Mefloquine and doxycycline malaria prophylaxis in Australian soldiers in East Timor

Objectives: To describe the tolerability of mefloquine in Australian soldiers for malaria prophylaxis, including a comparison with doxycycline. Design: Open-label, prospective study and cross-sectional questionnaire and interview. Setting and participants: Two contingents of Australian soldiers, each deployed to East Timor for peacekeeping duties over a 6-month period (April 2001-October 2001 and October 2001-May 2002). Outcome measures: Withdrawals during the study; adverse events relating to mefloquine prophylaxis; willingness to use mefloquine again on deployment. Results: Of 1157 soldiers starting on mefloquine, 75 (6.5%) withdrew because of adverse responses to the drug. There were three serious adverse events of a neuropsychiatric nature, possibly relating to mefloquine. Fifty-seven per cent of soldiers using mefloquine prophylaxis reported at least one adverse event, compared with 56% using doxycycline. The most commonly reported adverse effects of both drugs were sleep disturbance, headache, tiredness and nausea. Of the 968 soldiers still taking mefloquine at the end of their deployments, 94% indicated they would use mefloquine again. Of 388 soldiers taking doxycycline prophylaxis who were deployed with the first mefloquine study contingent, 89% indicated they would use doxycycline again. Conclusions: Mefloquine was generally well tolerated by Australian soldiers and should continue to be used for those intolerant of doxycycline.

Towards an ethics of engagement in education in global times

Starting from the observation that patterns of educational inequality are widely known but largely invisible in public debates on education, this article argues for the importance of an ethics of education which challenges simple acceptance of 'things as they are'. It suggests possibilities for working with discourses of ethics, rights and citizenship in contingent and strategic ways, and argues for the importance of engaging ethically across difference in current global times. It proposes three interrelated dimensions for an ethics of engagement in education: an ethics of commitment to intellectual rigour; an ethics of civility; and an inter-human ethics of care.

Information, Wildlife Valuation, Conservation: Experiments and Policy

The authors use experimental surveys to investigate the association between individuals' knowledge of particular wildlife species and their stated willingness to allocate funds to conserve each. The nature of variations in these allocations between species (e.g., their dispersion) as participants' knowledge increases is examined. Factors influencing these changes are suggested. Willingness-to-pay allocations are found not to measure the economic value of species, but are shown to be policy relevant. The results indicate that poorly known species, e.g., in remote areas, may obtain relatively less conservation support than they deserve. (JEL Q51, Q57, Q58)

Attaching unit costs to Australia's National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing

Background: In mental health, policy-makers and planners are increasingly being asked to set priorities. This means that health economists, health services researchers and clinical investigators are being called upon to work together to define and measure costs. Typically, these researchers take available service utilisation data and convert them to costs, using a range of assumptions. There are inefficiencies, as individual groups of researchers frequently repeat essentially similar exercises in achieving this end. There are clearly areas where shared or common investment in the development of statistical software syntax, analytical frameworks and other resources could maximise the use of data. Aims of the Study: This paper reports on an Australian project in which we calculated unit costs for mental health admissions and community encounters. In reporting on these calculations, our purpose is to make the data and the resources associated with them publicly available to researchers interested in conducting economic analyses, and allow them to copy, distribute and modify them, providing that all copies and modifications are available under the same terms and conditions (i.e., in accordance with the 'Copyleft' principle), Within this context, the objectives of the paper are to: (i) introduce the 'Copyleft' principle; (ii) provide an overview of the methodology we employed to derive the unit costs; (iii) present the unit costs themselves; and (iv) examine the total and mean costs for a range of single and comorbid conditions, as an example of the kind of question that the unit cost data can be used to address. Method: We took relevant data from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHWB), and developed a set of unit costs for inpatient and community encounters. We then examined total and mean costs for a range of single and comorbid conditions. Results: We present the unit costs for mental health admissions and mental health community contacts. Our example, which explored the association between comorbidity and total and mean costs, suggested that comorbidly occurring conditions cost more than conditions which occur on their own. Discussion: Our unit costs, and the materials associated with them, have been published in a freely available form governed by a provision termed 'Copyleft'. They provide a valuable resource for researchers wanting to explore economic questions in mental health. Implications for Health Policies: Our unit costs provide an important resource to inform economic debate in mental health in Australia, particularly in the area of priority-setting. In the past, such debate has largely, been based on opinion. Our unit costs provide the underpinning to strengthen the evidence-base of this debate. Implications for Further Research: We would encourage other Australian researchers to make use of our unit costs in order to foster comparability across studies. We would also encourage Australian and international researchers to adopt the 'Copyleft' principle in equivalent circumstances. Furthermore, we suggest that the provision of 'Copyleft'-contingent funding to support the development of enabling resources for researchers should be considered in the planning of future large-scale collaborative survey work, both in Australia and overseas.

Association of public support for survival of wildlife species with their likeability

We surveyed 204 individuals from the general public in Brisbane, Australia, to ascertain the extent to which they liked or disliked 24 species of wildlife (belonging to three classes: mammals, birds and reptiles) present in tropical Australia. We calculated likeability indices for each species. We also asked respondents if they favored the survival of each of these species, and were able to calculate the percentage of respondents favoring survival of each. Using linear regression analysis, we could relate the percentage of respondents favoring survival of each of the species to their indices of likeability. In addition, we compared the mean likeability of species in the three classes (mammals, birds and reptiles) with the respondents' allocation of funds (hypothetical 1,000 Australian dollars) between conservation of species and a human charity. From this, we were able to assess how important stated likeability is for preferences to conserve species by animal class, and reconsidered the hypothesis in the literature that there is likely to be more public support for the survival of mammals than for birds, and more support for the survival of birds than for reptiles.

Incentives and standards in agency contracts

This paper studies the structure of state-contingent contracts in the presence of moral hazard and multitasking. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of multitasking to lead to fixed payments instead of incentive schemes are identified. It is shown that the primary determinant of whether multitasking leads to higher or lower powered incentives is the role that noncontractible outputs play in helping the agent deal with the production risk associated with the observable and contractible outputs. When the noncontractible outputs are risk substitutes and are socially undesirable, standards are never optimal. If the noncontractible outputs are socially desirable, standards are never optimal if the noncontractible outputs play a risk-complementary role.

Do organizational climate and competitive strategy moderate the relationship between human resource management and productivity?

This study examined whether the effectiveness of human resource management (HRM)practices is contingent on organizational climate and competitive strategy The concepts of internol and external fit suggest that the positive relationship between HRM and subsequent productivity will be stronger for firms with a positive organizational climate and for firms using differentiation strategies. Resource allocation theories of motivation, on the other hand, predict that the relationship between HRM and productivity will be stronger for firms with a poor climate because employees working in these firms should have the greatest amount of spare capacity. The results supported the resource allocation argument.

Cost-benefit analyses for your group and yourself: The rationality of decision-making in conflict

Two studies in the context of English-French relations in Québec suggest that individuals who strongly identify with a group derive the individual-level costs and benefits that drive expectancy-value processes (rational decision-making) from group-level costs and benefits. In Study 1, high identifiers linked group- and individual-level outcomes of conflict choices whereas low identifiers did not. Group-level expectancy-value processes, in Study 2, mediated the relationship between social identity and perceptions that collective action benefits the individual actor and between social identity and intentions to act. These findings suggest the rational underpinnings of identity-driven political behavior, a relationship sometimes obscured in intergroup theory that focuses on cognitive processes of self-stereotyping. But the results also challenge the view that individuals' cost-benefit analyses are independent of identity processes. The findings suggest the importance of modeling the relationship of group and individual levels of expectancy-value processes as both hierarchical and contingent on social identity processes

Understanding conceptual schemas: exploring the role of application and IS domain knowledge

Although information systems (IS) problem solving involves knowledge of both the IS and application domains, little attention has been paid to the role of application domain knowledge. In this study, which is set in the context of conceptual modeling, we examine the effects of both IS and application domain knowledge on different types of schema understanding tasks: syntactic and semantic comprehension tasks and schema-based problem-solving tasks. Our thesis was that while IS domain knowledge is important in solving all such tasks, the role of application domain knowledge is contingent upon the type of understanding task under investigation. We use the theory of cognitive fit to establish theoretical differences in the role of application domain knowledge among the different types of schema understanding tasks. We hypothesize that application domain knowledge does not influence the solution of syntactic and semantic comprehension tasks for which cognitive fit exists, but does influence the solution of schema-based problem-solving tasks for which cognitive fit does not exist. To assess performance on different types of conceptual schema understanding tasks, we conducted a laboratory experiment in which participants with high- and low-IS domain knowledge responded to two equivalent conceptual schemas that represented high and low levels of application knowledge (familiar and unfamiliar application domains). As expected, we found that IS domain knowledge is important in the solution of all types of conceptual schema understanding tasks in both familiar and unfamiliar applications domains, and that the effect of application domain knowledge is contingent on task type. Our findings for the EER model were similar to those for the ER model. Given the differential effects of application domain knowledge on different types of tasks, this study highlights the importance of considering more than one application domain in designing future studies on conceptual modeling.

A processual analysis of basic emotions and sources of concerns as they are lived before and after a competition

Objectives: To examine the natural flow of (a) pre- and post-competition temporal patterns of intensity, frequency and daily mean level (a Composite measure of frequency and intensity) of basic emotions and (b) frequency of reports of competition-related and competition-extraneous concerns across time. Method: The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) was used, which permits the monitoring of the spontaneous flow of daily affective and cognitive experiences in the athletes' habitual environment. Thirty-nine male elite martial artists were assessed on 12 basic emotions and concerns at five random times a day across 1 week before and 3 days after a competition. On the competition day, the participants were assessed 1 h before and immediately after the contest. Results: Different patterns of change were observed for intensity and frequency of emotions and frequency of competition-related and competition-extraneous concerns. Frequency of fear was the most reactive affective component to competition vicinity. Increased frequency of some outcome-contingent negative emotions persisted for three days post-competition. The presence of negative emotions was the lowest in the post-competition days. Conclusions: This study confirms that, for a better understanding of the process of competitive stress, monitoring of both intensity and frequency of a wide range of emotions is needed. This research area may also benefit from analysing possible psychological spill-over between sport, competition and other life domains. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of uncertainty in the relationship between fairness evaluations and willingness to pay

Participants in contingent valuation studies may be uncertain about a number of aspects of the policy and survey context. The uncertainty management model of fairness judgments states that individuals will evaluate a policy in terms of its fairness when they do not know whether they can trust the relevant managing authority or experience uncertainty due to insufficient knowledge of the general issues surrounding the environmental policy. Similarly, some researchers have suggested that, not knowing how to answer WTP questions, participants convey their general attitudes toward the public good rather than report well-defined economic preferences. These contentions were investigated in a sample of 840 residents in four urban catchments across Australia who were interviewed about their WTP for stormwater pollution abatement. Four sources of uncertainty were measured: amount of prior issue-related thought, trustworthiness of the water authority, insufficient scenario information, and WTP response uncertainty. A logistic regression model was estimated in each subsample to test the main effects of the uncertainty sources on WTP as well as their interaction with fairness and proenvironmental attitudes. Results indicated support for the uncertainty management model in only one of the four samples. Similarly, proenvironmental attitudes interacted rarely with uncertainty to a significant level, and in ways that were more complex than hypothesised. It was concluded that uncertain individuals were generally not more likely than other participants to draw on either fairness evaluations or proenvironmental attitudes when making decisions about paying for stormwater pollution abatement.

Water rights for variable supplies

The relative merits of different systems of property rights to allocate water among different extractive uses are evaluated for the case where variability of supply is important. Three systems of property rights are considered. In the first, variable supply is dealt with through the use of water entitlements defined as shares of the total quantity available. In the second, there are two types of water entitlements, one for water with a high security of supply and the other a lower security right for the residual supply. The third is a system of entitlements specified as state-contingent claims. With zero transaction costs, all systems are efficient. In the realistic situation where transaction costs matter, the system based on state-contingent claims is globally optimal, and the system with high-security and lower security entitlements is preferable to the system with share entitlements.

What determines the finance-growth nexus? Empirical evidence for threshold models

This paper elaborates the notion of balanced'' financial development that is contingent on a country's general level of development. We develop an empirical framework to address this point, referring to threshold regressions and a bootstrap test for structural shift in a growth equation. We find that countries gain less from financial activity, if the latter fails to keep up with or exceeds what would follow from a balanced expansion path. These analyses contribute to the finance and growth literature in providing empirical support for the balanced'' financial development hypothesis.

From the sublime to the subliminal: Fear, awe and wonder in international politics

Key events in international politics, such as terrorist attacks, can be characterised as sublime: our minds clash with phenomena that supersede our cognitive abilities, triggering a range of powerful emotions, such as pain, fear and awe. Encounters with the sublime allow us an important glimpse into the contingent and often manipulative nature of representation. For centuries, philosophers have sought to learn from these experiences, but in political practice the ensuing insights are all too quickly suppressed and forgotten. The prevailing tendency is to react to the elements of fear and awe by reimposing control and order. We emphasise an alternative reaction to the sublime, one that explores new moral and political opportunities in the face of disorientation. But we also stress that we do not need to be dislocated by dramatic events to begin to wonder about the world. Moving from the sublime to the subliminal, we explore how it is possible to acquire the same type of insight into questions of representation and contingency by engaging more everyday practices of politics.

Fixed wages and bonuses in agency contracts: the case of a continuous state space

In this paper, we extend the state-contingent production approach to principal–agent problems to the case where the state space is an atomless continuum. The approach is modelled on the treatment of optimal tax problems. The central observation is that, under reasonable conditions, the optimal contract may involve a fixed wage with a bonus for above-normal performance. This is analogous to the phenomenon of "bunching" at the bottom in the optimal tax literature.