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How does bereavement affect the health-related quality of life of household members who do and do not provide unpaid care? Difference-in-difference analyses using the UK household longitudinal survey
Get PDFBackground
Guidelines for modelling in economic evaluation recommend that it may be necessary to consider costs and outcomes until all modelled patients have died. Some guidelines also recommend that carers’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) outcomes should be included. However, it is unclear whether economic evaluations should continue to include carers’ HRQoL after patients have died, and whether there is any evidence to support an additional bereavement effect for carers.
Methods
We used the UK Household Longitudinal Study waves 1–12. We used Difference-in-Differences to estimate the short- and long-term bereavement effects on the SF-6D for people who reported that they did and did not provide care to a household member who then died. We assumed parallel trends conditional on age, sex, long-term health conditions, education, and household income.
Results
Carers and non-carers experienced a significant loss in HRQoL in the year immediately following bereavement. Carers potentially experienced a loss in HRQoL in the year before bereavement, whereas the bereavement effect may have lasted longer for non-carers. For both groups, HRQoL became comparable to the non-bereaved population around 3 years after bereavement.
Conclusions
Bereavement has a statistically significant negative impact on HRQoL in the short-term, for both carers and non-carers. However, the effect size is small and is not sustained, suggesting that including bereavement in economic evaluation would make little difference to results
Dynamic assessment of word learning as a predictor of vocabulary, reading comprehension and risk status for the poor comprehender reading profile
Get PDFThe Poor Comprehender (PC) reading profile is characterised by difficulty comprehending text despite age-appropriate decoding skills. Risk for this profile is typically identified through static screening instruments measuring pre-existing knowledge, which may produce biased estimates for culturally and linguistically diverse children. In contrast, Dynamic Assessment (DA) measures potential to learn new knowledge and has been shown to reduce bias in screening. To date, however, DA has not been used to identify PC reading profile risk status. Adopting a longitudinal design, we used an adapted DA of word learning to measure growth in vocabulary and reading comprehension among a diverse sample of 322 primary school children (aged 9 years at the first time point) in England over a period of 16-19 months, and to classify later PC reading profile risk status. Two separate factor scores representing phonological and semantic aspects of word learning predicted unique variance in the growth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension after accounting for traditional static predictors. The DA of word learning achieved excellent classification accuracy for identifying poor comprehenders, identifying all of the poor comprehenders with EAL when added to the static assessments. Results suggest that DA of word learning may be a promising tool in screening for the PC reading profile, particularly for EAL pupils, ensuring that the risk of reading comprehension difficulties does not go unidentified in such learners
Financialisation and Intangible Assets in Emerging Market Economies: Evidence from Brazil
Get PDFWhereas previously scholars advocated a positive relationship between a growing size of the financial sector and economic growth, most recent evidence has shown that this might not be the case at all times. The financialisation literature has pointed to some of the mechanisms through which the increasing size and changing structure of the financial system might weigh negatively on growth through the changing financial relations of non-financial corporations (NFCs). This paper contributes to this debate on several grounds. First, rather than interrogating the relationship between finance and firms’ tangible investments, it focuses on firms’ intangible investments, arguably a sine-qua-non for innovativeness and productivity-enhancing structural change. Drawing on an emerging literature on intangible assets, innovation, and development studies, we highlight the important role of investment into intangible assets, in the context of developing economies. Second, by bringing together the literatures on access to finance, intangible assets, and financialisation, we delineate analytically three specific channels through which finance can affect intangible assets. Third, this is the first paper that tests empirically all three channels using the population of publicly listed manufacturing companies in an Emerging Market Economy, Brazil over the period 2011–2016. Our results confirm the potentially negative impact of financialisation on intangible assets through the crowding-out channel, that is, firm’s increased tendency to hold financial assets reduces intangible assets. Our findings also confirm the shareholder-value orientation channel, that is, firm’s payments of dividends reduce intangibles assets
Elevated CO2 alters antibiotic resistome in soil amended with sulfamethazine via chemical-organic fertilization
Get PDFRising antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an enormous challenge for global healthcare systems. The effects of elevated CO2 (eCO2) on AMR are poorly characterized. Using a free-air CO2 enrichment system and high-throughput qPCR arrays, we investigated the response of soil antibiotic resistome and bacterial communities to eCO2 (ambient + 200 ppm) in soils amended with sulfamethazine (SMZ) at 0.1 and 1 mg kg−1 via chemical-organic fertilizer (COL, COH). Results showed that under ambient condition, COH significantly enhanced the diversity of high-risk antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), relative abundance of low risk ARGs, unassessed ARGs and total ARGs compared to COL. Nevertheless, eCO2 mitigated the effects of COH, with no significant difference found between COL and COH on the above high risk, low risk, unassessed and total ARGs. Meanwhile, eCO2 decreased the relative abundance of spcN, ermA, olec, oprD, sulA-olP, tetB, tetT and vanXD in COL, and alleviated the enrichment of pikR2, ampC, lunC, oprD and pncA caused by the application of SMZ at 1 mg kg−1. Correlation and network analysis illustrated that changes of certain bacteria biomarkers and horizontal gene transfer of integrase gene were associated with the altered response of ARGs abundance to eCO2. This study adds knowledge of the potential risk of antibiotic resistance in agricultural exposure scenarios under increasing CO2 concentration
Molecular mechanism of condensin I activation by KIF4A
Get PDFDuring mitosis, the condensin I and II complexes compact chromatin into chromosomes. Loss of the chromokinesin, KIF4A, results in reduced condensin I association with chromosomes, but the molecular mechanism behind this phenotype is unknown. In this study, we reveal that KIF4A binds directly to the human condensin I HAWK subunit, NCAPG, via a conserved disordered short linear motif (SLiM) located in its C-terminal tail. KIF4A competes for NCAPG binding to an overlapping site with SLiMs at the N-terminus of NCAPH and the C-terminus of NCAPD2, which mediate two auto-inhibitory interactions within condensin I. Consistently, the KIF4A SLiM peptide alone is sufficient to stimulate ATPase and DNA loop extrusion activities of condensin I. We identify similar SLiMs in the known yeast condensin interactors, Sgo1 and Lrs4, which bind yeast condensin subunit, Ycg1, the equivalent HAWK to NCAPG. Our findings, together with previous work on condensin II and cohesin, demonstrate that SLiM binding to the NCAPG-equivalent HAWK subunit is a conserved mechanism of regulation in SMC complexes
Estimating the density of urban trees in 1890s Leeds and Edinburgh using object detection on historical maps
Get PDFWe present a new end-to-end methodology for extracting symbols from historical maps and demonstrate an application of the method to extract details of the urban forests of Leeds and Edinburgh in the UK using Ordnance Survey maps from the 1890s. The methods presented allow tree symbols on 1:500 scale maps to be efficiently extracted, with our object detection model achieving an F1-score of 0.945. The results for each city are presented on the National Library of Scotland website and have been used to generate an estimate of 37 ± 1 tree symbols per hectare for Leeds in 1888–90 and 40 ± 1 tree symbols per hectare for Edinburgh in 1893–94. This is the first time that quantitative data has been obtained for historical urban tree counts in these two cities. The method presented can be expanded to other UK towns and cities and is a valuable tool for learning about the past, and changes to both the natural and built environment over time, aiding decisions on future tree planting. We discuss the process used to automate the generation of training data and to train a machine learning model to extract the symbols, comparing it with other possible models. This discussion provides context on how best to tackle similar problems of symbol extraction from historical maps and the issues that may arise in such automated analysis, alongside factors that must be considered when using historical maps as a data source
Exploring the impact of variability in cell segmentation and tracking approaches
Get PDFSegmentation and tracking are essential preliminary steps in the analysis of almost all live cell imaging applications. Although the number of open-source software systems that facilitate automated segmentation and tracking continue to evolve, many researchers continue to opt for manual alternatives for samples that are not easily auto-segmented, tracing cell boundaries by hand and reidentifying cells on consecutive frames by eye. Such methods are subject to inter-user variability, introducing idiosyncrasies into the results of downstream analysis that are a result of subjectivity and individual expertise. The methods are also susceptible to intra-user variability, meaning findings are challenging to reproduce. In this pilot study, we demonstrate and quantify the degree of intra- and inter-user variability in manual cell segmentation and tracking by comparing the phenotypic metrics extracted from cells segmented and tracked by different members of our research team. Furthermore, we compare the segmentation results for a ptychographic cell image obtained using different automated software and demonstrate the high dependence of performance on the imaging modality they were developed to handle. Our results show that choice of segmentation and tracking methods should be considered carefully in order to enhance the quality and reproducibility of results
Nemo dat and theft:the need for clarity of the impact of the criminal status of rogue middlemen in title conflicts
No full textThe basic rule concerning title in English and Welsh law is nemo dat quod non habet: you cannot give what you have not got. The rule causes title conflicts, such as: the original owner hands over their goods to a middleman who disposes them without the original owner’s authority or consent to an innocent purchaser. The middleman either disappears or is not worth suing, meaning the dispute is (almost) invariably between the original owner and the innocent purchaser. Given that stolen goods cannot have their title laundered by a nemo dat exception, the delineation between stolen and non-stolen goods is a key issue but it remains unclear, exacerbated by developments in criminal law over the past twenty years. At the core of this problematization is a question of justice as to innocent purchasers, whose position turns on factors outside their knowledge and control
Insurgent imaginations: more dimensions in cultural theory in the light of inter-war Soviet theory
Get PDFFifteen-minute consultation: Should I get my child the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine?
No full textThe Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recently recommended the introduction of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine into the UK’s routine childhood immunisation schedule. This was previously only available to a small group of eligible children or through private healthcare providers. Engaging families in conversations around vaccines is recognised as important for informed decision-making, and professionals leading these discussions need to be confident and well-informed. This article aims to provide an overview of the evidence behind the decision to introduce varicella (chickenpox) vaccine, and addresses anticipated questions
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