Migration and nursing in Ireland: An internationalist history

Recent research and policy interest has focused on the changing composition of the nursing workforce in the Republic of Ireland, which has seen an increase in the number and importance of overseas-trained nurses. This is the most recent episode of the importance of migration in the history of nursing in Ireland which stretches back to the emergence of nursing in Ireland in the early 19th century. Delineating the intersecting histories of Irish nursing and migration, this article situates Irish nursing history within an internationalist framework involving the movement of people, ideas and practices across borders. The relevance of an internationalist analysis is demonstrated through an examination of the close connections between the British and Irish nursing institutions and labour forces and the significance of Catholic religious orders and religious migration in the development of nursing in Ireland and overseas. This analysis of the history of Irish nursing from the early nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century draws particular attention to the significance of female religious migration as a previously neglected chapter in the history of the international nurse migration in the Irish context, and it highlights the existence of the 'global nursing care chain' (Yeates, 2004, 2006, 2009) that linked Ireland to the international economy and to the development of nursing services at home and abroad

Southern regionalisms, Global agendas: Innovating inclusive access to health, medicines and social protection in a context of social inequity

This Policy Brief highlights key findings from an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Department for International Development-funded international social policy research project examining the scope for enhancing the contributions of Southern multilateral regional organisations to inclusive social development in low-income contexts. Questions guiding the project were: 1 Are social policies and programmes of action on a regional scale by Southern regional groupings of countries instituting approaches for accessing health and medicines that meet the needs of all? 2 What scope is there for strengthening regional health and social policy in the interests of poverty reduction, social equity and inclusive development? 3 What needs to be done to strengthen regional approaches and policies in support of equitable access to health, medicines and social protection? The principal focus of research was the regional health policies of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). This is because SADC and UNASUR have clear mandates in relation to health (and other social policies), and include many of the world’s most impoverished populations, for whom unfavourable access to basic health care and medicines is both a persistent obstacle and a key social determinant of morbidity and mortality

A Hundred Key Questions for the Post-2015 Development Agenda

With a new development framework under way and an increasingly urgent need to address political, socioeconomic and environmental issues on a global scale, this is a critical moment for the international development agenda. Almost 15 years after the Millennium Declaration, a new phase for international development is about to begin and, with it, comes the opportunity to critically assess how new development goals and milestones are likely to be shaped and delivered. This paper assumes that a greater understanding of development needs and practices can better sustain a new agenda for change, and that a key step in this process is to identify priorities based on both new and long-standing knowledge gaps, to help orient decision-making processes and funding allocation in academia and beyond. This paper present the results of a consultative and participatory exercise that addresses the need to articulate and better align the research interests and priorities of academics and practitioners working on international development in a post-2015 international development framework. The exercise was organized around a two-stage consultation and shortlisting process. A four-months open consultation was conducted, offering development stakeholders and individuals the opportunity to submit their questions. People were invited to submit questions related to some of the thematic priorities that guided the “World We Want” campaign—a global stakeholder consultation conducted by the UN between 2010 and 2014 involving governments, civil society and lay citizens. In this first phase, 705 individuals from 109 organizations based in 34 countries were involved in the formulation of 704 questions. The questions were then discussed and shortlisted during a two-day workshop with academic and practitioners representing different world regions and areas of expertise, among whom are also the authors of this paper. After the final shortlisting, questions were regrouped into nine macro-thematic sections: governance, participation and rights; environmental sustainability; food security, land and agriculture; energy and natural resources; conflict, population dynamics and urbanization; economic growth, employment and the private sector; social and economic inequalities; health and education; development policies, practices and institutions. The final 100 questions address a varied combination of long-standing problems that have hindered the development agenda for decades as well as new challenges emerging from broader socioeconomic, political and environmental changes. Well-established concerns about the rights of women, and of vulnerable groups such as poor workers, small-scale farmers, people with disabilities, children and ethnic minorities feature alongside emerging issues, including the role of business in protecting human rights, and information and communication technologies as tools for empowerment and social integration. Similarly, traditional concerns linked to rural livelihoods, land tenure and agricultural production are presented together with environmental sustainability, natural resource extraction, urbanization, food security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. While civil society and the empowerment of marginalized populations are recognized as key for development, questions on new actors including the private sector, emerging economic powers and new middle-income countries as development donors and partners feature heavily in the shortlist. The questions also reflect the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into a wide range of development areas, helping to cement the view that gender should be considered central to future development initiatives. A large number of the submitted questions (102) specifically addressed broader issues related to development politics, practices and institutions. This outcome, combined with the fact that a number of these were included in the final shortlist, highlights the fact that there is a critical need for a deeper collective reflection on the role and relationships of different actors in international development, and the impact that contemporary economic and political scenarios will have on the development agenda. We envision our list of 100 questions contributing to inform the post-2015 agenda and future development-related research priorities of international, governmental and non-governmental organizations. But, perhaps more centrally, we believe that these questions can act as starting points for debate, research and collaboration between academics, practitioners and policy makers. The value of research exercises such as this one rely on the ability of a variety of stakeholders to reach consensus around a set of research priorities put forward by anyone willing to engage in the process. We believe that the process of co-production we set out here, of debate and discussion between different stakeholders, is essential for successfully and effectively tackling the key challenges ahead for the international development agenda

Local ciliate communities associated with aquatic macrophytes

This study, based within the catchment area of the River Frome, an important chalk stream in the south of England, compared ciliated protozoan communities associated with three species of aquatic macrophyte common to lotic habitats: Ranunculus penicillatus subsp. pseudofluitans, Nasturtium officinale and Sparganium emersum. A total of 77 ciliate species were counted. No species-specific ciliate assemblage was found to be typical of any one plant species. Ciliate abundance between plant species was determined to be significantly different. The ciliate communities from each plant species were unique in that the number of species increased with ciliate abundance. The community associated with R. penicillatus subsp. pseudofluitans showed the highest consistency and species richness whereas S. emersum ciliate communities were unstable. Most notably, N. officinale was associated with low ciliate abundances and an apparent reduction in biofilm formation, discussed herein in relation to the plant’s production of the microbial toxin phenethyl isothiocyanate. We propose that the results reflect differences in the quantity and quality of biofilm present on the plants, which could be determined by the different plant morphologies, patterns of plant decay and herbivore defense systems, all of which suppress or promote the various conditions for biofilm growth

Human Resources for Health Migration: global policy responses, initiatives, and emerging issues

This report identifies and maps contemporary global policy responses to, and initiatives on, international HRH migration, with particular reference to low‐income source countries. It reports on a systematic review and analysis of the responses and initiatives of twelve multilateral organisations and global fora: European Union; Global Forum on Migration and Development; Global Health Workforce Alliance; International Labour Organization; International Organization for Migration; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; Pan‐American Health Organization; UN Global Migration Group; UN High‐Level Dialogue on Migration and Development; World Bank; World Health Organization; and the World Trade Organization. The report documents how these global policy actors are presently engaging with the HRH migration field through their activities, initiatives and policy responses. It situates this engagement within global policy initiatives spanning health, migration and development. In addition to reviewing and mapping current initiatives and policy responses and their outcomes, the report identifies emerging issues, upcoming promising initiatives and global policy scenarios

International healthcare worker migration in Asia Pacific: International policy responses

The growth of the international migration of health workers in recent decades has taken place in the context of the transnationalisation of healthcare provision as well as of governance and policy responses. This paper examines international policy responses to cross-border health worker migration in the Asia Pacific region. These include multilateral (global and regional) and bilateral policy agreements, policy dialogue and programmes of action in relation to key issues of ethical recruitment, ‘circular’ migration and labour rights and key themes of health workforce planning and management. The paper brings original new analysis of international datasets and secondary data to bear on the pressing and important questions of what international policy initiatives and responses are at work in the Asia Pacific region, and what these mean for the nature of migration governance in the region. The paper's focus routes the evidence and argument towards current research and policy debates about the relationship between health worker migration, health worker shortages and poor health outcomes. In this, the paper brings new insights into the analysis of the international policy ‘universe’ through its emphasis on multiple and intersecting cross-border institutions, initiatives and actors operating across different scales. Coherent national and international strategies for integrated health worker migration governance and policy need to incorporate these insights, and the paper considers their implications for current strategies to attain universal health care and improved health outcomes in Asia Pacific and beyond

Coronal mass ejection initiation: On the nature of the Flux Cancellation Model

We consider a three-dimensional bipolar force-free magnetic field with non zero magnetic helicity, occupying a half-space, and study the problem of its evolution driven by an imposed photospheric flux decrease. For this specific setting of the Flux Cancellation Model describing coronal mass ejections occuring in active regions, we address the issues of the physical meaning of flux decrease, of the influence on field evolution of the size of the domain over which this decrease is imposed, and of the existence of an energetic criterion characterizing the possible onset of disruption of the configuration. We show that: (1) The imposed flux disappearance can be interpreted in terms of transport of positive and negative fluxes towards the inversion line, where they get annihilated. (2) For the particular case actually computed, in which the initial state is quite sheared, the formation of a twisted flux rope and the subsequent global disruption of the configuration are obtained when the flux has decreased by only a modest amount over a limited part of the whole active region. (3) The disruption is produced when the magnetic energy becomes of the order of the decreasing energy of a semi-open field, and then before reaching the energy of the associated fully open field. This suggests that the mechanism leading to the disruption is nonequilibrium as in the case where flux is imposed to decrease over the whole region.Comment: In press in ApJ Letter

Using compression to identify acronyms in text

Text mining is about looking for patterns in natural language text, and may be defined as the process of analyzing text to extract information from it for particular purposes. In previous work, we claimed that compression is a key technology for text mining, and backed this up with a study that showed how particular kinds of lexical tokens---names, dates, locations, etc.---can be identified and located in running text, using compression models to provide the leverage necessary to distinguish different token types (Witten et al., 1999)Comment: 10 pages. A short form published in DCC200

Introduction – Managing Welfare Expectations and Social Change: Policy Responses in Asia

The question whether Asian welfare types can be classified as distinctly ‘productivist’ has remained subject to lively debates: in East Asia, the recent implementation of social rights-based public policy innovations – including working family support – as a response to rising inequalities, welfare expectations and accelerating social change has been well documented; similarly, South East Asian and South Asian economies have featured much more frequently in comparative social policy analysis as policymakers have sought to address persisting chronic poverty, a diminishing demographic dividend and burdensome epidemiological transitions via integrating human capital formation with social protection measures. Yet, far from a unifying convergence of these social policy trends in the post-Millennium Development Goals era, the global perspective we take in this article suggests continued variation and difference, with a multiplicity of forms of globalizations encountered and/or engendered in diverse contexts. As a consequence, variegated and path-dependent patterns of social development continue to persist across Asian economies. These findings, in turn, address major issues of our time, for they speak to the broader question of what analytical bases and research strategies can best reveal the complexities of (and interactions between) national, extra-national and transnational drivers of welfare formation and development under contemporary but diverse conditions