Fear of Financial Investors Unjustified

In the midst of the international financial crisis, the German federal government passed the Risk Limitation Act in autumn 2007. In spring 2008 the Bundestag has finally decided on the law. The domestic private equity/buyout providers, which have not previously been subject to banking supervision, are among the main addressees of the act. Among others, "objectionable macroeconomic activities of financial investors" are to be hindered or prevented, without simultaneously "impairing efficient financial and corporate transactions". In short, the regulation of activities is intended to have a stabilizing effect in the midst of turbulent times. Private equity funds can particularly be regarded as a supplement to the traditional instruments of corporate financing. In a study recently presented by DIW Berlin, it was determined that private equity funds generally do not swarm in on German companies "like locusts". Their macroeconomic significance has so far tended to be minor. An expansion of commitment by private equity funds would be welcomed. Particularly SMEs can profit from it.Private equity, Leveraged buyouts, Corporate finance

Delbrück scattering in a strong external field

We evaluate the Delbrück scattering amplitude to all orders of the interaction with the external field of a nucleus employing nonperturbative electron Green's functions. The results are given analytically in form of a multipole expansion

Identifying Changes of Functional Brain Networks using Graph Theory

This thesis gives an overview on how to estimate changes in functional brain networks using graph theoretical measures. It explains the assessment and definition of functional brain networks derived from fMRI data. More explicitly, this thesis provides examples and newly developed methods on the measurement and visualization of changes due to pathology, external electrical stimulation or ongoing internal thought processes. These changes can occur on long as well as on short time scales and might be a key to understanding brain pathologies and their development. Furthermore, this thesis describes new methods to investigate and visualize these changes on both time scales and provides a more complete picture of the brain as a dynamic and constantly changing network.:1 Introduction 1.1 General Introduction 1.2 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging 1.3 Resting-state fMRI 1.4 Brain Networks and Graph Theory 1.5 White-Matter Lesions and Small Vessel Disease 1.6 Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation 1.7 Dynamic Functional Connectivity 2 Publications 2.1 Resting developments: a review of fMRI post-processing methodologies for spontaneous brain activity 2.2 Early small vessel disease affects fronto-parietal and cerebellar hubs in close correlation with clinical symptoms - A resting-state fMRI study 2.3 Dynamic modulation of intrinsic functional connectivity by transcranial direct current stimulation 2.4 Three-dimensional mean-shift edge bundling for the visualization of functional connectivity in the brain 2.5 Dynamic network participation of functional connectivity hubs assessed by resting-state fMRI 3 Summary 4 Bibliography 5. Appendix 5.1 Erklärung über die eigenständige Abfassung der Arbeit 5.2 Curriculum vitae 5.3 Publications 5.4 Acknowledgement

Fear of Financial Investors Unjustified

In the midst of the international financial crisis, the German federal government passed the Risk Limitation Act in autumn 2007. In spring 2008 the Bundestag has finally decided on the law. The domestic private equity/buyout providers, which have not previously been subject to banking supervision, are among the main addressees of the act. Among others, "objectionable macroeconomic activities of financial investors" are to be hindered or prevented, without simultaneously "impairing efficient financial and corporate transactions". In short, the regulation of activities is intended to have a stabilizing effect in the midst of turbulent times. Private equity funds can particularly be regarded as a supplement to the traditional instruments of corporate financing. In a study recently presented by DIW Berlin, it was determined that private equity funds generally do not swarm in on German companies "like locusts". Their macroeconomic significance has so far tended to be minor. An expansion of commitment by private equity funds would be welcomed. Particularly SMEs can profit from it

Design of an Online Optimisation Tool for Smart Home Heating Control

The performance of model predictive smart home heating control (SHHC) heavily depends on the accuracy of the initial setup for individual building characteristics. Since owners or renters of residential buildings are predominantly not experts, users’ acceptance of SHHC requires ease of use in the setup and minimal user intervention (e.g. only declaration of preferences), but at the same time high reliability of the initial parameter settings and flexibility to handle different preferences. In contrast, the training time of self-learning SHHC (e.g. based on artificial neural networks) to reach a reliable control status could conflict with the users’ request for comfortable heating from the very beginning. Dealing with this trade-off, this paper follows the tradition of design science research and presents a prototype of an online optimisation tool (OOT) for SHHC. The OOT is multi objective (e.g. minimising lifecycle energy (cost) or carbon emissions) under constraints such as thermal comfort. While the OOT is based on a discrete dynamic model, its self-adaptation is accelerated by a database of physically simulated characteristic buildings, which allows parameter setting at the beginning by a similarity measurement. The OOT artefact provides a base for empirically testing advantages of different SHHC design alternatives

Theatre in Handwriting: Hamburg Prompt Book Practices, 1770s-1820s

In German spoken theatre, prompt books used to be written by multiple participants engaging in diverse manuscript practices which continually revise the unfixed literary text within its theatrical context. Based on examples of the vast Hamburg "Theatre-Library" from the 1770s to 1820s, this study proposes a transdisciplinary approach towards handwritten artefacts in modern European theatre. Martin Jörg Schäfer and Alexander Weinstock examine the many-handed creation, handwritten transformation and often decades of use of prompt books in a time increasingly dominated by print. This perspective changes our notion of theatre history around 1800 as well as that of literature and authorship