Higher effort-reward imbalance and lower job control predict exit from the labour market at the age of 61 years or younger: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Background: We examined whether higher effort-reward imbalance (ERI) and lower job control are associated with exit from the labour market. 

Methods: There were 1263 participants aged 50-74 years from the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing with data on working status and work-related psychosocial factors at baseline (wave 2; 2004-2005), and working status at follow-up (wave 5; 2010-2011). Psychosocial factors at work were assessed using a short validated version of ERI and job control. An allostatic load index was formed using 13 biological parameters. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Exit from the labour market was defined as not working in the labour market when 61 years old or younger in 2010-2011. 

Results: Higher ERI OR=1.62 (95% CI 1.01 to 2.61, p=0.048) predicted exit from the labour market independent of age, sex, education, occupational class, allostatic load and depression. Job control OR=0.60 (95% CI 0.42 to 0.85, p=0.004) was associated with exit from the labour market independent of age, sex, education, occupation and depression. The association of higher effort OR=1.32 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.73, p=0.045) with exit from the labour market was independent of age, sex and depression but attenuated to non-significance when additionally controlling for socioeconomic measures. Reward was not related to exit from the labour market. 

Conclusions: Stressful work conditions can be a risk for exiting the labour market before the age of 61 years. Neither socioeconomic position nor allostatic load and depressive symptoms seem to explain this association.

Plain English: Applying Principles to Home School Written Communication Considering Diverse Families

Schools attempting to engage with the families of all learners, including those with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds recognize the importance of effective oral and written communication. The aim of this study is to determine if school generated written communication created by an urban school district serving a culturally and linguistically diverse population in the Northeast of the US adhered to the principles of plain English. This exploratory research examined exemplar pieces of written school generated communication, using different forms of linguistic analysis to determine whether the communication contained elements recognized to facilitate or impede the comprehensibility of each piece of communication. Additionally, a text assessment tool which can help schools to analyze the written text communication they send to families was developed and refined.

Evolving southwest African response to abrupt deglacial North Atlantic climate change events

Climate change during the last deglaciation was strongly influenced by the „bipolar seesaw‟, producing antiphase climate responses between the North and South Atlantic. However, mounting evidence demands refinements of this model, with the occurrence of abrupt events in southern low to mid latitudes occurring in-phase with North Atlantic climate. Improved constraints on the north-south phasing and spatial extent of these events are therefore critical to
understanding the mechanisms that propagate abrupt events within the climate system. We present a 19,400 year multi-proxy record of climate change obtained from a rock hyrax midden in southernmost Africa. Arid anomalies in phase with the Younger Dryas and 8.2 ka events are apparent, indicating a clear shift in the influence of the bipolar seesaw, which diminished as the Earth warmed, and was succeeded after ~14.6 ka by the emergence of a dominant interhemispheric atmospheric teleconnection.

English Language Education at University: Trends and Challenges in Teaching and Learning Academic Discourse in the UK

This chapter discusses English Language Education at university and highlights a number of trends and their associated challenges in teaching and learning academic discourse. Academic discourse refers to the ways in which language is used by participants in academia. It encompasses written discourse, from article and book publishing, PhD theses to course assignments; spoken discourse, from study groups, tutorials, conference presentations to inaugural lectures; and more recently, computer-mediated discourse, from asynchronous text-based conferencing to academic blogs. The role of English language educators in preparing students and academics for successful participation in these academic events, or the academy, in English is not to be underestimated. Academic communication is not only vital to an individual’s success at university, but to the maintenance and creation of academic communities and to scientific progress itself (Hyland, 2009). This chapter presents an overview of academic discourse and discusses recent issues which have an impact on teaching and learning English at university and discusses their associated challenges: first, the increasing internationalisation of universities. Second, the emergence of a mobile academe in its broadest sense, in which students and academics move across traditional geopolitical, institutional and disciplinary boundaries, is discussed. Third, the growth of UK transnational higher education is examined as a trend which sees academics and students vicariously or otherwise involved in English language teaching and learning. Fourth, the chapter delves into the rapid and ongoing development in technology assisted and online learning. While responding to trends can be difficult, they can also inspire ingenuity. Furthermore, such trends and challenges will not emerge in the same manner in different contexts. The discussion in this chapter is illustrated with examples from a UK context but the implications of the trends and challenges are such that they reach beyond borders.

'The Blazing Torch': New Light on English Balladry as a Multi-Media Matrix

This paper investigates the inter-twining histories of two highly successful broadside ballads during the seventeenth century. Neither has been systematically studied before. A set of cultural relationships is opened for consideration by these songs: first, between the two ballads, which are different in several ways but set to the same tune; second, between the selected songs and other ballads on comparable themes; and third, between different editions of the two featured songs. In discussing each of these relationships, attention is paid not only to the texts but to the pictures and the tunes that helped to bring balladry to life for early-modern consumers. It is argued that balladry should be studied as an interconnected web and that individual publications drew significance from the manner in which they associated themselves – through shared pictures, tunes and narratives – with other examples of the genre.

Establishing the validity of English GP Patient Survey items evaluating out-of-hours care

Background A 2014 national audit used the English General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) to compare service users’ experience of out-of-hours general practitioner (GP) services, yet there is no published evidence on the validity of these GPPS items. Objectives Establish the construct and concurrent validity of GPPS items evaluating service users’ experience of GP out-of-hours care. Methods Cross-sectional postal survey of service users (n=1396) of six English out-of-hours providers. Participants reported on four GPPS items evaluating out-of-hours care (three items modified following cognitive interviews with service users), and 14 evaluative items from the Out-of-hours Patient Questionnaire (OPQ). Construct validity was assessed through correlations between any reliable (Cochran's α>0.7) scales, as suggested by a principal component analysis of the modified GPPS items, with the ‘entry access’ (four items) and ‘consultation satisfaction’ (10 items) OPQ subscales. Concurrent validity was determined by investigating whether each modified GPPS item was associated with thematically related items from the OPQ using linear regressions. Results The modified GPPS item-set formed a single scale (α=0.77), which summarised the two-component structure of the OPQ moderately well; explaining 39.7% of variation in the ‘entry access’ scores (r=0.63) and 44.0% of variation in the ‘consultation satisfaction’ scores (r=0.66), demonstrating acceptable construct validity. Concurrent validity was verified as each modified GPPS item was highly associated with a distinct set of related items from the OPQ. Conclusions Minor modifications are required for the English GPPS items evaluating out-of-hours care to improve comprehension by service users. A modified question set was demonstrated to comprise a valid measure of service users’ overall satisfaction with out-of-hours care received. This demonstrates the potential for the use of as few as four items in benchmarking providers and assisting services in identifying, implementing and assessing quality improvement initiatives.

Forecasting invasions: resource use by mussels informs invasion patterns along the South African coast

Invasive species are often more able to rapidly and efficiently utilise resources than natives, and comparing per capita resource use at different resource densities among invaders and trophically analogous natives could allow for reliable predictions of invasiveness. In South Africa, invasion by the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis has transformed wave-exposed shores, negatively affecting native mussel species. Currently, South Africa is experiencing a second mussel invasion with the recent detection of the South American Semimytilus algosus. We tested per capita uptake of an algal resource by invading M. galloprovincialis, S. algosus, and the native Aulacomya atra at different algal concentrations and temperatures, representing the west and south coasts of South Africa, to examine whether their per capita resource use could be a predictor of their spread and subsequent invasiveness. Regardless of temperature, M. galloprovincialis was the most efficient consumer, significantly reducing algal cells compared to the other species when the resource was presented in both low and high starting densities. Furthermore, these findings aligned with a greater biomass of M. galloprovincialis on the shore in comparison with the other species. Resource use by the new invader S. algosus was dependent on the density of resource and, although this species was efficient at low algal concentrations at cooler temperatures, this pattern broke down at higher algal densities. This was once more reflected in lower biomass in surveys of this species along the cool west coast. We therefore forecast that S. algosus will be become established along the south coast; however, we also predict that M. galloprovincialis will maintain dominance on these shores.

Debating Darwin at the Cape

This paper focuses attention on the fortunes of Darwin's theory among the English-speaking community in Cape Colony during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The paper begins with a review of early encounters with Darwin dwelling particularly on the response of figures like Roderick Noble - professor and editor of the Cape Monthly Magazine, the geologist John Shaw, and Sir Henry Barkly, governor of the colony. Besides these more theoretical responses, Darwin's ideas were also mobilised in a range of scientific inquiries on such subjects as birds and butterflies. But most conspicuous was the use of evolutionary thought-forms in the work of the eminent philologist Wilhelm Bleek, cousin of Darwin's leading German apologist, Ernst Haeckel. The prevailing sense is of a liberal intelligentsia calmly interacting with a novel theory with all due deference. During the 1870s, an address by Langham Dale at the South African Public Library injected new energy into the Darwin discussion. Dale expressed disquiet over some of the anthropological implications of evolution as well as its apparent reductionism, and this stimulated a range of reactions. Several anonymous commentators responded but the most sustained evaluation of Dale's position emanated from the Queenstown physician and later politician, Sir William Bisset Berry. Then, in 1874, copious extracts from John Tyndall's infamous 'Belfast Address' were printed in the Cape Monthly and this added yet further impetus to the debate. Tyndall's seeming materialism bothered a number of readers, not least Hon William Porter, former attorney-general of Cape Colony. To figures like these the materialist extrapolations of radical Darwinians such as Haeckel were deeply disturbing, not just for religious reasons, but because they seemed to destabilise the moral and pedagogic progressivism that lay at the heart of their civilising credo. While reservations about Darwin's proposals were certainly audible, taken in the round Darwinian conversations among the English-speaking literati at the Cape were conducted with liberal sentiments, not least when evolutionary science approached questions of race. For Darwin's writings were seen to confirm a monogenetic account of the origin and unity of the human race, and could readily be called upon to justify the paternalistic ideology that governed colonial affairs.