The intern economy: Laboring to learn in the music industry

As internships become an increasingly normal part of early careers, there is a need to examine how internships really function, if--and how--they benefit interns and companies. Through participant observation at two firms and semi-structured interviews, I focus on one of the major users of unpaid intern labor--the music industry--to analyze the meanings of intern work, both for the interns themselves and their supervisors. Consequently, this research provides an account of how aspiring and current workers in a competitive industry make sense of and reproduce precarious work conditions. By focusing on how interns and employees construct the importance of the music business within a context of routinized work, I analyze how the charisma of artistic production generates a powerful, but short-lived source of commitment for workers. I show how the lure of the music industry attracts people who want to do important work, though participants must learn to convey their excitement according to an informal code of conduct. Moreover, I show how music industry personnel generally devalue formal educational pathways to music industry employment, instead privileging on-site learning as an ennobling rite of passage. Aspiring and paid employees interpret and accept what I call the mailroom model for training. The responsibility for training thus falls on the intern and occurs under challenging circumstances. I find that interns perform provisional labor - work that is temporary, conditional, and ambiguous ( what you make of it ). Interns embody a flexible pool of labor for a host company, allowing for a range of formal and informal benefits for all parties concerned. Analyzing how people do succeed within the intern economy, I find that it is possible for interns to elevate their status and move beyond the characteristics and constraints of the role, though notions of race, class, age, and gender inform the selection and evaluation of interns. Taken together, the above suggests how the intern economy exacerbates class and other forms of inequality while nonetheless allowing some especially skilled interns to secure advancement. I conclude with an analysis of current intern activism and legal challenges to unpaid work

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Abstracts from the 8th International Conference on cGMP Generators, Effectors and Therapeutic Implications

This work was supported by a restricted research grant of Bayer AG

From Apprenticeship to Internship: The Social and Legal Antecedents of the Intern Economy

This article looks towards the future of the intern economy by focusing on its past. What led to recent debates about the intern economy? How did it become legally possible for interns to work for free? Using the United States as my case study, I draw parallels between the current intern economy and its closest historical antecedent, the apprenticeship system. By providing a brief overview of the history of work-based learning and the unpaid internship’s legal underpinnings, this article ultimately frames current lawsuits and debates as a correction to today’s insufficiently scrutinized youth labour regime not unlike the apprenticeship systems of the past. In the attempt to facilitate youth transitions from school to work, yet maintain minimum wage standards, government intervention and—more imminently likely—legal decisions will, I anticipate, eventually transform the intern economy much like the Fitzgerald Act of 1937 drastically formalized apprenticeships in the United States

Ciprofloxacin Alone vs. Ciprofloxacin plus an Aminoglycoside for the Prevention of Infectious Complications following a Transrectal Ultrasound-Guided Prostate Biopsy: A Retrospective Cohort Study

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of augmented prophylaxis (ciprofloxacin augmented with an aminoglycoside) compared with that of empirical prophylaxis (ciprofloxacin alone) on transrectal post-prostate biopsy infectious complication (PBIC) rates. A retrospective cohort study evaluated 2835 patients receiving either augmented or empirical prophylactic regimen before undergoing a transrectal ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy between January 2010 and October 2018. The patients were compared according to prophylactic regimen received. The incidence of PBICs and the impact of risk factors were evaluated. A total of 1849 patients received the empirical regimen, and 986 patients received the augmented regimen. The composite PBIC rate was 2.1% (n = 39) and 0.9% (n = 9) (p = 0.019), respectively, and the SIRS rate was 1.9% and 0.8% (p = 0.020), respectively. Of the 50 patients presenting with a PBIC, 29 (58%) had positive cultures (blood and/or urine) for Escherichia coli, of which 28 (97%) were ciprofloxacin-resistant. Taking a fluoroquinolone in the previous 6 months and having a previous urinary tract infection within 1 year prior to the biopsy had significant impact on PBIC rates (p = 0.009 and p = 0.011, respectively). Compared with ciprofloxacin alone, augmented prophylaxis was associated with significantly lower PBICs

Ablation of Potassium-Chloride Cotransporter Type 3 (Kcc3) in Mouse Causes Multiple Cardiovascular Defects and Isosmotic Polyuria.

Inactivation of Kcc3 in a mixed 129/Sv×C57BL/6 mouse background has been previously found to increase systemic blood pressure (BP) through presumed neurogenic mechanisms. Yet, while this background is generally not considered ideal to investigate the cardiovascular system, KCC3 is also expressed in the arterial wall and proximal nephron. In the current study, the effects of Kcc3 ablation was investigated in a pure rather than mixed C57BL/6J background under regular- and high-salt diets to determine whether they could be mediated through vasculogenic and nephrogenic mechanisms. Aortas were also assessed for reactivity to pharmacological agents while isolated from the influence of sympathetic ganglia. This approach led to the identification of unforeseen abnormalities such as lower pulse pressure, heart rate, aortic reactivity and aortic wall thickness, but higher diastolic BP, left ventricular mass and urinary output in the absence of increased catecholamine levels. Salt loading also led systolic BP to be higher, but to no further changes in hemodynamic parameters. Importantly, aortic vascular smooth muscle cells and cardiomyocytes were both found to express KCC3 abundantly in heterozygous mice. Hence, Kcc3 inactivation in our model caused systemic vascular resistance and ventricular mass to increase while preventing extracellular fluid volume to accumulate. Given that it also affected the physiological properties of aortas in vitro, vasculogenic mechanisms could therefore account for a number of the hemodynamic abnormalities observed