Comparing measures of general and abdominal adiposity as predictors of blood pressure in college students

Objective: To compare anthropometric measures of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), and sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD) as predictors of blood pressure in college students. Participants: Students (N = 116) were recruited from November 2012 to May 2014 at an urban university and rural community colleges. Methods: Students underwent a brief physical examination during which anthropometric measures were obtained and blood pressure was measured. Covariates were measured using self-reported questionnaires. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were used for the data analysis. Results: All anthropometric measures were predictive of systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). WC was the strongest predictor of SBP (β = .582, p < .01) explaining an additional 3–4% of the variance than BMI, WHtR, or SAD. The measures were similar in predicting DBP. WC predicted SBP independent of BMI. Conclusions: Clinicians should consider using WC to assess the risk for hypertension in college students.     

基于随机p-鲁棒优化的国家血液战略储备库选址-库存模型

以往的救灾实践对建立国家血液战略储备体系提出了迫切要求。国家血液战略储备库的建设问题亟待解决。由于血液产品特性以及应急血液保障特性的存在，使得国家血液战略储备库的选址决策具有一定的复杂性。本文将问题定位为选址-库存问题。首先，以应急条件下血液保障及时度最高为目标，构建了一个不确定环境下考虑多情景、多血型、多阶段、带提前期、有容量限制、日常随机需求、有预算约束及协同定位的国家血液战略储备库选址-库存模型。同时，为了规避应急条件下的不确定风险，进一步构建了国家血液战略储备库选址-库存问题的随机p-鲁棒优化模型。该模型为离散非线性混合整数规划模型，难以快速精确求解。故基于模型性质，设计了相应的遗传算法。最后，设计了两组算例验证模型与算法的有效性。其中，第1组算例基于我国大陆地区31个省级血液中心与省级行政区的数据，并根据不同预算值给出6个算例，得到了国家血液战略储备库的选址-库存决策方案。第2组算例为6个不同规模的模拟算例，用来测试不同规模下的算法性能。算例结果表明：遗传算法的性能更好；鲁棒解与确定性模型最优值相差不大（最大差距≤1.08%），可降低不确定性导致的风险。实践中，可对本文所建模型稍作改进，应用于具有类似特征的易腐品（药品、粮食等）应急物资储备库选址-库存决策。     

新冠疫情下停工期无薪休假制度探究

作为一种弹性工作方式,无薪休假通常运用于企业经营困难时期,以平衡劳资利益、稳定劳动关系,部分企业在此次新冠疫情停工期间进行了无薪休假的尝试。无薪休假具体表现为“缩短工时并相应地减少工资”,其在我国是一个新兴事物。若要引入“无薪休假”有必要厘清无薪休假实施的基础,考量我国引入无薪休假的必要性,并在考察域外无薪休假经验做法的基础上,结合实际情况构建我国无薪休假制度,重点在于劳资协商、最低工资保障与劳动监察等方面的规制。     

Unreasonable adjustments: the additional unpaid labour of academics with disabilities

Abstract

Two recent contributions to this section have drawn attention to the barriers which academics with disabilities have to navigate in academia where ableism “is endemic” (Brown and Leigh, 2018 Brown, N & Leigh, J (2018) Abelism in academia? Where are the disabled and ill academics. Disability & Society, 33 (6): 985–989.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]: 4). Hannam-Swain (2018 Hannam-Swain, S (2018) The additional labour of a disabled PhD student. Disability & Society, 33 (1): 138–142.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) highlighted the additional intellectual, emotional and physical labour required of her as a disabled PhD student, and Brown and Leigh (2018 Brown, N & Leigh, J (2018) Abelism in academia? Where are the disabled and ill academics. Disability & Society, 33 (6): 985–989.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) queried “where are all the disabled and ill academics?” However, Brown and Leigh primarily focus on those with invisible “conditions” and the dilemmas raised by disclosure in a context where such conditions negate academic status and credibility. In contrast, since my “disability” is visible, I do not share the dilemma/“luxury” of secrecy. My presence announces my status before me, and this negates my personhood altogether in academic settings. It also places a burden of additional unpaid labour upon me which has significant mental health and career impacts as well as violating principles of equality.     

Driven by Inequalities: Exploring the Resurgence of Domestic Work in U.S. Cities

Domestic work, once the most common occupation for women around the globe, was thought to be well on its way to extinction at the end of the twentieth century. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence began to appear that domestic work was in many places again becoming a growth occupation. My goal in this article is to examine the factors related to the recent expansion of domestic work in countries in the Global North, using the United States as a case study. I draw on U.S. Census data to document the resurgence of domestic work both nationally and in many large cities across the country, and then use multivariate analysis to compare rates of domestic work across these cities. The results indicate that rates of domestic work are highly related to variables measuring structural inequalities (racialization of the labor force, immigration, and economic polarization), while showing little relationship with variables measuring unmet care needs (care dependency ratios, female/maternal labor force participation, and availability of institutional care options). These findings underline the urgency of providing protections to domestic workers and point to the need for scholarship that better theorizes the relationships among unpaid care and different forms of paid care.     

Unaddressed problems and research perspectives in scheduling blood collection from donors

Many optimisation problems arise in managing the Blood Donation (BD) supply chain. Most of them have been addressed in the literature, while other problems, e.g. donation scheduling, have not been sufficiently addressed so far. However, blood collection from donors may have a disruptive impact on the entire BD supply chain if not properly managed. For example, scheduling donation appointments based on some system metrics may improve the flow of blood units through the BD supply chain and increase the quality of service perceived by donors. In this short communication, we present the donation scheduling problem and highlight the lack of work in the literature that deals with this problem. Then, we analyse the impact of an unbalanced flow of blood units on the BD system and the benefits that may derive from a suitable appointment scheduling. Finally, we propose suggestions for future research in BD collection scheduling that may improve the BD process.     

Righting anachronistic exclusions: The ethics of blood donation by men who have sex with men

ABSTRACT

Recently, the FDA announced that it would soon lift the long-standing lifetime ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men (MSM). Reexamining blood donation by MSM, it is clear that there are several ethical goods that must be balanced. Through balancing the primary duty to safety with the imperatives to craft a policy that is formally equal, upholds the public's trust, and is nondiscriminatory, an ethical blood donation deferral guideline may be advanced, both for MSM and the population at large.     

Oestrogen Rising 2016: Ireland’s stained and bloodied cloths

A weaver, seamstress, laundress and artist, in this essay I shall spin a yarn, tangle a web, and construct a text(ile) of the inter-weave of narrative and identity that I define as my intellectual, textual, somatic and material/visual practice obsessions. My work explores ‘the places in-between’ in the entanglements of Irish and Northern Irish gender and identity, and in the abject fabrics of death and of desire. As an Irish feminist, sense-making of the complexities, conundrums, challenges and contradictions of my land, my cloth, my body and my culture owes much to Irish women before me who fought for female suffrage, and Irish women now – north and south of the border that divides the island of Ireland – who still struggle for equality of citizenship, social justice, human rights, and full reproductive autonomy. My contention is that when we accept that Ireland herself is a many-layered cloth, a stained and bloodied cloth, a cloth marked irreversibly by history, conflict, denial and abuse, stained by its own repression, marked through denial of all its people’s rights and needs, and bloodied by its greatest export, the haemorrhage of its people, then – polemical, didactic or reflective, with more compassion, empathy, humility and heart – we just might make peace with our past.     

Care in a Time of Austerity: the Electronic Monitoring of Homecare Workers’ Time

Austerity places intense pressures on labour costs in paid care. In the UK, electronic monitoring technology has been introduced to record (and materially reduce) the working time and wages of homecare workers. Based on empirical findings, we show that, in a ‘time of austerity’, care is reductively constructed as a consumption of time. Service users are constructed as needy, greedy, time‐consumers and homecare workers as resource‐wasting time‐takers. We point to austerity as a temporal ideology aimed at persuading populations that individual deprivation in the present moment, self‐sacrifice and the suppression of personal need in the here and now is a necessary requirement to underpin a more secure national future. Accordingly, women in low‐waged care work are required to eschew a rights‐bearing, present‐tense identity and are assumed willing to suppress their entitlements to lawful wages as a sacrifice to the future. By transforming our understandings of ‘care’ into those of ‘time consumption’, and by emphasizing the virtue of present‐tense deprivation, a politics of austerity appears to justify time‐monitoring in care provision and the rationing of homecare workers’ pay.