Coronavirus and long term lockdown – How HR need to be proactive and not panic

As the nationwide lockdown is extended, and uncertainty surrounding when it will end, a HR expert and digital transformation expert from the University of Salford Business School give their top tips for HR teams when supporting their staff with long term working from home

Are returnships the answer to the current skills shortage? What are they and why are they popular?

Businesses have noticed a huge change in labour trends over the last couple of years with the ‘Great Resignation’ and Great Reshuffle.Businesses have noticed a huge change in labour trends over the last couple of years with the ‘Great Resignation’ and Great Reshuffle impacting employers’ ability to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce. What started as an economic trend in the US, soon travelled around the globe resulting in swathes of workers leaving their jobs, taking time off, emigrating abroad or changing sectors. The increase in technology enabled ‘digital nomads’ to operate without boundaries; whilst others reskilled during the Covid-19 pandemic, using furlough schemes as a way to fund learning and development

Are UK employment tribunals a barrier to justice

The UK Employment Tribunal System (ETS) is broken and in need of reform according to the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) (2011) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) (2011). Both organisations, that represent and lobby in the interests of employers, have carried out research which purports to show tribunals are too alacritous in accepting spurious claims and that the cost to defend a claim is higher than settling. In contrast the Trades Union Congress (TUC) (2011) and ETS commentators have consistently argued that the tribunal system favours employers through its judgments and ability to compensate, and needs to be reformed to address this lack of fairness, specifically the remedies awarded to claimants can be minimal in terms of potential career earnings, and the psychological impact of the tribunal process can be very damaging. Focusing on three areas of social justice identified by Rawls (2005) and Cropanzano, Stein and Nadisic (2011) this study argues that although the ETS is an important mechanism for adjudicating workplace disputes, there are major concerns regarding the inclination to defend cases and the willingness to follow a claim to a full tribunal hearing. Implications are drawn from these superficially similar viewpoints as to how the government can continually monitor, evaluate and reform the tribunal system. The study considers the proposition that tribunals should favour employees, as they have more to lose from the process, and it implies that if justice is both carried out and also perceived to be administered, the ETS has to be continually modernised to meet the expectations of those involved with the process. The law is stated as at October 2013

Radiogenomic analysis of primary breast cancer reveals [18F]-fluorodeoxglucose dynamic flux-constants are positively associated with immune pathways and outperform static uptake measures in associating with glucose metabolism

Background: PET imaging of 18F-fluorodeoxygucose (FDG) is used widely for tumour staging and assessment of treatment response, but the biology associated with FDG uptake is still not fully elucidated. We therefore carried out gene set enrichment analyses (GSEA) of RNA sequencing data to find KEGG pathways associated with FDG uptake in primary breast cancers. Methods: Pre-treatment data were analysed from a window-of-opportunity study in which 30 patients underwent static and dynamic FDG-PET and tumour biopsy. Kinetic models were fitted to dynamic images, and GSEA was performed for enrichment scores reflecting Pearson and Spearman coefficients of correlations between gene expression and imaging. Results: A total of 38 pathways were associated with kinetic model flux-constants or static measures of FDG uptake, all positively. The associated pathways included glycolysis/gluconeogenesis (‘GLYC-GLUC’) which mediates FDG uptake and was associated with model flux-constants but not with static uptake measures, and 28 pathways related to immune-response or inflammation. More pathways, 32, were associated with the flux-constant K of the simple Patlak model than with any other imaging index. Numbers of pathways categorised as being associated with individual micro-parameters of the kinetic models were substantially fewer than numbers associated with flux-constants, and lay around levels expected by chance. Conclusions: In pre-treatment images GLYC-GLUC was associated with FDG kinetic flux-constants including Patlak K, but not with static uptake measures. Immune-related pathways were associated with flux-constants and static uptake. Patlak K was associated with more pathways than were the flux-constants of more complex kinetic models. On the basis of these results Patlak analysis of dynamic FDG-PET scans is advantageous, compared to other kinetic analyses or static imaging, in studies seeking to infer tumour-to-tumour differences in biology from differences in imaging. Trial registration NCT01266486, December 24th 2010

Branching dendrites with resonant membrane: a “sum-over-trips” approach

Dendrites form the major components of neurons. They are complex branching structures that receive and process thousands of synaptic inputs from other neurons. It is well known that dendritic morphology plays an important role in the function of dendrites. Another important contribution to the response characteristics of a single neuron comes from the intrinsic resonant properties of dendritic membrane. In this paper we combine the effects of dendritic branching and resonant membrane dynamics by generalising the “sum-over-trips” approach (Abbott et al. in Biol Cybernetics 66, 49–60 1991). To illustrate how this formalism can shed light on the role of architecture and resonances in determining neuronal output we consider dual recording and reconstruction data from a rat CA1 hippocampal pyramidal cell. Specifically we explore the way in which an Ih current contributes to a voltage overshoot at the soma