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This study documents two empirical regularities, using data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm (Last In, First Out; LIFO). Second, workers' wages rise with seniority (= a worker's tenure relative to the tenure of her colleagues). We seek to explain these regularities by developing a dynamic model of the firm with stochastic product demand and hiring cost (= irreversible specific investments). There is wage bargaining between a worker and its firm. Separations (quits or layoffs) obey the LIFO rule and bargaining is efficient (a zero surplus at the moment of separation). The LIFO rule provides a stronger bargaining position for senior workers, leading to a return to seniority in wages. Efficiency in hiring requires the workers' bargaining power to be in line with their share in the cost of specific investment. Then, the LIFO rule is a way to protect their property right on the specific investment. We consider the effects of Employment Protection Legislation and risk aversion.

This study documents two empirical regularities, using data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm (Last In, First Out; LIFO). Second, workers' wages rise with seniority (= a worker's tenure relative to the tenure of her colleagues). We seek to explain these regularities by developing a dynamic model of the firm with stochastic product demand and hiring cost (= irreversible specific investments). There is wage bargaining between a worker and its firm. Separations (quits or layoffs) obey the LIFO rule and bargaining is efficient (a zero surplus at the moment of separation). The LIFO rule provides a stronger bargaining position for senior workers, leading to a return to seniority in wages. Efficiency in hiring requires the workers' bargaining power to be in line with their share in the cost of specific investment, Then, the LIFO rule is a way to protect their property right on the specific investment. We consider the effects of Employment Protection Legislation and risk aversion.

In this study, we investigate whether population aging influences employment shares in different economic sectors. To this end, we employ dynamic panel data analysis. Our unbalanced data set comprises 54 countries and extends to a maximum time period from 1970 till 2004. Our results suggest that the aging variable - approximated by the ratio of elderly either to the total population or to the labor force - does have a statistically significant differentiated impact on the employment shares when controlling for other relevant factors, e.g., income per capita, share of trade in GDP, government consumption share in GDP, population size, etc. In particular, we find that an increase in the aging proxies exerts a statistically significant adverse effect on the employment shares in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and mining and quarrying industries. At the same time, increasing share of the elderly people in the society positively affects employment shares in community, social, and personal services as well as in the financial sector. In the simulation exercise, we illustrate the effects of aging on the employment structure within the next 45 years.

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic severallayer model of European gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall supply situation of natural gas to Europe, indicating that current worries about energy supply security issues may be overrated. LNG will likely increase its share of European natural gas imports in the future, Russia will not dominate the European imports (~ share of 1/3), the Middle East will continue to be a rather modest supplier, the UK is successfully converting from being a natural gas exporter to become a transit node for LNG towards continental Europe, and congested pipeline infrastructure, and in some cases LNG terminals, will remain a feature of the European gas markets, but less than in the current situation.

This study examined the prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in pregnant women in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Between April and July 2004, antenatal attendees at two of the largest maternity clinics in Kinshasa were tested to identify HIV status, syphilis, Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG). HIV seroprevalence was 1·9% in 2082 women. With PCR techniques, CT and NG infections were also uncommon in the first 529 women (1·7% and 0·4%, respectively). No active syphilis infection case was identified by Treponema pallidum haemagglutination assay (TPHA) and rapid plasma reagin test (RPR). A woman's risk of HIV infection was significantly associated with her reporting a male partner having had other female sexual partners (OR 2·7, 95% CI 1·2–6·2). The continuing low seroprevalence of HIV in pregnant women from Kinshasa was confirmed. Understanding factors associated with this phenomenon could help prevent a future HIV epidemic in low HIV transmission areas in Africa.

Budget, its structure, principles of performance and budget execution statement are actual topics of study by several branches of science, especially economics and law. For law studies this financial activity is important as hole of relations in preparing and utilization of centralized Fund. The object of this work is - budget execution statement ant its evaluation. The purpose of analysis is to define conception of budget execution statement, determine the main features that describe essence and purpose of statement. In this work is trying to answer what it means rule incorporate in the constitution of Lithuania that the Government of the Republic of Lithuania prepare and propose the Parliament budget execution statement. Budget execution statement as vehicle of parliament or municipal control is important in several aspects – in controlling performance of executive authority and indirectly by different committees or accountable institutions. It is analysing in this work several items: the structure of state budget execution statement and corpus of municipality budget execution statement; subjects, that responsible form preparing, confirmation, evaluation and control system.

We analyse the Dutch waste-collection market for 1998–2005. We show that municipalities with unit-based pricing (UBP) or waste collection by private companies have lower costs. However, this cost advantage decreases over time as competition decreases, because of the introduction of the VAT-compensation fund, and because of contamination of waste streams. The cost advantage of private provision is shown to be much larger in the first years, while a longer duration of private production results in lower efficiency. An important conclusion from this study is that UBP, although its effectiveness deteriorates over time, is more effective in reducing cost than is contracting out. Moreover, we show that the effect of contracting out might have been overestimated in the previous literature because there is a correlation between the use of contracting out and UBP. Low incentive UBP systems, based on volume or frequency, are only effective when the municipality does not collect the waste itself.

News literacy is having the ability to understand, evaluate, and make use of the news in different situations. Guided by Potter's Media Literacy Theory, this study assesses news literacy of public high school students nowadays. A total of 205 public high schools students, chosen using non-probability sampling, completed a self-administered questionnaire. Findings reveal that the respondents were generally aware of what news is. They selected and consumed news based on their personal interests and perceived importance. While they considered political news important, they did not consume much news about it since politics was not among their primary interests. Also, news for them had some relevance since they can use it especially in classroom-related activities. And as they handle variety of news, it can therefore be held that they are competent not only in news acquisition, but also in understanding and evaluating the news. Hence, as revealed by the findings in areas of news literacy, the authors regard the respondents as news literate.

Recent growth in carbon dioxide emissions from China's energy sector has exceeded expectations. In a major US government study of future emissions released in 2007 (1), participating models appear to have substantially underestimated the near-term rate of increase in China's emissions. We present a recalibration of one of those models to be consistent with both current observations and historical development patterns. The implications of the new specification for the feasibility of commonly discussed stabilization targets, particularly when considering incomplete global participation, are profound. Unless China's emissions begin to depart soon from their (newly projected) business-as-usual path, stringent stabilization goals may be unattainable. The current round of global policy negotiations must engage China and other developing countries, not to the exclusion of emissions reductions in the developed world and possibly with the help of significant financial incentives, if such goals are to be achieved. It is in all nations' interests to work cooperatively to limit our interference with the global climate.

Families with children appear among both the 'traditional' and 'new' poor in Russia. On one hand, having one or more dependent household members has traditionally been recognised as an economic risk. On the other hand, working parents of young children are often among those 'employed poor' which constitute one of the specific characteristics of the Russian poverty. Family policy is constituted by both selective and universal means of social provision. It is aimed at (1) poverty relief and (2) managing social-economic risks resulting from a role conflict related to individual's duties as workers and caregivers. This study is aimed to explore the transformation of the structure of family policy provision from the early 1990s to early 2000s, expressed by changes in criteria for eligibility and levels of provision, as well as in effects on poverty levels among families with children. It will be focused on two elements of family policy - parental leave regulations and financial transfers.

Authors' final draft ; In the process of promoting wound healing, epidermal growth factor (EGF) activates protein kinase C, protein tyrosine kinase and ERK MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase). The activation of these mediators in signal pathways can regulate the operation of K+ channels. In addition, the K+ channel is involved with cell migration and proliferation, both of which are requisite for wound healing. Recent studies, although not conducted on skin wounds, have found that the K+ channel is associated with wound healing and that wound healing can be promoted by regulating the K+ channels. Therefore, the authors hypothesize that healing of skin wounds could be promoted by regulating K+ channel distribution in skin keratinocytes or fibroblasts. We plan to conduct a study of the promotion of skin wound healing using K+ channel regulators. ; This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea government (MOST) (No. R01-2007-000-20746-0).

The early Cold War history (1948-1955) of cybernetics, or the study of information control and communication, offers an instructive footnote to 20th century history of media and communication. While also relevant to those interested in the international history of science and computing, this article treats the academic and ideological accommodation of Norbert Wiener's early seminal work on cybernetics into the Soviet academy primarily as an literary act historicized within the circumstances of Cold War politics. The first two articles in the Soviet press (1955) to translate Weiner's work favorably bear many ironies specific to the negotiated compromises of Cold War politics and cybernetics. To name two such ironies with contemporary relevance: the similarity between cooperation and cooptaton in military industrial support of scientific aids to peace and the ambiguity of the accommodationist character of cybernetics as an information system prelude to modern-day computing. Throughout, Peters argues that cybernetics, or communication history more generally, can be best understood through an international lens of analysis.

The use of solar energy constitutes a great concern of national and international bodies, as a result of a strategic policy towards green energy consumption. The Portuguese regulations on building thermal behaviour and energy efficiency, recently enacted by the Portuguese Government, in line with the European Union Directive 2002/91/CE, have introduced the obligatory use of solar collector technology for hot water production applied to new building projects and to some important retrofit works. To cope with the prescriptions of these regulations, the solar technology market is been growing and the Portuguese project designers and construction professionals are founding new challenges. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyse the major problems and initial impacts of the obligatory implementation of solar collector technology in buildings and provide contributions to improve solar energy use in the future. The results show that, as almost all new technology implementation, some obstacles have always to be faced initially.

This is a conference paper. ; Vital aspects in water supply, such as quality and reliability (or vulnerability) of the service have been overlooked up to date in the definition of the term 'Access' when used as a sector indicator. As a rule, governments at all levels are ignoring them and no investments are made accordingly. This paper describes the experience of the Spanish NGO Ingeniería Sin Fronteras (Engineering Without Borders) on considering both aspects in a pilot project implemented in Same rural District, Tanzania. Based on the water point mapping methodology, basic water quality tests were included during the campaign and seasonality questions were also processed. The study aims to provide an example of to which extent improved water points do provide safe water; while considering year round functionality as a key aspect if the service wants to be sustainable. New indicators are proposed and results discussed. Last section concludes providing information on the opportunities, costs and challenges of including this additional information when access indicators are to be used.

This paper describes a fast procedure for evaluating asphalt pavement surface defects using airborne emissivity data. To develop this procedure, we used airborne multispectral emissivity data covering an urban test area close to Venice (Italy).For this study, we first identify and select the roads' asphalt pavements on Multispectral Infrared Visible Imaging Spectrometer (MIVIS) imagery using a segmentation procedure. Next, since in asphalt pavements the surface defects are strictly related to the decrease of oily components that cause an increase of the abundance of surfacing limestone, the diagnostic absorption emissivity peak at 11.2μm of the limestone was used for retrieving from MIVIS emissivity data the areas exhibiting defects on asphalt pavements surface.The results showed that MIVIS emissivity allows establishing a threshold that points out those asphalt road sites on which a check for a maintenance intervention is required. Therefore, this technique can supply local government authorities an efficient, rapid and repeatable road mapping procedure providing the location of the asphalt pavements to be checked.