The workforce retention dividend - valuing knowledge and skills in the public sector workforce

This report demonstrates the hidden costs of public sector job losses.  Key findings: Rapid loss of public sector workers, especially those with more experience and skill, will result in the loss of corporate knowledge and hinder the transfer of skills within the South Australian public service. This loss represents a considerable value which needs to be taken into account in public sector workforce planning. Over the next five years an accelerating retirement rate of public servants will coincide with the significant expansion of the resources sector. Combined these forces will result in tightening of the South Australian labour market. In this environment it will be more difficult to attract and retain experienced workers in the public sector. Loss of knowledge and skill in this context is particularly problematic. It may harm the ability of the State Government to deliver its programs effectively and efficiently. It is possible to estimate the approximate average value (investment) of a public service worker over his or her tenure in order to understand the implications of the State Governments public sector workforce employment reductions strategy (1600 FTEs or approximately 1913 persons on an FTE to person ratio). The total cost of hiring 1913 persons is approximately $38,259,200. The average total expenditure on training for them during their tenure is$25,308,460. Therefore, the total recruitment and training expenditure on average for the 1600 FTE public sector workforce reductions is around $63,567,660. The State Government needs to develop a better understanding of the implications of staff losses for the knowledge and skill base of the public service as a central element of public sector workforce planning. The central challenge to be faced by policymakers is the potential loss of a large number of experienced and skilled public sector workers over a relatively short period of time and the growing difficulty of sourcing suitable replacements in a tighter labour market. There is an urgent need to develop a multi-faceted approach to attraction and retention that addresses a range of drivers and barriers. Some progress is being made in this respect. The Treasurers announcement, in the 2011-12 State Budget of the introduction a new Retention Provision represents a constructive contribution to this and should be implemented universally across the public sector. There will be particular challenges associated with attraction and retention of public servants in regional South Australia where employment demand generated by mining projects has the potential to starve the public sector of various occupational skills. Related identifier: ISBN: 978-0-9871950-4-

Validation-based insertional mutagenesis (VBIM) technology identifies adenomatous polypossis coli (APC) like protein (ALP) as a novel negative regulator of NF-κB

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer related deaths in the United States. The nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) is an important family of transcription factors whose aberrant activation has been found in many types of cancer, including CRC. Therefore, understanding the regulation of NF-κB is of ultimate importance for cancer therapy. Using a novel validation-based insertional mutagenesis (VBIM) strategy, our lab has identified the novel adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) like protein (ALP) gene as a negative regulator of NF-κB. Preliminary studies from our lab demonstrated that overexpression of ALP led to decreased NF-κB activity by κB reporter assay and electrophoresis mobility gel shift assay (EMSA). The current project aims to further evaluate the role of ALP in the regulation of NF-κB signaling in CRC cells. We found that overexpression of ALP in human CRC HT29 cells greatly reduced both the number and the size of colonies that were formed in a soft agar assay. ALP overexpression also decreased the cell growth rate and cell migration ability, while shRNA mediated knockdown of ALP showed opposite effects, confirming that ALP is a tumor suppressor in CRC HT29 cells. Overexpression of ALP led to decreased NF-κB activity by κB reporter assay and condition media assay in CRC HT29 cells. Furthermore, immunohistochemical analysis with human colon vii tissues revealed that there is a gradual loss of ALP protein with tumor progression. We also found that ALP predominantly localizes in the cytoplasm, and binds to the p65 subunit of NF-κB, and might be functioning downstream of IκB kinase (IKK). In summary, in this study, we provide evidence regarding the tumor suppressor role of ALP in CRC by functioning as novel negative regulator of NF-κB. This discovery could lead to the establishment of ALP as a potential biomarker and therapeutic target in CRC

LLVM2GOTO: A translator from LLVM IR to CPROVER IR

There are more than 700 programming languages. The number of softwares is astronomical. It is highly important to verify whether the software meets it's specification and it is safe. However, there are very few stable software verification tools. Translating a source program into verification intermediate representation(VIR) is an overhead for software verification community. If we trans- late compiler intermediate representation into VIR, the overhead of translating source to VIR is reduced and software written in programming languages supported by the compiler can be verified. LLVM2GOTO uses LLVM IR as compiler IR and CPROVER's goto IR as VIR. In the current implementation we support variable declaration, load, store, arithmetic, bitwise, typecast, branch and switch instructions are supported by LLVM2GOTO.