Australia's mandatory retirement saving policy : a view from the new millennium

Formal retirement income provision in Australia, can be traced back to occupational schemes first offered by banks, and state governments in the nineteenth century. However, the year 1909 marks the beginning of a national retirement income policy, with the introduction of means-tested age pension. Since then, retirement income provision has evolved into a multi-pillar arrangement comprising the Age Pension, occupational annuity, and other long term saving through property, shares, and managed funds. The 1990s saw the introduction of private mandatory retirement saving in the form of the"Superannuation Guarantee". With this introduction, Australia joined a growing group of countries which center their retirement income policy, on private mandatory retirement saving. This paper provides a succinct description of the current system along with an analysis of its strengths, and areas where improvement is still needed.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Business in Development,Business Environment

Foam dressings: a review of the literature and evaluation of fluid-handling capacity of four leading foam dressings

Posnett and Franks (2008) have calculated that 200,000 people in the UK have a chronic wound, with an estimated treatment cost of between £2.3 billion and £3.1 billion per year. With an ever-increasing ageing population, it can be assumed that costs associated with the management and treatment of wounds will also continue to rise. The Business Service Authority (2014) reported that in 2013 between £160 and £185 million was spent on wound care dressings within primary care services in England, of which foam dressings accounted for £22.6 million of the overall spend. Foam dressings are frequently used in wound care to assist with the management of wound exudate, helping to prevent maceration of the wound bed, protect the surrounding skin and prevent cross-infection caused by strikethrough. The aim of dressings is to provide an optimum environment at the interface with the wound bed to promote wound healing. With limited financial resources within health care, the cost-effectiveness of each type of wound dressing is high on the agenda. It is, however, important that costs are not considered in isolation; the outcomes (general health benefits) associated with interventions (e.g. wound healing and reduction in wound pain) must also be taken into account alongside close collaboration with the patient, and in some cases the carer (Rippon et al, 2008). This article provides a summary of the published literature relating to foam dressings, investigating their impact on healing rates, pain on dressing removal, fluid-handling capacity and their costeffectiveness. It focuses on the independent assessment of the fluid-handling capacity of eight commonly-prescribed foam dressings: four bordered (Cutimed® Siltec B, Mepilex® Border, Allevyn® Life and Tegaderm™ foam adhesive) and four non-bordered (Cutimed® Siltec/Cutimed® SiltecPLUS, Mepilex®, Allevyn® Non-Adhesive, and Tegaderm™ foam)

Linear transmitter design for MSAT terminals

One of the factors that will undoubtedly influence the choice of modulation format for mobile satellites, is the availability of cheap, power-efficient, linear amplifiers for mobile terminal equipment operating in the 1.5-1.7 GHz band. Transmitter linearity is not easily achieved at these frequencies, although high power (20W) class A/AB devices are becoming available. However, these components are expensive and require careful design to achieve a modest degree of linearity. In this paper an alternative approach to radio frequency (RF) power amplifier design for mobile satellite (MSAT) terminals using readily-available, power-efficient, and cheap class C devices in a feedback amplifier architecture is presented