Employer Pension Plan Inequality in Canada

The purpose of this research paper is to contribute to knowledge regarding employer pension plan (EPP) inequality in Canada. Information on EPP coverage and value is analyzed using the 1999 and 2005 Surveys of Financial Security. The results indicate that women, persons who may live alone, landed immigrants, and language minorities are at a disadvantage in their EPP coverage and accrued value. In addition, age, educational attainment, occupation, industry of employment, union membership, total personal income, province, and size of urban residence figure importantly in EPP coverage. Furthermore, age, educational attainment, industry of employment, total personal income, province and size of urban residence are all important determinants of the termination value of EPPs. To identify inequalities in EPP coverage among the sub-populations, the researchers use multivariate analysis. This allows an identification of inequalities that are not a direct result of differences in age, gender, level of education, location, or position in the labour market. Findings indicate that differences in EPP coverage for women, persons who may live alone, landed immigrants and language minorities are primarily due to differences in these other characteristics. However, the lower EPP value witnessed by these sub-populations cannot be explained by individual or labour market characteristics.Employer Pension Plans, Registered Pension Plans, coverage, value, inequality, seniors, landed immigrants, gender differences, minority language

Genome hyperevolution and the success of a parasite

The strategy of antigenic variation is to present a constantly changing population phenotype that enhances parasite transmission, through evasion of immunity arising within, or existing between, host animals. Trypanosome antigenic variation occurs through spontaneous switching among members of a silent archive of many hundreds of variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) antigen genes. As with such contingency systems in other pathogens, switching appears to be triggered through inherently unstable DNA sequences. The archive occupies subtelomeres, a genome partition that promotes hypermutagenesis and, through telomere position effects, singular expression of VSG. Trypanosome antigenic variation is augmented greatly by the formation of mosaic genes from segments of pseudo-VSG, an example of implicit genetic information. Hypermutation occurs apparently evenly across the whole archive, without direct selection on individual VSG, demonstrating second-order selection of the underlying mechanisms. Coordination of antigenic variation, and thereby transmission, occurs through networking of trypanosome traits expressed at different scales from molecules to host populations

Employer Pension Plan Inequality in Canada

The purpose of this research paper is to contribute to knowledge regarding employer pension plan (EPP) inequality in Canada. Information on EPP coverage and value is analyzed using the 1999 and 2005 Surveys of Financial Security. The results indicate that women, persons who may live alone, landed immigrants, and language minorities are at a disadvantage in their EPP coverage and accrued value. In addition, age, educational attainment, occupation, industry of employment, union membership, total personal income, province, and size of urban residence figure importantly in EPP coverage. Furthermore, age, educational attainment, industry of employment, total personal income, province and size of urban residence are all-important determinants of the termination value of EPPs. To identify inequalities in EPP coverage among the sub-populations, the researchers use multivariate analysis. This allows an identification of inequalities that are not a direct result of differences in age, gender, level of education, location, or position in the labour market. Findings indicate that differences in EPP coverage for women, persons who may live alone, landed immigrants and language minorities are primarily due to differences in these other characteristics. However, the lower EPP value witnessed by these subpopulations cannot be explained by individual or labour market characteristics.Employer Pension Plans, Registered Pension Plans, coverage, value, inequality, seniors, landed immigrants, gender differences, minority language

Retirement Decisions of People with Disabilities: Voluntary or Involuntary

While some retirement is welcomed and on-time, other retirements are involuntary or forced due to the loss of a job, an early retirement incentive, a health problem, mandatory retirement, lack of control with too many job strains, or to provide care to a family member. An analysis of the 2002 Canadian General Social Survey reveals that 27% of retirees retired involuntarily. This research focuses on the disabled population in Canada and considers factors that influence voluntary and involuntary retirement. Further, consideration is given to the economic consequences of retiring involuntarily. This research will examine issues surrounding retirement and disability through statistical analysis of the Canadian Participation and Activity Limitations Survey (PALS) 2006 data. Methods include the use of descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis to determine the characteristics associated with involuntary retirement. This study found that those who retired involuntarily were more likely to have the following socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics -- age 55 or less, less than high-school education, live in Quebec, rent their home, and have relatively low income. They were also more likely to be worse off financially after retirement and to be receiving social assistance or a disability benefit. In terms of disability, the likelihood of retiring involuntarily was greater for those with poor health at retirement, the age of onset was over 55, higher level of severity, and multiple types of disability. For the discussion, a social inequalities framework is used, where health selection into involuntary retirement depends on social location defined by age and education. Policy initiatives that reduce the effects of disability, and allow individuals to remain in or return to the labour force such as workplace accommodations are discussed.Retirement, Disabled, Health, Labour Force

Retirement Decisions of People with Disabilities: Voluntary or Involuntary

While some retirement is welcomed and on-time, other retirements are involuntary or forced due to the loss of a job, an early retirement incentive, a health problem, mandatory retirement, lack of control with too many job strains, or to provide care to a family member. An analysis of the 2002 Canadian General Social Survey reveals that 27% of retirees retired involuntarily. This research focuses on the disabled population in Canada and considers factors that influence voluntary and involuntary retirement. Further, consideration is given to the economic consequences of retiring involuntarily. This research will examine issues surrounding retirement and disability through statistical analysis of the Canadian Participation and Activity Limitations Survey (PALS) 2006 data. Methods include the use of descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis to determine the characteristics associated with involuntary retirement. This study found that those who retired involuntarily were more likely to have the following socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics: age 55 or less, less than high school education, live in Quebec, rent their home, and have relatively low income. They were also more likely to be worse off financially after retirement and to be receiving social assistance or a disability benefit. In terms of disability, the likelihood of retiring involuntarily was greater for those with poor health at retirement, the age of onset was over 55, higher level of severity, and multiple types of disability. For the discussion, a social inequalities framework is used, where health selection into involuntary retirement depends on social location defined by age and education. Policy initiatives that reduce the effects of disability, and allow individuals to remain in or return to the labour force such as workplace accommodations are discussed.Retirement, Disabled, Health, Labour Force

The Testament of "Dichtung und Wahrheit": An Enquiry Into Goethe's Mode of Secularization

This thesis explores Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's use of his inherited religious tradition in his autobiography Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. It has as its premise the contention that, although scholarship has addressed to a considerable extent the question of Goethe's personal religious beliefs and their bearing on his works, there has emerged no manifest scholarly agreement on the nature and significance of Goethe's attitude to religion. This lack of consensus is explored, and possible reasons for it are posited. It is concluded that any attempt to define Goethe's putative personally held beliefs is of limited historical and critical interest, and the focus of this study on Goethe's application in his written works of material derived from the tradition of religion is justified. The use of religious concepts in an ostensibly non-religious context introduces the concept of secularization, which is analyzed in terms of its etymological and epistemological origins and implications. From this analysis emerges the relevance of the concept of binary synthesis for an appreciation of Goethe's use of elements of his inherited religious tradition. Binary synthesis is defined as a heuristic, and then applied to the apparent polarities of sacral and secular, and of past entity and present formulation, in Goethe's depiction of religious material in his autobiography. It is the titular paradox of the work which principally justifies the focus on Dichtung und Wahrheit, since the 'truth' of what the author is concerned to reveal to his reading public is explicitly couched in a veil of what he allusively calls 'poetry'. The relationship of conceptual meaning and rhetorical form in Goethe's representation of inherited religious material in Dichtung und Wahrheit is analyzed in terms of what recent scholarship on Goethe's attitude to his inherited tradition in general has adduced as a binary synthesis of form and meaning, through which the text functions aesthetically on the psyche of the perceptive reader. When applied to the representation of religion, it is contended that in Goethe's representation of his religious tradition in the context of his autobiography there exists to be perceived a sense of the very essence of that tradition which is a deep-seated feeling of faith. Thus Goethe's mode of secularization, by which elements of the sacral tradition are represented for renewed appraisal in the secular context of the literary text, it is argued, is to be understood as a binary synthesis of sacral material and secular form which operates on the reader in a particular way

Highly-branched poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide)s with core-shell morphology below the lower critical solution temperature

YesHighly-branched poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide)s in water pass through coil-to-globule transitions. Using calorimetry and the colour change of a solvatochromic dye within the polymer, we show that some compositions have biphasic core–shell morphologies, with globular cores and open coil shells. The two-phase structure is favoured by increased branching and arises because the chain ends penetrate only to a limited degree into the polymer coil

DNA methylation differs extensively between strains of the same geographical origin and changes with age in Daphnia magna

Background Patterns of methylation influence lifespan, but methylation and lifespan may also depend on diet, or differ between genotypes. Prior to this study, interactions between diet and genotype have not been explored together to determine their influence on methylation. The invertebrate Daphnia magna is an excellent choice for testing the epigenetic response to the environment: parthenogenetic offspring are identical to their siblings (making for powerful genetic comparisons), they are relatively short lived and have well-characterised inter-strain life-history trait differences. We performed a survival analysis in response to caloric restriction and then undertook a 47-replicate experiment testing the DNA methylation response to ageing and caloric restriction of two strains of D. magna. Results Methylated cytosines (CpGs) were most prevalent in exons two to five of gene bodies. One strain exhibited a significantly increased lifespan in response to caloric restriction, but there was no effect of food-level CpG methylation status. Inter-strain differences dominated the methylation experiment with over 15,000 differently methylated CpGs. One gene, Me31b, was hypermethylated extensively in one strain and is a key regulator of embryonic expression. Sixty-one CpGs were differentially methylated between young and old individuals, including multiple CpGs within the histone H3 gene, which were hypermethylated in old individuals. Across all age-related CpGs, we identified a set that are highly correlated with chronological age. Conclusions Methylated cytosines are concentrated in early exons of gene sequences indicative of a directed, non-random, process despite the low overall DNA methylation percentage in this species. We identify no effect of caloric restriction on DNA methylation, contrary to our previous results, and established impacts of caloric restriction on phenotype and gene expression. We propose our approach here is more robust in invertebrates given genome-wide CpG distributions. For both strain and ageing, a single gene emerges as differentially methylated that for each factor could have widespread phenotypic effects. Our data showed the potential for an epigenetic clock at a subset of age positions, which is exciting but requires confirmation