Fiscal News and Macroeconomic Volatility

This paper analyzes the contribution of anticipated capital and labor tax shocks to business cycle volatility in an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model. While fiscal policy accounts for 12 to 20 percent of output variance at business cycle frequencies, the anticipated component hardly matters for explaining fluctuations of real variables. Anticipated capital tax shocks do explain a sizable part of inflation and interest rate fluctuations, accounting for between 5 and 15 percent of total variance. In line with earlier studies, news shocks in total account for 20 percent of output variance. Further decomposing this news effect, we find that it is mostly driven by stationary TFP and non-stationary investment-specific technology.Anticipated Tax Shocks; Sources of Aggregate Fluctuations; Bayesian Estimation

Fiscal News and Macroeconomic Volatility

This paper analyzes the contribution of anticipated capital and labor tax shocks to business cycle volatility in an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model. While fiscal policy accounts for 12 to 20 percent of output variance at business cycle frequencies, the anticipated component hardly matters for explaining fluctuations of real variables. Anticipated capital tax shocks do explain a sizable part of inflation and interest rate fluctuations, accounting for between 5 and 15 percent of total variance. In line with earlier studies, news shocks in total account for 20 percent of output variance. Further decomposing this news effect, we find that it is mostly driven by stationary TFP and non-stationary investment-specific technology

Die Führerschule der Reichsärzteschaft in Alt Rehse – ethische Grenzen in der modernen Medizin : historische Aufarbeitung und aktuelle Diskussion unter Berücksichtigung des Bezugs zur Sozialen Arbeit und Sozialpädagogik

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die möglichen pädagogischen Angebote für Alt Rehse als politisches Memorial darzulegen. Welche Methoden könnten Alt Rehse zur Verfügung stehen, aber auch an welche Grenzen könnte man bei der Aufarbeitung stoßen. Ziel der Diplomarbeit ist es nicht, eine fertige Konzeption vorzulegen, mit welcher die pädagogische Arbeit vor Ort sofort beginnen könnte. Die Arbeit kann lediglich Denkanstöße und Vorschlage liefern. Eine weitere Zielstellung der Arbeit ist es, dem Leser die Wichtigkeit der Verbindung zwischen den aktuellen Diskussionen im Gesundheitswesen und der historischen Aufarbeitung nahe zubringen

Potential drug-drug interactions and adverse drug reactions in patients with liver cirrhosis

Background and aims: Patients with liver cirrhosis may be at risk for potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) and/or adverse drug reactions (ADRs) due to the severity of their disease and comorbidities associated with polypharmacy. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional retrospective study including 400 cirrhotic patients and assessed diagnoses, medication patterns, pDDIs, and ADRs at hospital admission. Results: The median (range) age of the patients was 60 (21-88) years; 68.5% were male. They had a total of 2,415 diagnoses, resulting in 6 (1-10) diagnoses per patient. Frequent were diagnoses of the digestive system (28.4%), circulatory system (14.2%), blood and blood-forming organs (8.7%), and psychiatric disorders (7.5%); 60.7% of the diagnoses were not liver-associated. The median number of drugs per patient was 5 (0-18), whereof 3 (0-16) were predominantly hepatically eliminated. Drugs were primarily indicated for gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, or nervous system disorders, reflecting the prevalent diagnoses. In 112 (28%) patients, 200 ADRs were detected, mainly associated with spironolactone, torasemide, furosemide, and ibuprofen. In 86 (21.5%) patients, 132 pDDIs were detected. Seven of these pDDIs were the direct cause of 15 ADRs, whereof 3 resulted in hospital admission. Patients with ADRs were older, had more comorbidities, were treated with more drugs, and had a worse renal function and more pDDIs than patients without ADRs. Conclusions: Pharmacotherapy is complex in cirrhotic patients. Hepatologists should know the principles of dose adjustment in cirrhosis and renal failure, but also the most important pDDIs of the drugs used to treat liver disease and comorbidities in this populatio

A Modality-Specific Feedforward Component of Choice-Related Activity in MT

The activity of individual sensory neurons can be predictive of an animal\u27s choices. These decision signals arise from network properties dependent on feedforward and feedback inputs; however, the relative contributions of these inputs are poorly understood. We determined the role of feedforward pathways to decision signals in MT by recording neuronal activity while monkeys performed motion and depth tasks. During each session, we reversibly inactivated V2 and V3, which provide feedforward input to MT that conveys more information about depth than motion. We thus monitored the choice-related activity of the same neuron both before and during V2/V3 inactivation. During inactivation, MT neurons became less predictive of decisions for the depth task but not the motion task, indicating that a feedforward pathway that gives rise to tuning preferences also contributes to decision signals. We show that our data are consistent with V2/V3 input conferring structured noise correlations onto the MT population

Hypoxic modulation of exogenous nitrite-induced vasodilation in humans

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Compositional Semantics for Stochastic Reo Connectors

In this paper we present a compositional semantics for the channel-based coordination language Reo which enables the analysis of quality of service (QoS) properties of service compositions. For this purpose, we annotate Reo channels with stochastic delay rates and explicitly model data-arrival rates at the boundary of a connector, to capture its interaction with the services that comprise its environment. We propose Stochastic Reo automata as an extension of Reo automata, in order to compositionally derive a QoS-aware semantics for Reo. We further present a translation of Stochastic Reo automata to Continuous-Time Markov Chains (CTMCs). This translation enables us to use third-party CTMC verification tools to do an end-to-end performance analysis of service compositions. As a case study, we are currentl

Recent Advances

Although often depicted as rigid structures, proteins are highly dynamic systems, whose motions are essential to their functions. Despite this, it is difficult to investigate protein dynamics due to the rapid timescale at which they sample their conformational space, leading most NMR-determined structures to represent only an averaged snapshot of the dynamic picture. While NMR relaxation measurements can help to determine local dynamics, it is difficult to detect translational or concerted motion, and only recently have significant advances been made to make it possible to acquire a more holistic representation of the dynamics and structural landscapes of proteins. Here, we briefly revisit our most recent progress in the theory and use of exact nuclear Overhauser enhancements (eNOEs) for the calculation of structural ensembles that describe their conformational space. New developments are primarily targeted at increasing the number and improving the quality of extracted eNOE distance restraints, such that the multi-state structure calculation can be applied to proteins of higher molecular weights. We then review the implications of the exact NOE to the protein dynamics and function of cyclophilin A and the WW domain of Pin1, and finally discuss our current research and future directions

Dose adjustment in patients with liver cirrhosis: impact on adverse drug reactions and hospitalizations

Aim and background: To assess drug-related problems in patients with liver cirrhosis by investigating the prevalence of inadequately dosed drugs and their association with adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and hospitalizations. Methods: This was a cross-sectional retrospective study assessing the dose adequacy of drug treatment of 400 cirrhotic patients at hospital admission based on the authors' own previous studies and standard literature. The prevalence of total and preventable ADRs and of hospitalizations due to preventable ADRs was determined. Results: Of all 1653 drugs prescribed (median 4 per patient), 336 (20%) drugs were inadequately dosed in 184 patients. Overall, 210 ADRs (78% preventable) occurred in 120 patients. Sixty-nine ADRs (33% of all ADRs) were associated with inadequate drug dosing in 46 patients, of which 68% were preventable. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and psycholeptics in particular frequently caused preventable ADRs associated with inadequate drug dosing. Inadequate drug dosing was more frequently associated with ADRs than adequate drug dosing, and patients receiving inadequately dosed drugs were more frequently admitted to the hospital due to ADRs. Hospitalization of patients receiving inadequately dosed drugs that caused preventable ADRs resulted in 94 additional hospital days. Conclusion: In this retrospective study, inadequate drug dosing was associated with an increased frequency of ADRs, hospital admissions and hospital days in cirrhotic patients. We therefore conclude that the careful dosing of critical drugs is important in patients with liver cirrhosi