Days in the Bay

A short performance devised by the Tiger’s Bay Men’s Group and inspired by the disappearing streetscape of North Belfast

Predictors of place of death for those in receipt of home-based palliative care services in Ontario, Canada

Many cancer patients die in institutional settings despite their preference to die at home. A longitudinal, prospective cohort study was conducted to comprehensively assess the determinants of home death for patients receiving home-based palliative care. Data collected from biweekly telephone interviews with caregivers (n=302) and program databases were entered into a multivariate logistic model. Patients with high nursing costs (odds ratio [OR]: 4.3; confidence interval [CI]: 1.8-10.2) and patients with high personal support worker costs (OR: 2.3; CI: 1.1-4.5) were more likely to die at home than those with low costs. Patients who lived alone were less likely to die at home than those who cohabitated (OR: 0.4; CI: 0.2-0.8), and those with a high propensity for a home-death preference were more likely to die at home than those with a low propensity (OR: 5.8; CI: 1.1-31.3). An understanding of the predictors of place of death may contribute to the development of effective interventions that support home death.

Land use history of Village Bay, Hirta, St Kilda World Heritage Site:A palynological investigation of plaggen soils

This paper presents findings based on a palynological investigation of artificially accreting (plaggen) soils from the settlement of Village Bay, Hirta, in the St Kilda archipelago, which was perhaps the most distant and inhospitable outpost of sustained human habitation in the British Isles. The soils were developed principally through the addition of turf ash and seabird waste, although some ash may have been derived from upland peats. It is assumed that the woodland pollen signal (much lower in the soils than in an upland peat site nearby) represents off-island sources. Corylus avellana-type pollen (frequent in upland sites), along with Potentilla-type, may provide markers in the Village Bay profiles for the addition of ashed hillside turf, and possibly peat, to the plaggen soils. Cereal-type pollen is well represented through the profiles and is often strongly associated with the record for Chrysanthemum segetum (corn marigold), a frequent indicator of arable land. The Brassicaceae signal may partly reflect the cultivation of cabbages; Chelidonium majus (greater celandine) may have been grown for medicinal use. Soil mixing has rendered radiocarbon dating meaningless at this site, but the establishment of a change in cultivation regime before AD 1830 may have been identified from the patterns of pollen concentration and preservation in the profiles. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.