Der einleitende Beitrag zum Schwerpunktheft 'Aussiedlerintegration' versucht, in knapper Form die Beiträge thematisch zu koordinieren und einige Aspekte der historischen Entwicklung der Problematik anzudeuten. Angesichts der Erfahrungen in den 60er-, 70er-, und 80er Jahren, in denen die Aussiedler auf Grund verschiedener Rahmenbedingungen mehr oder weniger 'spurlos' in der damaligen Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland aufgingen, stellt sich die Lage nach dem Zusammenbruch der sozialistischen Systeme in Osteuropa gravierend anders dar. Heute ist die Einwanderung deutschstämmiger Aussiedler nicht mehr unmittelbar mit ihrer sozialen, ökonomischen und kulturellen Integration verbunden. Die Beiträge dokumentieren den aktuellen Stand der Aussiedlerforschung, in derem Zentrum heute die eher langfristigen Folgen der Aussiedlung für die Familien stehen. (ICA)
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are driving profound changes in the way in which individuals, organizations and governments interact. In particular, the internet has been a major force behind the development towards a more globalized, knowledge-based economy. However, in terms of computer access and internet usage, a digital divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' has long been recognized. One key sector of non-users consists of older persons. For various reasons – including no exposure to computers over their lifetime and in their occupations, income levels, physical disability and access to affordable ICT training – only limited percentages of older people have adequate ICT skills. A growing concern is that older adults who do not engage with ICTs face social disadvantages and exclusion. This article reports upon a qualitative study on older non-users of ICTs, with its key goal being to understand what leads to, and the effects of, digital exclusion in later life. Results found that older persons who never made use of ICTs were significantly delineated by gender and socio-economic status patterns - namely, women (especially housewives, who had never been in paid employment), individuals who worked in blue-collar and working-class occupations, and the long-term unemployed. Data also demonstrated that access was not the main issue at hand, and that the failure of older adults to become digital citizens was the result of a continuum of overlapping barriers. This study provided information highlighting the rationales and motivations underlying individuals' non-use of computers - namely, believing that they were now 'too old' to use new technologies, a lack of relevance or 'life-fit' of computers, perceived non-usefulness and difficulty to use, anxiety about computer usage, concern about security and privacy issues, and the facing of disability issues. ; N/A
The paper examines cases of corrupt military procurement in Uganda since the late 1990s. It also considers the illicit business activities of Ugandan army officers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. The paper then discusses how military corruption aroused the concern of parliament, and became a matter of importance in the 2001 presidential elections. We argue that the prevalence of military corruption was the result of government and army leaders not being subject to public accountability. Not a single leader has been faced with prosecution or punishment for corrupt military behaviour. We conclude by arguing that military corruption has helped to maintain the National Resistance Movement (NRM) in power, although this has been realised at the cost of building a professional national army in Uganda.
The Southern Ocean is responsible for approximately 40% of oceanic carbon uptake through biological and physical processes. In the Southern Ocean, phytoplankton growth is limited by low iron (Fe) and light supply. Climate model projections for the Southern Ocean indicate that temperature, underwater irradiance and Fe supply are likely to change simultaneously in the future due to increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The individual effects of these environmental properties on phytoplankton physiology have been extensively researched, and culturing studies using Southern Ocean phytoplankton have shown that temperature and Fe will play a key role on setting growth under future conditions. To explore the potential responses of Southern Ocean phytoplankton to these environmental changes, we cultured the haptophyte Phaeocystis antarctica and the diatoms Chaetoceros flexuosus, Proboscia inermis, and Thalassiosira antarctica under two light and iron combinations and over a range of temperatures. Our study revealed that the thermal response curves of key Southern Ocean phytoplankton are diverse, with the highest growth rates measured at 5 ◦C (the annual temperature range at the isolation sites is currently 1–4◦C). Warming had species-specific effects on the photochemical efficiency of photosystem II (PSII; Fv/Fm), the functional absorption cross-section of PSII (σPSII), carbon:nitrogen ratio and cellular Chlorophyll a concentrations. Iron availability increased species' ability to tolerate warmer conditions by increasing the upper limit for growth and subsequently increasing the thermal niche that each species inhabit. ; This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship (SA) and Australian Research Council's Discovery Program (DP170102108 and DP130100679).
"The interwar period has left a deep impression on later generations. This was an age of crises where representative democracy, itself a relatively recent political invention, seemed unable to cope with the challenges that confronted it. It has recently become popular to make present-day analogies to the political developments of the 1920s and 1930s. This book asks whether such historical analogies make sense and why some democracies were able to cope with the stress of interwar crises whereas others were not. Focusing on democratic stability in Europe, the former British settler colonies, and Latin America, the book emphasizes the importance on democratic legacies and the strength of the associational landscape (i.e., organized civil society and institutionalized political parties) for the chances of democratic survival. Moreover, the book shows that these factors where themselves associated with a set of deeper structural conditions, which on the eve of the interwar period had brought about different political pathways"--
Iron-based alloys are widely used as structural components in engineering applications. This calls for a fundamental understanding of their mechanical properties, including those of pure iron. Under operational temperatures the mechanical and magnetic properties will differ from those of ferromagnetic body-centered-cubic iron at 0 K. In this theoretical work we study the effect of disordered magnetism on the screw dislocation core structure and compare with results for the ordered ferromagnetic case. Dislocation cores control some local properties such as the choice of glide plane and the associated dislocation mobility. Changes in the magnetic state can lead to modifications in the structure of the core and affect dislocation mobility. In particular, we focus on the core properties of the 1/2 screw dislocation in the paramagnetic state. Using the noncollinear disordered local moment approximation to address paramagnetism, we perform structural relaxations within density functional theory. We obtain the dislocation core structure for the easy and hard cores in the paramagnetic state, and compare them with their ferromagnetic counterparts. By averaging the energy of several disordered magnetic configurations, we obtain an energy difference between the easy- and hard-core configurations, with a lower, but statistically close, value than the one reported for the ferromagnetic case. The magnetic moment and atomic volume at the dislocation core differ between paramagnetic and ferromagnetic states, with possible consequences on the temperature dependence of defect-dislocation interactions. ; Funding Agencies|Swedish Research Council (VR)Swedish Research Council [2014-6336, 2019-05403]; Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions [INCA 600398]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFOMatLiU) [2009 00971]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Wallenberg Scholar Grant) [KAW-2018.0194]; Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research through the Future Research Leaders 6 program [FFL 15-0290]
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 10(11), 2019 ; Over the recent years, there has been an immense attraction towards age detection due to its raised implementation in various sectors. Such as government regulations and rules, security control, and human computer interaction. Popular human features such as the face and fingerprints can be modified or changed with time. However, ear has a stable structure that does not change with time and have unique features that satisfies the requirements of a biometric trait. This research presents a detailed analysis extracting the features of the human ear only by applying Deep Learning techniques. In particular, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is applied on large datasets which have multiple layers to extract the features and classify them. The proposed methodology increased the number of the dataset by collecting more private children datasets, and consequently achieved high accuracy by 98.75% along with amending the architecture of the selected neural network compared to previous studies. This research can be benefited to control the contents of social media by detecting the age of group whether it is under 18 or above 18. ; http://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume10No11/Paper_43-Smart_Age_Detection_for_Social_Media.pdf
In 1983 two million employees in South Africa were subject to minimum wages in terms of industrial council or wage board legislation. Studies of wage determination have been hampered by the lack of knowledge of actual wage rates. This paper compares the wage rates as laid down by the Industrial Council for the Iron. Steel, Engineering and Metallurgical Industry with the wages contained in a national salary survey, the latter representing 'actual' market wages. A job evaluation system has been used as the basis of comparison between the minimum and market rates. Both minimum and actual wages display similar characteristics in that the lowest levels have received the greatest (real) increases over the period under consideration. The upper skilled levels have seen a decrease in wages in real terms, with increases in actual wages being lower than the rates at which the minimum rates have increased. Explanations are sought both from an economic and a socio-political point of view.
The Korean War ended more than 70 years ago, and a tense peace has reigned ever since on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas have exchanged artillery fire, battled in the economic and diplomatic arenas, and even covertly dispatched spies to each other's territory. But the threats of a resumption of conflict, disproportionately coming from North Korea in recent years, have been rhetorical. The firepower of the South Korean military, backed by a U.S. defense pact, has deterred Pyongyang; the sheer number of soldiers in the North Korean army, backed by a small but operational nuclear arsenal, has deterred Seoul.But borders don't seem quite as inviolable as they once did. Russia has invaded Ukraine, Israel has sent forces into Gaza, and even Venezuela recently seemed to contemplate an incursion into Guyana. The United States, meanwhile, has recently attacked various targets abroad, from the Houthis in the Red Sea to Iranian commanders in Syria.Against this geopolitical backdrop, are the latest threats emanating from Pyongyang still rhetorical?North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sounds more and more embattled and belligerent. In power since the death of his father at the end of 2011, he has been constrained by a hemorrhaging economy and uncompromising adversaries abroad. The growth rate of the North Korean economy wasn't too bad at the beginning of his tenure. Since 2017, however, the arrow has simply gone downward, with a devastating 4.1 percent contraction in 2018, followed by a further 4.5 percent decline during the pandemic year of 2020. International sanctions have made North Korea dangerously dependent on China for trade, which explains in part Kim Jong Un's current interest in covering his bets by improving relations with Russia.Meanwhile, the two leaders that promised some form of engagement with Pyongyang—South Korea's Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump—are no longer in office. South Korea's current government is very cool toward engagement. Joe Biden, focused on a raft of other foreign policy challenges from Ukraine to Gaza, has not expressed much interest in expending political capital on a risky venture like negotiating with Pyongyang.Washington's failure to remain engaged with North Korea is the primary reason that longtime North Korea watchers Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker believe that Kim Jong Un has abandoned the default approach of more-or-less peaceful coexistence in favor of launching an attack against South Korea. In some ways, Kim is following the logic of Hamas, an illiberal force also in charge of a largely failed entity. Kim, too, perceives his adversaries as complacent, uninterested in any real negotiations, and vulnerable to a surprise attack. Presiding over an "open air prison" in Gaza, Hamas decided it had nothing left to lose. The North Korean leadership, in charge of an impoverished country with a horrific human rights record, may well have decided that it also has run out of options."The literature on surprise attacks should make us wary of the comfortable assumptions that resonate in Washington's echo chamber but might not have purchase in Pyongyang," Carlin and Hecker write in 38North. "This might seem like madness, but history suggests those who have convinced themselves that they have no good options left will take the view that even the most dangerous game is worth the candle."Carlin and Hecker don't have what the Israeli intelligence community possessed a year before the October 7 attacks, namely a detailed description of preparations to launch a surprise attack. They are relying on official North Korean statements eschewing reunification of the peninsula and a constitutional change that now identifies South Korea as an adversary rather than as tanil minjok ("one people, one blood"). This week, reports based on satellite images showed the destruction of Pyongyang's iconic Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, also called the Arch of Reunification, which Kim earlier referred to as "an eyesore," and called for its demolition.North Korea has also recently conducted a rash of missile tests, including one with a hypersonic warhead, as well as military drills near the maritime border that seem designed to provoke a response from the South. As sober analysts, Carlin and Hecker are not given to overstatement, so their warnings must be taken seriously.At the same time, the usual North Korean approach has been to make wild threats to get the attention of an otherwise indifferent U.S. government in order to pave the way for a fresh round of negotiations. Missile launches, nuclear tests, and promises to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" have all, in the past, signaled not an interest in war but, perversely, a determination to restart peace talks with newly attentive adversaries. Also, Kim might be eyeing elections in South Korea where the pro-engagement opposition party is hoping to increase its parliamentary majority in the April elections and in the United States where Donald Trump is now running even or better against Joe Biden in the polls. Trump has long boasted of the 27 "love letters" he exchanged with the North Korean leader. Perhaps, Kim strategizes, the love could continue if Trump is reelected.Beware wishful thinking. Most analysts misinterpreted Vladimir Putin's warlike rhetoric and military preparations at the end of 2021 as merely a bid for Western attention and a better bargaining position at the negotiations table. Conventional notions about the deterrence of superior force—Israel, NATO, South Korea—may not apply in a world of increasingly volatile leaders and increasingly violated borders.Kim's closer relationship with Putin may well prove pivotal in North Korean calculations. Beijing has traditionally attempted to rein in Pyongyang because an overly provocative neighbor is not good for the Chinese economy in addition to boosting U.S. military presence in the region. Moscow, on the other hand, might be sending different messages, given Putin's more confrontational approach to the West. Just as the war in Gaza has proven a boon to the Kremlin, in that it has distracted attention and military hardware away from the European theater of operations, a conflict on the Korean peninsula would be an even greater draw on U.S. and European resources.In the late 1940s, Stalin was skeptical about the advantages of North Korea attacking South Korea. Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, eventually convinced Stalin otherwise and won Soviet support for the attack on the south that took place on June 25, 1950. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has indicated that he will visit North Korea "at an early date," his first trip there since 2000. Pundits and policymakers take note: Putin's visit might tip the balance one way or the other in North Korea's deliberations over war and peace.In the meantime, it's not too late for the United States and South Korea to offer Kim Jong Un an offramp from the conflict he has yet to initiate.
