The numbers behind 2 decades of sex-based discrimination

The numbers behind 2 decades of sex-based discriminationThe numbers behind 2 decades of sex-based discriminationLadders recently reported on the steady rise of women CEOs occurring over the last five years. In companion with the study that tracked female presence in the corporate world, there were also statistics advertising a disproportionate number of unlawful dismissals staffed by sex-based discrimination.The numbers come courtesy of a study conducted by InsuranceQuotes using data compiled over two decades by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Sex-based prejudice accounts for about 25% of discrimination complaints additionally, the majority of percentages regarding paternity complaints belong to gender biases.Reports of sexual discrimination were found to be particularly prevalent in Mississippi and Alabama, with each averaging 18 complaints per 100,000 residents though Washington D.C had the most instances of sexual discrimination complaints overall.Its worse in s ome statesNeither Mississippi nor Alabama have any kind of equal pay laws, which means employers can lawfully compensate laborers after their own discretion for the same work.While it should be noted that all but eight states saw a decline in complaints in the last few years, some states fostered a substantial increase. Mississippi experienced a surge of 20% and Marylands total rose by 17%.Increases in sex-based complaints coincide with an increase in the number of women being hired in varying fields. The years between 2005 and 2009 saw a major spike in the phenomenon (note 2005 houses the Supreme Court ruling in Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White).Conversely, 2013 and 2014 saw a sharp drop (8.8% and 6% respectively.)In recent years, more and more cases are closed on the account of a lack of a reasonable cause (two-thirds of complaints ended with this verdict in 2017.) In the instances wherein discrimination allegations are deemed conclusive, the settlement the victi m receives has increased gradually. In 1997 for instance, a collective settlement was determined at around $73 million, which breaks down to $19,000 per complaint. In 2017, the number soared to $135 million ($28,000 per complaint.)Policy has hasted the pace of progress. In 2015, accommodation charges in response to gender complaints surged past $2,500. In 2012, charges alleging discrimination reached 90 and 75% respectively.A distinction must be considered between the alteration of numbers and progress. An increase in gender-based complaints is not as a rule indicative of ethical misbehavior. In some instances, its a portent of burgeoning encouragement for those who feel victimize by unfair promotion and wage stipulations to speak up.

Foliage Gets the Blood Pumping

Foliage Gets the Blood Pumping Foliage Gets the Blood Pumping Foliage Gets the Blood PumpingPeople and spinach share a few things in common, one of which is a vast, branching, vascular system.For the human, that system carries blood for the spinach, water. But, as researchers from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated, that doesnt mean we cant take the fluidic passageways of the leafy green and put them to use in our own venous network. Indeed, tomorrows artificial heart may be cruciferous.Glenn Gaudette, a professor of biomedical engineering at the university, is an expert inmyocardial decellularization. His lab routinely injects hearts with a detergent that breaks down cell membranes and washes out all cellular material. Whats left is a limp, gel-like heart, free of DNApure vascular structure.After visiting the Arkansas Biosciences Institute at Arkansas State University and seeing how they were manipulating plant tissue, Gaudette and his kollektiv started wondering if plants could be similarlydecellularized. Gaudette and graduate studentJoshua Gershlak were having lunch one day when they noticed that another student had some spinach on his plate. Gershlak asked to have a look at it.Removing plant cells from spinach leaves by flowing or perfusing a detergent solution through the leaves veins. Image Worcester Polytechnic InstituteIf you look at the leaf where it comes off the stem of the plant, theres a little hole there, says Gaudette. We said, Gee, can you stick a needle in and wash detergent in there?It turns out that you can, and they did. The process they used was almost identical to the one used with hearts. Only the strength of the detergent was lessened. At first glance it might seem that the leaf and the human heart are wildly different beasts. Where the spinach tears at the slightest nibble, the heart is more, hearty. But once stripped of all cellular material, the two are a lot alike.The mechanics of a decellularized human heart are s imilar to the mechanics of a decellularized spinach leaf, says Gaudette. Theyre both compliant and stretch a lot.Gaudette and Gershlak were able to seed the now-translucent spinach with beating heart cells. The result was a leaf with enough contractive power to actually move red dye through its vascular system.Drained of DNA, the vegetable is unlikely to be rejected by a patient in need of a vascular implant. And plant cellulose comes preapproved for other medical applications. It will be some time before sufferers of heart disease swap their hearts for a well-seeded bundle of spinach.Before we start thinking about creating an artificial heart, were thinking about using the leaf structure as a patch, says Gaudette. After a heart attack, part of the heart wall no longer works. If we can fix just that region, hopefully those patients going into heart failure wont need a new organ.Such a patch would be made by stacking leaves on top of each other. Unlike mammals, who need to push and p ull the blood in their veins, the flow in leaves is one way. Some leaves may need to pump blood one direction, while other leaves push it back.Needless to say, spinach is not the only plant with a potentially implantable vascular system. But, for the time being, it suits most of the labs needs.Id like to see bigger veins, says Gaudette. My graduate student puts the needle in and hes OK with it. Im a little older and cant see as well anymore. Still, the research has changed how he sees the vegetation around him.When I eat a salad and I look at iceberg lettuce and see a big hole down the middle, I tell my wife Wow that would be good in a lab. Not the best dinner conversation.Though the beating spinach heart may seem strange and futuristic, Gaudette is quick to point out that none of the techniques used to make it happen are new.Spinach has been there, he says. Its been right there in front of us. The decellularization process has been there. Seeding and growing cells too. What we did is bring all these things together. Id really like our students to use this as an example when building a new submarine or designing a new car, whatever it is. Developing that entrepreneurial mindsetbeing curious about other things.Michael Abrams is an independent writer.Spinach has been there. Its been right there in front of us. The decellularization process has been there. Seeding and growing cells too. What we did is bring all these things together.Prof. Glenn Gaudette, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Can You Facebook Your Way to a New Job

Can You Facebook Your Way to a New Job Can You Facebook Your Way to a New Job Done right, online networking will support your offline network, not replace itIn the old days, “networking” meant hours calling every contact in your Rolodex; paging through the directories of every professional organization you could join; going to breakfast seminars, lunch-time speaking events, happy hours and board meetings to press the flesh â€" anything to make real-time, one-on-one contact with someone who might know someone who might be hiring.The tools of the networking trade are changing and moving online, where e-mail, IM and social-networking Web sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and some specific to industry and career are the means to make new contacts and interact with current ones.A social-networking Web site is essentially a fancy, online address book that allows you to see what your contacts are doing and connect to their contacts. The medium allows users to quickly expand their reach, putting them in touch with industry allies and hiring managers miles from hom e and in different companies and verticals. It’s also an easy place to track relationships and promote yourself to a willing audience.But how much use are online social networks to an executive seeking a job, and which ones are worth the effort?“LinkedIn should be part of your strategy, but not in the way you might expect a good social-networking site to be,” said Robert Neelbauer, owner of StaffMagnet.com, a Washington, D.C.-based recruitment consultancy. Rather then sitting at your PC clicking your way to a new job, Neelbauer and career experts Ladders interviewed recommend a job seeker use Web sites as the launch pad for traditional social networking. Pressing the flesh and phone calls remain the most intimate way to bond with the contacts in your network.“If you’re only looking at LinkedIn for lead generation or hunting down candidates for jobs, it’s a valuable tool,” he said. “But if you send a message to someone through LinkedIn, they may not respond to it for days or even weeks.”Neelbauer is particularly critical of LinkedIn. Although a frequent user almost from its launch in May 2003, he complains that the site has become watered down by millions of users and thousands of recruiters who have flooded the system with resumes and job posts and fill their networks with contacts they barely know. Neelbauer said he prefers other sites, especially Facebook, which gives users much greater control over who is in their network and sees their information. Facebook therefore tends to make in-network contacts more immediate for members, he said.Don’t ignore the Web While online networking won’t replace the handshake, career experts caution anyone who discounts it entirely. Their role in job hunting specifically has become so central for recruiters and hiring managers that job seekers are severely handicapping themselves by not participating, Neelbauer said.The Executive Job Market Intelligence Report 2008 from ExecuNet, an online recruitment aggregator, shows executive recruiters now fill 56 percent of jobs through networking; another 10 percent through their own online research; and 4 percent by searching Google, social networks and other sites for possible recruits from target companies. Of the 42 million U.S. members of Facebook, the most active social network, 18 million, almost half, are over 26 years old, according to The Social Times, a Web site that reports on social-networking companies.“If you’re a recruiter and you’re not using LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter, I don’t know what you’re using,” said Lindsay Olson, partne r and recruiter at Paradigm Staffing. Olson said social networking plays at least some role in the hiring process for more than 60 percent of the positions she fills. “LinkedIn particularly is the first place people go to look for candidates. When I get a name, that’s where I look first to get a little more background on someone before I talk to them.”Online social networking is to networking what e-mail is to handwritten letters: it’s just easier, faster and a lot more convenient, said Isabel Walcott Hilborn, owner of Strategic Internet Consulting, an online marketing consultancy, and founder of SmartGirl.com, a 200,000-member social network for teenage girls. Rather than meeting people one at a time at a conference to trade cards or calls once a year, social networks let you do something with those contacts, Hilborn said. Put those people in a social-networking list, and you have the opportunity to learn more about them and let them get to know you in a low-stress way.“S ocial networking and marketing and job searching is all about getting yourself out there,” said Paul Gillin, a social-networking consultant at Paul Gillin Communications and author of “The New Influencers” and “Secrets of Social Media Marketing.”“Friends’ networks can show you who’s changing jobs, which means a job just opened up at their old company that you can go for that hasn’t been posted yet. And (it) can help you get introduced to people closer to that job than you might have gotten otherwise.”Three degrees of separation Job seeker Jim Nash used LinkedIn not only to get a new job but to do it in a foreign field where he had relatively few direct contacts.Nash has been a writer and editor at news, business and technology publications. He was the editorial director of NBC Universal’s Sci-Fi Channel Web site and a former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune. But he wanted to follow his core interests into medical or science publishing, preferably with a nonprofit.“I did know a few people at science publications, and that was helpful,” Nash said. “The good thing about social networking was that if I knew nobody in an industry, I could still look at all the people who were related to me and the people they knew to find people in the area I wanted so I could call them. I was casual about it but it was clear that I was looking, and almost everybody I approached was happy either to talk to me or introduce me to someone else.”Nash landed his current job â€" Web managing editor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York â€" through three degrees of separation. One of his contacts had introduced him to another contact, who introduced him to his boss. The employer educated Nash on how and where medical organizations might be able to use Web-publishing savvy and eventually hired Nash himself.“Once we made that contact, it seemed like things moved really quickly,” said Nash, who started the new job in October. “I contacted my current boss as the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, and it just worked out.”But not everyone is comfortable introducing themselves to strangers, even when the strangers are online and the job seeker has a lot of experience at marketing and selling. Susan, an UpLadder member who asked Ladders not to publish her full name, has a profile on LinkedIn but is reluctant to use it aggressively.“The majority of people I know are not on it,” she said. “So the people that would be contacting me on it are not likely to be close colleagues. None of my friends a re really using LinkedIn to find jobs, and people who want me to use it seem to want to use my contacts. It seems more a way for business building than for networking.”Don’t ignore the real world Doing it properly means marrying your offline network to your online network, said Hilborn.Hilborn recommends a job seeker use the contacts he makes offline to build out his social network, but then return to the offline sources when it comes time to make a job connection. For instance, when you find a job, online or off, don’t just e-mail your resume or apply online, she said. “If you’ve taken the time to develop your network and keep those connections live, you can type in a keyword and find you have three friends who work there or know someone who does,” she said. ”Then you can write to your contact, ask if they’d forward this to their friend and ask her to submit your resume. It’s almost impossible for HR to ignore a resume that’s submitted from someone inside, and they usually get paid if they refer someone who gets hired, so it works out really well.”Even an interview that doesn’t work out can extend your network and lead to opportunities you might not have had otherwise, Nash said.“I’d always try to talk on the phone or meet people I made contact with,” he said. “If they didn’t have a job available, or it wasn’t a match for some reason, I’d ask if I could link to them on LinkedIn and look through their contacts so I could write back in a week or two and say, ‘Thanks for meeting with me; it was really great, and would you mind recommending me or introducing me to this other person?’ And they were almost always fine with that.”It requires the same attention and interest in relationship building as traditional networking, Hillborn concluded.“When someone changes their picture, you can comment on it, or when they put up a note about having had a hard day, you can commiserate or offer suggestions,” Hilborn said. “And if in the past you’ve sent three e-mails to Maria, you are on her radar screen, so when you send an e-mail to all your contacts saying your company is doing a round of layoffs and you’re on the li st, she’s going to respond, where if you just had her business card, she wouldn’t even know.”“Half an hour on Facebook once a week is all you’d need to keep that social network totally thriving,” she said. “You have to pick and choose the things (to which) you respond to make them personal. But tiny little outreaches are quick; they take time over the long term, but one at a time, they’re pretty quick. And it lets you stay in touch with a much larger community than you otherwise could.”