Impact of child labor on academic performance : evidence from the program "Edúcame Primero Colombia"

In this study, the effects of different variables of child labor on academic performance are investigated. To this end, 3302 children participating in the child labor eradication program “Edúcame Primero Colombia” were interviewed. The interview format used for the children's enrollment into the program was a template from which socioeconomic conditions, academic performance, and child labor variables were evaluated. The academic performance factor was determined using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The data were analyzed through a logistic regression model that took into account children who engaged in a type of labor (n = 921). The results showed that labor conditions, the number of weekly hours dedicated to work, and the presence of work scheduled in the morning negatively affected the academic performance of child laborers. These results show that the relationship between child labor and academic performance is based on the conflict between these two activities. These results do not indicate a linear and simple relationship associated with the recognition of the presence or absence of child labor. This study has implications for the formulation of policies, programs, and interventions for preventing, eradicating, and attenuating the negative effects of child labor on the social and educational development of children.

Bio-inspired plume tracking algorithm for UAVS

There is an increased interest on the use of UAVs for environmental research and to track bush fire plumes, volcanic plumes or pollutant sources. The aim of this paper is to describe the theory and results of a bio-inspired plume tracking algorithm. A memory based and gradient based approach, were developed and compared. A method for generating sparse plumes was also developed. Results indicate the ability of the algorithms to track plumes in 2D and 3D.

Why does child labor persist with declining poverty?

We develop a dynamic overlapping generations model to highlight the role of income inequality in explaining the persistence of child labor under declining poverty. Differential investment in two forms of human capital—schooling and health—in the presence of inequality gives rise to a nonconvergent income distribution in the steady state characterized by multiple steady states of relative income with varying levels of education, health, and child labor. The child labor trap thus generated is shown to preserve itself despite rising per capita income. Policy recommendations include public provision of education targeted toward reducing schooling costs for the poor or raising the efficacy of public health infrastructure.

Creative destruction: The Trans-Pacific Partnership, jobs, and labor rights

In the United States, there has been a fierce debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and its impact upon jobs, employment, and labor rights and standards. This sweeping trade agreement spans the Pacific Rim, and includes such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, and Japan. There has been concern over the secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership — particularly in respect of labor rights.

Location and labor: Critical crossroads in global film and television

I approached the editorial prompt as an opportunity to work through some of the concerns driving my current research on creative labor in emergent or ‘peripheral’ media hubs, centers of production activity outside established media capitals that are nevertheless increasingly integrated into a global production apparatus. It builds from my research on the role that film, television and digital media production have played in the economic and cultural strategies of Glasgow, Scotland, and extends the focus on media work to other locations, including Prague and Budapest. I am particularly drawn to the spatial dynamics at play in these locations and how local producers, writers, directors and crew negotiate a sense of place and creative identity against the flows and counter-flows of capital and culture. This means not only asking questions about the growing ensemble of people, places, firms and policies that make international productions possible, but also studying the more quotidian relationships between media workers and the locations (both near and far) where they now find work. I do not see these tasks as unrelated. On the one hand, such queries underscore how international production depends on a growing constellation of interchangeable parts and is facilitated by various actors whose agendas may or may not converge. On the other hand, these questions also betray an even more complicated dynamic, a process that is shifting the spatial orientation of both location and labor around uneven and contested scales. As local industries reimagine themselves as global players, media practitioners are caught up in a new geography of creative labor: not only are personnel finding it increasingly necessary to hop from place to place to follow the work, but also place itself is changing, as locations morph into nebulous amalgamations of tax rebates, subsidized facilities, production services and (when it still matters) natural beauty.

Experiments on a plume with off-source heating: Implications for cloud fluid dynamics

We report here on a series of laboratory experiments on plumes, undertaken with the object of simulating the effect of the heat release that occurs in clouds on condensation of water vapor. The experimental technique used for this purpose relies on ohmic heating generated in an electrically conducting plume fluid subjected to a suitable alternating voltage across specified axial stations in the plume flow [Bhat et al., 1989]. The present series of experiments achieves a value of the Richardson number that is toward the lower end of the range that characteristics cumulus clouds. It is found that the buoyancy enhancement due to heating disrupts the eddy structures in the flow and reduces the dilution owing to entrainment of ambient fluid that would otherwise have occurred in the central region of the plume. Heating also reduces the spread rate of the plume, but as it accelerates the flow as well, the overall specific mass flux in the plume does not show a very significant change at the heat input employed in the experiment. However, there is some indication that the entrainment rate (proportional to the streamwise derivative of the mass flux) is slightly higher immediately after heat injection and slightly lower farther downstream. The measurements support a previous proposal for a cloud scenario [Bhat and Narasimha, 1996] and demonstrate how fresh insights into certain aspects of the fluid dynamics of clouds may be derived from the experimental techniques employed here.

Electrical Characterization of Airborne Vehicle Exhaust Plume

he induced current and voltage on the skin of an airborne vehicle due to the coupling of external electromagnetic field could be altered in the presence of ionized exhaust plume. So in the present work, a theoretical analysis is done to estimate the electrical parameters such as electrical conductivity and permittivity and their distribution in the axial and radial directions of the exhaust plume of an airborne vehicle. The electrical conductivity depends on the distribution of the major ionic species produced from the propellant combustion. In addition it also depends on temperature and pressure distribution of the exhaust plume as well as the generated shock wave. The chemically reactive rocket exhaust flow is modeled in two stages. The first part is simulated from the combustion chamber to the throat of the supersonic nozzle by using NASA Chemical Equilibrium with Application (CEA) package and the second part is simulated from the nozzle throat to the downstream of the plume by using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver. The contour plots of the exhaust parameters are presented. Eight barrel shocks which influence the distribution of the vehicle exhaust parameters are obtained in this simulation. The computed peak value of the electrical conductivity of the plume is 0.123 S/m and the relative permittivity varies from 0.89 to 0.99. The attenuation of the microwave when it is passing through the conducting exhaust plume has also been presented.

Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor

Precarious Creativity examines the seismic changes confronting media workers in an age of globalization and corporate conglomeration. This pathbreaking anthology peeks behind the hype and supposed glamor of screen media industries to reveal the intensifying pressures and challenges confronting actors, editors, electricians, and others. The authors take on pressing conceptual and methodological issues while also providing insightful case studies of workplace dynamics regarding creativity, collaboration, exploitation, and cultural difference. Furthermore, it examines working conditions and organizing efforts on all six continents, offering broad-ranging and comprehensive analysis of contemporary screen media labor in such places as Lagos, Prague, Hollywood, and Hyderabad. The collection also examines labor conditions across a range of job categories that includes, for example, visual effects, production services, and adult entertainment. With contributions from such leading scholars as John Caldwell, Vicki Mayer, Herman Gray, and Tejaswini Ganti, Precarious Creativity offers timely critiques of media globalization while also intervening in broader debates about labor, creativity, and precarity.

Central America: Labor Reports and Child Labor Reports Pursuant to the Trade Act of 2002, Section 2102(c)(8)-(9)

[Excerpt] These comments are in response to the “Request for Information Concerning Labor Rights in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua and their Laws Governing Exploitative Child Labor” published at 68 Fed. Reg. 19580 (April 21, 2003). This Request for Information was issued pursuant to Section 2102(c)(8) and (9) of the Trade Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-210, which requires the President, with respect to any proposed trade agreement, to submit to Congress a “meaningful labor rights report” and a “report describing the extent to which the country or countries that are parties to the agreement have in effect laws governing exploitative child labor.”

Illegal Immigration and the U.S. Labor Market of the 1990s

Public testimony by Prof. Briggs given before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, April 5, 1995.

The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor Problem?

This report is the third volume in ILAB’s international child labor series. It focuses on the use of child labor in the production of apparel for the U.S. market, and reviews the extent to which U.S. apparel importers have established and are implementing codes of conduct or other business guidelines prohibiting the use of child labor in the production of the clothing they sell. The report was mandated by the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996, P.L. 104-134.

Labor Regulations and Unionization Trends: Comparative Analysis of Latin American Countries

This paper discusses the influences of labor regulations on unionization rates through the comparative analysis of Argentina, Chile and Mexico, expecting to contribute to the understanding of the determinants of unionization in Latin America. These regulations, though only one of the factors determining unionization levels, have a crucial role, their influence being at least threefold: they define entitlements to and exclusions from the right to unionize, affect union recruitment strategies and, by generating incentives and disincentives, contribute to shape individual membership decisions. After discussing historical aspects of unionization in the three countries, the analysis centers successively in two periods in which the countries compared showed both similarities and contrasts relevant to the analysis of unionization trends. In the first, the comparison is between Argentina (1976-83) and Chile (1973-89), both under military regimes that had much in common, but with contrasting unionization trends. In the second, the focus is in Argentina (1991-2001) and Mexico (1984-2000), where the reforms implemented to liberalize the economy and ensuing social-economic and labor market transformations were similar, but unionization trends differed. It is argued that, in each case, the divergent behavior of unionization, in spite of the similar economic and sociopolitical contexts, may at least partly be attributed to differences in key labor institutions.

The Municipal Budgetary Response to Changing Labor Costs: The Case of San Francisco

"This paper analyzes how expenditures of the city of San Francisco were altered in response to changes in municipal labor costs over the period 1945 through 1976. A hybrid of the "demands" and the "organizational" models of budgeting is used to measure the budgetary response to changes in the relative prices of labor inputs. Descriptive and econometric evidence reveals significant adjustments both among and within departments in reaction to changes in relative labor costs. The empirical evidence demonstrates that the city's budgetary process is guided by simple allocative rules modified by price-responsive adjustments."

Labor-Management Cooperation

[Excerpt] In analyzing labor-management cooperation, it is important to be clear on what it is not. It is not an absence of strikes or conflict. Cooperation is not synonymous with industrial peace. Cooperation may take place even when bargaining leads to work stoppages; conversely, the mere absence of strikes is no evidence that there is labor-management cooperation. In the current period, there is a tendency to equate concessionary bargaining with labor-management cooperation. Demand for and acceptance of "givebacks" reflect economic pressures and relative bargaining strength and ought not to be interpreted as evidence of a cooperative relationship.