California\u27s Campaign For Paid Family Leave: A Model For Passing Federal Paid Leave

Part I of this Comment will provide a background of the stated purposes of the FMLA, the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL), and the benefits each law provides. Part II will discuss the federal income replacement bills of 2009 that need to be reintroduced and enacted to fulfill the FMLA’s intent. Part III will explain why wage replacement is needed at the federal level so that more workers are financially able to access the FMLA’s protections. Part IV will trace the legislative development of the FMLA and PFL to predict the likely challenges that federal income replacement bills will face. Given that paid leave is necessary to fulfill the FMLA’s intent to enable workers to balance work and family, Part V will provide a framework for applying the successful methods of California’s PFL campaign and lessons from court challenges to the FMLA’s regulations to a federal campaign to pass paid family leave

California\u27s Campaign For Paid Family Leave: A Model For Passing Federal Paid Leave

Part I of this Comment will provide a background of the stated purposes of the FMLA, the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL), and the benefits each law provides. Part II will discuss the federal income replacement bills of 2009 that need to be reintroduced and enacted to fulfill the FMLA’s intent. Part III will explain why wage replacement is needed at the federal level so that more workers are financially able to access the FMLA’s protections. Part IV will trace the legislative development of the FMLA and PFL to predict the likely challenges that federal income replacement bills will face. Given that paid leave is necessary to fulfill the FMLA’s intent to enable workers to balance work and family, Part V will provide a framework for applying the successful methods of California’s PFL campaign and lessons from court challenges to the FMLA’s regulations to a federal campaign to pass paid family leave

Intermittent stick-slip dynamics during the peeling of an adhesive tape from a roller

We study experimentally the fracture dynamics during the peeling at a constant velocity of a roller adhesive tape mounted on a freely rotating pulley. Thanks to a high speed camera, we measure, in an intermediate range of peeling velocities, high frequency oscillations between phases of slow and rapid propagation of the peeling fracture. This so-called stick-slip regime is well known as the consequence of a decreasing fracture energy of the adhesive in a certain range of peeling velocity coupled to the elasticity of the peeled tape. Simultaneously with stick-slip, we observe low frequency oscillations of the adhesive roller angular velocity which are the consequence of a pendular instability of the roller submitted to the peeling force. The stick-slip dynamics is shown to become intermittent due to these slow pendular oscillations which produce a quasi-static oscillation of the peeling angle while keeping constant the peeling fracture velocity (averaged over each stick-slip cycle). The observed correlation between the mean peeling angle and the stick-slip amplitude questions the validity of the usually admitted independence with the peeling angle of the fracture energy of adhesives.Comment: Forthcoming in Physical Review

Typical magnitude and spatial extent of crowding in autism

Enhanced spatial processing of local visual details has been reported in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC), and crowding is postulated to be a mechanism that may produce this ability. However, evidence for atypical crowding in ASC is mixed, with some studies reporting a complete lack of crowding in autism and others reporting a typical magnitude of crowding between individuals with and without ASC. Here, we aim to disambiguate these conflicting results by testing both the magnitude and the spatial extent of crowding in individuals with ASC (N = 25) and age- and IQ-matched controls (N = 23) during an orientation discrimination task. We find a strong crowding effect in individuals with and without ASC, which falls off as the distance between target and flanker is increased. Both the magnitude and the spatial range of this effect were comparable between individuals with and without ASC. We also find typical (uncrowded) orientation discrimination thresholds in individuals with ASC. These findings suggest that the spatial extent of crowding is unremarkable in ASC, and is therefore unlikely to account for the visual symptoms reported in individuals with the diagnosis.This work was supported by a Medical Research Council (MRC) UK grant to JF, a Harvard Society of Fellows grant to CER, and grants from the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Autism Research Trust to SBC. This study was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC EoE and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology via http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/16.5.1

Reduced perceptual exclusivity during object and grating rivalry in autism.

The dynamics of binocular rivalry may be a behavioral footprint of excitatory and inhibitory neural transmission in visual cortex. Given the presence of atypical visual features in Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), and the growing evidence in support of the idea of an imbalance in excitatory/inhibitory neural transmission in animal and genetic models of ASC, we hypothesized that binocular rivalry might prove a simple behavioral marker of such a transmission imbalance in the autistic brain. In support of this hypothesis, we previously reported a slower rate of rivalry in ASC, driven by longer transitional states between dominant percepts. We tested whether atypical dynamics of binocular rivalry in ASC are specific to certain stimulus features. 53 participants (26 with ASC, matched for age, sex, and IQ) participated in a binocular rivalry experiment in which the dynamics of rivalry were measured at two levels of stimulus complexity, low (grayscale gratings) and high (colored objects). Individuals with ASC experienced a slower rate of binocular rivalry, driven by longer transitional states between dominant percepts. These exaggerated transitional states were present at both low and high levels of stimulus complexity (gratings and objects), suggesting that atypical binocular dynamics in autism are robust with respect to stimulus choice. Interactions between stimulus properties and rivalry dynamics in autism indicate that achromatic grating stimuli produce stronger group differences. These results confirm the finding of atypical dynamics of binocular rivalry in ASC. These dynamics were present for stimuli of both low and high levels of visual complexity, suggesting a pervasive imbalance in competitive interactions throughout the visual system of individuals with ASC.This work was supported by a Medical Research Council (MRC) UK grant to JF, a Harvard Society of Fellows grant to CER, and grants from the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Autism Research Trust to SBC. This study was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC EoE and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology via http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/15.13.1

Typical magnitude and spatial extent of crowding in autism.

Enhanced spatial processing of local visual details has been reported in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC), and crowding is postulated to be a mechanism that may produce this ability. However, evidence for atypical crowding in ASC is mixed, with some studies reporting a complete lack of crowding in autism and others reporting a typical magnitude of crowding between individuals with and without ASC. Here, we aim to disambiguate these conflicting results by testing both the magnitude and the spatial extent of crowding in individuals with ASC (N = 25) and age- and IQ-matched controls (N = 23) during an orientation discrimination task. We find a strong crowding effect in individuals with and without ASC, which falls off as the distance between target and flanker is increased. Both the magnitude and the spatial range of this effect were comparable between individuals with and without ASC. We also find typical (uncrowded) orientation discrimination thresholds in individuals with ASC. These findings suggest that the spatial extent of crowding is unremarkable in ASC, and is therefore unlikely to account for the visual symptoms reported in individuals with the diagnosis.This work was supported by a Medical Research Council (MRC) UK grant to JF, a Harvard Society of Fellows grant to CER, and grants from the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Autism Research Trust to SBC. This study was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC EoE and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology via http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/16.5.1

Understanding Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Challenges Within the Research Software Community

Research software -- specialist software used to support or undertake research -- is of huge importance to researchers. It contributes to significant advances in the wider world and requires collaboration between people with diverse skills and backgrounds. Analysis of recent survey data provides evidence for a lack of diversity in the Research Software Engineer community. We identify interventions which could address challenges in the wider research software community and highlight areas where the community is becoming more diverse. There are also lessons that are applicable, more generally, to the field of software development around recruitment from other disciplines and the importance of welcoming communities.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures and tables, SE4Science21 track at 2021 International Conference on Computational Scienc

Implementing Smart Specialisation: An analysis of practices across Europe

This report seeks to examine how the Smart Specialisation approach was put into practice across European regions and Member States. It builds upon 35 implementation cases, outlining three main types of challenges that policy-makers are seeking to address through the implementation of their Smart Specialisation Strategies: 1) the involvement of stakeholders in a continuous dialogue to drive the territorial innovation process; 2) the development of efficient innovation policy instruments to support the structural transformation of the economy at regional and/or national level; 3) the pursuit of the internationalisation of the regional/national economy as well as the positioning in European value chains. For each key challenges identified, the report sheds light on the success-conducive factors and tools that have been used by policy-makers to manage the Smart Specialisation policy process, as well as the recurring types of outcomes that were achieved thanks to the implementation of Smart Specialisation related policies. The study lays out a broad range of research and innovation support systems that have been developed and that have driven a) a wider implication of stakeholders in innovation projects; b) the articulation and better functioning of innovation ecosystem; c) the reinforcement of transnational cooperation in S3 priority domains, although joint investment is still a weak point at this stage.JRC.B.3-Territorial Developmen