Diseases of the lower respiratory tract of sheep are not considered a serious cause of lost productivity in Australian flocks because of the generally sporadic nature of serious respiratory disease and the sub-clinical nature of most cases of respiratory infection. The extensive conditions under which Australian sheep are usually managed do not favour transmission of pneumonic infectious agents...

Chronic pain associated with rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA) affects millions of people every year. This pain subsequently affects almost every aspect of a person’s life and has a substantial impact on economics such as health insurance, lost wages, reduced productivity and increased incidence of depression and suicide. These facts highlight the need...

In today's fast-paced high-tech software application market (eg software tools that are used in the design of new computer chips), software development teams face incredible challenges to keep up with increasing cost of software maintenance, fast changes in technology complexity and time-to market pressures. Under these challenges, users of these software tools have been saying that quality iss...

A healthy mouth is essential for general health and wellbeing, enabling individuals to communicate effectively, and to eat and enjoy a variety of foods. It is important for overall quality of life, self-esteem and social confidence. The cost of oral disease to individuals and society extends beyond the oral health burden alone; there is, for example, lost productivity due to absenteeism fromwor...

BACKGROUND Cervical dystonia is thought to result in high disease burden, but limited information exists on its impact on employment and work productivity. We utilized data from the Cervical Dystonia Patient Registry for the Observation of OnabotulinumtoxinA Efficacy (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00836017) to assess the impact of cervical dystonia on employment and work productivity and ex...

BACKGROUND National working groups identify the need for return on investment research conducted from the purchaser perspective; however, the field has not developed standardized methods for measuring the basic components of return on investment, including costing out the value of work productivity loss due to illness. Recent literature is divided on whether the most commonly used method undere...

Corporate responses to illness is currently an ad-hoc, subjective process that has little basis in data on how disease actually spreads at the workplace. Some businesses emphasize a "tough-it-out" approach, implicitly encouraging employees to remain at work while they are sick. Other companies send people home at the first symptom and force them to stay home long after any symptoms remain. Natu...

Introduction Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency in the world, responsible for a staggering amount of ill health, lost productivity, and premature death. Although its prevalence in the United States has declined since the late 1960s, iron deficiency with or without anemia still is seen frequently in infants, toddlers, adolescent females, and women of childbearing age. In f...

The burden of mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders increased by 41% between 1990 and 2010 and now accounts for one in every 10 lost years of health globally [1]. Mental and brain disorders represent the greatest health burden to Europe-not only for directly affected individuals, but also for their caregivers and the wider society. They incur substantial economic costs through...

Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation of dextrin£zed cassava starch to glucose and alcohol, respectively, were carried out by co-immobilized Zymomonas mobilis and immobilz'zed glucoamylase (IG). Calcium alginate-entrapped cells and IG (4 : 1 ratio) gave an alcohol productivity of 0.30 glgww cellslh in a batchfermentation process. For continuous fermentation, 54.3 gil alcohol was produc...