Social work between charity and the right to social welfare

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Stuttgart – a Livable City: The global Agenda 2030 at a local level Baseline study depicting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The United Nations adopted the Agenda 2030 in 2015. This was a basis for the transition to a world in which economic efficiency, ecological compatibility and social justice can be in accord with one another. The Agenda 2030 addresses all states (“every country is a developing country”) at an international, national and, just as much, at a regional and local level. An essential component of Agenda 2030 are the 17 goals for a sustainable development (Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs). To achieve the goals of Agenda 2030 the focus is on partnerships between various actors from administration, politics, business and civil society. In the further development of the Sustainable Development Strategy for Germany in 2017 the Federal Government oriented itself systematically towards the Agenda 2030 with the 17 SDGs. Many other German states also developed strategies geared towards the SDGs. In Baden-Württemberg the Advisory Council of the State Government prepared a proposal as to how the SDGs could be integrated into the state-specific guidelines for sustainable development. The municipalities, having a close relationship with the residents, play a particular role when it comes to implementing Agenda 2030. To map out the status of sustainable development on a quantitative basis of SDGs and at a local level, seven organisations started a nationwide project in 2017 “SDG indicators for municipalities” – proposals for SDGs at a local level: Association of German Cities, German County Association, German Association of Towns and Municipalities, German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu), Federal Institute for Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Research, Service Agency Communities in One World of Engagement Global and the Bertelsmann Foundation. As one of the first municipalities in Germany the State Capital Stuttgart took on the challenging task of pilot-testing the “SDG indicators for municipalities” from June to October 2018. A second phase between July and September 2019 saw the update of the data. The baseline study was carried out in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation and Difu. The SDG baseline study for the State Capital Stuttgart has two main objectives: first, to analyse the current status of the city on the basis of data in place as regards social, ecological and economic sustainability and to improve the possibilities of a target-oriented, strategic development of the city’s measures; second, with this SDG baseline study to make a methodological contribution to a target-oriented strategic, further development of SDG indicators for an appropriate and effective design for the SDG baseline-studies in municipalities. The different starting conditions make a comparison of cities neither possible nor envisaged – however, the municipalities will receive a toolbox so they can gauge their own development. A qualitative depiction of selected programmes and measures of the State Capital Stuttgart complements the quantitative baseline study. These descriptions give an impression of the spectrum of the measures which can be taken with a view to sustainability. This should also address the issue in other cities and communities. Stuttgart sees itself here as an impulse-giver, but also as a learner, in a national and international network of local actors. The SDGs offer a comprehensive target system for sustainability and, at the same time, they point out possible conflicts of interests. The implementation of strategic objectives requires continuous monitoring. The participative, cross-divisional process of the baseline study shows that the tried and tested SDG indicators for municipalities are a suitable instrument to be quantitatively supportive in realising the existing objectives and approaches of the State Capital Stuttgart for social, ecological and economic sustainability. It was constructive to discuss the SDG indicators methodologically on a cross-sectoral basis, and to select and expand on issues to do justice to the distinctiveness of a municipality. This way, the cross-divisional knowledge management and the understanding of the correlations between the individual sustainability measures could be strengthened. All divisions and departments of the City of Stuttgart worked with enormous commitment on this report. Based on SDG indicators, this baseline study has for the first time developed a cross-sectoral instrument for a regular, all-embracing monitoring of correlations of social, economic and ecological sustainability. This forms an important basis for future recommendations and an effective action on the part of politics, administration and urban society which will help to serve the further development of municipal objectives and measures of implementing the SDGs in the State Capital Stuttgart. The present executive summary provides an overview of the methodological approach, a compilation of the selected indicators as well as the main results with regards to the process and further development of SDG- indicators

On the frontline or on the side-line?: homelessness care and care avoiders

Homelessness is a social problem which is subject to many definitional issues and problems. These problems can be discerned on both the conceptual and the practical level (Hopper, 1997). Based on research carried out in Ghent, Belgium, this article deals with ways in which social workers involved in homelessness care construe the problem of ‘care avoiders’, who seem to be perceived as a separate category within the homeless population. We show that (1) different categories of homelessness are created on an organisational and on an individual level; (2) specific services have been developed for those who do not enter regular facilities and (3) a residual group has been created, which social work does not really know how to deal with

Base Metal Catalyzed Isocyanide Insertions

Isocyanides are diverse C1 building blocks considering their potential to react with nucleophiles, electrophiles, and radicals. Therefore, perhaps not surprisingly, isocyanides are highly valuable as inputs for multicomponent reactions (MCRs) and other one-pot cascade processes. In the field of organometallic chemistry, isocyanides typically serve as ligands for transition metals. The coordination of isocyanides to metal centers alters the electronic distribution of the isocyano moiety, and reaction pathways can therefore be accessed that are not possible in the absence of the metal. The tunable reactivity of the isocyanide functional group by transition metals has evolved into numerous useful applications. Especially palladium-catalyzed isocyanide insertion processes have emerged as powerful reactions in the past decade. However, reports on the use of earth-abundant and cheap base metals in these types of transformations are scarce and have received far less attention. In this Minireview, we focus on these emerging base metal catalyzed reactions and highlight their potential in synthetic organic chemistry. Although mechanistic studies are still scarce, we discuss distinct proposed catalytic cycles and categorize the literature according to 1) the (hetero)atom bound to and 2) the type of bonding with the transition metal in which the (formal) insertion occurs

A Ga-doped SnO2 mesoporous contact for UV stable highly efficient perovskite solar cells

Increasing the stability of perovskite solar cells is a major challenge for commercialization. The highest efficiencies so far have been achieved in perovskite solar cells employing mesoporous TiO2 (m-TiO2). One of the major causes of performance loss in these m-TiO2-based perovskite solar cells is induced by UV- radiation. This UV instability can be solved by replacing TiO2 with SnO2; thus developing a mesoporous SnO2 (m-SnO2) perovskite solar cell is a promising approach to maximise efficiency and stability. However, the performance of mesoporous SnO2 (m-SnO2) perovskite solar cells has so far not been able to rival the performance of TiO2 based perovskite solar cells. In this study, for the first time, high-efficiency m-SnO2 perovskite solar cells are fabricated, by doping SnO2 with gallium, yielding devices that can compete with TiO2 based devices in terms of performance. We found that gallium doping severely decreases the trap state density in SnO2, leading to a lower recombination rate. This, in turn, leads to an increased open circuit potential and fill factor, yielding a stabilised power conversion efficiency of 16.4%. The importance of high-efficiency m-SnO2 based perovskite solar cells is underlined by stability data, showing a marked increase in stability under full solar spectrum illumination

Integration of highly crystalline C8-BTBT thin-films into simple logic gates and circuits

Highly crystalline organic thin films possess the charge carrier mobilities needed for high-performance, low-cost flexible electronics. However, only few reports exist that show the integration of these films into short-channel organic circuits. This work describes the integration of highly crystalline layers of the thermally and chemically fragile small molecule C8-BTBT. Thin films of this material are processed by a combination of zone-casting and homoepitaxial vacuum evaporation and display an average charge carrier mobility of 7.5 cm2/V in long channel transistors. The integration of these films into a circuit technology based on a 5 μm channel-length bottom-gate bottom-contact transistor topology results in inverters with gains up to 40 as well as a robust 19-stage ring oscillator. This circuit requires the simultaneous operation of 80 TFTs and displays a stage delay of 40 μs, resulting in an operating frequency of 630 Hz at an operating voltage of 10 V. With the help of circuit modelling, we quantify the relationship between the speed of ring oscillators and the contact resistance of individual transistors. Indeed, the successful integration of highly-crystalline layers with high intrinsic mobility stresses the need for advances in contact engineering

Iodospirocyclization of Tryptamine-Derived Isocyanides:Formal Total Synthesis of Aspidofractinine

The N-iodosuccinimide-mediated spirocyclization of tryptamine-derived isocyanides to generate spiroindolenines is reported. The products contain both an imine and an imidoyl iodide as flexible handles for follow-up chemistry. Nucleophilic addition typically occurs chemoselectively on the imine moiety with complete diastereoselectivity, providing opportunities for the construction of complex molecular frameworks. The synthetic potential of the method was showcased in the formal total synthesis of (±)-aspidofractinine