The Impact of Chernobyl on Health and Labour Market Performance in the Ukraine

Using longitudinal data from the Ukraine we examine the extent of any long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce. The variation in the local area level of radiation fallout from the Chernobyl accident is considered as a potential instrument to try to establish the causal impact of poor health on labour force participation, hours worked and wages. There appears to be a significant positive association between local area-level radiation dosage and health perception based on self-reported poor health status, though much weaker associations between local area-level dosage and other specific health conditions or labour market performance. Any effects on negative health perceptions appear to be stronger among women and older individuals.Chernobyl, health, labour market performance

Molecular Cloud-scale Star Formation in NGC 300

We present the results of a galaxy-wide study of molecular gas and star formation in a sample of 76 HII regions in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300. We have measured the molecular gas at 250 pc scales using pointed CO(J=2-1) observations with the APEX telescope. We detect CO in 42 of our targets, deriving molecular gas masses ranging from our sensitivity limit of ~10^5 Msun to 7x10^5 Msun. We find a clear decline in the CO detection rate with galactocentric distance, which we attribute primarily to the decreasing radial metallicity gradient in NGC 300. We combine GALEX FUV, Spitzer 24 micron, and H-alpha narrowband imaging to measure the star formation activity in our sample. We have developed a new direct modeling approach for computing star formation rates that utilizes these data and population synthesis models to derive the masses and ages of the young stellar clusters associated with each of our HII region targets. We find a characteristic gas depletion time of 230 Myr at 250 pc scales in NGC 300, more similar to the results obtained for Milky Way Giant Molecular Clouds than the longer (>2 Gyr) global depletion times derived for entire galaxies and kpc-sized regions within them. This difference is partially due to the fact that our study accounts for only the gas and stars within the youngest star forming regions. We also note a large scatter in the NGC 300 SFR-molecular gas mass scaling relation that is furthermore consistent with the Milky Way cloud results. This scatter likely represents real differences in giant molecular cloud physical properties such as the dense gas fraction.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures, 7 tables. Includes a complete image atlas of our HII region targets. ASCII versions of tables will be available electronically after paper is published. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Temporal Learning and Sequence Modeling for a Job Recommender System

We present our solution to the job recommendation task for RecSys Challenge 2016. The main contribution of our work is to combine temporal learning with sequence modeling to capture complex user-item activity patterns to improve job recommendations. First, we propose a time-based ranking model applied to historical observations and a hybrid matrix factorization over time re-weighted interactions. Second, we exploit sequence properties in user-items activities and develop a RNN-based recommendation model. Our solution achieved 5$^{th}$ place in the challenge among more than 100 participants. Notably, the strong performance of our RNN approach shows a promising new direction in employing sequence modeling for recommendation systems.Comment: a shorter version in proceedings of RecSys Challenge 201

The Impact of Chernobyl on Health and Labour Market Performance in the Ukraine

Using longitudinal data from the Ukraine we examine the extent of any long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce. The variation in the local area level of radiation fallout from the Chernobyl accident is considered as a potential instrument to try to establish the causal impact of poor health on labour force participation, hours worked and wages. There appears to be a significant positive association between local area-level radiation dosage and health perception based on selfreported poor health status, though much weaker associations between local area-level dosage and other specific health conditions or labour market performance. Any effects on negative health perceptions appear to be stronger among women and older individuals.Chernobyl, Health, LabourMarket Performance

A large Wolf-Rayet population in NGC300 uncovered by VLT-FORS2

We have detected 58 Wolf-Rayet candidates in the central region of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300, based on deep VLT-FORS2 narrow-band imaging. Our survey is close to complete except for heavily reddened WR stars. Of the objects in our list, 16 stars were already spectroscopically confirmed as WR stars by Schild & Testor and Breysacher et al., to which 4 stars are added using low resolution FORS2 datasets. The WR population of NGC300 now totals 60,a threefold increase over previous surveys, with WC/WN>1/3, in reasonable agreement with Local Group galaxies for a moderately sub-solar metallicity. We also discuss the WR surface density in the central region of NGC 300. Finally, analyses are presented for two apparently single WC stars - #29 (alias WR3, WC5) and #48 (alias WR13, WC4) located close to the nucleus, and at a deprojected radius of 2.5 kpc, respectively. These are among the first models of WR stars in galaxies beyond the Local Group, and are compared with early WC stars in our Galaxy and LMC.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to A&A (includes aa.cls) - version with higher resolution finding charts available from ftp://ftp.star.ucl.ac.uk/pub/pac/ngc300.ps.g

Defining benefit catalogues and entitlements to health care in Germany: Decision makers, decision criteria and taxonomy of catalogues

This paper studies the politico-economic reasons for the refusal of a proposed compulsory flood insurance scheme in Germany. It provides the rationale for such scheme and outlines the basic features of a market-orientated design. The main reasons for the political down-turn of this proposal were the (mis)perceived costs of a state guarantee, legal objections against a compulsory insurance, distributional conflicts between the federal government and the German states (Länder) on the implied administrative costs and the well-known samariter dilemma of ad-hoc disaster relief. The focus on pure market solutions proved to be an ineffective strategy for policy advice in this field. -- Während die Rahmenbedingungen für das deutsche Gesundheitssystem vom Gesetzgeber vorgegeben werden, obliegt die Bestimmung einzelner Leistungen bzw. Leistungsinhalte den Entscheidungsträgern der Selbstverwaltung. Dabei variiert die Genauigkeit der Leistungsdefinition zwischen verschiedenen Sektoren und Ausgabenträgern. Während die Leistungen einiger Ausgabenträger nur implizit definiert sind, ist der Leistungsumfang anderer Ausgabenträger bereits explizit als Leistungskatalog formuliert. Dabei orientiert sich die Mehrheit der Ausgabenträger an dem Leistungsumfang der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung (GKV) und überträgt diesen in den eigenen Bereich. Im Rahmen der GKV, die ca. 88% der Bevölkerung versichert und 56,9% der Gesundheitsausgaben trägt, bestimmen verschiedene Kataloge zusammen mit den Richtlinien des Gemeinsamen Bundesausschusses den Leistungsumfang. Die Leistungen, der Aufbau und der Inhalt der Leistungskataloge, die an der Definition der Kataloge beteiligten Akteure, sowie die Entscheidungskriterien für die Aufnahme neuer Leistungen in die Leistungskataloge der Sozialversicherungen werden in diesem Zusammenhang ausführlich dargestellt und analysiert.

A mid-IR interferometric survey with MIDI/VLTI: resolving the second-generation protoplanetary disks around post-AGB binaries

We present a mid-IR interferometric survey of the circumstellar environment of a specific class of post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (post-AGB) binaries. For this class the presence of a compact dusty disk has been postulated on the basis of various spatially unresolved measurements. Our interferometric survey was performed with the MIDI instrument on the VLTI. In total 19 different systems were observed using variable baseline configurations. Combining all the visibilities at a single wavelength at 10.7 micron, we fitted two parametric models to the data: a uniform disk (UD) and a ring model mimicking a temperature gradient. We compared our observables of the whole sample, with synthetic data computed from a grid of radiative transfer models of passively irradiated disks in hydrostatic equilibrium. These models are computed with a Monte Carlo code that has been widely applied to describe the structure of protoplanetary disks around young stellar objects (YSO). The spatially resolved observations show that the majority of our targets cluster closely together in the distance-independent size-colour diagram, and have extremely compact N-band emission regions. The typical uniform disk diameter of the N-band emission region is about 40 mass which corresponds to a typical brightness temperature of 400-600~K. The resolved objects display very similar characteristics in the interferometric observables and in the spectral energy distributions. Therefore, the physical properties of the disks around our targets must be similar. The grid of protoplanetary disk models covers very well the observed objects. Much like for young stars, the spatially resolved N-band emission region is determined by the hot inner rim of the disk. Continued comparisons between post-AGB and protoplanetary disks will help to understand grain growth and disk evolution processes,Comment: 30 pages, 21 figures, in press in Astronomy and Astrophysic

The Impact of Chernobyl on Health and Labour Market Performance

Using longitudinal data from Ukraine we examine the extent of any long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce. The variation in the local area level of radiation fallout from the Chernobyl accident is considered as a random exogenous shock with which to try to establish its causal impact on poor health, labour force participation, hours worked and wages. There appears to be a significant positive association between local area-level radiation dosage and perception of poor health, though much weaker associations between local area-level dosage and other specific self-reported health conditions. There is also some evidence to suggest that those more exposed to Chernobyl-induced radiation have significantly lower levels of labour market performance twenty years on.Chernobyl, health, labour market performance