Exploring employer behaviour in relation to Investors in People

"This report explores employer behaviour in relation to choices they make about Investors in People (IIP) accreditation in order for the future IIP strategy to ensure IIP is relevant, adds value to employers and tackles any barriers to successful delivery. The research focuses on the decision-making processes and experiences of three key groups of employers: employers that have held IIP accreditation for a number of years; employers who previously held IIP accreditation but have let this lapse; and employers who committed to gaining IIP accreditation but subsequently did not to go through the assessment process" - page 1

The gender impact of pension reform : a cross-country analysis

Pension systems may have a different impact on gender because women are less likely than men to work in formal labor markets and earn lower wages when they do. Recent multipillar pension reforms tighten the link between payroll contributions and benefits, leading critics to argue that they will hurt women. In contrast, supporters of these reforms argue that it will help women by the removal of distortions that favored men and the better targeted redistributions in the new systems. To test these conflicting claims and to analyze more generally the gender effect of alternative pension systems, the authors examine the differential impact of the new and old systems in three Latin American countries-Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Based on household survey data, they simulate the wage and employment histories of representative men and women, the pensions they are likely to generate under the new and old rules, and the relative gains or losses of men and women because of the reform. The authors find that women do accumulate private annuities that are only 30-40 percent those of men in the new systems. But this effect is mitigated by sharp targeting of the new public pillars toward low earners, many of whom are women, and by restrictions on payouts from the private pillars, particularly joint annuity requirements. As a result of these transfers, total lifetime retirement benefits for women reach 60-80 percent those of men, and for"full career"women they equal or exceed benefits of men. Also as a result, women are the biggest gainers from the pension reform. For women who receive these transfers, female/male ratios of lifetime benefits in the new systems exceed those in the old systems in all three countries. Private intra-household transfers from husband to wife in the form of joint annuities play the largest role.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Population&Development,Gender and Development,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Population&Development,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Anthropology

Prospects and challenges in the development of universal influenza vaccines

Current influenza vaccines offer suboptimal protection and depend on annual reformulation and yearly administration. Vaccine technology has rapidly advanced during the last decade, facilitating development of next-generation influenza vaccines that can target a broader range of influenza viruses. The development and licensure of a universal influenza vaccine could provide a game changing option for the control of influenza by protecting against all influenza A and B viruses. Here we review important findings and considerations regarding the development of universal influenza vaccines and what we can learn from this moving forward with a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine design.publishedVersio

Reopening Johnson County Hospital: The Beginning of Interprofessional Healthcare Education at ETSU

Johnson County Hospital was a hospital located in Mountain City, TN that existed from 1972 until its final closure in 1998. The hospital faced multiple financial challenges during its existence and was forced to close three times. In 1988 it closed for the penultimate time, and as it had in the past, it counted on the community, local business and local government to reopen the hospital. Three local businessmen were particularly dedicated to reopening the county hospital and reached out to East Tennessee State University (ETSU) and their newly formed College of Medicine. A partnership was formed between the community and ETSU to open a rural campus to educate medical, nursing, public health and allied health students. This rural campus was made a reality through the Kellogg Grant awarded to ETSU in 1991 and was expanded to include graduate medical education in 1996. This collaboration between the community, local businesses, local government and ETSU was able to reopen the hospital in 1992 and jump-started interprofessional education at ETSU which is continued today in the form of the Academic Health Sciences Center and the Interprofessional Education Program

Merging Local and Global 3D Perception for Robotic Grasping and Manipulation

This paper presents our results towards fusing RGB-D images with data from contact and proximity sensors embedded in a robotic hand for improved object perception, recognition and manipulation. Optical depth information from multiple sensors is often inaccurate and inconsistent. These problems arise from problems with sensor calibration, but also occlusion of objects by other objects or the robot arm itself. In this paper, we propose to combine global pose information from RGB-D sensing with local proximity sensing during approach. Here, we use contact information based on a novel contact sensor and additional pose information provided by the arm's pose