Using pooled European Social Survey data (Rounds 4-7, 2008-2014), we investigate the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and subjective wellbeing (SWB) for young Europeans (N = 16,050 individuals aged 25-34 from 18 countries). Previous research has been struggling with inconclusive results due to the methodological challenge of disentangling the independent (i.e., "net") effect of social mobility over and above the effects of social origin and destination. We contribute to this line of research by contrasting mobility effects estimated in a conventional linear regression framework with net mobility effects estimated by (non-linear) diagonal mobility models (DMM). We show how model selection influences estimates of mobility effects and how different specifications lead to radically different findings. Using DMM, we estimate how intergenerational educational mobility affects the SWB of young Europeans, differentiating between downward and upward mobility and different country groups. Our results suggest that status loss/gain across generations affects young adults' SWB in addition to the level-effect of ending up in a lower/ higher status position only in Continental Europe.

abstract: The dissertation consists of three essays that deal with variations in economic growth and development across space and time. The essays in particular explore the importance of differences in occupational structures in various settings. The first chapter documents that intergenerational occupational persistence is significantly higher in poor countries even after controlling for cross-country differences in occupational structures. Based on this empirical fact, I posit that high occupational persistence in poor countries is symptomatic of underlying talent misallocation. Constraints on education financing force sons to choose fathers' occupations over the occupations of their comparative advantage. A version of Roy (1951) model of occupational choice is developed to quantify the impact of occupational misallocation on aggregate productivity. I find that output per worker reduces to a third of the benchmark US economy for the country with the highest level of occupational persistence. In the second chapter, I use occupational prestige as a proxy of social status to estimate intergenerational occupational mobility for 50 countries spanning the breadth of world's income distribution for both sons and daughters. I find that although relative mobility varies significantly across countries, the correlation between relative mobility and GDP per capita is only mildly positive for sons and is close to zero for daughters. I also consider two measures of absolute mobility: the propensity to move across quartiles and the propensity to move relative to father's occupational prestige. Similar to relative mobility, the first measure of absolute mobility is uncorrelated with GDP per capita. The second measure, however, is positively correlated with GDP per capita with correlations being significantly higher for sons compared to daughters. The third chapter analyses to what extent the growth in productivity witnessed by India during 1983--2004 can be explained by a better allocation of workers across occupations. I first document that the propensity to work in high-skilled occupations relative to high-caste men increased manifold for high-caste women, low-caste men and low-caste women during this period. Given that innate talent in these occupations is likely to be independent across groups, the chapter argues that the occupational distribution in the 1980s represented talent misallocation in which workers from many groups faced significant barriers to practice an occupation of their comparative advantage. I find that these barriers can explain 15--21\% of the observed growth in output per worker during the period from 1983--2004. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2015

Cette étude se focalise sur les mobilités quotidiennes des populations à faibles revenus habitant les quartiers périphériques Nord et Est de Libreville, éloignés des services et des lieux d’emplois. En croisant les outils de la géographie des transports qui éclairent les enjeux sociaux, spatiaux et environnementaux des transports avec ceux de la géographie sociale, qui concernent les représentations de l’espace et leur appropriation par les populations, ce travail tente de renouveler les connaissances sur la manière dont les populations pauvres se déplacent. Il relativise la place importante très souvent accordée à la marche à pied dans les travaux portant sur les villes subsahariennes. Il se dégage de cette étude que les mobilités des plus démunis reposent davantage sur l’usage des modes motorisés, particulièrement les transports dit « suburbains », plus disponibles et moins onéreux pour ces usagers. / This study focuses on the daily mobility of low-income populations, particularly those living in suburbs of the north and east of Libreville, far from remote services and places of employment. By using the tools of geographical transport, which sheds light on the social, spatial and environmental issues of transport, and mobilizing at the same time the concepts of social geography on the representations of space and ownership by the people, this work attempts to renew the knowledge on how poor people are moving. It put into perspective the importance often given to pedestrian mobility within Sub-Saharan cities. It emerges from this study that mobility of poor people rely more on the use of motorized transport especially, so called “suburban transports”, which are more available and less expensive for those users.

Preparative mass spectrometry is an important method for the synthesis of new materials. Recently, soft landing mass spectrometry has been used to land ions on surfaces to coat or otherwise alter them. Commercial soft landing instruments do not yet exist, and the physical phenomenon of soft landing has not yet been fully described. For future ion mobility soft landing research, the theory of ion mobility, ion optics and soft landing is discussed, and 2 soft landing instruments have been built and described, along with proof of concept experiments for both instruments. Simulations of the process of ion mobility and ion optics for use in these instruments, as well as some preliminary results for the optics are included. Surfaces described include copper on mica and iron on silicon. Self assembly of soft landed ions is observed on the surfaces. The instruments constructed will be useful for future soft landing research, and soft landing can be used for future materials research with special attention focused on the self-assembly of the landed ions.

<div>The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a vision for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) based on safely introducing aviation services to missions that were previously not served or under-served. Many potential AAM missions lie in metropolitan areas that are beset by various types of uncertainty and potential constraints. Radio interference from other electronic devices can render unreliable communication between flying vehicles to ground operators. Buildings have irregular surfaces that degrade GPS localization performance. Skyscrapers can induce spontaneous turbulence that degrades vehicles' navigational accuracy. However, the potential market demands for aerial passenger-carrying and package delivery services have attracted investments. For example, Google WingX, Amazon Prime Air, and Joby Aviation are well-known companies developing AAM systems and services. If the market visions are realized, how will safety be assessed and maintained with high-density AAM operations?</div><div><br></div><div>While there are multiple technology candidates for realizing high-density AAM operations in urban environments, the means to accomplish the requisite first step of assessing the airspace safety of an integrated AAM eco-system from the candidate technologies is crucial but as yet unclear. This dissertation proposes an entropy-based framework for assessing the airspace safety level for low-altitude airspace in an AAM setting. The framework includes a conceptual model for depicting the information flows between air vehicles and an air traffic authority (ATA) and the use of a probability distribution to represent the traffic state. Subsequently, the framework embeds three airspace-level metrics for assessing airspace safety and uncertainty levels. The traffic safety severity metric quantifies the traffic safety level. The traffic entropy quantifies the uncertainty level of the traffic state distribution. Finally, the temperature is the ratio of the traffic safety severity to the traffic entropy. The temperature is similar to the traffic safety severity but gives a higher weight to the instance with a safe traffic state. </div><div><br></div><div>Simulation studies show that the combined use of the three metrics can evaluate relative airspace safety levels even if the unsafe conditions do not occur. The use cases include using the metrics for real-time airspace safety level monitoring and comparing the design of airspace systems and operational strategies. Additionally, this study demonstrates using a heat map to visualize vehicle-level metrics and assess designs of UAM airspace structures. The contribution of this study includes two parts. First, the temperature metric can heuristically assess a probability function. Based on the definition of the cost function, the temperature metric gives a higher weighting to the instance of the probability function with a lower cost value. This study constructs several triggers for predicting if a near-miss event would happen in the airspace. The temperature-based trigger has a better prediction accuracy than the cost-function-based trigger. Secondly, the temperature can visualize the safety level of an airspace structure with the considerations of the environmental and vehicle state measurement uncertainty. The locations with high-temperature values indicate that the regions are more likely to have endangered vehicles. Although this framework does not provide any means of resolving the unsafe conditions, it can be powerful in the comparison of different airspace design concepts and identify the weaknesses of either airspace design or operational strategies. </div>

This paper investigates the consequences of children's exposure to state-level incarceration rates on social mobility in the United States. The study uses social mobility data from the Opportunity Atlas for children born between 1978 and 1983. Jail population data is gathered from the 1985 and the 1995 Annual Survey of Jails. To analyze the impact of jail rates on social mobility, we estimate OLS regressions with state-level control variables. Of key interest is the potential differential effect of early (age 2-7) versus later (age 12-17) exposure. All estimates indicate a negative correlation between incarceration and social mobility. The main results indicate that exposure to incarceration rates during adolescence has a larger impact on social mobility. Further, the subgroup estimates indicate that female incarceration is a more effective determinant of social mobility and that the black and the female population are more sensitive to fluctuations in incarceration rates. The estimates by income percentiles show incoherent results. The results should be treated with caution to methodological issues and potential biases.

Iceland faces problems in achieving decarbonization goals, especially regarding its transportation sector having highly car-oriented passenger transport in the capital city, Reykjavík. Therefore, there is a need to shift toward more sustainable transport modes. It is well established that private and car-centered mobility regimes impose externalities on the environment and the livability of cities. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a recent mobility service concept that poses a promising solution to shift much of the travel demand within urban settings from private car ownership to shared mobility. This thesis aims to determine whether MaaS can function as a disincentive for private car ownership and find use in the context of Reykjavík, Iceland. Specifically, it provides an initial investigation on how influences on car ownership and use, and opinions on shared mobility services and the concept of MaaS may differ between different demographic groups. To test whether MaaS can function as a disincentive for private car ownership and use in Reykjavík, an online survey was distributed to car owners in the city. Respondents volunteered and were asked to respond to two sets of inquiries relating to perceived influences on car ownership and use, and sentiments on shared mobility and MaaS, respectively. The responses were inferentially analyzed. The results showed that in Reykjavík’s current state (i.e. public transport infrastructure and built environment), MaaS would struggle to disincentivize car ownership and be adopted city-wide. However, the younger generations are the most promising first adopters of the service. The results suggest that the city should focus on increasing urban densification and enhancing public transport. Furthermore, the results suggest that as these factors are enacted, the disincentivizing function of MaaS may become more effective. In line with this, further research should be focused on how to facilitate first adopters in their use of MaaS.

The project originated with the question "What is the future of urban mobility?" and the counterquestion "What is the future of urbanity?". To understand the future of mobility, we first need to try to understand more of the future context where it'll reside. Mobility and the context it exists within are two symbiotic yet constantly evolving elements. This project seeks to speculate about their respective state in the year of 2050. Our global population keeps on growing, and more people are moving into urbanized regions. Already today more 90% of the worlds population is concentrated on roughly 10% of our planets land surface, and the density keeps increasing. To cope with the expanding population, cities need to keep growing and create sustainable infrastructure. The trend in densely populated regions has been to grow in the vertical axis. Besides just residential spaces, modern cities are starting to distribute shops, utilities and other typical city content vertically as well. City blocks and their content that used to be spread out in the horizontal plane are now increasingly being housed within compact hubs over multiple levels vertically. This project proposes the idea of a prototype sub-city within a mega city in the South East Asian region, around the year of 2050. Created as a way to prototype solutions to challenges found in hyper densely populated regions ranging from urban planning and congestion to general liveability. The fictional district has a highly vertically oriented cityscape, consisting of many interconnected highrises and megastructures. Traversing the walls of the buildings, vertically and horizontally, are vehicles propelled through magnetic levitation technology on an inductive infrastructure retrofitted onto or built into the buildings in the region. The far future, visionary setting of the project intends to provoke thoughts and reflection about an urban lifestyle within a far more vertically oriented environment. The thesis also aims to paint a picture of a car free city hub where vehicles are bound to the vertical plane, and the horizontal plane is devoted to the community of the city. Whether it's on the ground level or multiple stories up in a luscious "sky garden", the horizontal planes belong to the people and are roamed by foot. The process behind the development of the project involved research into the future setting and emerging technologies. Creative development and ideation were done using analogue as well as digital sketching, brainstorm sessions and physical and digital mockuping. The final vizualisations and compositions were designed from storyboards describing typical use cases of the vehicle. After researching topics of future cityscapes, creating the future premise of the project and ideating and refining various ideas, the end result of the thesis is Vertal Hex. A maglev propelled shuttle targetting future businesses. Travelling along the walls of the interconnected megastructures making up the future cityscape and company campuses, it allows it's passengers to reach their destinations anywhere within the hub entering right at the floor of their destination.

The project is highly inspired by the rise of vertical cityscape and how it can shape a new context for mobility to exist within. When the destinations travelled will be spread out in the vertical landscape instead of only the horizontal one. A rearrangement of housing, schools, restaurants and parks will create new needs for mobility to fill. In which the vehicles restricted to the two dimensional format of today can not. This will create a new era of vertical transportation to combat the densification of the future. The project investigates how new technologies such as magnetic levitation could be applied to architecture and open up space for vertical transportation. To give a flexible mobility system in high rise, high density urban areas. And with this create walkways thriving with nature on the horizontal planes. That promotes walkability, social connections and gives more space to people. For this to work, the project was set in the year of 2050 inside of a protoype district. By the reason to let the technology mature, this will also be a pivotal time of how to accommodate for the densification. Exploring how mobility would work and the everdaylives of the innhabitants in the district. The Project aims to provoke the perception of what a future urban area could be and how it would affect the need for transportation. When the premise was set, the mission was to create this new type of mobility, its functionality, its experience and of course a vehicle to convey these different elements. This was made through a number of ideation sessions, physical prototypes, hand sketches, digital sketches and digital modeling. Realizing it into an viable solution. The result of this project is Vertal Mono, A compact vehicle suited for the era of vertical transportation. It is designed to be a daily commuting vehicle within Vertico district, a prototype district testing vertically connected cityscapes. Mono is designed to be the smaller human footprint pod of the Vertal line up. It is nimble and flexible, being able to reach anywhere at any time. It is an essential part of mobility to the inner circles of the district and part of the communities living there. Vertal offers an on demand shared experience whether the occupant is riding for a single minute or for 15. The interior space offers great flexibility as a response to the vast range of usecases it needs to fulfill.

Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) for malaria are restricted to a few biomarkers and antibody-mediated detection. However, the expression of commonly used biomarkers varies geographically and the sensibility of immunodetection can be affected by batch-to-batch differences or limited thermal stability. In this study we aimed to overcome these limitations by identifying a potential biomarker and by developing molecular sensors based on aptamer technology. Using gene expression databases, ribosome profiling analysis, and structural modeling, we find that the High Mobility Group Box 1 protein (HMGB1) of Plasmodium falciparum is highly expressed, structurally stable, and present along all blood-stages of P. falciparum infection. To develop biosensors, we used in vitro evolution techniques to produce DNA aptamers for the recombinantly expressed HMG-box, the conserved domain of HMGB1. An evolutionary approach for evaluating the dynamics of aptamer populations suggested three predominant aptamer motifs. Representatives of the aptamer families were tested for binding parameters to the HMG-box domain using microscale thermophoresis and rapid kinetics. Dissociation constants of the aptamers varied over two orders of magnitude between nano- and micromolar ranges while the aptamer-HMG-box interaction occurred in a few seconds. The specificity of aptamer binding to the HMG-box of P. falciparum compared to its human homolog depended on pH conditions. Altogether, our study proposes HMGB1 as a candidate biomarker and a set of sensing aptamers that can be further developed into rapid diagnostic tests for P. falciparum detection. / Grand Challenges Canada / Revisión por pares