Social Investment Policies in Times of Permanent Austerity

The objective of this paper is to identify the political conditions that are most likely to be conducive to the development of social investment policies. It starts from the view put forward by theorists of welfare retrenchment that in the current context of permanent austerity, policy is likely to be dominated by retrenchment and implemented in a way that allows governments to minimise the risk of electoral punishment (blame avoidance). It is argued that this view is inconsistent with developments observed in several European countries, were some welfare state expansion has taken place mostly in the fields of childcare and active labour market policy. An alternative model is put forward, that emphasises the notion of "affordable credit claiming". It is argued that even under strong budgetary pressures, governments maintain a preference for policies that allow them to claim credit for their actions. Since the traditional redistributive policies tend to be off the menu for cost reasons, governments have tended to favour investments in childcare and active labour market policy as credit claiming tools. Policies developed in this way while they have a social investment flavour, tend to be rather limited in the extent to which they genuinely improve prospects of disadvantaged people by investing in their human capital. A more ambitious strategy of social investment sees unlikely to develop on the basis of affordable credit claiming. The paper starts by presenting the theoretical argument, which is then illustrated with examples taken from European countries both in the pre-crisis and in the post-crisis years.

Strategic Enterprise Architecture Management - Challenges, Best Practices, and Future Developments

The discipline of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) deals with the alignment of business and information systems architectures. While EAM has long been regarded as a discipline for IT managers this book takes a different stance: It explains how top executives can use EAM for leveraging their strategic planning and controlling processes and how EAM can contribute to sustainable competitive advantage. Based on the analysis of best practices from eight leading European companies from various industries the book presents crucial elements of successful EAM. It outlines what executives need to do in terms of governance, processes, methodologies and culture in order to bring their management to the next level. Beyond this, the book points how EAM might develop in the next decade allowing today's managers to prepare for the future of architecture management.

Faire la ville juste : une analyse "in itinere" de la maîtrise publique d'ouvrage du projet urbain Carré de Soie (métropole lyonnaise)

Dans certaines portions des agglomérations (poches de pauvreté de centre-ville, couronnes suburbaines dégradées, espaces périurbains sans aménité), un cumul entre des inégalités sociales (pauvreté, chômage, etc.) et environnementales (exposition au bruit, aux risques industriels, etc.) peut être observé. La persistance de ces inégalités croisées dans le temps indique une tendance de fond : la capacité d'accéder à un cadre de vie de qualité n'est pas équitablement partagée parmi les individus. Ce constat interroge : comment se créent ces inégalités ? Comment infléchir cette tendance et faire la ville plus juste ?¦Apporter des réponses à cette problématique nécessite d'identifier les facteurs de causalités qui entrent en jeu dans le système de (re)production des inégalités urbaines. Le fonctionnement des marchés foncier et immobilier, la « tyrannie des petites décisions » et les politiques publiques à incidence spatiale sont principalement impliqués. Ces dernières, agissant sur tous les éléments du système, sont placées au coeur de ce travail. On va ainsi s'intéresser précisément à la manière dont les collectivités publiques pilotent la production de la ville contemporaine, en portant l'attention sur la maîtrise publique d'ouvrage (MPO) des grands projets urbains.¦Poser la question de la justice dans la fabrique de la ville implique également de questionner les référentiels normatifs de l'action publique : à quelle conception de la justice celle-ci doit- elle obéir? Quatre perspectives (radicale, substantialiste, procédurale et intégrative) sont caractérisées, chacune se traduisant par des principes d'action différenciés. Une méthodologie hybride - empruntant à la sociologie des organisations et à l'analyse des politiques publiques - vient clore le volet théorique, proposant par un détour métaphorique d'appréhender le projet urbain comme une pièce de théâtre dont le déroulement dépend du jeu d'acteurs.¦Cette méthodologie est utilisée dans le volet empirique de la recherche, qui consiste en une analyse de la MPO d'un projet urbain en cours dans la première couronne de l'agglomération lyonnaise : le Carré de Soie. Trois grands objectifs sont poursuivis : descriptif (reconstruire le scénario), analytique (évaluer la nature de la pièce : conte de fée, tragédie ou match d'improvisation ?) et prescriptif (tirer la morale de l'histoire). La description de la MPO montre le déploiement successif de quatre stratégies de pilotage, dont les implications sur les temporalités, le contenu du projet (programmes, morphologies) et les financements publics vont être déterminantes. Sur la base de l'analyse, plusieurs recommandations peuvent être formulées - importance de l'anticipation et de l'articulation entre planification et stratégie foncière notamment - pour permettre à la sphère publique de dominer le jeu et d'assurer la production de justice par le projet urbain (réalisation puis entretien des équipements et espaces publics, financement de logements de qualité à destination d'un large éventail de populations, etc.). Plus généralement, un décalage problématique peut être souligné entre les territoires stratégiques pour le développement de l'agglomération et les capacités de portage limitées des communes concernées. Ce déficit plaide pour le renforcement des capacités d'investissement de la structure intercommunale.¦La seule logique du marché (foncier, immobilier) mène à la polarisation sociale et à la production d'inégalités urbaines. Faire la ville juste nécessite une forte volonté des collectivités publiques, laquelle doit se traduire aussi bien dans l'ambition affichée - une juste hiérarchisation des priorités dans le développement urbain - que dans son opérationnalisation - une juste maîtrise publique d'ouvrage des projets urbains.¦Inner-city neighborhoods, poor outskirts, and peri-urban spaces with no amenities usually suffer from social and environmental inequalities, such as poverty, unemployment, and exposure to noise and industrial hazards. The observed persistence of these inequalities over time points to an underlying trend - namely, that access to proper living conditions is fundamentally unequal, thus eliciting the question of how such inequalities are effected and how this trend can be reversed so as to build a more equitable city.¦Providing answers to such questions requires that the causal factors at play within the system of (re)production of urban inequalities be identified. Real estate markets, "micromotives and macrobehavior", and public policies that bear on space are mostly involved. The latter are central in that they act on all the elements of the system. This thesis therefore focuses on the way public authorities shape the production of contemporary cities, by studying the public project ownership of major urban projects.¦The study of justice within the urban fabric also implies that the normative frames of reference of public action be questioned: what conception of justice should public action refer to? This thesis examines four perspectives (radical, substantialist, procedural, and integrative) each of which results in different principles of action. This theoretical part is concluded by a hybrid methodology that draws from sociology of organizations and public policy analysis and that suggests that the urban project may be understood as a play, whose outcome hinges on the actors' acting.¦This methodology is applied to the empirical analysis of the public project ownership of an ongoing urban project in the Lyon first-ring suburbs: the Carré de Soie. Three main objectives are pursued: descriptive (reconstructing the scenario), analytical (assessing the nature of the play - fairy tale, tragedy or improvisation match), and prescriptive (drawing the moral of the story). The description of the public project ownership shows the successive deployment of four control strategies, whose implications on deadlines, project content (programs, morphologies), and public funding are significant. Building on the analysis, several recommendations can be made to allow the public sphere to control the process and ensure the urban project produces equity (most notably, anticipation and articulation of planning and real- estate strategy, as well as provision and maintenance of equipment and public spaces, funding of quality housing for a wide range of populations, etc.). More generally, a gap can be highlighted between those territories that are strategic to the development of the agglomeration and the limited resources of the municipalities involved. This deficit calls for strengthening the investment abilities of the intermunicipal structure.¦By itself, the real-estate market logic brings about social polarization and urban inequalities. Building an equitable city requires a strong will on the part of public authorities, a will that must be reflected both in the stated ambition - setting priorities of urban development equitably - and in its implementation managing urban public projects fairly.

Mating does not influence reproductive investment, in a viviparous lizard.

Mating is crucial for females that reproduce exclusively sexually and should influence their investment into reproduction. Although reproductive adjustments in response to mate quality have been tested in a wide range of species, the effect of exposure to males and mating per se has seldom been studied. Compensatory mechanisms against the absence of mating may evolve more frequently in viviparous females, which pay higher direct costs of reproduction, due to gestation, than oviparous females. To test the existence of such mechanisms in a viviparous species, we experimentally manipulated the mating opportunity of viviparous female lizard, Lacerta (Zootoca) vivipara. We assessed the effect of mating on ovulation, postpartum body condition and parturition date, as well as on changes in locomotor performances and body temperatures during the breeding cycle. Female lizards ovulated spontaneously and mating had no influence on litter size, locomotor impairment or on selected body temperature. However, offspring production induced a more pronounced locomotor impairment and physical burden than the production of undeveloped eggs. Postpartum body condition and parturition dates were not different among females. This result suggests that gestation length is not determined by an embryonic signal. In the common lizard, viviparity is not associated with facultative ovulation and a control of litter size after ovulation, in response to the absence of mating.

Strategic Adaptation in Function of Chronicity of Schizophrenic Symptoms During A Fluency Task: An fMRI Study

Background: Language processing abnormalities and executive difficulties are hallmark features of schizophrenia. The objective of this study is to assess the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response at two different stages of the illness (i.e. comparison between adolescents and adults with schizophrenic symptoms) during a fluency task.Methods: BOLD responses during a covert verbal fluency task were compared between 11 psychotic adolescents with schizophrenic symptoms (mean age 16,9 years) and 14 adults with schizophrenia (mean age 33,4 years). fMRI data were analyzed with standard routine of spm5.Results: First, expected activation's network was found for both groups, separately. Secondly, adolescents showed greater activation in left rolandic opercule (BA 48), left angular (BA 39) and right hippocampus compared to adults. Thirdly, adults demonstrated greater activation in presupplementary motor area (BA 6) and in precentral area (BA 4) compared to adolescents.Conclusions: The adolescents seemed to recruit a verbal network (Broca and Wernicke) and memory abilities to perform a fluency task. In contrast, adults seemed to recruit more executive function abilities to perform a similar task. Despite the evolution of schizophrenia, which is known to have a deleterious influence on the prefrontal cortex development, adult patients seemed to be able to recruit such areas to perform a verbal fluency / executive function task.

Parental investment and its sensitivity to corticosterone is linked to melanin-based coloration in barn owls.

Behavioral and physiological responses to unpredictable changes in environmental conditions are, in part, mediated by glucocorticoids (corticosterone in birds). In polymorphic species, individuals of the same sex and age display different heritable melanin-based color morphs, associated with physiological and reproductive parameters and possibly alternative strategies to cope with variation in environmental conditions. We examined whether the role of corticosterone in resolving the trade-off between self-maintenance and reproductive activities covaries with the size of melanin-based spots displayed on the ventral body side of male barn owls. Administration of corticosterone to simulate physiological stress in males revealed pronounced changes in their food-provisioning rates to nestlings compared to control males. Corticosterone-treated males with small eumelanic spots reduced nestling provisioning rates as compared to controls, and also to a greater degree than did corticosterone-treated males with large spots. Large-spotted males generally exhibited lower parental provisioning and appear insensitive to exogenous corticosterone suggesting that the size of the black spots on the breast feathers predicts the ability to cope with stressful situations. The reduced provisioning rate of corticosterone-treated males caused a temporary reduction in nestling growth rates but, did not affect fledgling success. This suggests that moderately elevated corticosterone levels are not inhibitory to current reproduction but rather trigger behavioral responses to maximize lifetime reproductive success.

Dynamic models of energy allocation and investment

In dynamic models of energy allocation, assimilated energy is allocated to reproduction, somatic growth, maintenance or storage, and the allocation pattern can change with age. The expected evolutionary outcome is an optimal allocation pattern, but this depends on the environment experienced during the evolutionary process and on the fitness costs and benefits incurred by allocating resources in different ways. Here we review existing treatments which encompass some of the possibilities as regards constant or variable environments and their predictability or unpredictability, and the ways in which production rates and mortality rates depend on body size and composition and age and on the pattern of energy allocation. The optimal policy is to allocate resources where selection pressures are highest, and simultaneous allocation to several body subsystems and reproduction can be optimal if these pressures are equal. This may explain balanced growth commonly observed during ontogeny. Growth ceases at maturity in many models; factors favouring growth after maturity include non-linear trade-offs, variable season length, and production and mortality rates both increasing (or decreasing) functions of body size. We cannot yet say whether these are sufficient to account for the many known cases of growth after maturity and not all reasonable models have yet been explored. Factors favouring storage are also reviewed.

Les fentes labio-palatines: suivi psychologique et investissement de l'enfant dans sa famille [The cleft lip and palate: psychological following child and family investment].

Congrès de la Société Française de Pédiatrie et de l'Association des Pédiatres de Langue Française (APLF)

Impact of engineered nanomaterials on health : considerations for benefit-risk assessment

Nanotechnology encompasses the design, characterisation, production and application of materials and systems by controlling shape and size at the nanoscale (nanometres). Nanomaterials may differ from other materials because of their relatively large specific surface area, such that surface properties become particularly important. There has been rapid growth in investment in nanotechnology by both the public and private sectors worldwide. In the EU, nanotechnology is expected to become an important strategic contributor to achieving economic gain and societal and individual benefits. At the same time there is continuing scientific uncertainty and controversy about the safety of nanomaterials. It is important to ensure that timely policy development takes this into consideration. Uncertainty about safety may lead to polarised public debate and to business unwillingness to invest further. A clear regulatory framework to address potential health and environmental impacts, within the wider context of evaluating and communicating the benefit-risk balance, must be a core part of Europe's integrated efforts for nanotechnology innovation. While a number of studies have been carried out on the effect of environmental nanoparticles, e.g. from combustion processes, on human health, there is yet no generally acceptable paradigm for safety assessment of nanomaterials in consumer and other products. Therefore, a working group was established to consider issues for the possible impact of nanomaterials on human health focussing specifically on engineered nanomaterials. This represents the first joint initiative between EASAC and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The working group was given the remit to describe the state of the art of benefits and potential risks, current methods for safety assessment, and to evaluate their relevance, identify knowledge gaps in studying the safety of current nanomaterials, and recommend on priorities for nanomaterial research and the regulatory framework. This report focuses on key principles and issues, cross-referencing other sources for detailed information, rather than attempting a comprehensive account of the science. The focus is on human health although environmental effects are also discussed when directly relevant to health