Severance pay compliance in Indonesia

This paper contributes new evidence from two large household surveys on the compliance of firms with severance pay regulations in Indonesia, and the extent to which changes in severance pay regulations could affect employment rigidity. Compliance appears to be low, as only one-third of workers entitled to severance pay report receiving it, and on average workers only collect 40 percent of the payment due to them. Eligible female and low-wage workers are least likely to report receiving payments. Widespread non-compliance is consistent with trends in employment rigidity, which remained essentially unchanged following the large increases in severance mandated by the 2003 law. These results suggest that workers may benefit from a compromise that relaxes severance pay regulations while improving enforcement of severance pay statutes, and possibly establishing a system of unemployment benefits.Labor Markets,Wages, Compensation&Benefits,Social Protections&Assistance,Labor Policies,Labor Management and Relations

Automatic Tail-Cutter

The goal of this project is to design and test a universal ramp that guides runners into any size grinder that may be a short distance away from the press. Design consideration will be key to this project. It should be lightweight, easy to install, while considering other relevant design considerations as well. In addition, the universal ramp will need to be able to mount to any style press we have. The runners will vary in length and width, so the universal ramp will need to be able to change size to accommodate for the different sizes of runners

Exploring Apprenticeship Learning for Player Modelling in Interactive Narratives

In this paper we present an early Apprenticeship Learning approach to mimic the behaviour of different players in a short adaption of the interactive fiction Anchorhead. Our motivation is the need to understand and simulate player behaviour to create systems to aid the design and personalisation of Interactive Narratives (INs). INs are partially observable for the players and their goals are dynamic as a result. We used Receding Horizon IRL (RHIRL) to learn players' goals in the form of reward functions, and derive policies to imitate their behaviour. Our preliminary results suggest that RHIRL is able to learn action sequences to complete a game, and provided insights towards generating behaviour more similar to specific players.Comment: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI Play

The Role of Checkpoint Kinase 1 in Sensitivity to Topoisomerase I Poisons

Agents that target topoisomerase I are widely utilized to treat human cancer. Previous studies have indicated that both the ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM)/ checkpoint kinase (Chk) 2 and ATM- and Rad 3-related (ATR)/Chk1 checkpoint pathways are activated after treatment with these agents. The relative contributions of these two pathways to survival of cells after treatment with topoisomerase I poisons are currently unknown. To address this issue, we assessed the roles of ATR, Chk1, ATM, and Chk2 in cells treated with the topoisomerase I poisons camptothecin and 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin (SN-38), the active metabolite of irinotecan. Colony forming assays demonstrated that down-regulation of ATR or Chk1 sensitized cells to SN-38 and camptothecin. In contrast, ATM and Chk2 had minimal effect of sensitivity to SN-38 or camptothecin. Additional experiments demonstrated that the Hsp90 inhibitor 17-allylamino-17-demethoxygeldanamycin, which down-regulates Chk1, also sensitized a variety of human carcinoma cell lines to SN-38. Collectively, these results show that the ATR/Chk1 pathway plays a predominant role in the response to topoisomerase I inhibitors in carcinoma cells and identify a potential approach for enhancing the efficacy of these drugs

A study of parental involvement in three central Illinois school band programs

Three Central Illinois band programs were chosen at random for this study which involved 369 eighth and eleventh grade students and 656 parents. Students and parents were placed by their band director in one of four sub-groups for data collection and analysis based on the students current musical achievement as compared to their peers: above average, average, below average and dropouts. Questionnaires were administered to the eighth and eleventh grade students during the school day. Parent questionnaires were mailed directly to each individual parent.Conclusions were: (1) Parental involvement activities may be organized into three categories: Category I - Child Supportive Parental Involvement Activities; Category II - Parental Involvement Activities Supportive of the Total Program Which Directly Impact the Individual Child; and Category III - Parental Involvement Activities Supportive of the total Program Which Indirectly Impact the Individual Child. (2) Parental involvement activities in all categories are perceived by school administrators, band directors, students and their parents as important to the success of individual student success and total band program success. (3) The activities in which parents are involved were revealed by this study to have developed over time due to a perception by the parents that these specific activities were expected by the school and the child and were, therefore, important. (4) Band directors in this study had specific expectations for parental involvement that commonly were not being communicated to all the parents on a regular basis. Booster organizations served primarily fiscal needs and other non-academic purposes. (5) There is a difference in the quantity and quality of parental involvement activities identified by this study among students judged to be above average, average, and below average in musical achievement. (6) Parents of students who dropped band were not as supportive of their child's participation in band; they were similar in the type and degree of involvement with their child to the parents of students who were judged as below average. (7) Parents of band students, especially those who were judged to be below average by the band director, were desirous of more information concerning the musical strengths and weaknesses of their child and what they might do to help their child. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio