Type of housing predicts rate of readmission to hospital but not length of stay in people with schizophrenia on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Accommodation is considered to be important by institutions interested in mental health care both in Australia and internationally. Some authorities assert that no component of a community mental health system is more important than decent affordable housing. Unfortunately there has been little research in Australia into the consequences of discharging people with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia to different types of accommodation. This paper uses archival data to investigate the outcomes for people with schizophrenia discharged to two types of accommodation. The types of accommodation chosen are the person's own home and for-profit boarding house. These two were chosen because the literature suggests that they are respectively the most and least desirable types of accommodation. Results suggest that people with schizophrenia who were discharged to boarding houses are significantly more likely to be readmitted to the psychiatric unit of Gold Coast Hospital although their length of stay in hospital is not significantly different. (author abstract)

The wealth effect of housing on aggregate consumption

This study Measures the effect of changes in net housing and financial wealth oil household consumption using Australian data over the period Q2:1988-Q1:2003. It is found a permanent one dollar rise in housing wealth leads to a six cent increase in consumption, three times the effect of financial wealth. The result speaks strongly against the notion of assets fungibility.. and Suggests that a sharp movement in house prices is potentially more disruptive than a corresponding movement ill financial asset prices.

Introduction to Special issue on the Symposium on the Application of Neural Networks to the Earth Sciences

Papers in this issue of Natural Resources Research are from the “Symposium on the Application of Neural Networks to the Earth Sciences,” held 20–21 August 2002 at NASA Moffet Field, Mountain View, California. The Symposium represents the Seventh International Symposium on Mineral Exploration (ISME-02). It was sponsored by the Mining and Materials Processing Institute of Japan (MMIJ), the US Geological Survey, the Circum-Pacific Council, and NASA. The ISME symposia have been held every two years in order to bring together scientists actively working on diverse quantitative methods applied to the earth sciences. Although the title, International Symposium on Mineral Exploration, suggests exclusive focus on mineral exploration, interests and presentations always have been wide-ranging—talks presented at this symposium are no exception.