Estimating the South African trauma caseload

A survey of medical superintendents revealed that an estimated 1.5 million trauma cases presented to South Africa's 356 secondary and tertiary level hospitals in 1999. Injury rates for traffic, violence and other injuries showed considerable inter-provincial variation, with violence accounting for more than half of the trauma caseload. This type of survey is a simple low cost alternative for monitoring injury patterns and supplementing burden of disease and injury costing studies.     

POST‐TRANSITION POVERTY TRENDS BASED ON AN ALTERNATIVE DATA SOURCE1

This paper analyses a previously unused source of data – the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) – to arrive at alternative estimates of the post‐transition poverty path. The motivations for using this non‐official data source are twofold: concern over the comparability of the existing official post‐transition datasets – the Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) and Population Census – and a desire to extend analysis of poverty trends beyond 2001. While official data sources are generally preferred for purposes of poverty analysis, the IES and Census collect data at long (5 or 10 year) intervals, and additional years pass before these datasets become available to the public. In some cases there is also concern about data comparability between surveys. The expenditure data contained in the General Household Survey are available annually, although data are captured in a small number of categories that are not very conducive to analysis at the lower end of the income distribution. Analysis on AMPS data confirms the large decline in poverty implied by an increase of R18 billion (in 2000 Rand) in social grant payments between 2000 and 2004. The direction of this trend is consistent with recent research findings based on more frequently analysed data sources, including the work done by Agüero, Carter and May (2005), Seekings (2006 ) and Meth (2006 ).     

Profiling hospital utilization in a mixed public–private system

While there is an extensive body of literature on the demand for hospital services, little is known about the interaction between public and private hospitals in a mixed system. In this article, we (1) apply latent class analysis to identify distinct subgroups of patients who use the hospital market differently, (2) characterize each patient type by their personal characteristics and (3) link the patient type to future hospital admissions. We apply our analysis to individual-level longitudinal patient data from Australia, focusing on three popular procedures that are performed in both public and private hospitals. We find 4–5 patient types. The most common types use either a public or a private hospital almost exclusively and absorb a moderate level of hospital resources. The severe types represent 13–17% of patients. The type which uses both sectors makes up 10–20% and tends to have private health insurance coverage. The patient types are predictive of prospective utilizations as we find that patients tend to be admitted to the sector they have used in the past. By revealing how patients use coexisting public and private hospitals, our results have direct implications on health resource financing and allocations.     

When Social Infrastructure Deficits Create Displacement Pressures: Inner City Schools and the Suburbanization of Families in Melbourne

Under advanced capitalism, gentrification converges with the post‐Keynesian ‘unhinging' of the state from the project of social reproduction, including its responsibilities for collective consumption (e.g. housing, schools). Gentrification research scrutinizes this convergence through the ongoing assault on social/affordable housing, and yet anaemic housing welfare is not its endpoint. The social contract is further fractured through the ongoing discreditation and dismantling of the full gamut of legacies of the publicly regulated Keynesian inner city, including essential social infrastructure. Focusing on public schools, as an essential site for social reproduction, this article explores how the struggle for the city under neoliberal gentrification may be emerging along additional (non‐housing) vectors. Based on a qualitative study of families' experiences of poor public education provision in central Melbourne (Australia), this article argues that the exclusionary effects of gentrification likely exceed residential encroachment as state subsidization of residents continues to yield to the subsidization of capital. In particular, this article identifies life‐stage specific, infrastructure‐related displacement pressures wrought by a state failure to provide adequate public primary schools in the ‘regeneration' of central Melbourne, and it illustrates how these pressures prompt housing strategies that unevenly divest families of the locational advantages secured in the inner city. Highlighting the role of public school deficits in the reluctant suburbanization of lesser‐resourced families assists in foregrounding state complicity in displacement dynamics and the potential for these to magnify socio‐economic, gendered and socio‐spatial inequalities across the city.     

Interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection

The current availability of thousands of processors at many high performance computing centers has made it feasible to carry out, in near real time, interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection temperature fields, using grid configurations having 10–100 million unknowns. We will describe the technical details involved in carrying out this endeavor, using the facilities available at the Laboratory of Computational Science and Engineering (LCSE) at the University of Minnesota. These technical details involve the modification of a parallel mantle convection program, ACuTEMan; the usage of client–server socket based programs to transfer upwards of a terabyte of time series scientific model data using a local network; a rendering system containing multiple nodes; a high resolution PowerWall display, and the interactive visualization software, DSCVR. We have found that working in an interactive visualizastion mode allows for fast and efficient analysis of mantle convection results.     

Fatal violence among children under 15 years in four cities of South Africa, 2001-2005

Homicide rates for South African children were estimated at double the global average in 2000. This article presents a secondary data analysis of the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System (NIMSS), with full coverage in four major metropolitan cities. Child homicide rates for 2001-2005 were calculated within the 0-4, 5-9 and 10-14 year age groups. The homicide rates were similar to the global pattern, with higher rates for boys, and among children aged 0-4 years than for older children. Poisson regression, accounting for city level clustering, was used to investigate age, sex and period effects in the homicide rate. The model indicated that the gender difference was more marked in the 10-14 year age groups (RR?=?2.17; 95% CI 1.97-2.38) than in the 5-9 year (RR?=?1.43; 95% CI 1.27-1.62) with the 0-4 year age group in-between (RR?=?1.80; 95% CI 1.55-2.10). These data confirm previous observations that fatal violence among children is a public health concern, but, given the high rates of homicide among South African adults and other competing public health problems, it is difficult to motivate for action to address the issue of violence against children. Nonetheless, there are sufficient indications that efforts to reduce childhood violence are urgently needed.     

The commercial impact of live streaming: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Live streaming allows streamers and viewers to watch, create, and share videos in real time on topics from gaming, shopping, and social channels to tourism and entertainment. It is distinct from earlier forms of social media in that it allows for real-time interaction and is extremely synchronous. That makes live streaming an important new area of enquiry. Yet live streaming platforms, streamers, and scholars lack an informed structure from which to build more holistic understanding and strategy. Following the theory–context–characteristics–methodology framework, we undertake a framework-based systematic literature review of 89 articles to source, review, and synthesize disparate findings in the arena of live streaming and live streaming commerce users' motivation and interactions. A dual stimulus–organism–response integrative framework is developed to further explore the characteristics of interaction and motivation factors. A future research agenda highlights areas of research focus that are critical next steps for scholars.     

MEASURING THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF VOLUNTEER WORK GLOBALLY: CONCEPTS,ESTIMATES, AND A ROADMAP TO THE FUTURE

ABSTRACT: This article explores alternative approaches for measuring the economic value of volunteer work, develops a methodology for producing global estimates of this value using existing data sources, and identifies a new data source that promises to yield significantly improved data on which to base such estimates in the future at both the global and national levels. Both volunteering through organizations and directly for individuals are considered. Different approaches to valuation, including the replacement cost, opportunity cost, and social benefits approaches and both observed and reported market proxies, are examined. Based on a number of criteria, the replacement cost method using observed market wages is recommended. Using this method, the article estimates that ‘volunteerland,’ if it were its own country, would have the second largest adult population of any country in the world, and would be the world's seventh largest economy. The article concludes by discussing a new International Labour Organization Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work that adopts the basic method for defining and valuing volunteer work outlined here and promises to generate a much more robust and coherent body of data on volunteer work than has ever been available both globally and nationally.     

Adolescent Summer Camp Volunteers' Attitudes Toward Peers with Disabilities

ABSTRACT

This study explored the malleability of adolescent attitudes toward their peers with disabilities after volunteering in a summer day-camp. The Contact with Disabled Persons Scale (CDP) and the Multi-Dimensional Attitude Scale (MAS) were used to collect data in order to determine the association between volunteering in a recreation-based summer day camp and adolescent attitudes toward disability. After a covariate-adjusted regression analysis, contact with individuals with disabilities was found to significantly predict change in attitudes toward disability. Dyadic interviews were held after camp participation to provide additional sources of data with potential for deeper understanding of the camp experience for volunteers. The data suggested that participants perceived camp as a setting for the development of relationships with peers who have disabilities. These relationships further framed participants' understanding of the experience as fun, difficult, and resulting in perceived personal change. Implications for future research are discussed.     

The Socially Aware Baby Boomer: Gaining a Lifestyle-Based Understanding of the New Wave of Ecotourists

As the Baby Boomers approach retirement, tourism, in general, is expected to increase among members of this generation. This increase in travel is expected to be accompanied by a surge of interest in ecotourism—resulting in a new wave of ecotourists, over the next quarter century. This four-nation analysis of the post-war Baby Boom generation in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (the CANZUS countries) argues that Baby Boomers should be segmented by their lifestyle characteristics, in order to isolate the best prospects for ecotourism. Data are presented to show that the prime-prospect ecotourist among Baby Boomers is in the Socially Aware lifestyle group, in Australia, and its counterparts in the other CANZUS populations—Autonomous Rebels in Canada, Educated Liberals in New Zealand, and Actualisers in the United States. Additional data on the travel motives and value priorities of Socially Aware Baby Boomers give a fuller picture of this group. Members of the Baby Boom generation are currently experiencing middle age; the psychological implications of this life stage for ecotourism activity are also given. Strategy pointers are offered for the ecotourism manager, given the growing importance of the Socially Aware Baby Boomer as an ecotourist.