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Flexible sigmoidoscopy (FS) screening has been shown to reduce colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality among screened adults. The aim of this review was to identify patient-related factors associated with the screening test's use. We searched PubMed for studies that examined the association between FS screening use and one or more factors. To determine the eligibility of studies, we first reviewed titles, then abstracts, and finally the full paper. We started with a narrow search, which we expanded successively (by adding 'OR' terms) until the number of new publications eligible after abstract review was <1% of the total number of publications. We then abstracted factors from eligible papers and reported the number of times each was found to be positively or negatively associated with FS screening use. We identified 42 papers, most of which reported studies conducted in the United States of America (n = 21, 50%) and the United Kingdom (n = 13, 31%). Across studies, a wide range of factors were examined (n = 123), almost half of which were found to be associated with FS screening use at least once (n = 60). Sociodemographic and health and lifestyle factors that were frequently positively associated with FS screening use included: male gender, higher socioeconomic status and a family history of CRC. Frequently positively associated psychosocial factors included low perceived barriers and high perceived benefits. Findings suggest that future research should focus on developing a theoretical framework of cancer screening behaviour to allow a greater level of consistency and specificity in measuring key constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has been conducted on the concept of jobless recoveries and their potential causes, primarily focused on the United States from the 1990s. This paper finds that the prolonged employment downturn following the brief 1980–1981 recession in Britain qualifies as a jobless recovery and then investigates possible contributing factors: labor reallocation across industries, regional employment changes, and job polarization. The United States, which did not have a jobless recovery from the early 1980s recession, is taken as a comparison case. I find that the leading candidate explanation for this jobless recovery is the reallocation of labor across industries. This suggests an important role for structural change in the early 1980s recession and in jobless recoveries more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a close reading of the reports of racial oppression that appeared in issues of two periodicals, Anti-Caste and its successor Fraternity, between 1888 and 1895. Edited in Street, Somerset, these periodicals created an extensive political geographical imagination by mapping international cases of racial prejudice. Although critical of the British empire, neither Anti-Caste nor Fraternity demanded the destruction of the British empire. In a tactic similar to that used by early Pan-Africanists, the papers' narratives desired an end to the expansion of the British empire and an increase in the respect for and conditions of those who were ruled 'under the British Flag'. However, Anti-Caste's focus upon racial inequality across the United States as well as the British empire enabled it to create a distinctive critique of racial prejudice across the English-speaking world. Its criticism of the imperial project combined with support for human brotherhood allowed the paper to develop a framework for debates on racial prejudice that drew together criticisms of labour laws in India, the removal of people from their lands in Southern Africa, the racial segregation of public transport in the United States and the restriction of Chinese labour in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Journal of Archaeological Science first appeared in 1974 as an explicitly interdisciplinary medium, linking archaeology with the natural sciences, and one that emphasizes methodological innovation. This editorial analysis examines the steady growth of the journal from 400 to 3200 print pages per annum, and from a small to a large, double-column format. The impact factor increased until it became the leading archaeological journal overall. Tracking the published papers according to national origin, manuscripts from the USA began to outpace those from the UK in 1990, and Australia, South Africa and Canada are well represented. After 2000 the influx of papers from non-Anglophone countries also increased rapidly until by 2008 they exceeded those from the UK or USA. A growing interest for archaeological science is suggested in Mediterranean countries such as France, Israel, Spain and Italy. Thematic trends are more difficult to track due to the growing structural complexity of many papers. That said, there is no striking thematic shift, confirming the viability of the inclusive philosophy and diversity of the journal, and its balance between problems and analytical innovation, as applied to significant archaeological issues. Possible editorial responses to changing directions in archaeology are discussed. For all scientific periodicals, the efficacy of the peer-review system today is challenged by the increasing numbers of journals and manuscripts, together with the greater specialization of high-tech methods. This demands greater professional responsibility as well as new solutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Though almost no postwar union contracts indexed wage rates to prices of the employer's products, union agreements linking wage rates to product prices, known as sliding scales, were common in some industries in the United States and Britain from the 1860s through the 1930s. This paper explains why sliding scales disappeared after the 1930s, and examines what practical experience with sliding scales revealed about fundamental constraints on wage indexation. Paradoxically, the history of sliding scales confirms that workers' information about product prices and materials costs is generally imperfect, in ways that would substantially constrain wage indexation in long-term contracts. Sliding scales were not indexed long-term contracts, but rather devices to forestall costly strikes in the absence of contracts by revealing employers' private information about product demand. In the postwar US, unions and employers failed to link wage rates to product prices because they had gained the ability to enter binding contracts, which could achieve the benefits of preventing strikes without incurring the extra negotiation costs and information problems associated with product-price indexation. I present a model to show how sliding scales could forestall strikes by revealing information, and how the introduction of binding union contracts reduced incentives to link wages to product prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal variations in the organization of educational institutions are thought to affect the distribution of students into levels of educational achievement. This paper analyzes the diverging achievements of British and American cohorts as they pass through secondary and post-secondary education. The ways students' locations in the systems' structures deflect their achievements are charted, and the cumulative effects of those deflections between the ages of 16 and 28 are estimated. Despite the more stratified and standardized organization of the British educational system, and despite its sharper differentiation between academic and vocational credentials, the cumulative deflections during these years are greater in the United States. Explaining this outcome requires an understanding of both organizational and normative differences between the two systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]