The formation of a new transnational labour market: Polish labour migration to Vienna in the 1990s

After the fall of the Iron Curtain Austria's position within the framework of Europe's migration league table shifted from a marginal one to that of an appealing "Gateway to the Golden West" with a strong attraction for migrants. So it is not surprising that the inflow of labour force from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary was growing during the 1990s. This has led to the formation of a new transnational labour market which includes the eastern regions of Austria and the countries of East-Central Europe. In 1981 5,911 Polish citizens legally lived and worked in Austria. In 1991 the figure was three times as high (18,321), including 8,932 Polish citizens who had taken Austrian citizenship in the meantime. The highest number of labour migrants from Poland (19,421 persons) was registered in 1995. In 1995-96 there was a clear decline in numbers. As the range of information about Polish migration to Austria provided by official census data was quite inadequate we made field research among Vienna's Polish community. The location chosen for the inquiry was the Polish church, one of the favoured meeting points of the Poles. A sample of 408 Poles were interviewed during a spring week in 1993. Naturally, the financial and personal resources of our Institute were too meagre to aspire to an overall study of Vienna's manifold "Polonia". So we tried to concentrate our analysis on some specific topics listed below: - socio-demographic characteristics; - educational background and qualifications level; - labour market position (distribution of migrants among the sectors of the economy, the role of brain drain and its transformation into brain waste, illegal employment); - position on the Viennese housing market; - spatial distribution of the areas of origin in Poland. The main empirical results of the survey which needs stressing are: - the selectivity of Polish immigration by socio-demographic criteria; - the broad variety of family and household structures; - the uneven spatial distribution of the areas of origin of Viennese immigrants; - the overrepresentation of the large urban regions among migration origins; - the importance ot the mainly economic pull factors of the Austrian labour market; - the growing importance of temporary migration; - the high proportion of highly-qualified personnel among migrants; - a broad range of occupations; - a substantial degree of dequalification and brain waste; - an upward occupational mobility which depends on the duration of stay in Vienna; - a close relation of size and standard of dwelling and length of stay in Vienna; - significantly better housing conditions than those of Turkish or Balkanese guest-workers; - the phenomenon of large-scale illegal employment.

Managing expectations when publishing tools and methods for computational proteomics

Computational tools are pivotal in proteomics because they are crucial for identification, quantification, and statistical assessment of data. The gateway to finding the best choice of a tool or approach for a particular problem is frequently journal articles, yet there is Often an overwhelming variety of options that makes it hard to decide on the best solution. This is particularly difficult for nonexperts in bioinformatics. The maturity, reliability, and performance of tools can vary widely because publications may appear at different stages of development. A novel idea might merit early publication despite only offering proof-of-principle, while it may take years before a tool Can be considered mature, and-by that time it might be difficult for a new publication to be accepted, because of a perceived lack of novelty. After discussions with members of the computational mass spectrometry community, we describe here proposed recommendations for organization of informatics manuscripts as a Way to set the expectations of readers (and reviewers) through three different manuscript types that are based on existing journal designations. Brief Communications are short reports describing novel computational approaches where the implementation is not necessarily production-ready. Research Articles present both a novel idea and mature implementation that has been suitably benchmarked. Application Notes focus on a mature and tested tool or concept and need not be novel but should offer advancement from improved,quality, ease of use, and/or implementation. Organizing computational proteomics contributions into these three manuscript types will facilitate the review process and will also enable readers to identify the maturity and applicability of the tool for their own workflows

"Silver" product design: Product innovation for older people

Aging populations challenge companies across different countries and industries to respond to the changing needs, demands and expectations of their growing shares of older customers. This opens room for improving or developing innovations - products as well as services - that correspond to the diverse expectations. New product development for older customers or 'Silver' product design is one way to approach the 'silver' market - without explicitly excluding younger customers. Research in this field is still in its infancy. Silver product design focuses on individual autonomy, representing an elementary aspect of good life, disappearing in a more or less continuous manner over the life cycle of a human being. Offering solutions that will allow people to maintain or recover autonomy and to use products and services in an independent manner therefore seems to be a promising avenue for companies innovating across different industries. The general concept of autonomy can be perceived as a boundary-spanning argument and a common denominator for starting development initiatives leading to innovations targeting the silver market. Cross-case analysis based on four different product innovations addressing typical needs of older people are used to present how firms in different industrial contexts and user-settings address such needs, which have their roots in a need to stay autonomous and independent. Technological, marketing and strategy-related observations as well as communalities and differences of the cases are being discussed and very first implications for managing the front end of silver product development sketched. --Demographic change,aging,older users,silver market,innovation management,silver product design,individual autonomy

New approaches to protein docking

In the first part of this work, we propose new methods for protein docking. First, we present two approaches to protein docking with flexible side chains. The first approach is a fast greedy heuristic, while the second is a branch -&-cut algorithm that yields optimal solutions. For a test set of protease-inhibitor complexes, both approaches correctly predict the true complex structure. Another problem in protein docking is the prediction of the binding free energy, which is the the final step of many protein docking algorithms. Therefore, we propose a new approach that avoids the expensive and difficult calculation of the binding free energy and, instead, employs a scoring function that is based on the similarity of the proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of the tentative complexes with the experimental spectrum. Using this method, we could even predict the structure of a very difficult protein-peptide complex that could not be solved using any energy-based scoring functions. The second part of this work presents BALL (Biochemical ALgorithms Library), a framework for Rapid Application Development in the field of Molecular Modeling. BALL provides an extensive set of data structures as well as classes for Molecular Mechanics, advanced solvation methods, comparison and analysis of protein structures, file import/export, NMR shift prediction, and visualization. BALL has been carefully designed to be robust, easy to use, and open to extensions. Especially its extensibility, which results from an object-oriented and generic programming approach, distinguishes it from other software packages.Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit neuen Ansätzen zum Proteindocking. Zunächst stellen wir zwei Ansätze zum Proteindocking mit flexiblen Seitenketten vor. Der erste Ansatz beruht auf einer schnellen, gierigen Heuristik, während der zweite Ansatz auf branch-&-cut-Techniken beruht und das Problem optimal lösen kann. Beide Ansätze sind in der Lage die korrekte Komplexstruktur für einen Satz von Testbeispielen (bestehend aus Protease-Inhibitor-Komplexen) vorherzusagen. Ein weiteres, grösstenteils ungelöstes, Problem ist der letzte Schritt vieler Protein-Docking-Algorithmen, die Vorhersage der freien Bindungsenthalpie. Daher schlagen wir eine neue Methode vor, die die schwierige und aufwändige Berechnung der freien Bindungsenthalpie vermeidet. Statt dessen wird eine Bewertungsfunktion eingesetzt, die auf der Ähnlichkeit der Protonen-Kernresonanzspektren der potentiellen Komplexstrukturen mit dem experimentellen Spektrum beruht. Mit dieser Methode konnten wir sogar die korrekte Struktur eines Protein-Peptid-Komplexes vorhersagen, an dessen Vorhersage energiebasierte Bewertungsfunktionen scheitern. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit stellt BALL (Biochemical ALgorithms Library) vor, ein Rahmenwerk zur schnellen Anwendungsentwicklung im Bereich MolecularModeling. BALL stellt eine Vielzahl von Datenstrukturen und Algorithmen für die FelderMolekülmechanik,Vergleich und Analyse von Proteinstrukturen, Datei-Import und -Export, NMR-Shiftvorhersage und Visualisierung zur Verfügung. Beim Entwurf von BALL wurde auf Robustheit, einfache Benutzbarkeit und Erweiterbarkeit Wert gelegt. Von existierenden Software-Paketen hebt es sich vor allem durch seine Erweiterbarkeit ab, die auf der konsequenten Anwendung von objektorientierter und generischer Programmierung beruht

Bildung und Lebensplanung im ländlichen Raum

Bildung ist Dreh- und Angelpunkt einer aktiven Lebensplanung. Der Bildungsgrad der Menschen einer Region ist unmittelbar mit der Entwicklungsfähigkeit des einzelnen Menschen und der Region insgesamt verbunden: Qualitativ hochwertige Bildung wirkt positiv in alle Lebensbereiche, denn sie ermöglicht ein Handeln nach dem Subsidiaritätsprinzip, ist Kulturgut und Wirtschaftsfaktor. Mangelnde Bildung hingegen verschärft nahezu alle mit dem demografischen Wandel einhergehenden Problembereiche einer Region. […]Wenn auch im ländlichen Raum qualitativ hochwertige und finanziell erschwingliche Bildungsangebote bestehen, wächst die Attraktivität dieser Region für die Menschen, die derzeit (noch) abwandern. […] Die allgemeine Bildungsplanung und auch die individuelle Lebensplanung dürfen sich nicht am Mangel (Finanzen, Bevölkerung usw.) orientieren, sondern müssen anhand positiver realistischer Perspektiven gestaltet werden. (DIPF/Orig.

Frustrating Beginnings: How Social Ties Compensate Housing Integration Barriers for Afghan Refugees in Vienna

In this article, we present findings from a recent (2017-2018) qualitative survey on the integration of Afghan refugees in Vienna. Vienna is by far the largest city in Austria with a diversified labour and housing market and a multi-faceted (migrant) economy. It doubtlessly is the most attractive ‘arrival city’ in Austria. Moreover, Vienna has received the bulk of refugees during the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015–2016 and before. The analysis will focus on Ager and Strang’s (2008) argument, which characterizes housing as a core domain in integration. Housing constitutes a potential means of supporting integration into domains other than the labour market. In the process of housing integration, researchers (Aigner, 2018; Borevi & Bengtsson, 2015) have emphasized the relevance of refugees’ social ties with family and co-ethnic groups, whereas the importance of inter-ethnic networking with members of the receiving society remains insufficiently explored. The majority of the 65 interviewees had emphasized the importance of refugees’ social ties for their efforts towards structural integration. This analysis therefore aims at describing Afghans’ challenging access paths into the local housing market, and the outstanding compensatory relevance of social ties in this process. Thus, we can identify special constraints (e.g., ‘Afghanophobia,’ exploitative conditions) and coping strategies of this under-researched ‘newcomer’ group of refugees in Austria

From sequence to structure and back again: approaches for predicting protein-DNA binding

Gene regulation in higher organisms is achieved by a complex network of transcription factors (TFs). Modulating gene expression and exploring gene function are major aims in molecular biology. Furthermore, the identification of putative target genes for a certain TF serve as powerful tools for specific targeting of rational drugs. Detecting the short and variable transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) in genomic DNA is an intriguing challenge for computational and structural biologists. Fast and reliable computational methods for predicting TFBSs on a whole-genome scale offer several advantages compared to the current experimental methods that are rather laborious and slow. Two main approaches are being explored, advanced sequence-based algorithms and structure-based methods. The aim of this review is to outline the computational and experimental methods currently being applied in the field of protein-DNA interactions. With a focus on the former, the current state of the art in modeling these interactions is discussed. Surveying sequence and structure-based methods for predicting TFBSs, we conclude that in order to achieve a sound and specific method applicable on genomic sequences it is desirable and important to bring these two approaches together