Reviving Social Europe: a critical assessment of EU social policy in the wake of multiple crises

[Abstract] The concept of "Social Europe" encompasses the European Union's social policy framework. This paper argues that the financial crisis of 2007-2009, the subsequent Euro crisis, and the ensuing austerity measures diverted significant attention away from Social Europe. This neglect led to declining living standards, reductions in public services, and the emergence of critical challenges such as the gig economy. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these issues, prompting a renewed focus on Social Europe by EU institutions. This paper conducts a chronological analysis of recent legislative (acquis) and non-legislative (soft power) instruments implemented to address these challenges and assesses the prospects of Social Europe in the near term

Regulating labour platforms, the data deficit

It is widely reported that there is a data deficit regarding working conditions in the gig economy. It is known, however, that workers are disadvantaged because they are not classed as employees with the result that they lack work-related entitlements and may not be protected by the social welfare safety net. Nor is this compatible with the social market economy enshrined in the European Union treaties. Two obstacles are that labour law and social policy are mainly a national competence and that platforms are reluctant to share data with regulators. In this paper I take the specific case of offline labour platforms intermediated by app and smart phone such as driving and delivering and look for new pathways between access to data and the shaping of public policy in member states with potentially legal certainty

Surfactant templated mesostructured titania films: A comparison of three methods

The formation of thick, robust, mesoporous titania films is of particular interest and the focus of this thesis has been the study and comparison of the surfactant templated formation of such materials by three methods. film structure has been studied using TEM and small angle X-ray and neutron scattering while formation was studied using Brewster angle microscopy and X-ray and neutron reflectometry. Repetitive dip-coating was used to produce films for development into dye sensitized solar cells allowing development of cells of reasonable efficiency when four depositions were used. This research showed that repetitive deposition does not necessarily lead to a linear increase in film thickness, as subsequent depositions may be thinner making the future application of this method for solar cells problematic. In contrast to dip-coating, a fluorinated surfactant was used in a largely alcohol solvent to produce mesostructured films at the air-solution interface. Film formation occurred by a surface driven mechanism via addition of individual precursors and micelles producing a lamellar structure in-situ. After removal from the interface a cubic phase developed after drying of the film. Although films are not stable to calcination the calcined material remains porous. The surfactant templated formation of ZnO films at the air-solution interface was also studied. The di-block copolymer PEPEG2250 was also used to template titania films at the air-solution interface from alcoholic solvent. Film formation occurred via a bulk driven mechanism. Although these films were found to be disordered at the interface and not stable to calcinations they were unusually robust and self supporting after removal from the interface. Studies of subphase development allowed the first time-resolved observation of surfactant templated titania particle formation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Controlled porosity and pore size of nano-porous gold by thermally assisted chemical dealloying - a SAXS study

Nano-porous metals offer great potential for applications such as bio-sensors, chemical reactors, platforms for cell growth, and media for separation because of their high surface area and reactivity at the nanoscale. The high surface to volume ratio of nano-porous metals also offers advanced plasmonic properties which may be put to use upon refining the control over pore size distributions in the nanoscale range. Here, the impact of the solution temperature on the nature of both ligaments and pores generated across ultra-thin AuAg50 metal leaves by chemical dealloying is demonstrated for the first time. The pores were found to be controllably tuneable within a range from 30 to 54 nm in diameter after 75 min of treatment in an etching solution with a temperature between 5 and 60 °C. The kinetics of the pore formation was studied by an in situ dealloying experiment on the small angle X-ray scattering beamline at the Australian Synchrotron and specific materials properties were thereafter cross-correlated to ex situ morphological experiments. This work demonstrates a straightforward new method to refine porous structures at the nanoscale and fine-tune surface properties across nano-porous metals that will extend their applications

An in-situ small angle x ray scattering analysis of nanopore formation during thermally induced chemical dealloying of brass thin foils

The development of non-noble nano-porous metal materials is hindered by surface oxidation reactions and from the difficulty to generate long range order pore arrays. Dealloying is a promising route to generate such materials by selective chemical etching of metal alloy materials. This process can generate nano-metal materials with superior plasmonic, catalytic and adsorptive surface properties. Here, the impact of properties of the etching solution on the dealloying process to generate nano-pores across thin film alloys was investigated by in-situ SAXS dealloying experiments. Single phase CuZn alloys were used as model materials to evaluate the influence of the solution temperature on the pore formation kinetics. This novel analysis allowed to visualize the change in surface properties of the materials over time, including their surface area as well as their pore and ligament sizes. The dealloying kinetics at the very early stage of the process were found to be critical to both stable pore formation and stabilization. SAXS in-situ data were correlated to the morphological properties of the materials obtained from ex-situ samples by Rutherford back scattering and scanning electron microscopy

The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Fifth Data Release (DR5) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). DR5 includes all survey quality data taken through June 2005 and represents the completion of the SDSS-I project (whose successor, SDSS-II will continue through mid-2008). It includes five-band photometric data for 217 million objects selected over 8000 square degrees, and 1,048,960 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 5713 square degrees of that imaging data. These numbers represent a roughly 20% increment over those of the Fourth Data Release; all the data from previous data releases are included in the present release. In addition to "standard" SDSS observations, DR5 includes repeat scans of the southern equatorial stripe, imaging scans across M31 and the core of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, and the first spectroscopic data from SEGUE, a survey to explore the kinematics and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The catalog database incorporates several new features, including photometric redshifts of galaxies, tables of matched objects in overlap regions of the imaging survey, and tools that allow precise computations of survey geometry for statistical investigations.Comment: ApJ Supp, in press, October 2007. This paper describes DR5. The SDSS Sixth Data Release (DR6) is now public, available from http://www.sdss.or

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction