The effect of chronic pain on life satisfaction : evidence from Australian data

Acknowledgements We thank the participants of the 2014 Health Economics Study Group in Sheffield for their useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful to Dr. Agne Suziedelyte and Professor Denzil Fiebig for useful discussions on the methodology of the paper. Special thanks to two anonymous referees and Editor Joanna Coast for valuable comments and suggestions. This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute. The Health Economics Research Unit is supported in part by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates.Peer reviewedPostprin

The practice of risk management by cost consultants in Northern Ireland

This research endeavoured to explore the practice of risk management by cost consultants in Northern Ireland. It attempted to subjectively investigate the cost consultant’s appreciation of risk management practices and then further appraise the cost consultant’s understanding and usage of the theories and techniques available to manage risk under the risk management framework. A case study based approach involving five consultancy practices was adopted. A series of semi structured interviews (one per each case study) was carried out. The data collected was analysed using the Delphi technique. The practice of risk management for each organisation was documented using an analysis and evaluation of project documentation substantiated with interviews. The research indicated that consultants have a broad awareness of risk management but disparity exists on considering it as a core service. All consultants were unequivocal in identifying the need for an improved risk management framework. It was evident that there was a lack of knowledge of the array of risk identification and analysis techniques available. The research has established that there is a severe need to bridge the void between the theories and techniques used to manage risk and those which are implemented in practice. There is a necessity to train consultants in the practice of risk management and educate clients in the benefits of enforcing risk management practices as an integral part of project delivery

Ethics in Leisure - An Agenda for Research

The point of our brief paper today is to draw attention to the scope of ethics in leisure research (and therefore, by implication, teaching too) that is underpinned by philosophy and the rich potential it offers for academics in the next century

Modelling Heterogeneity and Uncertainty in Contingent Valuation : an Application to the Valuation of Informal Care

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Transovereignty: Separating Human Rights from Traditional Sovereignty and the Implications for the Ethics of International Law Practice

Part I of this Article develops some necessary perspective on transovereignty and its importance to law and ethics by reflecting first on traditional sovereignty. A few competing positivist and anti-positivist theories of the emergence of political and legal systems will be briefly reviewed to reveal significantly different pictures of the possible role played by rights-claims in political development. Part II extends one of those theoretical models to help us describe more fully the nature and importance of the special political phenomenon of transovereignty. Part III examines briefly a particularly strong example of transovereignty at work: the impact of the Catholic Church on local political activities in Poland. Widening the Article\u27s perspective, Part IV speculates briefly on the implications of transovereignty for the legal ethics of lawyers practicing human rights law. The Article addresses the question, for example, of whether lawyers as a professional group, with their shared reverence for the rule of law as a governing political ideal - an ideal of orderliness that they view as a “human right” all its own - are themselves becoming a significant transovereign force

Efficiently Computing Real Roots of Sparse Polynomials

We propose an efficient algorithm to compute the real roots of a sparse polynomial $f\in\mathbb{R}[x]$ having $k$ non-zero real-valued coefficients. It is assumed that arbitrarily good approximations of the non-zero coefficients are given by means of a coefficient oracle. For a given positive integer $L$, our algorithm returns disjoint disks $\Delta_{1},\ldots,\Delta_{s}\subset\mathbb{C}$, with $s<2k$, centered at the real axis and of radius less than $2^{-L}$ together with positive integers $\mu_{1},\ldots,\mu_{s}$ such that each disk $\Delta_{i}$ contains exactly $\mu_{i}$ roots of $f$ counted with multiplicity. In addition, it is ensured that each real root of $f$ is contained in one of the disks. If $f$ has only simple real roots, our algorithm can also be used to isolate all real roots. The bit complexity of our algorithm is polynomial in $k$ and $\log n$, and near-linear in $L$ and $\tau$, where $2^{-\tau}$ and $2^{\tau}$ constitute lower and upper bounds on the absolute values of the non-zero coefficients of $f$, and $n$ is the degree of $f$. For root isolation, the bit complexity is polynomial in $k$ and $\log n$, and near-linear in $\tau$ and $\log\sigma^{-1}$, where $\sigma$ denotes the separation of the real roots

The role of IL-17 in inflammatory hyperalgesia

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that affects up to 1% of the population. The importance of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) in RA has been established and anti-TNF biologics have proved to be highly effective in reducing inflammation. However, a proportion of RA patients fail to adequately respond to anti-TNF and even those who do respond have residual pain. This has prompted the investigation into other cytokines, such as interleukin-17 (IL-17), as potential new targets. This study sought to investigate the contribution of IL-17 to acute or chronic hyperalgesia. C57BL/6 mice were injected with recombinant IL-17. This induced a transient hyperalgesia, which was found to be dependent both on neutrophil migration and signalling through TNFR1. Using the air pouch model of cell migration, it was confirmed that the cell infiltration was associated with increased expression of the chemokine keratinocyte attractant (KC). These results suggest that IL-17 induces acute hyperalgesia by inducing TNF from resident cells. To investigate IL-17 and chronic hyperalgesia, the collagen induced arthritis mouse model (CIA) was used. IL-17RA was found to be up regulated in both the paw and in the dorsal root ganglia in arthritis, suggesting a role for IL-17 in chronic hyperalgesia. IL-17 blockade proved to be anti-arthritic and analgesic during CIA and potently reduced expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This study confirms that IL-17 contributes to acute and chronic hyperalgesia but acts in part via the induction of TNF

The Economical Impact of Mountain Bicycle Events in Oregon

The current project aimed to quantify the economic impact of several mountain biking events and one tour operator in Oregon during 2012. Participants from three events and customers of one mountain bike tour company (Cog Wild) were surveyed in 2012 using an online survey. Our work summarizes the initial data analysis of participant responses to the survey questions. Specifically, we outlined the county level economic impact travel estimates, participant demographics, travel party size and spending averages across the four events. Only data from non-local participants (i.e., participants living outside of the event host county) were used for the economic impact analysis