Exchange Rate Regime and Wage Determination in Central and Eastern Europe

After the eastern enlargement of the European Union due to increasing labor market integration, wage determination and monetary integration in Central and Eastern Europe have become key issues in European economic policy making. Based on the Scandinavian model of wage adjustment by Lindbeck (1979), we intend to analyze the role of exchange rates in the wage determination process of the Central and Eastern European countries to identify which exchange rate strategy contributes to faster wage convergence in Europe. Panel estimations reveal a robust negative relationship between exchange rates and wage growth. This suggests that workers in countries with fixed exchange rates are likely to benefit from higher wage increases.wage policy, labor markets, exchange rate regime, Central and Eastern Europe

Peacebuilding in Lebanon Using a “Serious” Game Intervention

A cultural acceptance of violence within a society permeates attainable conflict resolution strategies. Violence in Lebanon is rampant due to the neighboring war in Syria, divided alliances, recent assassinations and a state of unresolved transitional peace after decades of civil war. Domestic violence, therefore, does not garner significant attention yet plays a substantial part in creating culturally accepted violence. Because of the current crises, it is incumbent upon non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide services that promote peaceful resolutions in domestic violence situations.Violence against women leaves an entire segment of the population vulnerable when examined through the prism of the Human Security paradigm. The microcosm of security of the individual is often confined to the narrative, although collectively, violence of individuals and community has commanded a more nuanced analysis. The responsibility of states to define intimate partner violence as a human rights abuse and human security issue, as defined by the 1979 Convention to Eliminate Discrimination against Women and the 1993 United Nations Declaration to Eliminate Violence against Women is required in order for this type of violence to gain peaceful resolution. The specific aims of this research are to provide an educational tool for non-governmental organizations to mitigate the effects of violence against women through peace promotion and education in lieu of state intervention. Theprevalence of gender based violence in Lebanon has been reported to be up to 35% (Usta, et al, 2007) although actual statistics are unknown due to issues of underreporting. A macro-analysis of cultural norms created through the lens of peace psychology is analyzed as a possible indicator of cultural acceptance of intimate partner violence in Lebanon. To mitigate the effects of this cultural norm on the individual, the author developed a tool for practical therapeutic use in assisting women who are victims of gender based violence through a serious game intervention which may be used as an educational tool by NGOs to promote peaceful family relations. The implementation of human security measures for women in the Middle East will require a grass-roots effort based on therapeutic support for gender based violence victims. Positive results will have wider peace building implications

Childhood Obesity: The Role of Health Policy

This first policy report from the CPRC and the NICHQ Childhood Obesity Action Network was released on March 18, 2008 in Miami Florida as part of the Second Childhood Obesity Congress

Investigations of closed source registration method of depth sensor technologies for human-robot collaboration

Productive teaming is the new form of human-robot interaction. The multimodal 3D imaging has a key role in this to gain a more comprehensive understanding of production system as well as to enable trustful collaboration from the teams. For a complete scene capture, the registration of the image modalities is required. Currently, low-cost RGB-D sensors are often used. These come with a closed source registration function. In order to have an efficient and freely available method for any sensors, we have developed a new method, called Triangle-Mesh-Rasterization-Projection (TMRP). To verify the performance of our method, we compare it with the closed-source projection function of the Azure Kinect Sensor (Microsoft). The qualitative comparison showed that both methods produce almost identical results. Minimal differences at the edges indicate that our TMRP interpolation is more accurate. With our method, a freely available open-source registration method is now available that can be applied to almost any multimodal 3D/2D image dataset and is not like the Microsoft SDK optimized for Microsoft products

Coordinating Community Healthcare Needs to Local Services in Paraiso, Dominican Republic Through Strategic Assessment Strategies

Background: The availability of healthcare services is limited in Paraiso, Dominican Republic with the nearest full-service hospital located 34.1 km away. A local, underutilized clinic was unaware of the needs of this disadvantaged community. Method: Researchers adapted a World Health Organization assessment survey with the goals of determining residents’ priority needs and an appraisal of the current clinic capabilities and gaps in services in order to provide the community with relevant healthcare. 106 families were randomly selected in seven separate geographic areas of Paraiso to participate in the self-report assessment. Researchers, along with a community volunteer, conducted interviews utilizing the 63 question instrument. 105 families agreed to participate representing 504 individuals

FPGA-based multi-view stereo system with flexible measurement setup

In recent years, stereoscopic image processing algorithms have gained importance for a variety of applications. To capture larger measurement volumes, multiple stereo systems are combined into a multi-view stereo (MVS) system. To reduce the amount of data and the data rate, calculation steps close to the sensors are outsourced to Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) as upstream computing units. The calculation steps include lens distortion correction, rectification and stereo matching. In this paper a FPGA-based MVS system with flexible camera arrangement and partly overlapping field of view is presented. The system consists of four FPGA-based passive stereoscopic systems (Xilinx Zynq-7000 7020 SoC, EV76C570 CMOS sensor) and a downstream processing unit (Zynq Ultrascale ZU9EG SoC). This synchronizes the sensor near processing modules and receives the disparity maps with corresponding left camera image via HDMI. The subsequent computing unit calculates a coherent 3D point cloud. Our developed FPGA-based 3D measurement system captures a large measurement volume at 24 fps by combining a multiple view with eight cameras (using Semi-Global Matching for an image size of 640 px × 460 px, up to 256 px disparity range and with aggregated costs over 4 directions). The capabilities and limitation of the system are shown by an application example with optical non-cooperative surface

Addressing Unconscious Bias, Power, and Privilege to Increase Cultural Competence Skills in Healthcare Faculty: Intersecting Critical Race Theory and the Pyramid Model for Intercultural Competence

Inequity in healthcare has long been understood to be caused by individual and structural racism in the health system. Little progress has been made in diminishing the disparities that exist between Black and African American minoritized populations and the White majority. Cultural competence training in healthcare has focused on surface level differences in ethnicities, including language and religious practices, while ignoring difficult to address topics such as race and racism. This action research study, using a convergent mixed-methods design, attempted to address the gap in knowledge of race and racial structures in healthcare for the faculty in the college of health professions at a medium-sized, private university in New England. Constructs such as diversity, unconscious bias, power, privilege, stereotype construction, and racism were addressed in a series of inservice workshops in order to increase skills in cultural competence. The framework guiding the workshop was an intersection of critical race theory and the pyramid model of intercultural competence. Results indicate a significant change effect in median scores on the Intercultural Development Inventory between the pre and post workshop administration of the instrument. Qualitative data support the findings and highlight robust themes of learning and discovery. Although participants learned a great deal and shifted perspectives in some cases, the overall sentiment is more training is required before teaching the constructs to students. An action plan suggesting additional learning material and concrete next steps are provided

Rational Strain Engineering in Delafossite Oxides for Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Catalysis in Acidic Media

The rational design of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts which are competitive with platinum is an outstanding challenge to make power-to-gas technologies economically viable. Here, we introduce the delafossites PdCrO$_2$, PdCoO$_2$ and PtCoO$_2$ as a new family of electrocatalysts for the HER in acidic media. We show that in PdCoO$_2$ the inherently strained Pd metal sublattice acts as a pseudomorphic template for the growth of a strained (by +2.3%) Pd rich capping layer under reductive conditions. The surface modification continuously improves the electrocatalytic activity by simultaneously increasing the exchange current density j$_0$ from 2 to 5 mA/cm$^2_{geo}$ and by reducing the Tafel slope down to 38 mV/decade, leading to overpotentials $\eta_{10}$ < 15 mV for 10 mA/cm$^2_{geo}$, superior to bulk platinum. The greatly improved activity is attributed to the in-situ stabilization of a $\beta$-palladium hydride phase with drastically enhanced surface catalytic properties with respect to pure or nanostructured palladium. These findings illustrate how operando induced electrodissolution can be used as a top-down design concept for rational surface and property engineering through the strain-stabilized formation of catalytically active phases

Automatic detection and prediction of discontinuities in laser beam butt welding utilizing deep learning

Laser beam butt welding of thin sheets of high-alloy steel can be really challenging due to the formation of joint gaps, affecting weld seam quality. Industrial approaches rely on massive clamping systems to limit joint gap formation. However, those systems have to be adapted for each individually component geometry, making them very cost-intensive and leading to a limited flexibility. In contrast, jigless welding can be a high flexible alternative to substitute conventionally used clamping systems. Based on the collaboration of different actuators, motions systems or robots, the approach allows an almost free workpiece positioning. As a result, jigless welding gives the possibility for influencing the formation of the joint gap by realizing an active position control. However, the realization of an active position control requires an early and reliable error prediction to counteract the formation of joint gaps during laser beam welding. This paper proposes different approaches to predict the formation of joint gaps and gap induced weld discontinuities in terms of lack of fusion based on optical and tactile sensor data. Our approach achieves 97.4 % accuracy for video-based weld discontinuity detection and a mean absolute error of 0.02 mm to predict the formation of joint gaps based on tactile length measurements by using inductive probes