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Both the academic literature and practitioners have long noted the need for an equity investment mechanism for worker-controlled firms that alleviates investor anxieties without undermining internal workplace democracy. The purpose of this paper is to outline one such possible mechanism.

The proposal locks together the interests of workers and external investors, via non-voting shares with dividends set by a pre-agreed value-added sharing formula. Each worker is paid a base wage, with the average across the firm being a pre-defined multiple of the national minimum wage. Any additional surplus is split into a number of equal “slices”, with each share receiving one slice as its dividend, and the average worker receiving a pre-agreed number of slices as a bonus.

Workers have an incentive to maximise their own incomes, and in so doing, will also automatically maximise the dividends received by investors, obviating the need for the shares to have normal voting rights. Working on this principle of aligned interests, the authors also discuss reinvestment, worker ownership of non-voting shares and possibilities for a secondary share market. The authors show how this proposal will be a significant step in aligning the interests of investors with owner-workers in a democratic, negotiated way that shares both risk and returns, thus making worker-controlled firms more attractive to equity investment.

In light of the recognised problem of underinvestment in worker-controlled firms and the risk of their degeneration, this paper will interest both academics and practitioners in employee ownership, co-operatives and various forms of workplace democracy.

This paper aims to examine the role of “restructuring” in confronting the challenges facing contemporary high streets in the devolved UK. It complements three articles concerned with repositioning, reinventing and rebranding and illustrates the multi-faceted approaches involved in addressing retail change and town centre transformations. This paper emphasises the role of planning and governance in effecting change.

Informed by a literature review, action research involved inter-related interventions in selected locations, and associated workshops with engaged practitioners and community actors.

The findings highlight that the “resilience” of contemporary town centres demands resisting efforts to return to the status quo and necessitate forms of adaptive management. Understanding high street degeneration and the limitations of a retail-only led policy focus as a “wicked issue” further demands socially constructing town centres as an ecosystem requiring a holistic response. New forms of joint-working involve selecting appropriate models, attending to relational aspects and defined roles and responsibilities. Land use planning, including masterplanning and creating evidenced policy options, provides an important democratic space for legitimising action, offering leadership and extending participation to new change agents.

Restructuring of governance is an essential prerequisite in effecting change.

The originality of this study lies in the application of the restructuring element of the 4 Rs Framework which enables a focus on the governance dimensions of town centre and high street regeneration. The findings are enhanced through the experiential evidence which stresses both the importance of place-based diversification and value of prioritising holistic and joint actions developed through participatory visioning exercises.

The purpose of this paper is to review the causes of long waiting time in Hong Kong public hospitals and to suggest solutions in the service, organisational, systems, financial and policy perspectives.

The paper is a review of waiting time of public hospital services. Total joint replacement, which is one of the elective surgeries in public hospitals, is presented as a case study.

The average waiting time of semi-urgent and non-urgent patients in the accident and emergency departments of public hospitals is two hours, and that of specialist outpatient (SOP) clinics is from 1 to 144 weeks. For total joint replacement, it is from 36 to 110 months. Measures like Government subsidisation programme for the replacement surgery and employing adequate physiotherapists, Chinese medicine practitioners, clinical psychologists and nurses to reduce the waiting time are suggested. Issues concerning the healthcare system of Hong Kong, such as structural reform, service delivery model, primary care, quality and process management, and policy reviews, are also discussed.

The ‬over-reliance of public services has resulted in long waiting time in public hospitals in Hong Kong, particularly in the emergency services and SOP clinics. However, the consequences of long waiting period for surgical operations, though much less discussed by the media and public, can be potentially detrimental to the patients and families, and may result in more burdens to the already stretched public hospitals‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬.

Taurine (2-aminoethane sulfonic acid; C2H7NO3S) is a nonprotein sulfur-containing β-amino acid present in nearly all mammalian tissues and the most ubiquitous free endogenous biomolecule in human cells. Taurine is commonly known as a conditionally essential amino acid because taurine is one of the few amino acids that are not incorporated in protein synthesis. The purpose of this study is to review the existing articles related to taurine and to give an account how useful is taurine to the different body systems. In this thorough overview, taurine is covered in terms of its essentiality, sources, advantages for neonates and the elderly, the effects of taurine deficiency, and the safety and toxicity of taurine supplements.

This is a narrative review into the subject matter. Published articles were searched on different portals like PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubChem etc. The authors also evaluated the availability of taurine in commercially available energy drinks.

This comprehensive review, presents the potential clinical benefits and functional properties of taurine as a conditionally essential amino acid. Energy drinks containing taurine (and their concentration) are also reported in this review.

This is the first data that the authors are aware of that shows taurine content in a variety of energy drinks on the market.