The Intergenerational Transmission of Employers in Canada and Denmark

The intergenerational transmission of employers between fathers and sons is a common feature of labour markets in Canada and Denmark, with 30 to 40% of young adults having at some point been employed with a firm that also employed their fathers. This is strongly associated with the first jobs obtained during the teen years, but for four to about six percent it also refers to the main job in adulthood. In both countries the transmission of employers is positively associated with paternal earnings, rising distinctly and sharply at the very top of the father's earnings distribution, and has implications for the intergenerational transmission of earnings. Mobility out of the bottom has little to do with inheriting an employer from the father, while the preservation of high income status is distinctly related to this tendency. These findings stress that child adult outcomes are related to the structure of labour markets, and underscore the role of resources parents have – though information, networks, or direct control of the hiring process – in facilitating the job search of their children.intergenerational mobility, job search, equality of opportunity

Flexicurity, Wage Dynamics and Inequality over the Life-Cycle

We investigate the relationship between life-cycle wages and flexicurity in Denmark. We separate permanent from transitory wages and characterise flexicurity using membership of unemployment insurance funds. We find that flexicurity is associated with lower wage growth heterogeneity over the life-cycle and greater wage instability, changing the nature of wage inequality from permanent to transitory. While we are in general unable to formally test for moral hazard against adverse selection into unemployment insurance membership, robustness checks suggest that moral hazard is the relevant interpretation.unemployment insurance, wage dynamics, wage inequality, wage instability

Racial Disparities in the US Healthcare System

Provider mentality regarding minorities, both overt and subconscious, likely affects the quality of healthcare delivered. Survey research suggests that most (between 50-75%) Caucasian people believe minorities are less intelligent, more prone to violence, and less likely to be employed. More physicians identify themselves as Caucasian than all other races combined. One in five Spanish-speaking Latinos reports not seeking healthcare due to language barriers. Even when they have overcome barriers to getting healthcare, minority populations are still less likely than Caucasians to receive certain common medical procedures

Medicare Must Adapt for Aging Baby Boomer Population

Since Medicare was established in 1965 to provide insurance for the elderly and handicapped, the benefits offered by Medicare have scarcely changed except for a few added preventive services. Sustained growth in Medicare expenditures and the aging of the “baby boom generation are placing growing strains on Medicare\u27s financial sustainability. Under current practices, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Trustees estimate that the Part A Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will only remain solvent until the year 2018. On January 1, 2006, Medicare\u27s new Plan D prescription-drug coverage plan was launched. Critics have charged that unlike existing government health plans, Part D does not allow Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. As a result, these companies may be charging taxpayers up to 80% more for drugs purchased under Part D than for those purchased under other plans. With Medicare\u27s financial sustainability in question, Medicare infrastructure such as the Part D policy must be adapted in order for Medicare to continue providing quality health services to the elderly

Vertical scales and shear stresses in wave boundary layers over movable beds

Unified scaling rules are provided for smooth and rough wave boundary layers. It is shown that the rough equivalent of the smooth, or viscous, vertical scale √2v/ω, the Stokes' length, is √0.008rA, where r is the Nikuradse roughness and A is the near-bed semi excursion of the wave motion. Realizing this equivalence of viscous and rough scales a unified description in the style of Colebrook's (1939) formulae for steady flow friction can be devised based on the unified vertical scale z = √2v/ω + √0.008rA. That is, unified smooth and rough wave friction factor formulae in the form f = f (z1/A) = f ([√2v/ω + √0.008rA ]/A) can be used with adequate accuracy. A general procedure is given for deriving z1 from velocity data including data from mobile bed experiments, which enable determination of the equivalent Nikuradse roughness from these experiments. Presently available sheet flow data show a velocity structure, which corresponds to a Nikuradse roughness r of the order 50 to 100 grain diameters. Instantaneous shear stresses τ(z,t) derived through the usual momentum integral from sheet flow experiments show that T varies strongly through the sheet flow layer with the value at the lowest level of sediment motion being 2 to 3 times the value at the undisturbed bed level. The corresponding Nikuradse roughnesses are about 2.5d corresponding to the undisturbed bed level and 100d 0 for the stress at the lowest level of sediment motion. With this strong variation of r through the layer of moving sediment, it is not at all obvious what should be understood by THE BED SHEAR STRESS in the context of wave sediment transport

Telemedicine Management of Diabetics in an Underserved Community

Information technology via telemedicine offers the potential for cost-effective and active management of type 2 diabetes mellitus for people in high-risk underserved communities such as Harlem, NY and the Bronx, NY. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications technology for medical diagnostic, monitor- ing, and therapeutic purposes to communicate information instantaneously from one location to another, such as from a patients’ home to a hospital. We compared the baseline Hemoglobin A1C levels to the levels recorded after the patient was enrolled in the Housecalls telemedicine program for at least 3 months. The initial results indicate that the Housecalls program is effective in improving compliance and management of diabetes. The initial success of the program is encouraging and demonstrates a great po- tential for the use of telemedicine in monitoring chronic disease

On the Limiting Behaviour of the Fundamental Geodesics of Information Geometry

The Information Geometry of extended exponential families has received much recent attention in a variety of important applications, notably categorical data analysis, graphical modelling and, more specifically, log-linear modelling. The essential geometry here comes from the closure of an exponential family in a high-dimensional simplex. In parallel, there has been a great deal of interest in the purely Fisher Riemannian structure of (extended) exponential families, most especially in the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature. These parallel developments raise challenges, addressed here, at a variety of levels: both theoretical and practical—relatedly, conceptual and methodological. Centrally to this endeavour, this paper makes explicit the underlying geometry of these two areas via an analysis of the limiting behaviour of the fundamental geodesics of Information Geometry, these being Amari’s (+1) and (0)-geodesics, respectively. Overall, a substantially more complete account of the Information Geometry of extended exponential families is provided than has hitherto been the case. We illustrate the importance and benefits of this novel formulation through applications

A spiral-like disk of ionized gas in IC 1459: Signature of a merging collision

The authors report the discovery of a large (15 kpc diameter) H alpha + (NII) emission-line disk in the elliptical galaxy IC 1459, showing weak spiral structure. The line flux peaks strongly at the nucleus and is more concentrated than the stellar continuum. The major axis of the disk of ionized gas coincides with that of the stellar body of the galaxy. The mass of the ionized gas is estimated to be approx. 1 times 10 (exp 5) solar mass, less than 1 percent of the total mass of gas present in IC 1459. The total gas mass of 4 times 10(exp 7) solar mass has been estimated from the dust mass derived from a broad-band color index image and the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) data. The authors speculate that the presence of dust and gas in IC 1459 is a signature of a merger event