Kapitalmarktintegration und Wechselkurssysteme während und nach der mexikanischen Pesokrise

Im Kontext wirtschaftlicher Entwicklungsbemühungen läßt sich mit dem Auftreten von Währungskrisen in den Emerging Markets in den 90er Jahren ein deutlich zu Tage tretender struktureller Wandel erkennen. Kennzeichnend für diese Entwicklung waren zum einen eine zunehmende Vulnerabilität der Volkswirtschaften und zum anderen eine steigende Volatilität internationaler Finanzanlagen. Diesen Phänomenen lagen im wesentlichen zwei Faktoren zu Grunde. Erstens waren die Währungssysteme, die in den 80er Jahren als Mittel der Inflationsbekämpfung und der wirtschaftlichen Stabilisierung etabliert wurden, aufgrund systeminhärenter Probleme und einer fortschreitenden Integration in die internationalen Finanz- und Kapitalmärkte den neuen Herausforderungen nicht mehr gewachsen. Zweitens führte die Öffnung der Kapitalmärkte in Verbindung mit einer weitreichenden Liberalisierung, Deregulierung und Privatisierung zu neuen Formen investiven privaten Kapitals, daß grundlegend anderen Investitionsentscheidungen unterlag als noch die Kapitalzuflüsse der 80er Jahre. Beide Faktoren führten im Verlauf der 90er Jahre zu einer Reihe spekulativer Währungsattacken in den Emerging Markets und einem grundlegenden Wandel in der Währungspolitik dieser Länder. Dieser Prozess ist auch in der heutigen Zeit noch nicht abgeschlossen. Somit können die Krisenszenarien der 90er Jahre auch als logische Konsequenz und Ausdruck einer notwendigen und teilweise überfälligen Reaktion auf strukturelle Veränderungen gewertet werden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird dieser Prozeß anhand der Erfahrungen Mexikos und der Pesokrise von 1994, die oftmals als erste Finanzkrise des 21. Jahrhunderts bezeichnet wurde, nachvollzogen und unter Berücksichtigung nachfolgender Krisenszenarien in Asien, Rußland und Brasilien bewertet

Proportionality in Approval-Based Participatory Budgeting

The ability to measure the satisfaction of (groups of) voters is a crucial prerequisite for formulating proportionality axioms in approval-based participatory budgeting elections. Two common - but very different - ways to measure the satisfaction of a voter consider (i) the number of approved projects and (ii) the total cost of approved projects, respectively. In general, it is difficult to decide which measure of satisfaction best reflects the voters' true utilities. In this paper, we study proportionality axioms with respect to large classes of approval-based satisfaction functions. We establish logical implications among our axioms and related notions from the literature, and we ask whether outcomes can be achieved that are proportional with respect to more than one satisfaction function. We show that this is impossible for the two commonly used satisfaction functions when considering proportionality notions based on extended justified representation, but achievable for a notion based on proportional justified representation. For the latter result, we introduce a strengthening of priceability and show that it is satisfied by several polynomial-time computable rules, including the Method of Equal Shares and Phragm\`en's sequential rule

The moderating effects of sex, age, and education on the outcome of combined cognitive training and transcranial electrical stimulation in older adults.

Computerized cognitive training (CCT) has been shown to improve cognition in older adults via targeted exercises for single or multiple cognitive domains. Combining CCT with non-invasive brain stimulation is thought to be even more effective due to synergistic effects in the targeted brain areas and networks. However, little is known about the moderating effects of sex, age, and education on cognitive outcomes. Here, we investigated these factors in a randomized, double-blind study in which we administered CCT either combined with transcranial direct (tDCS), alternating (tACS) current stimulation or sham stimulation. 59 healthy older participants (mean age 71.7 ± 6.1) received either tDCS (2 mA), tACS (5 Hz), or sham stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the first 20 min of a CCT (10 sessions, 50 min, twice weekly). Before and after the complete cognitive intervention, a neuropsychological assessment was performed, and the test scores were summarized in a composite score. Our results showed a significant three-way interaction between age, years of education, and stimulation technique (F(6,52) = 5.53, p = 0.007), indicating that the oldest participants with more years of education particularly benefitted from tDCS compared to the sham group, while in the tACS group the youngest participants with less years of education benefit more from the stimulation. These results emphasize the importance of further investigating and taking into account sex, age, and education as moderating factors in the development of individualized stimulation protocols. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT03475446

Black Holes and Wormholes in 2+1 Dimensions

A large variety of spacetimes---including the BTZ black holes---can be obtained by identifying points in 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space by means of a discrete group of isometries. We consider all such spacetimes that can be obtained under a restriction to time symmetric initial data and one asymptotic region only. The resulting spacetimes are non-eternal black holes with collapsing wormhole topologies. Our approach is geometrical, and we discuss in detail: The allowed topologies, the shape of the event horizons, topological censorship and trapped curves.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, 11 figure

A Spinning Anti-de Sitter Wormhole

We construct a 2+1 dimensional spacetime of constant curvature whose spatial topology is that of a torus with one asymptotic region attached. It is also a black hole whose event horizon spins with respect to infinity. An observer entering the hole necessarily ends up at a "singularity"; there are no inner horizons. In the construction we take the quotient of 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space by a discrete group Gamma. A key part of the analysis proceeds by studying the action of Gamma on the boundary of the spacetime.Comment: Latex, 28 pages, 7 postscript figures included in text, a Latex file without figures can be found at http://vanosf.physto.se/~stefan/spinning.html Replaced with journal version, minor change

Making Anti-de Sitter Black Holes

It is known from the work of Banados et al. that a space-time with event horizons (much like the Schwarzschild black hole) can be obtained from 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space through a suitable identification of points. We point out that this can be done in 3+1 dimensions as well. In this way we obtain black holes with event horizons that are tori or Riemann surfaces of genus higher than one. They can have either one or two asymptotic regions. Locally, the space-time is isometric to anti-de Sitter space.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, 6 postscript figures, uses epsf.te

The moderating effects of sex, age, and education on the outcome of combined cognitive training and transcranial electrical stimulation in older adults

Computerized cognitive training (CCT) has been shown to improve cognition in older adults via targeted exercises for single or multiple cognitive domains. Combining CCT with non-invasive brain stimulation is thought to be even more effective due to synergistic effects in the targeted brain areas and networks. However, little is known about the moderating effects of sex, age, and education on cognitive outcomes. Here, we investigated these factors in a randomized, double-blind study in which we administered CCT either combined with transcranial direct (tDCS), alternating (tACS) current stimulation or sham stimulation. 59 healthy older participants (mean age 71.7 ± 6.1) received either tDCS (2 mA), tACS (5 Hz), or sham stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the first 20 min of a CCT (10 sessions, 50 min, twice weekly). Before and after the complete cognitive intervention, a neuropsychological assessment was performed, and the test scores were summarized in a composite score. Our results showed a significant three-way interaction between age, years of education, and stimulation technique (F(6,52) = 5.53, p = 0.007), indicating that the oldest participants with more years of education particularly benefitted from tDCS compared to the sham group, while in the tACS group the youngest participants with less years of education benefit more from the stimulation. These results emphasize the importance of further investigating and taking into account sex, age, and education as moderating factors in the development of individualized stimulation protocols.Clinical Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT03475446

The environs of Elaia (NW Turkey) – Sea-level fluctuations, vegetation history and microfaunal record

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Extrapolating satellite-based flood masks by one-class classification - a test case in Houston

Flood masks are among the most common remote sensing products, used for rapid crisis information and as input for hydraulic and impact models. Despite the high relevance of such products, vegetated and urban areas are still unreliably mapped and are sometimes even excluded from analysis. The information content of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is limited in these areas due to the side-looking imaging geometry of radar sensors and complex interactions of the microwave signal with trees and urban structures. Classification from SAR data can only be optimized to reduce false positives, but cannot avoid false negatives in areas that are essentially unobservable to the sensor, for example, due to radar shadows, layover, speckle and other effects. We therefore propose to treat satellite-based flood masks as intermediate products with true positives, and unlabeled cells instead of negatives. This corresponds to the input of a positive-unlabeled (PU) learning one-class classifier (OCC). Assuming that flood extent is at least partially explainable by topography, we present a novel procedure to estimate the true extent of the flood, given the initial mask, by using the satellite-based products as input to a PU OCC algorithm learned on topographic features. Additional rainfall data and distance to buildings had only minor effect on the models in our experiments. All three of the tested initial flood masks were considerably improved by the presented procedure, with obtainable increases in the overall k score ranging from 0.2 for a high quality initial mask to 0.7 in the best case for a standard emergency response product. An assessment of k for vegetated and urban areas separately shows that the performance in urban areas is still better when learning from a high quality initial mask

Vergleich von Signalerzeugungsmodellen für chromatisch-konfokale Sensoren

Wir stellen drei Signalerzeugungsmodelle vor, die die spektrale Leitungsverteilung am Ausgang eines chromatisch-konfokalen Sensors beschreiben. Diese berücksichtigen ausgedehnte Quellen- und Detektorgeometrien sowie Aberrationen des optischen Systems. Die Modelle werden anhand eines Experiments verifiziert