The State of Working America, 2004/2005

The State of Working America, prepared biennially since 1988 by the Economic Policy Institute, includes a wide variety of data on family incomes, wages, taxes, unemployment, wealth, and poverty--data that enable the authors to closely examine the effect of the economy on the living standards of the American people

The State of Working America 2006/2007

[Excerpt] Yet, despite this unequivocally beneficial development, many Americans report dissatisfaction with where the economy seems to be headed, and many worry about their own and their children’s well-being. These concerns have led some policy makers and economists to ask: why aren’t people happier about the economy? The question seems reasonable to those who follow the top-line numbers of the economy, such as the growth of the total economy (e.g. gross domestic product), the stock market, or corporate profits. The question is easily answered, however, for those who follow and report on the data that fill the chapters of this book

Overcoming Creditor Misfortune Creatively: Structured Dismissals in Chapter 11 Bankruptcies

No Abstract

Numerical analysis of a nonlocal parabolic problem resulting from thermistor problem

We analyze the spatially semidiscrete piecewise linear finite element method for a nonlocal parabolic equation resulting from thermistor problem. Our approach is based on the properties of the elliptic projection defined by the bilinear form associated with the variational formulation of the finite element method. We assume minimal regularity of the exact solution that yields optimal order error estimate. The full discrete backward Euler method and the Crank-Nicolson-Galerkin scheme are also considered. Finally, a simple algorithm for solving the fully discrete problem is proposed

Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change: Why It's Time to Give Tipped Minimum Workers the Regular Minimum Wage

Last year marked the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the legislation that established many of the basic labor protections workers enjoy today, such as a 40-hour workweek, overtime protection, and a national minimum wage. There have been periodic amendments to the FLSA over the years, but the 1966 amendments were especially significant. They extended protections to hotel, restaurant, and other service workers who had previously been excluded from the FLSA, but also introduced a new "subminimum wage" for workers who customarily and regularly receive tips.Unlike temporary subminimum wages (such as those for students, youths, and workers in training), the "tip credit" provision afforded to employers uniquely established a permanent sub-wage for tipped workers, under the assumption that these workers' tips, when added to the sub-wage, would ensure that these workers' hourly earnings were at least equal to the regular minimum wage. The creation of the tip credit -- the difference, paid for by customers' tips, between the regular minimum wage and the sub-wage for tipped workers -- fundamentally changed the practice of tipping. Whereas tips had once been simply a token of gratitude from the served to the server, they became, at least in part, a subsidy from consumers to the employers of tipped workers. In other words, part of the employer wage bill is now paid by customers via their tips.Today this two-tiered wage system continues to exist, yet the subsidy to employers provided by customers in restaurants, salons, casinos, and other businesses that employ tipped workers is larger than it has ever been. At the federal level, it currently stands at $5.12 per hour, as employers are required to pay their tipped staff a "tipped minimum wage" of only$2.13 per hour, and the federal regular minimum wage is currently $7.25. Remarkably, the federal tipped minimum wage has been stuck at$2.13 since 1991 -- a 23-year stretch, over which time inflation has lowered the purchasing power of the federal tipped minimum wage to its lowest point ever.Proposed federal minimum-wage legislation, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2014 -- also known as the Harkin -- Miller bill -- would not only increase the federal regular minimum wage to $10.10, but for the first time in decades would also reconnect the subminimum wage for tipped workers back to the regular minimum wage by requiring the former be equal to 70 percent of the latter. This would be a strong step in the right direction; however, we present evidence that tipped workers would be better off still if we simply eliminated the tipped minimum wage, and paid these workers the full regular minimum wage

VEHICULAR TRAFFIC SIMULATIONS: USE OF A GAMES ENGINE FOR VIDEO RENDERING AND VERIFICATION OF AN ARCHITECTURE MODEL BASED ON QUEUING SYSTEMS

In a previous work [Pasini L and Sabatini S 2016 TASK Quart. 20 (1) 9], we described a technique that allows a specific system of urban traffic to be associated to a description file system, called Model.dat. This file contains a list of data objects that are defined in the library [Pasini L and Feliziani S 2013 TASK Quart. 17 (3) 155] and that form the architecture model of a vehicular traffic system. This model turns out to be a network of queuing systems. In this work, we illustrate how we adapted the old procedure to study a new urban traffic system. Moreover, through a new tracking procedure, we illustrate how we developed a graphic simulation able to reinterpret the data from the simulation of the queuing networks model, in order to make it easier to check the effectiveness of the simulator and to have a graphical way to analyze the data

Metal–organic frameworks meet polymer brushes: enhanced crystalline film growth induced by macromolecular primers

We used poly-(3-sulfopropylmethacrylate) brushes as macromolecular 3D primers to promote heterogeneous nucleation and growth of archetypal ZIF-8 MOF thin films. The enhancement can be understood in terms of a high preconcentration of Zn2+ ions in the polymer brush; this leads to a rapid increase of nucleation sites in the primer.Fil: Rafti, Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Allegretto, Juan Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; ArgentinaFil: Segovia, Gustavo Manuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; ArgentinaFil: Tuninetti, Jimena Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Giussi, Juan Martín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Bindini, Elisa. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie; FranciaFil: Azzaroni, Omar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentin

Coexpression of ERβ with ERα and Progestin Receptor Proteins in the Female Rat Forebrain: Effects of Estradiol Treatment

Estrogen and progestin receptors (ER, PgR) play a critical role in the regulation of neuroendocrine functions in females. The neuroanatomical distribution of the recently cloned, ERβ, overlaps with both ERα and PgR. To determine whether ERβ is found within ERα- or PgR-containing neurons in female rat, we used dual label immunocytochemistry. ERβ-immunoreactivity (ERβ-ir) was primarily detected in the nuclei of cells in the periventricular preoptic area (PvPO), the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTpr), the paraventricular nucleus, the supraoptic nucleus, and the medial amygdala (MEApd). Coexpression of ERβ-ir with ERα-ir or PgR-ir was observed in the PvPO, BNSTpr, and MEApd in ovariectomized rats. E2 treatment decreased the number of ERβ-ir cells in the PvPO and BNSTpr and the number of ERα-ir cells in the MEApd and paraventricular nucleus, and therefore decreased the number of cells coexpressing ERβ-ir and ERα-ir in the PvPO, BNSTpr, and MEApd. E2 treatment increased the amount of PgR-ir in cells of the PvPO, BNSTpr, and MEApd, a portion of which also contained ERβ. These results demonstrate that ERβ is expressed in ERα- or PgR-containing cells, and they suggest that E can modulate the ratios of these steroid receptors in a brain region-specific manner

Multiscale asymptotic method for Maxwell's equations in composite materials

Author name used in this publication: Yanping Lin2009-2010 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Triggering doxorubicin release from responsive hydrogel films by polyamine uptake

Polyamines such as putrescine, spermidine and spermine are required in many inter- and intra-cellular processes. There is, however, evidence of anomalously high concentrations of these polyamines around cancer cells. Furthermore, high polyamine concentrations play a key role in accelerating the speed of cancer proliferation. Some current therapies target the reduction of the polyamine concentration to delay the cancer advance. In this study, we use a molecular theory to prove the concept that poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) hydrogels can play the dual role of incorporating and retaining polyamines as well as releasing preloaded drugs in response. Towards such a goal, we have developed a molecular model for each of the chemical species, which includes the shape, size, charge, protonation state, and configuration. Our results indicate that PMAA hydrogel films can incorporate significant amounts of polyamines; this absorption increases with the solution concentration of the polyamines. Doxorubicin was chosen as a model drug for this study, which can be successfully incorporated within the film; the optimal encapsulation conditions occur at low salt concentrations and pH values near neutral. Polyamine absorption within the film results in the desorption of the drug from the hydrogel. An increase in the concentration of the polyamines enhances the drug release. To validate our theoretical findings, poly(methacrylic acid) hydrogel thin films were synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization. Absorption/desorption experiments followed by UV-Vis spectroscopy demonstrate doxorubicin encapsulation within these films and polyamine-dependent drug release. This journal isFil: Pérez Chávez, Néstor Ariel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Nosthas Aguiar, Victor. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Allegretto, Juan Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; ArgentinaFil: Albesa, Alberto Gustavo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Giussi, Juan Martín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Longo, Gabriel Sebastian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentin