The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited

The striking thing about the happiness-income paradox is that over the long-term – usually a period of 10 y or more – happiness does not increase as a country's income rises. Heretofore the evidence for this was limited to developed countries. This article presents evidence that the long term nil relationship between happiness and income holds also for a number of developing countries, the eastern European countries transitioning from socialism to capitalism, and an even wider sample of developed countries than previously studied. It also finds that in the short-term in all three groups of countries, happiness and income go together, i.e., happiness tends to fall in economic contractions and rise in expansions. Recent critiques of the paradox, claiming the time series relationship between happiness and income is positive, are the result either of a statistical artifact or a confusion of the short-term relationship with the long-term one.Easterlin Paradox, life satisfaction, subjective well-being

Reluctant Intimacies. Japanese Eldercare in Indonesian Hands

The thesis explores the tensions in Japan between national ideologies of cultural homogeneity and the demographic and economic realities which increasingly point to the unavoidability of immigration. Based on ethnographic research in Japan and Indonesia, the thesis looks at the formation of relationships between the Japanese personnel, the employers, the cared-for elderly, and the Indonesian care workers employed in Japanese eldercare institutions under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) initially implemented in 2008. While primarily focusing on the negotiation of relationships at an interpersonal level, the thesis also considers the intersections between the ageing of society and the Japanese discourses of nationhood. Shifting between these scales of observation, the project discusses the interplay between the bodily, interpersonal, and cultural intimacies. It examines how they are formed, maintained, negated, negotiated, and lost. In doing so, it emphasises the saliency of essentialising cultural representations. However, the research reveals that these become paralleled by identifications based on other, non-cultural areas of immediate experience. Thus, the thesis shifts the emphasis away from (but does not completely abandon) the ethnic or national underpinnings of the migration processes as a lived experience for migrants and hosts alike. Following the politico–economic background of the Indonesian workers’ presence in Japan and the introduction of the idea of culture laid out in the vocabulary of intimacy, the consecutive chapters focus on different sets of relationships forged by the Indonesian workers. The thesis concludes with the discussion of media representations and a suggestion that the ‘seeding’ of foreign workers and residents within local communities in Japan constitutes the arena in which cross-cultural intimacies emerge

Politik in Fernsehserien

House of Cards, Borgen und Co. – seit einiger Zeit boomen Fernsehserien, die explizit den politischen Betrieb fokussieren. Diese erreichen nicht nur ein akademisches Nischenpublikum, sondern erzielen insgesamt hohe Zuschauerquoten. Die Beiträge des Bandes analysieren, wie der Gegenstand Politik in den Serien aufgegriffen und als Material für ihre auf Unterhaltung ausgerichteten Erzählungen aufgearbeitet wird. Über die Auseinandersetzung mit popkulturellen Produkten zeigen sie, wie politische Bilder in populären Filmen und Serien konstruiert und reproduziert werden und wie diese sich auf Wahrnehmungen und Vorstellungen von Politik auswirken. Das Interesse gilt dabei den konstruierten Bildern von Politik im Allgemeinen, aber auch den sich darin äußernden nationalen Besonderheiten

Modeling of viscoelastic properties of Ultra High Performance Fiber Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) under low to high tensile stresses

The purpose of this paper is to explore the UHPFRC time-dependent behavior under sustained tensile loading at very early age (3 days) and to highlight its sensitivity to the level of loading by laboratory testing and numerical analysis. Uniaxial creep and relaxation tests were performed at 3 days age at various stress levels by means of a Temperature-Stress Testing set-up (TSTM). Under low tensile stresses, the material exhibits a linear viscoelastic behavior. Under high tensile stresses the creep response becomes non-linear. A numerical algorithm was used to convert the creep results into relaxations and compare them with measured relaxations. A generalized Maxwell chain model was applied to predict the UHPFRC tensile relaxations at a low load level

The Community Explorer How to Inform Effectively Policy on U.S. Diversity with County Level Data

The Community Explorer provides novel insightintoon the different characteristics of the U.S. population that can be used in policy design and impact assessment. More broadly, it increases the understanding of socio-economic gaps and potential markets in the U.S.. More specifically, it synthesizes the information of 751 variables across 3142 counties from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey using machine learning methods, into 17 communities. Each one of these communities has a distinctive profile that combines demographic, economic, and many other behavior determinants while not being geographically bounded

TENSILE CREEP OF UHPFRC UNDER LOW AND HIGH STRESSES

The purpose of this paper is to investigate experimentally the UHPFRC time-dependent behavior under sustained tensile loading and to determine the effect of the stress level on the creep response. Uniaxial tensile creep tests were performed at various stress levels by means of an optimized testing set-up. An Acoustic Emissions equipment was used in parallel to correlate the creep deformations with damage. From 29 % to 85 % stress level, the material exhibited a linear viscoelastic behavior. The UHPFRC response under higher stress levels close to strain hardening remains an open question

Experimental study of tensile response of Strain Hardening UHPFRC at early age

Strain Hardening Ultra High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SH-UHPFRC), has a high tensile strength (over 10 MPa) and exhibit significant strain hardening (several ‰) under tensile loads. These appealing features make it a suitable material for improving the efficiency and durability of new or existing structures. However, in rehabilitation works, when a layer of a new material is applied on an existing structure, due to restraints from the existing structure, the shrinkage deformations lead to high tensile stresses in the new layer, which can lead to premature cracking. To characterize the effect of the restraining conditions, experimental investigations of evolution of autogenous shrinkage and development of eigenstresses were done using a Temperature Stress Testing Machine (TSTM) at quasi-isothermal curing conditions at 20oC, from the time of casting. Tests were done at partial and full restraint conditions to study the development of the eigenstresses. The tests with 100% restraint are the first of their kind on SH-UHPFRC and the results show that under full restraint conditions, the material enters into the strain-hardening zone of the tensile response