Assistive technology pricing: is it fair and reasonable?

Concerns about the price of assistive technology products (AT, also known as aids and equipment) arise regularly in public policy discourse and the media. These papers present the available evidence and essential contextual information regarding AT pricing in Australia.  Overview Concerns about the price of assistive technology products arise regularly in public policy discourse and the media. With the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Aged Care Reforms, clarity about the fairness (or not) of existing AT retail prices is central to ensuring effective AT public policy development and implementation for the one in ten Australians who rely on AT to do everyday tasks that others take for granted. Available evidence indicates that while AT can be expensive, it is in fact cheaper in Australia than in other comparable countries. Effective price comparisons require comparing like-with-like, not only in relation to the product but also services and other costs that are incorporated into retail prices. The Queensland Competition Authority recently compared like-with-like AT prices and found Australia was 24% lower than the best available overseas price when transportation to Australia was included in the calculation.  ATSA price comparisons using a different method produced similar results with Australian prices on average between 14-27% cheaper. Notwithstanding the general impression that the AT industry is about \u27aids and equipment, hardware and gadgets\u27, it is largely a service-based industry with an extensive range of services aimed at ensuring a good match between the individual and their AT incorporated into the retail price. The extent of these services is described in detail in the background paper. Yes, consumers can buy AT on the internet from internet-only AT sellers in the USA for about half the price of purchasing through a retail shop-front in Australia, but when transportation costs are factored in along with the lack of coverage by Australia\u27s strong consumer protection laws, the difficulty and costs of enforcing overseas warranties, and the purchaser carrying all responsibility for ensuring appropriateness of the AT for their needs; assembly/adjustment/customisation; sourcing spares, maintenance and repairs; training in safe use, etc. these may not be the bargains they appear to be. Particularly in relation to more complex AT such as a light-weight customised manual wheelchair for a very active person, a motorised wheelchair with customised seating and complex controls, or even something \u27simpler\u27 such as a hoist to help someone get in and out of bed, or a pressure care cushion, AT retailers typically trial and test a variety of products and options with the consumer and their therapist, with free in-home trials over a period of days or weeks commonplace to ensure the best available solution is achieved

Evaluation of a Byproduct from Hydrolyzed Porcine Small Intestines as an Ingredient in Pig Starters

Partial replacement of dried whey with dried hydrolysate of pig intestines resulted in a delayed positive growth performance response in three experiments. In weeks three and four, average daily gain and average daily feed intake were increased an average of 23.9 and 17.6%, respectively, by feeding intestinal hydrolysate in weeks one and two. The active component(s) in the product may speed the maturation of the pig’s ability to digest and/or assimilate nutrients

Alignment and Characterisation of Remote-Refocusing Systems

The technique of remote refocusing is used in optical microscopy to provide rapid axial scanning without mechanically perturbing the sample and in techniques such as oblique plane microscopy that build on remote refocusing to image a tilted plane within the sample. The magnification between the pupils of the primary (O1) and secondary (O2) microscope objectives of the remote-refocusing system has been shown previously by Mohanan and Corbett [J Microsc, 288(2):95-105 (2022)] to be crucial in obtaining the broadest possible remote-refocusing range. In this work, we performed an initial alignment of a remote-refocusing system and then studied the effect of axial misalignments of O1 and O2, axial misalignment of the primary tube lens (TL1) relative to the secondary tube lens (TL2), lateral misalignments of TL2 and changes in the focal length of TL2. For each instance of the setup, we measured the mean point spread function FWHMxy of 100 nm fluorescent beads, the normalised bead integrated fluorescence signal, and calculated the axial and lateral distortion of the system: all of these quantities were mapped over the remote-refocusing range and as a function of lateral image position. This allowed us to estimate the volume over which diffraction-limited performance is achieved and how this changes with the alignment of the system.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure

Fishery improvement projects: A voluntary, corporate “tool” not fit for the purpose of mitigating labour abuses and guaranteeing labour rights for workers

The recent development of a Human Rights and Social Responsibility Policy for fishery improvement projects (FIPs) has accelerated industry and NGO-led initiatives to address human and labour rights violations in seafood supply chains through FIPs. However, this brief communication demonstrates that FIPs’ social requirements, as currently constituted and reported, suffer from many of the same problems as other voluntary, market-based initiatives that fail to mitigate labour abuses. Examples of these shortcomings include the voluntarisation of what should be binding, international conventions and standards; moving benchmarks that lack meaning for workers; an absence of worker-defined remedy and recourse processes; and confusion around what actually constitutes a human rights due diligence process. In addition, social responsibility imperatives in FIPs present a new threat to the fight against labour abuses in supply chains in that they embrace and risk institutionalizing an ideology that moving towards, rather than complying with, fundamental human rights is acceptable

Contemporary political theorists in context

Charting the progression from the preoccupation with the boundaries of the modern state, through to the current debates on rights, identity and justice; the three sections of the book enable the ideas of significant political thinkers to unfold through a telling of the key political events that gave a social context for their thought: Section I: The Inter-War Debate: Weber, Gramsci and Schmitt Section II: Post-War Debates: Arendt, Oakeshott, De Beauvoir and Adorno Section III: Contemporary Debates: Rawls, Nozick, Kymlicka and Foucault Written in an accessible and concise format, features include: 'rewind' and 'fast-forward' indicators to easily guide students around the text discussion points, revision notes and further reading in each chapter informative text boxes to highlight key concepts, people and events. By exploring an often ignored relationship in political thought, the influence of thought upon historical change and the influence of historical change upon theory, this text delivers new and exciting angles from which to approach politics today. Contemporary Political Theorists in Context is essential reading for all students of social and political theory

Protect Your Home from Wildfire: Ember Awareness Checklist

Many communities in the western U.S. are fire-prone, as are many other areas in the world. These areas will always face wildfire, and will likely experience an increased number of extreme wildfire events in the future, resulting in substantial economic, social, and environmental impacts. Over the last 10 years, 3.4 to 10.1 million acres have burned annually in the U.S. In terms of area burned, 2017 has been one of the largest fire years in the last decade, with over 8.5 million acres burned across the U.S. (NIFC). Figure 1 shows the distribution of wildfires in the western U.S. in 2017. Unprecedented amounts of live and dead fuel, combined with warmer University of Arizona Cooperative Extension has also produced fire mitigation education materials to help communities understand how to coexist with wildfire. Please visit https:// extension.arizona.edu/pubs and type “wildfire” in the search box for specific Firewise® defensible space materials. This fact sheet was developed to help you and members of your community understand the danger of embers during a wildfire and take proactive steps to reduce the risk

Worker-less social responsibility: How the proliferation of voluntary labour governance tools in seafood marginalise the workers they claim to protect

In response to labour and human rights violations onboard fishing vessels, the private sector is increasingly relying on market-based solutions in the form of voluntary, non-governmental social governance tools to improve working conditions for fishers. While the proliferation of these tools is relatively recent in fishing, there is substantial evidence from other sectors that these voluntary standards fail to transform working conditions. Yet, there remains an insistence on using market-based solutions to mitigate labour abuses in fishing despite the problem being a market failure. Using a human and labour-rights based analytical paradigm that underpins worker-centric processes, we constructed objective criteria to assess several voluntary standards against. Failing to include workers and commit to meaningful remedy, findings from the analysis suggests these voluntary non-governmental social governance tools are not able to ensure that human and labour rights are respected in a way that is consistent with state and international regulation or rigorous human rights due diligence. As a result, there is an urgent need for a transformational shift in the sector away from a worker-less reactive and adaptive corporate social responsibility strategy of doing less harm toward a fundamental commitment to redistributing power through a worker-driven social responsibility paradigm