Settling down in a Foreign Country : A Comparison between U.S. and German Immigration Policies and Their Consequences

Policies on immigration are still essential in politics and they more or less affect a nation’s economy, culture, and stability. Therefore, it is important to study immigration. I choose to compare the United States and Germany, because they are both democratic and federal states, but their immigration policies stem from two completely different models (heterogeneous vs. homogeneous, jus soli vs. jus sanguinis) due to different cognitions of national identity. Moreover, immigration policies in the two countries have become similar throughout the years for economic and political reasons, but policymaking still shows signs of the influences of different national identities. Through the comparison of immigration policies between the United States and Germany and their consequences, I intend to demonstrate that the national identity approach of immigration policy theory is the basis of policymaking in regard to immigration, and I expect to see if similar economic and political needs will result in similar immigration policies in the two countries, and if similar immigration policies have similar receptions in public or have similar impacts on societies which are based on different immigration policy models. Literature plays a large role in my research, because it represents some historical facts about the immigration situation as well as immigrants’ mentalities. I have chosen several literary works as examples to demonstrate the influences and consequences of immigration policy on natives and immigrants. For future studies, it is worth seeing if German national identity will gradually change as the population of non-ethnic Germans (in a political sense of German citizenship) grows. It is possible that the change in ethnic demography will affect the perception of German national identity in the long run in the same way that American national identity changed. The notion of German blood as part of the national identity will hinder this process, and thus I do not expect the change in the perception of German national identity to happen in the near future. If this perception ever changes, the German immigration policy might change accordingly, which will further demonstrate the national identity approach

Impacts of Top Five Executives’ Compensation on Employee Wages

This paper studies the impacts of incentive compensation to the top five executives on employee wages. We employ pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) to measure executive incentive compensation. Using data for firms from Wharton Research Data Services over 1992 to 2017 period, we find that there exists a negative relation between executive incentive compensation and employee wages. In addition, we examine the impacts of executive incentive compensation on employee wages in different industries and find that the impacts are more severe in non-technology firms than in technology firms. Finally, we show that the executives with higher incentive compensation are more likely to suppress employee wages in financially distressed firms. Since the impacts of incentive compensation to top five executives on employee wages are similar to those to CEO, top executives appear to work together as a team, which supports executive compensation as team perspective. Furthermore, firm performance may not be promoted by granting high incentive compensation to executives

The Dark Side(-Channel) of Mobile Devices: A Survey on Network Traffic Analysis

In recent years, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) have met an increasing commercial success and have become a fundamental element of the everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Mobile devices are used not only for traditional communication activities (e.g., voice calls and messages) but also for more advanced tasks made possible by an enormous amount of multi-purpose applications (e.g., finance, gaming, and shopping). As a result, those devices generate a significant network traffic (a consistent part of the overall Internet traffic). For this reason, the research community has been investigating security and privacy issues that are related to the network traffic generated by mobile devices, which could be analyzed to obtain information useful for a variety of goals (ranging from device security and network optimization, to fine-grained user profiling). In this paper, we review the works that contributed to the state of the art of network traffic analysis targeting mobile devices. In particular, we present a systematic classification of the works in the literature according to three criteria: (i) the goal of the analysis; (ii) the point where the network traffic is captured; and (iii) the targeted mobile platforms. In this survey, we consider points of capturing such as Wi-Fi Access Points, software simulation, and inside real mobile devices or emulators. For the surveyed works, we review and compare analysis techniques, validation methods, and achieved results. We also discuss possible countermeasures, challenges and possible directions for future research on mobile traffic analysis and other emerging domains (e.g., Internet of Things). We believe our survey will be a reference work for researchers and practitioners in this research field.Comment: 55 page

The relationships between PM2.5 and meteorological factors in China: Seasonal and regional variations

The interactions between PM2.5 and meteorological factors play a crucial role in air pollution analysis. However, previous studies that have researched the relationships between PM2.5 concentration and meteorological conditions have been mainly confined to a certain city or district, and the correlation over the whole of China remains unclear. Whether or not spatial and seasonal variations exit deserves further research. In this study, the relationships between PM2.5 concentration and meteorological factors were investigated in 74 major cities in China for a continuous period of 22 months from February 2013 to November 2014, at season, year, city, and regional scales, and the spatial and seasonal variations were analyzed. The meteorological factors were relative humidity (RH), temperature (TEM), wind speed (WS), and surface pressure (PS). We found that spatial and seasonal variations of their relationships with PM2.5 do exist. Spatially, RH is positively correlated with PM2.5 concentration in North China and Urumqi, but the relationship turns to negative in other areas of China. WS is negatively correlated with PM2.5 everywhere expect for Hainan Island. PS has a strong positive relationship with PM2.5 concentration in Northeast China and Mid-south China, and in other areas the correlation is weak. Seasonally, the positive correlation between PM2.5 concentration and RH is stronger in winter and spring. TEM has a negative relationship with PM2.5 in autumn and the opposite in winter. PS is more positively correlated with PM2.5 in autumn than in other seasons. Our study investigated the relationships between PM2.5 and meteorological factors in terms of spatial and seasonal variations, and the conclusions about the relationships between PM2.5 and meteorological factors are more comprehensive and precise than before.Comment: 3 tables, 13 figure

Associations of plasma very-long-chain SFA and the metabolic syndrome in adults

Plasma levels of very-long-chain SFA (VLCSFA) are associated with the metabolic syndrome (MetS). However, the associations may vary by different biological activities of individual VLCSFA or population characteristics. We aimed to examine the associations of VLCSFA and MetS risk in Chinese adults. Totally, 2008 Chinese population aged 35–59 years were recruited and followed up from 2010 to 2012. Baseline MetS status and plasma fatty acids data were available for 1729 individuals without serious diseases. Among 899 initially metabolically healthy individuals, we identified 212 incident MetS during the follow-up. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate OR and 95 % CI. Cross-sectionally, each VLCSFA was inversely associated with MetS risk; comparing with the lowest quartile, the multivariate-adjusted OR for the highest quartile were 0·18 (95 % CI 0·13, 0·25) for C20 : 0, 0·26 (95 % CI 0·18, 0·35) for C22 : 0, 0·19 (95 % CI 0·13, 0·26) for C24 : 0 and 0·16 (0·11, 0·22) for total VLCSFA (all Pfor trend<0·001). The associations remained significant after further adjusting for C16 : 0, C18 : 0, C18 : 3n-3, C22 : 6n-3, n-6 PUFA and MUFA, respectively. Based on follow-up data, C20 : 0 or C22 : 0 was also inversely associated with incident MetS risk. Among the five individual MetS components, higher levels of VLCSFA were most strongly inversely associated with elevated TAG (≥1·7 mmol/l). Plasma levels of VLCSFA were significantly and inversely associated with MetS risk and individual MetS components, especially TAG. Further studies are warranted to confirm the findings and explore underlying mechanisms