A review of interventions to support young workers : findings of the youth employment inventory

This Youth Employment Inventory (YEI) is based on available documentation of current and past programs and includes evidence from 289 studies of interventions from 84 countries in all regions of the world. The interventions included in the YEI have been analyzed in order to (i) document the types of programs that have been implemented to support young workers to find work; and (ii) identify what appears to work in terms of improving employment outcomes for youth. This report synthesizes the information from this inventory and a set of background reports to document the global experience with youth employment programs. As background, Section B provides a brief summary of the situation of young people in labor markets world-wide, and also reviews the existing literature on policies to address youth employment problems. Following this, we turn to the underlying framework and methodology used to assemble the youth employment inventory in Section C. In Section D, we consider the coverage of the YEI, which represents the sample of youth programs identified in our global search of the available documentation. In addressing the question of"what works", it is critical to pay close attention to the quality of the evaluation evidence. This is discussed in Section E. The study then turns to the analysis of the effectiveness of the interventions included in the inventory. The descriptive evidence is presented in Section F. In addition, the study undertakes an econometric meta-analysis to more systematically identify the determinants of program success and the results of this analysis are presented in Section G. Finally, conclusions and implications are drawn in Section H.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Youth and Governance,,Adolescent Health

Efekti prstenaste struje u opservatorijskim godišnjim srednjacima

The purpose of this study is to identify the physical sources of the major disturbance in the observatory annual means caused by the external geomagnetic field. The observatory annual means are widely used, especially in the modeling of the main field and its secular variations, although it is known that they are contaminated by parts of the field that come from outside the Earth. We consider data from 46 European observatories spanning the time period 1960–2001. The core field was removed using the Comprehensive Model, CM4 (Sabaka et al., 2004). With a suitable parameterization of the POMME model (Maus et al., 2005), we were able to reconstruct the signal of the residuals which can be linked to the ring current. This investigation paves a way for the more detail study of the external field influence on the observatory annual means, which as a consequence can bring a proposal for their correction.Cilj ovog rada je identificirati fizikalne izvore glavnih poremećaja u godišnjim srednjim vrijednostima s opservatorija, a uzrokovanih vanjskim magnetskim poljem. Opservatorijske godišnje srednje vrijednosti su u širokoj uporabi, posebno pri modeliranju glavnog polja i njegovih sekularnih promjena, mada je poznato da sadrže utjecaje polja čiji su izvori izvan Zemlje. Razmatramo podatke s 46 Europskih opservatorija u razdoblju 1960–2001. Polje jezgre je otklonjeno koristeći Comprehensive Model, CM4 (Sabaka et al., 2004). S adekvatnom parametrizacijom POMME modela (Maus et al., 2005) uspjeli smo rekonstruirati signal reziduala koji se može povezati sa prstenastom strujom (ring current). Ovo istraživanje otvara put detaljnijoj studiji utjecaja vanjskog magnetskog polja na opservatorijske godišnje srednje vrijednosti, koja nadalje može pridonijeti njihovoj korekciji

Beam-colored Sketch and Image-based 3D Continuous Wireframe Reconstruction with different Materials and Cross-Sections

The automated reverse engineering of wireframes is a common task in topology optimization, fast concept design, bionic and point cloud reconstruction. This article deals with the usage of skeleton-based reconstruction of sketches in 2D images. The result leads to a flexible at least C₁ continuous shape description

ClassCut for Unsupervised Class Segmentation

Abstract. We propose a novel method for unsupervised class segmentation on a set of images. It alternates between segmenting object instances and learning a class model. The method is based on a segmentation energy defined over all images at the same time, which can be optimized efficiently by techniques used before in interactive segmentation. Over iterations, our method progressively learns a class model by integrating observations over all images. In addition to appearance, this model captures the location and shape of the class with respect to an automatically determined coordinate frame common across images. This frame allows us to build stronger shape and location models, similar to those used in object class detection. Our method is inspired by interactive segmentation methods [1], but it is fully automatic and learns models characteristic for the object class rather than specific to one particular object/image. We experimentally demonstrate on the Caltech4, Caltech101, and Weizmann horses datasets that our method (a) transfers class knowledge across images and this improves results compared to segmenting every image independently; (b) outperforms Grabcut [1] for the task of unsupervised segmentation; (c) offers competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-art in unsupervised segmentation and in particular it outperforms the topic model [2].

A comparative evaluation of interactive segmentation algorithms

In this paper we present a comparative evaluation of four popular interactive segmentation algorithms. The evaluation was carried out as a series of user-experiments, in which participants were tasked with extracting 100 objects from a common dataset: 25 with each algorithm, constrained within a time limit of 2 min for each object. To facilitate the experiments, a “scribble-driven” segmentation tool was developed to enable interactive image segmentation by simply marking areas of foreground and background with the mouse. As the participants refined and improved their respective segmentations, the corresponding updated segmentation mask was stored along with the elapsed time. We then collected and evaluated each recorded mask against a manually segmented ground truth, thus allowing us to gauge segmentation accuracy over time. Two benchmarks were used for the evaluation: the well-known Jaccard index for measuring object accuracy, and a new fuzzy metric, proposed in this paper, designed for measuring boundary accuracy. Analysis of the experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the suggested measures and provides valuable insights into the performance and characteristics of the evaluated algorithms

Optical control of scattering, absorption and lineshape in nanoparticles

We find exact conditions for the enhancement or suppression of internal and/or scattered fields in any smooth particle and the determination of their spatial distribution or angular momentum through the combination of simple fields. The incident fields can be generated by a single monochromatic or broad band light source, or by several sources, which may also be impurities embedded in the nanoparticle. We can design the lineshape of a particle introducing very narrow features in its spectral response

Messung von Ressourceneffizienz mit der ESSENZ-Methode

Eine belastbare Methode zu entwickeln, um den Ressourceneinsatz zu bewerten, ist das Ziel dieses Buches. Notwendig ist dies, da das starke Wirtschaftswachstum der letzten Jahrzehnte zu einer intensiven Beanspruchung natürlicher Ressourcen geführt hat. Mit ihrer steigenden Nutzung gehen auch zusätzliche Belastungen der Umwelt sowie Restriktionen der Verfügbarkeit von Ressourcen einher. Aus diesen Gründen ist ein effizienter Einsatz von Ressourcen als wichtiger Beitrag zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung erforderlich. Die ESSENZ-Methode (Integrierte Methode zur ganzheitlichen Berechnung/Messung von Ressourceneffizienz) wurde in einer Kooperation der Technischen Universität Berlin mit den Industriepartnern Daimler AG, Deutsches Kupferinstitut Berufsverband e. V., Evonik Industries AG, Siemens AG, ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG und Wissenschaftlicher Gerätebau Dr. Ing. Herbert Knauer GmbH entwickelt. Sie unterstützt die umfassende Messung und Bewertung von Ressourceneffizienz innerhalb der vier Dimensionen „Verfügbarkeit“, „Gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz“, „Umweltauswirkungen“ und „Nutzen“. Um diese vier Dimensionen wissenschaftlich abzubilden, werden 21 anwendbare Indikatoren entwickelt und vorgestellt. Die ESSENZ-Methode kann sowohl für die Analyse und Optimierung eines einzelnen Produktes als auch für den Vergleich mehrerer Produktalternativen verwendet werden. Ihre Anwendbarkeit ist für Metalle und fossile Rohstoffe bereits erprobt.BMBF, 033R094A-F, r³ - Strategische Metalle, Verbundvorhaben: Integrierte Methode zur ganzheitlichen Berechnung/Messung von Ressourceneffizienz - ESSEN

Integrated method to assess resource efficiency – ESSENZ

With increasing demand of abiotic resources also the pollution of natural resources like water and soil has risen in the last decades due to global industrial and technological development. Thus, enhancing resource efficiency is a key goal of national and international strategies. For a comprehensive assessment of all related impacts of resource extraction and use all three sustainability dimensions have to be taken into account: economic, environmental and social aspects. Furthermore, to avoid burden shifting life cycle based methods should be applied. As companies need operational tools and approaches, a comprehensive method has been developed to measure resource efficiency of products, processes and services in the context of sustainable development (ESSENZ). Overall 21 categories are established to measure impacts on the environment, physical and socio-economic availability of the used resources as well as their societal acceptance. For the categories socio-economic availability and societal acceptance new approaches are developed and characterization factors are provided for a portfolio of 36 metals and four fossil raw materials. The introduced approach has been tested on several case studies, demonstrating that it enhances the applicability of resource efficiency to assess product systems significantly by providing an overall framework that can be adopted across sectors, using indicators and methods which are applicable and can be integrated into existing life cycle assessment based schemes.BMBF, 033R094A-F, r³ - Strategische Metalle, Verbundvorhaben: Integrierte Methode zur ganzheitlichen Berechnung/Messung von Ressourceneffizienz - ESSEN