Tactile engagements: the world of the dead in the lives of the living... or 'sharing the dead'

ye

The UK national minimum wage’s impact on productivity

Low pay poses issues for managers internationally. We examine productivity in low-paying sectors in Britain, since the national minimum wage’s (NMW) introduction. We use a multiple channel analytical strategy, emphasising the wage incentives channel and linking it to a model of unobserved productivity. We estimate firm-specific productivity measures and aggregate them to the level of low-paying sectors. Difference-in-differences analysis illustrates that the NMW positively affected aggregate low-paying sector productivity. These findings highlight increased wages’ incentive effects with implications for management practice and public policy since ‘living’ wages may be productivity enhancing

Dying for a change? Bringing new senses to near eastern neolithic mortuary practice

Ye

Migrant workers’ exercise of agency during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: resilience, reworking and resistance

Drawing on qualitative data, we apply Katz’s conceptual framework of agency as resilience, reworking and resistance practices to theorise UK migrant workers’ responses to worsened employment conditions, stress of unemployment and reduced incomes during the pandemic. We draw attention to the range of micro practices they adopted to survive and rework existing conditions to their advantage - actions which rarely feature in academic writing, yet which recognise those who do not ‘resist’ as conscious agents who exercise power. Meanwhile, although outright oppositional responses to deteriorating employment conditions are rare, we demonstrate the nature of workplace union representation as a central factor in resisting managerial control. We extend Katz’s framework by considering the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind migrant workers’ responses, to understand better their dynamic choices of resilience, reworking and resistance practices in the chaotic circumstances of the pandemic

Quantifying the benefits of using decision models with response time and accuracy data

Response time and accuracy are fundamental measures of behavioral science, but discerning participants’ underlying abilities can be masked by speed–accuracy trade-offs (SATOs). SATOs are often inadequately addressed in experiment analyses which focus on a single variable or which involve a suboptimal analytic correction. Models of decision-making, such as the drift diffusion model (DDM), provide a principled account of the decision-making process, allowing the recovery of SATO-unconfounded decision parameters from observed behavioral variables. For plausible parameters of a typical between-groups experiment, we simulate experimental data, for both real and null group differences in participants’ ability to discriminate stimuli (represented by differences in the drift rate parameter of the DDM used to generate the simulated data), for both systematic and null SATOs. We then use the DDM to fit the generated data. This allows the direct comparison of the specificity and sensitivity for testing of group differences of different measures (accuracy, reaction time, and the drift rate from the model fitting). Our purpose here is not to make a theoretical innovation in decision modeling, but to use established decision models to demonstrate and quantify the benefits of decision modeling for experimentalists. We show, in terms of reduction of required sample size, how decision modeling can allow dramatically more efficient data collection for set statistical power; we confirm and depict the non-linear speed–accuracy relation; and we show how accuracy can be a more sensitive measure than response time given decision parameters which reasonably reflect a typical experiment

Horizontal DNA transfer mechanisms of bacteria as weapons of intragenomic conflict

Horizontal DNA transfer (HDT) is a pervasive mechanism of diversification in many microbial species, but its primary evolutionary role remains controversial. Much recent research has emphasised the adaptive benefit of acquiring novel DNA, but here we argue instead that intragenomic conflict provides a coherent framework for understanding the evolutionary origins of HDT. To test this hypothesis, we developed a mathematical model of a clonally descended bacterial population undergoing HDT through transmission of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) and genetic transformation. Including the known bias of transformation toward the acquisition of shorter alleles into the model suggested it could be an effective means of counteracting the spread of MGEs. Both constitutive and transient competence for transformation were found to provide an effective defence against parasitic MGEs; transient competence could also be effective at permitting the selective spread of MGEs conferring a benefit on their host bacterium. The coordination of transient competence with cell-cell killing, observed in multiple species, was found to result in synergistic blocking of MGE transmission through releasing genomic DNA for homologous recombination while simultaneously reducing horizontal MGE spread by lowering the local cell density. To evaluate the feasibility of the functions suggested by the modelling analysis, we analysed genomic data from longitudinal sampling of individuals carrying Streptococcus pneumoniae. This revealed the frequent within-host coexistence of clonally descended cells that differed in their MGE infection status, a necessary condition for the proposed mechanism to operate. Additionally, we found multiple examples of MGEs inhibiting transformation through integrative disruption of genes encoding the competence machinery across many species, providing evidence of an ongoing "arms race." Reduced rates of transformation have also been observed in cells infected by MGEs that reduce the concentration of extracellular DNA through secretion of DNases. Simulations predicted that either mechanism of limiting transformation would benefit individual MGEs, but also that this tactic's effectiveness was limited by competition with other MGEs coinfecting the same cell. A further observed behaviour we hypothesised to reduce elimination by transformation was MGE activation when cells become competent. Our model predicted that this response was effective at counteracting transformation independently of competing MGEs. Therefore, this framework is able to explain both common properties of MGEs, and the seemingly paradoxical bacterial behaviours of transformation and cell-cell killing within clonally related populations, as the consequences of intragenomic conflict between self-replicating chromosomes and parasitic MGEs. The antagonistic nature of the different mechanisms of HDT over short timescales means their contribution to bacterial evolution is likely to be substantially greater than previously appreciated

Dominant Role of Nucleotide Substitution in the Diversification of Serotype 3 Pneumococci over Decades and during a Single Infection

Streptococcus pneumoniae of serotype 3 possess a mucoid capsule and cause disease associated with high mortality rates relative to other pneumococci. Phylogenetic analysis of a complete reference genome and 81 draft sequences from clonal complex 180, the predominant serotype 3 clone in much of the world, found most sampled isolates belonged to a clade affected by few diversifying recombinations. However, other isolates indicate significant genetic variation has accumulated over the clonal complex’s entire history. Two closely related genomes, one from the blood and another from the cerebrospinal fluid, were obtained from a patient with meningitis. The pair differed in their behaviour in a mouse model of disease and in their susceptibility to antimicrobials, with at least some of these changes attributable to a mutation that upregulated the patAB efflux pump. This indicates clinically important phenotypic variation can accumulate rapidly through small alterations to the genotype

Dying to Talk? Co-producing resources with young people to get them talking about bereavement, death and dying

YesThe Dying to Talk project in Bradford, UK aimed to build resilience in young people around the topic of death, dying and bereavement. Starting conversations early in life could buttress people’s future wellbeing when faced with bereavement and indeed their own mortality. Research indicates that a key feature in young people’s experience of bereavement is ‘powerlessness’ (Ribbens McCarthy, 2007). Drawing on the principles of co-production, young people led the development of the project aimed at encouraging young people to talk about death, using archaeology as a facilitator to those conversations. The partnership between the University of Bradford, the voluntary sector and the young people proved to be a positive and empowering one. It laid the foundations for future collaboration and developed a framework for engaging young people in talking about death, building their resilience for dealing with death and dying in the future – a step towards building a ‘compassionate city’ for young people (Kellehear, 2012)University of Bradford, Higher Education Innovation Fund; AHR