Plus ça change...? Innovation and continuity in UK youth employment policy during the Great Recession

In response to rising youth unemployment in the context of the Great Recession, the UK introduced since 2010 numerous policy innovations in of its youth transitional labour market policy, focusing especially on Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Vocational Education and Training (VET). But is the intense reform activity indicative of a significant path-shift in policy trajectory in a direction of greater social investment, when considered against the UK’s pre-crisis institutional legacy? Focusing on key measures implemented in England between 2010 and 2015, we draw on Hall (1993) ‘degrees of change’ conceptual framework to analyse the content of recent policy innovations and assess their relative degree of continuity with the UK’s characteristic features as a ‘liberal youth transitions’ regime (Pohl and Walther, 2007). We find that despite significant changes in policy instruments’ design, the UK’s policy goals and overall youth transition model exhibit striking continuity with the pre-crisis period. In the dimension of ALMPs, we find continued emphasis on supply-side policies aimed at encouraging young people’s early labour market entry, prioritising work experience and early activation. VET shows signs of potential paradigmatic change, with numerous measures seeking to significantly transform the VET status and level of employer involvement. However, the depth of institutional change is limited, as evidence suggests continued employer resistance to stronger coordination mechanisms and a more active role as VET providers rather than consumers

Sds22 regulates aurora B activity and microtubule-kinetochore interactions at mitosis

Sds22 defines protein phosphatase 1 location and function at kinetochores and subsequent activity of aurora B in mitosis

The gold standard: accurate stellar and planetary parameters for eight Kepler M dwarf systems enabled by parallaxes

We report parallaxes and proper motions from the Hawaii Infrared Parallax Program for eight nearby M dwarf stars with transiting exoplanets discovered by Kepler. We combine our directly measured distances with mass-luminosity and radius–luminosity relationships to significantly improve constraints on the host stars’ properties. Our astrometry enables the identification of wide stellar companions to the planet hosts. Within our limited sample, all the multi-transiting planet hosts (three of three) appear to be single stars, while nearly all (four of five) of the systems with a single detected planet have wide stellar companions. By applying strict priors on average stellar density from our updated radius and mass in our transit fitting analysis, we measure the eccentricity probability distributions for each transiting planet. Planets in single-star systems tend to have smaller eccentricities than those in binaries, although this difference is not significant in our small sample. In the case of Kepler-42bcd, where the eccentricities are known to be ≃0, we demonstrate that such systems can serve as powerful tests of M dwarf evolutionary models by working in L⋆ − ρ⋆ space. The transit-fit density for Kepler- 42bcd is inconsistent with model predictions at 2.1σ (22%), but matches more empirical estimates at 0.2σ (2%), consistent with earlier results showing model radii of M dwarfs are underinflated. Gaia will provide high-precision parallaxes for the entire Kepler M dwarf sample, and TESS will identify more planets transiting nearby, late-type stars, enabling significant improvements in our understanding of the eccentricity distribution of small planets and the parameters of late-type dwarfs.Support for Program number HST-HF2-51364.001-A was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.Some of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. This paper includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate. The authors acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing HPC resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. URL: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu. (HST-HF2-51364.001-A - NASA through Space Telescope Science Institute; NAS5-26555 - NASA; NNX09AF08G - NASA Office of Space Science; NASA Science Mission directorate

Physical conditions regulate the fungal to bacterial ratios of a tropical suspended soil

As a source of ‘suspended soils’, epiphytes contribute large amounts of organic matter to the canopy of tropical rain forests. Microbes associated with epiphytes are responsible for much of the nutrient cycling taking place in rain forest canopies. However, soils suspended far above the ground in living organisms differ from soil on the forest floor, and traditional predictors of soil microbial community composition and functioning (nutrient availability and the activity of soil organisms) are likely to be less important. We conducted an experiment in the rain forest biome at the Eden Project in Cornwall to explore how biotic and abiotic conditions determine microbial community composition and functioning in a suspended soil. To simulate their natural epiphytic lifestyle, 20 bird’s nest ferns (Asplenium nidus) were placed on a custom-built canopy platform suspended 8m above the ground. Ammonium nitrate and earthworm treatments were applied to ferns in a factorial design. Extracellular enzyme activity and Phospholipid Fatty Acid (PLFA) profiles were determined at zero, three and six months. We observed no significant differences in either enzyme activity or PLFA profiles between any of the treatments. Instead, we observed decreases in β-glucosidase and N-acetyl-glucosaminidase activity, and an increase in phenol oxidase activity across all treatments and controls. An increase in the relative abundance of fungi during the experiment meant that the microbial communities in the Eden Project ferns after six months were comparable with 20 ferns sampled from pristine tropical rain forest in Borneo

Quantitative analysis of chromatin compaction in living cells using FLIM-FRET

FRET analysis of cell lines expressing fluorescently tagged histones on separate nucleosomes demonstrates that variations in chromosome compaction occur during mitosis