The role of local labour market conditions and pupil attainment on post-compulsory schooling decisions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Design/methodology/approach Through the specification of a nested logit model, the restrictive independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption inherent in the multinomial logit (MNL) model is relaxed across multiple unordered outcomes. Findings The analysis shows that the factors influencing schooling decisions differ for males and females. For females, on average, the key drivers of the schooling decision are expected wage returns based on youth educational attainment, attitudes to school and parental aspirations, rather than local labour market conditions. For males, higher local unemployment rates encourage greater investment in education. Originality/value The contribution of this paper to the existing literature is threefold. First, a nested logit model is proposed as an alternative to a MNL. The former can formally incorporate the structured and sequential decision-making process that youths may engage with in relation to the post-compulsory schooling decision, as well as relaxing the restrictive IIA assumption inherent in the MNL across multiple unordered outcomes, an issue the authors discuss in more detail in the Methodology section below. Second, the analysis is based on extremely rich socio-economic data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, matched to local labour market data and administrative data from the National Pupil Database and Pupil Level Annual School Census, which provide a broad set of unusually high-quality measures of prior attainment. The authors argue that such high-quality data and an appropriate model specification allows identification of the determinants of the post-compulsory decision in a more detailed manner than many previous analyses. Third, the data have the scale necessary to consider whether the determinants of post-compulsory schooling decisions vary by gender, a particularly important issue given the differential education participation rates of males and females (e.g. in this cohort, females are about 10 percentage points more likely to go on to higher education in the UK than males), and the gendered choices of occupation (see, e.g. Bertrand, 2011). The work will, therefore, provide recent empirical evidence from England on gender differences in the determinants of education choices. Office for Manpower Economic

A study of column separation accompanying pressure transients in an aviation kerosene pipeline

Column separation on both the upstream and downstream sides of a valve in an aviation kerosene pipeline was the subject of an investigation involving the method of characteristics to solve the partial differential equations governing pressure transient propagation. Particular attention was given to obtaining accurate velocity results at the instant the predicted pressure at a section reached vapour pressure. A test rig utilizing L.56 aluminium alloy fuel piping and other aircraft standard components and pumping Aviation Kerosene Specification 2494, was employed to investigate the phenomenon and test the computing procedures. For separation upstream of a valve following closure, a comparison of the computed and observed results indicated an accuracy within 3% for the first peak following valve closure and 5% for the cavity duration. Computed results within 10% of the observed were obtained for the later peaks following cavity collapse.Observation and filming of the sequence of events downstream of the valve during and following closure indicated that the air released during initial separation remained out of solution. The effect of this air was significant but could be included, in terms of its partial pressure, in the cavity boundary equations. The predicted cavity collapse pressures were consistently above those observed. Predicted values of maximum and minimum pressures, and their event times, following valve closure were, at worst, within 10% of the observed results. Analysis of the released gas indicated that it had normal air composition. Measurement of column velocity from the films and the use of a hot film probe and anemometer supported the assumptions made with reference to column motion. The hot film probe results demonstrated that this flow measurement technique was practical in this application

Occupational sex-segregation, specialized human capital and wages: evidence from Britain

Female-dominated occupations are poorly paid, but there is disagreement about why. Sociological explanations argue that pay in such occupations is low because society undervalues 'women's work', while economic theory argues that this is due to scant requirements for specialized skills. This article sheds light over these debates by examining the impact of occupational feminization on wages in Britain and exploring the mechanisms that produce it, using innovative statistical models that account for both observable and unobservable skill. Results confirm that occupational sex-segregation explains a sizeable portion of the gender wage gap and that wages in female-dominated occupations are lower than wages in other occupations. Inconsistent with human capital theory, low pay in female-dominated occupations cannot be explained fully by low skill specialization or by observable or unobservable characteristics of their workers. Remaining wage penalties in such occupations are consequently taken as evidence of institutional devaluation of 'women's work'

Deliberating Animal Values: a Pragmatic-Pluralistic Approach to Animal Ethics.

Debates in animal ethics are largely characterized by ethical monism, the search for a single, timeless, and essential trait in which the moral standing of animals can be grounded. In this paper, we argue that a monistic approach towards animal ethics hampers and oversimplifies the moral debate. The value pluralism present in our contemporary societies requires a more open and flexible approach to moral inquiry. This paper advocates the turn to a pragmatic, pluralistic approach to animal ethics. It contributes to the development of such an approach in two ways. It offers a pragmatist critique of ethical monism in animal ethics and presents the results of a qualitative study into the value diversity present in the different ways of thinking about animals in the Netherlands. Carefully arranged group discussions resulted in the reconstruction of four distinctive moral value frameworks that may serve as instruments in the future process of moral inquiry and deliberation in the reflection on animal use. © 2010 The Author(s)

Incomplete Inhibition of Sphingosine 1-Phosphate Lyase Modulates Immune System Function yet Prevents Early Lethality and Non-Lymphoid Lesions

BACKGROUND: S1PL is an aldehyde-lyase that irreversibly cleaves sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) in the terminal step of sphingolipid catabolism. Because S1P modulates a wide range of physiological processes, its concentration must be tightly regulated within both intracellular and extracellular environments. METHODOLOGY: In order to better understand the function of S1PL in this regulatory pathway, we assessed the in vivo effects of different levels of S1PL activity using knockout (KO) and humanized mouse models. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Our analysis showed that all S1PL-deficient genetic models in this study displayed lymphopenia, with sequestration of mature T cells in the thymus and lymph nodes. In addition to the lymphoid phenotypes, S1PL KO mice (S1PL(-/-)) also developed myeloid cell hyperplasia and significant lesions in the lung, heart, urinary tract, and bone, and had a markedly reduced life span. The humanized knock-in mice harboring one allele (S1PL(H/-)) or two alleles (S1PL(H/H)) of human S1PL expressed less than 10 and 20% of normal S1PL activity, respectively. This partial restoration of S1PL activity was sufficient to fully protect both humanized mouse lines from the lethal non-lymphoid lesions that developed in S1PL(-/-) mice, but failed to restore normal T-cell development and trafficking. Detailed analysis of T-cell compartments indicated that complete absence of S1PL affected both maturation/development and egress of mature T cells from the thymus, whereas low level S1PL activity affected T-cell egress more than differentiation. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings demonstrate that lymphocyte trafficking is particularly sensitive to variations in S1PL activity and suggest that there is a window in which partial inhibition of S1PL could produce therapeutic levels of immunosuppression without causing clinically significant S1P-related lesions in non-lymphoid target organs

Professional Learning Communities as drivers of educational change: the case of Learning Rounds

Many researchers claim that there is a compelling weight of evidence for the effectiveness of PLCs in promoting teachers’ learning and pupil achievement. However, others raise fundamental questions about their nature and purpose. Some of the uncertainties about the nature and purpose of PLCs relate to the ways in which the macro-context of neo-liberalism has shaped the practices of PLCs in particular ways. The fundamental questions raised about PLCs relate to the type of change they are intended to produce, the model of community they are based on and whether the right conditions and skills are in place for them to contribute to change. Some researchers argue that we need to pay more attention to shortcomings within existing PLCs and their internal dynamics. Others argue that little research focuses on the specific interactions of teachers inside PLCs. The research reported here goes ‘inside the teacher community’ of Learning Rounds to explore what the shortcomings of some examples of this model in practice add to what we know about how to assist PLCs to produce change in education

Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making

The globalisation of trade affects land use, food production and environmentsaround the world. In principle, globalisation can maximise productivity andefficiency if competition prompts specialisation on the basis of productive capacity.In reality, however, such specialisation is often constrained by practical or politicalbarriers, including those intended to ensure national or regional food security.These are likely to produce globally sub-optimal distributions of land uses. Bothoutcomes are subject to the responses of individual land managers to economicand environmental stimuli, and these responses are known to be variable and often(economically) irrational. We investigate the consequences of stylised food securitypolicies and globalisation of agricultural markets on land use patterns under avariety of modelled forms of land manager behaviour, including variation inproduction levels, tenacity, land use intensity and multi-functionality. We find that asystem entirely dedicated to regional food security is inferior to an entirelyglobalised system in terms of overall production levels, but that several forms ofbehaviour limit the difference between the two, and that variations in land useintensity and functionality can substantially increase the provision of food and otherecosystem services in both cases. We also find emergent behaviour that results inthe abandonment of productive land, the slowing of rates of land use change andthe fragmentation or, conversely, concentration of land uses following changes indemand levels