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Purpose Attention on world migration has mostly focused on economic and inter-personal impacts, leaving a large gap in our understanding of how migration can affect migrants’ health. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the interdependent experiences of skilled migrants, as they undertake the latter part of their journey of skilled migration and resettle into their adopted homeland, can be conceptualised as a structural determinant of health. Design/methodology/approach In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews collected data on skilled migrants’ experiences, including health impacts, related to their migration to Tasmania, Australia. A social determinants of health (SDOH) framework and Bourdieu’s theory of practice were applied to interpret the findings. Findings In total, 16 skilled migrants, from several nations and occupations, provided wide-ranging accounts of social inclusion and exclusion, and frequently reported experiencing psychological stress. There were also some reports of improved mental health. The migration process shapes life’s chances and choices. Many migrants reported access to important social, economic and cultural resources, however, good health was also impeded by equally significant systemic barriers. Research limitations/implications The sample is small and confined to a geographically isolated location, and did not include all types of skilled migrants. Practical implications Countries resettling skilled migrants should modify systems to promote rather than inhibit wellbeing, e.g. government and industry partnerships to facilitate employability and enhance access to supportive information about the migration process. Originality/value This is the first known study to link Bourdieu’s theory to SDOH relevant to skilled migrants. This approach helped reveal the prominence of structural factors beyond the control of migrants but potentially modifiable by the host country. This study illustrates the importance of examining both positive and negative health outcomes associated with migration, and how these factors relate to theory and policy.

In the late twentieth century, the Chinese communities in Indonesia and Malaysia were politically repressed. But recent events have prompted optimism that the Chinese communities in both countries could move forward and claim their rightful place as equal citizens. But while the Indonesian Chinese community appears to have made some headway, the situation in Malaysia has not improved, and in some ways, it is worse. We argue that institutional frameworks and political Islam are the main threats to political rights for the Chinese communities in both countries and that there are lessons to be learned from these neighboring nations.

In this paper we study codes with sparse generator matrices. More specifically, codes with a certain constraint on the weight of all the columns in the generator matrix are considered. The end result is the following. For any binary-input memoryless symmetric (BMS) channel and any epsilon > 2 epsilon*, where epsilon^* = \frac{1}{6}-\frac{5}{3}\log{\frac{4}{3}} \approx 0.085, we show an explicit sequence of capacity-achieving codes with all the column wights of the generator matrix upper bounded by (\log N)^{1+epsilon}, where N is the code block length. The constructions are based on polar codes. Applications to crowdsourcing are also shown., 12 pages, 2 tables

Mahathir Mohamad’s place in Asian history is assured. Not only has he had the distinction of being the longest serving Malaysian prime minister (1981–2003), he has just been re-elected as prime minister of his country on 9 May 2018, after being in retirement for 15 years. He is the world’s oldest elected leader at 92 years old.

This paper models the crowdsourced labeling/classification problem as a sparsely encoded source coding problem, where each query answer, regarded as a code bit, is the XOR of a small number of labels, as source information bits. In this paper we leverage the connections between this problem and well-studied codes with sparse representations for the channel coding problem to provide querying schemes with almost optimal number of queries, each of which involving only a constant number of labels. We also extend this scenario to the case where some workers can be unresponsive. For this case, we propose querying schemes where each query involves only log n items, where n is the total number of items to be labeled. Furthermore, we consider classification of two correlated labeling systems and provide two-stage querying schemes with almost optimal number of queries each involving a constant number of labels., Comment: 6 pages

The results of the 2015 Singapore general election (GE) saw the People’s Action Party (PAP) reverse the decline in support of the past few GEs. Many writers cited as some of the key reasons for PAP’s strong showing: a flight to safety, the superior PAP campaign, the personal popularity of Lee Hsien Loong, the 50 years of Singapore's Independence (SG50) feel-good factor, changes in government policies since 2011, direct government subsidies to the pioneer generation, the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, and the mainstream media’s attack on the credibility of the opposition. In this paper, the author offers an additional explanation, that is, the underlying causes of the PAP’s electoral success were the policies laid down after Singapore’s independence and some key cultural traits of this island nation. The policy of depoliticisation led to the creation of a social contract under which political liberties were voluntarily sacrificed in return for economic growth and prosperity. The author further argues tha...

On 11 September 2015 Singapore held its 12th general election (GE). While no one doubted that the People’s Action Party (PAP) would win, many had expected it to lose further ground to the oppositio...

The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) has long been seen as one of the most powerful political parties in the world in term of endurance and capacity to hold on to power. Until May 2018 it had held power continuously for a record 63 years. UMNO first came to power in colonial Malaya in 1955, stayed on in power in independent Malaya, and later in the Federation of Malaysia. It has often been compared to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) which held power in Mexico uninterruptedly for seven decades. In the region, the only party that is comparable is Singapore’s People’s Action Party, which has ruled the island state continuously since 1959.

In May, the Malaysian political scene was rocked by reports that the prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, has agreed to allow a bill proposed by Abdul Hadi Awang, the president of Parti Islam Malaysia ...

Ethnic Chinese in Cambodia are the country’s largest ethnic minority. About 60 % are urban residents engaged mainly in commerce and the other 40 % are in rural areas. Since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the once stricken Chinese community has been rejuvenated by an influx of new migrants from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and neighboring Southeast Asian countries. Enterprises set up by new Chinese migrants are now present in almost every city and town, particularly Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanouk Ville and Battambang. Chinese migrant entrepreneurs invest in building factories, banks, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, discos and casinos, while Chinese skilled laborers have been recruited to work in these enterprises, especially in garment factories. New Chinese migrants play a very important role in the economy of Cambodia, whose revenue relies mainly on the duties levied on their factories and companies.

Purpose A recent phase III study (PARAMOUNT) demonstrated that pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy is a new treatment paradigm for advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The majority of patients enrolled in PARAMOUNT were Caucasian (94%). We reviewed efficacy and safety data from two clinical trials, which enrolled East Asian (EA) patients, to supplement data from PARAMOUNT on pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy in patients with nonsquamous NSCLC. Materials and Methods Study S110 was a phase II, multicenter, randomized, controlled, open-label trial in never-smoker, chemonaïve, EA patients (n=31) with locally advanced or metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC (n=27). Study JMII was a multicenter, open-label, single-arm, post-marketing, clinical trial in Japanese patients (n=109) with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC. PARAMOUNT was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC. Results In EA patients with nonsquamous NSCLC, the median progression-free survival (PFS) for pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy was 4.04 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.22 to 5.29 months) in study S110 and 3.9 months (95% CI, 3.2 to 5.2 months) in study JMII. The median PFS for pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy in PARAMOUNT was 4.1 months (95% CI, 3.2 to 4.6 months). Pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy in EA patients in studies S110 and JMII did not lead to any unexpected safety events, and was consistent with PARAMOUNT’s safety profile. Conclusion The efficacy and safety data in the EA trials were similar to those in PARAMOUNT despite differences in patient populations and study designs. These data represent consistent evidence for pemetrexed continuation maintenance therapy in EA patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC.

BACKGROUND This program evaluation sought to compare cost and pediatric patient outcomes among a pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) hospitalist team, a combined PNP/doctor of medicine (MD) team, and 2 resident teams without PNPs. METHODS Administrative and electronic medical record data from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 was retrospectively reviewed from Children's Hospital Colorado inpatient medical unit and inpatient satellite sites in the Children's Hospital network of care (NOC). The top 3 All Patient Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (APR-DRG) admission codes bronchiolitis and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pneumonia, pneumonia not elsewhere classified (NEC), and asthma were selected for this analysis. Inpatient records representing these APR-DRG admission codes were reviewed (N = 1664). Measures included adherence with relevant clinical care guidelines (CCGs), length of stay (LOS), and cost of care. Chi square, t tests, and analysis of variance were used to analyze between-group differences. RESULTS Approximately 20% of these admissions were on the PNP team, 45% were on the resident teams, and 35% were on the PNP/MD team in the NOC. PNP adherence to CCGs was comparable to resident teams for selected measures. There was no significant difference in LOS among the PNP team, the PNP/MD team, and the resident teams. The direct cost of patient care per encounter provided by the PNP team was significantly less than the PNP/MD team and the resident teams. CONCLUSIONS There is evidence to suggest that PNP hospitalists provide inpatient care comparable to resident teams at a lower cost for patients with uncomplicated bronchiolitis, pneumonia, and asthma. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2014;9:261–265. © 2014 Society of Hospital Medicine

This article examines the strategies employed by the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (or National Front), and the opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance), in the 13th general election held in Malaysia in May 2013. It argues that while the opposition used the right strategy for the 2013 campaign, it lost because it could not overcome the three biggest hurdles for opposition politics in Malaysia: East Malaysia, the rural Malay votes and a biased electoral system.

Anwar Ibrahim was found not guilty of sodomy on 9 January 2012. The verdict was a surprise ending to a two-year trial widely seen as a politically motivated attempt to cripple Mr Anwar's attempt to...

The differences between Escherichia coli strains associated with symptomatic and asymptomatic urinary tract infections (UTIs) remain to be properly determined. Here we examined the prevalence of plasmid types and bacteriocins, as well as genetic relatedness, in a defined collection of E. coli strains that cause UTIs. Comparative analysis identified a subgroup of strains with a high number of virulence genes (VGs) and microcins M/H47. We also identified associations between microcin genes, VGs, and specific plasmid types.