Employment discrimination against transgender people and self-esteem.

The evocation of gender identity in company anti-discrimination policies is still very rare. This observation is also true forscientific studies. Very few researches have focused exclusively on transgender employees. Transgender are neither sick nor lesscompetent, and yet, the feeling of being strongly discriminated is shared by many transgender people. Such discrimination and thetype of causal attribution do not remain without any effect on the well-being of the concerned individuals. According to Crocker &Quinn (1998), the attribution of the discrimination to the existing prejudices may be a way to protect one-self from the negativeimpact on self-esteem. In this theoretical scope, the "rejection-identification" model (Branscombe, Schmitt & Harvey, 1999) has beenhighly mobilized. It emphasizes the importance of ingroup identification in the causal relationship between perceived discriminationsituation and well-being. Previous studies which did test this model show that the identification to a certain group can counteract thenegative effects on well-being. Following this theoretical frame, the presented study examines the impact of different types of causalattributions on self-esteem: internal causes (e.g. lack of skills), external causes (e.g. economic crisis), and gender identity relatedissues. For that purpose, an online survey has been created and fulfilled by 110 transgender people. Different scales were used to testthe model: the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, a causal attribution scale, the perceived discrimination of the transgender population inthe workplace scale and a group identification scale. The results show that transgender people feel still highly stigmatized today andattribute, significantly, the causes of their situation to the prejudices they are victim of. Also, in accordance with the “rejectionidentification”model, three links are observed: (1) a negative link between perceived discrimination and self-esteem; (2) a positivelink between perceived discrimination and ingroup identification; and (3) a positive link between ingroup identification and selfesteem.This situation reflects a lack in diversity considerations. Nevertheless, the attribution made to group stigmatization seems toplay a protective role towards transgender people self-esteem.

Educational Mismatch and Employment Contracts: A Labour Productivity Analysis

SCOPUS: no.j

Socialising young literacy learners into a discourse of failure: Dominant discourses in literacy teaching and assessment and their impact on the progression of young literacy learners into employment

This paper argues that contemporary literacy programmes are a mismatch for the expectations of both the government and employers as well as the goals of learners. It submits that the dominant discourses in literacy provision have led to the emergence of a learning culture which not only fails the learners but is also incapable of meeting the aspirations of both the government and employers. To support this argument, the paper reports a small scale research project that analyses the perceptions of learners, teachers and employers who were involved in a work placement scheme for young literacy learners in a college of further education. Data for the study were collected through focus group and face to face interviews and analysed using the framework of discourse analysis provided by Gill (2000) with findings codified and analysed thematically. The study found that teachers were aware that their learners were not adequately prepared for the world of work because of the demands of the dominant discourses of quality and performance measurement which were most obviously manifested in their assessment, teaching methods and the attitudes of learners. It found that employers perceive young learners as inadequate in terms of the workplace expectations. Learners in the study revealed that their workplace culture and expectations were totally different from the culture to which they had been socialised in their studies. The study concludes that unless the dominance of these discourses is ameliorated, young literacy learners will continue to be socialised into a discourse of failure.

Private equity and employment - the Davos/WEF/Harvard study

The World Economic Forum at Davos has published a major study showing that workplaces of firms taken over by private equity have 10% less employees 5 years after the takeover, than other similar workplaces. The rate of plant closures, opening, acquisitions and disposals is twice as high as in other firms, and the net effect is still a job loss of 3.6%-4.5% after only 2 years, compared with other firms. Firms taken over by private equity are also more likely to go bankrupt than publicly quoted firms.

Private equity: financial investors, public services, and employment

The report surveys the activity of private equity and other financial investors in the water, waste and healthcare sectors in Europe. It includes the appraisal of a WEF study on employment effects.

Towards an integrated forecasting system for pelagic fisheries

First results of a coupled modeling and forecasting system for the pelagic fisheries are being presented. The system consists currently of three mathematically fundamentally different model subsystems: POLCOMS-ERSEM providing the physical-biogeochemical environment implemented in the domain of the North-West European shelf and the SPAM model which describes sandeel stocks in the North Sea. The third component, the SLAM model, connects POLCOMS-ERSEM and SPAM by computing the physical-biological interaction. Our major experience by the coupling model subsystems is that well-defined and generic model interfaces are very important for a successful and extendable coupled model framework. The integrated approach, simulating ecosystem dynamics from physics to fish, allows for analysis of the pathways in the ecosystem to investigate the propagation of changes in the ocean climate and lower trophic levels to quantify the impacts on the higher trophic level, in this case the sandeel population, demonstrated here on the base of hindcast data. The coupled forecasting system is tested for some typical scientific questions appearing in spatial fish stock management and marine spatial planning, including determination of local and basin scale maximum sustainable yield, stock connectivity and source/sink structure. Our presented simulations indicate that sandeels stocks are currently exploited close to the maximum sustainable yield, but large uncertainty is associated with determining stock maximum sustainable yield due to stock eigen dynamics and climatic variability. Our statistical ensemble simulations indicates that the predictive horizon set by climate interannual variability is 2–6 yr, after which only an asymptotic probability distribution of stock properties, like biomass, are predictable.

Operational monitoring and forecasting of bathing water quality through exploiting satellite Earth observation and models: The AlgaRisk demonstration service

Coastal zones and shelf-seas are important for tourism, commercial fishing and aquaculture. As a result the importance of good water quality within these regions to support life is recognised worldwide and a number of international directives for monitoring them now exist. This paper describes the AlgaRisk water quality monitoring demonstration service that was developed and operated for the UK Environment Agency in response to the microbiological monitoring needs within the revised European Union Bathing Waters Directive. The AlgaRisk approach used satellite Earth observation to provide a near-real time monitoring of microbiological water quality and a series of nested operational models (atmospheric and hydrodynamic-ecosystem) provided a forecast capability. For the period of the demonstration service (2008–2013) all monitoring and forecast datasets were processed in near-real time on a daily basis and disseminated through a dedicated web portal, with extracted data automatically emailed to agency staff. Near-real time data processing was achieved using a series of supercomputers and an Open Grid approach. The novel web portal and java-based viewer enabled users to visualise and interrogate current and historical data. The system description, the algorithms employed and example results focussing on a case study of an incidence of the harmful algal bloom Karenia mikimotoi are presented. Recommendations and the potential exploitation of web services for future water quality monitoring services are discussed.

Evaluating machine-learning techniques for recruitment forecasting of seven North East Atlantic fish species

The effect of different factors (spawning biomass, environmental conditions) on recruitment is a subject of great importance in the management of fisheries, recovery plans and scenario exploration. In this study, recently proposed supervised classification techniques, tested by the machine-learning community, are applied to forecast the recruitment of seven fish species of North East Atlantic (anchovy, sardine, mackerel, horse mackerel, hake, blue whiting and albacore), using spawning, environmental and climatic data. In addition, the use of the probabilistic flexible naive Bayes classifier (FNBC) is proposed as modelling approach in order to reduce uncertainty for fisheries management purposes. Those improvements aim is to improve probability estimations of each possible outcome (low, medium and high recruitment) based in kernel density estimation, which is crucial for informed management decision making with high uncertainty. Finally, a comparison between goodness-of-fit and generalization power is provided, in order to assess the reliability of the final forecasting models. It is found that in most cases the proposed methodology provides useful information for management whereas the case of horse mackerel is an example of the limitations of the approach. The proposed improvements allow for a better probabilistic estimation of the different scenarios, i.e. to reduce the uncertainty in the provided forecasts.