ABSTRACTAs policy makers in the United Kingdom and many other countries grapple with financing the needs of an ageing population, financial planning for social care in later life is high on political agendas. We draw on qualitative research with older couples in the United Kingdom about their intimate money practices to analyse the day-to-day meanings attributed to money, saving and consumption in the context of financial planning for later life and death. We find that expenditure on funerals and home adaptations is discussed, negotiated and planned, as is ‘downsizing’ to release capital from the home for financing day-to-day expenses and leisure expenses. These outcomes are within easy contemplation and indeed money practice of older couples. In contrast, end-of-life planning for domiciliary or residential care was virtually non-existent across all socio-economic groups, and couples employed a range of techniques to avoid making these discussions ‘real’. Costs (while well known) are seen as astronomical, details are scarce, intensive domiciliary care is never discussed, and death is seen as preferable to residential care. We theorise antipathy to care planning as a product of social and psychological construction of the ‘fourth age’ as a period of abjection, and therefore ‘wasted’ expenditure. Exhortations by policy makers for individuals to consider care costs will be ineffective without recognition of the cultural transformation of later life.

ABSTRACTAs more couples live together into old age, difficult decisions have to be made about money matters, including the financing of late‐life care. This paper analyses in‐depth qualitative data from six older heterosexual couples, part of a wider study concerning money management in later life. Research when these cohorts were younger found that the organisation of money management within households was specialised and highly gendered, leading to substantive imbalances of power and access to financial resources, while also being core to the formation and maintenance of gendered role identities and couple identities. We find in this study that if a partner's ability to fulfil a money management role identity is threatened by later‐life issues such as poor health and cognitive decline, the other partner may try to protect that aspect of the spouse's role identity, using various covert strategies. This might be done to shore up the spouse's self‐esteem in the face of such age‐related threats to role identity, to ‘keep up appearances’ to the outside world or to maintain their identity as a couple at a time of life when there may be multiple difficulties to deal with. These findings have implications for practice and policy in the realm of money and identity management in later life. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

As couples survive longer and live together into older age they face many issues of financial management, including daily money management on reduced and/or reducing income, and paying for care or the additional costs of disability. Yet household money management is highly gendered, especially for older age groups. This has implications for the ability of women, particularly, to manage financial decisions in the face of their partner's illness, or widowhood, as well as for their autonomy and well-being. We analyse in depth qualitative data from forty-five older couples across the socio-economic spectrum to show that women have varying emotional responses to money management in coupledom: ‘accepters’ who accept financial inequality and dominance by their husbands, ‘resenters’ who recognise these inequalities but resent them, and ‘modifiers/resisters’ who retain financial independence and power within their relationships. It is only the latter group, who have long histories of financial control and management, who are well placed for financial management and decisions in later life. By recognising the implications of different types of couple relationship, policies can be better designed to assist those navigating money in later life.

Family members (or health-care confidants) of incapacitated patients are often consulted by doctors when making life-prolongation decisions. Little research has been conducted on confidants' views on life prolongation and advance care planning. This study investigated the health-care confidant's view on life prolongation and their involvement in being a potential decision-maker for their relatives in the event of incapacitation. Confidants (N = 12) were interviewed and interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The analysis revealed three themes relating to their perception of being a potential decision-maker for a relative's life prolonging measures: “good” and “bad” death based on past experience and perceptions of quality of life, a sense that discussions were inappropriate at present, and strategies which might be used to encourage discussion. The implications of these findings for family involvement in life-prolongation decisions and how to encourage family discussions about life prolongation are discussed.

While 'school culture' is a topical issue, there is some consensus on a knowledge deficit regarding its subterranean dynamics and influence on change effort. This article describes an exploration of the mediation of a values-related change effort by school culture in Irish post-primary schools from the perspective of a research project which focused on the dynamic interface of change, special educational needs (SEN) and information and communication technology (ICT). The study identified how an inclusion-orientated polycultural entity can be enabled in schools, but also tracked and modeled the contestation and bounding of that phenomenon. The findings point to the inadequacy of the dominant mono-cultural conceptualisation of school culture, and alternatively construct school culture as a zone of polycultural contestation and ideological settlement. This interpretation suggests the dominance of a naive reformist discourse on school culture and change, and suggests that an alternative discourse of critical realism be applied. A range of interpretations and recommendations arising from the study are outlined in relation to our understanding of school culture and values-related change.

The power of medical technologies to extend the final stages of life has heightened the need to understand what factors influence older people's wish to use such medical technologies. We analyse gender differences in such views, based on audio-recorded interviews with 33 men and 36 women (aged 65–93) in south-east England. Older women were twice as likely as men to oppose using medical technologies to extend life. More older women voiced 'other-oriented' reasons for their opposition, particularly not wanting to be a burden on others. Older men's attitudes were primarily 'self-oriented', reflecting a concern to stay alive for as long as possible, with fewer expressing concern about consequences for others. Women's greater life course involvement in caring and empathising with the wishes and concerns of others underlay these gender differences. Thus, women were 'performing gender' by putting others before themselves, even at this critical juncture in their lives.

Several short-lived, high-energy beta emitters are being proposed as the radionuclide components for molecular- targeted potential cancer therapeutic agents. The laboratory mice used to determine the efficacy of these new agents have organs that are relatively small compared to the ranges of these high-energy particles. The dosimetry model developed by Hui et al. was extended to provide realistic beta-dose estimates for organs in mice that received therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals containing (90)Y, (188)Re, (166)Ho, (149)Pm, (64)Cu, and (177)Lu. Major organs in this model included the liver, spleen, kidneys, lungs, heart, stomach, small and large bowel, thyroid, pancreas, bone, marrow, carcass, and a 0.025-g tumor. The study as reported in this paper verifies their results for (90)Y and extends them by using their organ geometry factors combined with newly calculated organ self-absorbed fractions from PEREGRINE and MCNP. PEREGRINE and MCNP agree to within 8% for the worst-case organ with average differences (averaged over all organs) decreasing from 5% for (90)Y to 1% for (177)Lu. When used with typical biodistribution data, the three different models predict doses that are in agreement to within 5% for the worst-case organ. The beta-absorbed fractions and cross-organ-deposited energy provided in this paper can be used by researchers to predict mouse-organ doses and should contribute to an improved understanding of the relationship between dose and radiation toxicity in mouse models where use of these isotopes is favorable.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may be used by default on patients suffering a cardiac arrest in hospital in the UK unless there is an order that specifies otherwise in the patient's notes. Guidelines recommend that the decision involves competent and willing patients or, in the case of incapacitation, their families. In practice, patient autonomy is often compromised. Ideally, discussion of preferences for end-of-life care should take place prior to hospitalisation. The majority of research on this topic has been conducted on hospitalised patients, so little is known about the views of older, but healthy, people about resuscitation decision-making. The present study was designed to address this gap. A series of eight focus groups involving a total of 48 participants over the age of 65 was conducted to explore people's views about the factors guiding resuscitation decision-making. A qualitative analysis, which emphasised the dilemmatic nature of resuscitation decision-making, identified two broad thematic dilemmas that subsumed six specific themes which contribute to resolving the dilemmas: quality of life (medical condition, mental versus physical incapacity, age and ageing, and burden), and the involvement of others (doctors and families) versus loss of autonomy. The dilemma underlying quality of life is that an acceptable quality of life after CPR cannot be assured. The dilemma underlying the involvement of others is that individual autonomy may be lost. The themes and subthemes provide the basis for guiding these difficult discussions in advance of serious illness.

This article investigates the influence of partnership status on older men's involvement in social organisations, drawing on qualitative research. Men are found to be highly resistant to participation in organisations that cater primarily for the needs of older people. Older divorced and never-married men are more susceptible to social isolation and poor health than married men. This could be ameliorated by membership of such establishments, yet their resistance is the greatest. Policy implications focus on identifying and responding to appropriate provision of organisational and communal activities for ageing men, particularly those who spend their later years without a partner.

Résumé Au cours des dernières décennies du xx e siècle, les recherches sur le genre et le vieillissement se sont, dans une large mesure, concentrées sur l’expérience vécue des femmes âgées. Dans cet article, nous revisitons les notions de vieillissement et de genre, en nous centrant sur l’expérience différentielle des hommes au cours de leur vieillesse, c’est-à-dire en comparant leurs réseaux sociaux à ceux des femmes âgées. Nous étudions en particulier la participation des hommes âgés à des organisations sociales : les valeurs intrinsèques et extrinsèques qu’ils attribuent à leur appartenance et la manière dont cela s’accorde avec l’idée qu’ils se font de la masculinité. Nous montrons que l’importance de l’identité masculine du point de vue de l’estime de soi et de l’indépendance subsiste, et que, sauf pour une minorité d’hommes âgés physiquement, fragiles et financièrement défavorisés, des moyens alternatifs permettant de conforter la masculinité jouent également dans la vieillesse.

The 1990s saw increasing numbers of pupils with physical disabilities and sensory impairments attending mainstream schools. Coinciding with this, the debate regarding the appropriate educational provision moved from the concept of "access", or "integration", to "inclusion", but little clarification has been achieved on the pedagogical processes or structures through which this might be brought about. While the "integration" process concentrated on the quantitative dimension, there has been little consideration, beyond broad generalisations, of what form of educational process and knowledge development should accompany "integration", so that "inclusion" can be achieved for the pupils concerned.

Review of: Babbie, Earl; Fred Halley; Jeanne Zaino (2000) Adventures in Social Research: Data Analysis Using SPSS for Windows 95/98. Pine Forge Press: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Monte Carlo simulation of radiotherapy is now available for routine clinical use. It brings improved accuracy of dose calculations for treatments where important physics comes into play, and provides a robust, general tool for planning where empirical solutions have not been implemented. Through the use of Monte Carlo, new information, including the effects of the composition of materials in the patient, the effects of electron transport, and the details of the distribution of energy deposition, can be applied to the field.

A comprehensive system allowing title and escrow companies, financial institutions and others to record property documents electronically has been awarded a 2010 Achievement Award by the National Association of Counties. This award is given to recognize unique, effective, innovative programs, which contribute to and enhance county government in the United States. The system, known as SECURE, ushers counties into the 21 st Century by eliminating the time and expense of either mailing or hand-carrying property documents to be recorded. The state Attorney General's office reviews and approves all electronic recording systems in California to ensure rigorous security standards. Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties share ownership of the SECURE system, representing more than 60% of all documents recorded statewide. Santa Barbara, Sacramento and San Mateo counties are also partnering in this endeavor. Other counties are encouraged to join.