Study of employability role in occupational mobility and transition with PLS structural equation model

Frequent reorganization and downsizing processes cause a dramatic increase of occupational transitions, having a strong impact on career models. Whereas job security is assumed to be important in predicting employees\u2019 well-being under a traditional career model, employability is considered crucial for the workers well-being under the new conditions of labour market. In general the concept of employability, from the individual worker\u2019s perspective, is an indicator of his or her opportunity to acquire and to keep an attractive job in the internal or external labour market. While there are several studies on employability of employees, there are only few studies on dismissed workers, who are managing an involuntary transition that is not linked to a personal career project. One of the objectives of labour policies is to set out preventive actions identifying in advance workers who are at risk of long-term unemployment. To implement this objective it is important to identify employability resources and protective factors to play on. However there isn\u2019t enough empirical evidence of the applicability of the construct of employability to involuntary occupational transitions and it is uncertain the dimensions of personal employability that should be developed to minimize the risk of depression and to sustain the worker in his/her search of a new post. Moreover in Italian outplacement services there isn\u2019t an agreed system of employability profiling. Starting from the psycho-social model to employability suggested by Fugate and partners, the aim of our contribution is to analyze the role of employability in re-employment processes for dismissed workers. Through structural equation models we want to study the relation between personal employability resources and mental and physical health. We want therefore to understand if and how some variables influence this relation. These variables have been identified as potential risk factors in unemployment situations: the perception of organizational justice, the perceived employability and the perceived utility of re-employment services. Our research involved dismissed workers in the pharmaceutical sector, who joined programs of requalification and re-employment sponsored by companies within a Welfare-to-Work project called Welfarm

Direct observation of the flux-line vortex glass phase in a type II superconductor

The order of the vortex state in La_{1.9} Sr_{0.1} CuO_{4} is probed using muon spin rotation and small-angle neutron scattering. A transition from a Bragg glass to a vortex glass is observed, where the latter is composed of disordered vortex lines. In the vicinity of the transition the microscopic behavior reflects a delicate interplay of thermally-induced and pinning-induced disorder.Comment: 14 pages, 4 colour figures include

PPARγ Controls Ectopic Adipogenesis and Cross-Talks with Myogenesis During Skeletal Muscle Regeneration.

Skeletal muscle is a regenerative tissue which can repair damaged myofibers through the activation of tissue-resident muscle stem cells (MuSCs). Many muscle diseases with impaired regeneration cause excessive adipose tissue accumulation in muscle, alter the myogenic fate of MuSCs, and deregulate the cross-talk between MuSCs and fibro/adipogenic progenitors (FAPs), a bi-potent cell population which supports myogenesis and controls intra-muscular fibrosis and adipocyte formation. In order to better characterize the interaction between adipogenesis and myogenesis, we studied muscle regeneration and MuSC function in whole body <i>Pparg</i> null mice generated by epiblast-specific Cre/lox deletion ( <i>Pparg <sup>Δ/Δ</sup></i> ). We demonstrate that deletion of PPARγ completely abolishes ectopic muscle adipogenesis during regeneration and impairs MuSC expansion and myogenesis after injury. Ex vivo assays revealed that perturbed myogenesis in <i>Pparg <sup>Δ/Δ</sup></i> mice does not primarily result from intrinsic defects of MuSCs or from perturbed myogenic support from FAPs. The immune transition from a pro- to anti-inflammatory MuSC niche during regeneration is perturbed in <i>Pparg <sup>Δ/Δ</sup></i> mice and suggests that PPARγ signaling in macrophages can interact with ectopic adipogenesis and influence muscle regeneration. Altogether, our study demonstrates that a PPARγ-dependent adipogenic response regulates muscle fat infiltration during regeneration and that PPARγ is required for MuSC function and efficient muscle repair

Muons as Local Probes of Three-body Correlations in the Mixed State of Type-II Superconductors

The vortex glass state formed by magnetic flux lines in a type-II superconductor is shown to possess non-trivial three-body correlations. While such correlations are usually difficult to measure in glassy systems, the magnetic fields associated with the flux vortices allow us to probe these via muon-spin rotation measurements of the local field distribution. We show via numerical simulations and analytic calculations that these observations provide detailed microscopic insight into the local order of the vortex glass and more generally validate a theoretical framework for correlations in glassy systems.Comment: 4+ pages, high-quality figures available on reques

Distributed optimal control of a nonstandard system of phase field equations

We investigate a distributed optimal control problem for a phase field model of Cahn-Hilliard type. The model describes two-species phase segregation on an atomic lattice under the presence of diffusion; it has been recently introduced by the same authors in arXiv:1103.4585v1 [math.AP] and consists of a system of two highly nonlinearly coupled PDEs. For this reason, standard arguments of optimal control theory do not apply directly, although the control constraints and the cost functional are of standard type. We show that the problem admits a solution, and we derive the first-order necessary conditions of optimality.Comment: Key words: distributed optimal control, nonlinear phase field systems, first-order necessary optimality condition

Employability and involuntary occupational transitions management : an explorative research with workers on unemployment benefit

Fragmented nature of current careers has placed at the centre of attention the concept of employability. This paper presents an explorative study aimed at analysing employability during the occupational transition of dismissed workers. In the light of the psychosocial approach suggested by Fugate and colleagues, the principal goal was to explore the relationship between dispositional employability and two crucial aspects of outplacement, re-employment and physical and mental health, hypothesizing a mediating role of perceived employability and perceived utility of outplacement services. The research involved pharmaceutical workers on unemployment benefit. Our analysis confirmed that dispositional employability can be considered as a latent multidimensional construct which sparingly summarizes three latent dimensions (self-efficacy in managing work changes; social capital; work career proactivity). Results highlighted that dispositional employability has a fairly direct impact on physical and mental health, but it is not associated with reemployment. Moreover perceived employability mediates the relationship between dispositional employability and perceived utility of outplacement services, while it doesn\u2019t have a direct connection with psychophysical health. Implications on career counselling are discusse