Latin American convergence and divergence towards the mortality profiles of developed countries

It is uncertain whether Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries are approaching a single mortality regime. Over the last three decades, LAC has experienced major public health interventions and the highest number of homicides in the world. However, these interventions and homicide rates are not evenly shared across countries. This study documents trends in life expectancy and lifespan variability for 20 LAC countries, 2000–14. By extending a previous method, we decompose differences in lifespan variability between LAC and a developed world benchmark into cause-specific effects. For both sexes, dispersion of amenable diseases through the age span makes the largest contribution to the gap between LAC and the benchmark. Additionally, for males, the concentration of homicides, accidents, and suicides in mid-life further impedes mortality convergence. Great disparity exists in the region: while some countries are rapidly approaching the developed regime, others remain far behind and suffer a clear disadvantage in population health.     

Relationship between duration of second stage of labour and postpartum anaemia

Aim

To assess the relationship between the duration of the second stage of labour and postpartum anaemia during vaginal birth.

External knowledge search,absorptive capacity and radical innovation in high-technology firms

Open innovation and absorptive capacity are two concepts based on the idea that companies can leverage the knowledge generated externally to improve their innovation performance. The aim of this paper is to analyse the joint effect of open innovation and absorptive capacity on a firm's radical innovation. Open innovation is expressed in terms of external search breadth and depth strategies and absorptive capacity is described by distinguishing between potential and realized absorptive capacity. In order to test our hypotheses, we carried out empirical research in firms operating in high-technology industries. The results indicate that internal routines and processes for absorbing external knowledge help explain radical innovation as they show a significant effect of potential and realized absorptive capacity. Also, there is a moderating effect of absorptive capacity on open innovation. Specifically, potential absorptive capacity exerts a positive effect on the relationship between external search breadth and depth and radical innovation. Realized absorptive capacity moderates the influence of external search breadth. These findings confirm the complementary nature of absorptive capacity and open innovation search strategies on radical innovation.     

Applying kaizen to the schedule in a concurrent environment

Not only ETO (Engineering to Order), but even serial production industry should know how to deal with projects and their schedule: plant commissioning, shutdown, introducing new products and similar circumstances should be managed with adequate planning and resource allocation techniques to create a schedule useful in decision making during the execution. The current complex reality, with evolving technologies and fierce pressure to reach the market as soon as possible, pushes the project managers to use more advanced techniques than waterfall planning, such as agile or lean. It also requires them to take a holistic view and manage concurrent tasks in complex projects. The contributions of this paper are two: the proposal to control specific parallel groups of waterfall activities under uncertain environments, which can lead to iterations and reworks, as a single concurrent Activity Managed by Kanban Methods (AMKM). This activity can be subsequently embedded into traditional scheduling approaches as CPM-PERT. The second contribution is the feasibility of its application in industrial environments due to the affordability of simulation software. Two use cases are shown as evidence. It is not a disruptive proposal, but a kaizen action based on very mature technologies. Finally, it is suggested some improvements to be implemented in Project Management Software due to this ‘kaizen’ proposal.     

A Multivariate Indicator to Compute Middle Class Population

Social Indicators Research - Monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 requires the global community to disaggregate targets along socio-economic lines, but little has...     

International and intercultural issues in English teaching textbooks: the case of Spain

The sociocultural content of foreign language textbooks has become a concern of scholars and practitioners owing to the fact that the traditional emphasis on purely linguistic issues has been expanded to embrace a language in context approach. This paper studies the English‐speaking communities that are described in English language teaching textbooks marketed in Spain. It examines to what extent an international and/or intercultural approach is a constituent element in their design.     

Enduring disablism: students with dyslexia and their pathways into UK higher education and beyond

This paper presents some of the findings derived from a UK Aimhigher South Yorkshire research report on disability and higher education. Many of the students who shared their life histories for this project found that there was a lack of information in making choices about their futures, especially information about pursuing higher education. Without information to make informed choices, disabled students not only experience stress and anxiety, but also difficulty in preparing themselves for higher education study. This is, perhaps, reason for the low proportion of disabled learners in further and higher education. There are many reasons to explain this disparity. Many factors are inextricably linked to disablism institutionalized within many sectors of education. The education arena is not being singled out here. However, it does serve as further notice of the pervasiveness of disablism existing in wider society.     

Demographic Shifts in the Czech Republic after 1989: A Second Demographic Transition View

A dramatic change in fertility,family formation and living arrangements tookplace in the Czech Republic over the 1990s. Theestablishment of democracy, profound socialtransformation and transition to the marketeconomy affected the values and demographicbehaviour of the young Czech generation. Thispaper examines whether these demographic shiftscan be interpreted within the framework of thesecond demographic transition. The theoreticalpart discusses the idea of the transition,outlining three distinctive conceptualisations.Two of them – the view of the transition as aprogression of characteristic interrelateddemographic changes and a broader viewstressing the importance of underlyingideational factors – fit the Czech situationvery well. A comparison with the Netherlandsreveals that the onset of the transition in theCzech Republic may be clearly located in thefirst half of the 1990s, lagging two decadesbehind the Netherlands.