Canadian National Union Presidents: An Empirical Study

L'objet de cet article est d'analyser dans quelle mesure divers facteurs influencent le temps nécessaire à un membre d'un bureau syndical pour accéder au poste de président d'un syndicat national au Canada. Un modèle fonde tant sur les caractéristiques personnelles des dirigeants syndicaux que celles des syndicats qu'ils administrent a été mis au point. Le modèle est vérifie au moyen d'une analyse de régression multiple.On a compile une liste de 151 présidents des syndicats nationaux au Canada à partir du Répertoire des organisations syndicales canadiennes 1984. On a expédie un questionnaire à chacun des syndicats en demandant que celui-ci soit rempli par le président du syndicat lui-même. Le taux des réponses reçues fut très élevé, soit 102 questionnaires représentant 67.5 pour cent du groupe. Les variables indépendantes sont les suivantes: l'âge auquel la personne était devenue membre du bureau syndical, son sexe, le pourcentage de ses revenus tires de sa fonction syndicale, l'importance du syndicat ainsi que la date de sa fondation, le caractère public ou prive du secteur d'activité des salaries qui y adhéraient ainsi que le degré de scolarité des présidents. Trois variables étaient reliés d'une façon significative au temps nécessaire pour accéder à la présidence à un niveau de .05: l'importance du syndicat, le degré de scolarité de la personne et la proportion de ses revenus tires de l'exercice du poste syndical. L'importance du syndicat et le pourcentage des revenus provenant de la fonction syndicale étaient en rapport positif avec la variable dépendante tandis que la scolarité allait dans le sens inverse.Le sujet exige un travail supplémentaire. Le modèle utilise n'explique qu'environ un tiers de la variance dans la variable dépendante. Il existe d'autres facteurs comme les caractéristiques personnelles et les orientations de politique interne des syndicats qu'il faudrait peut-être considérer. Il serait utile de poursuivre une recherche qualitative dans ce domaine — par exemple, au moyen d'entrevues avec les dirigeants syndicaux — et utiliser les informations recueillies pour améliorer le modèle et, conséquemment, vérifier empiriquement le modèle ainsi perfectionne.This study examines personal and organizational factors affecting the rise to office of presidents of Canadian national unions

Poor Reproducibility of Allergic Rhinitis SNP Associations

10.1371/journal.pone.0053975PLoS ONE81

Optimization and analysis for palm oil mill operations via input-output optimization model

A typical palm oil mill produces crude palm oil, crude palm kernel oil and other biomass from fresh fruit bunches. While the milling process is well established in the industry, insufficient research and development has been done on analyzing the operational performance of a mill. Factors such as operating time and fruit availability affect the performance of a palm oil mill (e.g., capital, operating and labor costs). This paper presents an input-output model to optimize the operations of a palm oil mill based on maximum economic performance. Following this, feasible operating range analysis (FORA) is performed to study the utilization and flexibility of the process. A palm oil mill case study in Malaysia is used to illustrate the proposed approach. Based on the optimized results, it was found that 37% reduction in capital cost and 49% increase in economic performance is achieved. Meanwhile, the utilization index of the mill during peak season increases from 0.48 to 0.76

Genome-wide association study identifies PERLD1 as asthma candidate gene

10.1186/1471-2350-12-170BMC Medical Genetics12-BMGM

Microalgae biorefinery alternatives and hazard evaluation

Biodiesel production based on microalgae and using carbon dioxide as feedstock constitutes an attractive biofuel alternative. Technology development and process optimization are necessary to minimize the overall production cost. Moreover, in the framework of process sustainability, social and environmental impacts should include process safety aspects. In this context, the objective of this work is to develop a biodiesel production process based on microalgae and the subsequent estimation of the associated risks, thus contributing to more sustainable and safe processes. The biodiesel biorefinery is optimized, taking into account alternative configurations for algae cultivation and lipid extraction. Algae cultivation options are open ponds and tubular photobioreactors. Regarding lipid extraction, dewatering and subsequent n-hexane extraction, and combined ethanol/n-hexane extraction are the studied alternatives. Numerical results showed that open ponds and n-hexane extraction provide maximum net present value. However, n-hexane consumption dramatically rises, and industrial hazards have not been considered in the optimization process. To overcome this issue, a preliminary hazard analysis is carried out to identify hazardous materials and operations. Event trees are formulated to derive the frequencies of different accident scenarios, further determining the consequences. The major consequences of accidents involve toxic releases of high quantities of n-hexane. By comparing the proposed alternatives, this work aims to highlight the need to consider not only economic but also safety and environmental objectives in the development of a biodiesel production project.The authors are grateful for the financial support provided by CONICET and the Spanish MICINN under projects CTQ2013-48280-C3-1-R and CTM2014-57833-R. J. Pinedo would also like to thank the financial support provided by “Becas Iberoamérica JPI España 2014”

A genome-wide association meta-analysis of self-reported allergy identifies shared and allergy-specific susceptibility loci

Allergic disease is very common and carries substantial public-health burdens. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide associations with self-reported cat, dust-mite and pollen allergies in 53,862 individuals. We used generalized estimating equations to model shared and allergy-specific genetic effects. We identified 16 shared susceptibility loci with association P < 5 × 10-8, including 8 loci previously associated with asthma, as well as 4p14 near TLR1, TLR6 and TLR10 (rs2101521, P = 5.3 × 10 -21); 6p21.33 near HLA-C and MICA (rs9266772, P = 3.2 × 10 -12); 5p13.1 near PTGER4 (rs7720838, P = 8.2 × 10 -11); 2q33.1 in PLCL1 (rs10497813, P = 6.1 × 10-10), 3q28 in LPP (rs9860547, P = 1.2 × 10-9); 20q13.2 in NFATC2 (rs6021270, P = 6.9 × 10-9), 4q27 in ADAD1 (rs17388568, P = 3.9 × 10-8); and 14q21.1 near FOXA1 and TTC6 (rs1998359, P = 4.8 × 10-8). We identified one locus with substantial evidence of differences in effects across allergies at 6p21.32 in the class II human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region (rs17533090, P = 1.7 × 10-12), which was strongly associated with cat allergy. Our study sheds new light on the shared etiology of immune and autoimmune disease