Which regime works best in social welfare?:Comparing outcomes of eight Dutch RCT experiments

Current technological innovations (automation, robotization, digitization, AI, big data) may have adverse employment effects notably for the low skilled welfare recipients. They face reduced chances for getting access to secure and fairly paid jobs also while two in three lack the basic qualifications needed to acquire the lowest level jobs, let alone that also more than one third consider themselves unfit to work due to serious physical or mental health issues. Therefore, eight Dutch municipalities (Deventer, Groningen, Nijmegen, Tilburg, Utrecht, Wageningen, Apeldoorn-Epe, Oss) started in the fall of 2017 and early 2018 a two-year long unique randomized control trial (RCT) to test three alternative regimes for people on welfare in which more than 5,000 recipients participated2. The treatments set up were (1) exemption/selfmanagement, that is exemption of the application obligations and rendering more trust and autonomy to the recipient for self-management, (2) intensive or tailored support, that is providing tailored and intensified counselling support to improve claimants’ work and social participation opportunities (e.g., in education, training or volunteer work) and (3) earnings release, that is rewarding welfare claimants for finding work by allowing participants to keep a larger part of their earnings on top of their benefit (work bonus). The experiments share some features of participation and basic income approaches even though their design and implementation are rather different. We found no evidence that the alternative welfare regimes have reduced employment effects compared to ‘workfare’ regimes. In some municipalities we find small positive significant effects on parttime and fulltime employment and on people’s self-efficacy, social trust and trust in caseworker’ support. No significant positive effects were found on health and wellbeing. The use of field experiments for testing the outcomes of alternative welfare regimes provides new avenues for welfare state policy in an era of rapid technological and economic change

Differential Effects of Vpr on Single-cycle and Spreading HIV-1 Infections in CD4+ T-cells and Dendritic Cells

The Vpr protein of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) contributes to viral replication in non-dividing cells, specifically those of the myeloid lineage. However, the effects of Vpr in enhancing HIV-1 infection in dendritic cells have not been extensively investigated. Here, we evaluated the role of Vpr during infection of highly permissive peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and CD4+ T-cells and compared it to that of monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MDDCs), which are less susceptible to HIV-1 infection. Infections of dividing PBMCs and non-dividing MDDCs were carried out with single-cycle and replication-competent HIV-1 encoding intact Vpr or Vpr-defective mutants. In contrast to previous findings, we observed that single-cycle HIV-1 infection of both PBMCs and MDDCs was significantly enhanced in the presence of Vpr when the viral stocks were carefully characterized and titrated. HIV-1 DNA quantification revealed that Vpr only enhanced the reverse transcription and nuclear import processes in single-cycle HIV-1 infected MDDCs, but not in CD4+ T-cells. However, a significant enhancement in HIV-1 gag mRNA expression was observed in both CD4+ T-cells and MDDCs in the presence of Vpr. Furthermore, Vpr complementation into HIV-1 virions did not affect single-cycle viral infection of MDDCs, suggesting that newly synthesized Vpr plays a significant role to facilitate single-cycle HIV-1 infection. Over the course of a spreading infection, Vpr significantly enhanced replication-competent HIV-1 infection in MDDCs, while it modestly promoted viral infection in activated PBMCs. Quantification of viral DNA in replication-competent HIV-1 infected PBMCs and MDDCs revealed similar levels of reverse transcription products, but increased nuclear import in the presence of Vpr independent of the cell types. Taken together, our results suggest that Vpr has differential effects on single-cycle and spreading HIV-1 infections, which are dependent on the permissiveness of the target cell

The Netherlands:From Diversity Celebration to a Colorblind Approach

This chapter offers a systematic review of sociological research in the Netherlands on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1980 and 2017. Six major research traditions are identified: (1) political arithmetic; (2) racism and ethnic discrimination; (3) school characteristics; (4) school choice; (5) family background and (6) an institutional approach, with research on ‘family background’ and ‘political arithmetic’ being the most dominant research traditions. Most of the research conducted in the Netherlands focuses on explaining ‘underachievement’ in relationship to ‘Turkish’, ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Surinamese’ minority students and is characterized by the use of quantitative research methods and a more positivistic approach to social sciences. This rich body of research is written mainly in Dutch and developed in a context characterized by a close collaborative relationship between educational sociologists and the government in conducting research in this area and a shift in policy that emphasises assimilation over multiculturalism

Multi-Scale Modeling of HIV Infection in vitro and APOBEC3G-Based Anti-Retroviral Therapy

The human APOBEC3G is an innate restriction factor that, in the absence of Vif, restricts HIV-1 replication by inducing excessive deamination of cytidine residues in nascent reverse transcripts and inhibiting reverse transcription and integration. To shed light on impact of A3G-Vif interactions on HIV replication, we developed a multi-scale computational system consisting of intracellular (single-cell), cellular and extracellular (multicellular) events by using ordinary differential equations. The single-cell model describes molecular-level events within individual cells (such as production and degradation of host and viral proteins, and assembly and release of new virions), whereas the multicellular model describes the viral dynamics and multiple cycles of infection within a population of cells. We estimated the model parameters either directly from previously published experimental data or by running simulations to find the optimum values. We validated our integrated model by reproducing the results of in vitro T cell culture experiments. Crucially, both downstream effects of A3G (hypermutation and reduction of viral burst size) were necessary to replicate the experimental results in silico. We also used the model to study anti-HIV capability of several possible therapeutic strategies including: an antibody to Vif; upregulation of A3G; and mutated forms of A3G. According to our simulations, A3G with a mutated Vif binding site is predicted to be significantly more effective than other molecules at the same dose. Ultimately, we performed sensitivity analysis to identify important model parameters. The results showed that the timing of particle formation and virus release had the highest impacts on HIV replication. The model also predicted that the degradation of A3G by Vif is not a crucial step in HIV pathogenesis

Are schools drifting apart? Intake stratification in English secondary schools

The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest – in the US, UK and internationally – as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families’ freedom to choose amongst schools encourage divergence or convergence in the types of pupil different schools admit. Most attention has been focussed on segregation along lines of ethnic or social background. Yet, the real consideration that seems to be in the back of most people’s minds is the issue of segregation or stratification of schools along lines of pupil ability. We look explicitly at this issue using data on the population of pupils entering Secondary school in England from 1996 to 2002. Our study does highlight wide disparities between peer-group ability in different schools. But we also find that, contrary to popular opinion, almost nothing has changed over these years in terms of the way pupils of different age-11 abilities are sorted into different Secondary schools