The price-setting behavior of Austrian firms: some survey evidence

This paper explores the price-setting behavior of Austrian firms based on survey evidence. Our main result is that customer relationships are a major source of price stickiness in the Austrian economy. We also find that the majority of firms in our sample follows a timedependent pricing strategy. However, a substantial fraction of firms deviates from time-dependent pricing in the case of large shocks and switches to a state-dependent pricing strategy. In addition, we present evidence suggesting that the price response to various shocks is subject to asymmetries. JEL Classification: C25, E30price rigidity, price-setting behavior

3D-imaging of foraminifera by X-ray microtomography

Abstrac

Strontium isotope stratigraphy of late Cenozoic fossiliferous marine deposits in North Borneo (Brunei, and Sarawak, Malaysia)

Neogene marine deposits of North Borneo are locally very rich in fossils that provide glimpses into the past biodiversity. However, dating these onshore sediments with biostratigraphy is often hampered by the lack and/or the poor preservation state of index fossils. Therefore, the fossiliferous sites were targeted with strontium isotope stratigraphy (SIS) to obtain higher precision relative dating. Well-preserved macrofossils were screened using a multidisciplinary approach, and 87Sr/86Sr ratios of the most pristine remains were used to date the embedding sediments. Most of the measured ages fall in the expected chronostratigraphic framework established by large scale studies for the region. The oldest, Burdigalian (early Miocene) ages were measured for the Sibuti Formation in Sarawak (17.71 \ub1 0.2My and 16.7 \ub1 0.2My) followed by a Serravallian (middle Miocene) age within the Belait Fm in Brunei (12.1 +1.4/-1.2My). Eight localities from the younger units, the Miri and Seria formations in Brunei, gave a range in age from 10.5 \ub1 1 to 7.0 +0.9/-0.5My (Tortonian-Messinian). Reworked fossil assemblages from Tutong beach were also investigated and the SIS ages of Late Miocene support an origin from the younger part of the Seria Fm. One locality, in Lumapas where limestone crops out in Brunei, gave an unexpected younger age (Tortonian, late Miocene, 10.6 \ub1 1My) compared to estimates projected for its assumed stratigraphic position in the lower Belait Formation (late Burdigalian). These challenging data require more research, yet if the young age is accepted, the stratigraphic situation of the limestone needs further revision

High-resolution self-gated dynamic abdominal MRI using manifold alignment

We present a novel retrospective self-gating method based on manifold alignment (MA), which enables reconstruction of free-breathing, high spatial and temporal resolution abdominal MRI sequences. Based on a radial golden-angle (RGA) acquisition trajectory, our method enables a multi-dimensional self-gating signal to be extracted from the k-space data for more accurate motion representation. The k-space radial profiles are evenly divided into a number of overlapping groups based on their radial angles. MA is then used to simultaneously learn and align the low dimensional manifolds of all groups, and embed them into a common manifold. In the manifold, k-space profiles that represent similar respiratory positions are close to each other. Image reconstruction is performed by combining radial profiles with evenly distributed angles that are close in the manifold. Our method was evaluated on both 2D and 3D synthetic and in vivo datasets. On the synthetic datasets, our method achieved high correlation with the ground truth in terms of image intensity and virtual navigator values. Using the in vivo data, compared to a state-of-the-art approach based on centre of k-space gating, our method was able to make use of much richer profile data for self-gating, resulting in statistically significantly better quantitative measurements in terms of organ sharpness and image gradient entropy