Introduction -- comparative study of social security systems in Asia and Latin America -- a contribution to the study of emerging welfare states

East Asia, India, Latin America, Social security, Social welfare

Transformation and continuity of the Argentine welfare state -- evaluating social security reform in the 1990s

Beginning after World War II, Argentina institutionalized a limited conservative corporatist welfare state where occupation-linked social insurance held a central position and social assistance had a residual character. This was called a limited conservative corporatist welfare state, because the huge population within the informal sector was excluded from the main system. A populist government supported by trade unions and the economic model of import-substituting industrialization were the background for the formation of this type of welfare state. During the 1990s, elements of a liberal regime were added to the Argentine welfare state under the reform carried out by the Menem Peronist government. However, social insurance reform and labor reform were not as drastic as the economic reform. They still retained a certain continuity from the traditional systems. The government intended to carry out more drastic social security and labor reform, but was unable to do so due to the legacy of corporatism of the Peronist government.Social security, Social welfare, Argentina

Jeans instability of interstellar gas clouds in the background of weakly interacting massive particles

Criterion of the Jeans instability of interstellar gas clouds which are gravitationally coupled with weakly interacting massive particles is revisited. It is established that presence of the dark matter always reduces the Jeans length, and in turn, Jeans mass of the interstellar gas clouds. Astrophysical implications of this effect are discussed.Comment: version accepted in ApJ, Nov. 1, 1998 issue, vol. 50

Evaluation of post-license advanced driver training in Italy

Post-license advanced driver training addresses different categories of road users such as: novice drivers, professional drivers, company employers and recidivists. These training courses can be carried out on-track or on the road. On-track courses allow participants to gain knowledge on driving physics and experience limits in a safe road environment. On-road courses are more focused on hazard perception and situation awareness. Although extensive research has been done in this field, knowledge of the effects of these courses on road accident risk remains unclear. Previous evaluation of on-track courses did not always show a positive effect on crash rate. For example, post-license training focused on mastery of driving skills can lead to an increase of accident risk, especially on young males. However, research identified several factors that may enhance the effectiveness of driving training. In Europe a new framework for driver education and training has been proposed based on a safe driver hierarchical model (the GADGET model) and the development of a strategy for continuous learning. According to this framework, an evaluation study of on-track post-license advanced driver training has been undertaken in Italy with the main goal of assessing the safety effects of these courses and identifying training aspects to be improved. Besides crash rate, the study aims at assessing also driver behavior, knowledge of risks, self-evaluation and training quality. This paper presents the results of the possible effects of advanced driver training on driving behavior, considering in particular the number and type of violations. For each driver, data on age, gender and driving violations history were extracted from the platform and the national violations database. Three cases were addressed through a before-after analysis with control group. Case 1 considers all drivers who attended an ADT course. Case 2 aimed at understanding the effects of the courses on a specific target group: the traffic violators. Case 3 is similar to Case 2, however the control group was selected in a way that drivers characteristics and the violation rate was similar to the violation rate of the treatment group in the before period. The significance of the differences highlighted was assessed through appropriate statistical tests (i.e. paired t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test). The study showed in general a higher propensity to commit traffic violations after attending an ADT course. These results are in contrast to what expected and show the necessity to diversify the training classes according to the different needs of participant

Isotropization of Quaternion-Neural-Network-Based PolSAR Adaptive Land Classification in Poincare-Sphere Parameter Space

Quaternion neural networks (QNNs) achieve high accuracy in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar classification for various observation data by working in Poincare-sphere-parameter space. The high performance arises from the good generalization characteristics realized by a QNN as 3-D rotation as well as amplification/attenuation, which is in good consistency with the isotropy in the polarization-state representation it deals with. However, there are still two anisotropic factors so far which lead to a classification capability degraded from its ideal performance. In this letter, we propose an isotropic variation vector and an isotropic activation function to improve the classification ability. Experiments demonstrate the enhancement of the QNN ability

Advancements in Road Safety Management Analysis

Road Safety Management (RSM) can be briefly defined as the tasks of preparing and implementing road safety policies. Many studies have been carried out on RSM, trying to identify success factors and reference best practice examples, but the complexity of the subject and the difficulty of quantitative data collection make it difficult a clear and comprehensive understanding. According to the EC-funded DACOTA research project, the weakest components of RSM systems in Europe are policy implementation and funding and the lack of knowledge-based road safety policy making. The main objective of the research, undertaken within the FERSI's working group on Road Safety Management (RSM), is to better investigate in several European countries those two RSM key functions: funding and research. Particularly the study aims at 1) exploring the existing structures, processes and factors affecting funding and research performances; 2) defining an assessment framework able to measure single country performances with reference to the efficiency and effectiveness of road safety funding and research, possibly shifting from a qualitative to a more quantitative approach. Based on the available knowledge on these two topics (research and funding), an assessment framework is defined and a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators for funding and research performance measurement is proposed. A desk analysis aiming at collecting available data useful to estimate the proposed indicators is conducted and a preliminary analysis with this subset of indicators is undertaken. A subset of research indicators (bibliometric) are used to estimate road safety research outputs performance of a country in terms of productivity and quality of research and international collaboration activities. Preliminary results show a positive correlation among them, even if the linear correlation turns to be not so strong. Countries are ranked on the basis of a composite index of all the three indicators