearly one-third of food wholesale firms) have traditional systems, as compared to only one-tenth of non-food firms. The tasks and the human resource practices typical of retail food firms are consistent with each other. Core employees in these firms perform tasks that are generally simpler and less variable than those in other industries, and the firms' human resource practices generally give workers less autonomy and incentives than those in other industries. Whether the structure and variability of tasks are the result of a particular business strategy or adoption of a certain technology is not known. Which came first, these simple tasks, the workers who perform them, or these human resource policies is similarly unknown. We arrive at these conclusions through analysis of an original data set composed of 806 Minnesota firms, including 211 food firms, which allows us to characterize the change in human resource practices since the early 1980s, and to examine differences in the organization of work across companies. Work organization and human resource practices in the retail food industry have changed substantially, although the change has been less pronounced than in most other industries.Labor and Human Capital, Marketing,

A catalog of Nearby Poor Clusters of Galaxies

A catalog of 732 optically selected, nearby poor clusters of galaxies covering the entire sky north of $\rm -3^{\circ}$ declination is presented. The poor clusters, called WBL clusters, were identified as concentrations of 3 or more galaxies with photographic magnitudes brighter than 15.7, possessing a galaxy surface overdensity of $10^{4/3}$. These criteria are consistent with those used in the identification of the original Yerkes poor clusters, and this new catalog substantially increases the sample size of such objects. These poor clusters cover the entire range of galaxy associations up to and including Abell clusters, systematically including poor and rich galaxy systems spanning over three orders of magnitude in the cluster mass function. As a result, this new catalog contains a greater diversity of richness and structures than other group catalogs, such as the Hickson or Yerkes catalogs. The information on individual galaxies includes redshifts and cross-references to other galaxy catalogs. The entries for the clusters include redshift (where available) and cross-references to other group and cluster catalogs.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, + one 20-page landscape table, accepted for publication in A