Noncognitive Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages

This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.noncognitive skills, personality, occupation, gender wage gap, decomposition

Noncognitive Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages

This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.noncognitve skills, personality, occupation, gender wage gap, decomposition

The impact of Mexico's retraining program on employment and wages

The authors evaluated how Mexico's Labor Retraining Program (PROBECAT) affected unemployment and displaced workers. As part of the World Bank supported Manpower Training project, PROBECAT has provided short-term vocational training to more than 250,000 unemployed people. Their evaluation was based on new longitudinal data on PROBECAT trainees developed for this purpose, and includes data on a control group of unemployed people who did not join PROBECAT. Their main findings were as follows: On average, the trainees found jobs more quickly than the control group. But training does not shorten the term of unemployment for those without work experience. Male trainees are more likely to be employed three and six months after training than are the controls. Female trainees with work experience are more likely to be employed three, six, and twelve months after training than are the controls. Male trainees are more likely to find employment in large firms than are comparable controls. Training increases the monthly earnings of male trainees, but this effect varies systematically depending on the person's level of schooling attainment. The monetary benefits of training outweigh the costs of the PROBECAT program for certain groups of trainees. For male trainees over 25 with prior work experience, the benefits outweigh the costs of training within three months of starting work. For all other males except those with no prior work experience, the benefits outweigh the costs within one year. Men with no prior work experience spend the longest time job hunting after training (8 months, compared with the trainee mean of 4.4 months) and benefit less from training in terms of monthly earnings (128 thousand pesos compared with the average benefit of 152 thousand pesos). For this group, the costs of training are offset only after 17 months of higher earnings.Teaching and Learning,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Vocational Education&Technical Training,Labor Standards

Alteration in Fluidity of Cell Plasma Membrane in Huntington Disease Revealed by Spectral Phasor Analysis.

Huntington disease (HD) is a late-onset genetic neurodegenerative disorder caused by expansion of cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) trinucleotide in the exon 1 of the gene encoding the polyglutamine (polyQ). It has been shown that protein degradation and lipid metabolism is altered in HD. In many neurodegenerative disorders, impaired lipid homeostasis is one of the early events in the disease onset. Yet, little is known about how mutant huntingtin may affect phospholipids membrane fluidity. Here, we investigated how membrane fluidity in the living cells (differentiated PC12 and HEK293 cell lines) are affected using a hyperspectral imaging of widely used probes, LAURDAN. Using phasor approach, we characterized the fluorescence of LAURDAN that is sensitive to the polarity of the immediate environment. LAURDAN is affected by the physical order of phospholipids (lipid order) and reports the membrane fluidity. We also validated our results using a different fluorescent membrane probe, Nile Red (NR). The plasma membrane in the cells expressing expanded polyQ shows a shift toward increased membrane fluidity revealed by both LAURDAN and NR spectral phasors. This finding brings a new perspective in the understanding of the early stages of HD that can be used as a target for drug screening

Four Short Stories about a Four Letter Word

This thesis falls under the creative category of the Honors Capstone Project and is a compilation of four short stories all written within the past year and a half. It draws from the author’s educational background of English Textual Studies and the screenwriting track within the Television/Radio/Film major. It combines the learned technical aspects of the English language from the former and the creative, story-telling techniques from the latter. Though the author has always been an avid writer, both academically and leisurely, it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 after sophomore year of college that she became interested in short fiction writing. She had written full length feature scripts, started over half a dozen novels, but had never actually written a finished short story. An online fiction writing workshop changed that. After writing her first short story and having it workshopped by her classmates and professor, the short story medium became another outlet for her imagination. The goal of this thesis project was to showcase the author’s creative writing skills and produce a tangible work of art that others could read (the author having never published anything before this). Writing style, just like the English language, evolves over time for an author, and the Capstone Thesis is where this particular author chose to experiment and display the many facets of her writing garnered throughout her three years of college. The art of story-telling is not easy. Many separate components make up a story: style, voice, narration, tone, point of view, dialogue, character development, exposition, story arc, syntax, diction, etc. They all must flow together, combine, and interact in order for the story to work as a whole, like mixing ingredients for recipe. It is not just the sentences that make up a story, nor the paragraphs one after the other; every single word comes into consideration. For this thesis, the author wanted to write four different stories that would incorporate various components, essentially creating four different recipes to dishes that all would go into one single dinner. That is why two stories are written in third person point of view, past tense—one with the voice of the protagonist, the other with the voice of an impartial narrator. Two are written in present tense, first person—one from the viewpoint of a female character, the other from the perspective of a male character. Two of the stories are meant to be more light-hearted and funny. The other two have a more serious tone to the subject matter. At first, there was no planned underlying theme or style intertwining all four stories. It was just to be a collection of short fiction based on the author’s own preferences and inspired ideas. However, upon reflection and analysis before the last story “Once Upon a Time” was written, the theme of love was found to be unwittingly present throughout the three (hence the title of the thesis and the acronym of L-O-V-E that the individual story titles spell out). As the thesis project evolved, this theme became more and more apparent. The last piece was written with the theme of love and all its forms in mind. After that, it truly became a cohesive thesis that had similarities among the separate stories while at the same time maintaining the individual uniqueness that had been planned. The entire thesis became an exploration of love and human relationships in every form. The first story “Lake” deals with romantic love, the abiding love between a husband and a wife. The second story “Once Upon a Time” is a little different in that it promotes love for oneself: respecting one’s own self-worth. The third story “Victoria Madeline” focuses on familial love, specifically the bond between sisters. And the fourth and final story “Escapades of a Zookeeper” centers on the love between friends—the trust and loyalty that comes from being dependent on someone (or something) else. Each story was crafted at different times, but the editing and revisions of them overlapped when trying to compile them together into one thesis. “Lake,” “Escapades of a Zookeeper,” and “Victoria Madeline” were all workshopped formally in separate classes with Professors Phil LaMarche, Sarah Harwell, and Arthur Flowers respectively. Though writing processes vary with each writer, this author develops her stories mainly through her characters then builds the story from there. Because of the author’s education in film as well, she also tends to visualize scenes in her head first then strings them together into a full plot. The following short stories can be viewed separately, one without the others, hopefully still with enjoyment. However, together they form the basis of this thesis. Together they explore the age old concept of love and its intricacies affecting life. And only together do they represent the author’s true writing ability and developed style, which has evolved throughout her college career and which will still continue to evolve long after

Direct Recovery of Recombinant Hepatitis B Core Antigen from Unclarified Escherichia Coli Feedstock Using Expanded Bed Adsorption Chromatography

The capsid of hepatitis B virus (HBV), which consists of hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAg) has become one of the most frequently studied viral-like-particle (VLP) for the display of foreign epitopes. Many studies have been carried out to purify this capsid. However, the conventional method of purification requires multiple steps of operation, which could lead to excessive product loss and high production costs. Therefore, it is of importance to develop a fast and cost effective protein recovery method such as expanded bed adsorption chromatography (EBAC) to ensure a better and efficient recovery of protein, especially in large scale downstream process. In this study, thermal treatment of the Escherichia coli cell feedstock at 60oC for 30 min prior to solid removal in the conventional method has resulted in 1.4 times and 18% higher in purity and recovery yield respectively compared to non-heat-treated feedstock. In direct capture of HBcAg from unclarified feedstock using the STREAMLINE DEAE (weak anion-exchangers) in batch adsorption, heat treatment at 60oC for 45 min has increased the recovery yield and purity by 2.3 and 3.8 times respectively compared with non-heat-treated feedstock. When these conditions were applied in large scale purification of HBcAg via EBAC, the yield and purity have increased by 1.2 and 1.8 folds respectively, compared with that purified from non-heat-treated feedstock. Heating the crude feedstock has resulted in denaturation and precipitation of contaminants in the feedstock, hence reducing non-specific interactions between the cell debris and anion-exchanger. The present study has also demonstrated that purification of HBcAg from heat-treated unclarified feedstock was most efficient when EBAC operation using FastlineTM 20 contactor was operated at constant velocity (127.9 cm/h) in feedstock containing 5% of biomass. Although the current study showed that heat-treatment of unclarified feedstock could increase the purity of HBcAg and reduced non-specific binding of contaminant onto Streamline DEAE, the purity obtained was lower compared with that purified using conventional methods. Therefore, development of an affinity adsorbent using M13 phage bearing a disulfide constrained heptapeptide at the gpIII protein coat with the sequence, C-WSFFSNI-C as the ligand has been carried out in this study. M13 phage immobilised onto Streamline Base Matrix via epoxy activation was used in direct capture of HBcAg from unclarified feedstock via two different modes of EBAC operations; typical single pass operation and modified EBAC operation with recirculation of feedstock. Higher yield of HBcAg was obtained using modified EBAC operation due to increase in protein residence time in the column, however, the purity was reduced by 15% compared with typical EBAC operation, which could be due to diffusion of contaminants into the internal volume of the macroporous adsorbents. Although the purity of HBcAg recovered using M13 phage ligand adsorbents was higher (70-80%) but the yield was lower compared with that purified using anion-exchanger. Therefore, this study showed that peptide displayed on M13 phage can be employed as an affinity ligand in direct capture of HBcAg from unclarified feedstock using EBAC. When analysed with ELISA, the antigenicity of HBcAg purified using both adsorbents in EBAC was still preserved

Zombie dan Diversifikasi Pada Masa Covid-19

The financial crisis has caused companies to compete to maintain their financial performance in order to avoid entering the category of "zombie companies." A zombie company is one that has low profits and has experienced losses for several consecutive years. Diversification strategies, such as varying products and/or selling products abroad, are believed to improve a company’s financial performance. This study examines the effect of diversification on zombie companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The population of this study consists of manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) from 2018 to 2021. The sampling technique is purposive, with a sample size of 126 companies. This study uses logistic regression analysis to examine the effect of diversification on zombie companies with tangibility, age, and company size as control variables. The results of this study found that diversification has no effect on zombie companies. As for the control variables of tangibility, age, and company size, they have no effect on zombie companies. This study concludes that both product and market diversification do not help companies avoid zombie conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. This could be due to the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hinders the export process in all countries that are mostly affected by the pandemic. Even though product diversification has been carried out, the products offered are still related to products whose sales are still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic

Noncognitive skills, occupational attainment, and relative wages

This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained

Global Kids Online The Philippines: executive summary

The Global Kids Online Philippines project was carried out by the University of the Philippines, Manila and focused on in-depth understanding of children’s online experiences, looking both at the risks and opportunities and their impact on child well-being. This report presents the findings from the pilot study. The Philippines is one of the 17 countries in the UNICEF Global Programme to protect children from online sexual exploitation and in a recent publication (UNICEF, 2016) the country was described as ‘the global epicentre of the live-stream sexual abuse trade’. Driven by poverty, particularly deprived areas become ‘hotspots’ for the international trade in live-stream child sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse materials were made illegal in the Philippines only in 2009 and the legal protection and prosecution framework remains insufficient. With the age of consent still 12 years of age, the country continues to face challenges in protecting vulnerable children and prosecuting their abusers

An Analytical Dataset of Approaches to V in Mozart

Tonal functions—tonic, pre-dominant, and dominant—are a standard feature of North American music theory. The pre-dominant (PD) encompasses the largest number of chords, varying in quality and scale degrees; unlike the tonic and dominant functions, it is primarily defined by its syntactical role, preceding the arrival of the dominant. While Western harmony textbooks consistently organize PD chords according to a regulative syntax (e.g., IV goes to ii), they differ on its rationale and are rarely explicit about the repertoire(s) on which it is based. Furthermore, while the PD is thought to be an essential element of cadential closure, the role of PDs at various formal locations is underexplored, be it in textbooks or corpus studies. To facilitate exploration of these claims for future research, we analyzed all 22 sonata-allegro movements from the Mozart piano sonatas and generated a new dataset containing every occurrence of V (including the Cad6/4), the three chords preceding each V, and their formal location