Does Migration Make You Happy?:A Longitudinal Study of Internal Migration and Subjective Well-Being

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (RES-625-28-0001). This project is part of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC). Financial support from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).The majority of quantitative studies on the consequences of internal migration focus almost exclusively on the labour-market outcomes and the material well-being of migrants. We investigate whether individuals who migrate within the UK become happier after the move than they were before, and whether the effect is permanent or transient. Using life-satisfaction responses from twelve waves of the British Household Panel Survey and employing a fixed-effects model, we derive a temporal pattern of migrants’ subjective well-being around the time of the migration event. Our findings make an original contribution by revealing that, on average, migration is preceded by a period when individuals experience a significant decline in happiness for a variety of reasons, including changes in personal living arrangements. Migration itself causes a boost in happiness, and brings people back to their initial levels. The research contributes, therefore, to advancing an understanding of migration in relation to set-point theory. Perhaps surprisingly, long-distance migrants are at least as happy as short-distance migrants despite the higher social and psychological costs involved. The findings of this paper add to the pressure to retheorize migration within a conceptual framework that accounts for social well-being from a life-course perspective.PostprintPeer reviewe

CO2 emission mitigation and fossil fuel markets: Dynamic and international aspects of climate policies

This paper explores a multi-model scenario ensemble to assess the impacts of idealized and non-idealized climate change stabilization policies on fossil fuel markets. Under idealized conditions climate policies significantly reduce coal use in the short- and long-term. Reductions in oil and gas use are much smaller, particularly until 2030, but revenues decrease much more because oil and gas prices are higher than coal prices. A first deviation from optimal transition pathways is delayed action that relaxes global emission targets until 2030 in accordance with the Copenhagen pledges. Fossil fuel markets revert back to the no-policy case: though coal use increases strongest, revenue gains are higher for oil and gas. To balance the carbon budget over the 21st century, the long-term reallocation of fossil fuels is significantly larger -- twice and more -- than the short-term distortion. This amplifying effect results from coal lock-in and inter-fuel substitution effects to balance the full-century carbon budget. The second deviation from the optimal transition pathway relaxes the global participation assumption. The result here is less clear-cut across models, as we find carbon leakage effects ranging from positive to negative because trade and substitution patterns of coal, oil, and gas differ across models. In summary, distortions of fossil fuel markets resulting from relaxed short-term global emission targets are more important and less uncertain than the issue of carbon leakage from early mover action

Mapping interactions between the sustainable development goals: lessons learned and ways forward

Pursuing integrated research and decision-making to advance action on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) fundamentally depends on understanding interactions between the SDGs, both negative ones (“trade-offs”) and positive ones (“co-benefits”). This quest, triggered by the 2030 Agenda, has however pointed to a gap in current research and policy analysis regarding how to think systematically about interactions across the SDGs. This paper synthesizes experiences and insights from the application of a new conceptual framework for mapping and assessing SDG interactions using a defined typology and characterization approach. Drawing on results from a major international research study applied to the SDGs on health, energy and the ocean, it analyses how interactions depend on key factors such as geographical context, resource endowments, time horizon and governance. The paper discusses the future potential, barriers and opportunities for applying the approach in scientific research, in policy making and in bridging the two through a global SDG Interactions Knowledge Platform as a key mechanism for assembling, systematizing and aggregating knowledge on interactions

The Epidemiology of Hypoxemic Pneumonia among Young Infants in Malawi

We describe hypoxemic pneumonia prevalence in outpatient and inpatient settings, in-hospital mortality, and clinical guideline performance for identifying hypoxemia in young infants in Malawi. In this retrospective analysis of a prospective cohort study, we investigate infants younger than 2 months participating in pneumonia surveillance at seven hospitals and 18 outpatient health centers in Malawi between 2011 and 2014. Logistic regression, multiple imputations with chained equations, and pattern mixture modeling were used to determine the association between peripheral oxyhemoglobin saturation (SpO2) levels and hospital mortality. We describe referral recommendations based on clinical characteristics and SpO2 distributions. Among 1,879 analyzed cases, SpO2 < 90% was more prevalent among outpatient health center cases than that among hospitalized cases (22.6% versus 13.5%, 95% CI: 17.6–28.4% and 12.0–15.3%, respectively). A larger proportion of hospitalized infants had signs of respiratory distress than infants at health centers (67.7% versus 56.6%, P < 0.001) and the signs were higher in male versus female infants (56.7% versus 40.6%, P < 0.001). An SpO2 of 90–92% and < 90% was associated with similarly increased odds of in-hospital mortality (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 4.3 and 4.4, 95% CI: 1.7–11.1 and 1.8–10.5, respectively). Unrecorded, or unobtainable, SpO2 was highly associated with mortality (n = 127, aOR: 18.1; 95% CI: 7.6–42.8). Four of 22 (18%) infants at health centers who did not meet clinical referral criteria had an SpO2 ≤ 92%. Clinicians should consider hospital referral in young infants with SpO2 ≤ 92%. Infants with unobtainable SpO2 readings should be considered a high-risk group, and hospital referral of these cases may be appropriate

Randomized clinical trial of percutaneous transluminalangioplasty, supervised exercise and combined treatment forintermittent claudication due to femoropopliteal arterial disease

Background:The aim was to compare percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA), a supervisedexercise programme (SEP) and combined treatment (PTA plus SEP) for intermittent claudication dueto femoropopliteal arterial disease.Methods: Consenting patients with femoropopliteal arterial lesions were randomized to one of threetreatment arms: PTA, SEP, or PTA plus SEP. All patients received optimal medical treatment. Patientswere assessed at baseline and 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after intervention. Clinical (ankle pressures, walkingdistances, symptoms) and quality-of-life (QoL) outcomes (Short Form 36, VascuQol) were analysed.Results: A total of 178 patients (108 men, median age 70 years) were included. All three treatmentgroups demonstrated significant clinical and QoL improvements. One year after PTA (60 patients, 8withdrew), 37 patients (71 per cent) had improved (16 mild, 16 moderate, 5 marked), nine (17 per cent)showed no improvement and six (12 per cent) had deteriorated. After SEP (60 patients, 14 withdrew),32 patients (70 per cent) had improved (19 mild, 10 moderate, 3 marked), six (13 per cent) showed noimprovement and eight (17 per cent) had deteriorated. After PTA plus SEP (58 patients, 11 withdrew),40 patients (85 per cent) had improved (18 mild, 20 moderate, 2 marked), seven (15 per cent) showedno improvement and none had deteriorated. On intergroup analysis, PTA and SEP alone were equallyeffective in improving clinical outcomes, although the effect was short-lived. PTA plus SEP produced amore sustained clinical improvement, but there was no significant QoL advantage.Conclusion: For patients with intermittent claudication due to femoropopliteal disease, PTA, SEP,and PTA plus SEP were all equally effective in improving walking distance and QoL after 12 months.Registration number: NCT00798850 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)

A step counting hill climbing algorithm

This paper presents a new single-parameter local search heuristic named Step Counting Hill Climbing algorithm (SCHC). It is a very simple method in which the current cost serves as an acceptance bound for a number of consecutive steps. This is the only parameter in the method that should be set up by the user. Furthermore, the counting of steps can be organized in different ways; therefore the proposed method can generate a large number of variants and also extensions. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of the three basic variants of SCHC on the university exam timetabling problem. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method shares the main properties with the Late Acceptance Hill Climbing method, namely its convergence time is proportional to the value of its parameter and a non-linear rescaling of a problem does not affect its search performance. However, our new method has two additional advantages: a more flexible acceptance condition and better overall performance. In this study we compare the new method with Late Acceptance Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing and Great Deluge Algorithm. The Step Counting Hill Climbing has shown the strongest performance on the most of our benchmark problems used

Current Radiation Issues for Programmable Elements and Devices

State of the an programmable devices are utilizing advanced processing technologies, non-standard circuit structures, and unique electrical elements in commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)-based, high-performance devices. This paper will discuss that the above factors, coupled with the systems application environment, have a strong interplay that affect the radiation hardness of programmable devices and have resultant system impacts in (1) reliability of the unprogrammed, biased antifuse for heavy ions (rupture), (2) logic upset manifesting itself as clock upset, and (3) configuration upset. General radiation characteristics of advanced technologies are examined and manufacturers' modifications to their COTS-based and their impact on future programmable devices will be analyzed

Renormalization Group Analysis of a Quivering String Model of Posture Control

Scaling concepts and renormalization group (RG) methods are applied to a simple linear model of human posture control consisting of a trembling or quivering string subject to damping and restoring forces. The string is driven by uncorrelated white Gaussian noise intended to model the corrections of the physiological control system. We find that adding a weak quadratic nonlinearity to the posture control model opens up a rich and complicated phase space (representing the dynamics) with various non-trivial fixed points and basins of attraction. The transition from diffusive to saturated regimes of the linear model is understood as a crossover phenomenon, and the robustness of the linear model with respect to weak non-linearities is confirmed. Correlations in posture fluctuations are obtained in both the time and space domain. There is an attractive fixed point identified with falling. The scaling of the correlations in the front-back displacement, which can be measured in the laboratory, is predicted for both the large-separation (along the string) and long-time regimes of posture control.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, RevTeX, accepted for publication in PR