Taking Stock of Retirement: How Workers and Employers Assess Pensions, Trust, and the Economy

This survey polls workers and employers regarding their views on corporate scandals and the collapse of Enron, the impact of these events on trust in the workplace, and policy strategies needed to increase pension and retirement security

The Disposable Worker: Living in a Job-Loss Economy

This important survey finds many U.S. workers have experienced job loss and the pinch of economic uncertainty during the 2000-2003 recession. The survey includes a large sample of workers who lost their jobs. The survey shows that many workers were laid off without any advance notice, severance pay, health care coverage, or career counseling. However, large numbers of workers believe these services and benefits are critical to their economic survival. Worker confidence in the U.S. economy and political leadership were at the lowest levels recorded in the history of the then six-year Work Trends series

A Workplace Divided: How Americans View Discrimination and Race on the Job

In this Work Trends survey, American workers express their views on the contentious issue of discrimination in the workplace -- how they perceive and experience discrimination as well as what they expect government and employers to do about it

At a Crossroads: American Workers Assess Jobs and Economic Security Amid the Race for President

New national Work Trends study finds high level of concern about job security, economy, and that citizens are divided on candidates' ability to address their concerns

The Biological Significance of the Tegument in Digenetic Trematodes

Paper by K. E. Dixo

Turning Brownfields into Jobfields

A handbook for practitioners and citizens on making brownfields development work

Laid Off: American Workers and Employers Assess a Volatile Labor Market

This Work Trends survey shows that despite economic growth, worker concern for the economy, their job security, and the threat of terrorism is increasing; workers and employers express fear about outsourcing jobs abroad

Swimming in curved space or The Baron and the cat

We study the swimming of non-relativistic deformable bodies in (empty) static curved spaces. We focus on the case where the ambient geometry allows for rigid body motions. In this case the swimming equations turn out to be geometric. For a small swimmer, the swimming distance in one stroke is determined by the Riemann curvature times certain moments of the swimmer.Comment: 19 pages 6 figure

Light and circadian regulation of clock components aids flexible responses to environmental signals

The circadian clock measures time across a 24h period, increasing fitness by phasing biological processes to the most appropriate time of day. The interlocking feedback loop mechanism of the clock is conserved across species; however, the number of loops varies. Mathematical and computational analyses have suggested that loop complexity affects the overall flexibility of the oscillator, including its responses to entrainment signals. We used a discriminating experimental assay, at the transition between different photoperiods, in order to test this proposal in a minimal circadian network (in Ostreococcus tauri) and a more complex network (in Arabidopsis thaliana). Transcriptional and translational reporters in O.tauri primarily tracked dawn or dusk, whereas in A.thaliana, a wider range of responses were observed, consistent with its more flexible clock. Model analysis supported the requirement for this diversity of responses among the components of the more complex network. However, these and earlier data showed that the O.tauri network retains surprising flexibility, despite its simple circuit. We found that models constructed from experimental data can show flexibility either from multiple loops and/or from multiple light inputs. Our results suggest that O.tauri has adopted the latter strategy, possibly as a consequence of genomic reduction

Note Value Recognition for Piano Transcription Using Markov Random Fields

This paper presents a statistical method for use in music transcription that can estimate score times of note onsets and offsets from polyphonic MIDI performance signals. Because performed note durations can deviate largely from score-indicated values, previous methods had the problem of not being able to accurately estimate offset score times (or note values) and thus could only output incomplete musical scores. Based on observations that the pitch context and onset score times are influential on the configuration of note values, we construct a context-tree model that provides prior distributions of note values using these features and combine it with a performance model in the framework of Markov random fields. Evaluation results show that our method reduces the average error rate by around 40 percent compared to existing/simple methods. We also confirmed that, in our model, the score model plays a more important role than the performance model, and it automatically captures the voice structure by unsupervised learning