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“In light of an aging workforce, reconciling informal eldercare and paid work becomes increasingly pertinent. This article investigates the association between informal eldercare and work-related strain and tests for both the competing demands and expansion hypotheses.

The sample of 938 Austrian employees consisted of employees caring for older relatives

and a control group of employees without eldercare obligations. We ran a Tobit regression model on work-related strain with different measures of informal eldercare as explanatory variables and controls AZD2281 for both personal and workplace characteristics.

Accounting for different characteristics of eldercare within one estimation model revealed that informal eldercare was associated with work-related strain in 2 ways, that is, it increased with both care hours and subjective care burden. However, after controlling for these burdensome attributes of eldercare, the carer status as such was found to be negatively associated with work-related strain. In addition and independently of care commitments, work-related factors, such as advanced skills

and job motivation, reduced work-related strain.

This article lends Selleckchem AZD9291 support to both the competing demands and the expansion hypotheses. Commitment to eldercare can enhance work-related outcomes but entails work-related problems if care burden and time demands of eldercare are substantial. Thus, workers with eldercare responsibilities cannot be considered less productive from the outset. An individual assessment of their situation, considering the care and work setting, is required. Regorafenib chemical structure Findings from this study support the design of workplace initiatives to uphold workers’ productivity in general and bring specific attention to policies

alleviating workers’ eldercare burden.”
“Recombinant plectasin, the first fungus defensin, was expressed in Pichia pastoris and purified, and its physical, chemical and antimicrobial characteristics were studied. Following a 120 h induction of recombinant yeast, the amount of total secreted protein reached 748.63 mu g/ml. The percentage of recombinant plectasin was estimated to be 71.79% of the total protein. After purification with a Sephadex G-25 column and RP-HPLC, the identity of plectasin was verified by MALDI-TOF MS. Plectasin exhibited strong antimicrobial activity against the Gram-positive bacteria Staphyloccocus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Streptococcus suis. At a concentration of 2560 mu g/ml, this peptide showed approximately equal activity against S. aureus, S. epidermidis, S. suis, and S. pneumoniae, when compared to 320 mu g/ml vancomycin, 640 mu g/ml penicillin, 320 mu g/ml vancomycin and 160 mu g/ml vancomycin, respectively. In addition, plectasin showed anti-S. aureus activity over a wide pH range of 2.0 and 10.