The super challenge of retirement income policy

Examines the economic impacts of Australia\u27s ageing population and decreasing housing affordability. Executive Summary Australia’s three-pillar approach to retirement income is internationally well regarded. However, many Australians currently approaching retirement face potential poverty, especially if they do not own their own homes. Australia’s aged dependency ratio (the number of people over 65 for every working-age person 15 to 64) is expected to double over the next 40 years, and the Australian Government recognises that current arrangements are fiscally unsustainable. Many Australians nearing retirement age today have not had compulsory superannuation for their entire working lives. While this issue will abate as the system matures, Australians are still worried they are not saving enough to live comfortably in retirement. Home ownership is a growing retirement issue. Renters not only have no owneroccupied housing wealth, but they also have considerably lower holdings of other forms of wealth. In  younger households, the net wealth of owners is around double that of renters. In older households, the net wealth of owners is around six times higher than that of renters. While home ownership among current retirees is up to 85 per cent, increasing numbers of retirees do not own their own dwellings and live at the mercy of the expensive private rental market in low economic resource (LER) households. The number of older income- and asset-poor households is likely to grow rapidly over the next 40 years, and many are likely to be in the private rental market

Housing Wealth and Household Consumption: New Evidence from Australia and Canada

Over the past two decades a number of countries have experienced an increase in house prices at the same time that aggregate consumption has been observed to increase. Alternative hypotheses have been put forward to explain this pattern. In this paper we test these hypotheses by using repeated Household Expenditure Surveys from Canada and Australia to identify the transmission mechanism that links consumption and household wealth. The empirical analysis suggests that neither a direct wealth effect nor a common causal factor is a likely explanation for the observed correlation between wealth and consumption. Rather, indirect factors such as relaxation of credit constraints are more likely explanations

Next moves? Expanding affordable rental housing in Australia through institutional investment

Efforts to engage institutional investment in rental housing provision were badly damaged by the 2014 termination of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS); yet lessons can be learned from the NRAS initiative and these should inform a successor program.   Building on our major 2013 study, a newly-published City Futures report reviews the NRAS experience and other emerging developments around the institutional financing of rental housing.    With contributions from (CFRC Visiting Fellow) Judy Yates and Prof Peter Williams (Cambridge University), the report focuses mainly on the Australian context. However, it also references rapidly unfolding UK developments involving both government- and industry-led initiatives that have made major advances in this space over the past two years and which have possible implications for Australia.    Drawing on interviews with finance experts and senior policymakers, as well as a review of recent Australian and UK publications, the report details 10 recommendations to government for action to re-start progress towards this widely-shared policy objective

Positioning children as artists through a ceramic arts project and exhibition: children meaning making

This article describes a ceramic arts research project that provided children with opportunities for meaning making using bone china clay, a medium with strong cultural and historical links to the city where the research took place. The children were positioned as artists and their work was curated and presented for exhibition by an international ceramic artist, affording equal status to their work as that of adults. Findings identified that children made meaning based on lived experiences, popular culture, unique family and cultural heritage, and school identities. We also acknowledge that adult attitudes and school schedules can both enable and limit children’s creativity. We further assert that the professional exhibition validated children’s processes, competence, cultural funds of knowledge and agency.The exhibition produced as a result of this research project was funded by the Vice Chancellors Ideas Forum from the University of Derby

Conceptualising and measuring the housing affordability problem

“Copyright 1970 AHURI Limited. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.” This is the publisher's copryight version of this article, the original can be found at: http://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/nrv-research-papers/nrv3-1Background Paper 1 has two aims. The first is to review relevant literature on affordability issues and discuss some of the main methods of measuring housing affordability. The second is to inform discussion on how housing affordability is to be measured for the overall CRV3 research program

The importance of recent infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis in an area with high HIV prevalence: a long-term molecular epidemiological study in Northern Malawi.

BACKGROUND: The proportion of cases of tuberculosis due to recent infection can be estimated in long-term population-based studies using molecular techniques. Here, we present what is, to our knowledge, the first such study in an area with high human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence. METHODS: All patients with tuberculosis in Karonga District, Malawi, were interviewed. Isolates were genotyped using restriction-fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns. Strains were considered to be "clustered" if at least 1 other patient had an isolate with an identical pattern. RESULTS: RFLP results were available from 83% of culture-positive patients from late 1995 to early 2003. When strains with <5 bands were excluded, 72% (682/948) were clustered. Maximum clustering was reached using a 4-year window, with an estimated two-thirds of cases due to recent transmission. The proportion clustered decreased with age and varied by area of residence. In older adults, clustering was less common in men and more common in patients who were HIV positive (adjusted odds ratio, 5.1 [95% confidence interval, 2.1-12.6]). CONCLUSIONS: The proportion clustered found in the present study was among the highest in the world, suggesting high rates of recent transmission. The association with HIV infection in older adults may suggest that HIV has a greater impact on disease caused by recent transmission than on that caused by reactivation

Large-Scale Differential Proteome Analysis in Plasmodium falciparum under Drug Treatment

Proteome studies contribute markedly to our understanding of parasite biology, host-parasite interactions, and mechanisms of drug action. For most antimalarial drugs neither mode of action nor mechanisms of resistance development are fully elucidated although this would be important prerequisites for successfully developing urgently required novel antimalarials. Here, we establish a large-scale quantitative proteomic approach to examine protein expression changes in trophozoite stages of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum following chloroquine and artemisinin treatment. For this purpose SIL (stable isotope labeling) using 14N-isoleucine and 13C6,15N1-isoleucine was optimized to obtain 99% atomic percent enrichment. Proteome fractionation with anion exchange chromatography was used to reduce sample complexity and increase quantitative coverage of protein expression. Tryptic peptides of subfractions were subjected to SCX/RP separation, measured by LC-MS/MS and quantified using the novel software tool Census. In drug treated parasites, we identified a total number of 1,253 proteins, thus increasing the overall number of proteins identified in the trophozoite stage by 30%. A relative quantification was obtained for more than 800 proteins. Under artemisinin and chloroquine treatment 41 and 38 proteins respectively were upregulated (>1.5) whereas 14 and 8 proteins were down-regulated (<0.5). Apart from specifically regulated proteins we also identified sets of proteins which were regulated as a general response to drug treatment. The proteomic data was confirmed by Western blotting. The methodology described here allows for the efficient large-scale differential proteome analysis of P. falciparum to study the response to drug treatment or environmental changes. Only 100 µg of protein is required for the analysis suggesting that the method can also be transferred to other apicomplexan parasites

Primary Care and the Perioperative Surgical Home

Our team partnered with UMass Memorial Medical Center’s Urology and Anesthesiology departments on a pilot patient-centered, physician-led, multidisciplinary team-based system of coordinated care for the surgical patient. The goals were to improve the patient experience, improve health care and reduce costs. Primary care physicians were surveyed to understand how surgical teams can better coordinate care with primary care. The results of the survey show that concise, useful communication about mutual patients is important to primary care physicians; there is no need for immediate follow-up appointments with primary care physicians unless necessary – appointments are recommended for two to four weeks after discharge; and defining the roles of primary care physicians and the surgeon is important

DDA3 recruits microtubule depolymerase Kif2a to spindle poles and controls spindle dynamics and mitotic chromosome movement

Dynamic turnover of the spindle is a driving force for chromosome congression and segregation in mitosis. Through a functional genomic analysis, we identify DDA3 as a previously unknown regulator of spindle dynamics that is essential for mitotic progression. DDA3 depletion results in a high frequency of unaligned chromosomes, a substantial reduction in tension across sister kinetochores at metaphase, and a decrease in the velocity of chromosome segregation at anaphase. DDA3 associates with the mitotic spindle and controls microtubule (MT) dynamics. Mechanistically, DDA3 interacts with the MT depolymerase Kif2a in an MT-dependent manner and recruits Kif2a to the mitotic spindle and spindle poles. Depletion of DDA3 increases the steady-state levels of spindle MTs by reducing the turnover rate of the mitotic spindle and by increasing the rate of MT polymerization, which phenocopies the effects of partial knockdown of Kif2a. Thus, DDA3 represents a new class of MT-destabilizing protein that controls spindle dynamics and mitotic progression by regulating MT depolymerases