Impact of Free Glasses and a Teacher Incentive on Children's Use of Eyeglasses: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose: To study the effect of free glasses combined with teacher incentives on in-school glasses wear among Chinese urban migrant children. Design: Cluster-randomized controlled trial. Methods: Children with VA <= 6/12 in either eye due to refractive error in 94 randomly-chosen primary schools underwent randomization by school to receive free glasses, education on their use and a teacher incentive (Intervention), or glasses prescriptions only (Control). Intervention group teachers received a tablet computer if >= 80% of children given glasses wore them during un-announced visits 6 weeks and 6 months (main outcome) after intervention. Results: Among 4376 children, 728 (16.7%, mean age 10.9 years, 51.0% boys) met enrollment criteria and were randomly allocated, 358 (49.2%, 47 schools) to Intervention and 370 (50.8%, 47 schools) to Control. Among these, 693 children (95.2%) completed the study and underwent analysis. Spectacle wear was significantly higher at 6 months among Intervention children (Observed [main outcome]: 68.3% versus 23.9%, Adjusted Odds Ratio [OR]=11.5, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 5.91-22.5, P<0.001; Self-reported: 90.6% versus 32.1%, OR = 43.7, 95% CI = 21.7-88.5, P < 0.001). Other predictors of observed wear at 6 months included baseline spectacle wear (P<0.001), uncorrected VA<6/18 (P=0.01) and parental spectacle wear (P=0.02). The 6-month observed wear rate was only 41% among similar-aged children provided free glasses in our previous trial without teacher incentives. Conclusions: Free spectacles and teacher incentives maintain classroom wear in the large majority of children needing glasses over a school year. Low wear among Control children demonstrates the need for interventions.

Tenure-track contract helps self-selection

Tenure-track contract is criticized for curbing the incentives to expend effort after obtaining tenured status. Yet the most productive faculties seem to work on a tenure contract, and schools which aim to employ the best faculty seem to prefer to offer tenure-track contracts to their new recruits. I argue that tenure-track contracts are by construction more attractive to more able freshly minted PhDs, and therefore the observed sorting is rationalizable.

Eliciting and estimating valid subjective probabilities: An experimental investigation of the Exchangeability Method.

Using a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether incentive compatibility affects subjective probabilities elicited via the exchangeability method (EM), an elicitation technique consisting of several chained questions. We hypothesize that subjects who are aware of the chaining strategically behave and provide invalid subjective probabilities, while subjects who are not aware of the chaining state their real beliefs and provide valid subjective probabilities. The validity of subjective probabilities is investigated using de Finetti's notion of coherence, under which probability estimates are valid if and only if they obey all axioms of probability theory.
Four experimental treatments are designed and implemented. Subjects are divided into two initial treatment groups: in the first, they are provided with real monetary incentives, and in the second, they are not. Each group is further sub-divided into two treatment groups, in the first, the chained structure of the experimental design is made clear to the subjects, while, in the second, the chained structure is hidden by randomizing the elicitation questions.
Our results suggest that subjects provided with monetary incentives and randomized questions provide valid subjective probabilities because they are not aware of the chaining which undermines the incentive compatibility of the exchangeability method.

Wounded Spaces: When Planning Degraded Cairo’s Urban Memory

This paper examines the position of planning practices operated under precise guidelines for displaying modernity. Cultivating the spatial qualities of Cairo since the 1970s has unveiled centralised ideologies and systems of governance and economic incentives. I present a discussion of the wounds that result from the inadequate upgrading ventures in Cairo, which I argue, created scars as enduring evidence of unattainable planning methods and processes that undermined its locales. In this process, the paper focuses on the consequences of eviction rather than the planning methods in one of the city’s traditional districts. Empirical work is based on interdisciplinary research, public media reports and archival maps that document actions and procedures put in place to alter the visual, urban, and demographic characteristics of Cairo’s older neighbourhoods against a backdrop of decay to shift towards a global spectacular. The paper builds a conversation about the power and fate these spaces were subject to during hostile transformations that ended with their being disused. Their existence became associated with sores on the souls of its ex-inhabitants, as outward signs of inward scars showcasing a lack of equality and social justice in a context where it was much needed.

Compliance with follow-up after cataract surgery in rural China.

PURPOSE:

To evaluate reasons for non-compliance with post-cataract surgical follow-up in rural China, and assess the impact of incentives on improving compliance.

METHODS:

Patients having undergone cataract surgery more than 3 months previously at cataract surgery training hospitals in Guangdong were invited by telephone and advertisements to a hospital-based study examination, with compensation for travel costs (US$7). Information on prior post-surgical follow up was collected by questionnaire at the hospital or by telephone. Logistic regression was used to assess predictors of post-operative attendance with or without compensation.

RESULTS:

Among 518 eligible patients, 426 (82.2%) underwent interviews and 342 (66.0%) attended the compensated study examination. Ninety nine participants (23.2%) reported previously returning for uncompensated follow-up ≥ 3 months post-operatively, and 225 (52.8%) had returned for any prior post-operative examination. Uncompensated follow-up at ≥ 3 months was associated with higher income (P = 0.037), and recalling instruction by a doctor to follow-up (P = 0.001), while age, gender, travel cost, and post-operative satisfaction and vision were not associated. Younger (P = 0.002) patients and those reporting being instructed to follow up (P = 0.008) were more likely to return for the compensated research examination. Among all interviewed subjects, only 170 (39.9%) reported knowing they were to return to hospital.

CONCLUSIONS:

Modest compensation, advertisements and telephone contact can increase medium-term follow-up rates after cataract surgery by three-fold. Better communication of specific targets for follow-up may improve follow-up compliance.

The neoliberalisation of the Cathedral Quarter and its contestations

Over time Belfast has been well researched as a site of ethnosectarian conflict, segregation and fear see (Boal et al 1976) and (Gaffiken and Morrisey 2011). The study of socio-spatial patterns of ‘ethnocracy’ is useful, but this article will argue how it is equally important to understand local forms of urban restructuring in terms of global processes that are linked to neoliberalism. To better understand the neoliberal urbanisation of Belfast this article is organised into two parts. The first part will demonstrate how the Northern Ireland State has sought legitimacy in the free market as ‘therapy’ for the production of neutral socio-spatial formations such as the Cathedral Quarter. Secondly it will examine this performance of neoliberal urbanism, as it ‘actually exists’ and demonstrate how market-led renewal has been extended through the clustering and non-sectarian interests, ‘soft’ arrangements of urban governance, cultural re-branding strategies, economic development incentives, and the development of various flagship projects. Critically this place-based grounding of neoliberalism is useful, as it also allows for the contestations of neoliberal urbanism to become real rather than just theoretical. The second part of the article will draw attention to the responses of local, and sometimes marginal, interests that have looked to challenge, adapt and, at times, divert the extension of market-led renewal. To be clear, this article does not want to overstate the performance of such interests. Nor does it want to claim that they significantly impact or obstruct the wider neoliberal urbanisation of Belfast. Instead it is interested in their behaviours and their different methods of working to explore what may be constituted as ‘alternative’, at least in the locality of the Cathedral Quarter. By studying how and why these interests have responded to the extension of neoliberal urbanism over time, it may just be possible to provide a better platform to articulate what more progressive forms of urban resistance might look like.

Not all social cleavages are the same: On the relationship between religious diversity and party system fragmentation

Most studies examining the relationship between social cleavages and party system fragmentation maintain that higher levels of social diversity lead to greater party system fragmentation. However, most aggregate-level studies focus on one type of social cleavage:ethnic diversity. In order to develop a better understanding of how different cleavages impact electoral competition, this paper considers another type of social cleavage: religious diversity.Contrary to previous literature, higher levels of religious diversity provide incentives for cross-religious cooperation, which in turn reduces party system fragmentation. Using a cross national data set of elections from 1946-2011, the results show that, in contrast to most studies examining the effects of social cleavage diversity on the number of parties, higher religious diversity is associated with lower levels of party system fragmentation.

A validated UPLC–MS/MS method for the surveillance of ten aquatic biotoxins in European brackish and freshwater systems

Over the past few decades, there has been an increased frequency and duration of cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in freshwater systems globally. These can produce secondary metabolites called cyanotoxins, many of which are hepatotoxins, raising concerns about repeated exposure through ingestion of contaminated drinking water or food or through recreational activities such as bathing/ swimming. An ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS) multi-toxin method has been developed and validated for freshwater cyanotoxins; microcystins-LR, -YR, -RR, -LA, -LY and -LF, nodularin, cylindrospermopsin, anatoxin-a and the marine diatom toxin domoic acid. Separation was achieved in around 9 min and dual SPE was incorporated providing detection limits of between 0.3 and 5.6 ng/L of original sample. Intra- and inter-day precision analysis showed relative
standard deviations (RSD) of 1.2–9.6% and 1.3–12.0% respectively. The method was applied to the analysis of aquatic samples (n = 206) from six European countries. The main class detected were the hepatotoxins; microcystin-YR (n = 22), cylindrospermopsin (n = 25), microcystin-RR (n = 17), microcystin-LR (n = 12), microcystin-LY (n = 1), microcystin-LF (n = 1) and nodularin (n = 5). For microcystins, the levels detected ranged from 0.001 to 1.51 mg/L, with two samples showing combined levels above the guideline set by the WHO of 1 mg/L for microcystin-LR. Several samples presented with multiple toxins indicating the potential for synergistic effects and possibly enhanced toxicity. This is the first published pan European survey of freshwater bodies for multiple biotoxins, including two identified for the first time; cylindrospermopsin in Ireland and nodularin in Germany, presenting further incentives for improved monitoring and development of strategies to mitigate human exposure.