Working and fighting for progress, for prosperity, for society : brave new business worlds before and beyond corporate citizenship

One of the things that many of us working in corporate citizenship tend to do is to assume that we are actually creating new agendas. Sometimes we do but, more often than not, other thinkers have been there before us. One such man worth revisiting in his extensive writings of over 60 years ago is Aldous Huxley, probably most famous to many for his novel Brave New World. This paper looks briefly at some of the things Huxley had to say that are relevant to our current thinking about the 'soul' of business and its relations to CSR and corporate citizenship.

Sociodemographic correlates of the increasing trend in prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus in a large population of women between 1995 and 2005

OBJECTIVE—Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is an increasingly prevalent risk factor for the development of type 2 diabetes in the mother and is  responsible for morbidity in the child. To better identify women at risk of developing GDM we examined sociodemographic correlates and changes in the prevalence of GDM among all births between 1995 and 2005 in Australia's largest state.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—A computerized database of all births (n = 956,738) between 1995 and 2005 in New South Wales, Australia, was used in a multivariate logistic regression that examined the association between sociodemographic characteristics and the occurrence of GDM.
RESULTS—Between 1995 and 2005, the prevalence of GDM increased by 45%, from 3.0 to 4.4%. Women born in South Asia had the highest adjusted odds ratio (OR) of any region (4.33 [95% CI 4.12–4.55]) relative to women born in Australia. Women living in the three lowest socioeconomic quartiles had higher adjusted ORs for GDM relative to women in the highest quartile (1.54 [1.50–1.59], 1.74 [1.69–1.8], and 1.65 [1.60–1.70] for decreasing socioeconomic status quartiles). Increasing age was strongly associated with GDM, with women aged >40 years having an adjusted OR of 6.13 (95% CI 5.79–6.49) relative to women in their early 20s. Parity was associated with a small reduced risk. There was no association between smoking and GDM.
CONCLUSIONS—Maternal age, socioeconomic position, and ethnicity are important correlates of GDM. Future culturally specific interventions should target prevention of GDM in these high-risk groups.

Prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in China data from the China National Nutrition and Health Survey 2002

Background— The present article aims to provide accurate estimates of the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in adults in China.

Methods and Results— Data were obtained from sphygmomanometer measurements and an administered questionnaire from 141 892 Chinese adults 18 years of age who participated in the 2002 China National Nutrition and Health Survey. In 2002, 153 million Chinese adults were hypertensive. The prevalence was higher among men than women (20% versus 17%; P<0.001) and was higher in successive age groups. Overall, the prevalence of hypertension was higher in urban compared with rural areas in men (23% versus 18%; P<0.01) and women (18% versus 16%; P<0.001). Of the 24% affected individuals who were aware of their condition, 78% were treated and 19% were adequately controlled. Despite evidence to suggest improved levels of treatment in individuals with hypertension over the past decade, compared with estimates from 1991, the ratio of controlled to treated hypertension has remained largely unchanged at 1:4.

Conclusions— One in 6 Chinese adults is hypertensive, but only one quarter are aware of their condition. Despite increased rates of blood pressure–lowering treatment, few have their hypertension effectively controlled. National hypertension programs must focus on improving awareness in the wider community, as well as treatment and control, to prevent many tens of thousands of cardiovascular-related deaths.

Fictional endstates

Studies the intellectual in power striving to realise the universal State or Empire. Examines this theme through the medium of four fictional narratives: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave new world, Arthur Koestler's Heart of darkness, and George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four. The hypothesis of the inquiry is that all four of these texts provide fictional redescriptions of a crisis of confidence in the Enlightenment ideal of progress.

The development of a national salt reduction strategy for Australia

Excess dietary salt is a well established cause of high blood pressure and vascular disease. National and international bodies recommend a significant reduction in population salt intakes on the basis of strong evidence for health gains that population salt reduction strategies could achieve. The Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health (AWASH) coordinates the Drop the Salt! campaign in Australia. This aims to reduce the average amount of salt consumed by Australians to six grams per day over five years through three main implementation strategies targeting the food industry, the media and government. This strategy has the potential to achieve a rapid and significant reduction in dietary salt consumption in Australia. With industry and government engagement, this promises to be a highly effective, low cost option for preventing chronic disease.

O where are you going? O do you imagine? Reproduction and response : a reflexive sociology of scholarship of teaching and learning in practical legal training

My doctoral research studies Australian PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning. I argue that many PLT practitioners are motivated to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning in their work. There are, however, individual and extra-individual impediments.
PLT practitioners are lawyers that teach in institutional practical legal training (“PLT”). Satisfactory completion of mandatory PLT is an eligibility requirement for admission to the Australian legal profession. The PLT requirement is additional to academic legal qualifications. PLT is undertaken at a post-graduate level with, or after, the academic law degree.
My study investigates PLT practitioners’ motivations and capabilities to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning (“SoTL”). I study organisational symbolic support for SoTL in PLT, and organisational allocation of resources to SoTL in PLT.
The study involves individual and extra-individual domains of PLT practitioners’ work. It considers how social structures (e.g. “the juridical”) are inscribed into individuals’ practices (“teaching”) and, conversely, whether practices influence social structures.
My research adopts qualitative methodologies. These involve inter-disciplinary exchanges between law, legal education, practice research, sociology of law, cultural theory, and theory and practice of teaching and learning. My theoretical framework draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s “reflexive sociology”, and Michel de Certeau’s “heterological science”.
I sourced data from documents, and semi-structured interviews with 36 Australian PLT practitioners. Documentary sources include statutory instruments, speeches, reports, practice directions, histories, and scholarly publications.
To analyse the data I adopted Kelle’s characterisation of “theoretical sensitivity”, drawing on “explicit” and “emergent” analysis strategies derived from “grounded theory”. The explicit strategies were based on my theoretical framework. The emergent strategy involved sensitivity to non-explicit concepts and theories that emerged from the data. Computer-aided qualitative data analysis software expedited these methods.
My findings to date question dominant legal structures’ readiness for change, the implications of this for teaching and learning in PLT, and in particular for PLT practitioners’ engagement with SoTL in PLT.
The espoused rationale for mandatory PLT (in statutes) is improvement for the protection of clients, the administration of justice, and to assure quality legal services. The tacit rationale is improved quality of legal education, and experiences, for lawyers-to-be. My thesis argues dominant structures in legal education impede the espoused and tacit objectives, and impede PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning.

Comparison of anthropometric measures as predictors of cancer incidence: a pooled collaborative analysis of 11 Australian cohorts

Obesity is a risk factor for cancer. However, it is not known if general adiposity, as measured by body mass index (BMI) or central adiposity [e.g., waist circumference (WC)] have stronger associations with cancer, or which anthropometric measure best predicts cancer risk. We included 79,458 men and women from the Australian and New Zealand Diabetes and Cancer Collaboration with complete data on anthropometry [BMI, WC, Hip Circumference (HC), WHR, waist to height ratio (WtHR), A Body Shape Index (ABSI)], linked to the Australian Cancer Database. Cox proportional hazards models assessed the association between each anthropometric marker, per standard deviation and the risk of overall, colorectal, post-menopausal (PM) breast, prostate and obesity-related cancers. We assessed the discriminative ability of models using Harrell's c-statistic. All anthropometric markers were associated with overall, colorectal and obesity-related cancers. BMI, WC and HC were associated with PM breast cancer and no significant associations were seen for prostate cancer. Strongest associations were observed for WC across all outcomes, excluding PM breast cancer for which HC was strongest. WC had greater discrimination compared to BMI for overall and colorectal cancer in men and women with c-statistics ranging from 0.70 to 0.71. We show all anthropometric measures are associated with the overall, colorectal, PM breast and obesity-related cancer in men and women, but not prostate cancer. WC discriminated marginally better than BMI. However, all anthropometric measures were similarly moderately predictive of cancer risk. We do not recommend one anthropometric marker over another for assessing an individuals' risk of cancer.

Mental health and human rights: the MI Principles - turning rhetoric into action

The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain General Assembly Resolution 46/119 United Nations Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement for Mental Health Care and situate them in the current examination of mental health and human rights issues. The paper will provide country examples of human rights standards in mental healthcare, will exemplify some of the failures to use the MI Principles and comment on why this has occurred. The paper will also discuss the 'Principles to Respect': Initiative on Mental Health and Human Rights, a practical strategy to address the human rights standards of persons with mental illness.

Hypertension, antihypertensive treatment and cancer incidence and mortality : a pooled collaborative analysis of 12 Australian and New Zealand cohorts

BACKGROUND: Observational studies examining associations between hypertension and cancer are inconsistent. We explored the association of hypertension, graded hypertension and antihypertensive treatment with cancer incidence and mortality. METHOD: Eighty-six thousand five hundred and ninety-three participants from the Australian and New Zealand Diabetes and Cancer Collaboration were linked to the National Death Index and Australian Cancer Database. Cox proportional hazards models estimated hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the association of treated and untreated hypertension with cancer incidence and mortality. RESULTS: Over a median follow-up of 15.1 years, 12 070 incident and 4350 fatal cancers were identified. Untreated and treated hypertension, compared with normotension, were associated with an increased risk for cancer incidence [hazard ratio 1.06, 95% CI (1.00-1.11) and 1.09 (1.02-1.16) respectively], and cancer mortality (1.07, 0.98-1.18) and (1.15, 1.03-1.28), respectively. When compared with untreated hypertension, treated hypertension did not have a significantly greater risk for cancer incidence (1.03, 0.97-1.10) or mortality (1.07, 0.97-1.19). A significant dose-response relationship was observed between graded hypertension and cancer incidence and mortality; Ptrend = 0.053 and Ptrend = 0.001, respectively. When stratified by treatment status, these relationships remained significant in untreated, but not in treated, hypertension. CONCLUSION: Hypertension, both treated and untreated, is associated with a modest increased risk for cancer incidence and mortality. Similar risks in treated and untreated hypertension suggest that the increased cancer risk is not explained by the use of antihypertensive treatment.

Colour polymorphism is likely to be disadvantageous to some populations and species due to genetic architecture and morph interactions

Polymorphism describes two or more distinct, genetically determined, phenotypes that co-occur in the same population, where the rarest morph is maintained at a frequency above the mutation rate (Ford 1945; Huxley 1955). In a recent opinion piece, we explored a new idea regarding the role of genetic architectures and morph interactions in colour polymorphisms and how this can negatively affect population performance (Bolton et al. 2015). In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Forsman (2016) thoroughly discusses the current evidence for polymorphisms enhancing population performance and critiques the validity of the definitions of polymorphism we use in our original paper. We respond by clarifying that the negative consequences of polymorphisms that we discussed are likely to be most pertinent in species that have a particular set of characteristics, such as strong sexual or social interactions between morphs and discrete genetic architectures. Although it was not our intention to redefine polymorphism, we do believe that there should be further discussion about refining or characterizing balanced polymorphisms with respect to the degree of morph sympatry, discreteness of traits and their underlying genetic architecture, and the types of selection that drive and maintain the variation. The latter describes whether polymorphism is primarily maintained by external factors such as predation pressure or internal factors such as interactions with members of the same species. The contribution of Forsman (2016) is useful to this discussion, and we hope that our exchange of opinions will inspire new empirical and theoretical ideas on the origin and maintenance of colour polymorphisms.