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James Walker, John Lee and Stephen Broadberry synthesise and analyse ancient sources to address three fascinating questions: What can Domesday Book tell us about medieval England and Wales? How can we estimate medieval populations? What was the size of the medieval economy?

Chronically ill patients may be at risk of re-hospitalization or even death if their care transitions are poorly coordinated. Transitions of care create challenges for care coordination, such as in...

Summary Background Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common opportunistic pathogen and molecular typing in outbreaks has linked patient acquisition to contaminated hospital water systems. Aim To elucidate the role of P. aeruginosa transmission rates in non-outbreak augmented care settings in the UK. Methods Over a 16-week period, all water outlets in augmented care units of four hospitals were sampled for P. aeruginosa and clinical isolates were collected. Outlet and clinical P. aeruginosa isolates underwent whole-genome sequencing (WGS), which with epidemiological data identified acquisition from water as definite (level 1), probable (level 2), possible (level 3), and no evidence (level 4). Findings Outlets were positive in each hospital on all three occasions: W (16%), X (2.5%), Y (0.9%) and Z (2%); and there were 51 persistently positive outlets in total. WGS identified likely transmission (at levels 1, 2 and 3) from outlets to patients in three hospitals for P. aeruginosa positive patients: W (63%), X (54.5%) and Z (26%). According to the criteria (intimate epidemiological link and no phylogenetic distance), approximately 5% of patients in the study ‘definitely’ acquired their P. aeruginosa from their water outlets in the intensive care unit. This study found extensive evidence of transmission from the outlet to the patients particularly in the newest hospital (W), which had the highest rate of positive outlets. Conclusions The overall findings suggest that water outlets are the most likely source of P. aeruginosa nosocomial infections in some settings, and that widespread introduction of control measures would have a substantial impact on infections.

Legionnaires’ disease has been recognized since 1976 and Legionella pneumophila still accounts for more than 95% of cases. Approaches in countries, including France, suggest that focusing risk reduction specifically on L. pneumophila is an effective strategy, as detecting L. pneumophila has advantages over targeting multiple species of Legionella. In terms of assays, the historically accepted plate culture method takes 10 days for confirmed Legionella spp. results, has variabilities which affect trending and comparisons, requires highly trained personnel to identify colonies on a plate in specialist laboratories, and does not recover viable-but-non-culturable bacteria. PCR is sensitive, specific, provides results in less than 24 h, and determines the presence/absence of Legionella spp. and/or L. pneumophila DNA. Whilst specialist personnel and laboratories are generally required, there are now on-site PCR options, but there is no agreement on comparing genome units to colony forming units and action limits. Immunomagnetic separation assays are culture-independent, detect multiple Legionella species, and results are available in 24 h, with automated processing options. Field-use lateral flow devices provide presence/absence determination of L. pneumophila serogroup 1 where sufficient cells are present, but testing potable waters is problematic. Liquid culture most probable number (MPN) assays provide confirmed L. pneumophila results in 7 days that are equivalent to or exceed plate culture, are robust and reproducible, and can be performed in a variety of laboratory settings. MPN isolates can be obtained for epidemiological investigations. This accessible, non-technical review will be of particular interest to building owners, operators, risk managers, and water safety groups and will enable them to make informed decisions to reduce the risk of L. pneumophila.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 led to a rapid shift to Working from Home (WFH). In universities and other parts of the education sector, on-line teaching and assessment become mandatory. We use research from a representative large-scale (n = 2,287) survey of business, management and economics academics in the UK to examine how prior on-line experience, learning during the ‘lockdown’, and work engagement, impacted their perceptions of on-line education. Results show that: (1) experience of on-line activity prior to the lockdown was substantially positively related to perceptions of working virtually, though perceptions differed by seniority; (2) experience of working on-line during lockdown did not enhance academic’s views of on-line delivery or any bias against on-line delivery, but it did increase positive attitudes towards on-line marking; (3) those able to maintain mental resilience and energy are considerably more likely to perceive on-line activity positively; but being more ‘dedicated’ or more ‘ensconced in work’ did not play a role. We explore the implications of these findings for the future of on-line work.

While the purpose of academic research is to obtain new knowledge and understanding, there is an increasing concern that many scholars value work based upon where it is published rather than on its intrinsic quality. We argue that the degree to which journal ranking lists affect research has an important field-specific component. Using a large-scale survey of UK business academics and underpinned with a conceptual framework inspired by Bourdieu, we examine the attitudes towards journal ranking lists of individuals working within 22 ‘fields’ operating under the umbrella of business and management in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG). We show that scholars in economics and finance at one end of the spectrum, and in organisational studies at the other, systematically differ from accounting scholars in how they relate to the list. While the empirical evidence suggests that finance and economics are more insular than other fields, members of these two fields are the ones who are significantly less likely to consider that journal lists create a ‘research monoculture’, foster ‘technically well-executed but boring research’, or ‘encourage work that is not of interest to practitioners/policy makers’. On the other hand, scholars in organisational studies show the highest agreement with these concerns about journal ranking lists. Our findings have important implications for the evolution of accounting as a field that spans both a critical, interpretive paradigm with a strong focus on organisational context as well as a positivist, financial and capital markets-based research paradigm. If accounting scholars of these two approaches attach different authority to journal ranking lists and the value of publications in highly ranked journals, these perception differences could lead to tensions within the field and could have distortive effects on resource allocations and the career prospects of accounting scholars working in the respective sub-fields.

We examine shifts in British income inequality and their causes from 1911–1949. Using newly rediscovered Inland Revenue income distribution estimates, we show that Britain had an unusually high concentration of personal incomes in 1911 compared to other industrial nations. We also find that Britain’s substantial inequality reduction over the next four decades was largely driven by a collapse in top capital incomes. This parallels findings for France, the United States, and other western countries, that reduced inequality was mainly caused by declining top unearned incomes, owing to economic shocks, policy responses, and non-market mechanisms associated with the retreat from globalization.

To update the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations for vaccination in adult patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases (AIIRD) published in 2011. Four systematic literature reviews were performed regarding the incidence/prevalence of vaccine-preventable infections among patients with AIIRD; efficacy, immunogenicity and safety of vaccines; effect of anti-rheumatic drugs on the response to vaccines; effect of vaccination of household of AIIRDs patients. Subsequently, recommendations were formulated based on the evidence and expert opinion. The updated recommendations comprise six overarching principles and nine recommendations. The former address the need for an annual vaccination status assessment, shared decision-making and timing of vaccination, favouring vaccination during quiescent disease, preferably prior to the initiation of immunosuppression. Non-live vaccines can be safely provided to AIIRD patients regardless of underlying therapy, whereas live-attenuated vaccines may be considered with caution. Influenza and pneumococcal vaccination should be strongly considered for the majority of patients with AIIRD. Tetanus toxoid and human papilloma virus vaccination should be provided to AIIRD patients as recommended for the general population. Hepatitis A, hepatitis B and herpes zoster vaccination should be administered to AIIRD patients at risk. Immunocompetent household members of patients with AIIRD should receive vaccines according to national guidelines, except for the oral poliomyelitis vaccine. Live-attenuated vaccines should be avoided during the first 6 months of life in newborns of mothers treated with biologics during the second half of pregnancy. These 2019 EULAR recommendations provide an up-to-date guidance on the management of vaccinations in patients with AIIRD.

Wage inequality has increased across most developed nations; this has been manifested in a wide range of organisations and sectors, with implications for well‐being and sustainability; within UK universities, this has become increasingly visible. There is increasing pressure on universities to deliver social and economic impact in an increasingly market‐driven and metric‐driven environment. In the UK context, increasing financial pressure has led to both an escalation of student fees and constrained wage growth for faculty. In contrast, most Vice Chancellors have secured substantive pay packages raising concerns that regulatory failures may be contributing to the rise. We show that Vice Chancellors use their internal power within organisations to extract a disproportionate amount of the value created by the institution. However, we encountered much diversity according to the quality of governance, highlighting the extent to which not only contextual but also internal dynamics drive wage inequality.

Academics often judge themselves and are judged by others according to the status of the journals in which they publish. Little is known about whether individual scholars would choose to publish an article in a high-status journal if it would garner similar or lower levels of scholarly impact than an article published in a lower-status journal. Drawing upon status theory, we explore whether and how much business school academics are willing to ‘pay’, as captured by a hypothetical level of ‘forfeited’ citations, to publish in high-status 4* journals rather than leading specialized 4-rated journals. Using choice-set design and survey data from UK business and management scholars, we suggest and empirically demonstrate that the willingness to forgo citations to publish in 4* journals is strongest among academics who have already published in 4* and/or 4-rated journals. Contrary to our expectations, we find that an individual’s existing scholarly impact, as captured by prior citations, has no effect on this preference. We also show that academics working in high-ranked institutions would give up more citations for 4* journal publication than those working at lower-ranked institutions. We explore the implications of these findings for theories of academic status, journal rankings and research assessment systems.

Background: Many countries re-opened schools after national lockdown but little is known about the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission in educational settings. Public Health England conducted six-month prospective surveillance in primary schools across England. Methods: The COVID-19 Surveillance in School KIDs (sKIDs) study included two arms: weekly nasal swabs for ≥4 weeks following partial reopening during the summer half-term (June to mid-July 2020) and blood sampling with nasal and throat swabs at the beginning and end of the summer half-term, and, following full reopening in September 2020, at the end of the autumn term (end-November 2020). Results: In round 1, 12,026 participants (59.1% students, 40.9% staff) in 131 schools had 43,091 swabs taken. Weekly SARS-CoV-2 infection rates were 3.9 (1/25,537; 95% CI, 0.10-21.8) and 11.3 (2/17,554; 95% CI, 1.4-41.2) per 100,000 students and staff. At recruitment, N-antibody positivity in 45 schools was 11.1% (91/817; 95%CI, 9.2-13.5%) in students and 15.1% (209/1381; 95%CI, 13.3-17.1%) in staff, similar to local community seroprevalence. Seropositivity was not associated with school attendance during lockdown or staff contact with students. Round 2 participation was 73.7% (1,619/2,198) and only five (4 students, 1 staff) seroconverted. In round 3, when 61.9% (1,361/2,198) of round 1 participants were re-tested, seroconversion rates were 3.4% (19/562; 95%CI, 2.0-5.2) in students and 3.9% (36/930; 95%CI, 2.7-5.3) in staff. Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 infection rates, assessed using nasal swabs for acute infection and serum antibodies for prior infection, were low following partial and full reopening of primary schools in England. Funding Statement: This surveillance was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Declaration of Interests: None to declare. Ethics Approval Statement: The surveillance protocol was approved by the Public Health England Research Ethics Governance Group (R&D REGG Ref: NR0209, 16 May 2020).

The quantity of finance research has grown enormously over the past two decades, yet questions remain over its breadth and ability to benefit the economy and society beyond academia. Using multisource data, we argue that individual and institutional incentives have fostered insularity and a consequent homogeneity in the discipline. We examine the characteristics of research that is published and cited in the leading field journals in finance, arguing that the work has become abstract and unrelated to real world issues. The work published in the ‘top’ journals makes increasing use of US data, even where the researchers are drawn from different countries. Using information from impact assessment, publication patterns, and grant capture, we illustrate that this narrow agenda lacks relevance to the financial services sector, the economy or wider society compared to other areas of business and management research. In particular, we highlight the relative absence of research on ethics in academic finance and discuss the likely consequences for the discipline including its relevance to society.

A tin-loaded liquid scintillator has been developed for gamma spectroscopy and neutron detection. The scintillator was characterized in regard to energy resolution, pulse shape discrimination, neutron light output function, and timing resolution. The loading of tin into scintillators with low effective atomic number was demonstrated to provide photopeaks with acceptable energy resolution. The scintillator was shown to have reasonable neutron/gamma discrimination capability based on the charge comparison method. The effect on the discrimination quality of the total charge integration time and the initial delay time for tail charge integration was studied. To obtain the neutron light output function, the time-of-flight technique was utilized with a 252Cf source. The light output function was validated with the MCNPX-PoliMi code by comparing the measured and simulated pule height spectra. The timing resolution of the developed scintillator was also evaluated. The tin-loading was found to have negligible impact on the scintillation decay times. However, a relatively large degradation of timing resolution was observed due to the reduced light yield.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1980s the Treasury and Bank of England successfully advocated a policy of restricting both private and public sector house-building, as a key but covert instrument of their wider ‘stop-go’ macroeconomic policy framework. While the intensity of restrictions varied over the economic cycle, private house-building was restricted (through limiting mortgage availability) for almost all this period. This was achieved by keeping building society interest rates low relative to other interest rates and thus starving the building society movement of mortgage funds. Mortgage restriction was never publicly discussed and sometimes operated alongside ambitious housing targets and well-publicised policy initiatives to boost housing demand. This paper outlines the evolution of house-building restriction, together with its impacts on the housing sector and the wider economy. We review the evolution of the policy framework and its consequences, compare the level and stability of British house-building during this period - historically and relative to other countries, and undertake time-series econometric analysis of its impacts on both house-building and house prices. Finally, implications for debates regarding stop-go policy, Britain’s housing problem, and the distributional consequences of government macroeconomic policy are discussed.

The development of the Association of Business Schools’ (ABS) list in 2007 and its rapid adoption by UK business schools has had a profound effect on the nature of business and management academics’ ways of working. Using a large-scale survey of UK business academics, we assess the extent to which individuals use the Academic Journal Guide (AJG/ABS) list in their day-to-day professional activities. In particular, we explore how their perceptions of the list, the academic influence of their research, academic rank and organizational context drive the varied use. Building on prior research on the importance of univalent attitudes in predicting behaviour, we find those who have either strong positive or negative views of the list are more extensive users than those who are ambivalent. We also find that the extent of use of the AJG/ABS list is greatest among those academics who have lower academic influence, in the middle or junior ranks within Business Schools and in middle and low-status universities. We explore the implications of these findings for the value of journal rankings and for the management of business schools.

Research about the Covid-19 pandemic has taken centre stage in shaping the work of many scholars, inter alia highlighting the importance of research in addressing the grand challenges humanity faces. However, the pandemic has also ushered in increased administrative, teaching and out of work commitments for many researchers, leading to concerns that academics will become less willing to invest time in obtaining resources to undertake non-Covid-related projects. Using a large-scale survey of business, economics and management researchers, coupled with their publication histories and additional institutional data, we examine how far individuals experienced the focus on the pandemic as ‘crowding out’ interest in, and undermining their confidence in applying for grants for work not focused on the pandemic. We found 40% of the sample agree that the pandemic has impaired their confidence in applying for non-pandemic-related grants and ‘crowded out’ other projects. Researchers with current and prior grants, particularly those with the most experience of holding grants, scholars whose work ‘impacted’ beyond academia, and early career researchers, disproportionately considered themselves to be most affected. We also found that researchers’ perceptions differed based on institutional characteristics. We discuss the implications of these findings for grant providers and national research agencies as well as for individual academic researchers and the institutions in which they work.

Within healthcare facilitates, environmental contamination is often identified as a major contributor in the transfer of pathogenic hospital acquired infection (HAI). These infections although mainly from a small collection of bacteria, have given rise to one of the most severe and devastating complications associated with hospital stays. Further to this, data appears to indicate that increased length of stay significantly increases the likelihood of acquiring a HAI. For decades manufactures have used biocides to try and reduce the negative impacts of microbial colonisation on specific products. Historically, strategies have focused on incorporating biocidal preservative compounds to impede biofilm formation, with the aim to reduce diminished aesthetic or structural integrity (biodeterioration). However, more recently focus has shifted in trying to provide either a contact-killing surface or a surface that can significantly reduce microbial colonisation to a level below the threshold for which there is significant pathogen survival, with the aim to reduce transfer of infection. In this review, the focus is on the inclusion of antimicrobials into the almost ubiquitous polymer based surfaces, as a means of reducing contamination within the healthcare environment. This includes already established techniques, such as incorporating inorganic and organic biocides into the polymer matrix and surface coatings, as well as more modern techniques such as light activation and nanoparticles. Further to this, the importance of cleaning and personal hygiene is considered, as well as the potential impact of future policy and legislation strategy.

Summary Background Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections have been linked to contaminated hospital taps, highlighting the potential for tap outlet fittings (OF) to harbour biofilm. P. aeruginosa may be transferred to OFs via contaminated cleaning cloths. Suggested interventions include flushing regimens and alternative OF designs. Aim To investigate the transfer of P. aeruginosa from a contaminated cleaning cloth to conventional and ‘antimicrobial/antibiofilm' OFs and to determine whether this contamination persists and/or leads to contamination of tap water. Methods Microfibre cloths contaminated with P. aeruginosa (10 8 cfu/mL) were used to wipe four different types of OF [one of conventional design (OF-A) and three marketed as ‘antimicrobial' and/or ‘antibiofilm' (OF- B, -C and -D)]. OFs were inserted into an experimental water distribution system for up to 24 h. Survival was assessed by culture. Single and multiple water samples were collected and cultured for P. aeruginosa . Findings The median number of P. aeruginosa transferred from cloth to OF was 5.7 × 10 5 cfu (OF-A), 1.9 × 10 6 cfu (OF-B), 1.4 × 10 5 cfu (OF-C) and 2.9 × 10 6 cfu (OF-D). Numbers declined on all OFs during the 24 h period with log reductions ranging from 3.5 (OF-C) to 5.2 (OF-B; P > 0.05). All water samples delivered immediately after OF contamination contained P. aeruginosa at ≥10 cfu per 100 mL. Contamination of water delivered from OF-A persisted despite continued flushing. Water delivered from OF-B did not contain P. aeruginosa beyond the first flush. Conclusion Contaminated cleaning cloths may transfer P. aeruginosa to OFs, leading to contamination of tap water. Although not removing the potential for contamination, ‘antimicrobial/antibiofilm' OFs may prevent P. aeruginosa from continually contaminating water delivered from the outlet.

The article examines the impact of resale price maintenance (RPM) on market structure, productivity, and competitive advantage in British retail pharmacy. In contrast to influential studies, but consistent with contemporary and recent work, it is shown that the major multiples were able to ameliorate the negative growth impacts of RPM. Higher profit margins ‒ principally from larger manufacturer discounts and backward integration – were used to fund initiatives aimed at boosting aggregate sales and economies of scale and scope. These relationships are explored using a recently discovered national establishment-level survey of retail pharmacists’ costs and margins, together with internal data for Boots Ltd.

This article examines the impacts of British government ‘stop-go’ policy on domestic sales of consumer durables over the period 1952–65, via hire purchase restrictions and punitive Purchase Tax rates. Our analysis includes a general review of contemporary evidence regarding the impacts of these measures, a more detailed study of the television sector, and time-series econometric analysis for both televisions and a representative high-ticket labour-saving consumer durable: washing machines. We find that the restrictions had devastating impacts on Britain's consumer durables industries, preventing firms from fully exploiting economies of scale, reducing output growth and international competitiveness, and eroding industrial relations. Government officials were aware of these problems, but considered them a price worth paying to facilitate moves towards sterling convertibility and the re-establishment of the City as a leading financial and trading centre.