The impact of postponement of reforms to long-term care financing in England

The delay in the introduction of a lifetime cap on spending on long-term care will result in single and widowed homeowners with modest incomes who need care now or in the near future having to use up twice as much of their capital to pay for their care

Maternity Rights and Mothers' Return to Work

In this paper we use the ALSPAC cohort of 12,000 births to examine the effect of maternity rights on mothers' post-birth return to employment decisions. We aim to disentangle the effects of the terms of maternity rights entitlements from the effects of other factors (such as household wealth, personal preferences and labour market opportunities) that influence the timing of a mother's return to work. We adopt a discrete hazard model with instrumental variables to estimate a counterfactual of what mothers with rights would have done in the absence of this legislation. Mothers with rights have an underlying (but unobserved) stronger attachment to the labour market which prompts earlier return than on average. Nevertheless, even when we take this into account we find a substantial impact of maternity rights on behaviour. Having rights induces around 20 per cent more women to return to their previous job before 7 months than would otherwise be the case. Women from lower skilled groups return disproportionately at the date at which maternity pay expires, while managerial and professional women tend to return at the expiry of unpaid leave.government policy, welfare, child care, labor supply

WFMOS - Sounding the Dark Cosmos

Vast sound waves traveling through the relativistic plasma during the first million years of the universe imprint a preferred scale in the density of matter. We now have the ability to detect this characteristic fingerprint in the clustering of galaxies at various redshifts and use it to measure the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. The Wide-Field Multi-Object Spectrograph (WFMOS) would use this test to shed significant light on the true nature of dark energy, the mysterious source of this cosmic acceleration. WFMOS would also revolutionise studies of the kinematics of the Milky Way and provide deep insights into the clustering of galaxies at redshifts up to z~4. In this article we discuss the recent progress in large galaxy redshift surveys and detail how WFMOS will help unravel the mystery of dark energy.Comment: 6 pages, pure pdf. An introduction to WFMOS and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations for a general audienc

The association between overall health, psychological distress, and occupational heat stress among a large national cohort of 40,913 Thai workers

BACKGROUND Occupational heat stress is a well-known problem, particularly in tropical countries, affecting workers, health and well-being. There are very few recent studies that have reported on the effect of heat stress on mental health, or overall health in workers, although socioeconomic development and rapid urbanization in tropical developing countries like Thailand create working conditions in which heat stress is likely. OBJECTIVE This study is aimed at identifying the relationship between self-reported heat stress and psychological distress, and overall health status in Thai workers. RESULTS 18% of our large national cohort (>40,000 subjects) often works under heat stress conditions and males are exposed to heat stress more often than females. Furthermore, working under heat stress conditions is associated with both worse overall health and psychological distress (adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.49 to 1.84). CONCLUSIONS This association between occupational heat stress and worse health needs more public health attention and further development on occupational health interventions as climate change increases Thailand's temperatures.This study was supported by the International Collaborative Research Grants Scheme with joint grants from the Wellcome Trust UK (GR0587MA) and the Australian NHMRC (268055)

Associating sporadic, foodborne illness caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli with specific foods : a systematic review and meta-analysis of case-control studies

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infections are a significant public health issue, with foodborne transmission causing >1 million illnesses worldwide each year. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registry # CRD42017074239), to determine the relative association of different food types with sporadic illnesses caused by STEC. Searches were conducted from 01 August to 30 September 2017, using bibliographic and grey literature databases, websites and expert consultation. We identified 22 case-control studies of sporadic STEC infection in humans, from 10 countries within four World Health Organization subregions, from 1985 to 2012. We extracted data from 21 studies, for 237 individual measures in 11 food categories and across three status types (raw or undercooked, not raw and unknown). Beef was the most significant food item associated with STEC illness in the Americas and Europe, but in the Western Pacific region, chicken was most significant. These findings were not significantly moderated by the raw or cooked status of the food item, nor the publication year of the study. Data from the African, South-East Asian and Eastern Mediterranean subregions were lacking and it is unclear whether our results are relevant to these regions

Treatment expectations but not preference affect outcome in a trial of CBT and exercise for pain

The following are members of the MUSICIAN study team: Gary Macfarlane (Principal Investigator), John McBeth (Investigator), Deborah Symmons (Investigator), Karina Lovell (investigator), Philip Keeley (Investigator), Phil Hannaford (Investigator), Chrysa Gkazinou (Trial manager), Marcus Beasley (Research Assistant), Elizabeth Jones (PhD student), Gordon Prescott (Statistician), and Steve Woby (Investigator). We are grateful to the practices and patients in Aberdeen city and Cheshire, which participated in the study: Carden medical centre, Elmbank medical practice, Great Western Road medical practice, Garthdee medical group, Readesmoor medical group practice, Lawton House surgery, Bollington medical practice, Park Lane surgery. The Scottish Primary Care Research Network facilitated access to patient information at the practices in Aberdeen city. Charlie Stockton was the study manager and Ashraf El-Metwally an Investigator during the setting up and for part of the conduct of the study. John Norrie was originally an investigator of the MUSICIAN study while Director of the Centre for Health Care Randomised Trials (CHART) at the University of Aberdeen. We are grateful for the input of members of the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) at The University of Aberdeen in the conduct of the study: Alison MacDonald and Gladys McPherson. We are grateful to the project assistants who worked on the survey: Dev Acharya, Jennifer Bannister, Flora Joyce, Michelle Rein., Karen Kane, and Rowan Jasper. Alison Littlewood was responsible for study management at the Cheshire site. Finally, we thank the independent members of the trial steering committee (Professor Matthew Hotopf, Professor Tracey Howe, Professor Martin Underwood) and data monitoring committee (Dr. Marwan Bukhari, Professor Hazel Inskip, Dr. Chris Edwards). Funding details The study was funded by Arthritis Research UK, grant number 17292.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Early estimates of seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness in Europe: results from the I-MOVE multicentre case-control study, 2012/13

Baltazar Nunes: member of the I-MOVE case–control study teamWe conducted a test-negative case–control study based in five European sentinel surveillance networks. The early 2012/13 adjusted influenza vaccine effectiveness was 78.2% (95% CI: 18.0 to 94.2) against influenza B, 62.1% (95% CI: −22.9 to 88.3%) against A(H1)pdm09, 41.9 (95% CI: −67.1 to 79.8) against A(H3N2) and 50.4% (95% CI: −20.7 to 79.6) against all influenza types in the target groups for vaccination. Efforts to improve influenza vaccines should continue to better protect those at risk of severe illness or complications

Early 2016/17 vaccine effectiveness estimates against influenza A(H3N2): I-MOVE multicentre case control studies at primary care and hospital levels in Europe

I-MOVE/I-MOVE+ study team: Portugal - Baltazar Nunes, Ausenda Machado, Ana Paula Rodrigues, Verónica Gomez, Irina Kislaya, Mafalda Sousa Uva (Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge); Raquel Guiomar, Pedro Pechirra, Paula Cristóvão, Patrícia Conde, Inês Costa (Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge).I-MOVE/I-MOVE+study team - Portugal: Baltazar Nunes, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Ausenda Machado, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Ana Paula Rodrigues, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Verónica Gomez, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Irina Kislaya, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Mafalda Sousa Uva, Departamento de Epidemiologia, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Raquel Guiomar, Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Pedro Pechirra, Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Paula Cristóvão, Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge; Patrícia Conde, Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo; Jorge Inês Costa, Departamento de Doenças Infeciosas, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge.We measured early 2016/17 season influenza vaccine effectiveness (IVE) against influenza A(H3N2) in Europe using multicentre case control studies at primary care and hospital levels. IVE at primary care level was 44.1%, 46.9% and 23.4% among 0-14, 15-64 and ≥ 65 year-olds, and 25.7% in the influenza vaccination target group. At hospital level, IVE was 2.5%, 7.9% and 2.4% among ≥ 65, 65-79 and ≥ 80 year-olds. As in previous seasons, we observed suboptimal IVE against influenza A(H3N2).This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 634446.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio