Worlds of working poverty : Cross-national variation in the mechanisms that lead to poverty among workers

The objective of this paper is to distinguish between different types of working poverty, on the basis of the mechanisms that produce it. Whereas the poverty literature identifies a myriad of risk factors and of categories of disadvantaged workers, we focus on three immediate causes of working poverty, namely low wage rate, weak labour force attachment, and high needs, the latter mainly due to the presence of children (and sometimes to the increase in needs caused by a divorce). These three mechanisms are the channels through which macroeconomic, demographic and policy factors have a direct bearing on working households. The main assumption tested here is that welfare regimes strongly influence the relative weight of these three mechanisms in producing working poverty, and, hence, the composition of the working-poor population. Our figures confirm this hypothesis and show that low-wage employment is a key factor, but, by far, not the only one and that family policies broadly understood play a decisive role, as well as patterns of labour market participation and integration.

Gender inequalities in occupational health related to the unequal distribution of working and employment conditions: a systematic review

Gender inequalities exist in work life, but little is known about their presence in relation to factors examined in occupation health settings. The aim of this study was to identify and summarize the working and employment conditions described as determinants of gender inequalities in occupational health in studies related to occupational health published between 1999 and 2010. A systematic literature review was undertaken of studies available in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Sociological Abstracts, LILACS, EconLit and CINAHL between 1999 and 2010. Epidemiologic studies were selected by applying a set of inclusion criteria to the title, abstract, and complete text. The quality of the studies was also assessed. Selected studies were qualitatively analysed, resulting in a compilation of all differences between women and men in the prevalence of exposure to working and employment conditions and work-related health problems as outcomes. Most of the 30 studies included were conducted in Europe (n=19) and had a cross-sectional design (n=24). The most common topic analysed was related to the exposure to work-related psychosocial hazards (n=8). Employed women had more job insecurity, lower control, worse contractual working conditions and poorer self-perceived physical and mental health than men did. Conversely, employed men had a higher degree of physically demanding work, lower support, higher levels of effort-reward imbalance, higher job status, were more exposed to noise and worked longer hours than women did. This systematic review has identified a set of working and employment conditions as determinants of gender inequalities in occupational health from the occupational health literature. These results may be useful to policy makers seeking to reduce gender inequalities in occupational health, and to researchers wishing to analyse these determinants in greater depth.

Mutation patterns of amino acid tandem repeats in the human proteome

Background: Amino acid tandem repeats are found in nearly one-fifth of human proteins. Abnormal expansion of these regions is associated with several human disorders. To gain further insight into the mutational mechanisms that operate in this type of sequence, we have analyzed a large number of mutation variants derived from human expressed sequence tags (ESTs).Results: We identified 137 polymorphic variants in 115 different amino acid tandem repeats. Of these, 77 contained amino acid substitutions and 60 contained gaps (expansions or contractions of the repeat unit). The analysis showed that at least about 21% of the repeats might be polymorphic in humans. We compared the mutations found in different types of amino acid repeats and in adjacent regions. Overall, repeats showed a five-fold increase in the number of gap mutations compared to adjacent regions, reflecting the action of slippage within the repetitive structures. Gap and substitution mutations were very differently distributed between different amino acid repeat types. Among repeats containing gap variants we identified several disease and candidate disease genes.Conclusion: This is the first report at a genome-wide scale of the types of mutations occurring in the amino acid repeat component of the human proteome. We show that the mutational dynamics of different amino acid repeat types are very diverse. We provide a list of loci with highly variable repeat structures, some of which may be potentially involved in disease.

Calling and career preparation: Investigating developmental patterns and temporal precedence

The presence of a calling and career development are assumed to be closely related. However, the nature of and reason for this relationship have not been thoroughly investigated. We hypothesized the existence of reciprocal effects between calling and three dimensions of career preparation and assessed the change of the presence of a calling, career planning, decidedness, and self-efficacy with three waves of a diverse sample of German university students (N = 846) over one year. Latent growth analyses revealed that the intercepts of calling showed a significant positive correlation with the intercepts of all career preparation measures. The slope of calling was positively related to those of decidedness and self-efficacy but not to planning. Cross-lagged analyses showed that calling predicted a subsequent increase in planning and self-efficacy. Planning and decidedness predicted an increase in the presence of a calling. The results suggest that calling and career preparation are related due to mutual effects but that effects differ for different career preparation dimensions.

Predicting current and future spatial community patterns of plant functional traits

Community-level patterns of functional traits relate to community assembly and ecosystem functioning. By modelling the changes of different indices describing such patterns - trait means, extremes and diversity in communities - as a function of abiotic gradients, we could understand their drivers and build projections of the impact of global change on the functional components of biodiversity. We used five plant functional traits (vegetative height, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf nitrogen content and seed mass) and non-woody vegetation plots to model several indices depicting community-level patterns of functional traits from a set of abiotic environmental variables (topographic, climatic and edaphic) over contrasting environmental conditions in a mountainous landscape. We performed a variation partitioning analysis to assess the relative importance of these variables for predicting patterns of functional traits in communities, and projected the best models under several climate change scenarios to examine future potential changes in vegetation functional properties. Not all indices of trait patterns within communities could be modelled with the same level of accuracy: the models for mean and extreme values of functional traits provided substantially better predictive accuracy than the models calibrated for diversity indices. Topographic and climatic factors were more important predictors of functional trait patterns within communities than edaphic predictors. Overall, model projections forecast an increase in mean vegetation height and in mean specific leaf area following climate warming. This trend was important at mid elevation particularly between 1000 and 2000 m asl. With this study we showed that topographic, climatic and edaphic variables can successfully model descriptors of community-level patterns of plant functional traits such as mean and extreme trait values. However, which factors determine the diversity of functional traits in plant communities remains unclear and requires more investigations.

How Wages and Employment Adjust to Trade Liberalization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Austria

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine di¤erential pre- and post-1990 wage and employment growth rates between regions bordering the formerly communist economies and interior regions. If the 'border regions'are de...ned narrowly, within a band of less than 50 kilometers, we can identify statistically signi...cant liberalization e¤ects on both employment and wages. While wages responded earlier than employment, the employment e¤ect over the entire adjustment period is estimated to be around three times as large as the wage e¤ect. The implied slope of the regional labor supply curve can be replicated in an economic geography model that features obstacles to labor migration due to immobile housing and to heterogeneous locational preferences.

Welfare regimes and change in the employment structure: Britain, Denmark and Germany since 1990

Welfare states are often reduced to their role as providers of social protection and redistribution. In 1990, Esping-Andersen argued that they also affect employment creation and the class structure. We analyse the stratification outcomes for three welfare regimes - Britain, Germany and Denmark - over the 1990s and 2000s. Based on individual-level surveys, we observe a disproportionate increase among professionals and managers, and a decline among production workers and clerks. The result is clear-cut occupational upgrading in Denmark and Germany. In Britain, high and low-end service jobs expanded, resulting in a polarized version of upgrading. Growth in low-end service jobs - and thus polarization - is no precondition for full employment. Both Britain and Denmark halved their low-educated unemployment rate between 1995 and 2008. Yet low-end service jobs expanded only in Britain, not in Denmark. The cause is the evolution of labour supply: rising educational attainment means that fewer low-educated workers look for low-skilled jobs.

Study to establish an evaluation system for State of Iowa Merit Employment System classifications on the basis of comparable worth, 1984

This final report establishes an evaluation system for the State of Iowa Merit Employment System classifications on the basis of comparable worth. Included in the report are summaries of the project's objectives, methods, analyses, findings, and recommendations.

Study to establish an evaluation system for State of Iowa Merit Employment System classifications on the basis of comparable worth, Statistical Supplement, 1984

This is the statistical supplement to the final report of the study to establish an evaluation system for State of Iowa Merit Employment System classifications on the basis of comparable worth.

Public Employment Relations Board Performance Plan, FY2015

Agency Performance Plan, Public Employment Relations Board

Sectoral and occupational employment growth in Spain 1995-2005

Between 1995 and 2005, the Spanish economy grew at an annual average rate higher than 3,5%. Total employment increased by more than 4.9 millions. Most of this growth was in occupations related with university degrees (more than 890,000, 18% of the total employment increase) and vocational qualifications (more than 855,000, 17.5% of the total employment increase). From a sectoral perspective, the main part of this increase took place in “Real estate, renting and business activities” (K sector in NACE rev.1), “Construction” (F sector) and “Health and social sector” (N sector). This paper analyses this employment growth in an Input-output framework, by means of a structural decomposition analysis (SDA). Two kinds of results have been obtained. From a sectoral perspective we decompose employment growth into Labour requirements change, technical change and demand change. From an occupational perspective, we decompose the employment growth in substitutions effect, labour productivity effect and demand effect. The results show that, in aggregated terms, the main part of this growth is attributable to demand growth, with a small technical improvement. But the results also show that this aggregated behaviour hides important sectoral and occupational variation. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate over productivity growth and what has been called the “growth model” for the Spanish economy.

Gene expression patterns unveil a new level of molecular heterogeneity in colorectal cancer.

The recognition that colorectal cancer (CRC) is a heterogeneous disease in terms of clinical behaviour and response to therapy translates into an urgent need for robust molecular disease subclassifiers that can explain this heterogeneity beyond current parameters (MSI, KRAS, BRAF). Attempts to fill this gap are emerging. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TGCA) reported two main CRC groups, based on the incidence and spectrum of mutated genes, and another paper reported an EMT expression signature defined subgroup. We performed a prior free analysis of CRC heterogeneity on 1113 CRC gene expression profiles and confronted our findings to established molecular determinants and clinical, histopathological and survival data. Unsupervised clustering based on gene modules allowed us to distinguish at least five different gene expression CRC subtypes, which we call surface crypt-like, lower crypt-like, CIMP-H-like, mesenchymal and mixed. A gene set enrichment analysis combined with literature search of gene module members identified distinct biological motifs in different subtypes. The subtypes, which were not derived based on outcome, nonetheless showed differences in prognosis. Known gene copy number variations and mutations in key cancer-associated genes differed between subtypes, but the subtypes provided molecular information beyond that contained in these variables. Morphological features significantly differed between subtypes. The objective existence of the subtypes and their clinical and molecular characteristics were validated in an independent set of 720 CRC expression profiles. Our subtypes provide a novel perspective on the heterogeneity of CRC. The proposed subtypes should be further explored retrospectively on existing clinical trial datasets and, when sufficiently robust, be prospectively assessed for clinical relevance in terms of prognosis and treatment response predictive capacity. Original microarray data were uploaded to the ArrayExpress database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/) under Accession Nos E-MTAB-990 and E-MTAB-1026. © 2013 Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Auditory localisation and recognition after left inferior collicular lesion: effects of work load on cortical activation patterns (fMRI study)

Evidence from neuropsychological and activation studies (Clarke et al., 2oo0, Maeder et al., 2000) suggests that sound recognitionand localisation are processed by two anatomically and functionally distinct cortical networks. We report here on a case of a patientthat had an interruption of auditory information and we show: i) the effects of this interruption on cortical auditory processing; ii)the effect of the workload on activation pattern.A 36 year old man suffered from a small left mesencephalic haemotrhage, due to cavernous angioma; the let% inferior colliculuswas resected in the surgical approach of the vascular malformation. In the acute stage, the patient complained of auditoryhallucinations and of auditory loss in right ear, while tonal audiometry was normal. At 12 months, auditory recognition, auditorylocalisation (assessed by lTD and IID cues) and auditory motion perception were normal (Clarke et al., 2000), while verbal dichoticlistening was deficient on the right side.Sound recognition and sound localisation activation patterns were investigated with fMRI, using a passive and an activeparadigm. In normal subjects, distinct cortical networks were involved in sound recognition and localisation, both in passive andactive paradigm (Maeder et al., 2OOOa, 2000b).Passive listening of environmental and spatial stimuli as compared to rest strongly activated right auditory cortex, but failed toactivate left primary auditory cortex. The specialised networks for sound recognition and localisation could not be visual&d onthe right and only minimally on the left convexity. A very different activation pattern was obtained in the active condition wherea motor response was required. Workload not only increased the activation of the right auditory cortex, but also allowed theactivation of the left primary auditory cortex. The specialised networks for sound recognition and localisation were almostcompletely present in both hemispheres.These results show that increasing the workload can i) help to recruit cortical region in the auditory deafferented hemisphere;and ii) lead to processing auditory information within specific cortical networks.References:Clarke et al. (2000). Neuropsychologia 38: 797-807.Mae.der et al. (2OOOa), Neuroimage 11: S52.Maeder et al. (2OOOb), Neuroimage 11: S33

The birth of the Rheic Ocean - Early Palaeozoic subsidence patterns and subsequent tectonic plate scenarios

New plate-tectonic reconstructions of the Gondwana margin suggest that the location of Gondwana-derived terranes should not only be guided by the models, but should also consider the possible detrital input from some Asian blocks (Hunia), supposed to have been located along the Cambrian Gondwana margin, and accreted in the Silurian to the North-Chinese block. Consequently, the Gondwana margin has to be subdivided into a more western domain, where the future Avalonian blocks will be separated from Gondwana by the opening Rheic Ocean, whereas in its eastern continuation, hosting the future basement areas of Central Europe, different periods of crustal extension should be distinguished. Instead of applying a rather cylindrical model, it is supposed that crustal extension follows a much more complex pattern, where local back-arcs or intra-continental rifts are involved. Guided by the age data of magmatic rocks and the pattern of subsidence curves, the following extensional events can be distinguished: During the early to middle Cambrian, a back-arc setting guided the evolution at the Gondwana margin. Contemporaneous intra-continental rift basins developed at other places related to a general post-PanAfrican extensional phase affecting Africa Upper Cambrian formation of oceanic crust is manifested in the Chamrousse area, and may have lateral cryptic relics preserved in other places. This is regarded as the oceanisation of some marginal basins in a context of back-arc rifting. These basins were closed in a mid-Ordovician tectonic phase, related to the subduction of buoyant material (mid-ocean ridge?) Since the Early Ordovician, a new phase of extension is observed, accompanied by a large-scale volcanic activity, erosion of the rift shoulders generated detritus (Armorican Quartzite) and the rift basins collected detrital zircons from a wide hinterland. This phase heralded the opening of Palaeotethys, but it failed due to the Silurian collision (Eo-Variscan phase) of an intra-oceanic arc with the Gondwana margin. During this time period, at the eastern wing of the Gondwana margin begins the drift of the future Hunia microcontinents, through the opening of an eastern prolongation of the already existing Rheic Ocean. The passive margin of the remaining Gondwana was composed of the Galatian superterranes, constituents of the future Variscan basement areas. Remaining under the influence of crustal extension, they will start their drift to Laurussia since the earliest Devonian during the opening of the Palaeotethys Ocean. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Estimating traveltimes and groundwater flow patterns using 3D time-lapse crosshole ERT imaging of electrical resistivity fluctuations induced by infiltrating river water

The infiltration of river water into aquifers is of high relevance to drinking-water production and is a key driver of biogeochemical processes in the hyporheic and riparian zone, but the distribution and quantification of the infiltrating water are difficult to determine using conventional hydrological methods (e.g., borehole logging and tracer tests). By time-lapse inverting crosshole ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) monitoring data, we imaged groundwater flow patterns driven by river water infiltrating a perialpine gravel aquifer in northeastern Switzerland. This was possible because the electrical resistivity of the infiltrating water changed during rainfall-runoff events. Our time-lapse resistivity models indicated rather complex flow patterns as a result of spatially heterogeneous bank filtration and aquifer heterogeneity. The upper part of the aquifer was most affected by the river infiltrate, and the highest groundwater velocities and possible preferential flow occurred at shallow to intermediate depths. Time series of the reconstructed resistivity models matched groundwater electrical resistivity data recorded on borehole loggers in the upper and middle parts of the aquifer, whereas the resistivity models displayed smaller variations and delayed responses with respect to the logging data. in the lower part. This study demonstrated that crosshole ERT monitoring of natural electrical resistivity variations of river infiltrate could be used to image and quantify 3D bank filtration and aquifer dynamics at a high spatial resolution.