Vocational, college and career counseling in Switzerland : blended information and e-counseling in a digitized world

In the course of the 2030 agenda of vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland, career development and career management skills in a digitized working world play an important role (SERI, 2017). Therefore the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) commissioned a scientific report on the future of career counseling in Switzerland (Hirschi, 2018) as part of the mission statement for vocational education and training in Switzerland. In this paper we will present two stand-alone initiatives directed at fostering vocational, college and career counseling in Switzerland by incorporating elements of automation and digitization. First, a blended information concept for the media libraries of the public career guidance centres in the Canton of Berne / Switzerland and second an ecounseling concept for vocational, college and career counseling at the IAP Institute of Applied Psychology at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)

Coxeter group structure of cosmological billiards on compact spatial manifolds

We present a systematic study of the cosmological billiard structures of Einstein-p-form systems in which all spatial directions are compactified on a manifold of nontrivial topology. This is achieved for all maximally oxidised theories associated with split real forms, for all possible compactifications as defined by the de Rham cohomology of the internal manifold. In each case, we study the Coxeter group that controls the dynamics for energy scales below the Planck scale as well as the relevant billiard region. We compare and contrast them with the Weyl group and fundamental domain that emerge from the general BKL analysis. For generic topologies we find a variety of possibilities: (i) The group may or may not be a simplex Coxeter group; (ii) The billiard region may or may not be a fundamental domain. When it is not a fundamental domain, it can be described as a sequence of pairwise adjacent chambers, known as a gallery, and the reflections in the billiard walls provide a non-standard presentation of the Coxeter group. We find that it is only when the Coxeter group is a simplex Coxeter group, and the billiard region is a fundamental domain, that there is a correspondence between billiard walls and simple roots of a Kac-Moody algebra, as in the general BKL analysis. For each compactification we also determine whether or not the resulting theory exhibits chaotic dynamics.Comment: 51 pages. Typos corrected. References added. Submitted for publicatio

Nontrivial Galois module structure of cyclotomic fields

We say a tame Galois field extension $L/K$ with Galois group $G$ has trivial Galois module structure if the rings of integers have the property that \Cal{O}_{L} is a free \Cal{O}_{K}[G]-module. The work of Greither, Replogle, Rubin, and Srivastav shows that for each algebraic number field other than the rational numbers there will exist infinitely many primes $l$ so that for each there is a tame Galois field extension of degree $l$ so that $L/K$ has nontrivial Galois module structure. However, the proof does not directly yield specific primes $l$ for a given algebraic number field $K.$ For $K$ any cyclotomic field we find an explicit $l$ so that there is a tame degree $l$ extension $L/K$ with nontrivial Galois module structure

The global cultural commons after Cancun: identity, diversity and citizenship

The cultural politics of global trade is a new and unexplored terrain because the public domain of culture has long been associated with national sovereignty. States everywhere have invested heavily in national identity. But in an age of globalization, culture and sovereignty have become more complex propositions, subject to global pressures and national constraints. This paper argues three main points. First, new information technologies increasingly destabilize traditional private sector models for disseminating culture. At the same time, international legal rules have become more restrictive with respect to investment and national treatment, two areas at the heart of cultural policy. Second, Doha has significant implications for the future of the cultural commons. Ongoing negotiations around TRIPS, TRIMS, GATS and dispute settlement will impose new restrictions on public authorities who wish to appropriate culture for a variety of public and private ends. Finally, there is a growing backlash against the WTO’s trade agenda for broadening and deepening disciplines in these areas. These issues have become highly politicized and fractious, and are bound to vex future rounds as the global south, led by Brazil, India and China flexes its diplomatic muscle

Intra-European Trade of Manufacturing Goods : An extension of the Gravity Model

In this paper, we propose and test several extensions of the standard gravity model. This yields a specification that allows for (i) a more flexible income response; (ii) a competitiveness effect with a general and a specific component; and (iii) an alternative and consistent measure of remoteness. Those extensions were found to be significant factors to explain intra-EU trade. Next, we analyze the effect of EU harmonization of technical regulations on domestic and intra-EU trade. We find, at different levels of aggregation of the manufacturing sector, that harmonization of regulations has contributed to more intra-EU trade but, apparently, did not affect the so called border effect.

Estimating Water Quality Benefits: Theoretical and Methodological Issues

Knowledge of the benefits and costs to water users is required for a complete assessment of policies to create incentives for water quality improving changes in agricultural production. A number of benefit estimation methods are required to handle the varying nature of water quality effects. This report reviews practical approaches and theoretical foundations for estimating the economic value of changes in water quality to recreation, navigation, reservoirs, municipal water treatment and use, and roadside drainage ditches.benefits, water quality, economic welfare, demand, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations

Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as explanatory power of distinctively network explanations, network levels, and network hierarchies