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Objective: To determine impact of undertaking an international educational program during a nurse's or midwife's pre-registration program on subsequent practice, focusing on how nurses and midwives were transformed personally through participation in such programs. Background: Participation in international educational programs has been reported to enhance nursing and midwifery students' personal and professional development, however long-term impacts remain unclear. This paper presents findings drawn from a larger grounded theory study. Study design and Methods: Charmaz's grounded theory methodology was used to elicit experiences from 13 general nurses, two mental health nurses, three midwives and four dual qualified nurse/midwives across eight different countries. Data analysis led to the creation of three categories, with this paper reporting on the category of Developing as a Person. Findings: Participation in international educational programs can be transformative for nurses and midwives with long-lasting impacts, contributing positively to their personal growth and development. Discussion: The study findings underscore significant long-term impacts of international educational programs for nurses and midwives. These outcomes highlight the importance of incorporating international experiences into healthcare education. Conclusion: By providing opportunities for healthcare professionals to engage with diverse settings and populations, organisations and educational institutions can foster the development of well-rounded and globally competent practitioners. Implications for research, policy, and practice: The study's findings hold significant implications for research, policy, and practice in healthcare education. To deepen our understandings, additional longitudinal research across diverse countries is warranted. Policymakers have an opportunity to acknowledge the positive impact of these programs on the personal growth and development of nurses and midwives, potentially leading to the integration of global competency requirements into licensure programs. In order to provide comprehensive education, educational institutions should consider the inclusion of study abroad opportunities, cultural exchanges, and global clinical placements within nursing and midwifery curricula. What is already known about the topic? • International educational programs are widely used as a way of developing nursing and midwifery students' cultural understandings. • Previous studies have reported on short-term impacts of international educational programs. What this paper adds: • Long-term impacts of participation in an international educational program on nurses and midwives are described. • Personal development and subsequent transformations occur for nurses and midwives as a result of participation in international educational programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Palliative care is insufficiently integrated in the continuum of care for older people. It is unclear to what extent healthcare policy for older people includes elements of palliative care and thus supports its integration. Aim: (1) To develop a reference framework for identifying palliative care contents in policy documents; (2) to determine inclusion of palliative care in public policy documents on healthcare for older people in 13 rapidly ageing countries. Design: Directed documentary analysis of public policy documents (legislation, policies/strategies, guidelines, white papers) on healthcare for older people. Using existing literature, we developed a reference framework and data extraction form assessing 10 criteria of palliative care inclusion. Country experts identified documents and extracted data. Setting: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, England, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain. Results: Of 139 identified documents, 50 met inclusion criteria. The most frequently addressed palliative care elements were coordination and continuity of care (12 countries), communication and care planning, care for family, and ethical and legal aspects (11 countries). Documents in 10 countries explicitly mentioned palliative care, nine addressed symptom management, eight mentioned end-of-life care, and five referred to existing palliative care strategies (out of nine that had them). Conclusions: Health care policies for older people need revising to include reference to end-of-life care and dying and ensure linkage to existing national or regional palliative care strategies. The strong policy focus on care coordination and continuity in policies for older people is an opportunity window for palliative care advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardcore, or long-term derelict and vacant brownfield sites which are often contaminated, form a significant proportion of brownfield land in many cities, not only in the UK but also in other countries. The recent economic recession has placed the economic viability of such sites in jeopardy. This paper compares the approaches for bringing back hardcore brownfield sites into use in England and Japan by focusing on ten case studies in Manchester and Osaka, using an 'agency'-based frame- work. The findings are set in the context of (i) national brownfield and related policy agendas; (ii) recent trends in land and property markets in both England and Japan; and (iii) city-level comparisons of brownfields in Manchester and Osaka. The research, which was conducted during 2009-10, suggests that hardcore brownfield sites have been badly affected by the recent recession in both Manchester and Osaka. Despite this, not only is there evidence that hardcore sites have been successfully regenerated in both cities, but also that the critical success factors (CSFs) operating in bringing sites back into use share a large degree of commonality. These CSFs include the presence of strong potential markets, seeing the recession as an opportunity, long-term vision, strong branding, strong partnerships, integrated development, and getting infrastructure into place. Finally, the paper outlines the policy implications of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue on international or national agendas, women's colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities, the raison d'être of women's universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women's universities in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women's universities embedded in their institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women's universities, with their tradition of fostering a 'good wife, wise mother' image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on gender policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to identify common patterns in central authorities' steering of universities and the institutional power in neo-liberal higher education regimes. The paper examines the regulatory mechanisms of England and Japan through Foucault's idea of 'governmentality' and utilises the concept of autonomy to identify the state-university nexus and institutional behaviour. The paper argues that the similar application of technologies of arts in England and Japan - such as financial incentives and output quality management - has not brought about the same effect across the two countries in institutional behaviour and culture. In the case of England, the decline of traditional university autonomy - which isolated the university sector from external pressure - and increasing external influence in the value system are the case, while in Japan, the shift is rather internal within an institution, changing from department to institutional autonomy, which is compatible with the concept of accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to elucidate the different meaning of university autonomy historically and comparatively. The paper examines the shift in the definition of the university autonomy in England and Japan. It argues that the definition of university autonomy in England and Japan differed traditionally. In England, university autonomy functioned as the universities' ideology to protect the universities from outside of pressure. In Japan, university autonomy was understood in relation to the Ministerial coordination. The market-oriented policies in those countries have changed the meaning of university autonomy, bringing about “contractual autonomy” in England and institutional autonomy in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates some of the ways in which culture affects house form by considering the premise that increased privatised living leads to increased demarcation of private living space. Historical data from England and Japan make it evident that Japanese privatised living was family-centred as compared with English home-centredness, and was reflected in observable differences in the evolution of house forms. While supporting the premise that cultural values influence house forms, the paper concludes that the original framework is too simple, but can be developed to accommodate data from different cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most advanced countries, young people are now expected to remain in education until the age of 18 and, in a context of poor opportunities for those who leave at an early stage, there are concerns about those who are being left behind. In this paper we use comparable survey data to focus on the destinations of young people in two contrasting societies, England and Wales and Japan. We compare the destinations of 19/20-year-olds in the two countries, with a strong focus on those who leave education at an early stage, and go on to explore the extent to which young people's socio-economic backgrounds and their orientations to education explain their post-school experiences. We argue that, in both societies, those who enter the labour market before the age of 20 face severe difficulties irrespective of their social background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To learn relational terms such as verbs and prepositions, children must first dissect and process dynamic event components. This paper investigates the way in which 8- to 14-month-old English-reared infants notice the event components, figure (i.e., the moving entity) and ground (i.e., stationary setting), in both dynamic (Experiment 1) and static representations of events (Experiment 2) for categorical ground distinctions expressed in Japanese, but not in English. We then compare both 14- and 19-month-old English- and Japanese-reared infants' processing of grounds to understand how language learning interacts with the conceptualization of these constructs (Experiment 3). Results suggest that (1) infants distinguish between figures and grounds in events; (2) they do so differently for static vs. dynamic displays; (3) early in the second year, children from diverse language environments form nonnative - perhaps universal - event categories; and (4) these event categories shift over time as children have more exposure to their native tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publication data relating to a rare and obscure Japanese journal Lansania Journal of arachnology and zoology (1929–1941) are examined. Available facts, together with a substantial body of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence suggest that many planned issues, including several cited by independent sources as having been published, were not published. Some biographical data relating to the editor, Kyukichi Kishida (1888–1968), are provided. Titles of all papers known to have been published in Lansania, with page numbers and claimed publication dates are presented, together with a list of 113 new zoological names proposed in the journal. Known library holdings of the journal worldwide are indicated. Details are provided of unpublished manuscripts in proof obtained from Kishida in the 1960s. The strong probability that some printed publication dates are inaccurate is discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new design of passive sampler is described which is appropriate to reduce the sampling resolution of most formats of Palmes’ tubes from weeks to 24h or less. The sampler employs a flat-type porous polyethylene membrane filter as a diffuser, which controls mass transfer of the target analyte from ambient air to impregnated trapping filter. The new design is applicable to any analyte for which there is a paper Palmes’ tube method, e.g. H2S, OCS, NO, SO2, O3, organic acids, NH3 and so on. As an example, the sampler for the determination of ambient atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2), employing a trapping filter impregnated with triethanolamine is described. Performance of the new sampler was evaluated in laboratory and field experiments. The sampling rate was measured directly at four kerb-side sites in Oxford, UK and Kanagawa, Japan, by comparing measured concentrations from the samplers with co-located automated NO2 analyzers. Results showed mass transfer rate of NO2 within the diffuser did not change with external wind speed (0.5–2ms−1). The passive device had relatively higher sampling rate than those of previous samplers and gave equivalent results on NO2 concentrations to the automated NO2 analyzer at 24h or less sampling duration. LOD and LOQ indicated possible application of these devices to sampling in urban intermediate, urban background and suburban areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents abstracts of the papers published in the journal "ICE Proceedings" in 2007 on topics related to civil engineering which include the design and construction of the tunnel under the Thames estuary in England, the design and construction of the station box at the Channel Rail Link in London, England, and a case history of a road remediation project in the coastal Saga Plain of Japan.

Although there has been a rapid growth in the globalisation of sport and its delivery to world markets, nevertheless there is a variety of models of sport-business whose characteristics are the product of local histories, local political and sporting cultures, local economic conditions and so on. This paper does not seek to deny the increasingly obvious impact of globalisation on professional sport, but rather it seeks to articulate the ways in which such global phenomena are locally mediated in professional soccer systems in five countries, to identify and to explain local responses to global pressures. The five examples include the oldest professional football system, that of England, and a second contrasting European system, France, together with three relatively recently established professional football systems in Japan a developed capitalist economy, Algeria, which is developing a post-socialist sports economy, and China which is experimenting in sport as in other areas with a ‘socialist market economy’. The resultant evolution of professional sporting systems represents distinctive configurations of stakeholders in what are in effect contrasting business models, and reflects a situation of ‘diminishing varieties and increasing contrasts’, in contrast to the claims made by Elias in relation to global cultural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the commonality of social policies on homelessness between Japan and England and to discuss the role of social policy in response to the recent emergence of homelessness throughout the world. Japan and England are regarded as different types of welfare state, and policies towards homelessness in both countries contrast sharply with each other. In some important areas, however, their approaches to homelessness coincide. There is a common 'style' of 'main bypass' policy with a diverse and often subjective implementation. This commonality can be interpreted as a result of the application of some general principles of the welfare state such as work requirement, family principles, moral requirement as a good citizen of the welfare state as well as the narrow and often stereotypical understanding of a person's 'place to live' in a society. Policies concerning homelessness in this common 'style' have not responded satisfactorily to the global emergence of homelessness. Instead, they have often played a part perpetuating situations where homeless people stay in temporary accommodation often facing uncertain and inconsistent treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]