Public Understanding of Law Survey: Everyday Problems and Legal Need

This first volume updates the broad picture of access to justice and legal need, explores how justiciable problems are experienced, what people do about them, and how they progress and conclude

A variational approach to strongly damped wave equations

We discuss a Hilbert space method that allows to prove analytical well-posedness of a class of linear strongly damped wave equations. The main technical tool is a perturbation lemma for sesquilinear forms, which seems to be new. In most common linear cases we can furthermore apply a recent result due to Crouzeix--Haase, thus extending several known results and obtaining optimal analyticity angle.Comment: This is an extended version of an article appeared in \emph{Functional Analysis and Evolution Equations -- The G\"unter Lumer Volume}, edited by H. Amann et al., Birkh\"auser, Basel, 2008. In the latest submission to arXiv only some typos have been fixe

Identification of publicly available data sources to inform the conduct of Health Technology Assessment in India

Background: Health technology assessment (HTA) provides a globally-accepted and structured approach to synthesising evidence for cost and clinical effectiveness alongside ethical and equity considerations to inform evidence-based priorities. India is one of the most recent countries to formally commit to institutionalising HTA as an integral component of the heath resource allocation decision-making process. The effective conduct of HTA depends on the availability of reliable data. Methods: We draw from our experience of collecting, synthesizing, and analysing health-related datasets in India and internationally, to highlight the complex requirements for undertaking HTA, and explore the availability of such data in India. We first outlined each of the core data components required for the conduct of HTA, and their availability in India, drawing attention to where data can be accessed, and different ways in which researchers can overcome the challenges of missing or low quality data. Results: We grouped data into the following categories: clinical efficacy; cost; epidemiology; quality of life; service use/consumption; and equity. We identified numerous large local data sources containing epidemiological information. There was a marked absence of other locally-collected data necessary for informing HTA, particularly data relating to cost, service use, and quality of life. Conclusions: The introduction of HTA into the health policy space in India provides an opportunity to comprehensively assess the availability and quality of health data capture across the country. While epidemiological information is routinely collected across India, other data inputs necessary for HTA are not readily available. This poses a significant bottleneck to the efficient generation and deployment of HTA into the health decision space. Overcoming these data gaps by strengthening the routine collection of comprehensive and verifiable health data will have important implications not only for embedding economic analyses into the priority setting process, but for strengthening the health system as a whole

A voice for change? Trust relationships between ombudsmen, individuals and public service providers

There has been a debate for years about what the role of the ombudsman is. This article examines a key component of the role, to promote trust in public services and government. To be able to do this, however, an ombudsman needs to be perceived as legitimate and be trusted by a range of stakeholders, including the user. This article argues that three key relationships in a person’s complaint journey can build trust in an institution, and must therefore be understood as a system. The restorative justice framework is adapted to conceptualize this trust model as a novel approach to understanding the institution from the perspective of its users. Taking two public sector ombudsmen as examples, the article finds that voice and trust need to be reinforced through the relationships in a consumer journey to manage individual expectations, prevent disengagement, and thereby promote trust in the institution, in public service providers, and in government

Entry, Exit, and the Determinants of Market Structure

This paper estimates a dynamic, structural model of entry and exit in an oligopolistic industry and uses it to quantify the determinants of market structure and long-run firm values for two U.S. service industries, dentists and chiropractors. Entry costs faced by potential entrants, fixed costs faced by incumbent producers, and the toughness of short-run price competition are all found to be important determinants of long-run firm values, firm turnover, and market structure. Estimates for the dentist industry allow the entry cost to differ for geographic markets that were designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas and in which entry was subsidized. The estimated mean entry cost is 11 percent lower in these markets. Using simulations, we compare entry-cost versus fixed-cost subsidies and find that entry-cost subsidies are less expensive per additional firm

Lighting the fuse: Cultivating the masculine physics habitus – a case study of Victor aged 10-18

This chapter presents a longitudinal case study analysis of Victor, a young man who was interviewed from the ages of 10–19, together with his mother, Sam, and who went on to study for a degree in astrophysics. We apply a Bourdieusian conceptual lens to the data, to explore how interactions of capital, habitus and field combine to possibilise Victor and his trajectory to being/becoming a physicist. We also identify specific alignments of his habitus and capital with dominant notions of masculinity and ‘cleverness’ that are demanded and normalised within physics and which, we argue, are key to the reproduction of the elite nature of physics

Time Aggregation and State Dependence in Welfare Receipt

Dynamic discrete-choice models have been an important tool in studies of state dependence in benefit receipt. An assumption of such models is that benefit receipt sequences follow a conditional Markov process. This property has implications for how estimated period-to-period benefit transition probabilities should relate when receipt processes are aggregated over time. This paper assesses whether the conditional Markov property holds in welfare benefit receipt dynamics using high-quality monthly data from Norwegian administrative records. We find that the standard conditional Markov model is seriously misspecified. Estimated state dependence is affected substantially by the chosen time unit of analysis, with the average treatment effect of past benefit receipt increasing with the level of aggregation. The model can be improved considerably by permitting richer types of benefit dynamics: Allowing for differences between the processes for entries and persistence we find important disparities especially in terms of the effects of permanent unobserved characteristics. Extending the model further, we obtain strong evidence for duration and occurrence dependence in benefit receipt. Based on our preferred model, the month-to-month persistence probability in benefit receipt for a first-time entrant is 37 percentage points higher than the entry rate of an individual without previous benefit receipt. Over a 12-month period, the average treatment effect is about 5 percentage points.Research Council of Norway (194339) INET grant INO1200010, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford Martin SchoolpublishedVersio

Dynamics of HIV-1 Assembly and Release

Assembly and release of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) occur at the plasma membrane of infected cells and are driven by the Gag polyprotein. Previous studies analyzed viral morphogenesis using biochemical methods and static images, while dynamic and kinetic information has been lacking until very recently. Using a combination of wide-field and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, we have investigated the assembly and release of fluorescently labeled HIV-1 at the plasma membrane of living cells with high time resolution. Gag assembled into discrete clusters corresponding to single virions. Formation of multiple particles from the same site was rarely observed. Using a photoconvertible fluorescent protein fused to Gag, we determined that assembly was nucleated preferentially by Gag molecules that had recently attached to the plasma membrane or arrived directly from the cytosol. Both membrane-bound and cytosol derived Gag polyproteins contributed to the growing bud. After their initial appearance, assembly sites accumulated at the plasma membrane of individual cells over 1–2 hours. Assembly kinetics were rapid: the number of Gag molecules at a budding site increased, following a saturating exponential with a rate constant of ∼5×10−3 s−1, corresponding to 8–9 min for 90% completion of assembly for a single virion. Release of extracellular particles was observed at ∼1,500±700 s after the onset of assembly. The ability of the virus to recruit components of the cellular ESCRT machinery or to undergo proteolytic maturation, or the absence of Vpu did not significantly alter the assembly kinetics