International Research Project on Job Retention and Return to Work Strategies for Disabled Workers: Germany

[Excerpt] The International Research Project on Job Retention and Return to Work Strategies for Disabled Workers is an initiative of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Global Applied Research and Information Network on Employment and Training (GLADNET). It reflects ILO and GLADNET joint aims of establishing a base for cross-national research and strengthening links between research analysis and policy reform in the field of employment of disabled people. The Project is a response to a combination of developments which highlight the need for more effective policies and practices in support of workers whose prospects of remaining in employment are jeopardised by work injury, illness or disability. Persons with disabilities are increasingly claiming rights to stay in work as well as to access employment. Pressures on state budgets, the rising costs of compensation claims and disability benefits, and changes in the structure of the labour market are strengthening policies in favour of job retention and return to work. Enterprises are developing their own strategies to minimise the costs of disability and to retain valued employees. Overall, the balance of responsibility is shifting from the state to the enterprise. Policies and practices to prevent disabled workers from leaving work unnecessarily, and to facilitate rapid return to employment if job loss cannot be prevented, are recent developments in many countries. The cross-national exchange of information on initiatives and their effects is limited. The first aim of this Project has been to gather information about what has been attempted, by whom, for what purposes, in which contexts and to what effects. The second, more ambitious, aim, is to examine the interaction between the various policies and practices, identify dysfunctions, and work towards more coherent and cost-effective strategies for job retention and return to work which might be applied in different national systems. The ultimate objective is to identify strategies which can be put into effect in the workplace

Experimental Results and Technical Results and Development at CTFII

The second phase of the Compact Linear Collider Test Facility (CTF II) has demonstrated the feasibility of two key ingredients of the Compact Linear Collider scheme (CLIC) [1], namely the acceleration with a 30 GHz normal conducting linac and the 30 GHz RF power production by a tightly-bunched, high-charge drive beam running parallel to the main beam. This beam is produced and accelerated with a 3 GHz linac using an RF-photo-injector and two travelling-wave sections, all specially developed for handling very high charges. A magnetic chicane compresses the micro-bunches to their nominal length. A mm-wave spectrometer, coupled to the beam pipe, allows non-destructive measurements of bunch length. So far a total acceleration of 60 MeV has been obtained using a string of five accelerating structures with a total active length of 1.4 m. The corresponding drive-beam deceleration is 6 MeV. The flexibility and extensive beam instrumentation allows a variety of other experiments, such as measurements of emittance growth and energy loss in bunch compressors due to coherent synchrotron radiation, high-gradient tests in single-cell 30 GHz cavities, high-power tests of a planar 30 GHz RF structure and tests of beam position monitor prototypes

Achievements and Future Plans of CLIC Test Facilities

CTF2 was originally designed to demonstrate the feasibility of two-beam acceleration with high current drive beams and a string of 30 GHz CLIC accelerating structure prototypes (CAS). This goal was achieved in 1999 and the facility has since been modified to focus on high gradient testing of CAS's and 30 GHz single cell cavities (SCC). With these modifications, it is now possible to provide 30 GHz RF pulses of more than 150 MW and an adjustable pulselength from 3 to 15 ns. While the SCC results are promising, the testing of CAS's revealed problems of RF breakdown and related surface damage. As a consequence, a new R&D program has been launched to advance the understanding of RF breakdown processes, to improve surface properties, investigate new materials and to optimise the structure geometries of the CAS's. In parallel the construction of a new facility named CTF3 has started. CTF3 will mainly serve two purposes. The first is the demonstration of the CLIC drive beam generation scheme. CTF3 will acceler-ate a 1.54 ms long electron pulse of 3.5 A in a fully beam-loaded S-band linac. The linac beam pulse is compressed in isochronous rings to 140 ns pulse-length, 35 A beam current and a micro-bunch repetition rate of 15 GHz. The second purpose of CTF3 is to test CAS's with nomi-nal CLIC parameters. For this reason the drive beam extracted from the combiner ring is transported through a string of 30 GHz power extraction cavities feeding CAS's. The 30 GHz acceleration is measured with a probe beam provided by a small, separate S-band linac

Effects of the Running of the QCD Coupling on the Energy Loss in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Finite temperature modifies the running of the QCD coupling alpha_s(k,T) with resolution k. After calculating the thermal quark and gluon masses selfconsistently, we determine the quark-quark and quark-gluon cross sections in the plasma based on the running coupling. We find that the running coupling enhances these cross sections by factors of two to four depending on the temperature. We also compute the energy loss dE/dx of a high-energy quark in the plasma as a function of temperature. Our study suggests that, beside t-channel processes, inverse Compton scattering is a relevant process for a quantitative understanding of the energy loss of an incident quark in a hot plasma.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

The Oxidative Phosphorylation system of the mitochondria in plants

Mitochondrial Oxidative Phosphorylation (OXPHOS) provides ATP for driving cellular functions. In plants, OXPHOS takes place in the context of photosynthesis. Indeed, metabolism of mitochondria and chloroplasts is tightly linked. OXPHOS has several extra functions in plants. This review takes a view on the OXPHOS system of plants, the electron transfer chain (ETC), the ATP synthase complex and the numerous supplementary enzymes involved. Electron transport pathways are especially branched in plants. Furthermore, the “classical” OXPHOS complexes include extra subunits, some of which introduce side activities into these complexes. Consequently, and to a remarkable degree, OXPHOS is a multi-functional system in plants that needs to be efficiently regulated with respect to all its physiological tasks in the mitochondria, the chloroplasts, and beyond. Regulatory mechanisms based on posttranslational protein modifications and formation of supramolecular protein assemblies are summarized and discussed

Enzymes: The two roles of complex iii in plants

Atomic structures of mitochondrial enzyme complexes in plants are shedding light on their multiple functions

Diversity and noise effects in a model of homeostatic regulation of the sleep-wake cycle

Recent advances in sleep neurobiology have allowed development of physiologically based mathematical models of sleep regulation that account for the neuronal dynamics responsible for the regulation of sleep-wake cycles and allow detailed examination of the underlying mechanisms. Neuronal systems in general, and those involved in sleep regulation in particular, are noisy and heterogeneous by their nature. It has been shown in various systems that certain levels of noise and diversity can significantly improve signal encoding. However, these phenomena, especially the effects of diversity, are rarely considered in the models of sleep regulation. The present paper is focused on a neuron-based physiologically motivated model of sleep-wake cycles that proposes a novel mechanism of the homeostatic regulation of sleep based on the dynamics of a wake-promoting neuropeptide orexin. Here this model is generalized by the introduction of intrinsic diversity and noise in the orexin-producing neurons in order to study the effect of their presence on the sleep-wake cycle. A quantitative measure of the quality of a sleep-wake cycle is introduced and used to systematically study the generalized model for different levels of noise and diversity. The model is shown to exhibit a clear diversity-induced resonance: that is, the best wake-sleep cycle turns out to correspond to an intermediate level of diversity at the synapses of the orexin-producing neurons. On the other hand only a mild evidence of stochastic resonance is found when the level of noise is varied. These results show that disorder, especially in the form of quenched diversity, can be a key-element for an efficient or optimal functioning of the homeostatic regulation of the sleep-wake cycle. Furthermore, this study provides an example of constructive role of diversity in a neuronal system that can be extended beyond the system studied here.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

Non-Intercepting Bunch Length Monitor for Picosecond Electron Bunches

A bunch length monitor for very short electron bunches, r.m.s. > 1 ps, has been implemented in the CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) Test Facility (CTF) at CERN. It consists of a long, rectangular wavegu ide connected at one end to the beam pipe and a detection system at the other end. Information on the bunch length is obtained by frequency-domain analysis of the signal excited by the beam in the wav eguide. The signal can be detected either by a fast diode detector or by a RF mixer in combination with a RF sweep oscillator. With the diode detector, single-shot measurements can be performed, while the mixer set-up allows quantitative bunch length measurements for single bunches and for bunch-trains. The design and installation of two monitors and detection systems operating in two different fre quency bands, Ka (26.5--40 GHz) and E (60--90 GHz), are described. Results obtained with the new monitor are presented and compared with bunch length measurements that were performed simultaneously wi th a streak camera recording Cerenkov Radiation