Occupational mobility within and between skill clusters: an empirical analysis based on the skill-weights approach

This paper applies Lazear\u27s skill-weights approach (2009) to analyze the specificity of skill combinations of various occupations and its effects on occupational mobility and wages. The results show that the more specific an occupation, the smaller the probability of an occupational change. We also identify clusters of occupations characterized by similar skill combinations and find that employees in specific occupations have a comparatively higher probability of changing occupations within a skill cluster than between skill clusters. Moreover, occupational mobility within a skill cluster results in wage gains, while between clusters it results in wage losses. Therefore, the acquired skill combination and the resulting skill cluster, rather than the occupation per se, crucially determines mobility. Thus, for educational policies, it is more important to study whether a skill cluster is sustainable than an occupation. (DIPF/Orig.

Vergleichende Qualitätsforschung - Neue Ansätze und Impulse täten gut

Eine am FiBL durchgeführte Auswertung neuer Studien im Bereich der vergleichenden Qualitätsforschung brachte die Bestätigung bekannter Befunde und Tendenzen, zeigte aber keine grundsätzlich neuen Ansätze. Für den biologischen Landbau bleibt die Qualitätsforschung von zentraler Bedeutung

Guideline for handling pesticide residues in Czech organic production

This document was prepared in the project «Development of guidelines for the use of pesticide analysis in organic inspection in the Czech Republic (sampling, evaluation and interpretation)». At the beginning of this project, a workshop with stakeholders was held. The present document builds on the outcomes of this workshop, and elaborates guidance for all stakeholders involved in Czech organic production and its control, on how to deal with residue analyses. In recognition of the European dimension of the problem, the project followed a two-step approach. In the first step, the present guideline was prepared. It is written in a general style and in the English language, so that it potentially applies for many countries. Although the current project aims specifically at the situation in the Czech Republic, its use for other countries is welcome! In the second step, a national guideline for the Czech Republic will be prepared, based on this document. The present document will serve as a blueprint for this guideline, which will be tailored to the specific situation in the Czech Republic and written in the Czech language. The aim is that all control bodies and authorities dealing with organic production and organic products in the Czech Republic will use this guideline

Benchmarking one-shot distillation in general quantum resource theories

We study the one-shot distillation of general quantum resources, providing a unified quantitative description of the maximal fidelity achievable in this task, and revealing similarities shared by broad classes of resources. We establish fundamental quantitative and qualitative limitations on resource distillation applicable to all convex resource theories. We show that every convex quantum resource theory admits a meaningful notion of a pure maximally resourceful state which maximizes several monotones of operational relevance and finds use in distillation. We endow the generalized robustness measure with an operational meaning as an exact quantifier of performance in distilling such maximal states in many classes of resources including bi- and multipartite entanglement, multi-level coherence, as well as the whole family of affine resource theories, which encompasses important examples such as asymmetry, coherence, and thermodynamics.Comment: 8+5 pages, 1 figure. v3: fixed (inconsequential) error in Lemma 1

Deliberating Risks Under Uncertainty: Experience, Trust, and Attitudes in a Swiss Nanotechnology Stakeholder Discussion Group

Scientific knowledge has not stabilized in the current, early, phase of research and development of nanotechnologies creating a challenge to ‘upstream' public engagement. Nevertheless, the idea that the public should be involved in deliberative discussions and assessments of emerging technologies at this early stage is widely shared among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Many forums for public debate including focus groups, and citizen juries, have thus been organized to explore public opinions on nanotechnologies in a variety of countries over the past few years. In Switzerland the Centre for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss) organized such a citizen panel in fall 2006. Drawing from an ethnographic study of this panel called ‘publifocus on nanotechnologies, health, and environment' this paper looks at the ways members of a stakeholder group deal with the epistemic uncertainty in their deliberation of nanotechnologies. By exploring the statements of the participants in the stakeholder discussion group, this paper reconstructs the narratives that constitute the epistemic foundations of the participants' evaluations of nanotechnologie

Generating entanglement between two-dimensional cavities in uniform acceleration

Moving cavities promise to be a suitable system for relativistic quantum information processing. It has been shown that an inertial and a uniformly accelerated one-dimensional cavity can become entangled by letting an atom emit an excitation while it passes through the cavities, but the acceleration degrades the ability to generate entanglement. We show that in the two-dimensional case the entanglement generated is affected not only by the cavity's acceleration but also by its transverse dimension which plays the role of an effective mass