Alternative routes to good jobs in the service economy: Employment restructuring and human resource management in incumbent telecommunications firms

This is a practitioner report detailing findings from a three-year study on organizational restructuring and employment outcomes at 10 incumbent telecommunications firms, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. It presents background on markets, ownership, and institutions in the case study firms and countries, and compares restructuring policies in three areas: downsizing and employment adjustment; diversifying employment contracts; and work organization and human resource Management. The report concludes with policy recommendations, based on findings from the study.ESRC Grant RES-061-25-044

Institutions and Inequality in Liberalizing Markets: Explaining Different Trajectories of Institutional Change in Social Europe

Economic and Social Research Council [grant number RES-061-25-0444]

Investigating Fatigue Performance on the Foamed Asphalt Specimens Generated Using Different Foam Properties

An evaluation of fatigue resistance for foamed asphalt mixture is very demanding since the binder is not continuously distributed on the aggregate surface and this mixtures contains water, the content of which dramatically affects the mechanical properties. This paper discusses the results of laboratory fatigue testingon the foamed asphalt mixtures in which the specimens are generated using three different foamed bitumen properties. Foamed bitumen as the binder was produced at three different foaming water content (FWC) at a temperature of 180oC using a 70/100 pen. The aggregates were mechanically mixed with foamed bitumen using a Hobart mixer. The resulting mixtures were then compacted using a gyratory compactor to generatespecimen with diameter of 100 mm. The specimens were fatigue tested at various stress levels at a temperature of 20oC following a curing period of 3 days at 40oC. Overall, fatigue performance of foamed asphalt can be identified based upon both stress and strain for mixtures produced at FWC 1%, 5%, and 10%

PPAR gamma pro12Ala polymorphism and type 2 diabetes: a study in a spanish cohort

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a disease whose occurrence is increasing prevalent in westernized civilizations and is responsible for the proliferation in the morbidity and total mortality of patients with cardiovascular diseases, worldwide. However, the complexity in the treatment and prevention of T2D arises from the intricacy of the many physical and biological factors involved in its etiology. Impaired pathways for insulin signaling have been implicated as one the many factors in the development of T2D Individual peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) have previously exhibited associations with alterations of lipid profiles, fat tissue and T2D and displayed complications derived from high levels of glucose. However, PPARgamma has not yet been associated with the development or developmental pathways of T2D. We performed an observational study a Spanish cohort in order to better understand the association between the SNP PPARgamma polymorphism Pro12Ala in our patients and the incidence of T2D and other cardiovascular complications. We study did not find a statistically significant relationship between the Pro12Ala and T2D development in our cohort, future observations will help us to know the association with vascular disease in patients with T2D

Cognitive outcome and gamma noise power unrelated to neuregulin 1 and 3 variation in schizophrenia

Background Neuregulins are a family of signalling proteins that orchestrate a broad range of cellular responses. Four genes encoding Neuregulins 1–4 have been identified so far in vertebrates. Among them, Neuregulin 1 and Neuregulin 3 have been reported to contribute to an increased risk for developing schizophrenia. We hypothesized that three specific variants of these genes (rs6994992 and rs3924999 for Neuregulin 1 and rs10748842 for Neuregulin 3) that have been related to this illness may modify information processing capacity in the cortex, which would be reflected in electrophysiological parameters (P3b amplitude or gamma noise power) and/or cognitive performance. Methods We obtained DNA from 31 patients with schizophrenia and 23 healthy controls and analyzed NRG1 rs6994992, NRG1 rs3924999 and NRG3 rs10748842 promoter polymorphisms by allelic discrimination with real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We compared cognitive outcome, P300 amplitude parameters and an electroencephalographic measure of noise power in the gamma band between the groups dichotomized according to genotype. Results Contrary to our hypothesis, we could not detect any significant influence of variation in Neuregulin 1/Neuregulin 3 polymorphisms on cognitive performance or electrophysiological parameters of patients with schizophrenia. Conclusions Despite our findings, we cannot discard that other genetic variants and, more likely, interactions between those variants and with genetic variation related to different pathways may still influence cerebral processing in schizophrenia

Genetic study in patients operated dentally and anesthetized with articaine-epinephrine

Aims: In this study we wanted to figure out if there was a correlation between OPRM1 N40D, TRPV1 I316M, TRPV1 I585V, NOS3 −786T>C and IL6 −174C>G polymorphisms and the response to locally applied articaine-epinephrine anesthetic. Methods: In this observational study, 114 oral cell samples of patients anesthetized with articaine-epinephrine (54 from men 60 from women), were collected from dental centers in Madrid (Spain). High molecular weight DNA was obtained from oral mucosa cells. The analysis of OPRM1 N40D (rs1799971), TRPV1 I316M (rs222747), TRPV1 I585V (rs8065080) and IL6 −174C>G polymorphism was performed through real-time PCR allelic discrimination using TaqMan probes. Polymorphism NOS3 −786T> C (rs2070744) was analyzed using RFLP-PCR. Results: The studied polymorphisms are involved neither in the response to the anesthetic, nor in the intensity of perceived dental pain. However, in a subset of female patients we found that TRPV1 I316M was associated with a delayed onset of anesthesia. Conclusions: There is no association among these polymorphisms and the time elapsed between the application of the anesthetic and the onset of its effect

La "Oración de gracias" de Casimiro Gómez Ortega a la Real Academia de la Historia (5 de Octubre de 1770)

En la presente nota ofrecemos la transcripción y edición de la Oracidn de gracias que Casimiro Gómez Ortega leyó con motivo de su ingreso en la Real Academia de la Historia, el día 5 de octubre de 1770. Por su contenido podemos situar tal discurso en el contexto de la polémica acerca de la ciencia española. Dos de los científicos que intervinieron en dicha polémica durante el período ilustrado fueron José Quer (1695-1 764) y José Cavanilles (1 754-1804), los cuales presentan matices en sus escritos o en la elaboración de los mismos, que impiden una interpretación lineal.CAICYT y el CSi

A New Method for Structural Simulation

In this paper structural change is defined and a tool to simulate structural changes is introduced which consists of a new simulation language which allows to deal separately with quantitative changes and structural qualitative changes. Two strategies of structural simulation are described. In the first one, the user defines the possible structures and conditions of change. In this case, the simulation process finds the structural paths through successive structures. In the second strategy, the structures are generated by the simulation process based on the model of creative thinking proposed by Poincare and Hadamard. AI and genetic programming techniques are used to implement the model. A simple example is given to illustrate the method of the second strategy

High-cadence spectroscopy of M-dwarfs – II. Searching for stellar pulsations with HARPS

Stellar oscillations appear all across the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. Recent theoretical studies support their existence also in the atmosphere of M dwarfs. These studies predict for them short periodicities ranging from 20 min to 3 h. Our Cool Tiny Beats (CTB) programme aims at finding these oscillations for the very first time. With this goal, CTB explores the short time domain of M dwarfs using radial velocity data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS)-European Southern Observatory and HARPS-N high-precision spectrographs. Here we present the results for the two most long-term stable targets observed to date with CTB, GJ 588 and GJ 699 (i.e. Barnard's star). In the first part of this work we detail the correction of several instrumental effects. These corrections are especially relevant when searching for subnight signals. Results show no significant signals in the range where M dwarfs pulsations were predicted. However, we estimate that stellar pulsations with amplitudes larger than ∼0.5 m s−1 can be detected with a 90 per cent completeness with our observations. This result, along with the excess of power regions detected in the periodograms, opens the possibility of non-resolved very low amplitude pulsation signals. Next generation more precise instrumentation would be required to detect such oscillations. However, the possibility of detecting pulsating M-dwarf stars with larger amplitudes is feasible due to the short size of the analysed sample. This motivates the need for completeness of the CTB survey