Treating Doctors Must be Proactive to Obtain Approval of Treatment for Injured Workers

Preface: Many spine surgeons handle cases of injured workers. This article, which includes in-depth research on workers' compensation laws, provides physicians with an insightful look into the legal side of spine practice

Making Bank irrigation investments more sustainable

This paper is about sustainability of irrigation investments in both the financial and physical senses. Finance provides the claim on resources necessary to accomplish physical operations in an economic system, while physical operations provide a flow of services for which beneficiaries are willing to pay in terms of claims on resources. This paper discusses two polar models of irrigation finance, followed by a discussion of quality control in irrigation and reviews of World Bank irrigation pricing policy, irrigation cost recovery and operations and maintenance funding conditionality experience. It includes a discussion of reasons for noncompliance with Bank irrigation lending conditionality. A framework for the design of sustainable irrigation investments is presented and a summary of results and recommendations is given.Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Research,Drylands&Desertification,Agricultural Irrigation and Drainage,Banks&Banking Reform

A glass half full or half empty?: A comparison of diversity statements among Russell group UK vs US Research universities

The term diversity is ubiquitous in university mission statements, strategic plans, recruitment brochures, and university websites. This paper argues aims to compare university diversity statements from US Research Tier 1 universities with those from the elite UK Russell group universities In order to compare the language of diversity, we have used the techniques of corpus linguistics. A corpus is an electronic collection of sample texts which can then be processed by software, in this case the Oxford Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1996) package. This enables a corpus to be searched for frequent words, concordances (the linguistic environment of target words), and collocations (the company that those words keep). The resulting analysis suggests that there are differences between US and UK diversity statements, significant enough that they cannot be said to conform to the same 'genre'. There is overall similarity in terms ofvocabulary choice and of grammatical structures used (nominalizations, modalities etc), however, the UK Russell group diversity statements display a modality position of certainty, which resonates with the noun commitment. In contrast, US Research university diversity statements are formulated more as aspirations, and focus on benefit to the community, but claim a less certain outcome. Diversity is seen as 'a good thing' and signified by multiple linguistic markers of appreciation. The word frequency analysis of the diversity statements suggests that they are largely made up ofsemantically vague lexical items - Strategically Deployable Shifters - which contribute little to the overall meanings of the statements. These words, e.g. excellence, diversity, respect, even equality are multi-functional, polysemic abstractions which invoke fair play. Discursively embracing diversity commits institutions to recognizing little difference, and certainly not to institutional or structural change, rather diversity is seen as the property of individuals, and is congruent with the project of the neoliberal university

Analyzing the effects of U.S. agricultural policy on Mexican agricultural markets using the MEXAGMKTS model

This paper uses results from simulations of the FAIRMODEL, USAGMKTS, and MEXAGMKTS models to analyze the effects of changes in U.S. agricultural policy on Mexican agricultural markets. The author concludes that under a scenario of trade liberalization for Mexico, Mexican agricultural production, prices, and trade are quite sensitive to agricultural policy changes in the U.S. The genesis of the research project was the perception that agricultural policies in Mexico (and many other countries) are often second best responses to the negative side effects of broad economic policies aimed primarily at macroeconomic and international trade objectives. The paper also discusses the role of agriculture in Mexican economic policy, and MEXAGMKTS, FAIR and USAGMKTS models. The paper includes an analysis of the sensitivity of Mexican agricultural markets to U.S. agricultural policy and a brief summary of the implications of the results.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access

MEXAGMKTS : a model of crop and livestock markets in Mexico

The genesis of the model MEXAGMKTS was the perception that agricultural policies in Mexico (and many other countries) are often second-best responses to the negative side effects of broad macroeconomic and international trade policies. MEXAGMKTS was designed to allow analysis of the relationship between such agricultural policies and different macroeconomic and international trade regimes. MEXAGMKTS is part of a set of interlinked macroeconomic and sectoral models of Mexico and the United States (with enough specifications for the rest of the world to close the system). The authors discuss the historical context in which MEXAGMKTS was developed as well as its economic structure, estimates, and validation. They present a stand-alone, counterfactural application of a trade liberalization scenario for Mexico.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access

Research methodologies in creative practice: literacy in the digital age of the twenty first century - learning from computer games

Literacy remains one of the central goals of schooling, but the ways in which it is understood are changing. The growth of the networked society, and the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), has brought about significant changes to traditional forms of literacy. Older, print based forms now take their place alongside a mix of newer multi-modal forms, where a wide range of elements such as image, sound, movement, light, colour and interactivity often supplant the printed word and contribute to the ways in which meaning is made. For young people to be fully literate in the twenty-first century, they need to have clear understandings about the ways in which these forms of literacy combine to persuade, present a point of view, argue a case or win the viewers’ sympathies. They need to know how to use them themselves, and to be aware of the ways in which others use them. They need to understand how digital texts organise and prioritise knowledge and information, and to recognise and be critically informed about the global context in which this occurs. That is, to be effective members of society, students need to become critical and capable users of both print and multimodal literacy, and be able to bring informed and analytic perspectives to bear on all texts, both print and digital, that they encounter in everyday life. This is part of schools’ larger challenge to build robust connections between school and the world beyond, to meet the needs of all students, and to counter problems of alienation and marginalisation, particularly amongst students in the middle years. This means finding ways to be relevant and useful for all students, and to provide them with the skills and knowledge they will need in the ICT-based world of the Twentyfirst century. With respect to literacy education, engagement and technology, we urgently need more information as to how this might be best achieved

Validation of the face-name pairs task in major depression: impaired recall but not recognition

Major depression can be associated with neurocognitive deficits which are believed in part to be related to medial temporal lobe pathology. The purpose of this study was to investigate this impairment using a hippocampal-dependent neuropsychological task. The face-name pairs task was used to assess associative memory functioning in 19 patients with major depression. When compared to age-sex-and-education matched controls, patients with depression showed impaired learning, delayed cued-recall, and delayed free-recall. However, they also showed preserved recognition of the verbal and nonverbal components of this task. Results indicate that the face-name pairs task is sensitive to neurocognitive deficits in major depression.Thisresearchwasfundedbya4-yearHealthResearch Board grant