Fertility and the Labor Supply of Women

The relation between fertility and female labor supply has been extensively studied, theoretically as well as empirically, in the literature. But until now no consensus has emerged from these investigations. In this analysis the problem is addressed in an international context. After a brief introduction which underlines the importance of this question in a macroeconomic framework, data on fertility and labor force participation are discussed for the IIASA countries. For the Western countries increasing consonance both in the trend as well as in the cycles can be observed for the fertility and labor supply behavior. The development of the corresponding data series for the Eastern countries are more heterogeneous. This can be interpreted, at least in the Western countries, as fertility and female labor supply being governed by identical factors. Since business cycles have shown an increasing consonance in the 1970s for the Western countries, it could be argued that the women's wage rate is the driving force behind fertility and labor supply development

Fertility and Female Labor-Force Participation: Estimates and Projections for Austrian Women Aged 20-30

The sharp and unexpected decline in fertility rates during the 1960s and 1970s provoked a great deal of controversy. What was the cause of this decline? What will be its future path? There were two opposing schools in this debate: Becker and the "human capital" school on one side and Easterlin and his school on the other. The former emphasized that the rise in women's real wage rates drove up the opportunity cost of having children, whereas the latter emphasized the age structure of the population. This paper presents these two lines of thought and constructs a model with ingredients from both schools. In this model the decision of having children or of entering the labor force is considered as a simultaneous one. Therefore the model tries to explain simultaneously the fertility rate and the labor-force participation rate. This structural model is then estimated for Austrian women aged 20-30 with a system estimator that takes into account the simultaneity in the model. These estimates together with some assumptions about exogenous variables are used to give some projections to the year 2000 for the endogenous variables, the fertility rates and the labor-force participation rate of women aged 20-30

Chromosomal anchoring of linkage groups and identification of wing size QTL using markers and FISH probes derived from microdissected chromosomes in Nasonia(Pteromalidae : Hymenoptera)

Nasonia vitripennis is a small parasitic hymenopteran with a 50-year history of genetic work including linkage mapping with mutant and molecular markers. For the first time we are now able to anchor linkage groups to specific chromosomes. Two linkage maps based on a hybrid cross (N. vitripennis x N. longicornis) were constructed using STS, RAPID and microsatellite markers, where 17 of the linked STS markers were developed from single microdissected banded chromosomes. Based on these microdissections we anchored all linkage groups to the five chromosomes of N. vitripennis. We also verified the chromosomal specificity of the microdissection through in situ hybridization and linkage analyses. This information and technique will allow us in the future to locate genes or QTL detected in different mapping populations efficiently and fast on homologous chromosomes or even chromosomal regions. To test this approach we asked whether QTL responsible for the wing size in two different hybrid crosses (N. vitripennis x N. longicornis and N. vitripennis x N. giraulti) map to the same location. One QTL with a major effect was found to map to the centromere region of chromosome 3 in both crosses. This could indicate that indeed the same gene/s is involved in the reduction of wing in N. vitripennis and N. longicornis. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel

Prolongation on regular infinitesimal flag manifolds

Many interesting geometric structures can be described as regular infinitesimal flag structures, which occur as the underlying structures of parabolic geometries. Among these structures we have for instance conformal structures, contact structures, certain types of generic distributions and partially integrable almost CR-structures of hypersurface type. The aim of this article is to develop for a large class of (semi-)linear overdetermined systems of partial differential equations on regular infinitesimal flag manifolds $M$ a conceptual method to rewrite these systems as systems of the form $\tilde\nabla(\Sigma)+C(\Sigma)=0$, where $\tilde\nabla$ is a linear connection on some vector bundle $V$ over $M$ and $C: V\rightarrow T^*M\otimes V$ is a (vector) bundle map. In particular, if the overdetermined system is linear, $\tilde\nabla+C$ will be a linear connection on $V$ and hence the dimension of its solution space is bounded by the rank of $V$. We will see that the rank of $V$ can be easily computed using representation theory.Comment: 35 pages; typos corrected and minor changes, final version to appear in International Journal of Mathematic

Push-pull thiophene chromophores for electro-optic applications: from 1D linear to beta-branched structures

We report the synthesis and characterization of a novel series of push-pull chromophores bearing 1D linear and beta-branched thiophenes as pi-conjugated spacers between a 2, 2, 4, 7-tetramethyl-1, 2, 3, 4-tetrahydroquinoline electron donor unit and dicyano- and tricyanovinylene electron acceptor groups. The effect of the introduction of beta-thiophenes on the linear and nonlinear (NLO) optical properties as well as electrochemical and thermal data is studied in detail by performing a comparative study between the branched and 1D linear systems. In addition, a parallel DFT computational study is used to evaluate structure-property relationships. The non-linear optical behavior of the molecules both in solution and in solid state as electro-optic (EO) films using a guest-host approach shows very promising performance for electro-optic applications with high molecular first hyperpolarizabilities (mu beta) of 4840 x 10(-48) esu and electro-optic coefficients r(33) reaching 650 pm V-1. One highlight is that the electro-optic films of the beta-branched chromophores are superior in terms of thermal stability in device operation as measured by a transmissive modified reflective Teng-Man method. This work provides guidelines for the design of improved electro-optic materials including beta-branched chromophores which could be useful for practical EO applications, where both enhanced beta and r(33) values together with chemical and thermal stability are necessary

Irradiation of benzene molecules by ion-induced and light-induced intense fields

Benzene, with its sea of delocalized $\pi$-electrons in the valence orbitals, is identified as an example of a class of molecules that enable establishment of the correspondence between intense ion-induced and laser-light-induced fields in experiments that probe ionization dynamics in temporal regimes spanning the attosecond and picosecond ranges.Comment: 4 ps figure