Open Access

Abstract As simple as it is, results describing the world are heavily dependent on the quality of the underlying data. One of the very crucial variables in microanalytical analyses of well-being and human resources is income. The more, when the situation of the self-employed is regarded. This paper focus on the distribution of income based on very sound data: the German Income Tax Statistic (Einkommensteuerstatistik) 1992. New is the actual possibility to use for the first time such a sound microdatabase to analyze the self-employed in particular: a 100.000 microdata sample of the population wide German Income Tax Statistic. New is the comparison between income from dependent and self-employed work with emphasis on the entrepreneurs and professions, and new is the indepth decomposition inequality analysis of the aggregated groups and of the single professions based on an inequality generalized entropy decomposition approach. One overall striking result is: the occupational status as an employee, entrepreneur or as a profession with its connected low between inequality share is by far not the overall driving factor to ‘explain’ the overall income distribution and inequality picture of the re-unified Germany; it is the within group inequality which counts in particular.

This study summarizes more than 15 years of scientific support for the United Nations-Economic Commission Europe (UN-ECE) Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) and other European environmental protection conventions such as the Commission for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) and the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) by means of development and application of numerical simulation models for the atmospheric long-range transport of heavy metals. The work is mainly based on results and conclusions described in the nine papers of the appendix but some more recent investigations which have not yet been published in the scientific literature are also presented. An introductory overview and synthesis of current knowledge and understanding pertaining to all major aspects of heavy metals in the atmosphere is presented from a viewpoint that numerical modelling of their atmospheric processes is necessary and feasible to support the conventions mentioned above. The models discussed in this study have capabilities to quantify transboundary fluxes of lead, cadmium and mercury as the priority metals of concern and have a potential to identify sources as well as to predict the impact of emission reductions on the load of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in Europe. Advantages and limitations of relatively simple Lagrangian models are outlined within the context of issues currently facing the environmental scientific and policy making communities. However, a focus of this study is a comprehensive model system for atmospheric mercury species using a fully three-dimensional Eulerian reference frame and incorporating a state-of-science mercury chemistry scheme, which has been adopted by various scientific institutions for their modelling purposes.

Combinatorial optimization is still one of the biggest mathematical challenges if you plan and organize the run-ning of a business. Especially if you organize potential factors or plan the scheduling and sequencing of opera-tions you will often be confronted with large-scaled combinatorial optimization problems. Furthermore it is very difficult to find global optima within legitimate time limits, because the computational effort of such problems rises exponentially with the problem size. Nowadays several approximation algorithms exist that are able to solve this kind of problems satisfactory. These algorithms belong to a special group of solution methods which are called local search algorithms. This article will introduce the topic of simulated annealing, one of the most efficient local search strategies. This article summarizes main aspects of the guest lecture Combinatorial Optimi-zation with Local Search Strategies, which was held at the University of Ioannina in Greece in June 1999.

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The EU electricity directive (96/92/EC) established the right of the member states to choose between Regulated and Negotiated Third Party Access (RTPA and NTPA). The interest group theory is able to explain whether the introduction of NTPA in Germany had been an interest group equilibrium under the restriction of EU-directive. Using the NTPA associations of electricity power suppliers, network monopolists and industrial consumers negotiated three agreements. The last one (AA VVII+) in December 2001 introduced a market comparison scheme with three structural features: “East-/West-Germany”, “consumption/population density”, and “cable rate”. These features are variables which are supposed to reflect cost differences between network suppliers. The theoretical analysis will derive the hypothesis that this conception allows to introduce a cost irrelevant factor and therefore to increase prices without harming firms which do not hold this factor. This hypothesis could be tested by analyzing the German low and medium voltage network suppliers in 2002 and 2003. Our estimations show that the use of structural feature “East-/West Germany” and “consumption/population density” could be explained by this hypothesis. But because we have no firm specific information about cost differences other explanations could not be excluded: Monopoly prices differ with marginal costs, and regulation could reflect real cost differences. The third structural feature “cable rate” has no influence in low voltage networks, but has an impact on access charges levied in medium voltage networks. This relationship is only given if we use the borderlines given by AA VVII+. Hence, we are not able to reject the interest group theory: The feature “cable rate” was introduced successfully to increase access charges for medium network suppliers which have high cable rates without having higher costs.

This thesis has been designed to improve the understanding of the distribution pattern and transport mechanisms of alkylphenols and the phthalates in the coastal margins, especially the roles of the air-sea exchanges in these processes. Henry’s Law Constants (HLC) were determined for the diastereomeric mixture of NP and t- OP in artificial seawater over given temperature range using a dynamic equilibrium system. An analytical method has been developed for the simultaneous extraction and determination of trace tertiary octylphenol (t-OP), technical nonylphenol isomers (NP), nonylphenol monoethoxylate isomers (NP1EO) and the phthalates in the atmosphere and sea water using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The method was successfully applied to the determination of APs and the phthalates in the atmosphere and sea water samples collected from the North Sea. A decreasing concentration profile of NP, t-OP, NP1EO and the phthalates appeared as the distance from the coast increased to the central part of the North Sea. Air-sea exchanges of t-OP, NP, DBP, BBP, and DEHP were estimated using the two-film resistance model based upon relative air-water concentrations. The average of air-sea exchange fluxes indicates a net deposition is occurring. These results suggest that the air–sea vapour exchange is an important process that intervenes in the mass balance of alkylphenols and the phthalates in the North Sea.

General Mental Ability, the Big Five, and several context specific variables are studied in regard to their relationship with two criteria of expatriate success, namely, adjustment and job performance. Interviews and standardized tests were conducted with a sample of 66 German and Austrian expatriates in South Korea. Results show no relationship with General Mental Ability for neither of the two criteria. Hypotheses for Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability were partially confirmed; Extraversion emerged to be negatively related to other-ratings of adjustment. Several context specific variables were found to be related to the criteria. Drawing from the study’s results, recommendations for future studies in the expatriate domain are provided.