Early Careers of Graduates from Private and Public Universities in Germany: A Comparison of Income Differences Regarding the First Employment

Research estimating the outcomes of higher education in Germany has widely ignored the private educational sector. This study focuses on labour market returns in terms of the income of graduates from private higher education institutions in Germany. Using data from the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) the results of the Bayesian regression analysis indicate a moderate wage premium for private students compared to students who are enrolled in public higher education institutions regarding the first employment. Despite the predominant role of public universities in Germany, graduates of private higher education institutions receive similar advantages on the labour market as their counterparts in other countries, although private education in other countries is more prestigious

Garnet-controlled very low velocities in the lower mantle transition zone at sites of mantle upwelling

Deep mantle plumes and associated increased geotherms are expected to cause an upward deflection of the lower–upper mantle boundary and an overall thinning of the mantle transition zone between about 410 and 660 kilometres depth. We use subsequent forward modelling of mineral assemblages, seismic velocities and receiver functions to explain the common paucity of such observations in receiver function data. In the lower mantle transition zone, large horizontal differences in seismic velocities may result from temperature‐dependent assemblage variations. At this depth, primitive mantle compositions are dominated by majoritic garnet at high temperatures. Associated seismic velocities are expected to be much lower than for ringwoodite‐rich assemblages at undisturbed thermal conditions. Neglecting this ultra‐low‐velocity zone at upwelling sites can cause a miscalculation of the lower–upper mantle boundary on the order of 20 kilometres

Three Essays on the Marketing of Innovations

Really new products frequently receive great academic, managerial and public attention, because they have the potential to change everybody’s lives. Our economic system fundamentally relies on creative destruction, i.e. the constant process by which innovations challenge established products. This tension between the new and the already existing in the end promises competitive advantage, but makes it difficult to successfully introduce product innovations to the market. Hence, companies strive to become better all along the innovation process, ranging from idea generation, to product launch, and customers’ post-adoption product experience. This dissertation addresses challenges along the product innovation process in three independent essays. Essay 1 focuses on members’ collaboration behavior in innovation forums. Many innovations at first are invented by users and later on get developed into products ready for the consumer market within firms’ R&D departments. Users are often the first to encounter novel needs and come up with ideas, concepts and even prototypes to satisfy them. Online forums are social spheres where hobbyists and professionals from all over the world meet to exchange their ideas about products and share their latest experiences. Hence, online forums represent incredibly rich resources to inspire companies’ ideation processes. Essay 1 investigates the social mechanism of member collaboration in innovation communities. Theory on creativity postulates that the interaction between the core and the periphery of social networks enables the communities’ innovative performance. Recent research showed that members from the periphery can boost their individual innovative performance via exchanging with the community core. However, we still do not know why core members assist peripherals. Essay 1 reveals that core members benefit from exchanging with members from the periphery throughout increasing their own influence as experts among peers in the core. The identified mechanism can be used to select the right candidates for co-creation workshops. Essay 2 identifies a product launch strategy for innovations which are both, radical and disruptive. The successful launch of radical and disruptive innovations is a difficult challenge, because their radical newness provokes consumers’ uncertainties. Furthermore, because of their disruptiveness, at the time of product launch those innovations are perceived to be inferior regarding their primary functionality compared to established products, although their performance in general is fully sufficient to satisfy consumers’ actual needs. A means to address the perceived inferiority is to add a feature to the innovation which offers a functional surplus by means of existing technology. Essay 2 shows that simultaneously introducing the innovation and a functionally modified version thereof increases consumers’ adoption intentions. Furthermore, consumers who opted for the modified, but more expensive version are not dissatisfied with their choice in the long run, although they do not need the additional performance from an objective point of view. Essay 2 contributes insights regarding the causes and consequences of this new product launch strategy to the theory of radical and disruptive innovations. The findings of this essay are highly relevant to managers, because they show how this strategy can be implemented in practice to lower the failure rate of really new products at product launch. Innovation research to date is rich on evidence regarding the determinants of consumers’ adoption decisions. However, perhaps due to questions of data accessibility, insights of consumers’ post-adoption product evaluation are still scarce. Hence, essay 3 shifts the focus beyond product adoption to investigate the interplay of early adopters’ experienced utility, perceived aesthetic value and attitude toward the product in the long-run. Findings show that the perceived aesthetic value creates a halo effect in the post-adoption phase, such that the influence of early adopters’ experienced utility on attitude gets weaker, the more positively they evaluate the innovations’ aesthetics over time. Furthermore, the halo effect only tempers the relationship between experienced hedonic utility and attitude when consumers are characterized by innate consumer innovativeness. Managers should see the products’ form not only as a means to increase purchase intentions, but understand that aesthetic value offers the potential to shape consumers’ long term attitude toward the product, which in turn is an important driver for word of mouth behavior. A high score on the trait innate consumer innovativeness is an appropriate criterion for the selection of users for design co-creation

Benchmarking of glyph-based visualization concepts for fourth-order tensors using von Mises plasticity and Ogden hyperelasticity

The visualization of higher-order tensors receives increasing attention, because they carry important information in many areas of mechanics as well as physics, medicine,or earth sciences. Higher-order tensors challenge any visualization method due to their higher number of coefficients compared to scalars, vectors, or second-order tensors. In this article, we focus on the stiffness tensor and compare four glyph-based visualization methods. One glyph focuses on the deformation modes, another on the plane waves, the third one on the anisotropy types, and the last one focuses on the uniaxial stiffness (or compliance) of the material. The visualization methods are compared using two different examples. The first example is an elastic-plastic thick-walled hollow sphere under pressure loading and the second example describes an indentation test, where a spherical indenter is pressed into a soft biological material. Both advantages and problems of the selected methods are discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the case of a singular stiffness tensor indicating a type of instability. As it is shown, the visualization method must be chosen with care to extract the relevant information from the tensor in a reliable way

Deleted in malignant brain tumors 1 (DMBT1) elicits increased VEGF and decreased IL-6 production in type II lung epithelial cells

Background: Deleted in malignant brain tumors 1 (DMBT1) is an innate defence protein expressed in the lungs of preterm infants and adults. Recent studies showed that DMBT1 is important in angiogenesis and can bind to different growth factors including VEGF. We aimed at examining relationships between VEGF and IL-6 levels to DMBT1 expression in the lungs of preterm and term infants and in lung epithelial cells in vitro. Methods: We examined by ELISA VEGF levels in 120 tracheal aspirates of 57 preterm and term infants and tested for correlation with different perinatal factors as well as with DMBT1 levels. To examine the effect of DMBT1 on VEGF and IL-6 expression we compared type II lung epithelial A549 cells stably transfected with a DMBT1 expression plasmid (DMBT1+ cells) to A549 cells stably transfected with an empty expression plasmid (DMBT1- cells). The concentrations of VEGF and IL-6 were determined via ELISA in the supernatant of the unstimulated cells and after stimulation with LPS, TNFα and Phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (PMA). Results: The VEGF levels in the tracheal aspirates of preterm and term infants were significantly correlated with DMBT1 levels (p = 0.0032), the postnatal age (p = 0.0073) and the presence of neonatal infection/sepsis (p = 0.0002). Unstimulated DMBT1+ A549 cells showed significantly higher VEGF expression (p = 0.0017) than DMBT1- cells. Significantly elevated VEGF levels were also confirmed for DMBT1+ cells after stimulation with TNFα (p = 0.0008), LPS (p = 0.0232) and PMA (p = 0.0025). The IL-6 levels were comparable in DMBT1+ versus DMBT1- cells without stimulation (p = 0.6028), but they were significantly reduced in DMBT1+ cells after stimulation with TNFα (p = 0.0003), LPS (p = 0.0088) and PMA (p = 0.0039). Conclusions: The data indicate that DMBT1 promotes VEGF and suppresses IL-6 production in alveolar tissues, which could point to DMBT1 having a possible role in the transition from inflammation to regeneration and being a potentially useful clinical marker

Reassessment of sst3 Somatostatin Receptor Expression in Human Normal and Neoplastic Tissues Using the Novel Rabbit Monoclonal Antibody UMB-5

Background: Among the five somatostatin receptors (sst1-sst5), the sst3 receptor displays a distinct pharmacological profile. Like sst2, the sst3 receptor efficiently internalizes radiolabeled somatostatin analogs. Unlike sst2, however, internalized sst3 receptors are rapidly transferred to lysosomes for degradation. Apart from this, very little is known about the clinical relevance of the sst3 receptor, which may in part be due to the lack of specific monoclonal sst3 antibodies. Methods: Here, we have extensively characterized the novel rabbit monoclonal anti-human sst3 antibody UMB-5 using transfected cells and receptor-expressing tissues. UMB-5 was then subjected to immunohistochemical staining of a series of 190 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded normal and neoplastic human tissues. Results: Specificity of UMB-5 was demonstrated by detection of a broad band migrating at a molecular weight of 70,000–85,000 in immunoblots from human pituitary. After enzymatic deglycosylation, the size of this band decreased to a molecular weight of 45,000. Tissue immunostaining was completely abolished by pre-adsorption of UMB-5 with its immunizing peptide. In addition, UMB-5 detected distinct cell populations in human tissues like pancreatic islands, anterior pituitary, adrenal cortex, adrenal medulla, and enteric ganglia, similar to that seen with a rabbit polyclonal antibody generated against a different carboxyl-terminal epitope of the sst3 receptor. In a comparative immunohistochemical study, UMB-5 yielded predominant plasma membrane staining in the majority of pituitary adenomas, pheochromocytomas, and a subset of neuroendocrine tumors. The sst3 receptor was also present in many glioblastomas, pancreatic, breast, cervix, and ovarian carcinomas. Conclusion: The rabbit monoclonal antibody UMB-5 may prove of great value in the identification of sst3-expressing tumors during routine histopathological examinations. Given its unique trafficking properties, these tumors may be potential candidates for sst3-directed receptor radiotherapy

Optogenetic Long-Term Manipulation of Behavior and Animal Development

Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) is widely used for rapid photodepolarization of neurons, yet, as it requires high-intensity blue light for activation, it is not suited for long-term in vivo applications, e.g. for manipulations of behavior, or photoactivation of neurons during development. We used “slow” ChR2 variants with mutations in the C128 residue, that exhibit delayed off-kinetics and increased light sensitivity in Caenorhabditis elegans. Following a 1 s light pulse, we could photodepolarize neurons and muscles for minutes (and with repeated brief stimulation, up to days) with low-intensity light. Photoactivation of ChR2(C128S) in command interneurons elicited long-lasting alterations in locomotion. Finally, we could optically induce profound changes in animal development: Long-term photoactivation of ASJ neurons, which regulate larval growth, bypassed the constitutive entry into the “dauer” larval state in daf-11 mutants. These lack a guanylyl cyclase, which possibly renders ASJ neurons hyperpolarized. Furthermore, photostimulated ASJ neurons could acutely trigger dauer-exit. Thus, slow ChR2s can be employed to long-term photoactivate behavior and to trigger alternative animal development

Coupling the Cardiac Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel to Channelrhodopsin-2 Generates Novel Optical Switches for Action Potential Studies

Voltage-gated sodium (Na + ) channels respond to short membrane depolarization with conformational changes leading to pore opening, Na + influx, and action potential (AP) upstroke. In the present study, we coupled channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), the key ion channel in optogenetics, directly to the cardiac voltage-gated Na + channel (Na v 1.5). Fusion constructs were expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes, and electrophysiological recordings were performed by the two-microelectrode technique. Heteromeric channels retained both typical Na v 1.5 kinetics and light-sensitive ChR2 properties. Switching to the current-clamp mode and applying short blue-light pulses resulted either in subthreshold depolarization or in a rapid change of membrane polarity typically seen in APs of excitable cells. To study the effect of individual K + channels on the AP shape, we co-expressed either K v 1.2 or hERG with one of the Na v 1.5-ChR2 fusions. As expected, both delayed rectifier K + channels shortened AP duration significantly. K v 1.2 currents remarkably accelerated initial repolarization, whereas hERG channel activity efficiently restored the resting membrane potential. Finally, we investigated the effect of the LQT3 deletion mutant ΔKPQ on the AP shape and noticed an extremely prolonged AP duration that was directly correlated to the size of the non-inactivating Na + current fraction. In conclusion, coupling of ChR2 to a voltage-gated Na + channel generates optical switches that are useful for studying the effect of individual ion channels on the AP shape. Moreover, our novel optogenetic approach provides the potential for an application in pharmacology and optogenetic tissue-engineering

VAMPIR: Visualization and Analysis of MPI Resources

Performance analysis most often is based on the detailed knowledge of program behavior. One option to get this information is tracing. Based on the research tool PARvis, the visualization environment VAMPIR was developed at KFA which now supports the new message passing standard MPI. VAMPIR translates a given trace file into a variety of graphical views, e.g., state diagrams, activity charts, time-line displays, and statistics. Moreover, it supports an animation mode that can help to locate performance bottlenecks, and it provides flexible filter operations to reduce the amount of information displayed. The most interesting part of VAMPIR is the powerful zooming feature that allows to identify problems at any level of detail