Identifying effect heterogeneity to improve the effiency of job creation schemes in Germany?

Previous empirical studies of job creation schemes in Germany have shown that the average effects for the participating individuals are negative. However, we find that this is not true for all strata of the population. Identifying individual characteristics that are responsible for the effect heterogeneity and using this information for a better allocation of individuals therefore bears some scope for improving programme efficiency. We present several stratification strategies and discuss the occurring effect heterogeneity. Our findings show that job creation schemes do neither harm nor improve the labour market chances for most of the groups. Exceptions are long-term unemployed men in West and long-term unemployed women in East and West Germany who benefit from participation in terms of higher employment rates. JEL: C13 , J68 , H4

A Concurrent Language with a Uniform Treatment of Regions and Locks

A challenge for programming language research is to design and implement multi-threaded low-level languages providing static guarantees for memory safety and freedom from data races. Towards this goal, we present a concurrent language employing safe region-based memory management and hierarchical locking of regions. Both regions and locks are treated uniformly, and the language supports ownership transfer, early deallocation of regions and early release of locks in a safe manner

Commensal observing with the Allen Telescope array: software command and control

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is a Large-Number-Small-Diameter radio telescope array currently with 42 individual antennas and 5 independent back-end science systems (2 imaging FX correlators and 3 time domain beam formers) located at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO). The goal of the ATA is to run multiple back-ends simultaneously, supporting multiple science projects commensally. The primary software control systems are based on a combination of Java, JRuby and Ruby on Rails. The primary control API is simplified to provide easy integration with new back-end systems while the lower layers of the software stack are handled by a master observing system. Scheduling observations for the ATA is based on finding a union between the science needs of multiple projects and automatically determining an efficient path to operating the various sub-components to meet those needs. When completed, the ATA is expected to be a world-class radio telescope, combining dedicated SETI projects with numerous radio astronomy science projects.Comment: SPIE Conference Proceedings, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy, Nicole M. Radziwill; Alan Bridger, Editors, 77400Z, Vol 774