Changing youth? : continuities and ruptures in transitions into adulthood among Catalan young people

The globalisation process has an impact at the micro-level on life-course patterns: concretely, the trajectories of young people into adulthood are being sharply modified. At a European level, the extension, de-linearisation, reversibility and diversification of youth trajectories have been identified as major changes. However, the extent to which these changes affect young people within each country depends on their respective welfare regimes. This article analyses how the Mediterranean welfare regime shapes youth trajectories among Catalan young people and explores the hypothesis that these constraints will make those trajectories less sensitive to the general trends of change identified at a European level. The research is based on an analysis of the Catalan Youth Survey, an official statistic that contains retrospective data on Educational, Work, Housing and Family transitions. The results offer an integrated typology of youth transitions in Catalonia and show how the persistence of traditional patterns of transition are the logical result of the particular articulation of the welfare regime and cultural patterns among Catalan young people

Nanobodies that block gating of the P2X7 ion channel ameliorate inflammation

International audienceIon channels are desirable therapeutic targets, yet ion channel-directed drugs with high selectivity and few side effects are still needed. Unlike small-molecule inhibitors, antibodies are highly selective for target antigens but mostly fail to antagonize ion channel functions. Nanobodies-small, single-domain antibody fragments-may overcome these problems. P2X7 is a ligand-gated ion channel that, upon sensing adenosine 5′-triphosphate released by damaged cells, initiates a proinflammatory signaling cascade, including release of cytokines, such as interleukin-1b (IL-1b). To further explore its function, we generated and characterized nanobodies against mouse P2X7 that effectively blocked (13A7) or potentiated (14D5) gating of the channel. Systemic injection of nanobody 13A7 in mice blocked P2X7 on T cells and macrophages in vivo and ameliorated experimental glomerulonephritis and allergic contact dermatitis. We also generated nanobody Dano1, which specifically inhibited human P2X7. In endotoxin-treated human blood, Dano1 was 1000 times more potent in preventing IL-1b release than small-molecule P2X7 antagonists currently in clinical development. Our results show that nanobody technology can generate potent, specific therapeu-tics against ion channels, confirm P2X7 as a therapeutic target for inflammatory disorders, and characterize a potent new drug candidate that targets P2X7

Youth unemployment and employment trajectories in Spain during the Great Recession: what are the determinants?

Since the beginning of the recession period in Europe, unemployment has greatly affected the young adult population. In this context, Spain is regarded as an extreme case, due to its exceptionally high youth unemployment rates. This article seeks to identify the determinants that have led certain groups of Spanish young people to suffer labour market trajectories with higher levels of unemployment and instability during the Great Recession than others. To do this, retrospective data from the 2012 Catalan Youth Survey are used. With these data and using cluster analysis, a typology of labour market trajectories is constructed. Next, multinomial logistic regressions are used to identify what individual socio-demographic characteristics and pre-crisis employment experiences are connected to these different typological career paths. Results show that the highly differentiated career paths are associated with different social profiles and differences in the presence of unemployment. Moreover, interesting differences among the most unstable career paths appear. For the most vulnerable social profiles the employment trajectory prior to the crisis seems to point towards the existence of an entrapment in low-skilled jobs that alternate with situations of unemployment. For those with a slightly better position their employment situation after the initiation of the crisis seems to have been impacted by their brief labour market trajectory before the crisis and their resulting work experience gap.We would like to thank the Catalan Youth Observatory for letting us use the data from the Catalan Youth Survey 2012. We would particularly like to thank Pau Serracant for his help and for encouraging us to send our study to the Journal of Labour Market Research in response to their call for research on Youth unemployment in Europe. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments, which enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our paper. It goes without saying that any errors in this article are the sole responsibility of the authors