Surviving Unemployment without State Support: Unemployment and Household Formation in South Africa

High unemployment in many OECD countries is often attributed, at least in part, to the generosity and long duration of unemployment compensation. It is therefore instructive to examine a country where high unemployment exists despite the near complete absence of an unemployment insurance system. In South Africa unemployment stood at 23% in 1997 and the unemployed have no unemployment insurance nor informal sector activities to fall back on. This paper examines how the unemployed are able to getaccess to resources without support from unemployment compensation. Analysing a household survey from 1995, we find that the household formation response of the unemployed is the critical way in which they assure access to resources. In particular, unemployment delays the setting up of an individual household of young people, in some cases by decades. It also leads to the dissolution of existing households and a return ofconstituent members to parents and other relatives and friends. Access to state transfers (in particular, non- contributory old age pensions) increases the likelihood of attracting unemployed persons to a household. Some unemployed do not benefit from this safety net, and the presence of unemployed members pulls many households supporting them into poverty. We also show that the household formation responses draw some unemployed away from employment opportunities and thus lowers their employment prospects. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for debates about unemployment and social policy in South Africa and in OECD countries.unemployment, household formation, South Africa, incentiveeffects

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Contributions to the Spin Hall Effect of Alloys

A fully relativistic description of the spin-orbit induced spin Hall effect is presented that is based on Kubo’s linear response formalism. Using an appropriate operator for the spin-current density a Kubo-Středa-like equation for the spin Hall conductivity (SHC) is obtained. An implementation using the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker band structure method in combination with the coherent potential approximation allow detailed investigations on various alloy systems. A decomposition of the SHC into intrinsic and extrinsic contributions is suggested. Accompanying calculations for the skew-scattering contribution of the SHC using the Boltzmann equation demonstrate the equivalence to the Kubo formalism in the dilute alloy regime and support the suggested decomposition scheme

Farming for Health: Aspects from Germany

Until now, the term ‘Farming for Health’ is unknown in Germany but it would cover a wide spectrum of different kinds of social agriculture already existing in Germany, such as farms that integrate disabled people or drug therapy into their farming system, or farms that integrate children, pupils or older people. Relevant work in Germany is done in ‘Sheltered Workshops’, where supporting and healing powers of farming and gardening are used for disabled people with a diversity of work possibilities. Relevant activities also take place in work-therapy departments using horticultural therapy and in animalassisted therapy. There are an estimated number of 1000 different projects for mentally ill, disabled and elderly people in hospitals, Sheltered Workshops, on farms and other projects in Germany with a multitude of individual work places. The upcoming idea of Farming for Health may be met by the term ‘multifunctionality’ as one of the future goals of agriculture: to combine the production of cash crops with social functions, like providing space for recreation, care for landscapes and care for disabled people. Research showed that farms that work together with clients in their farming system have more time and financial support to integrate aims like caring for biotopes and landscape measures into their work schedule

08492 Abstracts Collection -- Structured Decompositions and Efficient Algorithms

From 30.11. to 05.12.2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08492 ``Structured Decompositions and Efficient Algorithms \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Alone but not lonely: Observational evidence that binary interaction is always required to form hot subdwarf stars

Hot subdwarfs are core-helium burning stars that show lower masses and higher temperatures than canonical horizontal branch stars. They are believed to be formed when a red giant suffers an extreme mass-loss episode. Binary interaction is suggested to be the main formation channel, but the high fraction of apparently single hot subdwarfs (up to 30%) has prompted single star formation scenarios to be proposed. If such formation scenarios without interaction were possible, that would also imply the existence of hot subdwarfs in wide binaries that have undergone no interaction. We probe the existence of these systems by analysing light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for all known hot subdwarfs with a main sequence wide binary companion, and by searching for common proper motion pairs to spectroscopically confirmed hot subdwarfs. We find that (i) the companions in composite hot subdwarfs show short rotation periods when compared to field main sequence stars. They display a triangular-shaped distribution with a peak around 2.5 days, similar to what is observed for young open clusters. This observed distribution of rotation rates for the companions in known wide hot subdwarf binaries provides evidence of previous interaction causing spin-up. We also report (ii) a shortage of hot subdwarfs with candidate common proper motion companions, considering the frequency of such systems among progenitors. We identify only 16 candidates after probing 2938 hot subdwarfs with good astrometry. Out of those, at least six seem to be hierarchical triple systems, in which the hot subdwarf is part of an inner binary. These results suggest that binary interaction is always required for the formation of hot subdwarfs.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

White dwarf and subdwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 14

White dwarfs carry information on the structure and evolution of the Galaxy, especially through their luminosity function and initial-to-final mass relation. Very cool white dwarfs provide insight into the early ages of each population. Examining the spectra of all stars with $3\sigma$ proper motion in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 14, we report the classification for 20 088 spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs, plus 415 hot subdwarfs, and 311 cataclysmic variables. We obtain Teff, log g and mass for hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf stars (DAs), warm helium atmosphere white dwarfs (DBs), hot subdwarfs (sdBs and sdOs), and estimate photometric Teff for white dwarf stars with continuum spectra (DCs). We find 15793 sdAs and 447 dCs between the white dwarf cooling sequence and the main sequence, especially below Teff= 10000 K; most are likely low-mass metal-poor main sequence stars, but some could be the result of interacting binary evolution.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figure

CD26/DPP-4 inhibition recruits regenerative stem cells via stromal cell-derived factor-1 and beneficially influences ischaemia-reperfusion injury in mouse lung transplantation†

OBJECTIVES The CD26 antigen is a transmembrane glycoprotein that is constitutively expressed on activated lymphocytes and in pulmonary parenchyma. This molecule is also identified as dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) that cleaves a host of biologically active peptides. Here, we aimed to identify an important substrate of CD26/DPP-4—stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1/CXCL12)—as a key modulator for stem-cell homing together with its receptor CXCR4 in response to ischaemic injury of the lung. METHODS Orthotopic single lung transplantation (Tx) was performed between syngeneic C57BL/6 mice. Inhibition of CD26/DPP-4 activity in recipients was achieved using vildagliptin (10mg/kg, every 12h) subcutaneously, and 6h ischaemia time was applied prior to implantation. Forty-eight hours after Tx, lung histology, SDF-1 levels (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) in lung, spleen and plasma, and expression of the SDF-1 receptor CXCR4 in blood and lung were assessed. Homing of regenerative progenitor cells to the transplanted lung was evaluated using fluorescent-activated cell sorting. RESULTS Compared with untreated lung transplanted mice, systemic DPP-4 inhibition of Tx recipients resulted in an increase in protein concentration of SDF-1 in plasma, spleen and lung. Concordantly, the frequency of cells bearing the SDF-1 receptor CXCR4 rose significantly in the circulation and also in the lungs of DPP-4-inhibited recipients. We found co-expression of CXCR4/CD34 in the grafts of animals treated with vildagliptin, and the stem-cell markers Flt-3 and c-kit were present on a significantly increased number of cells. The morphology of grafts from DPP-4 inhibitor-treated recipients revealed less alveolar oedema when compared with untreated recipients. CONCLUSIONS Targeting the SDF-1-CXCR4 axis through CD26/DPP-4 inhibition increased the intragraft number of progenitor cells contributing to the recovery from ischaemia-reperfusion lung injury. Stabilization of endogenous SDF-1 is achievable and may be a promising strategy to intensify sequestration of regenerative stem cells and thus emerges as a novel therapeutic concep