Active civic participation of immigrants in Portugal

Portugal’s historical past strongly influences the composition of the country’s immigrant population. The main third-country foreign nationals in Portugal originate traditionally from Portuguese-speaking African countries (namely Cape Verde, Angola, Guinea Bissau, and S. Tomé e Príncipe) and Brazil. In 2001, a newly created immigrant status entitled “permanence” authorization uncovered a quantitative and a qualitative change in the structure of immigrant population in Portugal. First, there was a quantitative jump from 223.602 foreigners in 2001 to 364.203 regularized foreigners in 2003. Secondly, there was a substantial qualitative shift in the composition of immigrants. The majority of the new immigrants began coming from Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, and the Russian Federation. Thus, European countries outside the E.U. zone now rank second (after African countries) in their contribution of individuals to the stocks of immigrant population in Portugal. The differences between the new and traditional immigration flows are visible in the geographical distribution of immigrants and in their insertion into the labour market. While the traditional flows would congregate around the metropolitan area of Lisbon and in the Algarve, the new migratory flows tend to be more geographically dispersed and present in less urbanized areas of Portugal. In terms of insertion in the labour market, although the construction sector is still the most important industry for immigrant labour, Eastern European workers may also be found in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors. The institutional conditions that encourage immigrants’ civic participation are divided at three different levels: the state, the local, and the civil society levels. At the state level, the High Commissioner for Migrations and Ethnic Minorities is the main organizational structure along with a set of interrelated initiatives operating under specific regulatory frameworks, which act as mediators between state officials and the Portuguese civil society, and more specifically, immigrant communities. At the local level, some municipalities created consultative councils and municipal departments aiming at encouraging the participation and representation of interests from immigrant groups and association in local policies. In the civil society sphere, the main actors in Portugal spurring immigrants civic participation are immigrant associations, mainstream associations directed toward immigration topics, and unions. The legal conditions framing immigrants’ access to social housing, education, health, and social security in Portugal are also considered to be positive. Conditions restricting immigrants’ civic participation are mainly normative and include the Portuguese nationality law, the regulations shaping the political participation of immigrants, namely in what concerns their right to vote, and employment regulations restricting immigrants’ access to public administration positions. Part II of the report focuses on the active civic participation of third country immigrants. First, reasons for the lack of research on this issue in Portugal are explained. On the one hand, the recent immigration history and the more urgent needs regarding school and economic integration kept this issue out of the research spotlight. On the other hand, it was just in the beginning of the 1990s that immigrants took the very first steps toward collective mobilisation. Secondly, the literature review of Portuguese bibliography covers research on third country immigrants’ associative movement, research on local authorities’ policies and discussion about ethnic politics and political mobilisation of immigrants in Portugal. As political mobilisation of these groups has been made mainly through ethnic and/or migrant organisations, a brief history of immigrants' associative movement is given. Immigrant associations develop multiple roles, covering the social, the cultural, the economic and the political domains. Political claiming for the regularisation of illegal immigrants has been a permanent and important field of intervention since the mid-1990s. Research results reveal the com5 plex relations between ethnic mobilisation and the set of legal and institutional frameworks developed by local and national governmental authorities targeted to the incorporation of minority groups. Case studies on the Oeiras district and on the Amadora district are then presented. Conclusions underline that the most active immigrant groups are those from Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau, since these groups have constituted a higher number of ethnic associations, give priority to political claiming and present a more politicised discourse. Reflecting on the future of research on civic participation of third country immigrants in Portugal, the authors state that it would be interesting and relevant to compare the Portuguese situation with those of other European countries, with an older immigration history, and analyse how the Portuguese immigrants’ associative movement will be affected by a changing legal framework and the emergence of new opportunities within the set of structures regarding the political participation of minority groups.

How enforcement institutions affect markets

In an experiment we study market outcomes under alternative incentive structures for third-party enforcers. Our transactions resemble an anonymous credit market where lenders can give loans and borrowers can repay them. When borrowers default, judges are free to enforce repayment but are themselves paid differently in each of three treatments. First, paying judges according to lenders votes maximizes surplus and the equality of earnings. In contrast, paying judges according to borrowers votes triggers insufficient enforcement, destroying the market and producing the lowest surplus and the most unequal distribution of earnings. Lastly, judges paid the average earnings of borrowers and lenders achieve results close to those based on lender voting. We employ a steps-of-reasoning argument to interpret the performances of different institutions. When voting and enforcement rights are allocated to different classes of actors, the difficulty of their task changes, and arguably as a consequence they focus on high or low surplus equilibria.

"As you receive with one hand, so should you give with the other": the mutual-help practices of Cape Verdeans on the Lisbon periphery”

Rural Cape Verdeans employ a number of mutual-help practices to mitigate the uncertainties surrounding activities fundamental to their subsistence. One of these practices is djunta mon (‘to work together’), a loosely planned, non-monetized system of allocating labor at peak intervals during the growing season. By means of djunta mon, neighbors or family members work in each other’s fields until the tasks of every landowning participant are complete. Alongside djunta mon in rural Cape Verde exist a number of other non-remunerated mutual-help practices, such as djuda mutua (‘mutual help’) and laja kaza (‘to add concrete to one’s house’). While less visible than djunta mon, they are nonetheless important in completing tasks essential to rural life in the islands. In this thesis, I will attempt to show how Cape Verdean immigrants in Lisbon have adapted the mutual-help practices of rural Cape Verde to a new, transnational context. The iterations of these practices in Lisbon differ from their rural counterparts in that they involve fewer people, occur on a year-round basis, and are concerned primarily with domestic work. They also help people find employment, access childcare, secure interest-free credit, and construct or repair houses. I will argue that extensive mutual-help ties ensure Cape Verdean migrants in Lisbon a sufficient pool of family and friends upon which they can rely for support and assistance. An additional element I will explore is the perception among Cape Verdean immigrants that these mutual-help practices seem to be occurring with less frequency. While this shift is in part due to the availability of other means of support, I will contend that the changing attitude of Cape Verdeans towards mutual help is also due to their encountering neoliberal notions of ‘self-accountability.’ Thus, Cape Verdeans perceive that their mutual-help practices are in decline, while simultaneously needing the material support that they provide.

Auctions of licences and market structure

This paper studies sequential auctions of licences to operate in amarket where those firms that obtain at least one licence then engage ina symmetric market game. I employ a new refinement of Nash equilibrium,the concept of {\sl Markovian recursively undominated equilibrium}.The unique solution satisfies the following properties: (i) when severalfirms own licences before the auction (incumbents), new entrants buylicences in each stage, and (ii) when there is no more than one incumbent,either the single firm preempts entry altogether or entry occurs inevery stage, depending on the parameter configuration.

Electoral platforms, implemented policies and abstention

Recent studies of American politics evidence that political polarization of both the electorate and the political elite have moved 'almost in tandem for the past half century' (McCarty et al., 2003, p.2), and that party polarization has steadily increased since the 1970s. On the other hand, the empirical literature on party platforms and implemented policies has consistently found an imperfect but nonnegligible correlation between electoral platforms and governmental policies: while platforms tend to be polarized, policies are moderate or centrist. However, existing theoretical models of political competition are not manifestly compatible with these observations.In this paper, we distinguish between electoral platforms and implemented policies by incorporating a non-trivial policy-setting process. It follows that voters may care not only about the implemented policy but also about the platform they support with their vote. We find that while parties tend to polarize their positions, the risk of alienating their constituency prevents them from radicalizing. The analysis evidences that the distribution of the electorate, and not only the (expected) location of a pivotal voter, matters in determining policies. Our results are consistent with the observation of polarized platforms and moderate policies, and the alienation and indifference components of abstention.

2008 Affirmative Action in Iowa Annual Review

In with accordance 19B.5 of the Code of Iowa, this item has submitted the fiscal year 2008 Affirmative Action in Iowa report. The report details the progress we have made to balance our workforce in FY 2008. Just as importantly, the plan describes steps to put into practice our continued commitment to increasing diversity in the state’ workforce and details our response to the challenges we face as a result of increased talent competition. The State's renewed emphases on recruitments. along with greater oversight of state agency hiring practices, are key strategies that we must aggressively employ in competing for talent and balancing our workforce.

Multiple filtering devices for the estimation of cyclical DSGE models

We propose a method to estimate time invariant cyclical DSGE models using the informationprovided by a variety of filters. We treat data filtered with alternative procedures as contaminated proxies of the relevant model-based quantities and estimate structural and non-structuralparameters jointly using a signal extraction approach. We employ simulated data to illustratethe properties of the procedure and compare our conclusions with those obtained when just onefilter is used. We revisit the role of money in the transmission of monetary business cycles.

Growth accounting in items of turbulence and death: efficiency, technology, capital accumulation and human capital 1929-1950

We employ a non-parametrical approach to growth accounting (Data Envelopment Analysis,DEA) to disentangle the proximate sources of labour productivity growth in 41 nationsbetween 1929 and 1950 by decomposing productivity growth into four components:technological change; efficiency catch-up (movements towards the production frontier),capital accumulation and human capital accumulation. We show that efficiency catch-upgenerally explains productivity growth, whereas technological change and factoraccumulation were limited and distorted by the effects of war. War clearly hamperedefficiency. Moreover, an unbalanced ratio of human capital to physical capital (a gap to thetechnological leader) was crucial for efficiency catching-up.

On heuristic and linear models of judgment: Mapping the demand for knowledge

Research on judgment and decision making presents a confusing picture of human abilities. For example, much research has emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, and yet, other findings suggest that these can be highly effective. A further line of research has modeled judgment as resulting from as if linear models. This paper illuminates the distinctions in these approaches by providing a common analytical framework based on the central theoretical premise that understanding human performance requires specifying how characteristics of the decision rules people use interact with the demands of the tasks they face. Our work synthesizes the analytical tools of lens model research with novel methodology developed to specify the effectiveness of heuristics in different environments and allows direct comparisons between the different approaches. We illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. We further link our results to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies and estimate both human andheuristic performance in the same tasks. Our results highlight the trade-off betweenlinear models and heuristics. Whereas the former are cognitively demanding, the latterare simple to use. However, they require knowledge and thus maps of when andwhich heuristic to employ.

European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM) accreditation of forensic pathology services in Europe.

Forensic experts play a major role in the legal process as they offer professional expert opinion and evidence within the criminal justice system adjudicating on the innocence or alleged guilt of an accused person. In this respect, medico-legal examination is an essential part of the investigation process, determining in a scientific way the cause(s) and manner of unexpected and/or unnatural death or bringing clinical evidence in case of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse in living people. From a legal perspective, these types of investigation must meet international standards, i.e., it should be independent, effective, and prompt. Ideally, the investigations should be conducted by board-certified experts in forensic medicine, endowed with a solid experience in this field, without any hierarchical relationship with the prosecuting authorities and having access to appropriate facilities in order to provide forensic reports of high quality. In this respect, there is a need for any private or public national or international authority including non-governmental organizations seeking experts qualified in forensic medicine to have at disposal a list of specialists working in accordance with high standards of professional performance within forensic pathology services that have been successfully submitted to an official accreditation/certification process using valid and acceptable criteria. To reach this goal, the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) has elaborated an accreditation/certification checklist which should be served as decision-making support to assist inspectors appointed to evaluate applicants. In the same spirit than NAME Accreditation Standards, European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM) board decided to set up an ad hoc working group with the mission to elaborate an accreditation/certification procedure similar to the NAME's one but taking into account the realities of forensic medicine practices in Europe and restricted to post-mortem investigations. This accreditation process applies to services and not to individual practitioners by emphasizing policies and procedures rather than professional performance. In addition, the standards to be complied with should be considered as the minimum standards needed to get the recognition of performing and reliable forensic pathology service.

Retinal degeneration progression changes lentiviral vector cell targeting in the retina

Ce travail de thèse a été réalisé au sein de l'Unité de Thérapie Génique et Biologie des Cellules Souches de l'Hôpital Jules- Gonin dans le Service d'Ophtalmologie de l'Université de Lausanne. Ce laboratoire recherche des solutions thérapeutiques pour des maladies dégénératives et incurables de la rétine comme les rétinites pigmentaires (RP). Ayant déjà montré certains résultats dans le domaine, la thérapie génique a été notre outil pour ce travail. Cette méthode se base sur le principe de remplacer un gène déficient par sa copie normale, en transportant celle-ci au coeur même du noyau par un vecteur. Il existe à l'heure actuelle différents vecteurs. Un des plus efficaces est un vecteur viral non-réplicatif : le lentivirus, dérivé de HIV-1. Celui-ci a la capacité d'intégrer le génome de la cellule cible, lui conférant ainsi un nouveau matériel génétique. Notre but a été d'établir le tropisme du lentivirus dans une rétine en dégénérescence. Ce lentivirus est connu pour transduire efficacement les cellules de l'épithélium pigmentaire rétinien dans l'oeil adulte sain, ainsi que celles de la neurorétine, mais ce, uniquement durant le développement. On sait aussi que le vecteur lentiviral présente un tropisme différent selon les enveloppes dont il est muni ; par exemple, le lentivirus avec une enveloppe Mokola est connu pour transduire les cellules gliales du système nerveux central. La rétine qui dégénère montre quant à elle des changements de sa structure qui pourraient influencer la diffusion du vecteur et/ou son tropisme. Le postulat de base a été le suivant : chez l'adulte, la transduction des neurones de la rétine via le lentivirus pourrait être facilitée par l'altération de la membrane limitante externe induite par la dégénérescence (meilleure pénétrance du virus). D'un point de vue technique, nous avons utilisé deux types distincts de modèles murins de dégénérescence rétinienne : des souris Balb/C soumises à une dose toxique de lumière et les souris Rhodopsin knockout, animaux génétiquement modifiés. Comme vecteur viral, nous avons employé deux différents pseudotypes de lentivirus (caractérisés par les enveloppes virales) avec différents promoteurs (séquence d'ADN qui initie la transduction et confère la spécificité d'expression d'un gène). En changeant l'enveloppe et le promoteur, nous avons essayé de trouver la meilleure combinaison pour augmenter l'affinité du vecteur vis-à-vis des photorécepteurs d'abord, puis vis-à-vis d'autres cellules de la rétine. Nos résultats ont montré que la membrane limitante externe est effectivement altérée chez les deux modèles de dégénérescence, mais que cette modification ne favorise pas la transduction des photorécepteurs lorsqu'on utilise un vecteur lentiviral contenant une enveloppe VSVG et un promoteur photorécepteur-spécifique ou ubiquitaire. En effet, une forte réaction gliale a été observée. Par contre, en utilisant le lentivirus avec une enveloppe Mokola et un promoteur ubiquitaire, nous avons constaté une très bonne transduction au niveau des cellules de Millier dans la rétine en dégénérescence, phénomène non observé chez les souris sauvages. Ce travail a donc permis de trouver un vecteur viral efficace pour atteindre et transduire les cellules de Miiller, ceci seulement pendant la dégénérescence de la rétine. Ces cellules, une fois transduites, pourraient être utilisées pour sécréter dans la rétine des agents thérapeutiques tels que des facteurs neurotrophiques pour soutenir la survie des photorécepteurs ou des facteurs anti-angiogéniques pour prévenir la néo-vascularisation lors de diabète ou de dégénérescence maculaire liée à l'âge. - In normal mice, the lentiviral vector (LV) is very efficient to target the RPE cells, but transduces retinal neurons well only during development. In the present study, the tropism of LV has been investigated in the degenerating retina of mice, knowing that the retina structure changes during degeneration. We postulated that the viral transduction would be increased by the alteration of the iuter limiting membrane (OLM). Two different LV pseudotypes were tested using the VSVG arid the Mokola envelopes, as well as two animal models of retinal degeneration: light-damaged Balb-C and Rhodopsin knockout (Rho-/-) mice. After light damage, the OLM is altered and no significant increase of the number of transduced photoreceptors can be obtained with a LV-VSVG-Rhop-GFP vector. In the Rho-/- mice, an altération of the OLM was also observed, but the possibility of transducing photoreceptors was decreased, probably by ongoing gliosis. The use of a ubiquitous promoter allows better photoreceptor transduction, suggesting that photoreceptór-specific promoter activity change during late stages of photoreceptor degeneration. However, the number of targeted photoreceptors remains low. In contrast, LV pseudotyped with the tfokola envelope allows a wide dispersion of the ctor into the retina (corresponding to the injection bleb) with preferential targeting of Muller cells, a situation Mc\ does ot occur in the wild- type retina. Mokola-pseudotyped lentiviral vectors may serve to engineer these glial cells to deliver secreted therapeutic factors to a diseased area of the retina.

Space Utilization and Building Study for the Department of General Services, October 9, 2000

Purposes of this Report: • Recommend the most logical and economical options to address state governmental space needs in the Polk County metropolitan area to the year 2010. • Include building size, location, phasing, financing, method of project delivery and estimated cost. • Develop a software tool to compare costs of leasing vs. ownership of space. Methodology: Identify: 1. Current amount and location of owned and leased space, by agency; 2. Types of space and whether best located on or off of the Capitol Complex; 3. Utilization of space, noting over-crowding and under-utilization; 4. Current number of workstations for full and part time employees, Personnel Employment Organization (PEO) workers, contractors, interns, etc.; and, 5. History of staff levels to assist in the prediction of staff growth. Scope: This report focuses on 10 state-owned buildings located on the Capitol Complex and 48 leased spaces in the Polk County metropolitan area. (See Figures 1 and 2.) • Due to a separate space study under way by the Legislature, implications of area and staff for the State Capitol building are included only for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Treasurer, Secretary of State, Auditor and the Department of Management. • Because it is largely a museum building that does not have office space available for other agencies, the area and staff of the Historical Building are not fully addressed. • Only the parking implications of the new Judicial Building are included in this study because the building space is under the jurisdiction of the Judicial Branch and not available for other agencies. Several state-owned buildings are not included in the scope of this report, generally because they have highly focused purposes, and their space is not available for assignment to other agencies. Several leased locations are not included for similar reasons, including leases that do not fall within the authority of the Department of General Services.

Deciphering and reversing tumor immune suppression.

Generating an anti-tumor immune response is a multi-step process that is executed by effector T cells that can recognize and kill tumor targets. However, tumors employ multiple strategies to attenuate the effectiveness of T-cell-mediated attack. They achieve this by interfering with nearly every step required for effective immunity, from deregulation of antigen-presenting cells to establishment of a physical barrier at the vasculature that prevents homing of effector tumor-rejecting cells and the suppression of effector lymphocytes through the recruitment and activation of immunosuppressive cells such as myeloid-derived suppressor cells, tolerogenic monocytes, and T regulatory cells. Here, we review the ways in which tumors exert immune suppression and highlight the new therapies that seek to reverse this phenomenon and promote anti-tumor immunity. Understanding anti-tumor immunity, and how it becomes disabled by tumors, will ultimately lead to improved immune therapies and prolonged survival of patients.

Characterization of intonation in Karṇāṭaka music by parametrizing context-based Svara Distributions

Intonation is a fundamental music concept that has a special relevance in Indian art music. It is characteristic of the rāga and intrinsic to the musical expression of the performer. Describing intonation is of importance to several information retrieval tasks like the development of rāga and artist similarity measures. In our previous work, we proposed a compact representation of intonation based on the parametrization of the pitch histogram of a performance and demonstrated the usefulness of this representation through an explorative rāga recognition task in which we classified 42 vocal performances belonging to 3 rāgas using parameters of a single svara. In this paper, we extend this representation to employ context-based svara distributions, which are obtained with a different approach to find the pitches belonging to each svara. We quantitatively compare this method to our previous one, discuss the advantages, and the necessary melodic analysis to be carried out in future.

Representações Sociais do Consumo de Álcool e Drogas em Estudantes da Universidade Jean Piaget: um estudo com alunos de Direito e Psicologia.

O presente estudo teve como objectivo conhecer e caracterizar as Representações Sociais do consumo de álcool e drogas em estudantes dos cursos de Direito e Psicologia, na Universidade Jean Piaget de Cabo Verde. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo e exploratório, que adopta uma abordagem quantitativa, realizado com uma amostra com 99 estudantes universitários de ambos os sexos, com idade compreendida entre 18 e 48 anos, do 1º e do 4º ano dos cursos de Direito e Psicologia, que responderam a uma Escala de Representações Sociais sobre o consumo de álcool e drogas e a um questionário sobre dados pessoais.Após a recolha de dados, foram realizadas análises estatísticas de tipo descritivo, correlacional e inferencial, utilizando-se o programa estatístico SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science), versão 20.0. Os resultados indicaram ser pouco provável que exista uma relação segura (ou melhor, com significância estatística) entre as variáveis sexo, curso e ano escolar de um lado, e as representações sociais no total da escala, de outro. Entretanto, encontramos evidências de uma associação estatisticamente significativa entre a frequência do consumo de álcool e o total da ERS, e de uma associação estatística e altamente significativa entre a frequência do consumo de álcool e a componente Atitudes. Constatámos, outrossim, diferenças estatisticamente significativas entre os sexos a nível da subescala atitudes, sendo que o sexo masculino apresenta atitudes mais favoráveis e permissivas face ao consumo de álcool e drogas, comparativamente ao sexo feminino.