Early Retirement and Inequality in Britain and Germany: How Important Is Health?

Both health and income inequalities have been shown to be much greater in Britain than in Germany. One of the main reasons seems to be the difference in the relative position of the retired, who, in Britain, are much more concentrated in the lower income groups. Inequality analysis reveals that while the distribution of health shocks is more concentrated among those on low incomes in Britain, early retirement is more concentrated among those on high incomes. In contrast, in Germany, both health shocks and early retirement are more concentrated among those with low incomes. We use comparable longitudinal data sets from Britain and Germany to estimate hazard models of the effect of health on early retirement. The hazard models show that health is a key determinant of the retirement hazard for both men and women in Britain and Germany. The size of the health effect appears large compared to the other variables. Designing financial incentives to encourage people to work for longer may not be sufficient as a policy tool if people are leaving the labour market involuntarily due to health problems.health, early retirement, hazard models

An exploratory study on the effect of positive (warmth appeal) and negative (guilt appeal) print imagery on donation behaviour in animal welfare

Very few studies in social marketing empirically compare the effectiveness of positive and negative appeals. This study examines the effect of positive (warmth appeal) and negative (guilt appeal) print imagery on donation behaviour to an animal welfare organisation. A quasiexperimental design was used to test the appeals, using a convenience sample of 282 university students, with each experimental group being exposed to only one type of appeal. The results indicated that negative imagery which evoked guilt was more effective than positive imagery which evoked warmth, on intention to donate money and time to the animal welfare organisation

Proportional Consistency of Apportionment Methods

We analyze a little-known property of apportionment methods that captures how allocations scale with the size of the house: specifically, if, for a fixed population distribution, the house size and allocation can be scaled down within the set of integers, then the apportionment should be correspondingly scaled down. Balinski and Young (2001) include this property among the minimal requirements for a "reasonable" apportionment method. We argue that this property is better understood as a consistency requirement since quota-based apportionments that are "less proportional" meet this requirement while others that are "more proportional" do not. We also show that the family of quotatone methods based on stationary divisors (including the quota method) do not satisfy this property

Saltwater intrusion induces shifts in soil microbial diversity and carbon use efficiency in a coastal grassland ecosystem

Salt accumulation and salinisation of coastal soils is a global issue. Further, climate change is likely to increase the amount of land affected by salinity due to the increasing frequency and severity of coastal flooding and brackish water ingress. The impact of this on the ability of soils to deliver ecosystem services, particularly carbon (C) storage, however, remains unclear. We hypothesized that coastal inundation would negatively affect C storage by lowering plant C inputs and by placing greater osmotic stress on the microbial community leading to a reduced C use efficiency (CUE). Here, we use a coastal grassland ecosystem, which is becoming increasingly subjected to sea and brackish water flooding, to explore the relationship between plant/microbial growth and CUE along a natural salinity gradient. To reflect steady state conditions, we traced the turnover and partitioning of a low (ambient) dose and high (growth stimulation) dose of 14C-labelled glucose into microbial anabolic and catabolic pools, from which microbial CUE was calculated. This was supported by measurements of the diversity of the bacterial community across the salinity gradient using 16S metabarcoding. Our results showed that coastal flooding significantly reduced plant growth (p < 0.005), increased soil C content (p < 0.05) and induced an increase in microbial CUE under low glucose-C conditions (p < 0.05). Conversely, no significant difference in CUE or microbial growth was apparent when a high glucose-C dose was used. Soil bacterial community alpha (α) diversity increased with soil salinity while beta (β) diversity also shifted in response to the higher saline conditions. Our analysis suggests that the largest impact of coastal flooding on soil C cycling was the inability of the plant community to adapt, leading to higher plant residue inputs as well as the decline in soil structure. Conversely, the microbial community had adapted to the increased salinity, resulting in only small changes in the uptake and metabolic partitioning of C

A blueprint for success: constructing social and cognitive development of deaf and hard of hearing adolescent students using team building games in the classroom

Includes bibliographical references.This thesis illustrates how experiential education, specifically teambuilding games, can be beneficial when used with adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing. Teambuilding games can especially help advance areas of development in which these students are often behind. It discusses the areas of social and cognitive development according to several theorists and how students with hearing impairments fit into those specific theories. Also discussed are the characteristics of experiential education and teambuilding and which of those make it unique for students who are at risk for delays in social and cognitive development. Through researching the various topics, this thesis organizes the information and shows how experiential education can provide a foundation for social and cognitive development in students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The main purpose of this work is to establish a link between these two and present the ideas to appropriate professionals, with the focus on present and future educators of the deaf and hard of hearing. This thesis has also been organized into a workshop form using Microsoft Power Point to facilitate a presentation of the material to professionals to whom this will be useful.B.S.Ed. (Bachelor of Science in Education

Digital Commonwealth: Handbook of Digital Storytelling

Developed by the Digital Commonwealth project team at the University of the West of Scotland, funded by The Big Lottery, University of the West of Scotland and The Media Trust. The handbook is structured around exploring a theme (in this case the Commonwealth) and then ideas for using blogging, audio, social media and video for digital storytelling. Each section contains: ● An overview of the aims and learning for each skill ● An introduction to the skill ● Suggestions for how to use this skill for digital storytelling ● Examples of the skill in action (including examples from the Digital Commonwealth project

Digital Commonwealth: Handbook of Digital Storytelling

Developed by the Digital Commonwealth project team at the University of the West of Scotland, funded by The Big Lottery, University of the West of Scotland and The Media Trust. The handbook is structured around exploring a theme (in this case the Commonwealth) and then ideas for using blogging, audio, social media and video for digital storytelling. Each section contains: ● An overview of the aims and learning for each skill ● An introduction to the skill ● Suggestions for how to use this skill for digital storytelling ● Examples of the skill in action (including examples from the Digital Commonwealth project

Immediate replacement of fishing with dairying by the earliest farmers of the NE Atlantic archipelagos

The appearance of farming, from its inception in the Near East around 12 000 years ago, finally reached the northwestern extremes of Europe by the fourth millennium BC or shortly thereafter. Various models have been invoked to explain the Neolithization of northern Europe; however, resolving these different scenarios has proved problematic due to poor faunal preservation and the lack of specificity achievable for commonly applied proxies. Here, we present new multi-proxy evidence, which qualitatively and quantitatively maps subsistence change in the northeast Atlantic archipelagos from the Late Mesolithic into the Neolithic and beyond. A model involving significant retention of hunter–gatherer–fisher influences was tested against one of the dominant adoptions of farming using a novel suite of lipid biomarkers, including dihydroxy fatty acids, ω-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids and stable carbon isotope signatures of individual fatty acids preserved in cooking vessels. These new findings, together with archaeozoological and human skeletal collagen bulk stable carbon isotope proxies, unequivocally confirm rejection of marine resources by early farmers coinciding with the adoption of intensive dairy farming. This pattern of Neolithization contrasts markedly to that occurring contemporaneously in the Baltic, suggesting that geographically distinct ecological and cultural influences dictated the evolution of subsistence practices at this critical phase of European prehistory