WP 17 - Working women's choices for domestic help

Household services are increasing. Which households consume these services, in particular domestic help? This article tests whether time and financial resources influence the use of domestic help, performing logistic regression analyses with the WWIQ-2000/01-data (N=10,969), addressing working women in the Netherlands. The use of paid domestic cleaning services is highly dependent upon a woman’s working hours, supervisory position and hourly wages. It is to a minor extent dependent upon children and partner. Age and high education have a substantial impact. The factors influencing paid domestic help predict neither occasional and unpaid help, nor the number of hours of paid domestic help.

The dynamic potential of European Union health law

Some understandings of European Union health law are based on a presumption of law as a static and closed system. This approach to the Union as a legal entity has important ramifications. The Union is a political system created by and subject to the rule of law. Its successes (and failures) are attributable to the legalisation of solving externalities and ensuring Member State solidarity to gain benefits from integration. Member States, which create and sustain the Union by repeated acts of sovereign choice, choose to subject themselves to the rule of (Union) law. This protects both the Member States and the Union institutions (imperfectly, but nonetheless) from charges of illegitimacy. While recognising the benefits of such an approach to European Union integration and law-making, we take the view that law also has an important dynamic potential. That dynamic potential is inherent in all law, for law is embodied in text, and always open to interpretation, as the external contexts that give legal text meaning in the real-world change through time. We trace the dynamic potential of Union health law by looking at its legal basis to its foundational Treaties, and we plot its trajectory going forward

Abortion law in Europe:The promise and pitfalls of human rights and transnational trade law in the face of criminalization with exceptions

The fairly general consensus position on abortion law across Europe is that of partial decriminalization or, more accurately, criminalization with exceptions. Women in most European countries are able to access abortion, but currently there is no broad individual right to abortion on request. By contrast, abortion is generally a criminal offence. However, the law in each country offers various exceptions to that rule. The specific conditions of decriminalization and consequent access to lawful abortion vary substantially among European countries. These usually establish exceptions (rape, fetal abnormalities, risk to life or health of the woman, emergency/necessity) and other alternative requirements, such as a gestational term, mandatory counselling and waiting periods, parental and/or judicial consent in the case of minors, and limitations related to the type and number of healthcare professionals who need to be involved in the procedure. We show that this position is vulnerable to worrying indications that the direction of travel in Europe is away from liberalization, autonomy or human rights protection, and towards greater restrictions on women’s access to abortion. We consider possible legal and other strategies for women’s empowerment, including cross-border provision of abortion services in Europe

Solidarity and trust in European Union health governance: three ways forward

Trust and solidarity are centrally important to the functioning of healthcare systems, and for societal resilience and stability more broadly. The European Union is increasingly shaping governance and norms that affect trust and solidarity in health—a process that has intensified with the announcement of the ‘European Health Union’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, how can the EU ensure solidarity in health while generating public trust as a pre-condition for solidaristic institutions? We propose three strategies to reach this goal. First, both at national and European levels, institutions and mechanisms of solidarity should be strengthened. Second, the Union should boost the resilience and stability of national healthcare systems through mechanisms of risk-sharing. Third, the Union should mandate or encourage its member countries to enhance prevention and other public health policies to strengthen pre-distribution, aimed to ensure a more equal baseline of public health before inequalities arise

Improvement of flexible rotor/active magnetic bearings system performance using pi-d control

Proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control is the most common control approach used to control active magnetic bearings system, especially in the case of supporting rigid rotors. In the case of flexible rotor support, the most common control is again PID control in combination with notch filters. Other control approaches, known as modern control theory, are still in development process and cannot be commonly found in real life industrial application. Right now, they are mostly used in research applications. In comparison to PID control, PI-D control implies that derivate element is in feedback loop instead in main branch of the system. In this paper, performances of flexible rotor/active magnetic bearing system were investigated in the case of PID and PI-D control, both in combination with notch filters. The performances of the system were analysed using an analysis in time domain by observing system response to step input and in frequency domain by observing a frequency response of sensitivity function

Річард Смоллі і знамениті «десять вересневих днів»

У вересні цього року виповнюється 27 років, як було відкрито фулерен — нову сфероподібну форму вуглецю. Ця подія буквально приголомшила вчених, які на той час вважали, що про елементарний вуглець їм відомо практично все. Історія відкриття цієї речовини досить незвичайна. Ще в 1971 р. можливість існування молекули фулерену була передбачена японським ученим Е. Осавою (E. Osawa), за два роки радянські хіміки-теоретики Д.А. Бочвар і О.Г. Гальперн квантово-хімічними розрахунками підтвердили стабільність молекули С60, і лише у 1985 р. Р. Смоллі, Р. Керл та Г. Крото експериментально отримали кластери із 60 атомів вуглецю в стійкій формі, яку вони пояснили структурою молекули у вигляді футбольного м’яча. Натхненнику цього відкриття, видатному вченому, нобелівському лауреату, активному популяризатору нанотехнологій Річарду Смоллі присвячено цей матеріал.В сентябре этого года исполняется 27 лет с момента открытия фуллерена — новой сферообразной формы углерода. Это событие буквально потрясло ученых, которые в то время считали, что об элементарном углероде им известно практически все. История открытия этого вещества довольно необычна. Еще в 1971 г. возможность су ществования молекулы фуллерена была предсказана японским ученым Е. Осавой (E. Osawa), через два года советские химики-теоретики Д.А. Бочвар и Е.Г. Гальперн с помощью квантово-химических расчетов подтвердили стабильность молекулы С60, и только в 1985 г. Р. Смолли, Р. Керл и Г. Крото экспериментально получили кластеры из 60 атомов углерода в устойчивой форме, которую они объяснили структурой молекулы в виде футбольного мяча. Вдохновителю этого открытия, выдающемуся ученому, нобелевскому лауреату, активному популяризатору нанотехнологий Ричарду Смолли посвящен этот материал.27 years since the discovery of fullerene, the new form of carbon, is observed in September of this year. This event has literally shocked scientists, who believed at that time that they know almost everything about the elementary carbon. History of this discovery is rather unusual. Long ago, in 1971 the possibility of the existence of a fullerene molecule was predicted by an young Japanese scientist E. Osawa. Then two Soviet chemists and theorists D.A. Bochvar and E.G. Hal pern confirm the stability of the C60 molecule using quantum chemical calculations, and in 1985 at last R. Smalley, R. Curl and H. Kroto experimentally obtained clusters of 60 carbon atoms in a sustainable form. They explained the structure of this molecule as the structure of a soccer ball. This material is devoted to the inspirer of this discovery, an outstanding scientist, Nobel laureate, active popularizer of nanotechnology — Richard Smalley

More Competences than You Knew? The Web of Health Competence for European Union Action in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak

To combat COVID-19, unlike its Member States, the Union may act“only within thelimits of the competences conferred upon it by the Member States in the Treaties to attainthe objectives set out therein”.4As legal scholars, we understand why one may think thatthe Union has no power to act in ways that public health experts and others, such aseconomists and behavioural psychologists, suggest would be helpful. The Union’spowers in the health domain are traditionallyunderstood to be severely constrained:health law and policy are seen as matters for Member States.We propose an alternative to this standard legal analysis. The Union has more possiblelegal powers to create health law and policy in response to the COVID-19 outbreak than istraditionally understood, particularly if the different iterations of the protection andpromotion of public and human health throughout the Treaty on the Functioning of theEuropean Union (TFEU) are readin relation toone another. This alternativeinterpretation of the Union’s competence norms, the“legal bases”on which the Unioninstitutions act to adopt either binding legal rules or persuasive measures, suggests thatthere are legal options that permit the Union a wider range of actions than it has takento date, and that support–and go further than–the approaches that the EuropeanCommission (Commission) and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Controlhave suggested in various policy documents, guidance and communications in Marchand April 2020.5In short, we are arguing thatlegalimpediments to Union action areless restrictive than is commonly understood

Variability and coherence of the Agulhas Undercurrent in a High-resolution Ocean General Circulation Model

The Agulhas Current system has been analyzed in a nested high-resolution ocean model and compared to observations. The model shows good performance in the western boundary current structure and the transports off the South African coast. This includes the simulation of the northward-flowing Agulhas Undercurrent. It is demonstrated that fluctuations of the Agulhas Current and Undercurrent around 50–70 days are due to Natal pulses and Mozambique eddies propagating downstream. A sensitivity experiment that excludes those upstream perturbations significantly reduces the variability as well as the mean transport of the undercurrent. Although the model simulates undercurrents in the Mozambique Channel and east of Madagascar, there is no direct connection between those and the Agulhas Undercurrent. Virtual float releases demonstrate that topography is effectively blocking the flow toward the north