An Overview of the Employment-Population Ratio

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of the employment-population ratio. It opens with a discussion of its value as a labor market indicator, noting its key features and limitations. This is followed by an examination of long-term and recent trends. The contribution of demographic and economic factors to recent patterns is explored at the close of the report

Paid Family Leave in the United States

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of paid family leave in the United States, summarizes state-level family leave insurance programs, notes paid family leave policies in other advanced-economy countries, and notes recent federal proposals to increase access to paid family leave

Paid Family Leave in the United States

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of paid family leave in the United States, summarizes state-level family leave insurance programs, notes PFL policies in other advanced-economy countries, and notes recent federal legislative action to increase access to paid family leave

Labor Market Patterns Since 2007

[Excerpt] The period since 2007 has been a time of significant change for labor markets. The Great Recession of 2007-2009, the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression, caused the unemployment rate to briefly reach 10%, and labor markets have subsequently experienced a long and gradual recovery. Most labor force metrics, including the unemployment rate and various other measures of labor force underutilization, have returned to levels that have historically been consistent with full employment

Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2017

[Excerpt] The focus of this report is on wage rates and changes at selected wage percentiles, with some attention given to the potential influence of educational attainment and the occupational distribution of worker groups on wage patterns. Other factors are likely to contribute to wage trends over the 1979 to 2017 period as well, including changes in the supply and demand for workers, labor market institutions, workplace organization and practices, and macroeconomic trends. This report provides an overview of how these broad forces are thought to interact with wage determination, but it does not attempt to measure their contribution to wage patterns over the last four decades. For example, changes over time in the supply and demand for workers with different skill sets (e.g., as driven by technological change and new international trade patterns) is likely to affect wage growth. A declining real minimum wage and decreasing unionization rates may lead to slower wage growth for workers more reliant on these institutions to provide wage protection, whereas changes in pay setting practices in certain high pay occupations, the emergence of superstar earners (e.g., in sports and entertainment), and skill biased technological changes may have improved wage growth for some workers at the top of the wage distribution. Macroeconomic factors, business cycles, and other national economic trends affect the overall demand for workers, with consequences for aggregate wage growth, and may affect employers’ production decisions (e.g., production technology and where to produce) with implications for the distribution of wage income. These factors are briefly discussed at the end of the report

Low-temperture electrostatic silicon-to-silicon seals using sputtered borosilicate glass

Silicon members are hermetically sealed to each other. Process produces no measurable deformation of silicon surfaces and is compatible with package designs of tight tolerance. Seals have been made with glass coatings in 10-mm to 20-mm thickness range without any prior annealing of coated silicon substrates

What Does the Gig Economy Mean for Workers?

[Excerpt] Technological advancement and the proliferation of the smartphone have reshaped the commercial landscape, providing consumers new ways to access the retail marketplace. On-demand companies are one such innovation, and underpinning on-demand commerce is the gig economy, the collection of markets that match service providers to consumers of on-demand services on a gig (or job) basis. Flagship on-demand companies such as Uber (driver services) and Handy (home cleaners and household services) have garnered significant media attention both for their market success and recent legal challenges, particularly concerning the classification of gig workers. Broader questions about the pros and cons of the gig economy have emerged as on-demand markets grow and the gig economy expands into new sectors. By some accounts, workers’ willingness to participate in the gig economy provides evidence that gig work is a beneficial arrangement. Indeed, gig jobs may yield benefits relative to traditional employment in terms of the ease of finding employment and greater flexibility to choose jobs and hours. The gig economy may facilitate bridge employment (e.g., temporary employment between career jobs or between full-time work and retirement) or provide opportunities to generate income when circumstances do not accommodate traditional full-time, full-year employment. At the same time, however, the potential lack of labor protections for gig workers and the precarious nature of gig work have been met with some concern. The nationwide reach of gig work and its potential to impact large groups of workers, and their livelihoods, have attracted the attention of some Members of Congress. These Members have raised questions about the size and composition of the gig workforce, the proper classification of gig workers (i.e., as employees or independent contractors), the potential for gig work to create work opportunities for unemployed or underemployed workers, and implications of gig work for worker protections and access to traditional employment-based benefits. In support of these policy considerations, this report provides an overview of the gig economy and identifies legal and policy questions relevant to its workforce

Move-minimizing puzzles, diamond-colored modular and distributive lattices, and poset models for Weyl group symmetric functions

The move-minimizing puzzles presented here are certain types of one-player combinatorial games that are shown to have explicit solutions whenever they can be encoded in a certain way as diamond-colored modular and distributive lattices. Such lattices can also arise naturally as models for certain algebraic objects, namely Weyl group symmetric functions and their companion semisimple Lie algebra representations. The motivation for this paper is therefore both diversional and algebraic: To show how some recreational move-minimizing puzzles can be solved explicitly within an order-theoretic context and also to realize some such puzzles as combinatorial models for symmetric functions associated with certain fundamental representations of the symplectic and odd orthogonal Lie algebras

Primordial follicular assembly in humans : revisited

Peer reviewedPreprin

Identification of a Widespread Palmitoylethanolamide Contamination in Standard Laboratory Glassware.

Introduction: Fatty acid ethanolamides (FAEs) are a family of lipid mediators that participate in a host of biological functions. Procedures for the quantitative analysis of FAEs include organic solvent extraction from biological matrices (e.g., blood), followed by purification and subsequent quantitation by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. During the validation process of a new method for LC/MS analysis of FAEs in biological samples, we observed unusually high levels of the FAE, palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), in blank samples that did not contain any biological material. Materials and Methods: We investigated a possible source of this PEA artifact via liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry, as well as accurate mass analysis. Results: We found that high levels of a contaminant indistinguishable from PEA is present in new 5.75″ glass Pasteur pipettes, which are routinely used by laboratories to carry out lipid extractions. This artifact might account for discrepancies found in the literature regarding PEA levels in human blood serum and other tissues. Conclusions: It is recommended to take into account this pitfall by analyzing potential contamination of the disposable glassware during the validation process of any method used for analysis of FAEs