62880 research outputs found
Sort by
Autism community priorities in diverse low-resource settings: a country-wide scoping exercise in India
Get PDFWhile studies to map the priorities of the autistic community have been undertaken in some high-income countries, there has been little or no such systematic assessment in the global south. India alone is home to an estimated >5 million autistic individuals. To address this gap in the literature, this study conducted a survey of the Indian autism community on their priorities for three areas: skills training, intervention and research. Individuals with a clinical diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders and parents/guardians of autistic individuals were invited to take part in the study. Data from 280 respondents were collected online and followed up with interviews on a subset (n = 40) chosen through stratified random selection. Results highlighted a unanimous prioritisation for self-help skills as the most important area in skills training, as it was considered the foundation for acquiring all other skills. Speech and language therapy was identified as the most important intervention for autistic individuals. Within research, identifying the most effective ways for the community to support autistic people was given the topmost priority. Researchers, clinicians and policymakers may use these insights to develop services and shape future research that is more in accord with the community’s needs
Connecting hydrological modelling and forecasting from global to local scales: perspectives from an international joint virtual workshop
Get PDFThe unprecedented progress in ensemble hydro-meteorological modelling and forecasting on a range of temporal and spatial scales, raises a variety of new challenges which formed the theme of the Joint Virtual Workshop, "Connecting global to local hydrological modelling and forecasting: challenges and scientific advances”. Held from 29 June to 1 July 2021, this workshop was co-organized by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Copernicus Emergency Management (CEMS) and Climate Change (C3S) Services, the Hydrological Ensemble Prediction EXperiment (HEPEX), and the Global Flood Partnership (GFP). This paper aims to summarize the state-of-the-art presented at the workshop and provide an early career perspective. Recent advances in hydrological modelling and forecasting, reflections on the use of forecasts for decision-making across scales, and means to minimise new barriers to communication in the virtual format are also discussed. Thematic foci of the workshop included hydrological model development and skill assessment, uncertainty communication, forecasts for early action, co-production of services and incorporation of local knowledge, Earth Observation, and data assimilation. Connecting hydrological services to societal needs and local decision-making through effective communication, capacity-building and co-production was identified as critical. Multidisciplinary collaborations emerged as crucial to effectively bring newly developed tools to practice
Economic performance amongst English seaside towns
Get PDFWithin urban and tourism studies, although much research has focused on uneven city prosperity and competitiveness, little is known about factors influencing seaside town economic performance. We adopt a place-based approach to understand its determinants amongst 58 of England’s largest seaside towns drawing on a bespoke database. Through Partial Least Square analysis, Spearman’s Rank Correlation and general linear regression modelling for panel data with random effects, we identify the ‘leaders’ and ‘laggers’ along with a set of associated socio-economic characteristics. These insights enhance understanding of how and why economic performance differs amongst these towns. We highlight implications for addressing such socio-economic disparities across seaside towns, which has wider destination relevance, and use these findings to inform policy which seeks to raise the productivity potential of ‘lagging’ towns
The policy mix in a monetary union: who bears the burden of asymmetric shocks' stabilisation?
Get PDFWe utilise a standard reduced-form neo-Keynesian model in a monetary union, in which the monetary authority and the fiscal authorities strategically interact, to explore who, under alternative institutional arrangements (strategic and fiscal regimes) and shocks' configurations, bears the burden of asymmetric shocks' stabilisation. We show that in the core/periphery fiscal regime, described by an asymmetry in the sequence of moves between the core and the peripheral member-states, asymmetric shocks pass through at the union level to the inflation rate and the output gap when there are strategically significant spill-over effects and the monetary policy's and fiscal policies' instruments are not perfect substitutes in the stabilisation process. The monetary authority reacts to asymmetric shocks, but does not succeed in fully offsetting them. The first best implies the coordination of fiscal policies. A second best embraces the fiscal leadership strategic regime (as a form of implicit coordination), when there are strong interconnections in the union, or the use of policy instruments by the fiscal authorities that directly decrease inflation when fiscal policy is expansionary, such as taxes, production subsidies or public investment, when there is a strong cost channel of monetary policy
‘Brief conversations for pilgrims’: Rasputin, Russian-speaking travellers and the pilgrim experience in Jerusalem in 1911-1912
Get PDFIn 1911, Grigorii Rasputin undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That same year, the Katanov brothers published a quadrilingual phrasebook in Jerusalem – in Russian, Greek, Turkish and Arabic – designed for Russian pilgrims. The Russian pilgrim market was a very different one to the western tourist and pilgrim market typically catered to by phrasebook and guidebook authors in Palestine. Russian pilgrims tended to be poorer, of lower socio-economic status, to travel in large groups, and to have limited contact with people and places in Palestine outside the churches and religious sites which were their goal – all of which made their linguistic needs very different. Using Rasputin’s own account of his pilgrimage, the Katanov brothers’ phrasebook and another contemporary account by English journalist Stephan Graham, this paper explores the Russian pilgrim experience in Jerusalem and how it contrasted with that of the elite western tourists who are most prominent in our written sources
The age-wage-productivity puzzle: evidence from the careers of top earners
Get PDFThere is an inverted u-shaped relationship between age and wages in most labor markets, but the effects of age on productivity are often unclear. We use panel data in a market of high earners, professional footballers (soccer players) in North America, to estimate age-productivity and age-wage profiles. We find stark differences; wages increase for several years after productivity has peaked, before dropping sharply at the end of a career. This poses the question: why are middle-aged workers seemingly overpaid? We investigate a range of possible mechanisms that could be responsible, only finding evidence that tentatively supports a talent discovery theory
Regional house price convergence: implications of monetary policy
Get PDFMotivated by the structural change since the adoption of inflation targeting in October 1992, this research investigates regional house price convergence in the UK over 1973:Q4 to 2020:Q4. By utilising subsample comparisons, results show that all regions in the inflation targeting regime converges to one club until the global financial crisis. The finding suggests that the successful inflation targeting policy can promote integration among regions
Experience and reporting of postnatal depression across cultures: a comparison using anchoring vignettes of mothers in the UK and India
Get PDFPostnatal mental health is often assessed using self-assessment questionnaires in epidemiological research. Differences in response style, influenced by language, culture and experience, may mean that the same response may not have the same meaning in different settings. These differences need to be identified and accounted for in cross-cultural comparisons. We describe the development and application of anchoring vignettes to investigate the cross-cultural functioning of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in urban community samples in India (n = 828) and the UK (n = 549), alongside a UK calibration sample (n = 226). Participants completed the EPDS and anchoring vignettes when their children were 12-24 months old. In an unadjusted item-response theory model, UK mothers reported higher depressive symptoms than Indian mothers (d = .48, 95% CI: .358, .599). Following adjustment for differences in response style, these positions were reversed (d = -.25, 95% CI: -.391, -.103). Response styles vary between India and the UK, indicating a need to take these differences into account when making cross-cultural comparisons. Anchoring vignettes offer a valid and feasible method for global data harmonisation
Causes of diverse impacts of ENSO on the Southeast Asian summer monsoon among CMIP6 models
Get PDFThis study examines the fidelity of 47 models from phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) in representing the influence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the Southeast Asian summer monsoon (SEASM) during the ENSO decaying summer. The response of the SEASM to ENSO shows a large model spread among the models, some of which even simulate opposite signs of SEASM anomalies compared to the observed values. The bad-performance models (BPMs) are therefore selected to be compared with both the good-performance models (GPMs) and observations to explore the possible causes of the deficiency. Results show that in the BPMs, the ENSO-related warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies extend too far westward in the western equatorial Pacific (WEP) and they do not dissipate in the El Niño decaying summer in comparison with those in the GPMs and observations, interfering with the effect of ENSO on the SEASM. The slow decay of WEP SST anomalies from the El Niño mature winter to the decaying summer in BPMs is mainly caused by a weak negative shortwave radiation feedback due to a low sensitivity of convection to local SST anomalies, which is related to the cold bias in climatological SST over this region. On the other hand, from the mature winter to the decaying summer of El Niño, the El Niño-related anomalous eastward current does not reverse to westward current in the BPMs, which also contributes to the slow decay of WEP SST anomalies via inducing excessively persistent warm zonal advection
