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Summary: After more than 120 hand‐upper extremity and 37 face transplant procedures performed worldwide, vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) now falls under the scope of organ transplant legislation in Europe and the United States. While in the USA, VCA has been considered as standard care since 2014, VCA in Europe is still performed through clinical research trials, except in United Kingdom. However, after two decades of favourable experience with upper extremity transplantation (UET), professionals in Europe are proposing hand allotransplantation as "controlled standard" care, as opposed to face transplantation (FT), which is still a challenging activity. The European Committee on Organ Transplantation (CD‐P‐TO) has elaborated a position paper to provide recommendations concerning regulatory aspects for UET and FT. It is aimed at Health Authorities in charge of the oversight – and coordination – of organ donation and transplantation, and at professional groups to help them manage such complex and costly programs dedicated to properly selected patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the papers of the 19th-century British art connoisseur and curator George Scharf. The author notes that the papers, which are housed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, represent a remarkable repository of unpublished information regarding hundreds of old master paintings. Particular focus is paid to a series of papers relating to the art collections of the industrialist Abraham Darby IV and the art dealer John Watkins Brett. The paintings, which toured the U.S. in the 1830s, are related to early efforts to establish the first American national gallery. In addition, the author comments on the display of the paintings at the "Art Treasures of the United Kingdom" exhibition held in Manchester, England in 1857.

This paper seeks to bring to the attention of regulatory economists and policymakers the existence of some approaches to utility regulation that have hitherto received little or no attention in the economics literature. It begins by noting that regulatory actions have discouraged certain kinds of retail contracts in the UK that are offered in Nordic countries, almost extinguished retail competition in Ohio, and distorted the market for merchant interconnectors in Australia. In contrast, Argentina secured an efficient appraisal and implementation of transmission expansions by empowering users and severely limiting the role for regulation. Some US and Canadian jurisdictions have fostered the emergence of negotiated settlements that exhibit considerable innovation, and greater benefits for all parties than would have been possible with the conventional regulatory approach. These examples of the actual regulatory world can inform the work of theorists and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper involves an examination of skilled manual work in the modern paper industry. The data were collected at five mills in three countries -- the UK, Australia and the USA. The questions were formulated in order to probe four theories of skilled work. The results suggest that the distinction between skilled and nonskilled work is a fundamental feature of occupational differentiation in all five plants. They also reveal that there are intra-skilled conflicts over relative pay and demarcation lines and that these are affected by the wider socio-political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stamp collectors frequently donate their stamps to cultural heritage institutions. As digitization becomes more prevalent for other kinds of materials, it is worth exploring how cultural heritage institutions are digitizing their philatelic materials. This paper begins with a review of the literature about the purpose of metadata, current metadata standards, and metadata that are relevant to philatelists. The paper then examines the digital philatelic collections of four large cultural heritage institutions, discussing the metadata standards and elements employed by these institutions. The paper concludes with a recommendation to create international standards that describe metadata management explicitly for philatelic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the reflections on coordinating a multi-country paper which emphasizes a means to an end. It offers information about a research to inform policy making in multi-country comparative health systems. The research involves the International Medical Workforce Collaborative (IMWC) member countries including Australia, U.S., and Great Britain.

Objective: Although medication abortion has become more common in high-income countries, the procedure has not yet met early expectations for widening access to abortion. High-quality evidence can serve as a catalyst for changes in policy and practice. To direct research priorities, it is important to understand where quality evidence is concentrated and where gaps remain. High-income countries have developed a body of evidence that may have implications for the future of medication abortion. This literature review assesses the characteristics and quality of published studies on medication abortion conducted in the last 10 years in high-income countries and indicates future areas for research to advance policy and practice, and broaden access. Study design: A structured search for literature resulted in 207 included studies. A framework based upon the World Health Organization definition of sub-tasks for medication abortion was developed to categorize research by recognized stages of the medication abortion process. Using an iterative and inductive approach, additional sub-themes were created under each of these categories. Established quality assessment frameworks were drawn upon to gauge the internal and external validity of the included research. Results: Studies in the US and the UK have dominated research on MA in high-income countries. The political and social contexts of these countries will have shaped of this body of research. The past decade of research has focused largely on clinical aspects of medication abortion. Conclusion: Researchers should consider refocusing energies toward testing service delivery approaches demonstrating promise and prioritizing research that has broader generalizability and relevance outside of narrow clinical contexts. Plain English summary: Although medication abortion is more commonly available worldwide, it is not being used as often as people thought it would be, particularly in high income countries. In order to encourage changes in policy and practice that would allow greater use, we need good quality evidence. If we can understand where we do not have enough research and where we have good amounts of research, we can determine where to invest energies in further studies. Many high-income countries have produced research on medication abortion that could influence policy and practice in similarly resourced contexts. I conducted a literature review to be able to understand the type and quality of research on medication abortion conducted in high-income countries in the past 10 years. I conducted the review in an organized way to make sure that the papers reviewed discussed studies that I thought would be important for answering this question. The literature review found 207 papers. Each of these papers were reviewed and organized them by theme. I also used existing methods to determinine the quality of each study. Most of the research came from the US and the UK. Furthermore, most of the research conducted in the past 10 years was focused on clinical studies of medication abortion. In future studies, researchers should focus more on new ways of providing medication abortion to women that offers greater access. Also, the studies should be designed so that the results have meaning for a broader group of people or situations beyond where the study was done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both the United Kingdom and United States of America legislation has been proposed or enacted which claims to provide patients with a 'right' of access to experimental drugs and treatments where there is no other hope. In this paper we will explore this narrative and consider the steps taken in the United States to shift to a more rights driven legal framework. The paper will critically assess the United States model and the similarly framed 'Saatchi' model in the United Kingdom; demonstrating that, despite the rights-based narrative, these laws do not represent a significant change in access to treatment for patients. Rather, the reality is that this 'right to try' paradigm represents a patient advocate narrative that is deeply flawed. It fails to implement any meaningful change, exposes vulnerable patients to risk of harm and, potentially, delays safe development of potentially life-saving treatment regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional citation analysis has been greatly criticized because the process of citation accumulation requires considerable time after publication. So, the term "altmetrics" was proposed in 2010 to measure the scientific and social impact of a paper. According to the deficiencies of traditional citation analysis, we performed a comprehensive search for medical ethics publications using the altmetrics approach from the beginning until 2019. In this descriptive-analytical study, we retrieved the articles discussing any topics relating to medical ethics that published in the Scopus database from the beginning till 2019 using related medical ethics keywords. A total number of 455 articles with altmetrics scores and citations, included in this study. Altmetrics data were extracted via an altmetrics bookmarklet. Dimensions, Mendeley, and Twitter, had prominent sources of attention on social media platforms. The most number of tweets, and Mendeley's attentions, in the medical ethics fields, originated from the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). Moreover, master students have the largest share in the citation of articles in Mendeley. Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine has the most proportion of altmetrics score among Iranian papers in medical ethics. The correlation between the altmetrics score and citation index was significant (p <0.05). The medical ethics researchers have to pay more attention to social activities (such as creating and updating their profiles on social media) on the web for wide dissemination and proper evaluation of their scientific publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The prescribing of opioids has increased internationally in developed countries in recent decades within primary and secondary care. The majority of patients with chronic non-malignant pain (CNMP) are managed by their general practitioner (GP). Recent qualitative studies have examined the issue of opioid prescribing for CNMP from a GP viewpoint. The aim of this study is to identify and synthesise the qualitative literature describing the factors influencing the nature and extent of opioid prescribing by GPs for patients with CNMP in primary care. Methods: MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane Database, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, CINAHL and Web of Science were systematically searched from January 1986 to February 2018. The full text of included articles was reviewed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool for qualitative research. The papers were coded by two researchers and themes organised using Thematic Network Analysis. Themes were constructed in a hierarchical manner, basic themes informed organising themes which informed global themes. A theoretical model was derived using global themes to explain the interplay between factors influencing opioid prescribing decisions. Results: From 7020 records, 21 full text papers were assessed, and 13 studies included in the synthesis; 9 were from the United States, 3 from the United Kingdom and 1 from Canada. Four global themes emerged: suspicion, risk, agreement and encompassing systems level factors. These global themes are inter-related and capture the complex decision-making processes underlying opioid prescribing whereby the physician both consciously and unconsciously quantifies the risk–benefit relationship associated with initiating or continuing an opioid prescription. Conclusion: Recognising the inherent complexity of opioid prescribing and the limitations of healthcare systems is crucial to developing opioid stewardship strategies to combat the rise in opioid prescription morbidity and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Global health research partnerships, which promote the exchange of ideas, knowledge and expertise across countries, are considered key to addressing complex challenges facing health systems. Yet, many studies report inequalities in these partnerships, particularly in those between high and low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). Objective: This paper examines global research collaborations on community health worker (CHW) programmes, specifically analysing the structures of authorship teams and networks in publications reporting research on CHW programmes in low-income countries (LICs). Methods: A sub-set of 206 indexed journal articles reporting on CHW programmes in LICs was purposefully selected from a prior review of research authorship on CHW programmes in all LMICs over a five year period (2012–2016). Data on country and primary organisational affiliation and number of publications for all individual authors, programme area (e.g. maternal child health) and total citations per paper were extracted and coded in excel spreadsheets. Data were then exported and analysed in Stata/ICV.14 and Gephi. Results: The 206 papers were authored by 1045 authors from 299 institutions, based in 43 countries. Half (50.1%) the authors came from LIC-based institutions, 43.8% from high-income country (HIC) institutions, 2.9% from middle-income country (MIC) institutions and 3.2% had different first affiliations in different publications. Authors based in the USA (302) and UK (68) accounted for just over a third (35.4%) of all authors. Partnership patterns revealed a primary mode of North–South collaboration with authors from the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, playing central bridging roles between institutions. Strong network clusters of multiple-affiliated authors were evident in research on MCH and HIV/TB aspects of CHW programmes. Conclusion: Knowledge production on CHW programmes in LICs flows predominantly through a pool of connected HIC authors and North–South collaborations. There is a need for strategies harnessing more diverse, including South–South, forms of partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses medical research on the diagnosis of psychopathy that was withheld from publication for 3 years. The article focuses on variations in libel laws in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada that may not have protected forensic psychologist and coauthor Jennifer Skeem from a libel suit that could have been filed by forensic psychologist Robert Hare.

This article attempts to highlight quantitatively the growth and development of world literature on hemophilia in terms of publications output as per SCOPUS database (2003-2017). During 2003-2017 a total of 13503 papers were published by the scientists in the field of hemophilia. The average number of publications published per year was 900. The highest number of publications 1095 was published in 2012. Out of 13503 contributions, only 18.48% (2495 papers) of single authored and rest of 11008 papers (81.52%) were multi authored. The study identifies active institutions and country-wise distributions of hemophilia research output. The yearly analysis of data shows that there is a rapid growth of literature from 2011 onwards. There were 126 countries involved in the research in this field. USA is the top producing country with 3986 authorships (29.52%) followed by United Kingdom with 1438 authorships (10.65%). Still, in an international sense, relative productivity of India is low and requires more focused research and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To describe and summarize evidence on economic evaluations (EEs) of primary caries prevention in preschool children aged 2 to 5 years and to evaluate the reporting quality of full EE studies using a quality assessment tool.Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in several databases. Full and partial EEs were included. The reporting quality of full EE studies was assessed using the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) checklist.Results: A total of 808 studies were identified, and 39 were included in the review. Most papers were published between 2000 and 2017 and originated in the United States and the United Kingdom. The most common type of intervention investigated was a complex multicomponent intervention, followed by water fluoridation. Cost analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis were the most frequently used types of EE. One study employed cost-utility analysis. The proportion of full EEs increased over time. The parameters not reported well included study perspective, baseline year, sensitivity analysis, and discount rate. The CHEERS items that were most often unmet were characterizing uncertainty, study perspective, study parameters, and estimating resources and costs.Conclusions: Within the past 2 decades, there has been an increase in the number of EEs of caries prevention interventions in preschool children. There was inconsistency in how EEs were conducted and reported. Lack of preference-based health-related quality-of-life measure utilization in the field was identified. The use of appropriate study methodologies and greater attention to recommended EE design are required to further improve quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The bibliometric analysis uses the citation count of an article to measure its impact in the scientific community, yet there is still no comprehensive summary of gastric disease researches via bibliometric analysis. We aimed to evaluate the situations and trends of the most cited articles in gastric disease via bibliometric analysis and to provide physicians a practical guide in assessing the most influential articles written on this subject. Methods. The 100 top-cited articles in gastric disease were compiled using Web of Science. The articles selected were evaluated for their number of citations, year of publication, country of origin, type of study, and others. Results. The database had 484,281 articles published between 1965 and 2019. The most cited article received 4,017 citations and the least received 604, with a mean of 1,149 citations. We classified the articles into seven categories: gastric cancer (n = 53), Helicobacter pylori (n = 17), ulcer (n = 7), gastrointestinal stromal tumors (n = 6), gastritis (n = 5), gastric bypass surgery (n = 2), and others (n = 10). Altogether, 69 of the articles were from the USA (n = 41), the UK (n = 17), and Japan (n = 11). Among all the institutions, Royal Perth Hospital led the list with 5 articles. One-quarter of authors owned three or more of these top-cited articles. The 100 papers were published in 33 journals, and most of them were clinical researches (n = 47). Conclusions. Our study provides a historical perspective for the scientific progress of gastric disease, and the articles of significant findings that contributed great impact on the prevention and treatment of gastric disease had been identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid energy storage system (HESS) based on Li-ion and supercapacitor (SC) can play a potential role to stabilize the grid by providing the fast frequency ancillary services. The SC helps to reduce the battery charge/discharge stress and, hence, assists to extend the battery lifespan. The power sharing method (PSM) is the heart in control part to improve the HESS performance and reduce the battery stress. This paper proposes a hybrid PSM and investigates its impact on battery life extension along with its relation to the system design and regulation signal. The performance of hybrid PSM is compared with three other PSMs (low-pass filter, first and second rule based) in a 10 MW/10 MWh full-active parallel HESS for frequency regulation service in two networks: U.K. (national grid) and USA (PJM). Considering maximum possible battery lifetime upto 25 years, result shows that the hybrid PSM approach allows a degree of the better performance for both grid while the sharing of SC is kept maximum 2.0% and 2.5% (for U.S. and U.K. grid, respectively) of the HESS capacity. This study also analyses the impact of PSM on shared capacity and design of HESS for different grid regulation signals. [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]

The student accommodation sector in now the best-performing asset in the UK and US property markets and this is projected to further accelerate, with building refurbishment of existing student accommodations being the preferred method to satisfy growing demand. However, there are no published research studies on refurbishment projects within the student accommodation sector. Refurbishment is an emergent trend to upgrade existing stock to ensure that buildings meet rising energy efficiency demands. Moreover, it is widely affirmed that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and notably the built environment is a significant contributor, both through its construction and during its operation and use. This paper demonstrates through a comparative case study approach, how greenhouse gases levels can be effectively measured during refurbishment works. There are multiple metrics used for quantification/assessment of greenhouse gases performance and this paper aims to make well-argued recommendations for their best use. Four student accommodation refurbishment projects are presented to compare and contrast differing emission datasets. The results dictate that project cost and duration cannot alone be used to gauge greenhouse gases emissions; more too, in the instance of student accommodation refurbishment, gross internal floor area and the number of rooms offers a more predictable indicator. It is recommended that refurbishment developers reflect on these recommendations when reporting the primary energy and GHG performance of their refurbishment works. Best practice from this research may be adopted into domestic buildings refurbishment projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development steered by The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) since 2005 ended in 2014. It looked into the integration principles, values and practices of sustainable development in all aspects of education and learning, with the intention of addressing the global social, economic, cultural and environmental issues in the 21st century. It has become an essential issue in architectural education to create awareness among future generations of architects to be more sensitive towards the environmental impact of architecture on human behavior. This encouraged every school of architecture to incorporate sustainability knowledge into its curriculum and promote ‘sustainable architectural education’, leading to the questions of: what type of structural model of integration approach being applied in promoting architectural sustainable education? The objectives of this paper are to investigate the type of structural models that have been applied in architectural curriculum in selected schools of architecture in both countries and evaluate the level of emphasis in incorporating sustainability knowledge in the curriculum. Therefore, this paper reviewed the approach of integration principles, values and practices of sustainable development at 10 conveniently sampled architecture schools in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA). Data was collected from their respective web sites and their concepts of integration were reviewed and the distribution of credit hours revealed to determine the level of emphasis considered. Findings showed various paths taken by the different institutions in integrating the knowledge of sustainability into their architectural curriculum. This paper concludes with recommendations for further research into gauging the effectiveness of architectural curricula with integrated sustainability knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between supply chain performance and renewable energies has been widely identified as a critical research topic by practitioners, international organizations, and academics. It is essential to explore the articles that have been published by scholars regarding their main concerns, the methodologies used, the renewable energies that have been focused on, and the performance indicators that have been used in the optimization of renewable energies supply chains. This paper delivers a comprehensive bibliometric analysis that provides a better understanding not previously fully evaluated by earlier studies in the field of supply chain performance and renewable energies. The goal of this research is: 1) to recognize the scholarly production; 2) the most productive authors; 3) the most productive journals; 4) the most cited articles; and 5) the most productive countries. The analysis begins by identifying studies published during the period between 2005 and the middle of 2018, which are then reduced in number to those authored by influential investigators. Also discussed are the gaps in knowledge about literature and bibliometric analysis. The findings provide a potential roadmap for researchers who intend to undertake research in this field. • The number of publications in supply chain performance and renewable energies has been increasing, in the last few years. • The topic of supply chain performance and renewable energies has been explored most deeply in the USA, Italy, and the UK. • The most-cited articles are related to the spatial distribution of bioenergy production units and process network. • The renewable energies most focused are bioethanol, biofuels, biomass, bio-oil gasifier. • The Biomass and Bioenergy journal is the most-cited journal in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older adults often experience functional decline following acute medical care. This functional decline may lead to permanent disability, which will increase the burden on the medical and long-term care systems, families, and society as a whole. Post-acute care aims to promote the functional recovery of older adults, prevent unnecessary hospital readmission, and avoid premature admission to a long-term care facility. Research has shown that post-acute care is a cost-effective service model, with both the hospital-athome and community hospital post-acute care models being highly effective. This paper describes the post-acute care models of the United States and the United Kingdom and uses the example of Taiwan's highly effective post-acute care system to explain the benefits and importance of post-acute care. In the face of rapid demographic aging and smaller household size, a post-acute care system can lower medical costs and improve the health of older adults after hospitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Non‐motor symptoms (NMS) are integral to Parkinson's disease (PD) and have a detrimental effect on patients and their caregivers. Clinical quantification has been aided by the development of comprehensive assessments such as the Non‐Motor Symptoms Questionnaire (NMSQuest) and Scale (NMSS). The NMSS has been widely used in clinical studies and trials; however, since its validation in 2007, our understanding of NMS has changed substantially. With the support of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (IPMDS), after a detailed peer review an initiative to develop an updated version of NMSS, the MDS‐NMS was launched in 2015. Objective: This paper encapsulates the data from the pre‐validation phases carried out under the auspices of the IPMDS Non‐Motor PD Study Group. Methods: Item selection and wording (formatted as a rater‐based tool) were based on the NMSS, literature review, and expert consensus. Neurologists, PD patients, and healthy controls were included in the cognitive pretesting and administration of the preliminary version of the MDS‐NMS. Primary data on acceptability and reliability were obtained. Results: The pilot study, carried out in English in the United Kingdom and the United States, demonstrated that the preliminary version of the MDS‐NMS was comprehensive, understandable, and appropriate. Data quality was excellent; moderate floor effect was present in patients for most MDS‐MNS domains, with some components showing weak internal consistency. The results led to additional instrument modifications. Conclusion: Qualitative and quantitative research results have led to an updated NMSS, the definitive version of the MDS‐NMS, which is currently being validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: (i) To determine the current state of online grocery shopping, including individuals' motivations for shopping for groceries online and types of foods purchased; and (ii) to identify the potential promise and pitfalls that online grocery shopping may offer in relation to food and beverage purchases. Design: PubMed, ABI/INFORM and Google Scholar were searched to identify published research. Setting: To be included, studies must have been published between 2007 and 2017 in English, based in the USA or Europe (including the UK), and focused on: (i) motivations for online grocery shopping; (ii) the cognitive/psychosocial domain; and (iii) the community or neighbourhood food environment domain. Subjects: Our search yielded twenty-four relevant papers. Results: Findings indicate that online grocery shopping can be a double-edged sword. While it has the potential to increase healthy choices via reduced unhealthy impulse purchases, nutrition labelling strategies, and as a method to overcome food access limitations among individuals with limited access to a brick-and-mortar store, it also has the potential to increase unhealthy choices due to reasons such as consumers' hesitance to purchase fresh produce online. Conclusions: Additional research is needed to determine the most effective ways to positively engage customers to use online grocery shopping to make healthier choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the InCites tool of Thomson Reuters, this study compares normalized citation impact values calculated for China, Japan, France, Germany, United States, and the UK throughout the time period from 1981 to 2010. InCites offers a unique opportunity to study the normalized citation impacts of countries using (i) a long publication window (1981 to 2010), (ii) a differentiation in (broad or more narrow) subject areas, and (iii) allowing for the use of statistical procedures in order to obtain an insightful investigation of national citation trends across the years. Using four broad categories, our results show significantly increasing trends in citation impact values for France, the UK, and especially Germany across the last thirty years in all areas. The citation impact of papers from China is still at a relatively low level (mostly below the world average), but the country follows an increasing trend line. The USA exhibits a stable pattern of high citation impact values across the years. With small impact differences between the publication years, the US trend is increasing in engineering and technology but decreasing in medical and health sciences as well as in agricultural sciences. Similar to the USA, Japan follows increasing as well as decreasing trends in different subject areas, but the variability across the years is small. In most of the years, papers from Japan perform below or approximately at the world average in each subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rapidly changing circumstances of our increasingly digital world, reading is also becoming an increasingly digital experience: electronic books (e-books) are now outselling print books in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, many readers still view e-books as less readable than print books. The present study thus used combined EEG and eyetracking measures in order to test whether reading from digital media requires higher cognitive effort than reading conventional books. Young and elderly adults read short texts on three different reading devices: a paper page, an e-reader and a tablet computer and answered comprehension questions about them while their eye movements and EEG were recorded. The results of a debriefing questionnaire replicated previous findings in that participants overwhelmingly chose the paper page over the two electronic devices as their preferred reading medium. Online measures, by contrast, showed shorter mean fixation durations and lower EEG theta band voltage density – known to covary with memory encoding and retrieval – for the older adults when reading from a tablet computer in comparison to the other two devices. Young adults showed comparable fixation durations and theta activity for all three devices. Comprehension accuracy did not differ across the three media for either group. We argue that these results can be explained in terms of the better text discriminability (higher contrast) produced by the backlit display of the tablet computer. Contrast sensitivity decreases with age and degraded contrast conditions lead to longer reading times, thus supporting the conclusion that older readers may benefit particularly from the enhanced contrast of the tablet. Our findings thus indicate that people's subjective evaluation of digital reading media must be dissociated from the cognitive and neural effort expended in online information processing while reading from such devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probabilistic flood mapping offers flood managers, decision makers, insurance agencies, and humanitarian relief organizations a useful characterization of uncertainty in flood mapping delineation. Probabilistic flood maps are also of high interest for data assimilation into numerical models. The direct assimilation of probabilistic flood maps into hydrodynamic models would be beneficial because it would eliminate the intermediate step of having to extract water levels first. This paper introduces a probabilistic flood mapping procedure based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Given a SAR image of backscatter values, we construct a total histogram of backscatter values and decompose this histogram into probability distribution functions of backscatter values associated with flooded (open water) and non-flooded pixels, respectively. These distributions are then used to estimate, for each pixel, its probability of being flooded. The new approach improves on binary SAR-based flood mapping procedures, which do not inform on the uncertainty in the pixel state. The proposed approach is tested using four SAR images from two floodplains, i.e., the Severn River (U.K.) and the Red River (U.S.). In all four test cases, reliability diagrams, with error values ranging from 0.04 to 0.23, indicate a good agreement between the SAR-derived probabilistic flood map and an independently available validation map, which is obtained from aerial photography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ABSTRACT A huge change has occurred in the way people obtain weather information in the last few years and a large percentage of the population now get weather forecasts on their mobile phones. There is currently a wide range of smartphone weather apps available: in 2014, iTunes App Store alone offered 5043 active applications in the weather category. The rapid penetration of new broadcasting technologies strongly affects the way weather forecasts are communicated to, and used by, people. Portability, permanent connectivity and geolocalization allow location-specific and time-sensitive weather forecasts to be provided. This paper explores the main features emerging in the 39 most popular weather apps in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy, and focuses on the implications in the communication of uncertainty. The results show that even if the advances in mobile communication technologies could, in principle, improve the effectiveness of weather communication enormously, the expectations created around weather forecasts appear to be inconsistent with current forecasting capabilities, particularly with their inherent uncertainties in space and time, as well as in the nature of the predicted weather events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite electronic book (e-book) piracy being viewed by many rightsholders as the greatest contemporary challenge to the publishing industry, there is little research evaluating different anti-piracy methods, and explaining how they work. This paper explores the technological methods that United Kingdom and United States publishers, and their representative bodies, are using to tackle the growing challenge of e-book piracy. Through interviews with industry experts (including consultants, publishers and representatives) and publishing case studies, this paper brings together knowledge previously published and considered separately. The systems considered include The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal, and Digital Rights Management in its various forms. Through these systems, we can reveal a lack of nuanced understanding in the motivations and methods of illegal file sharing, which have led to unsuccessful blanket solutions to a complex problem. By teasing out these problems, this paper will act as a point of reference for current anti-piracy measures, and consider the future options for an industry increasingly using the World Wide Web to distribute content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of 32,574 papers published by USA, UK, China, India and Brazil in the field of 'plant genetics and breeding' research during 2005-2009 indicates that USA produced the highest number of publications followed by China. The impact of research output as seen by the values of different impact indicators is highest for UK. The sub-domains of emphasis of research shifted in 2009 as compared to 2005 for all countries. India contributed about 9 percent to the world publication output. Indian output formed a part of the mainstream science as seen by the pattern of publication and citation of the research output. The total Indian output originated from 1,806 institutions located in different parts of the country. About 41 percent of the total Indian output was concentrated among 23 institutions. Among the institutions, international institutes located in India had the highest impact. The proportion of single authored papers has decreased considerably and the share of internationally co-authored papers has remained almost steady during the period of study [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their apparently pervasive reach and relevance, the geographies of branded commodities and their branding have been unevenly recognised and under-researched. This paper presents a way of conceptualising and analysing brand and branding geographies. Focusing upon goods and services, the notion of geographical entanglements is developed to understand the spatial associations and connotations that unavoidably ensnare brands and branding. Second, it examines how such attachments shape and are shaped by brand and branding agents, including producers, circulators, consumers and regulators. Last, the placing of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding is developed as a means of lifting their 'mystical veils' and prompting reflections upon their politics and relationships to uneven development. Situating branding genealogies in geographical context, the empirical analysis comprises a socio-spatial biography of Newcastle Brown Ale (NBA). It explains how NBA's geographical entanglements have been (re)constructed in its contrasting survival in the UK and growth in the US. As a way of thinking about brand and branding geographies, the paper seeks to broaden the reach of economic geographies at their intersections with cultural economy approaches and to stimulate debate about their politics and alternatives to uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars researching the commercialization of science focus on biomedicine, this paper explores the changing commercial frameworks for meteorology in the UK and the US. The organization of meteorology in both countries increasingly reflects a political-economic approach that treats science as an economic entity in which market-based criteria can be used to allocate scientific resources. The differences are equally significant in terms of the production and dissemination of meteorological forecasts and other data to public and private services. Alongside this commercialization has been the emergence of weather derivatives markets -- financial products that enable trading on weather indices in a way similar to oil or gas futures -- which have re-shaped how some businesses interact with meteorologists. This paper explores how weather derivatives traders engage with, shape, and are frustrated by a commercialized approach to funding meteorological data and forecasts. It highlights how commercial imperatives raise questions about the collection and quality of meteorological data, and how forecasting and weather modelling is being adopted within the private sector to enable trading strategies in the weather derivatives market. The consequences for commercial actors are highly variable, suggesting that any account of commercialization of science, while recognizing extant policy shifts, must be sufficiently nuanced in its interpretation of such effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second World War, the British book trade faced severe shortages of paper, of labour, particularly in the printing and binding sectors, and of shipping space for imports of raw materials and exports of finished books. These limitations drastically reduced the number of books publishers produced—supplies to British booksellers were strictly rationed and exports dwindled to a mere fraction of their pre-war levels. American publications, less affected by war-time shortages, began to supplant British exports in certain key markets. Concern intensified in Britain that this trend would continue, seriously and permanently damaging the book export trade. Overseas book sales were particularly valued, not only because of their very real contribution to the balance of trade, but also because of their immeasurable contributions to the promotion of British culture and ideas around the world: ‘Books are ambassadors of British culture… Books are salesmen of British goods.’1 Prompted by the desire to reclaim markets neglected during the war, drawn by the lure of new markets emerging after, and constantly motivated by the treat of competition from America, the British book trade waged a great campaign to increase book exports. Individual publishers, trade organizations, government ministries and charitable organizations all cooperated in this export drive, introducing an astonishing number of new initiatives and projects between 1940 and 1960. This paper charts traces the motivations behind the book export drive and describes the major initiatives it prompted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we present the current state of cultural diversity education for undergraduate medical students in three English-speaking countries: the United Kingdom (U.K.), United States (U.S.) and Canada. We review key documents that have shaped cultural diversity education in each country and compare and contrast current issues. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the varied terminology that is immediately evident. Suffice it to say that there are many terms (e.g. cultural awareness, competence, sensitivity, sensibility, diversity and critical cultural diversity) used in different contexts with different meanings. The major issues that all three countries face include a lack of conceptual clarity, and fragmented and variable programs to teach cultural diversity. Faculty and staff support and development, and ambivalence from both staff and students continue to be a challenge. We suggest that greater international collaboration may help provide some solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the key issues related to migrant workers, work, public policy and HRM while introducing the five articles included in the special issue. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports on the issue which is made up of articles that present research based on surveys, interviews and longitudinal census data. Findings - It is evident that high-performing economies attract migrants from lower-performing economies. However, with influxes of migrant labour there are a number of challenges that need to be met at the organisational and policy levels. Research limitations/implications - The indications are that some economies are beginning to slow and this means that migrant flows will also slow or reverse. The implications for migrant-dependent sectors and countries are not clear, although all five papers indicate areas for further research. Practical implications - Each article includes practical implications depending on the sector, skill and country being examined. Practical implications include the role of day labour centres as HR mediators between organisations and employees, the need for culturally sensitive and tailored training programs to assist professional migrants and the need for policies geared towards the assimilation of migrants and return migrants in order to assist their integration into the labour market. Originality/value - The five articles presented here represent a wide range of approaches, skill levels and sectors within the five counties examined: the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and Finland. Some, such as the US paper which includes the first national survey of day labour worker centres, present findings from a highly under-represented area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'obscenity' has no universal definition. It is often ill -defined, subjective and highly dependent on the culture of the communities in question and between communities. Nevertheless, the aim of the law on obscenity is to prevent publication and distribution of materials, which are potentially harmful to its readers, viewers and audience. The purpose of this paper is three fold. Firstly, it briefly considers the law on obscenity in the United Kingdom, and in the United States. Secondly, the paper discusses and evaluates the law relating to obscenity in Hong Kong in the light of the recent publication and distribution of materials which could be argued to fall within the realm of obscenity. Finally, it considers whether the law on obscenity would ever be able to fit into an "acceptable community standard". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning from the Teaching, Research, and International Politics (TRIP) survey, this paper outlines the most important emerging paradigm in international political economy (IPE), known as open economy politics (OEP). This approach forms the core of the 'American' school of IPE. The paper then contrasts the epistemology of OEP, based on partial equilibrium analysis, with that of the 'British' school of IPE, which favors a more holistic approach. This difference is not captured well in the TRIP survey, nor is it particularly well understood by many proponents of either side. Recognizing the progressive nature of the OEP research program, the essay concludes with a call to bridge but not necessarily to abolish the transatlantic divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the technological measures that copyright holders employ to lock their works and discusses why users are disadvantaged. It compares the anticircumvention rules in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the US and the Copyright, Patents and Designs Act in the UK; the latest exemptions to circumventing activities released by the US Library of Congress are included. It reviews the evolution of Chinese anti-circumvention rules, starting with a well-known case preceding the promulgation of the anti-circumvention rules, then it examines the anti-circumvention provisions in the Copyright Act 1990, the Software Regulation 2001 and the ISP Interpretation 2004. It also critically analyzes the latest Network Regulation 2006 by comparing it with the DMCA and the CDPA. The paper suggests that the Chinese anticircumvention rules need to be constructed with more legal certainties. Recommendations are also made for additional redrafting to make China's anti-circumvention rules more adaptive to a digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the assumption that increasing competition among higher education institutions is the best method of achieving a strong higher education sector in developing countries. It notes that there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of higher education institutions for sustainable development, particularly because of their importance to the global knowledge economy. For the same reason, the appropriate management of the relationship between the state and higher education institutions is vital to a strong and dynamic future for these institutions. This paper proposes a menu of options for higher education governance, grouped around ‘state-centric’ and ‘neo-liberal’ models of development. The ‘state-centric’ model proposed is based on a variety of examples of high performing Asian economies, in particular, while the ‘neo-liberal’ model is based on emerging trends in higher education management in countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper suggests that despite pressure across the globe to encourage a market among universities, this may not always be the most efficient use of resources, or the best way to integrate universities in a country’s drive for economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the dynamics of competition in higher education. National competition and global competition are distinct, but feed into each other. Higher education produces ‘positional goods’ (Hirsch 1976) that provide access to social prestige and income-earning. Research universities aim to maximise their status as producers of positional goods. This status is a function of student selectivity plus research performance. At system-level competition bifurcates between exclusivist elite institutions that produce highly value positional goods, where demand always exceeds supply and expansion is constrained to maximise status; and mass institutions (profit and non-profit) characterised by place-filling and expansion. Intermediate universities are differentiated between these poles. In global competition, the networked open information environment has facilitated (1) the emergence of a world-wide positional market of elite US/UK universities; and (2) the rapid development of a commercial mass market led by UK and Australian universities. Global competition is vectored by research capacity. This is dominated by English language, especially US universities, contributing to the pattern of asymmetrical resources and one-way global flows. The paper uses Australia as its example of system segmentation and global/national interface. It closes by reflecting on a more balanced global distribution of capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Logo’ is the name for a philosophy of education and for a continually evolving family of computer languages that aid its realization. Developed in the USA in the late 1960s, it became the material embodiment of a radical educational philosophy and a potential vehicle for the transformation of education. In the early 1980s, Logo was introduced into mainstream education in both the USA and the UK. Within an increasingly conservative social and political context with different education policy priorities, Logo was gradually stripped of its radical potential, marginalized and, where it survived, remoulded as harmless to the mainstream educational system. This paper draws on empirical research that explored the evolution of Logo between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. The paper focuses on the social processes involved in the initial development and evolution of Logo. It shows that these processes were heavily contested. Logo was the product of complex social, technical, political and economic decisions, and the product of negotiation shaped by the concerns of the social players involved. The evolution of Logo was not linear or even primarily technical. Rather, it was a seamless web in which the technical was interwoven with the social, economic and political in ways that illustrate the dialectical interaction between historical contingency and the intentions and aspirations of individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, ‘decisive’ events and the agency of the military-state. This paper, in common with recent work on ‘popular geopolitics’, offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile – the US-made ‘Corporal’– through the testimony of a self-described ‘space-daft’ schoolboy who, in 1959, travelled alone across Scotland to witness the first British testing of the missile. However, unlike much of the literature on popular geopolitics, this paper is concerned with the more-than-representational question of observant practice. Addressing recent calls for a more empirical enquiry into the relationship between geography and visual culture, the paper examines how geopolitical power operates through sights and spectacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that governments of some otherwise enlightened states are increasingly fearful of acknowledging the restraints imposed on them by existing international law. They are also reluctant to enter into new commitments by way of international conventions that would expand the reach of international law. The paper asks whether these fears are based on a true understanding of international law or on some distorted view of it. It will draw comparisons and some contrasts between Australia and the United States in their reactions to a number of recent events as well as to some enduring situations of contemporary relevance. Had time (and the limits of my research) permitted, one might also have examined public attitudes toward international law in China, Japan, and Russia in this context, where similar fears appear to be entertained. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, also enlightened states, appear by contrast to belong to a group more dedicated to international law. As Robert Kagan has recently remarked, the experience of two world wars at close quarters, and the formation of the European Union, have made the European countries more dedicated to process, where the United States is more interested in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of ‘just sustainability’ provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses approaches to global education in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The paper begins by looking at movements that preceded global education, such as education for international understanding, development education, multicultural education, and peace education. The rise and fall of these earlier movements is analysed in terms of the interplay between the international and domestic politics of particular countries. To identify the world views which underpinned these pedagogic forms, the author discusses various discontinuities between the period up to the 1990s and thereafter. It is suggested that fresh forms of global education are emerging in — and because of — the changed world of the late 20th and early 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of giving ethos and behavior in the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular the relationship of giving to civic life. Obvious disparities between the two countries exist when overall levels of giving are considered. In the United States, individual giving as a percentage of gross national or domestic product has consistently hovered around 2% of Gross Domestic Product. By contrast, charitable giving in the United Kingdom has yet to reach 1% of GDP. The paper identifies the differences in giving ethos and behavior in the two countries in relation to the complexity of the differences between the political structures, social attitudes, and the role of charitable giving in the two countries. In particular, the paper postulates a set of models—generosity and altruism—for explaining the differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the logic of membership of sectoral business associations in Britain using evidence from a proportionate stratified random sample of associations. The British system gives no statuatory status to business associations. As a result the size and fragmentation of associations is similar to the US, membership of associations is interpreted in terms of the logic of specific business service demand and the logic of collective activities. Expectations from models of collective action, associability and involvement are used to interpret association membership. The paper argues that the normal distinction between associations as trade, professional or "peak" bodies is too simplistic in not properly differentiating the types of member. The paper employs instead a set of six categories dependent on the type of members: companies, owner-managers, the self-employed, and individuals, as well as bodies with mixed membership, and federations (which are associations of associations). Survey evidence demonstrates that member motives for joining, lapsing and constraining service development differ significantly between association types and tend most strongly to emphasise the logic of individual services as complements to the logic collective activity. Analysis of the rates of joining and lapsing membership show evidence of reluctance to join and high rates of lapsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a structural time series methodology to test the notion of interconnectedness between the UK and the US credit markets. The empirical tests utilise data on premium for the Banking sector credit default swaps (CDS) and covers the recent period of financial turmoil. The methodology based on Kalman filter is robust in the presence of limited convergence. The long-term steady state convergence in CDS premium is clearly noticeable between these two markets from the results. This observation lends support for the coordinated regulatory policy initiatives to deal with the crisis and offer suggestions for sound operations of the international financial systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lone parents and their children experience higher than average levels of adverse health and social outcomes, much of which are explained by high rates of poverty. Many high income countries have attempted to address high poverty rates by introducing employment requirements for lone parents in receipt of welfare benefits. However, there is evidence that employment may not reduce poverty or improve the health of lone parents and their children.Methods: We conducted a systematic review of qualitative studies reporting lone parents' accounts of participation in welfare to work (WtW), to identify explanations and possible mechanisms for the impacts of WtW on health and wellbeing. Twenty one bibliographic databases were searched. Two reviewers independently screened references and assessed study quality. Studies from any high income country that met the criteria of focussing on lone parents, mandatory WtW interventions, and health or wellbeing were included. Thematic synthesis was used to investigate analytic themes between studies.Results: Screening of the 4703 identified papers and quality assessment resulted in the inclusion of 16 qualitative studies of WtW in five high income countries, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, covering a variety of welfare regimes. Our synthesis found that WtW requirements often conflicted with child care responsibilities. Available employment was often poorly paid and precarious. Adverse health impacts, such as increased stress, fatigue, and depression were commonly reported, though employment and appropriate training was linked to increased self-worth for some. WtW appeared to influence health through the pathways of conflict and control, analytical themes which emerged during synthesis. WtW reduced control over the nature of employment and care of children. Access to social support allowed some lone parents to manage the conflict associated with employment, and to increase control over their circumstances, with potentially beneficial health impacts.Conclusion: WtW can result in increased conflict and reduced control, which may lead to negative impacts on mental health. Availability of social support may mediate the negative health impacts of WtW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older people who live in nursing homes commonly suffer from pain. Therefore, relieving suffering among older people that stems from pain demands knowledge improvement through an integration of international knowledge. This study aimed to integrate current international findings and strengthen the understanding of older people's experiences of and perspectives on pain and pain management in nursing homes. A meta-synthesis study using Noblit and Hare's interpretative meta-ethnography approach was conducted. Empirical research papers from journals were collected from various databases. The search process and appraisal determined six articles for inclusion. Two studies were conducted in the US and one each in Iceland, Norway, the UK, and Australia. The older people's experiences of pain as well as perspectives on pain management from all involved (older people, their family members, and healthcare staff) were integrated into a theoretical model using three themes of "identity of pain," "recognition of pain," and "response to pain." The metaphor of "normalizing suffering" was devised to illustrate the meaning of pain experiences and pain management in nursing homes. Society's common attitude that pain is unavoidable and therefore acceptable in old age in society--among older people themselves as well as those who are responsible for reporting, acknowledging, and relieving pain--must change. The article emphasizes that pain as a primary source of suffering can be relieved, provided that older people are encouraged to report their pain. In addition, healthcare staff require sufficient training to take a person-centered approach towards assessment and management of pain that considers all elements of pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]