Free personal care for older people : a wider perspective on its costs

The paper comments on the so-called "Free Personal Care (FPC)" policy established in Scotland in 2002. FPC is the legal entitlement of people aged 65 and older, who have been assessed by the council as having personal care needs, to receive services that will assist them in their day-to-day activities. One view is that FPC may not be affordable in its current form because population ageing will increase dramatically the numbers eligible for assistance in the future. This paper discusses ways in which FPC may actually lower the total per-person cost of accommodating Scotland's ageing population

Behavioral risk profiles of homeschooled adolescents in the United States: a nationally representative examination of substance use related outcomes

BACKGROUND: The homeschool population continues to grow in size and now accounts for 3.4% of all students in the United States. OBJECTIVE: Given the heterogeneous nature of the population, this study examines the relationship between different types of homeschoolers and a number of substance use related outcomes. METHODS: To conduct this study, we used pooled data (2002–2013) from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Respondents aged 12–17 who reported they had been homeschooled at any time during the previous 12 months were classified as homeschoolers (N = 1,321). Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to identify latent subgroups of homeschoolers and multinomial regression was executed to assess the relationship between the subgroups and perceived substance use risk, availability, and past 12-month use. RESULTS: The LPA yielded four subgroups, which were summarized as (1) highly religious and engaged, (2) limited parental monitoring, (3) high parental warmth and support, and (4) secular permissive. Of these, the highly religious and engaged subgroup was the least likely to report using substances. CONCLUSION: The results underscore the variation that exists among homeschoolers and the importance of examining the relationship between different types of homeschoolers and outcomes of interest

The Origins of American Resource Abundance

American manufacturing exports became increasingly resource-intensive over the very period, roughly 1880-1920, during which the U.S. ascended to the position of world leadership in manufacturing. This paper challenges the simplistic view that the resource-intensity of manufacturing reflected the country's abundant geological endowment of mineral deposits. Instead, it shows that in the century following 1850 the U.S. exploited its natural resource potentials to a far greater extent than other countries and did so across virtually the entire range of industrial minerals. It argues that "natural resource abundance" was an endogenous, "socially constructed" condition that was not geologically pre-ordained. It examines the complex legal, institutional, technological and organizational adaptations that shaped the U.S. supply-responses to the expanding domestic and international industrial demands for minerals and mineral-products. It suggests that the existence of strong "positive feedbacks"--even in the exploitation of depletable resources--was responsible for the explosive growth of the American minerals economy

Effect of organic crop rotations on long-term development of the weed seedbank

Changes in the weed seedbank were monitored between 1991 and 1998 in two experiments that were established to compare organic crop rotations at two sites in NE Scotland. Two rotations, replicated twice at each site, were compared and all courses of both rotations were present every year. There were relatively minor changes in weed species diversity over time, but major changes in seedbank abundance. Weed seed numbers were relatively low in rotations with a high proportion of grass/clover ley. Differences in level of seedbank across the rotation were relatively predictable at Tulloch but much less so at Woodside where factors such as the effect of the grass/clover ley seemed to play a lesser role. Other factors, such as weather and its influence on the effectiveness of weed control operations, and higher populations of ground-living arthropods, may be affecting the Woodside seedbanks

Some contractible open manifolds and coverings of manifolds in dimension three

AbstractMcMillan has shown that every irreducible, contractible, open 3-manifold is the monotone union of handlebodies (only 0- and 1-handles) and that there are uncountably many such manifolds. Work by Myers and Wright shows that no irreducible, contractible, open 3-manifold different from R3 can nontrivially cover any 3-manifold when the handlebodies all have genus one or have bounded genus. We describe a family of irreducible, contractible, open 3-manifolds that we call composite Whitehead manifolds. These manifolds have the property that when written as the monotone union of handlebodies, the handlebodies must have unbounded genus. We show that there are uncountably many composite Whitehead manifolds that nontrivially cover open 3-manifolds but do not cover a compact 3-manifold. We also show that there exist uncountably many composite Whitehead manifolds which cannot nontrivially cover any 3-manifold. It is a famous unsolved problem if any irreducible, contractible, open 3-manifold different from R3 can cover a compact 3-manifold. It is unlikely that any composite Whitehead manifold covers a compact manifold, but our techniques are not strong enough to answer this question

Military service and crime: new evidence

BACKGROUND: Evidence indicates that a substantial proportion of military personnel are involved in high-risk and antisocial behaviors that place them at jeopardy for criminal justice system involvement. However, prior research on military service and crime has disproportionately focused on veterans from the Vietnam War era (1955–1975), and has tended to focus on either current or former military members. METHODS: This study employed data from a population-based study (i.e., National Study on Drug Use and Health [NSDUH] between 2002 and 2014). It systematically examines the prevalence of self-reported antisocial behaviors, criminal justice system involvement, and substance abuse among the US civilian population and military service members, including reservists (n = 2206) and those who reported having been separated or retired from military service (n = 20,551). These factors are further examined across the developmental spectrum of adulthood (ages 18–34, 35–49, and 50–64). RESULTS: Results showed that military members were more prone to lifetime arrests and overall substance misuse. However, additional findings emerged suggesting that, while the military population overall seems to be positively associated with higher criminal activity than that found in the civilian population, these findings were based on a specific subgroup of the veteran population. This subgroup is comprised of individuals who likely did not fit in with the military culture and were discharged from the military early in their careers. CONCLUSION: Additional research on identifying this subgroup of military members is encouraged to better concentrate on prevention and treatment measures

Torsions, low-frequency vibrations, and vibration–torsion (“vibtor”) levels in the m-chlorotoluene cation

Zero-electron-kinetic-energy (ZEKE) spectra are presented for m-chlorotoluene (mClT), employing different low-lying torsional and vibration–torsional (“vibtor”) levels of the S1 state as intermediates. The adiabatic ionization energy is determined to be 71 319 cm−1 ± 5 cm−1 (8.8424 ± 0.0006 eV). It is found that the activity in the ZEKE spectra varies greatly for different levels and is consistent with the assignments of the S1 levels of m-fluorotoluene (mFT) deduced in the recent fluorescence study of Stewart et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 150, 174303 (2019)] and the ZEKE study from Kemp et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 151, 084311 (2019)]. As with mFT, the intensities in the ZEKE spectra of mClT are consistent with a phase change in the torsional potential upon ionization, allowing a large number of torsions and vibtor levels to be observed for the cation. Vibration-induced modifications of the torsional potential are discussed. Calculated vibrational wavenumbers for the S0, S1, and D0+ states are also presented