Social Contacts, Dutch Language Proficiency and Immigrant Economic Performance in the Netherlands

Using longitudinal data on immigrants in the Netherlands for the years 1991, 1994, 1998, 2002, we examined the impacts of social contacts and Dutch language proficiency on adult foreign-born men’s earnings, employment and occupational status. The main conclusions are as follows. On average, social contacts and a good mastery of the Dutch language enhance immigrants’ economic performances. The effects are stronger for immigrants with low-skilltransferability than for immigrants with high-skill-transferability, and are stronger for economic migrants than for non-economic migrants. Contact with Dutch people and Dutch organisations unambiguously enhances all aspects of immigrants’ economic performance, however, we found no evidence for the positive effect of co-ethnic contact on employment status

Personalized Recommendation for Balancing Content Generation and Usage on Two-Sided Entertainment Platforms

Online entertainment platforms such as Youtube host a vast amount of user-generated content (UGC). The unique feature of two-sided UGC entertainment platforms is that creators’ content generation and users’ content usage can influence each other. However, traditional recommender systems often emphasize content usage but ignore content generation, leading to a misalignment between these two goals. To address the challenge, this paper proposes a prescriptive uplift framework to balance content generation and usage through personalized recommendations. Specifically, we first predict the heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) of recommended contents on creators’ content generation and users’ content usage, then consider these two predicted HTEs simultaneously in an optimization model to determine the recommended contents for each user. Using a large-scale real-world dataset, we demonstrate that the proposed recommendation method better balances content generation and usage and brings a 42% increase in participants’ activity compared to existing benchmark methods

Barriers of culture, networks, and language in international migration: a review

Along with the increasing pace of globalization, recent decades faced a dramatically increase in international migrant flows as well. Compared to the flows of trade, capital and knowledge, we observe that contemporaneous complex institutional differences, historical backgrounds, and individuals' diverse socio-demographic characteristics make the migrant workers' choice of destination arguably much more uncontrollable. This study shows that migration is in a complex way intertwined with culture, networks and language, (i) by reviewing related studies on the barriers of culture, networks and language in international labor mobility, and (ii) by exploring missing gaps and prospective avenues for research. Nowadays, the migration pressure on Europe and the United states has created substantial challenges, leading to an urgent need to address the economic assimilation and social integration of migrants. Against this background, we emphasize that these non-economic factors have played an increasingly critical role in shaping international migration and its future socio-economic consequences for destination countries

Omni-directional damage detection and localization with a 2-D piezoelectric ultrasonic phased array

The disadvantages of linear arrays are such that the range of damage detection is limited up to only 180°, and also that the detection accuracy is very poor at angles close to 0° and 180°. In order to solve this problem, this paper puts forward a new damage detection and localization method by coupling the image enhancement technology with two-dimensional piezoelectric ultrasonic phased arrays arranged in the shape of a cross. The basic detection principle as well as the detailed process of damage localization will be covered in this paper. Along with the implementation of the cross-shaped sensor arrays, a new image enhancement algorithm is proposed with the aim to deal with the problem of phantom image emerging in the opposite side of the original image. The results of the experiments conducted on an aluminum plate show that the above proposed method can not only effectively solve the limitation of the linear sensor array, but also accurately detect multiple damages in full angle mode

Omni-directional damage detection and localization with a cruciform piezoelectric ultrasonic phased array

A full-range (360°) damage detection is necessary for structural health monitoring of large plate-like structures. However, the linear arrays are mainly limited by the range of damage detection, which is maximum up to 180°. Moreover the detection accuracy is also very poor at angles close to 0° and 180°. In order to solve this problem, a novel damage detection and localization method is presented in this paper. The proposed method combines the image enhancement technology and the cruciform piezoelectric phased array to improve the performance of the linear array based system. In addition to the implementation of cruciform phased array, a new image enhancement algorithm is proposed with an aim to deal with the problem of phantom image emerging in the opposite side of the original image. The results of the experiments conducted on aluminum plate and epoxy composite laminate plate show that the proposed method can effectively solve the limitations of the linear sensor array, and accurately detect single or multiple damages in full angle mode