Cancer mortality in East and Southeast Asian migrants to New South Wales, Australia, 1975–1995

Routinely collected data for New South Wales were used to analyse cancer mortality in migrants born in East or Southeast Asia according to duration of residence in Australia. A case-control approach compared deaths from cancer at particular sites with deaths from all other cancers, adjusting for age, sex and calendar period. Compared with the Australian-born, these Asian migrants had a 30-fold higher risk of dying from nasopharyngeal cancer in the first 2 decades of residence, falling to ninefold after 30 years, and for deaths from liver cancer, a 12-fold risk in the first 2 decades, falling to threefold after 30 years. The initial lower risk from colorectal, breast or prostate cancers later converged towards the Australian-born level, the change being apparent in the third decade after migration. The relative risk of dying from lung cancer among these Asian migrants was above unity for each category of duration of stay for women, but at or below unity for men, with no trend in risk over time. An environmental or lifestyle influence for nasopharyngeal and liver cancers is suggested as well as for cancers of colon/rectum, breast and prostate. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Some emerging demographic issues on Australia's teaching academic workforce

© Palgrave MacmillanLike other OECD nations, Australia is facing a crisis in the academic staff of its universities over the next two decades. This is a function of several factors, among which demographic elements are especially significant. The academic workforce of Australia is characterized by three distinct demographic features — age heaping, a concentration in older ages, and gender imbalance. The first two are a result of rapid expansion in the late 1960s and 1970s when the numbers of students expanded exponentially with the passage of the post-war baby boom cohorts into the university entrance ages and greatly increased participation rates. This, together with increases in student/staff ratios and perhaps the increased attractiveness of alternative vocations, has created a dearth of young academics. The impending and actual retirement of the bulge means that there will be a tightening of the academic labor market and an increase in demand for university staff unprecedented for three decades. This will occur in a context where the number of Australian graduates moving to foreign universities is increasing rapidly as a result of further internationalization of the labor market. Some of the challenges and opportunities that this presents are discussed.Graeme Hug

Social status, social position and social class in post-war British society

In this chapter I consider the question of why the first substantial survey based empirical investigation of social mobility in Britain was conceived not through the lens of social class mobility but in terms of movements between social status groups. This presents itself as a puzzle because the principal investigator, David Glass was, arguably, an intellectual Marxist who might reasonably be thought to have some sympathy with a class framework. In the course of answering this question I discuss the web of personnel interconnections that contributed to Glass’ formation as a sociologist during the 1930s. I also uncover a wholly unexpected connection between his inquiry and a rather different tradition of empirical investigation with its roots in the 1930s—Mass Observation

A Compact Lowpass Filter with Ultra Wide Stopband using Stepped Impedance Resonator

In this paper, a compact asymmetric-shaped microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) using a stepped impedance resonator is presented. An ultra wide stopband with high attenuation in the stopband region, within very small circuit area is achieved for the proposed filter using novel asymmetric structures for resonator and suppressor. The transmission zeros of the resonators can be adjusted as a function of high impedance and low impedance microstrip lines, and due to the asymmetric structure, the proposed suppressing cell can be located within the resonator structure without occupying a large area. For verification, a 2.92 GHz LPF is designed and fabricated. The experimental results, in comparison with the other LPFs, show that the proposed LPF has significant advantages in the stopband characteristics with acceptable sharp roll off. The measured passband insertion loss is below 0.1 dB, and the rejection band over -20 dB is obtained from 3.42 GHz to 36.2 GHz. The size of filter corresponds to compact electrical size of 0.156 λg × 0.128 λg, where λg is the guided wavelength at 2.92 GHz. Also, the maximum variation of the group delay in 80 percent of the passband region is only about 0.2 ns

Childlessness Among Men in Australia

Childlessness, Fertility, Men, Fatherhood, Australia, Family background, Work, Occupation, Marital status,

State of the art and future challenges of interregional migration empirical research in Oceania

With an estimated eight million international immigrants, Oceania is a region with the highest proportion of immigrants worldwide. The flow of migrants between Australia and New Zealand is especially large given their geographic proximity, cultural similarities, and a shared history as part of the British Commonwealth. This chapter places a particular focus on the interregional flows in Australia and New Zealand given that they represent the two most popular immigration destinations in Oceania. We discuss how immigration policy in both nations are likely to continue to focus on attracting and retaining immigrants that are selected based on their skills in an attempt to address persistent skill shortages and to ameliorate the effects of ageing populations. The challenge for regional scientists, population geographers and labour economists will be to identify sources of data through which we can better understand the migratory pathways through which both domestic and new international arrivals pass. Understanding these complex pathways will be the first step to unveiling the factors that underpin interregional migrations and how these shape outcomes for both individuals and local labour markets