EG-Sozialpolitik nach Verflechtungsfalle und Entscheidungslücke: Bewertungsmaßstäbe und Entwicklungstrends

Bis in die 1990er Jahre befand sich die EG-Sozialpolitik infolge weitestgehender Einstimmigkeitserfordernisse in einer ‚Politikverflechtungsfalle’ (Fritz W. Scharpf), die noch durch eine, korporatistische Entscheidungslücke’ (Wolfgang Streeck) ergänzt wurde. Der Maastrichter Vertrag brachte allerdings signifikante Neuerungen in Hinblick auf Handlungskompetenzen, Mehrheitsvoten und die korporatistische Einbeziehung der Sozialpartnerverbände. Dass diese Potenziale entgegen vielfachen Erwartungen auch praktisch zur Anwendung kamen, heißt allerdings noch nicht, dass die Problemlösungskapazität der EG-Sozialpolitik schon zufrieden stellend wäre. Dieser Beitrag analysiert unterschiedliche Beurteilungsmaßstäbe dafür und zeigt auf, dass die ‚soziale Dimension‘ bei Anwendung von inhaltlich vergleichsweise eng definierten Ansprüchen mittlerweile besser abschneidet, als oft erwartet wurde (Schließung akuter arbeitsrechtlicher Lücken; Kommissionsvorschläge im Vergleich zu Ratsbeschlüssen). Noch tut die Union allerdings wenig, um marktinduziertem Druck auf soziale Standards in den Mitgliedstaaten entgegenzuwirken. Bislang kaum ernsthaft diskutiert wurde auch die Nützung jener Potenziale für sozialgestaltende Politik auf supranationaler Ebene, die heute angesichts offener Märkte in den Mitgliedstaaten immer weniger bestehen. Als Entwicklungstrend zeichnet sich in allerjüngster Zeit eine völlig neue Rolle für die EG-Sozialpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert ab: als Motor und zugleich Korsett für auf nationaler Ebene entschiedene Reformen.Until the 1990s, eC social policy was characterised by a joint-decision trap (Fritz W. Scharpf) characterized by a joint decision trap and a concomitant ‘corporatist decision gap’ (Wolfgang Streeck). The Maastricht Treaty, however, brought significant innovation in terms of EC competencies, majority voting, and corporatist decision patterns. The fact that some of these potential improvements have actually been put into practice — surprisingly for many — does not, however, mean that the problem solving capacity of the EC in social policy is satisfying. This article analyses several quite different yardsticks and shows that the ‘social dimension’ is more successful than was often expected, in the light of the less ambitious standards (closing labour law gaps induced by the Internal Market; Commission proposals compared to Council decisions). By contrast, the EC does little to fight devaluative pressures on the national social standards, and it does not yet make use of the specific potential for improvements in social policy which nowadays tends to exist on the supranational level rather than on the national one. Very recently, however, there has been a trend towards a new role for EC social policy in the 21st century: as a catalyst and, at the same time, corset for reforms decided upon at the national level

Edge Influence Computation in Dynamic Graphs

Reachability queries are of great importance in many research and application areas, including general graph mining, social network analysis and so on. Many approaches have been proposed to compute whether there exists one path from one node to another node in a graph. Most of these approaches focus on static graphs, however in practice dynamic graphs are more common. In this paper, we focus on handling graph reachability queries in dynamic graphs. Specifically we investigate the influence of a given edge in the graph, aiming to study the overall reachability changes in the graph brought by the possible failure/deletion of the edge. To this end, we firstly develop an efficient update algorithm for handling edge deletions. We then define the edge influence concept and put forward a novel computation algorithm to accelerate the computation of edge influence. We evaluate our approach using several real world datasets. The experimental results show that our approach outperforms traditional approaches significantly

Formation of phase lags at the cyclotron energies in the pulse profiles of magnetized, accreting neutron stars

Context: Accretion-powered X-ray pulsars show highly energy-dependent and complex pulse-profile morphologies. Significant deviations from the average pulse profile can appear, in particular close to the cyclotron line energies. These deviations can be described as energy-dependent phase lags, that is, as energy-dependent shifts of main features in the pulse profile. Aims: Using a numerical study we explore the effect of cyclotron resonant scattering on observable, energy-resolved pulse profiles. Methods: We generated the observable emission as a function of spin phase, using Monte Carlo simulations for cyclotron resonant scattering and a numerical ray-tracing routine accounting for general relativistic light-bending effects on the intrinsic emission from the accretion columns. Results: We find strong changes in the pulse profile coincident with the cyclotron line energies. Features in the pulse profile vary strongly with respect to the average pulse profile with the observing geometry and shift and smear out in energy additionally when assuming a non-static plasma. Conclusions: We demonstrate how phase lags at the cyclotron energies arise as a consequence of the effects of angular redistribution of X-rays by cyclotron resonance scattering in a strong magnetic field combined with relativistic effects. We also show that phase lags are strongly dependent on the accretion geometry. These intrinsic effects will in principle allow us to constrain a system's accretion geometry.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; updated reference lis

Cyclotron resonant scattering feature simulations. I. Thermally averaged cyclotron scattering cross sections, mean free photon-path tables, and electron momentum sampling

Electron cyclotron resonant scattering features (CRSFs) are observed as absorption-like lines in the spectra of X-ray pulsars. A significant fraction of the computing time for Monte Carlo simulations of these quantum mechanical features is spent on the calculation of the mean free path for each individual photon before scattering, since it involves a complex numerical integration over the scattering cross section and the (thermal) velocity distribution of the scattering electrons. We aim to numerically calculate interpolation tables which can be used in CRSF simulations to sample the mean free path of the scattering photon and the momentum of the scattering electron. The tables also contain all the information required for sampling the scattering electron's final spin. The tables were calculated using an adaptive Simpson integration scheme. The energy and angle grids were refined until a prescribed accuracy is reached. The tables are used by our simulation code to produce artificial CRSF spectra. The electron momenta sampled during these simulations were analyzed and justified using theoretically determined boundaries. We present a complete set of tables suited for mean free path calculations of Monte Carlo simulations of the cyclotron scattering process for conditions expected in typical X-ray pulsar accretion columns (0.01<B/B_{crit}<=0.12, where B_{crit}=4.413x10^{13} G and 3keV<=kT<15keV). The sampling of the tables is chosen such that the results have an estimated relative error of at most 1/15 for all points in the grid. The tables are available online at http://www.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.de/research/cyclo.Comment: A&A, in pres

Localization, analysis and evolution of transposed human immunoglobulin VK genes

The localization of Vκ gene regions to chromosome 2, on which the κ locus is located, and to other chromosomes is described. The Vκ genes that have been transposed to other chromosomes are called orphons. The finding of two new Vκ genes on chromosome 22 is reported. A Vκ II gene of this region and two Vκ I genes of the Chr 1 and the cos 118 regions were sequenced. The two Vκ I orphon sequences and two others that had been determined previously were 97.5% identical, indicating that they may have evolved from a common ancestor by amplification. A model of the evolution of the human Vκ orphons is discussed. Author Keywords: Human-rodent cell hybrids; cosmids; restriction maps; ligation artifacts; orphon; recombinant DNA Abbreviations: aa, amino acid(s); bp, base pair(s); Chr1, Vκ gene-containing regions of chromosomes 1; Chr22, Vκ gene-containing regions of chromosomes 22; FR, framework regions; CDR, complementary determining regions; kb, kilo-base(s) or 1000 bp; L, L′, parts of a leader gene segment; m219-1, the first subclone of the cosmid clone cos 219; orphon, Vκ gene outside the κ locus on chromosome 2pl2; SSC, 0.15 M NaCl, 0.015 M Na3-citrate, pH 7.6; V, variable gene segments; J, joining gene segments; C, constant gene segments; Vκ I to Vκ IV, variable gene segments of immunoglobulin light chains of the κ type belonging to subgroups I to IV; for reasons of simplicity Vκ gene segments are generally called Vκ gene

Microstructure of Injection Moulding Machine Mould Clamping Mechanism: Design and Motion Simulation

With the advent of intelligence technologies, more and more machines and devices are involved in the creation of complex structures. In the intelligent manufacturing industries, mouldings including injection moulding, blow moulding, compression moulding, and others play critical roles in manufacturing highly precise parts required for building intelligent machines (such as computers, cell phones, robots etc.). The performance of the clamping mechanism directly affects the quality of the microstructure of injection products. The design of the injection moulding mould clamping mechanism is based on the microstructure characteristics of the trip of the toggle lever mechanism ratio, speed ratio, and force amplification ratio. These are used to study the main performance parameters, such as analysis, as well as for the establishment of the physical model of the clamping mechanism. The model is based on the microstructure of injection of hyperbolic elbow clamping mechanism kinematics simulation. Simulation results and theoretical calculation contrast analysis show that the maximum dynamic template speed is 215.34 mm/s. The dynamic templates and cross-head speed ratio is 2.15; therefore, the design of the injection moulding mould clamping mechanism for the microstructure provides favourable technical support. The method described here is important to build complicated moulds required to build highly precise parts to build intelligent machineries