A Didactic Approach Emphasising the Social Habitat as an Attempt to Meet Growing Social Disintegration: teaching in classes with youth of conspicuous behaviour using aesthetic and cultural means of communication

The life conflicts of pupils with behavioural disorders can be examined through their pictures. Conclusions can be drawn not only with regards to the psychological effects of art therapy, but also regarding a didactic orientated at life-circumstances. The pictures drawn by these pupils can give impulses for further aesthetic processes and become the basis for reflection and changes in behaviour. Environment-orientated didactics open the way to an active, but symbolic confrontation with manifest social conflicts. Teachers have to open their classrooms to the actual subcultural subjects and practices of their pupils. The pursuit of existential problems and the effort to find solutions can prepare the ground for new factual learning. In reference to social-philosophic theories, the culture-critical contents of these pictures should also be questioned. The images produced at the edge of society very often are pictures of a torn world.     

Assessment of Inhalation Exposures and Potential Health Risks to the General Population that Resulted from the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers

In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated numerous air monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster. Using these data, EPA conducted an inhalation exposure and human health risk assessment to the general population. This assessment does not address exposures and potential impacts that could have occurred to rescue workers, firefighters, and other site workers, nor does it address exposures that could have occurred in the indoor environment. Contaminants evaluated include particulate matter (PM), metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, silica, and synthetic vitreous fibers (SVFs). This evaluation yielded three principal findings. (1) Persons exposed to extremely high levels of ambient PM and its components, SVFs, and other contaminants during the collapse of the WTC towers, and for several hours afterward, were likely to be at risk for acute and potentially chronic respiratory effects. (2) Available data suggest that contaminant concentrations within and near ground zero (GZ) remained significantly elevated above background levels for a few days after 9/11. Because only limited data on these critical few days were available, exposures and potential health impacts could not be evaluated with certainty for this time period. (3) Except for inhalation exposures that may have occurred on 9/11 and a few days afterward, the ambient air concentration data suggest that persons in the general population were unlikely to suffer short-term or long-term adverse health effects caused by inhalation exposures. While this analysis by EPA evaluated the potential for health impacts based on measured air concentrations, epidemiological studies conducted by organizations other than EPA have attempted to identify actual impacts. Such studies have identified respiratory effects in worker and general populations, and developmental effects in newborns whose mothers were near GZ on 9/11 or shortly thereafter. While researchers are not able to identify specific times and even exactly which contaminants are the cause of these effects, they have nonetheless concluded that exposure to WTC contaminants (and/or maternal stress, in the case of developmental effects) resulted in these effects, and have identified the time period including 9/11 itself and the days and few weeks afterward as a period of most concern based on high concentrations of key pollutants in the air and dust.     

Industrial Relations and Trade Union Effects on Innovation in Germany

ABSTRACT: This paper provides a thoretical and empirical evaluation of unions’effects on innovative activity, focussing on institutional details and country-specific factors. We represent results of an econometric investigation for Germany using data at the industry and establishment level. In contrast to US studies, no statistically significant negative influence of unions on innovative activity shows up from industry-level data. Establishment-level data, however, indicate that the presence of a works council is positive for R & D if union density is not “too high”. This is in line with the more cooperative nature of industrial relations in Germany.     

Free,free, set them free? Are programmes effective that allow job centres considerable freedom to choose the exact design?

Active labour market programmes are expected to be quite effective if job centres have a substantial degree of freedom to deliver tailor‐made individual services. For Germany, we studied the effectiveness of Schemes for Activation and Integration (SAI), which were introduced in 2009 to grant such freedoms to implement short training and private placement services. We estimated SAI participation effects on welfare recipients’ earnings and employment rate using propensity score matching and rich administrative data. We distinguished between participation in in‐firm training or training in other settings, and considered effect heterogeneity by gender, region and non‐employment duration. Participation substantially improved the participants’ earnings and employment rate, in‐firm training more so than training in other settings. Our employment effect estimates were not considerably larger than those previously found for comparable pre‐reform programmes. A lack of experience with SAI and a still inadequate client focus in the period studied might explain this.     

Orphanhood and Human Capital Destruction: Is There Persistence into Adulthood?

This article presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long run for health and education outcomes in a region of northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991–1994 who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19%, lost one or more parents before age 15 in this period, allowing us to assess permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. In the analysis, we control for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. We find that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5% compared with similar children whose mothers survived until at least their 15th birthday.     

The Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Methodological Artefact?

A number of recent publications claims to have demonstrated that the pattern of environmental pollution in growing economies follows an inverted parabolic curve, called the environmental Kuznets curve. It is suggested that the Kuznets curve is a logical consequence of the kind of measurement but with little meaning for future, efficiency based environmental policies. Environmental Space as an measure of environmental pressures is introduced, accounting for the total use of energy, materials and land. Based on this, the trends in overall resource consumption are described. No indication of an environmental Kuznets curve can be found for the total resource throughput in several countries.     

Multidimensional time and income poverty: well-being gap and minimum 2DGAP poverty intensity – German evidence

This paper focuses on interdependent multidimensional poverty of time and income with its incidence and intensity. We introduce a Two Dimensional Minimum Poverty Gap (2DGAP) measure, which quantifies the shortest path to escape multidimensional poverty. The 2DGAP disentangles single poverty attribute gaps while assuring their interdependence; an important issue for targeted antipoverty policies. Besides income, we include genuine personal leisure time with social participation reflecting Sen’s capability approach. The interdependence of multidimensional poverty is estimated by a CES-type well-being function with individual German data. The empirical results of Germany’s “working poor” emphasize the importance of time with social participation aspects in the multidimensional poverty discussion.     

In the Yugoslav Mirror: The EU Disintegration Crisis

The Yugoslav and the present EU integration crisis display several parallels. In both cases, the integration models have proved to be unable to attenuate the uneven development patterns, and the state has been characterised by strong confederal elements. Deep economic crisis strengthened in both cases the centrifugal tendencies. The political discourse became increasingly dominated by the question ‘who exploits whom?’. While central authorities pursued policies of neo-liberal structural adjustment eroding its legitimacy among the popular classes, the republican authorities in Yugoslavia, respectively, the national governments in the EU tried to shift the burden of the crises to the others and strengthened their role during the crisis management. With the deepening of the crisis, constitutional reform became an issue in Yugoslavia. In the Yugoslav case, the various proposals proved to be irreconcilable. In the EU, a debate on its future shape has begun as well. This issue is highly controversial. In the EU, a key problem is the relationship between euro zone and non-euro zone states. Such an institutional divide did not exist in Yugoslavia. It is significant that the leading state of the non-euro zone group, the UK, is the first state to exit the EU. A key question is whether the EU has already passed the critical point where a deep reform is still possible.