Small business owners\u27 measures of success

Small business plays a significant part in the economy of all nations because of its revenue contribution and as a generator of employment. In the Australian context, small businesses account for 85% of all businesses, employ 40% of the total workforce and contribute $75 billion annually to Industry Gross Product. All of these numerical indicators highlight the financial importance of small business, which is also how small business success has traditionally been measured. These traditional success measures have been by increases in financial performance criteria, such as return on investment, turnover or profit, or by increases in number of staff

Pregnancy, prison and perinatal outcomes in New South Wales, Australia: a retrospective cohort study using linked health data

BACKGROUND Studies from the United States and the United Kingdom have found that imprisoned women are less likely to experience poorer maternal and perinatal outcomes than other disadvantaged women. This population-based study used both community controls and women with a history of incarceration as a control group, to investigate whether imprisoned pregnant women in New South Wales, Australia, have improved maternal and perinatal outcomes. METHODS Retrospective cohort study using probabilistic record linkage of routinely collected data from health and corrective services in New South Wales, Australia. Comparison of the maternal and perinatal outcomes of imprisoned pregnant women aged 18-44 years who gave birth between 2000-2006 with women who were (i) imprisoned at a time other than pregnancy, and (ii) community controls. OUTCOMES OF INTEREST onset of labour, method of birth, pre-term birth, low birthweight, Apgar score, resuscitation, neonatal hospital admission, perinatal death. RESULTS Babies born to women who were imprisoned during pregnancy were significantly more likely to be born pre-term, have low birthweight, and be admitted to hospital, compared with community controls. Pregnant prisoners did not have significantly better outcomes than other similarly disadvantaged women (those with a history of imprisonment who were not imprisoned during pregnancy). CONCLUSIONS In contrast to the published literature, we found no evidence that contact with prison health services during pregnancy was a "therapunitive" intervention. We found no association between imprisonment during pregnancy and improved perinatal outcomes for imprisoned women or their neonates. A history of imprisonment remained the strongest predictor of poor perinatal outcomes, reflecting the relative health disadvantage experienced by this population of women.This work was undertaken with funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. Project Grant ID 457515

A Lattice Test of 1/N_c Baryon Mass Relations

1/N_c baryon mass relations are compared with lattice simulations of baryon masses using different values of the light-quark masses, and hence different values of SU(3) flavor-symmetry breaking. The lattice data clearly display both the 1/N_c and SU(3) flavor-symmetry breaking hierarchies. The validity of 1/N_c baryon mass relations derived without assuming approximate SU(3) flavor-symmetry also can be tested by lattice data at very large values of the strange quark mass. The 1/N_c expansion constrains the form of discretization effects; these are suppressed by powers of 1/N_c by taking suitable combinations of masses. This 1/N_c scaling is explicitly demonstrated in the present work.Comment: 13 pages, 20 figures; v2 version to be published in PR

Narrative As Communication Activism: Research Relationships In Social Justice Projects

When they talk about CASA or the project, Deb and Elizabeth use the words “we, our, or us,” not “them or they.” Deb and Elizabeth are part of CASA because they understand us. They get it. Lots of people study domestic violence, but they were the first researchers interested in us, the workers. We felt validated because university researchers thought what we did was important, and they asked us to help them understand our work. They didn’t lecture us; they listened to us. These are some of the staff’s observations about our participation in the University Community Initiative Project (UCI), a grant-funded research collaboration between Community Action Stops Abuse (CASA) and the University of South Florida’s (USF) Communication and Sociology Departments. CASA is a community service organization located in St. Petersburg, Florida that advocates for victims and survivors of domestic violence by providing both emergency assistance and long-term support. USF is a large, metropolitan, state-supported university that seeks to connect with its surrounding community by forging partnerships designed to assist with social problems

Demonstrating Collegiality: A Co-Constructed Narrative Inquiry

“Demonstrating Collegiality: A Co-Constructed Narrative Inquiry” seeks to define a collegial relationship through the experiences of two first year doctoral students at a large state-supported university. The techniques used to develop the co-constructed narrative parallel the authors’ development of a collaborative relationship. Using autoethnographic essays and interactive interviews, the authors co-construct several narratives that describe the process of moving from a friendly, social relationship to a scholarly, collaborative relationship, as well as the process of moving from peer reviewers to co-authors. An introductory narrative frames the paper; each of the “interior” narratives is accompanied by an extensive analytic introduction and the interpretation section is presented as a co-constructed narrative of the interpretive process. The authors attempt to categorize shared characteristics and values that were important to their development of a collegial relationship

Auditory experience modulates frontoparietal theta activity serving fluid intelligence

Children who are hard of hearing are at risk for developmental language and academic delays compared with children with normal hearing. Some work suggests that high-order cognitive function, including fluid intelligence, may relate to language and academic outcomes in children with hearing loss, but findings in these studies have been mixed and to date, there have been no studies of the wholebrain neural dynamics serving fluid intelligence in the context of hearing loss. To this end, this study sought to identify the impact of hearing loss and subsequent hearing aid use on the neural dynamics serving abstract reasoning in children who are hard of hearing relative to children with normal hearing using magnetoencephalography. We found significant elevations in occipital and parietal theta activity during early stimulus evaluation in children who are hard of hearing relative to normal-hearing peers. In addition, we found that greater hearing aid use was significantly related to reduced activity throughout the fronto-parietal network. Notably, there were no differences in alpha dynamics between groups during later-stage processing nor did alpha activity correlate with hearing aid use. These cross-sectional data suggest that differences in auditory experience lead to widespread alterations in the neural dynamics serving initial stimulus processing in fluid intelligence in children

Medication adherence in patients with myotonic dystrophy and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Myotonic dystrophy (DM) and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) are the two most common adult muscular dystrophies and have progressive and often disabling manifestations. Higher levels of medication adherence lead to better health outcomes, especially important to patients with DM and FSHD because of their multisystem manifestations and complexity of care. However, medication adherence has not previously been studied in a large cohort of DM type 1 (DM1), DM type 2 (DM2), and FSHD patients. The purpose of our study was to survey medication adherence and disease manifestations in patients enrolled in the NIH-supported National DM and FSHD Registry. The study was completed by 110 DM1, 49 DM2, and 193 FSHD patients. Notable comorbidities were hypertension in FSHD (44 %) and DM2 (37 %), gastroesophageal reflux disease in DM1 (24 %) and DM2 (31 %) and arrhythmias (29 %) and thyroid disease (20 %) in DM1. Each group reported high levels of adherence based on regimen complexity, medication costs, health literacy, side effect profile, and their beliefs about treatment. Only dysphagia in DM1 was reported to significantly impact medication adherence. Approximately 35 % of study patients reported polypharmacy (taking 6 or more medications). Of the patients with polypharmacy, the DM1 cohort was significantly younger (mean 55.0 years) compared to DM2 (59.0 years) and FSHD (63.2 years), and had shorter disease duration (mean 26 years) compared to FSHD (26.8 years) and DM2 (34.8 years). Future research is needed to assess techniques to ease pill swallowing in DM1 and to monitor polypharmacy and potential drug interactions in DM and FSHD

Australian SMEs: Waste sent to landfill

Landfill waste has a negative impact on the environment and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are believed to be significant contributors. There is little government or scholarly research, however, quantifying the collective volume of waste SMEs send to landfill. The limited studies instead measure total volumes (landfill and recycling combined) and/or do not distinguish between specific waste streams (e.g. wood) and subcategories (e.g. dust). This paper contributes to knowledge by reconceptualising SME waste into subcategories and by measuring landfill volumes. It presents findings from 404 Australian SMEs which found that, in descending order, cardboard, paper, plastic wrap, wood dust and particleboard were the subcategories these SMEs sent to landfill in the greatest volumes. It also argues that this reconceptualisation and associated data collection protocols have the potential to enable scholars and policymakers to determine the waste subcategories to which SMEs contribute most, formulate targeted interventions and research/evaluate environmental outcomes

Effective Remediation in Master’s-Level Counseling Students

Despite evidence that remediation is effective, little is known about counselor educators’ experience with remediation. In this consensual qualitative study, authors interviewed counselor educators (N=11) to better understand remedial practices and identify effective strategies. Findings have implications for the remediation of master’s-level students in counselor education