Is the Regional Perspective Useful?: Rural and Urban Quality of Life ; an Assessment

In Germany, processes can be observed that have long been out of keeping with the principle of equality of opportunity. Unemployment is concentrated in the structurally weak peripheral areas, in Eastern Germany in particular; emigration of young and better-educated people to the West is not diminishing, but contrary to expectation is again on the increase; aging pro-cesses have set in already, and when it comes to the provision of infrastructure, e.g. in the field of professional training, some regions are already suffering from considerable problems. These difficulties are frequently interpreted as differences between East and West and are explained away as problems resulting from reunification, such as the deindustrialization and restructuring of the economy and the enormous decline in the birth rate in Eastern Germany. Although these problems cannot just be attributed to social transformation and the birth rate crisis alone, being subject to more general processes of intensified globalization and the aging of society, the increasing regional disparities are rarely considered in the overall context of regional development patterns throughout Germany. Moreover, the difficulty of even obtaining data for purposes of comparison generally means that an international yardstick is lacking when regional developments are analyzed. The present study investigates regional disparities over a period of time in the light of subjective and objective indicators of the quality of life for individuals. To this end, we make use of data from the Wohlfahrtssurvey [Welfare Survey] from 1978 to 2001, among other sources. On the basis of the Euromodule that has been established at the WZB, we compare current regional patterns in Germany with those in other European countries. This approach makes it possible to provide information on the scale of regional disparities in various different countries, and to identify privileged and handicapped regions with reference to standards of living and the sense of wellbeing. The study's findings show that, in the past twenty-five years, welfare in Western Germany has evened out at a higher level, but currently a trend towards increasing economic disparity is discernible. In comparison with other European countries, on the other hand, the differences (regional differences) within Germany are comparatively slight.

Social Housing and Location Choices of Immigrants in France

Our study examines the empirical links between social housing policy and location choices of immigrants in France. More specifically, we characterize the main individual and contextual determinants of the probability for immigrants to live in a HLM (habitations à loyer modéré, dwelling with a moderate rent), which is the main public housing policy in France. For that purpose, we use individual information coming from large (one-fourth) extracts of the French population censuses conducted by INSEE (Paris) in 1982, 1990, and 1999. Our estimates show that, in general, migrants live more frequently in social housing than French natives, other observables being equal. In particular, this probability is higher for migrants from Turkey, Morocco, Southeast Asia, Algeria, Tunisia and Sub-Saharan Africa (in descending order). We find also that migrants of all origins live less often in a HLM when the city has plenty of social housing and when the fraction of natives is high.social magnets, migration, social housing

Les transformations du travail des professeurs des universités québécoises : tendances fondamentales et développements souhaités

Cet article s’appuie sur des données colligées lors d'une enquête effectuée auprès des professeurs des universités québécoises ; il identifie les tendances fondamentales de la transformation actuelle du travail professoral et propose une série de mesures pour mieux concilier les exigences du monde universitaire et la spécificité du travail professoral. D'une part, il rappelle que la charge de travail des professeurs est lourde, que les tâches sont plus ou moins bien intégrées, et que diverses transformations qualitatives s’imposent aux tâches d'enseignement et de recherche. D'autre part, il propose de délester certaines activités de gestion courante, de mieux identifier les compétences requises dans le nouveau contexte et de reconnaître davantage le caractère organisationnel et collectif du travail et l'existence de plusieurs types d’aménagements des tâches professorales.This article presents data from a survey of Quebec university professors, identifies the fundamental tendencies of the current transformation of professor’s work, and proposes a series of measures that could better reconcile the demands of the university and the specificity of professors’ work. The author notes, on one hand, that professors have a heavy workload, that the tasks are more or less integrated, and that various qualitative transformations are required for both functions of teaching and research. On the other hand, he proposes to alleviate certain current management activities, to better identify those competencies required in this new context, and to better recognize the organizational and collective characteristic of work and the existence of several types of professors.Este artículo se apoya sobre los datos colegidos durante un estudio realizado con profesores de universidades quebequenses ; identifica luego las tendencias fundamentales de la transformación actual del trabajo académico y propone una serie de medidas que tienen como objetivo conciliar las exigencias del mundo universitario y las especificidad del trabajo profesoral. Por una parte, el estudio recuerda que la carga de trabajo de profesores es dura, que las tareas son más o menos integradas y que se imponen algunas tranformaciones cualitativas a las cargas de enseñanza y de investigación. Por otra parte, se propone liberar ciertas actividades de gestión corriente, identificar mejor las competencias requeridas dentro del nuevo contexto y tener en cuenta el carácter organizativo y colectivo del trabajo así como la existencia de varios tipos de profesores.Dieser Beitrag stützt sich auf Daten, die im Rahmen einer Umfrage unter Québecker Universitätsprofessoren ermittelt wurden. Er identifiziert die Grundtendenzen der gegenwärtigen Veränderungen der akademischen Arbeit und erwägt eine Reihe von Maßnahmen, um die Forderungen des Universitätslebens mit der spezifischen professoralen Tätigkeit besser in Einklang zu bringen. Es wird zunächst ausgeführt, dass die Arbeitslast der Professoren eine sehr schwere ist, dass die Tätigkeit mehr oder weniger integriert ist und dass die Lehr- und Forschungsarbeit verschiedenen qualitativen Veränderungen unterworfen ist. Darüber hinaus wird vorgeschlagen, bestimmte routinemäßige Verwaltungs-aufgaben abzuschütteln, die für die veränderte akademische Umwelt notwendigen Kompetenzen genauer zu definieren und den organisato-rischen und kollektiven Charakter der Tätigkeit sowie die Tat-sache, dass es verschiedene Typen von Professoren gibt, mit in Betracht zu ziehen

Moment Matching Based Model Reduction for LPV State-Space Models

We present a novel algorithm for reducing the state dimension, i.e. order, of linear parameter varying (LPV) discrete-time state-space (SS) models with affine dependence on the scheduling variable. The input-output behavior of the reduced order model approximates that of the original model. In fact, for input and scheduling sequences of a certain length, the input-output behaviors of the reduced and original model coincide. The proposed method can also be interpreted as a reachability and observability reduction (minimization) procedure for LPV-SS representations with affine dependence

Voltage Sensing in Bacterial Protein Translocation

The bacterial channel SecYEG efficiently translocates both hydrophobic and hydrophilic proteins across the plasma membrane. Translocating polypeptide chains may dislodge the plug, a half helix that blocks the permeation of small molecules, from its position in the middle of the aqueous translocation channel. Instead of the plug, six isoleucines in the middle of the membrane supposedly seal the channel, by forming a gasket around the translocating polypeptide. However, this hypothesis does not explain how the tightness of the gasket may depend on membrane potential. Here, we demonstrate voltage-dependent closings of the purified and reconstituted channel in the presence of ligands, suggesting that voltage sensitivity may be conferred by motor protein SecA, ribosomes, signal peptides, and/or translocating peptides. Yet, the presence of a voltage sensor intrinsic to SecYEG was indicated by voltage driven closure of pores that were forced-open either by crosslinking the plug to SecE or by plug deletion. We tested the involvement of SecY’s half-helix 2b (TM2b) in voltage sensing, since clearly identifiable gating charges are missing. The mutation L80D accelerated voltage driven closings by reversing TM2b’s dipolar orientation. In contrast, the L80K mutation decelerated voltage induced closings by increasing TM2b’s dipole moment. The observations suggest that TM2b is part of a larger voltage sensor. By partly aligning the combined dipole of this sensor with the orientation of the membrane-spanning electric field, voltage may drive channel closure

Optimal stopping via pathwise dual empirical maximisation

The optimal stopping problem arising in the pricing of American options can be tackled by the so called dual martingale approach. In this approach, a dual problem is formulated over the space of martingales. A feasible solution of the dual problem yields an upper bound for the solution of the original primal problem. In practice, the optimization is performed over a finite-dimensional subspace of martingales. A sample of paths of the underlying stochastic process is produced by a Monte-Carlo simulation, and the expectation is replaced by the empirical mean. As a rule the resulting optimization problem, which can be written as a linear program, yields a martingale such that the variance of the obtained estimator can be large. In order to decrease this variance, a penalizing term can be added to the objective function of the path-wise optimization problem. In this paper, we provide a rigorous analysis of the optimization problems obtained by adding different penalty functions. In particular, a convergence analysis implies that it is better to minimize the empirical maximum instead of the empirical mean. Numerical simulations confirm the variance reduction effect of the new approach

Les restes humains : questions de médiation

Les restes humains conservés dans les fonds patrimoniaux posent des questions de sensibilité et d’éthique qui tendent à occulter leur importance historique au profit d’une idée de musée des horreurs. Ce sentiment aboutit au mieux à une incompréhension, au pire à un rejet. Seule une médiation importante, soucieuse de comprendre et de faire comprendre, peut prétendre dépasser ces difficultés. L’école de médecine navale à Rochefort, gérée depuis trente ans par le musée national de la Marine, propose une expérience dans ce domaine encore peu explorée dans notre pays.Human remains held in cultural heritage collections raise questions of sensibility and ethics that tend to eclipse their historical import and promote the notion of a museum of horrors. At best, this leads to incomprehension ; at worst, to rejection. Only informed mediation, striving towards understanding and making others understand, can overcome these difficulties. The School of Naval Medicine, Rochefort, run for the past three decades by the Musée National de la Marine, offers a positive experience in this domain, which, in France, is still virtually unexplored

Optimal stopping via pathwise dual empirical maximisation

The optimal stopping problem arising in the pricing of American options can be tackled by the so called dual martingale approach. In this approach, a dual problem is formulated over the space of martingales. A feasible solution of the dual problem yields an upper bound for the solution of the original primal problem. In practice, the optimization is performed over a finite-dimensional subspace of martingales. A sample of paths of the underlying stochastic process is produced by a Monte-Carlo simulation, and the expectation is replaced by the empirical mean. As a rule the resulting optimization problem, which can be written as a linear program, yields a martingale such that the variance of the obtained estimator can be large. In order to decrease this variance, a penalizing term can be added to the objective function of the path-wise optimization problem. In this paper, we provide a rigorous analysis of the optimization problems obtained by adding different penalty functions. In particular, a convergence analysis implies that it is better to minimize the empirical maximum instead of the empirical mean. Numerical simulations confirm the variance reduction effect of the new approach

Axisymmetric Level Set model of Leidenfrost effect

We propose a level-set model of phase change and apply it to the study of the Leidenfrost effect. The new ingredients used in this model are twofold: first we enforce by penalization the droplet temperature to the saturation temperature in order to ensure a correct mass transfer at interface, and second we propose a careful differentiation of the capillary interface with respect to a moving interface with phase change. We perform some numerical tests in the axisymmetric case and show that our numerical method, while not avoiding well known numerical caveats of diffuse interface methods, behave quite well in the limit of numerical interface width going to zero in comparison to an analytical formula

Zur Entwicklung der Dateninfrastruktur in Deutschland

Die Analyse der Statik und Dynamik sozialer Phänomene anhand von empirischen Daten hat in den Sozialwissenschaften eine lange Tradition (Adorno 1970; Lowe 1926). Am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts können Forschende auf eine Vielzahl qualitativ hochwertiger Daten zurückgreifen (Fachinger u. a. 2010), weshalb zum einen zahlreiche Forschungsprojekte erst ermöglicht wurden und zum anderen nicht mehr in jedem Fall eigene Datenerhebungen benötigt werden. So positiv die Entwicklungen hin zu mehr Datenverfügbarkeit zu bewerten sind, so aktuell ist es aber auch, die Daten im Rahmen einer geordneten und transparenten Infrastruktur zur Verfügung zu stellen. Neben den klassischen Datenarchiven sind die vom Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten initiierten Forschungsdatenzentren (FDZ) und Datenservicezentren (DSZ) Teil einer Forschungsinfrastruktur. Die meisten der intensiv ausgewerteten Datensätze sind heute als Mikrodatensätze über diese Forschungsdateninfrastruktur beziehbar.