Simulating the impact of regulation changes on the market for prostitution services

The paper draws on recent research on the economics of prostitution focussing on the role of stigma in shaping the interaction between demand and supply and the resulting sub-markets in which this activity is typically organised. Here we extend the framework to consider the role of reputation and stigma in determining policy decisions regarding the regulation of prostitution and show how sub-optimal outcomes (from the point of view of the welfare of sex workers) may prevail.

Designing persuasive third party applications for social networking services based on the 3D-RAB model

The use of social networks services for promoting business, teaching, learning, persuasion and spread of information continues to attract attention as most social networking services (SNSs) now allow third party applications to operate on their sites. In the field of persuasive technology, the ability of SNSs to build relationships among their users and create momentum and enthusiasm through rapid cycles also give it a greater advantage over other persuasive technology approaches. In this paper we discuss the 3-dimensional relationship between attitude and behavior (3D-RAB) model, and demonstrate how it can be used in designing third-party persuasive applications in SNSs by considering external factors which affects persuasive strategies.

What next for children's services? Can policy at a local or national level have any significant impact on the outcomes for children and their families?

In England at both strategic and operational levels, policy-makers in the public sector have undertaken considerable work on implementing the findings of the Every Child Matters report and subsequently through the Children's Act 2004. Legislation has resulted in many local authorities seeking to implement more holistic approaches to the delivery of children's services. At a strategic level this is demonstrated by the creation of integrated directorate structures providing for a range of services, from education to children's social care. Such services were generally under the management of the Director of Children's Services, holding statutory responsibilities for the delivery of services formally divided into the three sectors of education, health and social services. At a national level, more fundamental policy developments have sought to establish a framework through which policy-makers can address the underlying causes of deprivation, vulnerability and inequality. The Child Poverty Act, 2010, which gained Royal Assent in 2010, provides for a clear intention to reduce the number of children in poverty, acknowledging that ‘the best way to eradicate child poverty is to address the causes of poverty, rather than only treat the symptoms’. However, whilst the policy objectives of both pieces of legislation hold positive aspirations for children and young people, a change of policy direction through a change of government in May 2010 seems to be in direct contrast to the intended focus of these aims. This paper explores the impact of new government policy on the future direction of children's services both at the national and local levels. At the national level, we question the ability of the government to deliver the aspirations of the Child Poverty Act, 2010, given the broad range of influences and factors that can determine the circumstances in which a child may experience poverty. We argue that poverty is not simply an issue of the pressure of financial deprivation, but that economic recession and cuts in government spending will further increase the number of children living in poverty.

Institutional pressures on financial services firms: the role of information systems in regulatory compliance

The financial crisis of 2008 led to new international regulatory controls for the governance, risk and compliance of financial services firms. Information systems play a critical role here as political, functional and social pressures may lead to the deinstitutionalization of existing structures, processes and practices. This research examines how an investment management system is introduced by a leading IT vendor across eight client sites in the post-crisis era. Using institutional theory, it examines changes in working practices occurring at the environmental and organizational levels and the ways in which technological interventions are used to apply disciplinary effects in order to prevent inappropriate behaviors. The results extend the constructs of deinstitutionalization and identify empirical predictors for the deinstitutionalization of compliance and trading practices within financial organizations.

Running Climate Models On The NERC Cluster Grid Using G-Rex

Compute grids are used widely in many areas of environmental science, but there has been limited uptake of grid computing by the climate modelling community, partly because the characteristics of many climate models make them difficult to use with popular grid middleware systems. In particular, climate models usually produce large volumes of output data, and running them usually involves complicated workflows implemented as shell scripts. For example, NEMO (Smith et al. 2008) is a state-of-the-art ocean model that is used currently for operational ocean forecasting in France, and will soon be used in the UK for both ocean forecasting and climate modelling. On a typical modern cluster, a particular one year global ocean simulation at 1-degree resolution takes about three hours when running on 40 processors, and produces roughly 20 GB of output as 50000 separate files. 50-year simulations are common, during which the model is resubmitted as a new job after each year. Running NEMO relies on a set of complicated shell scripts and command utilities for data pre-processing and post-processing prior to job resubmission. Grid Remote Execution (G-Rex) is a pure Java grid middleware system that allows scientific applications to be deployed as Web services on remote computer systems, and then launched and controlled as if they are running on the user's own computer. Although G-Rex is general purpose middleware it has two key features that make it particularly suitable for remote execution of climate models: (1) Output from the model is transferred back to the user while the run is in progress to prevent it from accumulating on the remote system and to allow the user to monitor the model; (2) The client component is a command-line program that can easily be incorporated into existing model work-flow scripts. G-Rex has a REST (Fielding, 2000) architectural style, which allows client programs to be very simple and lightweight and allows users to interact with model runs using only a basic HTTP client (such as a Web browser or the curl utility) if they wish. This design also allows for new client interfaces to be developed in other programming languages with relatively little effort. The G-Rex server is a standard Web application that runs inside a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat and is therefore easy to install and maintain by system administrators. G-Rex is employed as the middleware for the NERC1 Cluster Grid, a small grid of HPC2 clusters belonging to collaborating NERC research institutes. Currently the NEMO (Smith et al. 2008) and POLCOMS (Holt et al, 2008) ocean models are installed, and there are plans to install the Hadley Centre’s HadCM3 model for use in the decadal climate prediction project GCEP (Haines et al., 2008). The science projects involving NEMO on the Grid have a particular focus on data assimilation (Smith et al. 2008), a technique that involves constraining model simulations with observations. The POLCOMS model will play an important part in the GCOMS project (Holt et al, 2008), which aims to simulate the world’s coastal oceans. A typical use of G-Rex by a scientist to run a climate model on the NERC Cluster Grid proceeds as follows :(1) The scientist prepares input files on his or her local machine. (2) Using information provided by the Grid’s Ganglia3 monitoring system, the scientist selects an appropriate compute resource. (3) The scientist runs the relevant workflow script on his or her local machine. This is unmodified except that calls to run the model (e.g. with “mpirun”) are simply replaced with calls to "GRexRun" (4) The G-Rex middleware automatically handles the uploading of input files to the remote resource, and the downloading of output files back to the user, including their deletion from the remote system, during the run. (5) The scientist monitors the output files, using familiar analysis and visualization tools on his or her own local machine. G-Rex is well suited to climate modelling because it addresses many of the middleware usability issues that have led to limited uptake of grid computing by climate scientists. It is a lightweight, low-impact and easy-to-install solution that is currently designed for use in relatively small grids such as the NERC Cluster Grid. A current topic of research is the use of G-Rex as an easy-to-use front-end to larger-scale Grid resources such as the UK National Grid service.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the ward pharmacist’s time and activities

Objective To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the time spent providing a ward pharmacy service and the activities carried out. Setting Surgical ward, London teaching hospital. Method All data were collected two months pre- and one year post-intervention. First, the ward pharmacist recorded the time taken each day for four weeks. Second, an observational study was conducted over 10 weekdays, using two-dimensional work sampling, to identify the ward pharmacist's activities. Finally, medication orders were examined to identify pharmacists' endorsements that should have been, and were actually, made. Key findings Mean time to provide a weekday ward pharmacy service increased from 1 h 8 min to 1 h 38 min per day (P = 0.001; unpaired t-test). There were significant increases in time spent prescription monitoring, recommending changes in therapy/monitoring, giving advice or information, and non-productive time. There were decreases for supply, looking for charts and checking patients' own drugs. There was an increase in the amount of time spent with medical and pharmacy staff, and with 'self'. Seventy-eight per cent of patients' medication records could be assessed for endorsements pre- and 100% post-intervention. Endorsements were required for 390 (50%) of 787 medication orders pre-intervention and 190 (21%) of 897 afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Endorsements were made for 214 (55%) of endorsement opportunities pre-intervention and 57 (30%) afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Conclusion The intervention increased the overall time required to provide a ward pharmacy service and changed the types of activity undertaken. Contact time with medical and pharmacy staff increased. There was no significant change in time spent with patients. Fewer pharmacy endorsements were required post-intervention, but a lower percentage were actually made. The findings have important implications for the design, introduction and use of similar systems.

Livestock services and the poor

This paper reviews the economic framework for the delivery of livestock services to the poor. It is argued that the demand for livestock products is likely to increase rapidly and the ability of the poor to participate in the opportunities presented by this growth is linked critically to the availability of good service support, both on the input and output side. Governments therefore have a responsibility to supply the necessary public goods (including the institutions and legal frameworks), and the market infrastructure for facilitating the emergence of efficient markets for livestock services. The paper further argues that the dynamics of public policy in developing countries are much more complex than the simple application of economic logic. It is the larger political economy that often dictates policy choices. It is therefore important to integrate political economy and governance issues into the economic debate on livestock service delivery. The paper also reviews the context in which the markets for livestock services will need to function. Different countries are facing very different sets of issues, and the identification of possible interventions in livestock service markets would require careful field research and analysis. In this context, the paper suggests the elements of a research agenda for the next few years.

'A load too heavy': Critical reflections on the child labor problem in Africa's small-scale mining sector

This paper provides an extended analysis of the child labor problem in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, focusing specifically on the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years, the issue of child labor in ASM has garnered significant attention from the International Labor Organization (ILO), which has been particularly active in raising public awareness of the problem; and, has proceeded to implement policies and collaborative project work aimed at Curtailing children's participation in ASM activities in a number of African countries. The analysis concludes with a critical appraisal of an ILO project recently launched in the Talensi-Nabdam District in the Upper East Region of Ghana, which sheds light on how the child labor problem is being tackled in practice in ASM communities in sub-Saharan Africa. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) inhibit vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation via differential effects on the cell cycle

Abnormal vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of both atherosclerosis and restenosis. Recent studies suggest that high-dose salicylates, in addition to inhibiting cyclooxygenase activity, exert an antiproliferative effect on VSMC growth both in-vitro and in-vivo. However, whether all non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) exert similar anti proliferative effects on VSMCs, and do so via a common mechanism of action, remains to be shown. In this study, we demonstrate that the NSAIDs aspirin, sodium salicylate, diclofenac, ibuprofen, indometacin and sulindac induce a dose-dependent inhibition of proliferation in rat A10 VSMCs in the absence of significant cytotoxicity. Flow cytometric analyses showed that exposure of A10 cells to diclofenac, indometacin, ibuprofen and sulindac, in the presence of the mitotic inhibitor, nocodazole, led to a significant G0/G1 arrest. In contrast, the salicylates failed to induce a significant G1 arrest since flow cytometry profiles were not significantly different from control cells. Cyclin A levels were elevated, and hyperphosphorylated p107 was present at significant levels, in salicylate-treated A10 cells, consistent with a post-G1/S block, whereas cyclin A levels were low, and hypophosphorylated p107 was the dominant form, in cells treated with other NSAIDs consistent with a G1 arrest. The ubiquitously expressed cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitors, p21 and p27, were increased in all NSAID-treated cells. Our results suggest that diclofenac, indometacin, ibuprofen and sulindac inhibit VSMC proliferation by arresting the cell cycle in the G1 phase, whereas the growth inhibitory effect of salicylates probably affects the late S and/or G2/M phases. Irrespective of mechanism, our results suggest that NSAIDs might be of benefit in the treatment of certain vasculoproliferative disorders.

Attitudes of rural branch managers in Madhya Pradesh, India, toward their role as providers of financial services to the poor

Discussions on banking reforms to reduce financial exclusion have referred little to possible attitudinal constraints, on the part of staff at both branch and institutional levels, inhibiting the provision of financial services to the poor. The research project, funded by the ESCOR (now Social Science Research) Small Grants Committee, has focused on this aspect of financial exclusion. The research commenced in May 2001 and was completed in April 2002. Profiles of the rural bank branch managers, including personal background, professional background and workplace, are presented. Attitudes of managers toward aspects of their work environment and the rural poor are examined, using results from both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Finally, the emerging policy implications are discussed. These include bank reforms to address human resource management, the work environment, intermediate bank management and organization, and the client interface.

The effect of intensive case management on the relatives of patients with severe mental illness

Objective: Relatives play a vital role in caring for patients with severe mental illness but receive inadequate support from psychiatric services. Evidence suggests that although intensive case management is directed primarily at patients, relatives may benefit a's well. This study examined whether relatives of patients who were receiving intensive case management had more contact with mental health professionals than relatives of patients who were receiving standard case management. It also examined whether relatives of patients receiving intensive case management appraised caregiving less negatively and experienced less psychological distress than relatives of patients receiving standard case management. Methods: The sample was drawn from the pool of patients participating in the UK700 randomized controlled trial of intensive case management. Prospective data on contact between case managers and the relatives of 146 patients were collected over a two-year period. At a two-year follow-up assessment, relatives of 116 patients were. interviewed with the Experience of Caregiving Inventory and the 12-item General Health Questionnaire. Results: Considerably more relatives of patients receiving intensive case management had contact with a case manager during the study period than relatives of patients receiving standard case management (70 percent compared with 45 percent). However, relatives of patients receiving intensive case management did not-appraise caregiving less negatively or experience less psychological distress than relatives of patients who were receiving. standard case management. Conclusions: Reducing case managers' caseloads alone. will not guarantee adequate support for relatives.. Instead, providing more support will need to be an explicit aim, and staff will require specific additional training to achieve it.

An analysis on the performance of the forward and return interaction channels in DVB-RCS

The next generation consumer level interactive services require reliable and constant communication for both mobile and static users. The Digital Video Broadcasting ( DVB) group has exploited the rapidly increasing satellite technology for the provision of interactive services and launched a standard called Digital Video Broadcast through Return Channel Satellite (DYB-RCS). DVB-RCS relies on DVB-Satellite (DVB-S) for the provision of forward channel. The Digital Signal processing (DSP) implemented in the satellite channel adapter block of these standards use powerful channel coding and modulation techniques. The investigation is concentrated towards the Forward Error Correction (FEC) of the satellite channel adapter block, which will help in determining, how the technology copes with the varying channel conditions and user requirements(1).

Position paper on the future of social networking

Social networking mediated by web sites is a relatively new phenomenon and as with all technological innovations there continues to be a period of both technical and social adjustment to fit the services in with people’s behaviours, and for people to adjust their practices in the light of the affordances provided by the technology. Social networking benefits strongly from large scale availability. Users gain greater benefit from social networking services when more of their friends are using them.This applies in social terms, but also in eLearning and professional networks. The network effect provides one explanation for the popularity of internet based social networking sites (SNS) because the number of connections between people which can be maintained by using them is greatly increased in comparison to the networks available before the internet. The ability of users to determine how much they trust information available to them from contacts within their social network is important in almost all modes of use. As sources of information on a range of topics from academic to shopping advice, the level of trust which a user can put in other nodes is a key aspect of the utility of the system.