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Among the multitudes lured to Australia's shores in the 1850s by the glitter of gold were entrepreneurial musicians who hoped to attract audiences eager for entertainment and culture. The tours of nineteenth-century virtuoso musicians around Europe and the Americas are well-researched, but less so touring musicians to the Antipodean gold rush. While the 1850s gold rush had profound impacts on social, economic and political life in Australia, the impact of gold upon cultural life warrants more attention. Newspapers of the time record many visiting musicians who hoped to profit from the backwash of rivers of gold. This article opens a window onto this world by studying the concert tours around Australia from 1854 to 1858 of Miska Hauser. A European classical musician with elite violin school training, he is notable as the first world-class violinist to tour the Australian colonies. This study draws upon the digital records of colonial newspapers available online from the National Library of Australia. This article analyses the populist concert programmes that Hauser presented to diverse audiences during his indefatigable tours around Australia and explores the extent of his professional and financial success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary paper argues that the Asia-Pacific region would benefit from a home-grown version of the European Observatory on Health Care Systems to inform health sector policy: an Asia-Pacific Observatory. The countries in this diverse region, ranging from highly developed to very poor countries, are undergoing dramatic and diverse health sector changes, often on the basis of little evidence and with little information on successes and failures in neighbouring countries. The international community also is interested in knowing more about the many distinctive models of Asia-Pacific health care. While statistical comparisons are important, health policymakers and researchers need to understand the story behind the statistics in order to interpret the numbers and to formulate policies and strategies. Health system profiles therefore are useful instruments that describe how a complex health sector works, offer a comparative framework for cross-national comparisons, identify trends in health system design, and with standardised measures and regular updates measure progress against benchmarks. These reports and expanded analyses have influenced both national and Europe-wide debates on health policy. In the Asia-Pacific region, health systems research has built up a critical mass of studies and people with strong links across countries. The next ambitious steps are to identify sponsors able to support an enterprise that transcends national boundaries and to begin a project of comparative studies of national health systems.

Complex target systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) experiments utilizing a range of target scaffolds is described. It is found that SELEX enable isolation of potent and selective aptamers directed against a variety of cell surface proteins.

Hospitals pose many challenges to those undertaking reform of health care systems. This paper examines the evolving role of the hospital within the health care system in industrialized countries and explores the evidence on which policymakers might base their decisions. It begins by tracing the evolving concept of the hospital, concluding that hospitals must continue to evolve in response to factors such as changing health care needs and emerging technologies. The size and distribution of hospitals are matters for ongoing debate. This paper concludes that evidence in favour of concentrating hospital facilities, whether as a means of enhancing effectiveness or efficiency, is less robust than is often assumed. Noting that care provided in hospitals is often less than satisfactory, this paper summarizes the evidence underlying three reform strategies: (i) behavioural interventions such as quality assurance programmes; (ii) changing organizational culture; and (iii) the use of financial incentives. Isolated behavioural interventions have a limited impact, but are more effective when combined. Financial incentives are blunt instruments that must be monitored. Organizational culture, which has previously received relatively little attention, appears to be an important determinant of quality of care and is threatened by ill-considered policies intended to `re-engineer' hospital services. Overall, evidence on the effectiveness of policies relating to hospitals is limited and this paper indicates where such evidence can be found. Keywords: hospitals; health facility environment; health care reform; organizational innovation; developed countries., Voir page 808 le resume en francais. En la pagina 809 figura un resumen en espanol. Introduction Hospitals pose many challenges to those undertaking reform of health care systems. They [...]