A glossary for the social epidemiology of work organization. Part 3: terms from labour markets

This is part 3 of a three-part glossary on the social epidemiology of work organisation. The first two parts deal with the social psychology of work and with organisations. This concluding part presents concepts related to labour markets. These concepts are drawn from economics, business and sociology. They relate both to traditional interests in these disciplines and to contemporary ideas on post-industrialisation and globalisation, particularly the growth of employment in service industries, the development of a 24-h economy, increased participation of the female labour force and the perceived needs of employers in emerging high-tech economies.These changes are of particular interest because they are linked to increasing inequality in earnings and changes in social relationships in employment. These concepts have the potential to elucidate the pathways through which health is affected by conditions of work as an underlying cause

Psychosocial factors and work related sickness absence among permanent and non-permanent employees

Study objective: To examine the association between psychosocial work factors and work related sickness absence among permanent and non-permanent employees by sex.Design: A cross sectional survey conducted in 2000 of a representative sample of the European Union total active population, aged 15 years and older. The independent variables were psychological job demands and job control as measures of psychosocial work environment, and work related sickness absence as the main outcome. Poisson regression models were used to compute sickness absence days' rate ratios.Setting: 15 countries of the European Union.Participants: A sample of permanent (n=12875) and non-permanent (n=1203) workers from the Third European Survey on Working Conditions.Results: High psychological job demands, low job control, and high strain and passive work were associated with higher work related sickness absence. The risks were more pronounced in non-permanent compared with permanent employees and men compared with women.Conclusions: This work extends previous research on employment contracts and sickness absence, suggesting different effects depending on psychosocial working conditions and sex

How to Complete an Interactive Configuration Process?

When configuring customizable software, it is useful to provide interactive tool-support that ensures that the configuration does not breach given constraints. But, when is a configuration complete and how can the tool help the user to complete it? We formalize this problem and relate it to concepts from non-monotonic reasoning well researched in Artificial Intelligence. The results are interesting for both practitioners and theoreticians. Practitioners will find a technique facilitating an interactive configuration process and experiments supporting feasibility of the approach. Theoreticians will find links between well-known formal concepts and a concrete practical application.Comment: to appear in SOFSEM 201

Pattern formation in a predator-prey system characterized by a spatial scale of interaction

We describe pattern formation in ecological systems using a version of the classical Lotka-Volterra model characterized by a spatial scale which controls the predator-prey interaction range. Analytical and simulational results show that patterns can emerge in some regions of the parameters space where the instability is driven by the range of the interaction. The individual-based implementation captures realistic ecological features. In fact, spatial structures emerge in an erratic oscillatory regime which can contemplate predators' extinction.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Extended-spectrum beta-lactamases-producing <i>Escherichia coli</i> in common vampire bats <i>Desmodus rotundus</i> and livestock in Peru

Antibiotic resistance mediated by bacterial production of extended‐spectrum beta‐lactamase (ESBL) is a global threat to public health. ESBL resistance is most commonly hospital‐acquired; however, infections acquired outside of hospital settings have raised concerns over the role of livestock and wildlife in the zoonotic spread of ESBL‐producing bacteria. Only limited data are available on the circulation of ESBL‐producing bacteria in animals. Here, we report ESBL‐producing Escherichia coli in wild common vampire bats Desmodus rotundus and livestock near Lima, Peru. Molecular analyses revealed that most of this resistance resulted from the expression of blaCTX‐M‐15 genes carried by plasmids, which are disseminating worldwide in hospital settings and have also been observed in healthy children of Peru. Multilocus sequence typing showed a diverse pool of E. coli strains carrying this resistance that were not always host species‐specific, suggesting sharing of strains between species or infection from a common source. This study shows widespread ESBL resistance in wild and domestic animals, supporting animal communities as a potential source of resistance. Future work is needed to elucidate the role of bats in the dissemination of antibiotic‐resistant strains of public health importance and to understand the origin of the observed resistance

Observation of two-dimensional Fermi surface and Dirac dispersion in YbMnSb2_2

We present the crystal structure, electronic structure, and transport properties of the material YbMnSb$_2$, a candidate system for the investigation of Dirac physics in the presence of magnetic order. Our measurements reveal that this system is a low-carrier-density semimetal with a 2D Fermi surface arising from a Dirac dispersion, consistent with the predictions of density functional theory calculations of the antiferromagnetic system. The low temperature resistivity is very large, suggesting scattering in this system is highly efficient at dissipating momentum despite its Dirac-like nature.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Characterization of Propellant Flow and Bias Required to Initiate an Arc Discharge in a Heaterless Hollow Cathode

Heaterless hollow cathodes provide an opportunity to reduce complexity and improve reliability in electric propulsion systems. While removal of the heater has little effect on steady-state operation of a hollow cathode, it has a considerable effect on the ignition process. To successfully integrate a heaterless hollow cathode into a spaceflight electric propulsion system, it will be necessary to establish definitive requirements for the propellant feed and electrical subsystems so that ignition of a plasma discharge can be achieved reliably. The aim of this research was to form a better understanding of these requirements by performing an investigation of the propellant flow and voltage conditions required for the ignition of a plasma arc discharge. This aim was achieved by performing discharge initiation experiments using both a specially designed experimental apparatus and a functional heaterless hollow cathode assembly. It was demonstrated that there is a distinct difference in the voltage required to initiate a plasma discharge between two common electric propulsion propellants, xenon and krypton, which suggests that the developmental testing of heaterless hollow cathodes needs to be performed with the appropriate propellant gas species. Heaterless hollow cathode ignition experiments showed that the keeper orifice diameter has a strong effect on the voltage required to ignite a plasma discharge at a given propellant mass flow rate, while the effect of keeper-cathode separation distance was only strong at flow rates below 25 sccm (Xe)

Feature Model Differences

International audienceFeature models are a widespread means to represent commonality and variability in software product lines. As is the case for other kinds of models, computing and managing feature model differences is useful in various real-world situations. In this paper, we propose a set of novel differencing techniques that combine syntactic and semantic mechanisms, and automatically produce meaningful differences. Practitioners can exploit our results in various ways: to understand, manipulate, visualize and reason about differences. They can also combine them with existing feature model composition and decomposition operators. The proposed automations rely on satisfiability algorithms. They come with a dedicated language and a comprehensive environment. We illustrate and evaluate the practical usage of our techniques through a case study dealing with a configurable component framework

Ferromagnetic ordering along the hard axis in the Kondo lattice YbIr3Ge7

Ferromagnetic Kondo lattice compounds are far less common than their antiferromagnetic analogs. In this work, we report the discovery of a new ferromagnetic Kondo lattice compound, YbIr3Ge7. Like almost all ferromagnetic Kondo lattice systems, YbIr3Ge7 shows magnetic order with moments aligned orthogonal to the crystal electric field (CEF) easy axis. YbIr3Ge7 is unique in that it is the only member of this class of compounds that crystallizes in a rhombohedral structure with a trigonal point symmetry of the magnetic site, and it lacks broken inversion symmetry at the local moment site. AC magnetic susceptibility, magnetization, and specific heat measurements show that YbIr3Ge7 has a Kondo temperature TK = 14 K and a Curie temperature TC = 2.4 K. Ferromagnetic order occurs along the crystallographic [100] hard CEF axis despite the large CEF anisotropy of the ground state Kramers doublet with a saturation moment along [001] almost four times larger than the one along [100]. This implies that a mechanism which considers the anisotropy in the exchange interaction to explain the hard axis ordering is unlikely. On the other hand, the broad second-order phase transition at TC favors a fluctuation-induced mechanism