The EU's New Economic Governance Framework and Budgetary Decision-Making in the Member States: Boon or Bane for Throughput Legitimacy?

The euro crisis has sparked changes in the EU’s economic governance framework and a crisis of legitimacy across the union. While the institutional repercussions of the crisis have been studied before, the democratic impact at the national level has received much less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap, focusing on the procedural changes that the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) framework has brought to national budgetary decision-making. Building upon the Varieties of Democracy framework, the paper adds empirical nuance and conceptual clarity to the notion of ‘throughput legitimacy’ and its components: openness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. Detailed case studies of post-crisis Austria, Italy and Portugal show that the NEG improved access to national budgetary decision-making and enhanced executive scrutiny, while excessive complexity remains the Achilles’ heel of EU fiscal rules. We submit that these procedural changes are too meaningful to be overlooked in post-crisis debates about EU democracy.publishedVersio

How intracellular bacteria affect the fate of their Amoeba host

In den letzten Jahre gab es große Fortschritte im Verständnis der Beziehung zwischen intrazellulären Bakterien und ihren Wirten. Viele Details endosymbiotischer und parasitischer Interaktionen sind jedoch weiterhin unklar. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es Entwicklungszyklen des Amöbenendosymbionten Protochlamydia amoebophila und der beiden Amöbenparasiten Parachlamyida sp. und Legionella pneumophila zu vergleichen. Zum anderen wurde die Hypothese getestet, ob das Vorhandensein des Endosymbionten seinem Amöbenwirt eine erhöhte Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit bei einer Parasiteninfektion verleiht. Die Entwicklungszyklen in Acanthamoeba castellanii Neff wurden bei zwei unterschiedlichen Temperaturen charakterisiert. Dabei wurde eine Kombination aus Fluoreszenz-in-situ-Hybridisierung (FISH) und DAPI angewendet , um Rückschlüsse auf die metabolische Aktivität der Symbionten ziehen zu können. Die Lebensfähigkeit des Wirtes wurde mit Propidiumiodid untersucht. Die erhaltenen quantitativen Daten ermöglichten die Bestimmung charakteristischer Zeitpunkte der endosymbiotischen bzw. parasitischen Interaktionen unserer Modellsysteme, welche die Basis für später darauf aufbauende Transkriptomik Studien bilden. Amöben-Kulturen mit und ohne Endosymbiont wurden mit dem Modell-Parasit L. pneumophila infiziert, um zu überprüfen, ob das Vorhandensein von P. amoebophila einen Vorteil für seinen Wirt A. castellanii bringt. Der Infektionsverlauf wurde mittels FISH und Quantifizierung von Amöben und Legionellen untersucht und verglichen. In endosymbiontentragenden Amöben kam es bereits innerhalb der ersten Tage nach Infektion zu einem beschleunigten Legionellen-Wachstum. Dies führte zu einer erhöhten Sterberate des Wirtes. Amöben mit Endosymbiont waren nach zwei Wochen uninfiziert und begannen sich zu erholen. Schließlich erreichten sie Zelldichten, die jene endosymbiontenloser Amöben um mehr als das Hundertfache überstiegen. Letztendlich kam es jedoch in der Gegenwart von P. amoebophila zu einem filamentösen Legionellen-Wachstum mit Ausbildung Biofilm-ähnlicher Strukturen, was das Überleben einer großen Anzahl von Legionellen zu ermöglichen schien. Die Ergebnisse zeigen deutlich, dass die Gegenwart von P. amoebophila in A. castellanii den Verlauf einer Legionellen-Infektion verändert. Versteht man das Auftreten filamentöser Legionellen als Folge des hier verwendeten künstlichen Systems, so kann man aufgrund der beobachteten Erholung des Wirts, auf eine mutualistische Beziehung zwischen A. castellanii und P. amoebophila schließen. Betrachtet man die weite Verbreitung freilebender Amöben in der Natur und die Häufigkeit ihrer bakteriellen Endosymbionten, so wird klar, dass die in dieser Arbeit beobachteten Vorgänge bedeutende Auswirkungen auf ökologische und evolutionäre Prozesse haben könnten.Within the last years, there has been an effort in understanding the relationship between intracellular bacteria and their hosts. However, many details on mechanisms underlining endosymbiotic or parasitic interactions still remain elusive. The aims of the study were to (1) compare the developmental cycles of the amoebae endosymbiont Protochlamydia amoebophila and two amoebae parasites Parachlamydia sp. and Legionella pneumophila, and (2) address the hypothesis of increased amoebal survival in the face of parasitic infection when the endosymbiont was present. Developmental cycles in Acanthamoeba castellanii Neff at two different temperatures were roughly characterized by combining fluorescence-in-situ-hybridization (FISH) with the nucleic acid stain DAPI in order to estimate the symbiont’s metabolic activity, and in addition, by assessing host viability using propidium iodide. The obtained quantitative data allowed for specification of crucial time points during our model stable and parasitic interactions, thereby facilitating a follow-up study on the transcriptomes of these systems. In order to test for a benefit of the host A. castellanii Neff in the presence of P. amoebophila, co-cultures and cultures of endosymbiont-free amoebae were infected with the amoebal parasite L. pneumophila. The course of infection was compared by FISH, and by quantification of amoebal as well as L. pneumophila cell numbers. Within the first days post infection Legionella replication was enhanced in amoebae with endosymbiont, resulting in higher rates of host cell death. After 2 weeks most amoebae with endosymbiont were uninfected and started to recover, reaching cell densities more than 100-fold increased relative to endosymbiont-free amoebae. However, in the presence of P. amoebophila, Legionella finally grew up as filaments in a biofilm-like structure, allowing it to persist in high numbers. The results obtained clearly show that the presence of P. amoebophila as an endosymbiont in A. castellanii alters the course infection of L. pneumophila. Considering filamentous Legionella as an outcome of the used artificial system, the host-recovery in the presence of Protochlamyida lets one conclude from a mutualistic relationship. Given the abundance of free-living amoebae in the environment as well as the frequent presence of endosymbionts in these protozoa, the observed phenomenon may hold widespread ecological and evolutionary implications

Event-based clustering for reducing labeling costs of event-related microposts

Automatically identifying the event type of event-related information in the sheer amount of social media data makes machine learning inevitable. However, this is highly dependent on (1) the number of correctly labeled instances and (2) labeling costs. Active learning has been proposed to reduce the number of instances to label. Albeit the thematic dimension is already used, other metadata such as spatial and temporal information that is helpful for achieving a more fine-grained clustering is currently not taken into account. In this paper, we present a novel event-based clustering strategy that makes use of temporal, spatial, and thematic metadata to determine instances to label. An evaluation on incident-related tweets shows that our selection strategy for active learning outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches even with few labeled instances

Continuous Secure Software Development and Analysis

Software security becomes increasingly important nowadays. Security should be considered as early as possible in the software development. However, considering different aspects of security is a complex task. In this paper, we propose an extendable framework for continuous secure software development and evolution. The framework provides interconnected analyses on different stages of development. Explicit assumption management helps to verify the security requirements more properly. Thus, the security of the system under development can be estimated more accurately. Finally, the concrete assumptions also help to identify and close security gaps that arise during the software’s lifetime

Draft Genome Sequences of Chlamydiales Bacterium STE3 and Neochlamydia sp. Strain AcF84, Endosymbionts of Acanthamoeba spp.

Chlamydiales bacterium STE3 and Neochlamydia sp. strain AcF84 are obligate intracellular symbionts of Acanthamoeba spp. isolated from the biofilm of a littoral cave wall and gills from striped tiger leaf fish, respectively. We report the draft genome sequences of these two environmental chlamydiae affiliated with the family Parachlamydiaceae

Decoding the Mindset: A Neural Network Approach for Analyzing CEO’s Digital Strategy and Its Innovation Implications

The swift advancement of digital technologies demands CEOs to prioritize digital innovation strategies to stay competitive. However, an overemphasis on digitality, neglecting aspects like customer focus, operations, and collaboration, can hinder innovation. Using a neural network, we evaluated CEOs’ digital strategies by training on 1,000 company pitches and applying this to S&P 500 CEOs\u27 Shareholder Letters (2001-2018). We discovered an inverted U relationship between digital strategy intensity and innovation performance. This stresses the need for a balanced strategy with the right digital focus. Our research illuminates top executives\u27 digital mindset in driving innovation, emphasizing the potential pitfalls of a purely digital approach. Furthermore, our machine-learning method offers a novel, scalable way to quantify digital strategy, paving the way for subsequent research

A Note on Scheduling Problems with Irregular Starting Time Costs

In [9], Maniezzo and Mingozzi study a project scheduling problem with irregular starting time costs. Starting from the assumption that its computational complexity status is open, they develop a branch-and-bound procedure, and identify special cases that are solvable in polynomial time. In this note, we review three previously established, related results which show that the general problem is solvable in polynomial time