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In Sweden, the care of older people and people with disabilities is increasingly carried out by informal carers, often family members, who are unpaid and outside a professional or formal framework. While there is an increasing awareness of the role of carers within service systems and their own needs for support, their involvement in research is underexplored. The purpose of this paper is to explore carers’ views and experiences of involvement in research and development (R&D) work.

A qualitative study was conducted, consisting of 12 individual interviews with carers from different local Swedish carer organizations.

Core findings included carers’ discussions of the perceived challenges and benefits of their involvement in research, both generally and more specifically, in the context of their involvement in the development of a national carer strategy.

Limitations included the relative lack of male carer participants and the convenience sample.

Authentic carer involvement in research demands a high level of engagement from researchers during the entire research process. The provided CRAC framework, with reference to the themes community, reciprocity, advocacy and circumstantiality, may help researchers to understand and interpret carer involvement in research and provide the prerequisites for their involvement.

There is a dearth of studies that systematically examine carer involvement in research. This paper attempts to redress this gap by providing a nuanced analysis of carer involvement in R&D work from the perspective of carers themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on carers’ experiences of being involved in the development of a web-based support programme for carers of people with heart failure (CPwHF), and discuss the challenges related to their involvement in the development process. The focus was on the different phases in the project as well as the methodological challenges and opportunities that occurred in the user group sessions conducted.

This research adopt an explorative design studying a co-design process to develop an information and communication technology based support programme for and with CPwHF. Habermas’ concepts of lifeworld and system are used as a theoretical framework to analyse the co-design process employed in the study.

Reflecting on the co-design approach adopted, the findings highlight the methodological challenges that arise with carer involvement and the possible tensions that occur between researchers’ ambitions to include users in the design process, and the goal of developing a product or service, in the different phases of the design process.

Findings highlight that there is a tension between the system and lifeworld in the co-design process which are not totally compatible. The paper highlights that there is a need to develop flexible and reflexive human-centred design methodologies, able to meet carers’ needs and ideas, and at the same time balance this with proposed research outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the complexity surrounding the implementation of advanced electronic tracking, communication and emergency response technologies, namely, an extended safety and support (ESS) system for people with dementia (pwd) living at home. Results are presented from a Swedish demonstration study (2011-2012) conducted in 24 municipalities.

It is a descriptive intervention study with a pre-post test design. Questionnaires were administered to pwd, carers and professionals at the outset and eight months later. ESS logging data were analyzed.

ESS usage rates varied widely. A total of 650 alerts were triggered, mainly when the pwd was outdoors. Activities were reduced amongst pwd, most likely due to a progression of their disease. Carers noted that pwd were more independent than previously on those occasions when they engaged in outdoor activities. Staff considered that nearly half of pwd could remain living at home due to the ESS, compared with a third amongst carers. In total, 50 per cent of carers felt it was justified to equip their relative with an ESS without their explicit consent, compared to one in eight staff.

A limitation is the amount of missing data and high drop- out rates. Researchers should recruit pwd earlier in their illness trajectory. A mixed-methods approach to data collection is advisable.

Carers played a crucial role in the adoption of ESS. Staff training/supervision about assistive devices and services is recommended.

Overall, use of ESS for pwd living at home was not an ethical problem.

The study included key stakeholder groups and a detailed ethical analysis was conducted.

This article outlines a model for gauging the quality of a partnership approach to research that was developed for use in a Research Centre in West Sweden. The Äldre Väst Sjuhärad Centre has as its main goal the promotion of partnerships between older people and their families, service providers and researchers. In pursuing these goals the Centre adopts a broadly‐constructivist approach to undertaking research that is ‘authentic’ and meaningful to those who take part. In order to make judgements about the quality of its activity the Centre has adapted the authenticity criteria originally suggested by Guba and Lincoln (1989), so that they are more readily understood by older people, carers and service providers. These criteria can be applied at all stages of research activity, and it is suggested here that they can be utilised more widely in order to make inferences about the effects of partnership working in other contexts.

This paper aims to look into the digital divide in countries where new centres of information technology create wealth and integrate some sectors into the global economy, while millions remain deprived of basic human needs.

Reports were produced by the UN's Millenium Project and the Gyandoot Project in India which produced action plans to reduce poverty on a local and global basis.

An effort has been made to achieve results despite the unavailability of information professionals to disseminate information provided to tackle poverty issues.

Gives valid views on information sharing on a worldwide basis.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the frequency and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of pathogens present in ready-to-eat salads available at a local market.

A 100 salad samples were collected aseptically. Each sample (25 g) was homogenized in 225 ml of sterile peptone water and was serially diluted up to 1×106. Dilutions were inoculated on nutrient agar by surface spread plate technique. Aerobic colony count (ACC) was estimated by counting the colonies. Bacterial isolates were cultured on blood and MacConkey agar and identified on the basis of their morphology, culture characteristics and confirmed by API 20E and 20NE. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined as per CLSI 2014.

ACC range was 1.1×103 cfu/g to 5.8×109 cfu/g. Among these the highest ACC was found in channa chat (4.9×104 to 5.8×109 cfu/g). A total of 127 microorganisms were identified; 73 were gram negative rods (GNRs) and 24 were gram positive cocci (GPC). Among GNRs; Klebsiella spp. (n=18) was the predominant whereas among GPC, Staphylococcus aureus (n=6) were the chief pathogen. Klebsiella spp. showed 100 percent resistance to ampicillin, 89-78 percent to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid and 33 percent to imipenem, however, Enterobacter spp. were resistant to ampicillin (100 percent) amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (77 percent) and imipenem (23 percent). Staphylococcus aureus showed resistance to co-amoxiclav (83 percent) and penicillin (75 percent).

This study revealed that effective control measures must been implemented and respected by throughout the entire food chain and better surveillance studies should be performed at national level to reduce the spread of bacteria by fresh salads.

This paper explore the high prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens in different salads and most of the salads were found to be unhygienic for consumption.

This piece argues that television families’ shift away from the traditional nuclear family form is crucial to understand the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in mainstream politics. Released in the early 2010s, The Americans focusses on a KGB-created family composed of two Soviet spies, total strangers who ultimately have two children to further their cover as an innocent American family running a DuPont Circle travel agency and living in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. Rather than being idealised or sought after, The Americans reveals that the nuclear family is legally, socially, and politically constructed, and, in the end, doomed to failure. Sex and love and even children are instrumentally manipulated on a regular basis to further political goals, transforming basic assumptions about how marriage and family life really work beyond the façade of suburban America. This opens space for consideration and acceptance of alternative family forms, including same-sex marriage.