The Dichotomy between Property Rules and Liability Rules: Experiences from German Law

Calabresi and Melamed delivered a powerful theory to explain under what conditions it is economically efficient to transfer a property right by voluntary and alternatively by involuntary transactions. In the first instance, the property right should be protected by a property rule or an injunction as well as by criminal law sanctions in order to prevent involuntary transactions altogether. In the second instance, it should be protected only by a liability rule that provides compensation for involuntary transactions. Their theory is normative in the sense that they defend involuntary transactions under one set of conditions and voluntary transactions under another. However, their analysis is also analytical insofar as it predicts an evolutionary pressure on legal norms to encourage voluntary or involuntary transactions if the conditions, which they identified, are met. This article describes two diametrically opposed legal changes in Germany. In nuisance law, the development was from voluntary to involuntary transactions, while in privacy law it was from involuntary to voluntary transactions. We try to make it clear that these developments were triggered by the underlying causes that Calabresi and Melamed identified in their seminal paper on property rules vs. liability rules

Explodierende Staatsschulden, drohende Staatsbankrotte: Was kommt auf uns zu?

Seit Ausbruch der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ist weltweit ein enormer Anstieg staatlicher Defizite und Schuldenstände zu beobachten. Was bedeutet die Entwicklung für die Europäische Währungsunion? Charles B. Blankart und Erik R. Fasten, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, finden es wünschenswert, »vom Nichtauslösungsartikel auszugehen und diesen mit einem Verfahren wie dem des Eurostabilitätspaktes zu verbinden. Die Mitgliedstaaten sagen Hilfe zur Restrukturierung zu. Aber wenn dies alles nichts fruchtet, so steht am Ende … nicht die Auslösung, sondern der Staatsbankrott«. Jörn Axel Kämmerer und Hans-Bernd Schäfer, Bucerius Law School, Hochschule für Rechtswissenschaft, Hamburg, sehen die Europäische Union vor einem äußerst schmalen Grat. Die EU dürfe das Bail-out-Verbot nicht zum Schaden des Euro in einer Weise aufweichen, dass »die Ausnahme zur Regel« werde. Aber sie könne auch nicht untätig bleiben. Jörg Asmussen, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, unterstreicht, dass sich der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt als fiskalpolitisches Koordinierungsinstrument bewährt habe. Auf der anderen Seite werden jetzt die Regeln wieder restriktiver angewandt. Dies bedeute, dass alle Mitgliedstaaten ihre Haushalts- und/oder Strukturprobleme aus eigener Kraft in den Griff bekommen müssen. Für Christian Tietje, Universität Halle-Wittenberg, bleibt es zunächst immer bei der Selbstverantwortung der Staaten der Eurogruppe für ihre Wirtschaftspolitik, finanzielle Solidaritätsmaßnahmen müssen die Ultima Ratio im Euroraum bleiben. Michael Kühl und Renate Ohr, Universität Göttingen, sind der Meinung, dass hochverschuldete Länder, wie z.B. Griechenland, selbst einen Weg finden müssen, ihre Staatsfinanzen zu konsolidieren.Öffentliche Schulden, Wirtschaftskrise, Haushaltskonsolidierung, Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion, Staatsbankrott, Finanzpolitik, Deutschland, Griechenland, Italien, Belgien, EU-Staaten

Screened-interaction expansion for the Hubbard model and determination of the quantum Monte Carlo Fermi surface

We develop a systematic self-consistent perturbative expansion for the self energy of Hubbard-like models. The interaction lines in the Feynman diagrams are dynamically screened by the charge fluctuations in the system. Although the formal expansion is exact-assuming that the model under the study is perturbative-only if diagrams to all orders are included, it is shown that for large-on-site-Coulomb-repulsion-U systems weak-coupling expansions to a few orders may already converge. We show that the screened interaction for the large-U system can be vanishingly small at a certain intermediate electron filling; and it is found that our approximation for the imaginary part of the one-particle self energy agrees well with the QMC results in the low energy scales at this particular filling. But, the usefulness of the approximation is hindered by the fact that it has the incorrect filling dependence when the filling deviates from this value. We also calculate the exact QMC Fermi surfaces for the two-dimensional (2-D) Hubbard model for several fillings. Our results near half filling show extreme violation of the concepts of the band theory; in fact, instead of growing, Fermi surface vanishes when doped toward the half-filled Mott-Hubbard insulator. Sufficiently away from half filling, noninteracting-like Fermi surfaces are recovered. These results combined with the Luttinger theorem might show that diagrammatic expansions for the nearly-half-filled Hubbard model are unlikely to be possible; however, the nonperturbative part of the solution seems to be less important as the filling gradually moves away from one half. Results for the 2-D one-band Hubbard model for several hole dopings are presented. Implications of this study for the high-temperature superconductors are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 12 eps figures embedded, REVTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev. B; (v2) minor revisions, scheduled for publication on November 1

PhotoApp: Photorealistic Appearance Editing of Head Portraits

Photorealistic editing of head portraits is a challenging task as humans are very sensitive to inconsistencies in faces. We present an approach for high-quality intuitive editing of the camera viewpoint and scene illumination (parameterised with an environment map) in a portrait image. This requires our method to capture and control the full reflectance field of the person in the image. Most editing approaches rely on supervised learning using training data captured with setups such as light and camera stages. Such datasets are expensive to acquire, not readily available and do not capture all the rich variations of in-the-wild portrait images. In addition, most supervised approaches only focus on relighting, and do not allow camera viewpoint editing. Thus, they only capture and control a subset of the reflectance field. Recently, portrait editing has been demonstrated by operating in the generative model space of StyleGAN. While such approaches do not require direct supervision, there is a significant loss of quality when compared to the supervised approaches. In this paper, we present a method which learns from limited supervised training data. The training images only include people in a fixed neutral expression with eyes closed, without much hair or background variations. Each person is captured under 150 one-light-at-a-time conditions and under 8 camera poses. Instead of training directly in the image space, we design a supervised problem which learns transformations in the latent space of StyleGAN. This combines the best of supervised learning and generative adversarial modeling. We show that the StyleGAN prior allows for generalisation to different expressions, hairstyles and backgrounds. This produces high-quality photorealistic results for in-the-wild images and significantly outperforms existing methods. Our approach can edit the illumination and pose simultaneously, and runs at interactive rates

PhotoApp: Photorealistic Appearance Editing of Head Portraits

Photorealistic editing of portraits is a challenging task as humans are very sensitive to inconsistencies in faces. We present an approach for high-quality intuitive editing of the camera viewpoint and scene illumination in a portrait image. This requires our method to capture and control the full reflectance field of the person in the image. Most editing approaches rely on supervised learning using training data captured with setups such as light and camera stages. Such datasets are expensive to acquire, not readily available and do not capture all the rich variations of in-the-wild portrait images. In addition, most supervised approaches only focus on relighting, and do not allow camera viewpoint editing. Thus, they only capture and control a subset of the reflectance field. Recently, portrait editing has been demonstrated by operating in the generative model space of StyleGAN. While such approaches do not require direct supervision, there is a significant loss of quality when compared to the supervised approaches. In this paper, we present a method which learns from limited supervised training data. The training images only include people in a fixed neutral expression with eyes closed, without much hair or background variations. Each person is captured under 150 one-light-at-a-time conditions and under 8 camera poses. Instead of training directly in the image space, we design a supervised problem which learns transformations in the latent space of StyleGAN. This combines the best of supervised learning and generative adversarial modeling. We show that the StyleGAN prior allows for generalisation to different expressions, hairstyles and backgrounds. This produces high-quality photorealistic results for in-the-wild images and significantly outperforms existing methods. Our approach can edit the illumination and pose simultaneously, and runs at interactive rates.Comment: http://gvv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/PhotoApp

Mosaic vs. Single Image Analysis with Confocal Microscopy of the Corneal Nerve Plexus for Diagnosis of Early Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy

The assessment of the corneal nerve fibre plexus with corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) is an upcoming but still experimental method in the diagnosis of early stage diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). Using an innovative imaging technique—Heidelberg Retina Tomograph equipped with the Rostock Cornea Module (HRT-RCM) and EyeGuidance module (EG)—we were able to look at greater areas of subbasal nerve plexus (SNP) in order to increase the diagnostic accuracy. The aim of our study was to evaluate the usefulness of EG instead of single image analysis in diagnosis of early stage DPN

ERC-ESICM guidelines on temperature control after cardiac arrest in adults

The aim of these guidelines is to provide evidence based guidance for temperature control in adults who are comatose after resuscitation from either in-hospital or out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, regardless of the underlying cardiac rhythm. These guidelines replace the recommendations on temperature management after cardiac arrest included in the 2021 post-resuscitation care guidelines co-issued by the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM). The guideline panel included thirteen international clinical experts who authored the 2021 ERC-ESICM guidelines and two methodologists who participated in the evidence review completed on behalf of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) of whom ERC is a member society. We followed the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach to assess the certainty of evidence and grade recommendations. The panel provided suggestions on guideline implementation and identified priorities for future research. The certainty of evidence ranged from moderate to low. In patients who remain comatose after cardiac arrest, we recommend continuous monitoring of core temperature and actively preventing fever (defined as a temperature > 37.7 degrees C) for at least 72 hours. There was insufficient evidence to recommend for or against temperature control at 32-36 degrees C or early cooling after cardiac arrest. We recommend not actively rewarming comatose patients with mild hypothermia after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) to achieve normothermia. We recommend not using prehospital cooling with rapid infusion of large volumes of cold intravenous fluids immediately after ROSC.Peer reviewe