Employment Expectations and Gross Flows by Type of Work Contract

There is growing interest in understanding firms’ temporary and permanent employment practices and how institutional changes shape them. Using data on Spanish establishments, we examine: (a) how employers adjust temporary and permanent job and worker flows to prior employment expectations, and (b) how the 1994 and 1997 labour reforms promoting permanent employment affected establishments’ employment practices. Generally, establishments’ prior employment expectations are realized through changes in all job and worker flows. However, establishments uniquely rely on temporary hires as a buffer to confront diminishing long-run employment expectations. None of the reforms significantly affected establishments’ net temporary or permanent employment flows.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40032/3/wp646.pd

Co-prescription patterns of cardiovascular preventive treatments: A cross-sectional study in the Aragon worker' health study (Spain)

Objectives: To identify cardiovascular disease (CVD) preventive treatments combinations, among them and with other drugs, and to determine their prevalence in a cohort of Spanish workers. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting Aragon Workers'' Health Study (AWHS) cohort in Spain. Participants 5577 workers belonging to AWHS cohort. From these subjects, we selected those that had, at least, three prescriptions of the same therapeutic subgroup in 2014 (n=4605). Primary and secondary outcome measures Drug consumption was obtained from the Aragon Pharmaceutical Consumption Registry (Farmasalud). In order to know treatment utilisation, prevalence analyses were conducted. Frequent item set mining techniques were applied to identify drugs co-prescription patterns. All the results were stratified by sex and age. Results: 42.3% of men and 18.8% of women in the cohort received, at least, three prescriptions of a CVD preventive treatment in 2014. The most prescribed CVD treatment were antihypertensives (men: 28.2%, women 9.2%). The most frequent association observed among CVD preventive treatment was agents acting on the renin-angiotensin system and lipid-lowering drugs (5.1% of treated subjects). Co-prescription increased with age, especially after 50 years old, both in frequency and number of associations, and was higher in men. Regarding the association between CVD preventive treatments and other drugs, the most frequent pattern observed was lipid-lowering drugs and drugs used for acid related disorders (4.2% of treated subjects). Conclusions: There is an important number of co-prescription patterns that involve CVD preventive treatments. These patterns increase with age and are more frequent in men. Mining techniques are a useful tool to identify pharmacological patterns that are not evident in the individual clinical practice, in order to improve drug prescription appropriateness

El teléfono móvil: disponibilidad, usos y relaciones por parte de los adolescentes entre 12 y 16 años

Presentamos los resultados de una investigación sobre el uso, la disponibilidad y algunos aspectos relativos a las relaciones que se establecen con diferentes personas en torno al teléfono móvil en una muestra de adolescentes (N=1211) entre 12 y 16 años de la provincia de Girona. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la existencia de diferencias de género en cuanto a su disposición y uso, siendo las chicas las que en mayor porcentaje poseen un móvil y más horas dedican a usarlo. Los adolescentes prefieren hablar sobre lo que hacen con el móvil con los iguales, seguido de los hermanos o las hermanas y, en último lugar, con los adultos (progenitores y profesores o profesoras). Finalmente, se analiza cómo los adolescentes se muestran más interesados por e informados sobre Internet y el móvil en comparación con los otros cuatro medios audiovisuales explorados (televisión, ordenador, juegos para ordenador y videojuegos)

Culturo-Scientific Storytelling

In this article, we reflect on the functions of outreach in developing the modern scientific mind, and discuss its essential importance in the modern society of rapid technological development. We embed our approach to outreach in culturo-scientific thinking. This is constituted by embracing disciplinary thinking (in particular creativity) whilst appreciating the epistemology of science as an evolving dialogue of ideas, with numerous alternative perspectives and uncertain futures to be managed. Structuring scientific knowledge as an assemblage of interacting and evolving discipline-cultures, we conceive of a culturo-scientific storytelling to bring about positive transformations for the public in these thinking skills and ground our approach in quantum science and technologies (QST). This field has the potential to generate significant changes for the life of every citizen, and so a skills-oriented approach to its education, both formal and non-formal, is essential. Finally, we present examples of such storytelling in the case of QST, the classification and evaluation of which correspond to future work in which this narrative approach is studied in action

Chemical determinants of occupational hypersensitivity pneumonitis

Background: Workplace inhalational exposures to low molecular weight (LMW) chemicals cause hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) as well as the more common manifestation of respiratory hypersensitivity, occupational asthma (OA). Aims: To explore whether chemical causation of HP is associated with different structural and physico-chemical determinants from OA. Methods: Chemical causes of human cases of HP and OA were identified from searches of peer-reviewed literature up to the end of 2011. Each chemical was categorised according to whether or not it had been the attributed cause of at least one case of HP. The predicted asthma hazard was determined for each chemical using a previously developed quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model. The chemicals in both sets were independently and ‘blindly’ analysed by an expert in mechanistic chemistry for a qualitative prediction of protein cross-linking potential and determination of lipophilicity (log Kow). Results: Ten HP causing chemicals were identified and had a higher median QSAR predicted asthma hazard than the control group of 101 OA causing chemicals (p < 0.005). Nine of ten HP causing chemicals were predicted to be protein cross-linkers compared to 24/92 controls (p<0.0001). The distributions of log Kow indicated higher values for the HP list (median 3.47) compared to controls (median 0.81) (p < 0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that chemicals capable of causing HP tend to have higher predicted asthma hazard, are more lipophilic and are more likely to be protein cross-linkers than those causing OA. Key words: hypersensitivity pneumonitis, occupational chemicals, occupational respiratory disease, toxic inhalatio

Impact of a basic mathematics course on the performance of college students in algebra subject

A common problem for universities is the lack of knowledge and mathematical skills of new students because this deficiency creates difficulties in their studies throughout their career, which can cause their dropout. The aim of this paper is to describe the impact of a basic mathematics course on the performance of college student in algebra subject. This is a 32-hour course which is developed in 16 sessions in parallel to the algebra classes and is mainly offered to students: a) identified with low performance on mathematics component of national highschool test, and b) remitted by the subject teacher. The main findings are: a) the pass rate for students who attended to more than half of the sessions of the course if 95%, and b) the average grade of the subject tends to increase as with the attendance level to the course of the students. Consequently, these results lead to the conclusion that the course has a positive effect on the students' performance

Factors that promote positive attitudes towards mathematics in higher education students

The purpose of this review article is to explain the importance of understanding attitudes towards teaching and learning mathematics in higher education students. For that, we start from the premise that attitudes are related to performance towards learning mathematics, bearing in mind that what directly influences their success are the feelings of possessing competencies to understand their contents and not the feelings of difficulty towards them. In essence, at first, we describe the different attitudes towards mathematics. Next, we examine how attitudes influence math learning and finally identify the factors that foster positive attitudes toward math. From this, we suggest teaching practices that can be carried out to foster positive attitudes towards mathematics and propose new lines of research in this field

Sensory function in cluster headache: an observational study comparing the symptomatic and asymptomatic sides

Background: Based on inconsistent sensory alterations demonstrated in cluster headache (CH), the aim of this study was to determine whether patients with CH develop sensory changes in the symptomatic side compared to the asymptomatic side. Methods: Quantitative sensory testing (QST), including pressure pain threshold (PPT), tactile detection threshold (TDT), prick detection threshold (PDT), and two-point detection threshold (2PDT), was evaluated in 16 patients (seven women; age 41.9±6.8 years) with CH. Test sites included the rst, second, and third divisions of the trigeminal nerve, cervical spine, and thenar eminence in the symptomatic and asymptomatic sides. Results: The symptomatic side, compared to the asymptomatic side, presented signi cantly decreased PPT in the rst (P=0.011; 423.81±174.05 kPa vs 480.13±214.99 kPa) and second (P=0.023; 288.88±140.80 kPa vs 326.38±137.33 kPa) divisions of the trigeminal nerve, significantly increased TDT in the first (P=0.002; 2.44±0.40 vs 1.74±0.24) and second (P=0.016; 1.92±0.34 vs 1.67±0.09) divisions, and increased 2PDT in the rst division (P=0.004; 18.13±4.70 mm vs 15.0±4.92 mm) and neck (P=0.007; 45.31±20.65 mm vs 38.44±16.10 mm). Conclusion: These results support the prior evidence suggesting a specific pattern of alteration of sensory function with alterations in the symptomatic side compared to the asymp- tomatic side

Normal response to tibial neurodynamic test in asymptomatic subjects

BACKGROUND: The straight leg raise test (SLR) is one of the most performed physical tests for mechanosensitivity and impairment of the nervous system. According to the anatomy of the tibial nerve, ankle dorsiflexion and eversion movements could be used to perform the tibial neurodynamic test (TNT). To date, no study has documented the normal responses of the TNT. OBJECTIVE: To document normal responses of the TNT in asymptomatic individuals and to investigate influences from sex and leg dominance. METHODS: A cross-sectional study with 44 asymptomatic volunteer subjects, a total of 88 lower limbs, was carried out. The range of motion (ROM), quality, and distribution of sensory responses were recorded. The hip flexion ROM was measured when subjects reported an intensity of their symptoms of 2/10 (P1) and 8/10 (P2). RESULTS: The mean ROM for hip flexion at P1 was 44.22 ± 13.13 and 66.73 ± 14.30 at P2. Hip flexion was significantly greater at P2 than P1 (p 0.05). The descriptor of the quality of sensory responses most often used by participants was stretching (88.6% and 87.5% for P1 and P2, respectively) in the popliteal fossa and posterior calf. CONCLUSIONS: This study describes the sensory responses of asymptomatic subjects resulting from the TNT. Our findings indicate that TNT responses are independent of the influence of sex or leg dominance

A Multi-objective Exploratory Procedure for Regression Model Selection

Variable selection is recognized as one of the most critical steps in statistical modeling. The problems encountered in engineering and social sciences are commonly characterized by over-abundance of explanatory variables, non-linearities and unknown interdependencies between the regressors. An added difficulty is that the analysts may have little or no prior knowledge on the relative importance of the variables. To provide a robust method for model selection, this paper introduces the Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm for Variable Selection (MOGA-VS) that provides the user with an optimal set of regression models for a given data-set. The algorithm considers the regression problem as a two objective task, and explores the Pareto-optimal (best subset) models by preferring those models over the other which have less number of regression coefficients and better goodness of fit. The model exploration can be performed based on in-sample or generalization error minimization. The model selection is proposed to be performed in two steps. First, we generate the frontier of Pareto-optimal regression models by eliminating the dominated models without any user intervention. Second, a decision making process is executed which allows the user to choose the most preferred model using visualisations and simple metrics. The method has been evaluated on a recently published real dataset on Communities and Crime within United States.Comment: in Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Vol. 24, Iss. 1, 201