What Countries Currently Offer Government Sponsored Paid Family Leave (PFL) Programs and What Do They Look Like?

[Excerpt] PFL has not been clearly defined and often includes maternity and paternity time off. While Paid Time Off allotments are generally utilized for less severe employee illness and vacation time, and Maternity Leave covers additional time off for women during the last term of pregnancy and early birth, we define PFL as full or partial paid time off covering post-birth bonding time for male and female employees, and time spent caring for severely ill family members. Listed as an upcoming employee benefit trend of 2022, and gradually becoming a part of mandatory state government disability insurance in the US, PFL is a growing business reality global companies need to consider

Understanding The Decision-Making Process of Local Level Emergency Managers and Future Impacts of Social Data

During the course of a natural disaster, affected populations turn to different avenues to attempt to communicate their needs and locations while emergency managers are faced with the task of making quick decisions to aid in the response effort. The decisions that emergency managers face are affected by factors such as available resources, responder safety, and source of information. In this research, we interview emergency managers about the 2009 North American Ice Storm and a flooding event in late April of 2017 to understand the decisions made and the factors that affected these decisions. Using these interviews, a list of interview questions using the Critical Decision Method were created that could be used to more deeply understand the decisions and decision-making process of a local-level emergency manager during a disaster response event. Additionally, animations were created to illustrate the comparative effectiveness of disaster response routing plans developed with and without the consideration of social data based on data inspired by a real event

What Indicators Exist that Lead to Employees Feeling Included?

[Excerpt] The concept of inclusion is something that most people are familiar with. However, the term often lacks the specificity needed to address it analytically. So, before discussing how to build and measure an inclusive workplace, we will lay out a brief foundation around the what and why of inclusion. To define what, we have chosen to base our study around the following dimensions of inclusion: ●Satisfaction of individual needs within a group ●Feelings of belongingness and uniqueness As for why, studies show that inclusion improves creativity and attracts talent. These factors can be tied back to business success through lowered human capital costs and increased competitive advantage due to innovation and workforce excellence

VALUING CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSFERABLE DEER HUNTING PERMITS IN KANSAS

The novel use of transferable deer hunting permits in Kansas has altered property rights to a traditionally government rationed good, providing the institutional framework and incentives for competitive market activity. This paper investigates how attributes of the permit itself, spatial determinants, and the socioeconomic characteristics of the consumer-hunter influence market price. Findings provide valuable insight into factors that are important to Kansas interest groups, its economy, and to structuring transferable permits for wildlife programs.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Can You Provide the Current Trends in HR on People Analytics?

[Excerpt] People analytics is an increasingly hot topic and many companies are working to gain insight through this emerging field. Business leaders are asking how analytics can help drive better decision-making in order to improve business results. Among these questions, turnover prediction and succession planning are two key areas that HR professionals identify as high value. Since there isn’t a one-size- fits-all solution to these questions, we compiled our most noteworthy insights and put forward several steps that an organization should follow in order to create its own internal models

Economic Impacts of the Elimination of Azinphos-methyl on the Apple Industry and Washington State

The Environmental Protection Agency has declared the organophosphate pesticide azinphos-methyl (AZM) cannot be used in the production of apples after September 30, 2012. We estimate the change to sales, price, and employment to the Washington State apple industry from using the likely AZM alternative had this ban been in effect in 2007. Furthermore, we estimate the effects of this ban as it ripples through the overall Washington State economy. We find the ban will bring a relatively modest change to sales (-0.8%), prices (0.2%), and employment (0.1%) in the apple industry, with negligible impacts on the overall Washington State economy.apples, azinphos-methyl, economic impact, computable general equilibrium

Do National Parties Still Matter? A Study of Party System Congruence in the South

The research presented here attempts to examine the evidence of incongruence implied by Gimpel\u27s intrastate party system autonomy theory. Through an examination of geographic voting patterns, trends toward greater congruence (less autonomy) should become apparent. The hypotheses implied are as follows: H1: Over time, statewide elections in the South will produce electoral cleavages, which are increasingly congruent with presidential electoral cleavages within each state. H2: Rim South electoral cleavage congruence will appear earlier in time than electoral cleavage congruence in the Deep South. H3: Statewide electoral cleavages in the Rim South will produce consistently higher congruence with presidential races than those of the Deep South

Application Intrusion Detection: Security for Cloud Deployments

As servers move to the cloud, sources for security analysis become more limited. Security teams must make the most of the resources available to them. Our project attempts to fulfill this need by providing a template-based application to analyze and detect security events in logs that are available in cloud environments. We focus on authentication logs, but analysis modules can be added to flag anomalies in any log. The deliverables include log analysis, including successive repeated failures, location-based anomalies, and excessive failed login attempts across multiple accounts. To present our findings we output the results to a web interface for further analysis by a security team. Our project was limited by time, knowledge, available hardware and log sources. Under these constraints we developed a server-based solution that analyzes authentication logs and presents the data in an easily understood format. An authentication data log for a large organization can contain millions of events. To narrow down the large volume of information into a manageable number of interesting events, we analyzed the data-based on a set of our proposed criteria. The information that results from the analysis is easily read and used for further investigation into possible malicious behavior. The market impact of a comprehensive security engine capable of analyzing large amounts of seemingly unconnected data and reducing them into only the interesting entries would be significant. It would save security teams time, improve the incident detection efficiency, and help focus efforts and funds where they are needed most.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1095/thumbnail.jp

The Extracellular Heat Shock Protein 72 Response to a 7-day Desert-based Ultra-marathon

Extracellular heat shock protein 72 (eHsp72) concentration has been shown to significantly increase in response to extreme stress. Ultra-endurance events are becoming increasingly popular and place individuals under a prolonged duration of exercise stress, which is exacerbated when undertaken in extreme environmental conditions, particularly extreme heat. The extreme stress imposed upon the body under such conditions places individuals at increased risk of heat illness and cellular damage. The eHsp72 response to ultra-endurance events in extreme environmental conditions has received little attention and thus research is required to understand the heat shock response to such stress. PURPOSE: To investigate the effect of a desert based ultra-marathon (the Marathon des Sables; MDS) on the eHsp72 response in humans. METHODS: Thirteen (three female) competitors (age 42, range: 23-60 years, height 1.74 ± 0.10 m, mass 77.29 ± 12.92 kg, VO2max 55.25 ± 11.96 ml.kg.min-1) provided blood samples via venepuncture for the measurement of eHsp72 concentration on two occasions prior to the race: i) 12 weeks (baseline), and ii) 7 d (pre-race) prior to departure for the MDS, and two further occasions post-race: iii) ~ 6 h post-race and iv) 7 d post-race. The MDS 2015 consisted of 7 consecutive stages, over 7 d, across the Sahara Desert, Morocco, equating to a total distance of 249.4 km. eHsp72 was determined using a commercially available ELISA kit and is displayed as a percentage change from baseline values. RESULTS: Participants completed the ultra-marathon in an average total time of 3043 ± 1002 min. Post-race eHsp72 concentration was 122%, 117% and 108% greater than baseline, pre-race and 7 d post-race, respectively (F3, 45 = 63.348, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: eHsp72 concentration is significantly elevated in response to 7 consecutive days of prolonged exercise heat stress in extreme environmental conditions and returns to near baseline values within 7 d post race completion

Beyond Narrow Liberalism

Of growing debate among those concerned with American political culture and democratic theory is the modern conception ofliberal democratic theory. This work attempts to broaden our understanding ofdemocracy. I will argue that modern liberalism has narrowed our conception of individual liberty. This narrowed focus has produce a reliance on the use ofpublic regulation and interest group pressure as substitutes for civic engagement. In an attempt to move past a mere critique of narrow liberalism, this essay will develop a research design and an empirical test to measure our current political culture\u27s support for a robust democracy and its future prospects of development