Decent working time: New trends, new issues.

Includes selected papers from the 9th International Symposium on Working Time, Paris (2004), looking at the increasing use of results-based employment relationships for managers and professionals, and the increasing fragmentation of time to more closely tailor staffing needs to customer requirements (e.g., short-hours, part-time work). Moreover, as operating/opening hours rapidly expand toward a 24-hour and 7-day economy, the book considers how this has resulted in a growing diversification, decentralization, and individualization of working hours, as well as an increasing tension between enterprises' business requirements and workers' needs and preferences regarding their hours. It addresses issues such as increasing employment insecurity and instability, time-related social inequalities, particularly in relation to gender, workers' ability to balance their paid work with their personal lives, and the synchronization of working hours with social times, such as community activities. In addition, the book offers suggestions on how policy-makers, academics, and the social partners can together help further develop effective policies for advancing "decent working timeRéduction du temps de travail; Aménagement du temps de travail; Horaires de travail; Labor laws and legislation; Developed countries; Trend; Arrangement of working time; Flexible hours of work; Hours of work;

Decent working time. New trends, new Issues

International audienc

Work-time underemployment and financial hardship: class inequalities and recession in the UK

The economic crisis that led to recession in the UK in 2008–9 impacted in multiple ways on work and economic life. This article examines changes to the work-time of employees. The UK stood out for its recessionary expansion of work-time underemployment. Working in a job that provides ‘too few’ hours can have serious ramifications for the economic livelihood of workers. Working-class workers are central here. Drawing on analysis of large-scale survey data, the article identifies that workers in lower level occupations experienced the most substantial post-recessionary growth in the proportions working ‘too few’ hours. Did these work-time changes narrow or widen class inequalities in feelings of financial hardship? The article concludes that although middle-class workers also saw their financial positions damaged, this so-called ‘first middle-class recession’ did not erode class inequalities in financial hardship among UK workers

A Toolkit and Robust Pipeline for the Generation of Fosmid-Based Reporter Genes in C. elegans

Engineering fluorescent proteins into large genomic clones, contained within BACs or fosmid vectors, is a tool to visualize and study spatiotemporal gene expression patterns in transgenic animals. Because these reporters cover large genomic regions, they most likely capture all cis-regulatory information and can therefore be expected to recapitulate all aspects of endogenous gene expression. Inserting tags at the target gene locus contained within genomic clones by homologous recombination (“recombineering”) represents the most straightforward method to generate these reporters. In this methodology paper, we describe a simple and robust pipeline for recombineering of fosmids, which we apply to generate reporter constructs in the nematode C. elegans, whose genome is almost entirely covered in an available fosmid library. We have generated a toolkit that allows for insertion of fluorescent proteins (GFP, YFP, CFP, VENUS, mCherry) and affinity tags at specific target sites within fosmid clones in a virtually seamless manner. Our new pipeline is less complex and, in our hands, works more robustly than previously described recombineering strategies to generate reporter fusions for C. elegans expression studies. Furthermore, our toolkit provides a novel recombineering cassette which inserts a SL2-spliced intercistronic region between the gene of interest and the fluorescent protein, thus creating a reporter controlled by all 5′ and 3′ cis-acting regulatory elements of the examined gene without the direct translational fusion between the two. With this configuration, the onset of expression and tissue specificity of secreted, sub-cellular compartmentalized or short-lived gene products can be easily detected. We describe other applications of fosmid recombineering as well. The simplicity, speed and robustness of the recombineering pipeline described here should prompt the routine use of this strategy for expression studies in C. elegans

A Genome-Wide Collection of Mos1 Transposon Insertion Mutants for the C. elegans Research Community

Methods that use homologous recombination to engineer the genome of C. elegans commonly use strains carrying specific insertions of the heterologous transposon Mos1. A large collection of known Mos1 insertion alleles would therefore be of general interest to the C. elegans research community. We describe here the optimization of a semi-automated methodology for the construction of a substantial collection of Mos1 insertion mutant strains. At peak production, more than 5,000 strains were generated per month. These strains were then subject to molecular analysis, and more than 13,300 Mos1 insertions characterized. In addition to targeting directly more than 4,700 genes, these alleles represent the potential starting point for the engineered deletion of essentially all C. elegans genes and the modification of more than 40% of them. This collection of mutants, generated under the auspices of the European NEMAGENETAG consortium, is publicly available and represents an important research resource

The Caenorhabditis elegans Eph Receptor Activates NCK and N-WASP, and Inhibits Ena/VASP to Regulate Growth Cone Dynamics during Axon Guidance

The Eph receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are regulators of cell migration and axon guidance. However, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which Eph RTKs regulate these processes is still incomplete. To understand how Eph receptors regulate axon guidance in Caenorhabditis elegans, we screened for suppressors of axon guidance defects caused by a hyperactive VAB-1/Eph RTK. We identified NCK-1 and WSP-1/N-WASP as downstream effectors of VAB-1. Furthermore, VAB-1, NCK-1, and WSP-1 can form a complex in vitro. We also report that NCK-1 can physically bind UNC-34/Enabled (Ena), and suggest that VAB-1 inhibits the NCK-1/UNC-34 complex and negatively regulates UNC-34. Our results provide a model of the molecular events that allow the VAB-1 RTK to regulate actin dynamics for axon guidance. We suggest that VAB-1/Eph RTK can stop axonal outgrowth by inhibiting filopodia formation at the growth cone by activating Arp2/3 through a VAB-1/NCK-1/WSP-1 complex and by inhibiting UNC-34/Ena activity

CO2 wettability of seal and reservoir rocks and the implications for carbon geo-sequestration

We review the literature data published on the topic of CO2 wettability of storage and seal rocks. We first introduce the concept of wettability and explain why it is important in the context of carbon geo-sequestration (CGS) projects, and review how it is measured. This is done to raise awareness of this parameter in the CGS community, which, as we show later on in this text, may have a dramatic impact on structural and residual trapping of CO2. These two trapping mechanisms would be severely and negatively affected in case of CO2-wet storage and/or seal rock. Overall, at the current state of the art, a substantial amount of work has been completed, and we find that: 1. Sandstone and limestone, plus pure minerals such as quartz, calcite, feldspar, and mica are strongly water wet in a CO2-water system. 2. Oil-wet limestone, oil-wet quartz, or coal is intermediate wet or CO2 wet in a CO2-water system. 3. The contact angle alone is insufficient for predicting capillary pressures in reservoir or seal rocks. 4. The current contact angle data have a large uncertainty. 5. Solid theoretical understanding on a molecular level of rock-CO2-brine interactions is currently limited. 6. In an ideal scenario, all seal and storage rocks in CGS formations are tested for their CO2 wettability. 7. Achieving representative subsurface conditions (especially in terms of the rock surface) in the laboratory is of key importance but also very challenging