Stimulating Recruitment of Female Managers

La rareté relative de femmes dans les fonctions administratives peut s'expliquer, au moins théoriquement, par le haut roulement de la main-d'oeuvre féminine. L'article ci-dessus veut démontrer pourquoi il en est ainsi et également proposer un plan qui éliminerait la discrimination contre les candidates à des fonctions administratives à cause du taux de roulement de la main-d'oeuvre féminine. L'auteur soutient que le plan qu'il préconise servirait à la fois les travailleurs, les employeurs et la collectivité.Les entreprises ne se préoccupent du taux des départs que dans la mesure où elles ont engagé des capitaux dans la formation de leur personnel. Si nous divisons la formation interne en deux catégories, la formationgénérale et la formationspécialisée, nous y verrons que l'entreprise sera perdante lorsque l'employé démissionne uniquement dans le cas où celui-ci avait besoin d'un entraînement d'un type spécial.La formation internegénérale implique l'acquisition, en milieu de travail, de connaissances qui valent aussi pour les autres entreprises. Une fois celles-ci acquises et que la productivité s'est accrue, d'autres entreprises seront désireuses d'offrir un traitement plus élevé à l'employé pour l'attirer chez elles. Étant donné que le salaire devrait être augmenté proportionnellement à la hausse de productivité du travailleur, il n'y a aucun intérêt pour un employeur à dépenser en vue de la formation de son personnel. Les avantages en reviendraient à la personne qui a acquis l'expérience et elle devrait avoir à en défrayer le coût en recevant au départ un bas salaire alors qu'elle se trouve en quelque sorte à l'apprentissage.La formation internespécialisée implique que l'acquisition des connaissances ne vaut que pour l'entreprise où elle a été obtenue. Au fur et à mesure que l'employése familiarise avec son travail, sa productivité ne s'accroît que s'il demeure chez son employeur. Par conséquent, il ne sera pas nécessaire d'en augmenter le traitement pour en retenir les services. Il n'y aura aucune pression des entreprises voisines pour l'attirer en lui offrant davantage. Donc, lorsqu'une entreprise engage des capitaux dans la formation internespécialisée, elle peut espérer en retirer un profit et elle sera disposée dans une certaine mesure à en défrayer le coût. Elle offrira au départ un traitement supérieur à la productivité de l'employé. En réalité, la firme imposera ainsi à son employé une part du coût de sa formationspécialisée et lui permettra, par ailleurs, de tirer profit de cet investissement plus tard sous forme d'incitations à rester à son service.Les postes administratifs exigent d'ordinaire passablement de connaissances spécialisées. Il peut s'écouler plusieurs mois avant qu'un nouvel employé soit assez familier avec le fonctionnement d'une entreprise pour devenir un administrateur efficace. Il lui faut acquérir beaucoup de connaissances variées. En conséquence, nous devons nous attendre à trouver moins de femmes dans la hiérarchie administrative que dans les postes de rang inférieur où la formation qu'ils exigent est plutôt de caractère général.S'il est possible de mettre au point un plan qui puisse éviter les pertes découlant d'un départ, nous éliminerons la préférence qui est accordée aux hommes par suite du roulement de la main-d'oeuvre. Un plan apte à réaliser un tel objectif consisterait dans le remboursement du contrat d'apprentissage ou de formation. Un semblable contrat, conclu au moment de l'engagement, garantirait le remboursement à l'entreprise du coût de la formation selon une échelle tout comme les salaires sont ainsi fixés. Le remboursement serait élevé au départ, puis irait en diminuant suivant la durée de service de l'employé. Il équivaudrait aux coûts de la formation encourus par l'employeur que le travailleur n'a pas déjà remis par le travail qu'il a exécuté à un traitement moindre que sa productivité.Ainsi protégé par le contrat de remboursement du coût de la formation, l'entreprise serait prête à en payer tous les frais. Tel qu'il a été exposé précédemment, l'employeur ferait d'abord assumer à l'employé une partie du coût de la formation spécialisée qui, par la suite, profiterait de cet investissement sous forme d'incitations à ne pas abandonner son emploi. Si, cependant, l'entreprise devait être complètement remboursée advenant le départ, il n'y aurait aucune raison d'offrir d'incitations à l'employé pour qu'il reste à son service non plus qu'à ne lui charger le paiement que d'une partie de sa formation spécialisée.En outre de faire disparaître la préférence qui est accordée aux hommes à cause du roulement, le contrat de remboursement du coût de la formation servirait les employeurs, les travailleurs et la société. Les entreprises y gagneraient parce qu'elles n'auraient plus à absorber des pertes advenant le départ de l'employé. L'individu loyal y gagnerait en touchant au départ un traitement plus élevé du fait que les employeurs seraient disposés à absorber le coût total de la formation spécialisée. La collectivité y gagnerait aussi en ce que cette formule ferait comprendre aux candidats peu sérieux l'importance du coût qu'exige leur formation. Ils n'ignoreraient plus s'ils décidaient de partir ce qu'il en a coûté à l'entreprise pour les former. L'employé se rendrait compte du coût social de son comportement et, éventuellement, le consommateur y trouverait à son tour profit par l'abaissement des prix consécutif à l'épargne des ressources de la communauté qui sont consacrés à la formation d'individus qui n'utilisent pas pleinement la formation qu'ils ont acquise.In order to induce firms to feel indifferent towards the sexes in their recruitment for the administrative level, the cause of preference towards males must be eliminated. In this paper the author discusses the preference for males that arise out of expected lower turnover for male employees

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Survey of oxaliplatin-associated neurotoxicity using an interview-based questionnaire in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND: New chemotherapy regimens for patients with colorectal cancer have improved survival, but at the cost of clinical toxicity. Oxaliplatin, an agent used in first-line therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer, causes acute and chronic neurotoxicity. This study was performed to carefully assess the incidence, type and duration of oxaliplatin neurotoxicity. METHODS: A detailed questionnaire was completed after each chemotherapy cycle for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer enrolled in a phase I trial of oxaliplatin and capecitabine. An oxaliplatin specific neurotoxicity scale was used to grade toxicity. RESULTS: Eighty-six adult patients with colorectal cancer were evaluated. Acute neuropathy symptoms included voice changes, visual alterations, pharyngo-laryngeal dysesthesia (lack of awareness of breathing); peri-oral or oral numbness, pain and symptoms due to muscle contraction (spasm, cramps, tremors). When the worst neurotoxicity per patient was considered, grade 1/2/3/4 dysesthesias and paresthesias were seen in 71/12/5/0 and 66/20/7/1 percent of patients. By cycles 3, 6, 9, and 12, oxaliplatin dose reduction or discontinuation was needed in 2.7%, 20%, 37.5% and 62.5% of patients. CONCLUSION: Oxaliplatin-associated acute neuropathy causes a variety of distressing, but transient, symptoms due to peripheral sensory and motor nerve hyperexcitability. Chronic neuropathy may be debilitating and often necessitates dose reductions or discontinuation of oxaliplatin. Patients should be warned of the possible spectrum of symptoms and re-assured about the transient nature of acute neurotoxicity. Ongoing studies are addressing the treatment and prophylaxis of oxaliplatin neurotoxicity

Detection of Pionium with DIRAC

The aim of the DIRAC experiment at CERN is to provide an accurate determination of S-wave pion-pion scattering lengths from the measurement of the lifetime of the pi+ pi- atom. The measurement will be done with precision comparable to the level of accuracy of theoretical predictions, formulated in the context of Chiral Perturbation Theory. Therefore, the understanding of chiral symmetry breaking of QCD will be submitted to a stringent test

Managing the link and strengthening transition from child to adult mental health Care in Europe (MILESTONE): Background, rationale and methodology

Background: Transition from distinct Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS) is beset with multitude of problems affecting continuity of care for young people with mental health needs. Transition-related discontinuity of care is a major health, socioeconomic and societal challenge globally. The overall aim of the Managing the Link and Strengthening Transition from Child to Adult Mental Health Care in Europe (MILESTONE) project (2014-19) is to improve transition from CAMHS to AMHS in diverse healthcare settings across Europe. MILESTONE focuses on current service provision in Europe, new transition-related measures, long term outcomes of young people leaving CAMHS, improving transitional care through 'managed transition', ethics of transitioning and the training of health care professionals. Methods: Data will be collected via systematic literature reviews, pan-European surveys, and focus groups with service providers, users and carers, and members of youth advocacy and mental health advocacy groups. A prospective cohort study will be conducted with a nested cluster randomised controlled trial in eight European Union (EU) countries (Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, UK) involving over 1000 CAMHS users, their carers, and clinicians. Discussion: Improving transitional care can facilitate not only recovery but also mental health promotion and mental illness prevention for young people. MILESTONE will provide evidence of the organisational structures and processes influencing transition at the service interface across differing healthcare models in Europe and longitudinal outcomes for young people leaving CAMHS, solutions for improving transitional care in a cost-effective manner, training modules for clinicians, and commissioning and policy guidelines for service providers and policy makers

The Brescia Internationally Validated European Guidelines on Minimally Invasive Pancreatic Surgery (EGUMIPS)

Objective: To develop and update evidence-based and consensus-based guidelines on laparoscopic and robotic pancreatic surgery. Summary Background Data: Minimally invasive pancreatic surgery (MIPS), including laparoscopic and robotic surgery, is complex and technically demanding. Minimizing the risk for patients requires stringent, evidence-based guidelines. Since the International Miami Guidelines on MIPS in 2019, new developments and key publications have been reported, necessitating an update. Methods: Evidence-based guidelines on 22 topics in 8 domains were proposed: terminology, indications, patients, procedures, surgical techniques and instrumentation, assessment tools, implementation and training, and artificial intelligence. The Brescia Internationally Validated European Guidelines on Minimally Invasive Pancreatic Surgery (EGUMIPS, September 2022) used the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) methodology to assess the evidence and develop guideline recommendations, the Delphi method to establish consensus on the recommendations among the Expert Committee, and the AGREE II-GRS tool for guideline quality assessment and external validation by a Validation Committee. Results: Overall, 27 European experts, 6 international experts, 22 international Validation Committee members, 11 Jury Committee members, 18 Research Committee members, and 121 registered attendees of the 2-day meeting were involved in the development and validation of the guidelines. In total, 98 recommendations were developed, including 33 on laparoscopic, 34 on robotic, and 31 on general MIPS, covering 22 topics in 8 domains. Out of 98 recommendations, 97 reached at least 80% consensus among the experts and congress attendees, and all recommendations were externally validated by the Validation Committee. Conclusions: The EGUMIPS evidence-based guidelines on laparoscopic and robotic MIPS can be applied in current clinical practice to provide guidance to patients, surgeons, policy-makers, and medical societies.</p

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations: A systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background: A key component of achieving universal health coverage is ensuring that all populations have access to quality health care. Examining where gains have occurred or progress has faltered across and within countries is crucial to guiding decisions and strategies for future improvement. We used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to assess personal health-care access and quality with the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index for 195 countries and territories, as well as subnational locations in seven countries, from 1990 to 2016. Methods Drawing from established methods and updated estimates from GBD 2016, we used 32 causes from which death should not occur in the presence of effective care to approximate personal health-care access and quality by location and over time. To better isolate potential effects of personal health-care access and quality from underlying risk factor patterns, we risk-standardised cause-specific deaths due to non-cancers by location-year, replacing the local joint exposure of environmental and behavioural risks with the global level of exposure. Supported by the expansion of cancer registry data in GBD 2016, we used mortality-to-incidence ratios for cancers instead of risk-standardised death rates to provide a stronger signal of the effects of personal health care and access on cancer survival. We transformed each cause to a scale of 0-100, with 0 as the first percentile (worst) observed between 1990 and 2016, and 100 as the 99th percentile (best); we set these thresholds at the country level, and then applied them to subnational locations. We applied a principal components analysis to construct the HAQ Index using all scaled cause values, providing an overall score of 0-100 of personal health-care access and quality by location over time. We then compared HAQ Index levels and trends by quintiles on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary measure of overall development. As derived from the broader GBD study and other data sources, we examined relationships between national HAQ Index scores and potential correlates of performance, such as total health spending per capita. Findings In 2016, HAQ Index performance spanned from a high of 97\ub71 (95% UI 95\ub78-98\ub71) in Iceland, followed by 96\ub76 (94\ub79-97\ub79) in Norway and 96\ub71 (94\ub75-97\ub73) in the Netherlands, to values as low as 18\ub76 (13\ub71-24\ub74) in the Central African Republic, 19\ub70 (14\ub73-23\ub77) in Somalia, and 23\ub74 (20\ub72-26\ub78) in Guinea-Bissau. The pace of progress achieved between 1990 and 2016 varied, with markedly faster improvements occurring between 2000 and 2016 for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, whereas several countries in Latin America and elsewhere saw progress stagnate after experiencing considerable advances in the HAQ Index between 1990 and 2000. Striking subnational disparities emerged in personal health-care access and quality, with China and India having particularly large gaps between locations with the highest and lowest scores in 2016. In China, performance ranged from 91\ub75 (89\ub71-93\ub76) in Beijing to 48\ub70 (43\ub74-53\ub72) in Tibet (a 43\ub75-point difference), while India saw a 30\ub78-point disparity, from 64\ub78 (59\ub76-68\ub78) in Goa to 34\ub70 (30\ub73-38\ub71) in Assam. Japan recorded the smallest range in subnational HAQ performance in 2016 (a 4\ub78-point difference), whereas differences between subnational locations with the highest and lowest HAQ Index values were more than two times as high for the USA and three times as high for England. State-level gaps in the HAQ Index in Mexico somewhat narrowed from 1990 to 2016 (from a 20\ub79-point to 17\ub70-point difference), whereas in Brazil, disparities slightly increased across states during this time (a 17\ub72-point to 20\ub74-point difference). Performance on the HAQ Index showed strong linkages to overall development, with high and high-middle SDI countries generally having higher scores and faster gains for non-communicable diseases. Nonetheless, countries across the development spectrum saw substantial gains in some key health service areas from 2000 to 2016, most notably vaccine-preventable diseases. Overall, national performance on the HAQ Index was positively associated with higher levels of total health spending per capita, as well as health systems inputs, but these relationships were quite heterogeneous, particularly among low-to-middle SDI countries. Interpretation GBD 2016 provides a more detailed understanding of past success and current challenges in improving personal health-care access and quality worldwide. Despite substantial gains since 2000, many low-SDI and middle- SDI countries face considerable challenges unless heightened policy action and investments focus on advancing access to and quality of health care across key health services, especially non-communicable diseases. Stagnating or minimal improvements experienced by several low-middle to high-middle SDI countries could reflect the complexities of re-orienting both primary and secondary health-care services beyond the more limited foci of the Millennium Development Goals. Alongside initiatives to strengthen public health programmes, the pursuit of universal health coverage hinges upon improving both access and quality worldwide, and thus requires adopting a more comprehensive view-and subsequent provision-of quality health care for all populations