Statistical discrimination and employers' recruitment : Practices for low-skilled workers

This paper deals with the recruitment strategies of employers in the low-skilled segment of the labour market. We focus on low-skilled workers because they are overrepresented among jobless people and constitute the bulk of the clientele included in various activation and labour market programmes. A better understanding of the constraints and opportunities of interventions in this labour market segment may help improve their quality and effectiveness. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 41 employers in six European countries, we find that the traditional signals known to be used as statistical discrimination devices (old age, immigrant status and unemployment) play a somewhat reduced role, since these profiles are overrepresented among applicants for low skill positions. However, we find that other signals, mostly considered to be indicators of motivation, have a bigger impact in the selection process. These tend to concern the channel through which the contact with a prospective candidate is made. Unsolicited applications and recommendations from already employed workers emit a positive signal, whereas the fact of being referred by the public employment office is associated with the likelihood of lower motivation.

Therapeutic drug monitoring of seven psychotropic drugs and four metabolites in human plasma by HPLC-MS.

A simple and sensitive LC-MS method was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantification of aripiprazole (ARI), atomoxetine (ATO), duloxetine (DUL), clozapine (CLO), olanzapine (OLA), sertindole (STN), venlafaxine (VEN) and their active metabolites dehydroaripiprazole (DARI), norclozapine (NCLO), dehydrosertindole (DSTN) and O-desmethylvenlafaxine (OVEN) in human plasma. The above mentioned compounds and the internal standard (remoxipride) were extracted from 0.5 mL plasma by solid-phase extraction (mix mode support). The analytical separation was carried out on a reverse phase liquid chromatography at basic pH (pH 8.1) in gradient mode. All analytes were monitored by MS detection in the single ion monitoring mode and the method was validated covering the corresponding therapeutic range: 2-200 ng/mL for DUL, OLA, and STN, 4-200 ng/mL for DSTN, 5-1000 ng/mL for ARI, DARI and finally 2-1000 ng/mL for ATO, CLO, NCLO, VEN, OVEN. For all investigated compounds, good performance in terms of recoveries, selectivity, stability, repeatability, intermediate precision, trueness and accuracy, was obtained. Real patient plasma samples were then successfully analysed.

Defining and searching for structural motifs using DeepView/Swiss-PdbViewer.

BACKGROUND: Today, recognition and classification of sequence motifs and protein folds is a mature field, thanks to the availability of numerous comprehensive and easy to use software packages and web-based services. Recognition of structural motifs, by comparison, is less well developed and much less frequently used, possibly due to a lack of easily accessible and easy to use software. RESULTS: In this paper, we describe an extension of DeepView/Swiss-PdbViewer through which structural motifs may be defined and searched for in large protein structure databases, and we show that common structural motifs involved in stabilizing protein folds are present in evolutionarily and structurally unrelated proteins, also in deeply buried locations which are not obviously related to protein function. CONCLUSIONS: The possibility to define custom motifs and search for their occurrence in other proteins permits the identification of recurrent arrangements of residues that could have structural implications. The possibility to do so without having to maintain a complex software/hardware installation on site brings this technology to experts and non-experts alike.