The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

Biosecurity Policy and the Use of Geospatial Predictive Tools to Address Invasive Plants: Updating the Risk Analysis Toolbox

International and national biosecurity policies consider risk assessment a critical component of overall plant health risk analysis. The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, the International Plant Protection Convention, and the Convention on Biological Diversity all provide guidelines and recommendations on how to use risk assessment. This article discusses how these instruments address risk assessment, and makes recommendations on how the risk assessment process needs to incorporate current geospatial predictive science and geographic information systems into the plant health biosecurity risk analysis toolbox.     

Recovery From Mental Health Problems: Scratching The Surface Without Ethnography

This article examines a central plank of mental health policy (‘recovery’) in societies which have attempted to reverse the long-term warehousing of those with a diagnosis of mental disorder (de-institutionalisation). The emergence of the concept is traced in relation to the shift from an institutional to a more dispersed and community-based form of service organisation. Different usages of the term ‘recovery’, each with distinct implications for practice are considered on the part of three main interest groups (traditional bio-medical psychiatrists; social psychiatrists emphasising social skills training; and dissenting service users). These different usages suggest that ‘recovery’ is a polyvalent concept that creates an uneasy consensus point to define the management philosophies of local services enacting mental health policy. Also mental health work is about more than the group of patients mainly considered in relation to recovery (those with ‘severe and enduring mental health problems’). Practice-near research strategies are now required to investigate the varied practical scenarios these contradictions generate and ethnographic research is therefore indicated. Without multiple ethnographies, we will be left with competing rhetoric about recovery and its meaning or meanings may be rendered worthless.     

An International Comparative Study on Women's Pension Rights and Their Economic Risks

This article examined the theoretical meanings of pension rights and analyzed their effects on women's economic risks in developed countries. First, based on the status of a citizen, worker, parent, and spouse, this study investigated how pension benefits are guaranteed as a citizen regardless of work history, the degree to which women's disadvantageous situations in the labor market and unpaid work are compensated by public pension as workers and parents, and how marital status is treated in the different pension systems. Second, analysis of the effect of pension rights showed that individual rights is a significant factor to prevent economic risks of elderly women. Derived rights did not seem to secure the economic welfare of elderly women, at least in a comparative context. This finding suggested that developing individual rights, rather than derived rights, is the way to guarantee long‐term elderly women's economic welfare.     

Unraveling Health Disparities Among Sexual and Gender Minorities: A Commentary on the Persistent Impact of Stigma

ABSTRACT

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) populations experience disparities in health outcomes, both physical and mental, compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. This commentary confronts the view held by some researchers that the disparate rates of mental health problems reported among LGBT populations are the consequences of pursuing a particular life trajectory, rather than resulting from the corrosive and persistent impact of stigma. Suggesting that mental health disparities among LGBT populations arise internally, de novo, when individuals express non-heterosexual and non-conforming gender identities ignores the vast body of evidence documenting the destructive impact of socially mediated stigma and systemic discrimination on health outcomes for a number of minorities, including sexual and gender minorities. Furthermore, such thinking is antithetical to widely accepted standards of health and wellbeing because it implies that LGBT persons should adopt and live out identities that contradict or deny their innermost feelings of self.     

Enhancing the Career Planning Self-Determination of Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges

The impact of an intervention on the self-determination and career planning engagement of young adults with mental health challenges was studied. Sixty-seven young adults, 20 to 30 years of age, with mental health diagnoses (e.g., depression, bipolar disorder) were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Statistically significant greater increases were made by the intervention group versus the control group for self-determination and career planning engagement, and self-determination at least partially mediated increases in career planning engagement. With career planning self-determination interventions, young adults with mental health challenges might be able to achieve better career and life outcomes than is typical for this population.     

多维视角下的老年人社会健康影响因素分析

采用全国老年人口健康状况调查项目2002年~2005年纵向数据作为研究样本,对中国老年人社会健康的影响因素进行多维分析。通过结构方程模型,在方法上解决了社会健康的多维性、抽象概念的定量分析和测量误差的问题。研究发现,经济社会因素是影响老年人社会健康的主要方面,其中老年人自身的经济条件是最重要的因素;心理健康是影响老年人社会健康的关键因素,其它因素通过心理健康对社会健康起间接作用;由于社会生活方式的改变,家庭因素对老年人社会健康的直接影响正在弱化,但是家庭因素对老年人社会健康的间接影响依然存在。     

Risk Assessment for Hospital-Acquired Diseases: A Risk-Theory Approach

We introduce a new approach to hospital-acquired disease risk assessment from public health databases. In a spirit similar to actuarial risk theory, we define an adjustment coefficient that can quantify the risk associated with a hospital department, allowing comparisons of similar departments. The adjustment coefficient characterizes the tail of the distribution of the total patient length of stay in a department before the first disease event occurs. We show that this coefficient is the solution of a Lundberg-like equation, and we provide a nonparametric estimation procedure for this measure, based on a Cramér-Lundberg approximation for the tail of the distribution. Using simulations, we provide evidence of the robustness of the approximation to various individual risk models. In addition, we illustrate the relevance of this approach by evaluating the risk associated with a standard patient safety indicator in 20 hospitals of southeastern France.     

中国都市密集区市际关系中存在的问题及其应对

当前，中国都市密集区市际关系中存在的问题包括产业结构趋同、恶性竞争、城市定位重复混乱、地方保护主义以及基础设施重复建设等。都市密集区市际关系中存在的复杂问题，与市际关系协调机制不成熟、不完善密切相关。创新都市密集区市际关系协调的制度和机制，实现协调主体的多元化、方式多样化、目标长期化，是当前都市密集区发展中殊为迫切的任务。     

Gaps in social protection for health care and long‐term care in Europe: Are the elderly faced with financial ruin?

While public expenditure on health care and long‐term care (LTC) has been monitored for many years in European countries, far less attention has been paid to the financial consequences for older people of private out‐of‐pocket (OOP) expenditure necessary to access such care. Employing representative cross‐sectional data on the elderly populations of 11 European countries in 2004 from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we find that OOP payments for health care and LTC are very common among the elderly across European countries and such expenditures impact significantly on disposable income: up to 95 per cent of the elderly make OOP payments for health care and 5 per cent for LTC, resulting in income reductions of between 5 and 10 per cent, respectively. Failure to prevent financial ruin, as a consequence of excessive OOP payments, is evident in 0.7 per cent of elderly households utilizing health care and 0.5 per cent of elderly households utilizing LTC. Those particularly concerned are the poor, women and the very old.