Changing Perspectives in British Economic Sociology

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The vulnerability of the low-skilled

The low-skilled are a critical category for analyses of labour market marginalization. Class analysis has tended to depict low-skilled employees as sharing a broadly similar position with respect to both employment and labour market conditions. Their employment relationship is defined by a specific type of contract – the labour contract – characterized by precarious pay, low asset specificity and high job insecurity. This contrasts with employees who benefit from a service relationship which is designed to bind employees to the organization on a longer term basis. Recent neo-institutional theories however have emphasized the diversity of employment conditions between advanced capitalist societies, depending in particular on the nature of their production, employment and welfare regimes. An important issue is whether such divergences apply only to more skilled categories of the workforce (and hence lead to accentuated polarization) or also affect the employment conditions of the low-skilled. Are the low-skilled significantly more integrated into the labour market in some countries than in others and hence less vulnerable in times of economic restructuring? The paper will examine this by comparing a number of EU-15 countries that have been regarded as reflecting contrasting institutional regimes. It will focus in particular on the position of the low-skilled with respect to pay, training and job security

LIVED EXPERIENCES OF EMIRATI SENIOR WOMEN MANAGERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

Over the last four decades, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sought to ensure the full, comprehensive inclusion of women in both education and the workplace. Motivated by my own rise from a relatively humble upbringing to later professional success achieved largely against the odds, this thesis aims, through the use of narrative analysis, to establish the reasons behind the accomplishments of five Emirati women managers in Higher Education (HE). The thesis contextualises their testimony by providing a historical overview of the UAE and a comprehensive examination of the literature; and setting out the critical feminist perspective at the heart of this study, which influenced the research paradigm: linking this with the narrative analysis method adopted. The life stories of the five women are analysed in detail, in order to identify key themes and commonalities. These key themes are: support received from different individuals at different times; opportunities provided by political, cultural and structural change in the UAE; personal resilience and resolve to succeed; and the importance of the Islamic faith. Taken together, the women’s testimony justifies the use of narrative analysis; it provides lessons for policymakers to learn (as well as recommendations set out at the end of the thesis, which seek to nourish an environment based on genuine equality of opportunity for all) and inspiration for future generations of Emirati women and girls seeking to follow in their footsteps

Activation workers’ perceptions of their long-term unemployed clients’ attitudes towards employment

The Work Programme’s use of severe social security benefit sanctions reflects British coalition ministers’ belief that many people on out-of-work benefits do not want a job. While a substantial empirical literature has repeatedly demonstrated that in fact unemployed benefit claimants possess the same work values as the employed and that the vast majority want paid work, it has ignored some conservative authors’ pleas to consider the views and experiences of people who work with the unemployed. Forty employees of agencies contracted to help unemployed people into employment were interviewed in summer 2011. Respondents had spent an estimated combined total of 147,000 hours in the presence of people who have claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for over six months. Most said that between a quarter and half of their present clients did not want employment. This finding does not contradict existing research, given that most JSA claimants re-enter employment within six months. However, all forty agreed that many others remained unemployed because they were choosy in the jobs they were willing to undertake, and,most strikingly, respondents overwhelmingly endorsed the view that a ‘dependency culture’ exists in households and neighbourhoods that have experienced joblessness for several generations

Partnership, high performance work systems and quality of working life

The paper measures the effects of workplace partnership and selected high performance work practices on four different dimensions of employee experience. Whilst the partnership-high performance work systems nexus seems to have little impact on employees' job satisfaction or sense of attachment, it does, however, have a negative impact on both workplace stress and employee evaluations of union performance. The analysis thus questions common assumptions about the inevitability of 'mutual gain' and the necessity of employer/unionpartnership. Introduction and researc

The Histone 3'-Terminal Stem-Loop-Binding Protein Enhances Translation through a Functional and Physical Interaction with Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 4G (eIF4G) and eIF3

Metazoan cell cycle-regulated histone mRNAs are unique cellular mRNAs in that they terminate in a highly conserved stem-loop structure instead of a poly(A) tail. Not only is the stem-loop structure necessary for 3'-end formation but it regulates the stability and translational efficiency of histone mRNAs. The histone stem-loop structure is recognized by the stem-loop-binding protein (SLBP), which is required for the regulation of mRNA processing and turnover. In this study, we show that SLBP is required for the translation of mRNAs containing the histone stem-loop structure. Moreover, we show that the translation of mRNAs ending in the histone stem-loop is stimulated in Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells expressing mammalian SLBP. The translational function of SLBP genetically required eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E), eIF4G, and eIF3, and expressed SLBP coisolated with S. cerevisiae initiation factor complexes that bound the 5' cap in a manner dependent on eIF4G and eIF3. Furthermore, eIF4G coimmunoprecipitated with endogenous SLBP in mammalian cell extracts and recombinant SLBP and eIF4G coisolated. These data indicate that SLBP stimulates the translation of histone mRNAs through a functional interaction with both the mRNA stem-loop and the 5' cap that is mediated by eIF4G and eIF3

Announcement of the meeting of the National Dental Association

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Induction of Monozygotic Twinning by Ascorbic Acid in Tobacco

Embryo development in plants initiates following the transverse division of a zygote into an apical, proembryo cell and a basal cell that gives rise to the suspensor. Although mutants affected in embryo development through changes in cell division have been described, little is known about the control of the first zygotic division that gives rise to the proembryo. Ascorbic acid (Asc) promotes cell division by inducing G1 to S progression but its role in embryo development has not been examined. In this study, we show that the level of dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR) expression, which recycles Asc and regulates Asc pool size, affects the rate of monozygotic twinning and polycotyly. DHAR-induced twinning resulted from altered cell polarity and longitudinal instead of transverse cell division that generated embryos of equal size. Direct injection of Asc into ovaries phenocopied DHAR-induced twinning. Twinning induced by Asc was developmentally limited to the first two days after pollination whereas polycotyly was induced when the level of Asc was elevated just prior to cotyledon initiation. This work describes the first example of gene-directed monozygotic twinning and shows that Asc regulates cell polarity during embryo development

Job quality and inequality: The unequal world of work in the UK, 1986-2012

Job quality has become a prominent issue in recent years - and with good reason, say Francis Green, Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie. Their findings on inequality and job quality and how they have changed illuminate the true state of Britain's labour market, and make clear the need for changes in policy to improve working lives

The birth of a bacterial tRNA gene by large-scale, tandem duplication events

Organisms differ in the types and numbers of tRNA genes that they carry. While the evolutionary mechanisms behind tRNA gene set evolution have been investigated theoretically and computationally, direct observations of tRNA gene set evolution remain rare. Here, we report the evolution of a tRNA gene set in laboratory populations of the bacterium ̑extitPseudomonas fluorescens} SBW25. The growth defect caused by deleting the single-copy tRNA gene, ̑extit{serCGA}, is rapidly compensated by large-scale (45–290 kb) duplications in the chromosome. Each duplication encompasses a second, compensatory tRNA gene (̑extit{serTGA}) and is associated with a rise in tRNA-Ser(UGA) in the mature tRNA pool. We postulate that tRNA-Ser(CGA) elimination increases the translational demand for tRNA-Ser(UGA), a pressure relieved by increasing ̑extit{serTGA copy number. This work demonstrates that tRNA gene sets can evolve through duplication of existing tRNA genes, a phenomenon that may contribute to the presence of multiple, identical tRNA gene copies within genomes