Hours of work and retirement behavior

Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labor Force Survey this paper examines the impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exit from the labor force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure to postpone retirement, then a reduction in working hours should be associated with retirement at later ages. Results prove otherwise suggesting that reducing hours of work before retirement is associated with early exits from the labor force. A reduction in hours of work seems to signal the worker’s wish to retire sooner rather than to announce the desire of remaining in the labor market.aging, retirement, working hours, older workers.

Age and opportunities for promotion

Using a panel of new firms and their employees, this paper studies the promotion opportunities for older workers within the same firm. Survival analysis suggests that younger employees experience shorter times to promotion than older workers and, therefore, the latter face a smaller likelihood of promotion. Although men are promoted more often than women, empirical results show that women have shorter survival times to promotion than men. Also, previous promotions are stronger determinants of subsequent ones and this finding provides support to the evidence on promotion “fast-tracks”.aging, older workers, employment relationships, promotion

Hours of Work and Retirement Behavior

Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labor Force Survey this paper examines the impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exit from the labor force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure to postpone retirement, then a reduction in working hours should be associated with retirement at later ages. Results prove otherwise suggesting that reducing hours of work before retirement is associated with early exits from the labor force. A reduction in hours of work seems to signal the worker's wish to retire sooner rather than to announce the desire of remaining in the labor market. This result may enclose the need for some alternative policy strategies regarding working hours.aging, retirement, working hours, older workers

Seletividade de herbicidas aplicados em diferentes estádios de desenvolvimento da cultura do arroz de terras altas.

Foram conduzidos quatro experimentos de campo, sendo dois no município de Santo Antônio de Goiás-GO e dois no município de Santa Helena de Goiás-GO, nos anos agrícolas de 1998/1999 e 1999/2000, com o objetivo de avaliar a seletividade de herbicidas para a cultura do arroz de terras altas em diferentes estádios da planta, dos cultivares Maravilha, Primavera e Canastra. Os tratamentos foram: metsulfuron-methyl (2,4 g i.a. ha-1) aos 10 e 20 dias após a emergência (DAE); 2,4-D amina (335, 502 e 670 g i.a ha-1) aos 10, 20 e 30 DAE; fenoxaprop-p-ethyl (41,4 g i.a. ha-1) aos 10, 20 e 30 DAE; e clefoxydin (120 g i.a. ha¹) aos 10, 20 e 30 DAE. A seletividade dos herbicidas dependeu do cultivar e do estádio de desenvolvimento da planta do arroz. Assim, os resultados permitem concluir que é recomendada para o cultivar Primavera a aplicação de metsulfuron-methyl aos 20 DAE e de fenoxaprop-p-ethyl e clefoxydin aos 30 DAE; o herbicida 2,4-D amina não é recomendado para este cultivar. Para o cultivar Maravilha, o metsulfuron-methyl e o fenoxaprop-p-ethyl podem ser aplicados em qualquer estádio do crescimento. Os herbicidas 2,4-D amina e clefoxydin são recomendados para aplicação aos 30 DAE. O cultivar Canastra apresentou alta resistência à aplicação dos herbicidas em todos os estádios de crescimento analisados

Age and Opportunities for Promotion

Using a panel of new firms and their employees, this paper studies the promotion opportunities for older workers within the same firm. Survival analysis suggests that younger employees experience shorter times to promotion than older workers and, therefore, the latter face a smaller likelihood of promotion. Although men are promoted more often than women, empirical results show that women have shorter survival times to promotion than men. Also, previous promotions are stronger determinants of subsequent ones and this finding provides support to the evidence on promotion fast-tracks

Improving implementation of health promotion interventions for maternal and newborn health.

Editoria

Living bacteria rheology: population growth, aggregation patterns and cooperative behaviour under different shear flows

The activity of growing living bacteria was investigated using real-time and in situ rheology -- in stationary and oscillatory shear. Two different strains of the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus -- strain COL and its isogenic cell wall autolysis mutant -- were considered in this work. For low bacteria density, strain COL forms small clusters, while the mutant, presenting deficient cell separation, forms irregular larger aggregates. In the early stages of growth, when subjected to a stationary shear, the viscosity of both strains increases with the population of cells. As the bacteria reach the exponential phase of growth, the viscosity of the two strains follow different and rich behaviours, with no counterpart in the optical density or in the population's colony forming units measurements. While the viscosity of strain COL keeps increasing during the exponential phase and returns close to its initial value for the late phase of growth, where the population stabilizes, the viscosity of the mutant strain decreases steeply, still in the exponential phase, remains constant for some time and increases again, reaching a constant plateau at a maximum value for the late phase of growth. These complex viscoelastic behaviours, which were observed to be shear stress dependent, are a consequence of two coupled effects: the cell density continuous increase and its changing interacting properties. The viscous and elastic moduli of strain COL, obtained with oscillatory shear, exhibit power-law behaviours whose exponent are dependent on the bacteria growth stage. The viscous and elastic moduli of the mutant have complex behaviours, emerging from the different relaxation times that are associated with the large molecules of the medium and the self-organized structures of bacteria. These behaviours reflect nevertheless the bacteria growth stage.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

The role of coherent structures and inhomogeneity in near-field inter-scale turbulent energy transfers

We use Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data to study inter-scale and inter-space energy exchanges in the near-field of a turbulent wake of a square prism in terms of a Kármán-Howarth-Monin-Hill (KHMH) equation written for a triple decomposition of the velocity field which takes into account the presence of quasi-periodic vortex shedding coherent structures. Concentrating attention on the plane of the mean flow and on the geometric centreline, we calculate orientation-averages of every term in the KHMH equation. The near-field considered here ranges between 2 and 8 times the width d of the square prism and is very inhomogeneous and out of equilibrium so that non-stationarity and inhomogeneity contributions to the KHMH balance are dominant. The mean flow produces kinetic energy which feeds the vortex shedding coherent structures. In turn, these coherent structures transfer their energy to the stochastic turbulent fluctuations over all length-scales r from the Taylor length to d and dominate spatial turbulent transport of small-scale two-point stochastic turbulent fluctuations. The orientation averaged non-linear inter-scale transfer rate a which was found to be approximately independent of r by Alves Portela et al. (2017) in the range 6 r 6 0:3d at a distance x1 = 2d from the square prism requires an inter-scale transfer contribution of coherent structures for this approximate constancy. However, the near-constancy of a in the range 6 r 6 d at x1 = 8d which was also found by Alves Portela et al. (2017) is mostly attributable to stochastic fluctuations. Even so, the proximity of a to the turbulence dissipation rate " in the range 6 r 6 d at x1 = 8d does require inter-scale transfer contributions of the coherent structures. Spatial inhomogeneity also makes a direct and distinct contribution to a, and the constancy of a=" close to 1 would not have been possible without it either in this near-field flow. Finally, the pressure-velocity term is also an important contributor to the KHMH balance in this near-field, particularly at scales r larger than about 0:4d, and appears to correlate with the purely stochastic non-linear inter-scale transfer rate when the orientation average is lifted