Chinese acquisitions in Germany- assessing the short-term impact on profitability on acquired German Companies

The level of Chinese Outbound M&A has risen significantly during recent years, with German companies being the main target within Europe. This Work Project explores this phenomenon, by assessing the short-term impact on profitability of acquired German companies pre-acquisition versus post-acquisition, whereby the results show statistically insignificant differences Moreover, the study portrays the Chinese M&A activity in Germany during the period 2011-2014 and shows that many companies of key German industries were acquired; Private Equity companies played an important role as sellers, and both Chinese acquirers from the same industries as well as form different industries as the target firm were represented

Simulation of a Hard-Spherocylinder Liquid Crystal with the pe

The pe physics engine is validated through the simulation of a liquid crystal model system consisting of hard spherocylinders. For this purpose we evaluate several characteristic parameters of this system, namely the nematic order parameter, the pressure, and the Frank elastic constants. We compare these to the values reported in literature and find a very good agreement, which demonstrates that the pe physics engine can accurately treat such densely packed particle systems. Simultaneously we are able to examine the influence of finite size effects, especially on the evaluation of the Frank elastic constants, as we are far less restricted in system size than earlier simulations

A broad analysis of short-term overreactions in the market for cryptocurrencies

We analyze market inefficiencies in the market for cryptocurrencies by providing a comprehensive analysis of short-term (over)reactions that follow significant price changes of such currencies. We identify and analyze overreactions and mispricing in markets for crypto currencies by applying a broad set of thresholds that depend on market specific dynamics and volatilities. We analyze the returns on days following abnormal returns and identify significant differences from normal returns using the t-test and the Mann–Whitney-U-test. We further complement the literature by using end-of-the-day returns in addition to high-low returns. Additionally, we consider a broad sample of 50 cryptocurrencies for an expanded time span (2015 to 2020) that includes the big currencies as well as smaller currencies. We detect the existence of overreactions and, thus, market inefficiencies in crypto markets. The findings for different methodological approaches are similar, which underpins the robustness of the findings. By considering a broad sample that includes small and big currencies we can show the existence of a market size effect. By considering a broad set of thresholds, we further found evidence for a magnitude effect, which means that higher initial abnormal returns are related to higher inefficiencies. Our paper has practical implications. We detect market inefficiencies that can be used in practical trading to obtain excess returns. In fact, our methodological approach and its results can be used to derive a strategy for trading in cryptocurrencies that can be easily implemented. Based on our findings, we can expect positive access returns by applying this trading strategy. We complement the literature on market inefficiencies and mispricing in crypto markets by analyzing price patterns after initial abnormal returns. We contribute by applying different methodological approaches in addition to the approaches used so far, by considering a set of different thresholds, and by applying a much broader data set that enables us to analyze additional aspects

It was (not) me: Causal Inference of Agency in goal-directed actions

Summary: 
The perception of one’s own actions depends on both sensory information and predictions derived from internal forward models [1]. The integration of these information sources depends critically on whether perceptual consequences are associated with one’s own action (sense of agency) or with changes in the external world that are not related to the action. The perceived effects of actions should thus critically depend on the consistency between the predicted and the actual sensory consequences of actions. To test this idea, we used a virtual-reality setup to manipulate the consistency between pointing movements and their visual consequences and investigated the influence of this manipulation on self-action perception. We then asked whether a Bayesian causal inference model, which assumes a latent agency variable controlling the attributed influence of the own action on perceptual consequences [2,3], would account for the empirical data: if the percept was attributed to the own action, visual and internal information should fuse in a Bayesian optimal manner, while this should not be the case if the visual stimulus was attributed to external influences. The model correctly fits the data, showing that small deviations between predicted and actual sensory information were still attributed to one’s own action, while this was not the case for large deviations when subjects relied more on internal information. We discuss the performance of this causal inference model in comparison to alternative biologically feasible statistical models applying methods for Bayesian model comparison.

Experiment: 
Participants were seated in front of a horizontal board on which their right hand was placed with the index finger on a haptic marker, representing the starting point for each trial. Participants were instructed to execute straight, fast (quasi-ballistic) pointing movements of fixed amplitude, but without an explicit visual target. The hand was obstructed from the view of the participants, and visual feedback about the peripheral part of the movement was provided by a cursor. Feedback was either veridical or rotated against the true direction of the hand movement by predefined angles. After each trial participants were asked to report the subjectively experienced direction of the executed hand movement by placing a mouse-cursor into that direction.

Model: 
We compared two probabilistic models: Both include a binary random gating variable (agency) that models the sense of ‘agency’; that is the belief that the visual feedback is influenced by the subject’s motor action. The first model assumes that both the visual feedback xv and the internal motor state estimate xe are directly caused by the (unobserved) real motor state xt (Fig. 1). The second model assumes instead that the expected visual feedback depends on the perceived direction of the own motor action xe (Fig. 2). 
Results: Both models are in good agreement with the data. Fig. A shows the model fit for Model 1 superpositioned to the data from a single subject. Fig. B shows the belief that the visual stimulus was influenced by the own action, which decreases for large deviations between predicted and real visual feedback. Bayesian model comparison shows a better fit for model 1.
Citations
[1] Wolpert D.M, Ghahramani, Z, Jordan, M. (1995) Science, 269, 1880-1882.
[2] Körding KP, Beierholm E, Ma WJ, Quartz S, Tenenbaum JB, et al (2007) PLoS ONE 2(9): e943.
[3] Shams, L., Beierholm, U. (2010) TiCS, 14: 425-432.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the BCCN Tübingen (FKZ: 01GQ1002), the CIN Tübingen, the European Union (FP7-ICT-215866 project SEARISE), the DFG and the Hermann and Lilly Schilling Foundation

Versuchsbericht Mulchfolien 2019

Zuckerrüben sind zurzeit eine finanziell sehr interessante Kultur im Schweizer Biolandbau, da hohe Erlöse für die Rüben erzielt werden. Massgebend für die Rentabilität der Kultur unter Bio‐Bedingungen sind die Aufwendungen für die Beikrautregulierung, wobei die Kosten für das Jäten von Hand den Löwenanteil ausmachen. Die Zuckerrübe ist im Jugendstadium eine sehr konkurrenzschwache Kultur und reagiert empfindlich auf einen hohen Beikrautbesatz. Zudem wird sie relativ früh gesät, wodurch Beikräuter sich noch schneller entwickeln als die Zuckerrübe. Man geht im Schnitt von 200 Stunden Handarbeit je Hektare Bio Zuckerrüben aus. Daher ist es von grösstem Interesse, diese Handarbeitsstunden durch ausgefeilte Techniken und Strategien zu reduzieren, um die Wirtschaftlichkeit steigern zu können

End-of-life and waste management in life cycle assessment—Zurich, 6 December 2011

Introduction: Waste management is a key component in society's strategy to mitigate the adverse effects of its economic activities. Through its comprehensive system approach, life cycle assessment (LCA) is frequently put forward as a powerful tool for the assessment of waste management activities. However, many methodological challenges regarding the environmental assessment of waste treatment systems still remain, and consensus is still far from being reached in areas like the definition of (temporal) system boundaries, life cycle inventory generation, selection and use of environmental indicators, and interpretation and communication of the LCA results. Summary of the topics presented in DF-46: The 46th Swiss Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment (DF-46) consisted of three sessions. The first session tried to address policy making and implications for sustainable waste management of consumer products, e.g., information and communication technology, and food packaging. The second session focused on recent methodological developments in LCA for end-of-life treatment (EoL) activities and waste management assessment. The third session was dedicated to E-waste treatment and scarce metal recovery processes. DF-46 closed with short presentations on decision support in the areas of coprocessing, food waste, and after-treatment technologies for municipal waste incineration residues. Conclusions: The main conclusions drawn from DF-46 are: (a) the option of waste prevention, despite its prominent position in the so-called waste hierarchy, is rarely considered in LCAs on waste and EoL management, (b) although a general problem in many other applications of LCA, the differences in scope definitions and time perspectives, the use of proxies or data of poor quality, allocation, or system expansion procedures, and weighting in the impact assessment are prominent issues in LCAs of waste and EoL management and thus have to be minimized and inventory data must be as transparent as possible, (c) life cycle inventory formats have to be adapted to be able to account for new materials, such as nanoparticles and scarce metals in LCA, (d) the selection of environmental indicators requires clear guidance on their appropriate use and open communication. The selection of a set of complementary indicators is of particular importance in order to avoid that the adverse effects on the environment are merely shifted between impact categories, and (e) useful LCA tools for the environmental assessment of waste management options are currently developed to meet the evolving demands and expectations for support in decision making related to waste and EoL management today and in the future. The presentations from DF-46 are available for download ( www.lcaforum.ch

ARMart – AR-Based Shopping Assistant to Choose and Find Store Items

Supermarkets offer a wide range of products which makes it challenging for consumers to choose between the different options and find the items they are looking for. Augmented Reality (AR) applications, however, have a high potential to enrich real-world objects with information which can be leveraged to improve this process. We developed an application that runs on a regular smartphone and helps users to choose between packaged groceries based on factors such as calories or sugar, rated on a scale from red (bad) to green (good). Compared to previous work, there is no need for a priori knowledge about product locations making the system suitable for many use cases. Moreover, information maps precisely onto the outline of the product\u27s and not on the approximate shelf. To do so, no modifications of the objects, such as specialized tags, are necessary. Additionally, users can find items just by entering the name. Highlighting the packaging virtually helps to find the desired product. It is also possible to make a binary distinction between groceries that contain specific ingredients