Plant Turnover and the Evolution of Regional Inequalities

Understanding the evolution of earnings inequality is a major research topic with obvious policy implications. While there is widespread belief that institutions are largely responsible for the limited rise in inequality in some European countries, it is also recognised that little or no growth in inequality could be the outcome of market forces alone. However, the role of these market forces in different institutional environments is still not entirely understood. Is the small growth in inequality at the country level reflecting small increases in inequality within and between groups or is it the result of large offsetting changes in different components? Using a large longitudinal matched employer-employee dataset we produce several measures of within and between groups inequality in Portugal for the 1986-1998 period. We focus our attention on changes in the returns to observable characteristics (gender, age and education) of workers and test the hypothesis that these changes reflect developments in the labour market. However, we depart from previous research by shifting focus from the supply side to the demand side of the labour market. Drawing on the results of the by-now large literature on plant turnover we investigate the link between plant entry and exit and changing returns to observable worker characteristics. We argue that Portugal is an interesting case study because, despite very tight regulation and a centralised wage setting system, the level and changes of earnings inequality in recent years make the Portuguese case akin to the US and UK cases rather than to other European cases that share with Portugal similar labour market institutions. Furthermore, high firing costs have previously been identified as the cause for a larger share of employment adjustment occurring in Portugal through plant openings and closings as an alternative to the expansion and contraction of continuing plants. Our analysis is done at the regional level - 28 regions in mainland Portugal (NUTS III) are considered. The advantages of working at the regional level are twofold. First, data for all regions come from the same source - the Personnel Records - which eliminates all issues of comparability that plague many studies dealing with international comparisons. Second, regional comparisons within the same country guarantees a common institutional background which is appropriate given our focus on the role market forces play in shaping patterns of changing earnings inequality. Personnel Records are an administrative survey administered by the Ministry of Employment which is mandatory to all plants with at least one wage earner. Data reported by respondents include characteristics of the plant (location, industry and size), the firm they belong to (location, industry, total employment, annual sales and legal status) and each worker in the plant. Reported worker characteristics include gender, age, education, skill, tenure, earnings and weekly hours of work). Because each plant is assigned a unique invariant identifier, plants can be followed across waves and entries and exits can be identified. On average, the data contains information on 200 thousand plants and 2 million workers per year.

The Women Against Violence Experiment (W.A.V.E.): social journalism solutions to help immigrant women protect themselves against abuse

The Women Against Violence Experiment (W.A.V.E.) is the product of a yearlong investigation about information gaps in New York’s Latina immigrant community. I interviewed two Brazilian-American immigration attorneys serving the Brazilian community and several Brazilian women living in New York, including victims and survivors of domestic violence, and found that immigrant women have little or no knowledge about the different forms of abuse to which they are vulnerable. No matter who perpetrates the abuse -- a partner, a boss, a landlord -- women don’t know about the resources available to protect their rights, such as free services and U.S. legislation. This social journalism practicum developed unconventional services to inform Brazilian immigrant women who are victims or at risk of domestic violence. I assessed the community’s information gaps, media consumption habits and reliance on social media for exchanging of information and communication. I then looked for inspiration in technology and in one of the oldest art forms: theater. This report describes the process of developing W.A.V.E.’s first two services: a chatbot prototype called Chicabot and the forum play “What If It Happened to You?” It also covers the impact of both solutions as well as lessons learned

Observational properties of brown dwarfs. The low-mass end of the mass function.

Brown dwarfs are objects with sub-stellar masses that are unable to sustain hydrogen burning, cooling down through out their lifetimes. This thesis presents two projects, the study of the IMF of the double cluster, h & χ Persei, and the determination of the dynamical masses of the brown dwarf binary, ε Indi Ba, Bb. The study of a cluster’s population distribution gives us the opportunity to study a statistically meaningful population of objects over a wide range of masses (from massive stars to brown dwarfs), with a similar age and chemical composition providing formation and dynamical evolution constraints. h & χ Persei is the largest double cluster known in our galaxy. Using optical and infrared photometric data we have produced the deepest mass function for the system. A study of the radial distribution shows evidence of mass segregation while the mass function shows that these clusters may be suffering from accelerated dynamical evolution due to their interaction, triggering the ejection of brown dwarfs. The physical parameterization of brown dwarfs is reliant on the use of interior and atmospheric models. The study of brown dwarf binaries can provide crucial model independent measurements, especially masses. ε Indi Ba, Bb (spectral types T1 and T6) is the closest known brown dwarf binary to Earth. The brown dwarf binary itself orbits a main sequence star allowing us to constrain the distance, metallicity and age of the system making it possible to break the sub-stellar mass-age-luminosity degeneracy. The relative motion of the brown dwarf binary has been studied with precision astrometry from infrared AO data, allowing the determination of the system mass, 121.16 ± 0.17 ± 1.08 MJup . The individual masses of the binary components were derived from the absolute movement of the binary to be MBa = 68.04±0.94 MJup and MBb = 53.12±0.32 MJup. We concluded that the isochronally-derived masses were underestimating the system mass by ∼ 60%, due to the likely underestimation of the age of the system. The evolutionary models are consistent with the parameters measured observationally if the system has an age ∼ 4 Gyr.MARIE CURIE EC RTN CONSTELLATIO

COMPARISON OF THREE TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE OF PERFORMANCE ON THE LEARNING OF ROUNDHOUSE TAEKWONDO KICK OF INEXPERIENCED ADULT LEARNERS

The Roundhouse kick (RHK) is one of the most employed techniques in taekwondo competitions to score on the opponent, since it provides a fast and a powerful attack. However, its effectiveness depends on high technical accuracy. To polish an athlete’s technique, trainers generally provide movement-related information via augmented feedback. Feedback is provided in two different ways, knowledge of result (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP). KR is about the accuracy score of a trial, whereas KP concerns the movement pattern that produces the result. Few studies have focused on understanding which moment of providing feedback on martial arts movement patterns is the most efficient. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether KP would be more effective for taekwondo RHK learning if provided after relatively good trials, after relatively poor trials or when requested by the learner. Eighteen undergraduate students with no prior experience with martial arts were assigned to different groups: a group that received feedback after performing good trials (GOOD), a group that received feedback after poor attempts (POOR) and a group that decided when to receive feedback (SELF). Four blocks of tests were performed, including a pre-test, post-test, retention and transfer. The subjects had to hit a higher amount of RHK on a kick pad according the movement pattern. The ANOVA revealed that the SELF group showed a higher score than the GOOD and POOR groups, while no differences were found between the GOOD and POOR groups

Tolcapone, a potent aggregation inhibitor for the treatment of familial leptomeningeal amyloidosis

Hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR) is a disease characterized by the extracellular deposition of transthyretin (TTR) amyloid fibrils. Highly destabilizing TTR mutations cause leptomeningeal amyloidosis, a rare, but fatal, disorder in which TTR aggregates in the brain. The disease remains intractable, since liver transplantation, the reference therapy for systemic ATTR, does not stop mutant TTR production in the brain. In addition, despite current pharmacological strategies have shown to be effective against in vivo TTR aggregation by stabilizing the tetramer native structure and precluding its dissociation, they display low brain permeability. Recently, we have repurposed tolcapone as a molecule to treat systemic ATTR. Crystal structures and biophysical analysis converge to demonstrate that tolcapone binds with high affinity and specificity to three unstable leptomeningeal TTR variants, stabilizing them and, consequently, inhibiting their aggregation. Because tolcapone is an FDA-approved drug that crosses the blood-brain barrier, our results suggest that it can translate into a first disease-modifying therapy for leptomeningeal amyloidosis. Databases PDB codes for A25T-TTR, V30G-TTR, and Y114C-TTR bound to tolcapone are 6TXV, 6TXW, and 6XTK, respectively

Functional and morphological assessment of a standardized rat sciatic nerve crush injury with a non-serrated clamp

Peripheral nerve researchers frequently use the rat sciatic nerve crush as a model for axonotmesis.Unfortunately, studies from various research groups report results from different crush techniquesand by using a variety of evaluation tools, making comparisons between studies difficult. The pur-pose of this investigation was to determine the sequence of functional and morphologic changes af-ter an acute sciatic nerve crush injury with a non-serrated clamp, giving a final standardized pres-sure of p9 MPa. Functional recovery was evaluated using the sciatic functional index (SFI), theextensor postural thrust (EPT) and the withdrawal reflex latency (WRL), before injury, and thenat weekly intervals until week 8 postoperatively. The rats were also evaluated preoperatively andat weeks 2, 4, and 8 by ankle kinematics, toe out angle (TOA), and gait-stance duration. In addi-tion, the motor nerve conduction velocity (MNCV) and the gastrocnemius-soleus weight parameterswere measured just before euthanasia. Finally, structural, ultrastructural and histomorphometricanalyses were carried out on regenerated nerve fibers. At 8 weeks after the crush injury, a full func-tional recovery was predicted by SFI, EPT, TOA, and gait-stance duration, while all the other pa-rameters were still recovering their original values. On the other hand, only two of the histomor-phometric parameters of regenerated nerve fibers, namely myelin thickness/axon diameter ratio andfiber/axon diameter ratio, returned to normal values while all other parameters were significantlydifferent from normal values. The employment of traditional methods of functional evaluation inconjunction with the modern techniques of computerized analysis of gait and histomorphometricanalysis should thus be recommended for an overall assessment of recovery in the rat sciatic nervecrush model