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Work conditions and major life events can impact individual sleep quality, and subsequently impact mental health. This study aims to investigate effect of sleep quality on mental health of working Australians. We pioneer to employ a novel method in public health studies, a quasi-experimental (Instrumental Variable) approach, which can address reciprocal relationships between sleep and mental health in order to estimate causal effect of sleep quality on mental health on a sample of 14,480 working Australians aged 25-64 from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 2013 and 2017. We find that work conditions such as high job demand, long workhours, long unpaid workhours, shift work, and major life events adversely affect sleep quality, and hence the changes in sleep quality strongly affect mental health of working Australians. The finding underscores the need for policies that should address current employment conditions by reducing long workhours, high work demand, irregular work shifts, and providing better support including emotional support programs, and creating worker-friendly settings to mitigate poor sleep quality in the Australian workforce. Doing so would help improve workers’ sleep quality, and ultimately mental health and overall health outcomes.

More people are working into older age, raising questions about how many hours they can work before their health becomes compromised. This paper models work-hour tipping points for mental health and vitality among older Australian workers aged 50–70 years. We use longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, 2005–2016 (about 44,900 observations), and bootstrapping Three Stage Least Squares (3SLS) estimation techniques to adjust for reverse and reciprocal relationships between wages, work hours and health. Our approach corrects for heteroscedasticity in the system equation error terms, and we estimate models on the relatively healthy older adults who have remained employed into older age. Among these older workers we observe weekly thresholds of 39–40 hours beyond which mental health and vitality decline. This average, however, hides variability in work-hour limits linked to overall health and occupation. Thus, weekly tipping points for blue- and pink-collar jobs are 7–9 hours lower compared to white-collar jobs, and even wider gaps (11 hours) are apparent for workers with poorer physical functioning, which becomes common as people age. Our modelling reveals that age is not the biggest limiting factor for how many hours older adults can work, rather their health and the types of jobs are critical, and likely widen the gap in who ages successfully or not.

We investigate time inequity as an explanatory mechanism for gendered physical activity disparity. Our mixed-effect generalized linear model with two-stage residual inclusion framework uses longitudinal data, capturing differing exchanges and trade-offs in time resources. The first stage estimates within-household exchanges of paid and family work hours. Estimates show that men’s employment increases women’s family work hours while reducing their own, whereas women’s employment weakly affects men’s family time. Incorporating unequal household exchange into the second stage reveals that as women’s paid or family work hours increase, physical activity goes down. In contrast, men’s physical activity is unaffected by paid work hours, and family time appears protective. Control over work time further underscores gendered time exchange: Men’s activity increases with own or partner’s control, whereas women’s increases only with their own. Our approach reveals how men’s and women’s unequal capability to use time creates differing trade-offs between work, family, and physical activity, generating health inequity.

The adverse impacts of exposure to work intensity on mental health have been widely studied. However, there is a lack of research examining who is most vulnerable in terms of position on the mental health distribution. The current study aims to: (a) initially estimate the average impacts of work intensity on workers’ mental health in Australia, and then (b) estimate the extent to which this effect varies across the mental health distribution. The current study uses data from waves 2005­–2017 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. It first employs Average Treatment Effect (ATE) to provide a baseline/average treatment effect for the whole population, and then applies Quantile Regression fixed effects models for various quantiles on the mental health distribution. The baseline estimates show that there are significantly negative effects of work intensity on mental health for the whole population, but importantly the quantile fixed effect estimates show that these adverse effects are substantially stronger for those with the poorest mental health (i.e. at the bottom of the distribution). When ATE alone is estimated, the significant effect is averaged over the mental health distribution, missing important information regarding the heterogeneity of the effect. The findings have important implications for understanding and reducing mental health inequality, particularly inequality driven by workplace stress. First, they align with existing research demonstrating the importance of reducing psychosocial job stressors. Second, given workers with mental health problems were most susceptible to the adverse effects of work intensity, there is a need to offer additional support (and be sensitive of workloads) for this group in particular.

Using the RIF-decomposition to explore changes in wage inequality during the economic transformation in Vietnam, we find that real wages increased substantially during the period 1998-2010, but wage growth slowed down in the following period 2010-2020. Wage inequality increased in the former period, but declined considerably in the later one. Overall changes in wage inequality over the former period was mainly contributed by changes in labor market, job and workers’ observed characteristics, but in the later period the change was mainly contributed by the changes in returns to job and workers’ observed characteristics (wage structure effect). The economic structure change and increased supply of higher educated workforce have substantially contributed to the changing wage inequality over the past two decades. A rapid increase in supply of higher educated workers in the later stage of economic transformation has resulted in declining returns to education and thus has contributed to a decline in wage inequality.

Experiencing poor sleep quality affects an individual’s health and wellbeing. Sleep quality may be influenced by work conditions, with working under high intensity a possible contributor. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 2013 and 2017, this study investigates whether experiencing poor sleep quality is associated with work intensity. This study uses a nationally representative sample of working Australian individuals aged 25–64 from the HILDA survey and finds a strong positive association between work intensity and sleep quality, with an individual’s sleep quality worsening as their work intensity increased. The association between work intensity and sleep quality is even stronger than that between long work hours and sleep quality.

There is increasing interest in targeting CD33 in malignant and non-malignant disorders. In acute myeloid leukemia, longer survival with the CD33 antibody-drug conjugate gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO) validates this strategy. Still, GO benefits only some patients, prompting efforts to develop more potent CD33-directed therapeutics. As one limitation, CD33 antibodies typically recognize the membrane-distal V-set domain. Using various artificial CD33 proteins, in which this domain was differentially positioned within the extracellular portion of the molecule, we tested whether targeting membrane-proximal targeting epitopes enhances the effector functions of CD33 antibody-based therapeutics. Consistent with this idea, a CD33V-set/CD3 bispecific antibody (BsAb) and CD33V-set-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells elicited substantially greater cytotoxicity against cells expressing a CD33 variant lacking the entire C2-set domain than cells expressing full-length CD33, whereas cytotoxic effects induced by GO were independent of the position of the V-set domain. We therefore raised murine and human antibodies against the C2-set domain of human CD33 and identified antibodies that bound CD33 regardless of the presence/absence of the V-set domain (“CD33PAN antibodies”). These antibodies internalized when bound to CD33 and, as CD33PAN/CD3 BsAb, had potent cytolytic effects against CD33+ cells. Together, our data provide rationale for further development of CD33PAN antibody-based therapeutics.

Cystine-dense peptides (CDPs) are a miniprotein class that can drug difficult targets with high affinity and low immunogenicity. Tools for their design, however, are not as developed as those for small-molecule and antibody drugs. CDPs have diverse taxonomic origins, but structural characterization is lacking. Here, we adapted Iterative Threading ASSEmbly Refinement (I-TASSER) and Rosetta protein modeling software for structural prediction of 4298 CDP scaffolds and performed in silico prescreening for CDP binders to targets of interest. Mammalian display screening of a library of docking-enriched, methionine and tyrosine scanned (DEMYS) CDPs against PD-L1 yielded binders from four distinct CDP scaffolds. One was affinity-matured, and cocrystallography yielded a high-affinity ( K D = 202 pM) PD-L1–binding CDP that competes with PD-1 for PD-L1 binding. Its subsequent incorporation into a CD3-binding bispecific T cell engager produced a molecule with pM-range in vitro T cell killing potency and which substantially extends survival in two different xenograft tumor-bearing mouse models. Both in vitro and in vivo, the CDP-incorporating bispecific molecule outperformed a comparator antibody-based molecule. This CDP modeling and DEMYS technique can accelerate CDP therapeutic development.

It is well known that physical and mental health are closely related, with growing evidence for biological and behavioural pathways. Mostly the research has focussed on mental health as the key driver of this inter-connection; the extent physical health shapes mental health has received less attention. We aim to derive robust estimates of the unique role physical health may play in shaping mental health outcomes. To do so we use a novel approach, incorporating longitudinal and instrumental variable methods which can address the reciprocal relationship between physical and mental health, and the endogeneity of physical health, before estimating the physical to mental health pathway. A sample of 209,442 observations (or 24,966 unique individuals) aged 15 and over spanning 18 years (2002–2019) was extracted from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australian Survey (HILDA). We find that physical activity and health shocks erode mental health via their impact on physical health with a one point improvement (or worsening) in physical health scores (0–100) resulting in a rise (or decline) of 0.43 points (or 43%) in mental health score.

Assumptions about time, value, labour, and health coalesce in the policy decision to extend the pension eligibility age in Australia from 65 to 67 years. Acknowledging the multiple, often incompati...

Background The COVID-19 outbreak has spread to almost every country around the world and caused more than 3 million deaths. The pandemic has triggered enormous disruption in people’s daily lives with profound impacts globally. This has also been the case in Australia, despite the country’s comparative low mortality and physical morbidity due to the virus. This scoping review aims to provide a broad summary of the research activity focused on mental health during the first 10 months of the pandemic in Australia. Results A search of the Australian literature was conducted between August-November 2020 to capture published scientific papers, online reports and pre-prints, as well as gaps in research activities. The search identified 228 unique records in total. Twelve general population and 30 subpopulation group studies were included in the review. Conclusions Few studies were able to confidently report changes in mental health driven by the COVID-19 context (at the population or sub-group level) due to a lack of pre-COVID comparative data and non-representative sampling. Never-the-less, in aggregate, the findings show an increase in poor mental health over the early period of 2020. Results suggest that young people, those with pre-existing mental health conditions, and the financially disadvantaged, experienced greater declines in mental health. The need for rapid research appears to have left some groups under-researched (e.g. Culturally and Linguistically Diverse populations and Indigenous peoples were not studied), and some research methods under-employed (e.g. there was a lack of qualitative and mixed-methods studies). There is a need for further reviews as the follow-up results of longitudinal studies emerge and understandings of the impact of the pandemic are refined.

We provide new insights into the relationship between foreign investment and the labour productivity of domestic firms in the Vietnamese manufacturing industry. Using quantile regression analysis of a panel of firm-level data over a 2010–2015 study period, we find that the presence of foreign investment has a positive impact on domestic firm labour productivity through competition effects within the industry at the middle and high quantiles. We do not find significant evidence to support a positive relationship between foreign investment in downstream sectors and domestic firm labour productivity in upstream sectors, however. There are some indications that suggest a positive relationship between foreign suppliers in upstream sectors and labour productivity of domestic buyers in downstream sectors at the low and middle quantiles.

BackgroundAustralians born in 2012 can expect to live about 33 years longer than those born 100 years earlier. However, only seven of these additional years are spent in the workforce. Longer life expectancy has driven policies to extend working life and increase retirement age, the current Australian policy, which has increased the eligibility for the pension from 65 to 67 by 2023, assumes that an improvement in longevity corresponds with an improvement in health expectancy. However, there is mixed evidence of health trends in Australia over the past two decades. Although some health outcomes are improving among older age groups, many are either stable or deteriorating. This raises the question of how health trends intersect with policy for older Australians aged from 50-70. This paper considers the interplay between older workers’ health and workforce participation rates over the past 15 years when extended workforce participation has been actively encouraged. MethodsWe compared health and economic outcomes of the older people in following years with the base year (start of the study period), adjusting for some key socio-economic characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, education and equivalized household income by applying the Random effects estimator with maximum likelihood estimation technique.Results We find that regardless of increasing longevity, the health of older adults aged between 50-70 has slightly deteriorated. In addition, health gaps between those who were working into their older age and those who were not have widened over the 15-year period. Finally, we find that widening health gaps linked to workforce participation are also accompanied by rising economic inequality in incomes, financial assets and superannuation. With the exception of a small group of healthy and very wealthy retirees, the majority of the older Australians who were not working had low incomes, assets, superannuation, and poor health.ConclusionsThe widening economic and health gap within older population over time indicates a clear and urgent need to add policy actions on income and health, to those that seek to increase workforce participation among older adults.

CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor-engineered (CD19 CAR) T-cell therapy has shown significant efficacy for relapsed or refractory (R/R) B-cell malignancies. Yet, CD19 CAR T cells fail to induce durable responses in most patients. Second infusions of CD19 CAR T cells (CART2) have been considered as a possible approach to improve outcomes. We analyzed data from 44 patients with R/R B-cell malignancies (acute lymphoblastic leukemia [ALL], n = 14; chronic lymphocytic leukemia [CLL], n = 9; non-Hodgkin lymphoma [NHL], n = 21) who received CART2 on a phase 1/2 trial (NCT01865617) at our institution. Despite a CART2 dose increase in 82% of patients, we observed a low incidence of severe toxicity after CART2 (grade ≥3 cytokine release syndrome, 9%; grade ≥3 neurotoxicity, 11%). After CART2, complete response (CR) was achieved in 22% of CLL, 19% of NHL, and 21% of ALL patients. The median durations of response after CART2 in CLL, NHL, and ALL patients were 33, 6, and 4 months, respectively. Addition of fludarabine to cyclophosphamide-based lymphodepletion before the first CAR T-cell infusion (CART1) and an increase in the CART2 dose compared with CART1 were independently associated with higher overall response rates and longer progression-free survival after CART2. We observed durable CAR T-cell persistence after CART2 in patients who received cyclophosphamide and fludarabine (Cy-Flu) lymphodepletion before CART1 and a higher CART2 compared with CART1 cell dose. The identification of 2 modifiable pretreatment factors independently associated with better outcomes after CART2 suggests strategies to improve in vivo CAR T-cell kinetics and responses after repeat CAR T-cell infusions, and has implications for the design of trials of novel CAR T-cell products after failure of prior CAR T-cell immunotherapies.

This study investigated the role of provincial governance on the growth of per capita income of Vietnamese households, using a balanced panel dataset for the period 2012-2014. Whereas we found no evidence for the influence of provincial governance when a linear fixed-effect regression estimator was used, the results from a fixed-effect quantile regression estimator reveal that provincial governance has a positive effect on several groups (but not the poorest) and the effect tends to be greater for better-off households. In addition, we find that wage employment plays a larger role in the income growth of poorer households, while returns on education are higher for richer households. The findings suggest that a mean regression approach that looks only at the role of explanatory variables on mean household welfare and does not consider differences in the distribution of household welfare, may miss some heterogeneity that is of interest to policy makers.

This study explores the dynamics of income and income inequality in Vietnam from 2004 to 2014. Two main population subgroups are investigated: the ethnic majority, known as the Kinh people, and the minority group, which includes 53 minor ethnicities in Vietnam. The findings show that the income gap among ethnic groups has increased over the last decade. The Gini index decomposition indicates that wages and nonfarm business income are the two main determinants of income inequality. Cultivation and agricultural side-line incomes were relatively evenly distributed, despite their recent smaller equalizing effect. Both sub-population groups have experienced a declining contribution from the agricultural sector to overall household income. Changes in income inequality in Vietnam by income source reflect the change in the structure of the economy from reliance on agriculture to non-agricultural economic activities.