Representation of Lesbian and Gay Men in Federal, State, and Local Bureaucracies

Americans increasingly view lesbians and gay men as a legitimate minority, entitled to equal employment opportunities and perhaps to adequate representation in government. Scholars of public administration have extensively studied whether women and racial minorities receive fair representation and pay in the public sector, but we have generally ignored lesbians and gay men, largely because we lack data on the sexual orientation of government employees. Using a 5 percent sample of the 2000 Census, this paper provides new insights into one group of lesbian and gay employees: full-time workers with same-sex unmarried partners. It first determines whether they are as likely to hold jobs in the public and nonprofit sectors as workers who are married, have different-sex unmarried partners, or have never been married. Second, it explores whether lesbians' and gay men's representation is concentrated in particular occupations. It then examines whether workers with same-sex partners earn as much as other workers, and whether any disparities can be explained by race, gender, education, age, occupation, and location. Working Paper 08-2

Abutment-thermal interaction of a composite bridge

A two-span test structure, with tie-rods to similate approach-slab forces, was subjected to thermal loading. The resultant strains and deflections are correlated with those obtained from a prior theoretical study. It was concluded ~hat the theoretical procedure provides a rational method for predicting the thermal behavior of composite-girder bridge structures

Sequence analysis of the cis-regulatory regions of the bithorax complex of Drosophila

The bithorax complex (BX-C) of Drosophila, one of two complexes that act as master regulators of the body plan of the fly, has now been entirely sequenced and comprises approximate to 315,000 bp, only 1.4% of which codes for protein. Analysis of this sequence reveals significantly overrepresented DNA motifs of unknown, as well as known, functions in the nonprotein-coding portion of the sequence. The following types of motifs in that portion are analyzed: (i) concatamers of mono-, di-, and trinucleotides; (ii) tightly clustered hexanucleotides (spaced less than or equal to 5 bases apart); (iii) direct and reverse repeats longer than 20 bp; and (iv) a number of motifs known from biochemical studies to play a role in the regulation of the BX-C. The hexanucleotide AGATAC is remarkably overrepresented and is surmised to play a role in chromosome pairing. The positions of sites of highly overrepresented motifs are plotted for those that occur at more than five sites in the sequence, when <0.5 case is expected. Expected values are based on a third-order Markov chain, which is the optimal order for representing the BXCALL sequence

Using statutory guidance and codes of practice to build on whistleblowing legislation: the Irish experience

In our opinion, the use of Guidance regarding whistleblower protection represents best international practice with regard to protected disclosures. It is devised on the premise that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate given the different nature and scope of public sector bodies. In the authors’ opinion, the Irish experience demonstrates how statutory guidance and Codes of Practice can be valuable methods of explaining how the law is intended to operate as well as encouraging best practice which goes beyond the minimum statutory floor of rights

The content of whistleblowing procedures: a critical review of recent official guidelines

There is an increasing recognition of the need to provide ways for people to raise concerns about suspected wrongdoing by promoting internal policies and procedures which offer proper safeguards to actual and potential whistleblowers. Many organisations in both the public and private sectors now have such measures and these display a wide variety of operating modalities: in-house or outsourced, anonymous/confidential/identified, multi or single tiered, specified or open subject matter, etc. As a result of this development, a number of guidelines and policy documents have been produced by authoritative bodies. This article reviews the following five documents from a management perspective, the first two deal with the principles upon which legislation might be based and the others describing good management practice: the Council of Europe Resolution 1729 (COER); Transparency International ‘Recommended Principles for Whistleblowing Legislation’ (TI); European Union Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Opinion (EUWP); International Chamber of Commerce ‘Guidelines on Whistleblowing’ (ICC); and the British Standards Institute ‘Whistleblowing arrangements Code of Practice 2008 (BSI)