325 research outputs found
Fortissat Science Alliance podcast:Aryanne Finnie
No full textThis episode features guest Aryanne Finnie from the University of Strathclyde who talks to us about detecting bacteria with fluorescence to check for illness. She also talks about her many pets
Fortissat Science Alliance podcast: Aryanne Finnie
No full textAryanne Finnie was an EPSRC/MRC OPTIMA CDT PhD student studying optical medical imaging alongside an integrated Masters in healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde. She took part in the Fortissat Science Alliance podcast recordings in December 2021.What is the Fortissat Science Alliance?The Fortissat Science Alliance was a Wellcome Trust & Children In Need "Curiosity" project. This scheme provided informal STEM learning opportunities for young people who attended the community centre Getting Better Together Shotts (GBT Shotts) between 2019 and 2023. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deliveries had to pivot online so the podcast was founded. These recordings were made via Zoom with warm-up STEM activities sent to every young person in advance, along with a profile page for each researcher, so that they were relaxed and able to ask excellent questions.Link to episode on Spotify.Depending on the broadcast date, podcast deliveries were co-sponsored by Glasgow Science Festival, EXPLORATHON 2021, or EXPLORATHON 2022/23.For the duration of the project, it was supported jointly by Children in Need and the Wellcome Trust. In 2021, EXPLORATHON episodes were supported by the European Commission [grant agreement ID 101036101]. In 2022-23, EXPLORATHON episodes were supported by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/X020894/1]. Layla was supported by the EPSRC/MRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Optical Medical Imaging (OPTIMA).Author contributions to contentAryanne Finnie was the guest featured on this episode. Rebecca Hay was the youth worker coordinating the young people who conducted the interviews as well as co-editing and broadcasting the recordings. Iain Hamilton co-edited the episodes. Kirsty Ross was the STEM consultant for the project and uploaded completed episodes to Figshare.</p
Cyclical Changes in Short-Run Earnings Mobility in Canada, 1982-1996
No full textThe paper by Charles M. Beach and Ross Finnie represents the first attempt to quantify short-term or cyclical changes in earnings mobility in Canada. Mobility analysis can be seen as a complement to the analysis of income distribution. For a given degree of earnings inequality, more earnings mobility corresponds to securing greater labour market opportunity. Using longitudinal income-tax-based data, the authors divide the employed population into eight age/sex groups: entry workers (20–24), younger workers (25–34), prime-age workers (35–54), and older workers (55–64) for both sexes; and divide the earnings distribution into lower, middle and upper regions or earnings intervals based on median earnings levels for the distribution as a whole, and calculate the proportion of workers in each group for all years over the 1982–96 period. They also develop transition matrices that show the probability of moving from one earnings interval to another over a one-year period. They find that there have been major cyclical changes in earnings polarization and that these changes have been concentrated in recessions, notably in the 1990–92 downturn. They also find that men in particular experienced a marked decrease in their net probability of upward mobility in the earnings distribution during recessions, as the probability of moving up fell sharply as did the probability of moving down. The results of the paper are particularly relevant for an understanding of how earnings mobility may be affected by the current economic slowdown.Earnings Mobility, Income Mobility, Mobility, Income, Earnings, Distribution, Income Distribution, Earnings Distribution, Earnings Inequality, Recession, Cyclical
Did flaws in the application of resource accounting and budgeting distort the Strategic Review of Water Charges in Scotland?
No full textIn August 2001, the Water Commissioner was tasked by the Scottish Executive to carry out a strategic review of water charges covering the years 2002-06. Based on revenue calculations made by the Water Commissioner in his review, Scottish Water issued its water charges for 2003-04. Since then there have been repeated arguments and complaints, particularly from businesses, that the prices charged are too high and are crippling business. For example, Peter Jones, writing in the Economist 29th May 2003, cited the example of the BP refinery at Grangemouth, where the annual water bill is now £12.7 million, as against £7 million for a similar establishment in England. This article examines the impact which the then newly introduced system of expenditure control based on Resource Accounting and Budgeting, (RAB), had on the Strategic Review. We conclude that there appear to have been mistakes in the application of the RAB system at the time of the Strategic Review, which mean that the review took an unduly pessimistic view of the water industry’s financial position. This implies that the charges set as a result of the review were potentially too high by a significant amount. There is a requirement to re-open key aspects of the arithmetic of the Strategic Review: in particular, on how the Scottish Executive set the original RAB limits and how these were then translated into the Commissioner's advice. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly sets the background. The main content of the paper is in section 3, where we examine how the Water Commissioner used the information given by the Scottish Executive with regard to RAB to determine how much Scottish Water could borrow, and we compare this with the figures the Scottish Executive itself produced for net borrowing. There is clear evidence of inconsistency between the Commissioner and the Scottish Executive, with the Commissioner producing in his calculations a much more pessimistic view than the Scottish Executive of the amount of net borrowing consistent with a given RAB control limit. The implications of this for the charging decisions taking during the review are potentially profound and may amount to more than £100 million per annum. We cannot establish categorically, on the basis of the available evidence, how this inconsistency arose: but it appears to relate either to revised estimates of depreciation which the Commissioner calculated during his review, or more probably, to the possibility that there is a mistake in the terms of the letter from the Scottish Executive commissioning the review of charges which has meant that a substantial element of investment has effectively been double counted. Section 4 identifies, and discusses briefly, a number of other issues which are relevant to the determination of water charges. The section concludes with the recommendations that (a) the arithmetic on the setting of existing charges should be re-opened, and (b), that there should be a more wide ranging review of charging policy
Welfare Policy, Language Group and the Duration of Lone Motherhood Spells
No full textThe duration of spells of lone motherhood has important consequences for the economic well being of the members of such families and the cost of social programs. We use a large sample of linked income tax records to estimate a competing risk model of the impact of welfare benefits, language group, and other demographic characteristics on the likelihood of an exit to both marital and common law unions. We also consider the economic consequences of exits from motherhood to such unions.lone mathers, marriage
Displacement of Older Workers: Re-employment, Hastened Retirement, Disability, or Other Destinations?
No full textThe central objective of this study is to investigate the income sources and patterns of prime-age and older workers who suffer a layoff from steady employment. We focus on a set of cohorts who are deemed to have a high degree of attachment to the labour force preceding the event of an involuntary separation. Using a unique data base that merges administrative data marking the job separation, we track all of their sources of income over an interval that spans four years prior to the separation to five years after the separation. Our empirical analysis includes an investigation of the frequency that a laid-off individual will receive income ex post from a given source, a typology analysis of the various configurations of income received, and an econometric analysis of the incidence of certain post-layoff income configurations. We find that in any given year, approximately 2 % of our sample of workers with stable employment histories experience a ‘visible’ layoff. During the first three post-layoff years, 77 % of the group of laid-off workers (aged 45-64 years old) have non-trivial labour market earnings, and 56-65 % of them depend on the labour market for their primary source of income. This group of workers does experience substantial income losses. During the post-layoff period, approximately 14-19 % of them file a subsequent claim for EI benefits, but few of them depend on the EI regime as the primary source of their income. Very few of these individuals draw on other types of social insurance benefits, such as CPP disability, social assistance, and workers’ compensation. The most common destination state for prime-age and older workers who have not yet reached retirement age are early retirement and continued labour market activity, albeit at much lower earnings. It is rare for them to draw on social insurance benefits, and we find little evidence that disability benefits and workers compensation are functioning as disguised unemployment benefits.Post-layoff transitions, incidence of program usage, retirement behaviour, disability benefits, re-employment transitions
How the strategic review of charges 2002-06 casts a long shadow over future water charges in Scotland
No full textThe findings of the research described in this paper are that there were significant errors made in the setting of water charges in 2002-06 in Scotland, such that there was substantial overcharging of customers. This will continue at a lesser extent over the period 2006-10. The amounts involved are large: total overcharging in cash terms is likely to be at least £650 million cumulatively over the eight year period from 2002 to 2010, and could well be close to £1 billion. This affects both households and businesses in Scotland
The Income Sources for Long-Term Workers Who Exhaust Employment Insurance Benefits
No full textProduced by the Mowat Centre at the School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto.Ross Finnie, David Gray, Ian Irvine, and Yan Zhang chart the labour market outcomes and income sources of individuals who exhaust EI regular benefits. The focus is on individuals who worked for an extended period prior to receiving EI
The Income Sources for Long-Term Workers Who Exhaust Employment Insurance Benefits
No full textProduced by the Mowat Centre at the School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto.Ross Finnie, David Gray, Ian Irvine, and Yan Zhang chart the labour market outcomes and income sources of individuals who exhaust EI regular benefits. The focus is on individuals who worked for an extended period prior to receiving EI
The Role of Non-Financial Barriers in the Access of First-Generation Students to Post-Secondary Education
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to determine why first-generation students (defined as those students whose parents‟ highest level of completed education is a high school diploma or less) are under-represented in Canada‟s post-secondary education (PSE) institutions. Using data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), it will answer the following research questions:
1. Do family and social background, academic experiences in high school and overall educational motivations and aspirations serve as non-financial barriers that may subvert the participation of first-generation students in post-secondary education? If so, how?
2. What are the policy levers that may be accessed and the policy interventions and/or modifications that may be implemented in order to help first-generation students in overcoming these barriers?
What this paper illustrates is that first-generation students are more likely to be of low to modest economic means, to have parents who hold their children to lower educational expectations, to be academically low performing and to exhibit low overall aspirations and motivations for higher education. In this regard, as this paper will argue, it is not so much the first-generation status that can impede the academic trajectory so much as it is the factors associated with coming from a first-generation household that pose as non-financial barriers to PSE
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