Behavioral Economics and Workforce Development: A Review of the Literature from Labor Economics and the Broader Field

Literature Reviewhere is mutual benefit for employers and workers when workers improve their skills beyond the minimum requirements for their position—a fact not lost on employers, many of who are willing to provide education and training opportunities to staff, including frontline workers. These opportunities typically include on-the-job-training, tuition reimbursement for postsecondary courses, and paid leave to attend classes. Despite often generous budgets for these activities, relatively few workers take advantage of these opportunities, potentially limiting increases in productivity, wages and longer-term career advancement (Tompson, Benz, Agiesta, & Junius, 2013). This dilemma raises an interesting research question: Can emerging lessons from behavioral science experiments be applied to cutting the Gordian Knot of worker participation in education and training programs? This review of current literature on the topic is intended to explore the strengths and limitations of applying tools of behavioral sciences to increase the participation and completion rate of training for lower-wage, frontline incumbent workers in ways that benefit both workers and sponsoring firms.The Hitachi FoundationRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

2017 Nuru Ethiopia Impact Report

Since 2016, the Ray Marshall Center has been providing technical assistance to support Nuru International’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) team. The Center’s experience and expertise supports Nuru’s work in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria by demonstrating the effectiveness and robustness of its integrated approach to addressing poverty. The integrated Nuru model seeks to address four key areas of need: 1) food insecurity, 2) inability to cope with economic shocks, 3) unnecessary disease and death, and 4) lack of quality education for children. In Ethiopia and Kenya, Nuru M&E utilizes a quasi-experimental design with the intent of measuring the effectiveness of the four impact programs as well as the overarching impact of these programs on multidimensional poverty. By following a panel of farmers from a non-intervention group as well as the same cohort of Nuru households over time, Nuru M&E evaluates whether or not any observed changes in well-being can be attributed to Nuru programming. Additionally, M&E analyzes key performance indicators to ensure programs track toward their goals. Since 2017, RMC researchers have been responsible for carrying out data analyses for the Nuru M&E team and studying the outcomes and impacts of Nuru’s programming in Ethiopia. Findings from the analyses are used by the Nuru M&E team to inform program planning and decision making. In this report, RMC researchers present results from an outcomes and impact analysis of Nuru’s Rural Livelihoods, Health, and Education programs in Ethiopia in 2017.Nuru InternationalRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Assistance for A Glimmer of Hope Foundation: Guidance About Target Populations and Interventions

From March 2018 through May 2018, the Ray Marshall Center provided technical assistance to support A Glimmer of Hope Foundation’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) efforts. The RMC’s experience and expertise supported Glimmer’s work by demonstrating the effectiveness and robustness of its integrated approach to addressing poverty. In the first phase of technical assistance, RMC conducted an in-depth review of Glimmer’s baseline assessment study design and baseline assessment tools, and provided recommendations based on best practices from the literature. In the second phase of technical assistance, RMC conducted an in-depth review of literature to understand the primary factors driving poverty in Ethiopia; interventions currently being implemented to address these factors; specific interventions that have been shown to be most effective; and interventions, issues, and target populations that other actors (government/NGOs) are addressing in the area and their effectiveness. In this report, we provide strategic advice and recommendations on the selection of appropriate target populations and appropriate target interventions for Glimmer (specifically in the livelihoods and education sectors).The Glimmer of Hope FoundationRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Texas Early Childhood Care and Education Professional Preparation – Survey Data Report

This study was designed to broaden our understanding of the capacity of Texas Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) early childhood care and education (ECCE) programs to effectively prepare Texas early childhood professionals for the workforce.University of Texas Health Science Center and Texas Early Learning CouncilRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Phylogenetic Relationships of Monocots Based on the Highly Informative Plastid Gene ndhF

We used ndhF sequence variation to reconstruct relationships across 282 taxa representing 78 monocot families and all 12 orders. The resulting tree is highly resolved and places commelinids sister to Asparagales, with both sister to Liliales—Pandanales in the strict consensus; Pandanales are sister to Dioscoreales in the bootstrap majority-rule tree, just above Petrosaviales. Acorales are sister to all other monocots, with Alismatales sister to all but Acorales. Relationships among the four major clades of commelinids remain unresolved. Relationships within orders are consistent with those based on rbcL, alone or in combination with atpB and 18S nrDNA, and generally better supported: ndhF contributes more than twice as many informative characters as rbcL, and nearly as many as rbcL, atpB, and 18S nrDNA combined. Based on functional arguments, we hypothesized that net venation and fleshy fruits should both evolve—and thus undergo concerted convergence—in shaded habitats, and revert to parallel venation and dry, passively dispersed fruits in open, sunny habitats. Our data show that net venation arose at least 26 times and disappeared 9 times, whereas fleshy fruits arose 22 times and disappeared 11 times. Both traits arose together at least 15 times and disappeared together 5 times. They thus show a highly significant pattern of concerted convergence (P \u3c 10-9) and are each even more strongly associated with shaded habitats (P \u3c 10-10 to 10-23); net venation is also associated, as predicted, with broad-leaved aquatic plants. Exceptions to this pattern illustrate the importance of other selective constraints and phylogenetic inertia

Regulation of neutrophil senescence by microRNAs

Neutrophils are rapidly recruited to sites of tissue injury or infection, where they protect against invading pathogens. Neutrophil functions are limited by a process of neutrophil senescence, which renders the cells unable to respond to chemoattractants, carry out respiratory burst, or degranulate. In parallel, aged neutrophils also undergo spontaneous apoptosis, which can be delayed by factors such as GMCSF. This is then followed by their subsequent removal by phagocytic cells such as macrophages, thereby preventing unwanted inflammation and tissue damage. Neutrophils translate mRNA to make new proteins that are important in maintaining functional longevity. We therefore hypothesised that neutrophil functions and lifespan might be regulated by microRNAs expressed within human neutrophils. Total RNA from highly purified neutrophils was prepared and subjected to microarray analysis using the Agilent human miRNA microarray V3. We found human neutrophils expressed a selected repertoire of 148 microRNAs and that 6 of these were significantly upregulated after a period of 4 hours in culture, at a time when the contribution of apoptosis is negligible. A list of predicted targets for these 6 microRNAs was generated from http://mirecords.biolead.org and compared to mRNA species downregulated over time, revealing 83 genes targeted by at least 2 out of the 6 regulated microRNAs. Pathway analysis of genes containing binding sites for these microRNAs identified the following pathways: chemokine and cytokine signalling, Ras pathway, and regulation of the actin cytoskeleton. Our data suggest that microRNAs may play a role in the regulation of neutrophil senescence and further suggest that manipulation of microRNAs might represent an area of future therapeutic interest for the treatment of inflammatory disease

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV