The UK Future Jobs Fund: Labour’s adoption of the job guarantee principle

This paper examines the development of employment policy in the United Kingdom leading to the creation of the Young Person’s Guarantee and its main component, the Future Jobs Fund. Past public-sector direct employment schemes, including those associated with the workfare model, had been discredited as ineffective across the OECD. In numerous countries, however, newer job creation schemes were implemented from the 1990s, aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings of earlier projects, and utilizing the growth of smaller community-based projects – the Intermediate Labour Markets, or ILMs. Whilst there was no strategic policy commitment to demand-led active labour market policy in the UK until recent years, a network of ILMs came into existence, and much of the funding for these small-scale local projects came from the government. With the onset of the current economic downturn, and the substantial rise in cyclical unemployment, policy-makers more closely examined options for a demand-led strategy. Although ILMs had not been created with a view to forming part of an ‘employer of last resort’ policy, and were generally directed at very specific groups, the potential of these schemes to form part of a wider national strategy was clearly seen. In 2009 the government announced a job guarantee for all young people, primarily through the Future Jobs Fund. This initiative was inspired by ‘employer of last resort’ (or ‘job guarantee’) concept and the work of Hyman Minsky, and the intention was to extend it over time. Although the Future Jobs Fund was scrapped in May 2010 following a change of government in the UK, it incorporates the lessons of past policy failures, representing a bold step in active labour market policy – and may form a model for reviving demand-led employment policy.Unemployment; New Deal; Job Guarantee; Employer of Last Resort; Minsky; Future Jobs Fund

Normality Testing- A New Direction

Abstract This paper is concerned with the evaluation of the performance of the normality tests to ensure the validity of the t-statistics used for assessing significance of regressors in a regression model. For this purpose, we have explored 40 distributions to find the most damaging distribution on the t-statistic. Power comparisons are conducted to find the best performing test against these distributions. It is found that Anderson-Darling statistic is the best option among the five normality tests, Jarque-Bera, Shapiro-Francia, D’Agostino & Pearson, Anderson-Darling & Lilliefors.Normality test, power of the test, t-statistic

"Dark Matter: Some Reflections on the Current Account Debate"

The United States has a large and persistent current account deficit. Yet, U.S.'s income receipts from the rest of the world have exceeded its income payments to the rest of the world for many years. This appears to be paradoxical because for a country with a negative net foreign assets position, such as the U.S., international income payments to the rest of the world are likely to exceed its international income receipts. Hausmann and Sturzenegger (2005) offer an explanation of this apparent paradox. They argue that U.S. current account statistics do not properly measure U.S.'s net foreign assets position and that its actual net foreign assets position is measurably better than the officially estimated position primarily due to the existence of intangible corporate capital invested overseas. In their view the debate about the sustainability of the U.S. current account deficit and the negative net foreign assets position is moot because these deficits and debts are either non-existent or fairly small. This paper critically evaluates Hausmann et al's claims and examines the implications of their hypothesis. It offers, within an analytical framework, alternative explanations that are more consistent with the stylized facts.

Device-to-device (D2D) reliable transmission in the internet of things

D2D stands for device-to-device communication, which is likely to perform a major impact in future mobile communications because it offers ultra-low latency for end user’s direct conversation. Throughout minimizing latency, increasing strength and improved transmission efficiency, and expanding telecommunication services, D2D services are seen as a successful innovation for emerging mobile communications. The D2D networking makes a unique contribution to the wireless world by simplifying data transfer among devices connected. D2D networking makes use of adjacent two nodes to maximize the use of existing infrastructure, low latency, boost throughput and expand service functionality. Within wireless networks, D2D communication is described as immediate interaction among two mobile devices without passing through the access point or network infrastructure. The fully integrated wireless communication would be built by integrating D2D and the Internet of Things. D2D enables the larger number of devices to be paired at a higher bandwidth frequency and with minimum latency. Building a new reliable framework for D2D communication of smart devices can be an important framework for improving the reliability of communication. Internet of Things is the process of communicating and sharing information between nearby devices. But there are many challenges to secure and reliable communication. Amongst the major concerns for wireless transmission has been identified as communication trust, and overcoming this issue could lead to sustained expansion in the usage and popularity of the Internet of Things. The proposed study develops a system for providing internet access to a network of smart devices connected to the internet of things. The significant contributions link the latest findings that incorporate the interaction framework's stability and provides secure internet networking for connected devices

SPATIAL ABILITY AND SCIENCE EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF CORRELATIONAL STUDIES

Out of the four approaches in researches on spatial thinking in undergraduate science curricula, viz. correlation studies, studies on training of spatial ability, focused studies and dynamic spatial representations studies; this paper reviews the correlational studies of spatial ability and science education. Spatial ability plays vital roles in participation and success of an individual in science. Researchers have found positive correlations ranging from 0.1 – 0.6 among spatial abilities and performance in different branches of science.  Article visualizations

Development of ECG and EMG platform with IMU to eliminate the motion artifacts found in measurements

The long term measurement and analysis of electrophysiological parameters is crucial for diagnosis of chronic diseases, and to monitor critical health parameters. It is also very important to monitor physical fitness improvement, or degradation level, of human beings where physical fitness is entirely critical for their work, or of more vulnerable members of society such as senior citizens and the sick. The state-of-the-art technological developments are leading to the use of artificial intelligence in the continuous monitoring and identification of life-threatening events in the daily life of ordinary people. However, these ambulatory measurements of electrophysiological parameters leads to drastic motion artifacts because of the test subject’s movements. Therefore, there is a dire need for the development of both hardware and software solutions to address this challenge. The scope of this thesis is to develop a hardware platform, by using off-the-shelf discrete and IC electronic components, to measure two electrophysiological parameters, electrocardiogram (ECG) and electromyogram (EMG), with an additional motion sensor inertial measurement unit (IMU) comprising nine degrees of freedom. The ECG, EMG and IMU data will be collected using the developed measurement platform from various predefined day-to-day routine activity events. A Bluetooth interface will be developed to transmit the data wirelessly, and record it on a laptop for further real-time processing. The resources of the electrical workshop and measurement lab at Aalto University will be used for the development, assembly, testing and finally for research of the measurement platform. The second aspect of the study is to prepare, process and analyze the recorded ECG and EMG data by using MATLAB. Various filtering, denoising, processing and analysis algorithms will be developed and executed to extract the features of the ECG and EMG waveform structures. Finally, graphical representations will be made for the resulting outputs of the aforementioned techniques

A Middleware Framework between Mobility and IoT Using IEEE 802.15.4e Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a mobility framework for connecting the physical things in wireless ad hoc sensor networks. Our area of study is the internet of things by using an ad hoc sensor network. Our purpose in this study is to create a mobility framework for the internet of things. For example- how we connect many physical objects and give them a sense of sensing each other in an ad hoc environment. We can connect different physical objects in a framework of an ad hoc sensor network. Our main contribution is a new methodology for simulating mobility physical objects for the internet of things. Our methodology uses the correct and efficient simulation of the desired study and can be implemented in a framework of ad hoc sensor networks. Our study will generate a new framework for solving the issue of connectivity among physical objects. The proposed mobility framework is feasible to run among physical objects using the ad hoc sensor network