Own-account workers in Europe: Flexible, mobile, and often inadequately insured

The European Union is currently experiencing a kind of renaissance of selfemployment. As part of this trend, the share of self-employed workers who are operating their enterprises without the support of dependent employees is growing particularly evidently. Members of this category of self-employed are known as ownaccount workers. Proceeding from the theory of transitional labour markets, the authors develop a concept with which mobility rates and mobility patterns can be used to compare the dynamics of own-account work (entries, exits and duration) in five different European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom and occasionally Sweden). Against this background, the insurance coverage offered to the self-employed as well as that enjoyed by persons entering or exiting the status of selfemployment are then observed and compared across the different countries. -- Die selbstständige Erwerbsarbeit hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten in der Mehrzahl der EUMitgliedsstaaten an Bedeutung gewonnen. Insbesondere der Anteil von Klein- und Solo-Unternehmen weist eine steigende Tendenz auf. Im Kontext der Theorie der Übergangsarbeitsmärkte wird ein Mobilitätskonzept entwickelt und die Dynamik der Solo-Selbstständigkeit anhand von Mobilitätsraten und Mobilitätsmustern (Eintritte, Austritte, Dauer) in fünf europäischen Ländern (Deutschland, den Niederlanden, Italien, Großbritannien und Schweden) verglichen. Abschließend wird auf die national unterschiedliche institutionelle Absicherung von Mobilität bzw. von Übergängen eingegangen. Am Beispiel der staatlichen Rentenversicherungssysteme wird aufgezeigt, ob Statuswechsel in und aus der Solo- Selbstständigkeit heraus in sozialversicherungsrechtlicher Hinsicht in den betrachteten Ländern mit Nachteilen verbunden sind.

Adapting labour law and social security to the needs of the new self-employed: Comparing European countries and initiatives at EU level

The emergence of new self-employment presents a challenge to political actors both in the individual European countries and at the EU level. The new selfemployed are exposed to the same social risks as dependent employees, but they generally enjoy fewer social and labour rights. How are social policymakers reacting to this situation? Our response to the question is structured as follows: First, comparing the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, we briefly describe the structure of new selfemployment. Second, we outline the initiatives carried out at EU level to adjust legislation in an endeavour to accommodate new self-employment and those types of work that are found at the boundary between dependent employment and self-employment. Third, we delineate the ways in which these types of work are considered under national labour legislation and the extent to which they are taken into account by statutory social security systems. -- Das zunehmende Auftreten neuer Selbstständigkeit stellt die politischen Akteure auf nationaler wie auf europäischer Ebene vor neue Herausforderungen. Diese neuen Selbstständigen sehen sich denselben sozialen Risiken ausgesetzt wie abhängig Beschäftigte, trotzdem genießen sie im Allgemeinen einen geringeren sozial- und arbeitsrechtlichen Schutz. Wie reagieren die sozialpolitischen Akteure auf diese Situation? Wir werden diese Frage auf dem folgenden Wege beantworten: Zunächst vergleichen wir kurz die Erscheinungsformen und die Struktur der neuen Selbstständigkeit im Vereinigten Königreich, in Deutschland und den Niederlanden. Anschließend stellen wir die Initiativen vor, die auf der EU-Ebene vorangetrieben werden, um der neuen Selbstständigkeit und dem Grenzbereich zwischen abhängiger und selbstständiger Beschäftigung Rechnung zu tragen. Diesen EU-Initiativen werden im dritten Kapitel die nationalen arbeitsrechtlichen Regulierungen solcher Beschäftigungsformen gegenübergestellt, sowie die Art und Weise, in der die neuen Selbstständigen in die Sozialversicherungssysteme einbezogen werden.

Simulation of Economic Losses from Tropical Cyclones in the Years 2015 and 2050: The Effects of Anthropogenic Climate Change and Growing Wealth

This paper simulates the increase in the average annual loss from tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic for the years 2015 and 2050. The simulation is based on assumptions concerning wealth trends in the regions affected by the storms, considered by the change in material assets (capital stock). Further assumptions are made about the trend in storm intensity resulting from anthropogenic climate change. The simulations use a stochastic model that models the annual storm loss from the number of storms and the loss per storm event. The paper demonstrates that increasing wealth will continue to be the principle loss driver in the future (average annual loss in 2015 +32%, in 2050 +308%). But climate change will also lead to higher losses (average annual loss in 2015 +4%, in 2050 +11%). In order to reduce the uncertainties surrounding the assumptions on the trend in capital stock and storm intensity, a sensitivity analysis was carried out, based on the assumptions from current studies on the future costs for tropical storms.climate change, tropical cyclones, natural catastrophes, insurance

Tropical Cyclone Losses in the USA and the Impact of Climate Change: A Trend Analysis Based on a New Dataset

Economic losses caused by tropical cyclones have increased dramatically. It can be assumed that most losses are due to increased prosperity and a greater tendency for people to settle in exposed areas, but also that the growing incidence of severe cyclones is due to climate change. This paper aims to isolate the socio-economic effects and ascertain the potential impact of climate change on this trend. Storm losses for the period 1950-2005 have been adjusted to 2005 socio-economic values so that any remaining trend cannot be ascribed to socio-economic developments. In the period 1971-2005, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum.Climate change, tropical cyclones, loss trends

Breathing Life into Polycations

The lack of efficient delivery systems is still limiting the full therapeutic potential of siRNA. For the purpose of nucleic acid transfer, among other synthetic carrier systems, polycations have been applied. Favorable characteristics of suitable polymers include nucleic acid binding, compaction, protection, and biocompatibility. However the lack of nucleic acid transfer activity in transfection-based screening often abandons promising candidates. Here we present that functionalization may turn polycations with poor delivery activity into efficient carriers:  for example, polylysine, on its own lacking nucleic acid transfer activity, displayed high efficiency in siRNA delivery after modification with polyethylene glycol and a pH-responsive endosomolytic peptide. Hence these findings have implication for the selection process of polymeric carriers for siRNA

Discovery and engineering systems for multi-enzyme catalysis

Reprogramming and rewiring biological systems by introducing new functionalities offers great promise for the design of cells for the production of new chemicals. In this lecture I will discuss and show examples of our efforts on engineering metabolic pathways and other complex properties into microbial cells and for in vitro biomanufacturing. In this presentation I will discuss our efforts in i) discovery and characterization of biosynthetic enzymes for the production of natural products and ii) design and engineering of self-assembling protein systems for in vivo and in vitro multi-enzyme biocatalysis. In a first example, I will describe our efforts on characterizing and accessing the natural product portfolio of Basidiomycete fungi with goal of enabling the discovery of new enzyme activities and bioactive compounds. using genomics driven approaches together with heterologous expression and biochemical characterization of enzymes and biosynthetic pathways. Basidiomycota and Ascomycota represent the major phyla of the fungal kingdom. Only a fraction of this diversity has been described and an even smaller fraction of the known species has been characterized in more detail and/or exploited by humans. Ascomycota have so far received the greatest attention while Basidiomycota remain greatly understudied despite their importance for carbon recycling, ecosystem functioning and medicinal properties. This group of fungi holds great promise for the discovery of novel biosynthetic pathways and biocatalysts, especially enzymes for redox catalysis [1]. Homology-based analysis of fungal genomes suggests that the secondary metabolome of Basidiomycota differs significantly from those of other prolific microbial natural products producers [2]. Leveraging genomic information, we have identified and characterized a large number of different sesquiterpene synthases from Basidiomycota. Many of the sesquiterpene synthases are located in associated biosynthetic gene clusters which we have begun to characterize. More recently, we have sequenced additional Basidiomycota genomes that give us access to new types of sesquiterpene scaffolds and clustered biosynthetic enzymes. In a second example, I will discuss our efforts on engineering enzyme co-localization systems for metabolic engineering and biocatalysis. Cells operate a multitude of enzyme cascade reactions simultaneously with high efficiency, while at the same time controlling metabolic fluxes, preventing the build-up of toxic intermediates and directing metabolites to the correct enzymatic pathways [3]. Key to the optimal function of cellular metabolic networks is the spatial organization and temporal control of these cascades. The same design principles for spatial organization of metabolic enzymes may be adapted to engineer more efficient metabolic pathways and create robust and highly efficient cell-free orthogonal biocatalytic cascade reactions that operate concurrently in one pot. We have engineered protein nano-compartments into E. coli and have shown that multiple heterologous cargo proteins can be targeted into these compartments [4, 5]. More recently, we have designed robust self-assembling protein scaffolds that enable co-localization of multiple cargo proteins and enzymes on these protein architectures. Recombinant scaffold building block and cargo proteins can be readily produced for the formation of self-assembled protein systems. [1] C. Schmidt-Dannert (2016) Biocatalytic portfolio of Basidiomycota. Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 31:40-49. [2] C. Schmidt-Dannert (2015) Biosynthesis of terpenoid natural products in fungi. Adv. Biochem Eng. Biotechnol. 8:26-8. [3] C. Schmidt-Dannert, F. Lopez-Gallego (2016) A roadmap for biocatalysis – functional and spatial orchestration of enzyme cascades. Microb. Biotechnol. 9:601-609. [4] M. Held, A. Kolb, S. Perdue, S. Hsu, S. Bloch, M.B. Quin, C. Schmidt-Dannert (2016) Engineering formation of multiple recombinant Eut protein nanocompartments in E. coli. SciReports, 6:24359. [5] M.B. Quin, S.A. Perdue, S.Y. Hsu, C. Schmidt-Dannert (2016) Encapsulation of multiple cargo proteins within recombinant Eut nanocompartments. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 100:9187-9700

Analyse betriebswirtschaftlicher Kennzahlen zur Unterstützung von Managemententscheidungen

Entscheidungen zu treffen gehört zu den wesentlichen Aufgaben jedes Managers. Die Gefahr von Fehlentscheidungen liegt dabei auf der Hand. Um diese zu vermeiden, ist es von zentraler Bedeutung, eine genaue Analyse der für den Entscheidungsprozess wesentlichen Informationen vorzunehmen. Ziel dieses Papiers ist es, einen Weg aufzuzeigen, wie ein aussagekräftiges Bild der finanzwirtschaftlichen Situation potenzieller Geschäftspartner mithilfe einer fundierten Querschnittsanalyse frei zugänglicher betriebswirtschaftlicher Daten gewonnen werden kann. Dieser Ansatz kann in jeder Entscheidungssituation, in der die Finanzausstattung der betrachteten Unternehmen entscheidungsrelevant ist, genutzt werden.Decision making is one of the most important management tasks. In this context wrong decisions are real risks. In order to avoid them it is necessary to analyse the relevant facts intensively – especially if these decisions affect the selection of a new business partner. Therefore the main goal of this paper is to describe a management analysis using only free accessible data to get a significant impression of the financial situation of potential business partners. This analysis is applicable in each situation where the financial situation of companies is relevant for business decisions

A Concept for User-Centered Delegation of Abstract High-Level Tasks to Cobots for Flexible Lot Sizes

Technical advances in collaborative robots (cobots) are making them increasingly attractive to companies. However, many human operators are not trained to program complex machines. Instead, humans are used to communicating with each other on a task-based level rather than through specific instructions, as is common with machines. The gap between low-level instruction-based and high-level task-based communication leads to low values for usability scores of teach pendant programming. As a solution, we propose a task-based interaction concept that allows human operators to delegate a complex task to a machine without programming by specifying a task via triplets. The concept is based on task decomposition and a reasoning system using a cognitive architecture. The approach is evaluated in an industrial use case where mineral cast basins have to be sanded by a cobot in a crafts enterprise