Search

Within the financialisation literature, scholars have turned their attention to the state, exploring the adoption of financial activities by state actors, paying less attention to the limits of state financialisation. This paper explores these limits using the case of social impact bonds (SIBs). Pioneered in the UK in 2010 and subsequently trialed in some 35 countries, SIBs use private capital to fund social programs, with governments providing a return based on the degree of success. Despite expectations of dramatic growth, the SIB model has never truly taken hold. Based on the rollout of SIBs in the UK, Israel, and Canada, the paper considers the challenges encountered by the SIB enterprise as a form of financialised statecraft and identifies three barriers: (1) resistance to political agendas of state financialisation; (2) clashes between finance and public sector cultures; (3) financial innovation seen as 'risk' and 'disruption' to entrenched socio-technical routines. These barriers reveal tensions both within the state itself and between finance and the public sector, and indicate the importance of thinking about the limits and failures of state financialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Whilst the uniqueness of loneliness and social isolation is now recognised for members of the Armed Forces Community, there is currently a lack of evidence examining these experiences within the Military Widow/er population. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to search and synthesise the current evidence base exploring experiences of loneliness and social isolation in this community. Method: Six databases were searched; ASSIA; CINAHL; ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global; PsycArticles; Medline; Web of Science. Any article type was included if they focused on UK or international Military Widows and loneliness and social isolation. In the absence of loneliness and social isolation, related aspects were included, for example, social support. Results: A thematic synthesis was completed on the nine eligible papers, where key findings were coded and generated into four themes; Experiences of Loneliness and Social Isolation, The Uniqueness of the Military, Access to Social Support, and The Importance of Peer Support. Conclusions: Evidence supports the need for military-specific support services with peers who recognise the individuals' unique experiences of loneliness and social isolation. None of the available evidence focused specifically on social isolation, however this was often prevalent in the results. All of the studies were carried out in the USA and Israel, with none including the views of widowers. Further evidence is required, particularly relating to a UK-context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the number of centers involved in kidney donor programs in Great Britain. Basis of donor assessment guidelines; Consequences of associated physiological, ethical and clinical implications; Number of renal transplants performed annually.

This paper combines two case studies from the UK and Israel to question/'que(e)ry' LGBTQ people's travel and mobility behaviours, to explore the issue of 'queer mobilities' and related exclusions from heteronormative public transport spaces. Our research demonstrates how the fear of anti-LGBTQ discrimination and violence have profound impacts on LGBTQ people's travel options and activity spaces. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, we examine how LGBTQ identity/'queerness', visibility, and safety perceptions affect mobility opportunities and choices. We pursue feminist and queer approaches to expose how LGBTQ people embody a complex, intersectional set of mobility considerations. The study reveals grounded experiences of different LGBTQ travellers and their coping strategies to feel able to travel safely. It identifies how LGBTQ participants are not necessarily physically excluded from mobility opportunities. Rather, they pay hidden costs to travel safely, which take the shape of identity and visibility compromises and heightened levels of fear while travelling. They also use more expensive travel alternatives, such as taxis, or take less direct routes to overcome their experiences of unsafe and inaccessible public transport alternatives. Thereby, we advocate a view of mobility as another important dimension of the discrimination and exclusion of sexual and gender minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel's relationship with the West during the first half of the 1950s was not a walk in the park. Economic relations fitted into this general picture. Both Britain and France were sceptical as far as Israel's potential was concerned. Their early prognoses tended to be quite gloomy. Simultaneously, economic relations provided a convenient communication channel at a time when overt association with the Jewish state was not desirable. The progress in Franco-Israeli economic ties during the years 1953-1955 illustrates this ambivalence in full. While prudence remained, the increase in bilateral trade managed to warrant the military supplies. Britain, constituting a traditional market, surpassed France as a trading partner. Given British political aloofness, the instrument of trade served primarily its immediate economic purpose. Based on archival sources gathered in all of the three countries, the paper traces the interplay of trade and diplomacy in the early years of Israel's foreign relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reviews public transport crowding valuation research, using a number of primary studies conducted in the UK, USA, Australia and Israel. We identify three measures used to value crowding (a time multiplier, a monetary value per time unit and a monetary value per trip), and associated ways of representing crowding in stated preference experiments. Although a number of different types of crowding in terms of location are identified, namely in-vehicle, access-way, entrance and platform/station, the majority of reviewed studies investigate only in-vehicle crowding. Despite the different characteristics of the reviewed studies, they all report that crowding would increase the value of travel time savings, which can be viewed as an additional component of generalised time. This paper also comments on the role that the WTP for crowding reduction can play in project appraisal, and suggests some important avenues for future public transport crowding valuation research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper elaborates on the concept of ‘knowledge economy’ as a prelude to demonstrating its incidence at regional and sub-regional levels in the UK, EU and Israel. The paper shows consistencies in the incidence of knowledge economies across the countries and georegion. This is a good test of the basic methodology, which is simple, and suggests its underlying theory is robust for distinctive spaces and times. It should thus contribute to standard methodology in academic and policy environments. The future economy will be characterised by more knowledge-intensive activities, and as shown in the paper, will be a highly disequilibriated one in spatial terms. Consequently the need for counter-measures is growing in order to continuously follow up and to take the needed actions in lagging regions. This is an acute challenge for future policy, namely to correct market failure in the knowledge economy for peripheral and otherwise deprived areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several of the articles gathered in this special issue are based on papers presented at the symposium on 'Writing Jews in Contemporary Britain' held at and generously funded by the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism on 11 September 2013, and co-convened by the editors together with the Institute's director, David Feldman. Others have been especially commissioned for the issue. Thanks are also due to Jan Davison, Jonathan Magonet and Jenny Pizer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, each country has adopted different control measures to contrast the epidemic's diffusion. Restrictions to mobility, public transport, and social life in general have been actuated to contain the spread of the pandemic. In this paper, we consider the deterministic SIRD model with delays proposed by Calleri et al., which is improved by adding the vaccinated compartment V (SIRDV model) and considering a time-dependent contact frequency. The three delays take into account the incubation time of the disease, the healing time, and the death time. The aim of this work is to study the effect of the vaccination campaigns in Great Britain (GBR) and Israel (ISR) during the pandemic period. The different restriction periods are included by fitting the contact frequency on real datasets as a piecewise constant function. As expected, the vaccination campaign reduces the amount of deaths and infected people. Furthermore, for the different levels of restriction policy, we find specific values of the contact frequency that can be used to predict the trend of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many reviews of job stress and the stressor-strain relationship have been conducted, such reviews typically focus exclusively on quantitative data. In the current paper, we review qualitative studies on occupational stress that met two criteria: (1) the studies employed qualitative methods; (2) the stressors, strains and/or coping strategies were grouped into identifiable, higher-order categories. Results indicated that the nature of the stressors experienced varied by (a) occupation, (b) country, (c) seniority and (d) gender. The review further revealed that organizational constraints, work overload and interpersonal conflict were relatively universal stressors. Anger and annoyance were the most frequently reported psychological strains in the United States and the United Kingdom, while Chinese workers exhibited tension and anxiety and Indian workers exhibited acceptance. Coping strategies also varied by gender, occupation and country. Research on gender differences suggested that, compared to men, women tended to report more interpersonal stressors. Differences in the ways in which the two types of methodologies are applied, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses, underline the value of qualitative approaches to the study of occupational stress, especially when used in conjunction with quantitative methods in mixed-methods studies. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article accounts for Israel's failure to take the historical opportunity to invade the West Bank during the 1948 war. It also considers the nature of British support for Jordan between 1948 until the death of King Abdullah in 1951. British interests in Transjordan were determined by strategic factors that were outlined in the 1948 Anglo-Transjordan Treaty. Although the British were bound by the treaty to come to Jordan's assistance in the case of an invasion, in practice this would have been very difficult to achieve short of invading Israel from Egypt. This paper argues that the Israelis failed to invade the West Bank in 1948 because they were deterred by the possibility of British intervention and because of divisions within the Israeli political establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD), also known as Dyspraxia in the United Kingdom (U.K.), is a developmental disorder affecting motor co-ordination. In the past this was regarded as a childhood disorder, however there is increasing evidence that a significant number of children will continue to have persistent difficulties into adulthood. Despite this, there remains little information as to how the difficulties might present at this stage, and additionally the impact on every day functioning. As young people move into further and higher education there is a need for screening and assessment tools. Such tools allow for identification of these difficulties, access to support, and clarification of areas where appropriate support needs to be targeted. This paper describes the first adult screening tool for DCD. The development and the results from testing this tool in two countries, Israel and the U.K. are outlined and the implications for its use in further and higher education discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper illustrates how learners who tell THEIR stories can enhance their learning. Two educational contexts were compared to illustrate different forms of reflective practices. From Israel, first-year students in a teacher training college who were training to become English teachers participating in an ‘Introduction to Education’ course, were contrasted with candidates undertaking a practice-based professional doctorate programme in the United Kingdom. Data were collected from observations and the analysis of linguistic autobiographies, personal diaries, reflective journals, narrative accounts and research diaries. Evidence from narrative accounts of students and teachers showed how they can improve the capability to learn and construct meanings from their own life experiences. The use of research diaries on the two professional doctorate programmes showed how candidates collect, and analyse, their daily work as insider researchers. Our conclusions are that these tools represent an ever-increasing, but low resource consumption, educative device and they extend reflective learning beyond individuals to the wider group of learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical trials for the treatment of schizophrenia now often include cognitive assessments in addition to clinical ratings of symptoms. Recently, these trials have included cross-national assessments. It is not clear if translated psychological tests produce consistent results across different languages. This paper presents the results of a study of the comparability of the results of cognitive assessments in different English-speaking countries and a number of countries where tests were translated into other languages. Performance on tests of executive functioning, verbal and visuo-spatial learning and memory, language skills, psychomotor speed, and vigilance was compared across the first episode patients with schizophrenia (n=301) assessed in six different languages (English, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, and Afrikaans), including two different countries where patients were assessed in English and other languages: Canada (French) and South Africa (Afrikaans). The variance in performance across the sites tested in English was as large as the variance between English and non-English speakers when all tests were considered. Performance differences across English and other languages were found only for executive functions, vigilance, and psychomotor speed, with executive functioning differences nonsignificant when education was considered. No differences were found between English and non-English speakers in Canada. These results suggest that the translation of tests of memory and verbal skills can lead to consistent results across translated versions of the tests. Differences between countries were greater than differences between languages, suggesting the need to consider representativeness of patient samples in terms of local educational attainment. In general, these data support the validity of cross-national neuropsychological assessments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the role of categorical benefits, i.e. non-means-tested and non-contributory cash benefits, in Great Britain and Israel. After introducing a more rigorous definition of the term and differentiating between various types of categorical benefits, it looks at the role and recent development of these benefits in the two countries. It finds that they play a growing and significant role in the social security systems of Great Britain and Israel. An examination of the decision-making process surrounding the adoption of these benefit programmes indicates why this is so. On the basis of the findings, initial conclusions relating to changes in the nature of social security are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes some population redistribution policy alternatives by examining the mechanisms used to influence population distribution patterns in the Netherlands, Great Britain and Israel. These nations were selected for study because they have public policies which, among other goals, seek to affect population redistribution and because the basic approaches to redistribution in these nations. Relevant policies in the Netherlands seek to reverse the net in-migration flow to the highly urbanized western part of the country. The British policies seek to alter long-term regional differences in population growth rates, due primarily to internal migration streams, which have resulted in the agglomeration of about two-thirds of the population in a zone of approximately 200 miles extending from London in the south-east to the Manchester metropolitan area. Israeli policies have been directed toward a reduction in the large proportion of the Jewish population living in the three major metropolitan regions of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

Background: The atrocities in Syria have been covered in the four general medical weekly journals in the USA and the UK. Medical journal articles addressing political determinants of public health have rightly described and criticised the international community's failure to enforce humanitarian law while urging global bodies of power to ensure protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure and medical services. Discussions of the political influences on health of people in the occupied Palestinian territory (West Bank and Gaza Strip) seem to be considered politically out-of-bounds by some medical journals. This study used a keyword-based search to explore patterns of publication about the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel by four large US and European medical journals.Method: The four highest ranked, peer-reviewed, international medical journals were searched: The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), The Lancet, and The British Medical Journal (BMJ). Searches were conducted between Sept 1 and Sept 6, using each journal's search engine with the keywords "Gaza", "West Bank" and the stems "Palestin*" and "Israel*" in all fields for the period Jan 1, 1990, to Sept 6, 2016. News and commentary articles were included in the findings.Findings: The searches found the term "Palestin*" in 49 articles from the two US journals (32 in JAMA; 17 in NEJM) and 694 articles in the two UK journals (236 in The Lancet; 458 in BMJ). "Israel*" was found in 840 articles in US journals (386 in JAMA; 454 in NEJM) and in 2972 articles in UK journals (1388 in The Lancet; 1584 in BMJ). "West Bank" was found in nine articles in US journals (nine in JAMA; none in NEJM) and in 297 articles from the UK (211 in The Lancet; 86 in BMJ). "Gaza" was found in 18 articles in US journals (15 from JAMA; three from NEJM) and in 487 articles in UK journals (324 in The Lancet; 166 in BMJ).Interpretation: Compared with the two US-based medical journals, the UK journals published substantially more articles with the relevant keywords and discussed political responsibilities for the dire health conditions experienced by the Palestinian people. The journals included in this study differed in the extent to which they featured news and comments, which might have affected the number of published articles. Because there is a larger research establishment in Israel than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the keyword "Israel" might have been included in a larger number of clinical and biomedical scientific papers. Medical leaders, including journal editors, have a responsibility to participate in the discussion around this preventable situation, which could have long-lasting public health consequences.Funding: None. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]