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

Co-viewing TV with Twitter: more interesting than the shows?

Social media services, and Twitter in particular, are changing the way in which many people consume traditional broadcast media. Real-time backchannel conversations are now common-place as audiences simultaneously watch TV whilst using Twitter to broadcast their own thoughts, sentiments, opinions and emotions related to what they are watching. This individual behavior, when aggregated, results in a new social experience comprising of mass, real-time, coconsumption of TV services that has, thus far, been neither recognized nor investigated by the HCI community nor the broadcast industry. This paper describes a work-in-progress which aims to understand user behaviour in this burgeoning area and provides some preliminary analysis of viewers’ Twitter activity surrounding the popular UK TV show, The X Factor

Developing a Conceptual Framework for Cloud Security Assurance

Postprin

Single Mother Work and Poverty under Welfare Reform: Are Policy Impacts Different in Rural Areas?

During the 1990s, employment increased and poverty declined for single mothers in rural and urban areas. Our results suggest that, holding demographics constant, changes in welfare and social policy during this decade contributed to employment increases--but not to poverty reduction--for both rural and urban single mothers. If rural and urban demographics had been the same, the policy changes would have increased employment and reduced poverty more in rural areas. Without demographic controls, however, estimated policy impacts were no better in rural places. This suggests that rural demographic changes limited the policy impact on rural single-mother work and poverty.Demographics; Mothers; Policy; Single Mother; Welfare

Evaluation of 3D Printed Immobilisation Shells for Head and Neck IMRT

This paper presents the preclinical evaluation of a novel immobilization system for patients undergoing external beam radiation treatment of head and neck tumors. An immobilization mask is manufactured directly from a 3-D model, built using the CT data routinely acquired for treatment planning so there is no need to take plaster of Paris moulds. Research suggests that many patients find the mould room visit distressing and so rapid prototyping could potentially improve the overall patient experience. Evaluation of a computer model of the immobilization system using an anthropomorphic phantom shows that >99% of vertices are within a tolerance of ±0.2 mm. Hausdorff distance was used to analyze CT slices obtained by rescanning the phantom with a printed mask in position. These results show that for >80% of the slices the median “worse-case” tolerance is approximately 4 mm. These measurements suggest that printed masks can achieve similar levels of immobilization to those of systems currently in clinical use

The Modified Pharaoh Approach: Stingless bees mummify beetle parasites alive

Social insect colonies usually live in nests, which are often invaded by parasitic species^1^. Workers from these colonies use different defence strategies to combat invaders^1^. Nevertheless, some parasitic species are able to bypass primary colony defences due to their morphology and behaviour^1-3^. In particular, some beetle nest invaders cannot be killed or removed by workers of social bees^2-5^, thus creating the need for alternative social defence strategies to ensure colony survival. Here we show, using Diagnostic Radioentomology^6^, that stingless bee workers _Trigona carbonaria_, immediately mummify invading destructive nest parasites _Aethina tumida_ alive, with a mixture of resin, wax and mud, thereby preventing severe damage to the colony. In sharp contrast to the responses of honeybee^7^ and bumblebee colonies^8^, the rapid live mummification strategy of _T. carbonaria_ effectively prevents beetle parasite advancements and removes their ability to reproduce. The convergent evolution of live mummification by stingless bees and social encapsulation by honeybees^3^ suggests that colonies of social bees generally rely on, secondary defence mechanisms when harmful nest intruders cannot be killed or ejected easily. This process is analogous to immune responses in animals

The Effectiveness of a Primary School Based Badminton Intervention on Children’s Fundamental Movement Skills

This study examined the effects of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) Shuttle Time program on fundamental movement skills (FMS) in English children. A total of 124 children; 66 in key stage 1 (ages 6–7 years) and 58 in key stage 2 (10–11 years) undertook the Shuttle Time program, once weekly for six weeks (n = 63) or acted as controls (n = 61). Pre, post and ten-weeks post, both process and product FMS were determined. Children in the intervention group, aged 6–7 years, had higher total process FMS (via test of gross motor development-2) compared to the control group at post and ten-weeks post intervention (both p = 0.0001, d = 0.6 and 0.7, respectively). There were no significant differences in process FMS scores for children aged 10–11 years. Ten-meter sprint speed decreased pre to post and was maintained at ten-weeks post for the intervention groups aged 6–7 years (p = 0.0001, d = 0.6) and 10–11 years (p = 0.001, d = 0.2) compared to control. Standing long jump distance increased pre to post (p = 0.0001, d = 0.8) and was maintained at ten-weeks post (p = 0.0001, d = 0.5) for the intervention group. Medicine ball throw performance increased pre to post (p = 0.0001, d = 0.3) for the intervention group. The BWF Shuttle Time program is beneficial in developing FMS for key stage 1 children (ages 6–7)

Trust Management and Security in Satellite Telecommand Processing

New standards and initiatives in satellite system architecture are moving the space industry to more open and efficient mission operations. Primarily, these standards allow multiple missions to share standard ground and space based resources to reduce mission development and sustainment costs. With the benefits of these new concepts comes added risk associated with threats to the security of our critical space assets in a contested space and cyberspace domain. As one method to mitigate threats to space missions, this research develops, implements, and tests the Consolidated Trust Management System (CTMS) for satellite flight software. The CTMS architecture was developed using design requirements and features of Trust Management Systems (TMS) presented in the field of distributed information systems. This research advances the state of the art with the CTMS by refining and consolidating existing TMS theory and applying it to satellite systems. The feasibility and performance of this new CTMS architecture is demonstrated with a realistic implementation in satellite flight software and testing in an emulated satellite system environment. The system is tested with known threat modeling techniques and a specific forgery attack abuse case of satellite telecommanding functions. The CTMS test results show the promise of this technique to enhance security in satellite flight software telecommand processing. With this work, a new class of satellite protection mechanisms is established, which addresses the complex security issues facing satellite operations today. This work also fills a critical shortfall in validated security mechanisms for implementation in both public and private sector satellite systems