The Janus-headed salvation: sovereign and bank credit risk premia during 2008-09

As the global banking crisis intensified in the fall of 2008, governments announced comprehensive rescue packages for financial institutions. In this paper, we put the joint response of euro area bank and sovereign CDS premia under the microscope. We find that the bank rescue packages led to a clear structural break in these premia's comovement, which had been rather tight and stable in the weeks preceding the in-tensification of the crisis. Firstly, the packages induced a decrease in risk spreads for banks at the expense of a marked increase in risk spreads for governments. Secondly, we show that in addition to this one-off jump in the levels of CDS spreads, the packages strongly increased the sensitivity of sovereign risk spreads to any further aggravation of the crisis. At the same time, the sensitivity of bank credit risk premia declined and became more sovereign-like, reflecting the extensive government guarantees of banking sector liabilities. JEL Classification: G15, G21credit default swaps, financial crisis, risk transfer

Draft Genome Sequence of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius Strain 13-13613, Isolated from a Case of Canine Pyoderma

Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius strain 13-13613, isolated from a case of canine pyoderma. The draft genome contains 2,533,486 bp in 570 contigs

Optical properties of InAlGaAs quantum wells: Influence of segregation and band bowing

Knowledge of the quaternary InAlGaAs material system is very limited for the composition range relevant for growth on GaAs substrates. We report on the characterization and modeling of InAlGaAs quantum wells with AlGaAs barriers, grown pseudomorphically on a GaAs substrate with molecular beam epitaxy. The quantum wells are characterized with photoluminescence, and the measured transition energies are modeled taking into account the influence of In segregation on the shape of the well potential. From the modeling we deduce a relation for the low temperature band gap of unstrained Inx(AlyGa1−y)1−xAs, for 0⩽x,y⩽0.20. The measured linewidths of the luminescence peaks are in agreement with the broadening expected from random alloy fluctuations and well width fluctuations with an effective interface roughness of 1.1 ML

Role of the Cannabinoid Receptor Type 1 (CB1) in Synaptic Plasticity, Memory and Emotionality

The present work focused on the role of the cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1) in synaptic plasticity, memory and emotionality in mice. CB1 is abundantly expressed in the central nervous system and is mainly (if not exclusively) located on GABAergic and glutamatergic nerve cells. CB1 is a G-protein coupled receptor which is essentially inhibiting transmitter release from presynaptic GABAergic or glutamatergic nerve terminals. To differentiate between the physiological significance of CB1 expressed on glutamatergic and GABAergic nerve terminals, the studies included work with three different CB1-deficient mouse lines: A conventional knock-out mouse line (total-CB1- ko mice) with a deficiency of CB1 in the entire brain and two conditional knock-out mouse lines using the Cre/lox P recombination system, and leading to cell type specific deficiency of CB1 on GABAergic neurons (GABA-CB1-ko mice) or glutamatergic neurons (Glu-CB1-ko mice). As a common model for alterations in synaptic plasticity and hippocampus-dependent memory, we studied long-term potentiation in the hippocampus at first. The hippocampus is an essential brain structure being involved in spatial and episodic-like memory. We showed that there is an increase of hippocampal LTP in vivo at the perforant path-dentate gyrus granule cell synapse in total-CB1-ko mice, but failed to detect any difference in LTP levels for GABA-CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice. Also, short-term plasticity using a paired-pulse stimulation protocol is unchanged in the three mouse lines. Eventually, augmented theta rhythm that is believed to underlie enhanced cognitive abilities could not be found in total-CB1-ko mice. Our hypothesis of memory improvement in CB1-deficient mouse lines could not be verified in three tests for memory that are based on a spontaneous preference for novelty: The social recognition test, the object recognition test and the open field habituation test. We consequently tested the mice in two memory tasks that rely on an aversive test situation. In the water maze spatial discrimination task, again no differences could be assessed for acquisition of the task in total-CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice. Curiously, Glu-CB1-ko mice demonstrate more flexible behaviour in reversal learning indicating that CB1 on glutamatergic neurons may lead to perseverant and persistent behaviour. Eventually, we could show for the first time that there is a differential contribution of CB1 on either GABAergic neurons or glutamatergic neurons in the background contextual fear conditioning task. Here, mice were tested in the shock context and in a different context containing the grid floor as a similar aspect to the shock context, called grid context. GABA-CB1-ko mice reveal increased fearful behaviour specifically in the grid context. This might indicate an increased context generalisation and/or a feature learning strategy in GABA-CB1-ko mice. In contrast, Glu-CB1-ko mice display increased fearful behaviour specifically for the shock context, indicating a conjunctive learning strategy. Total-CB1-ko mice showed an increased fear response in both contexts, representing a mixed phenotype of Glu-CB1-ko and GABA-CB1-ko mice. Another novel finding confirming a large body of evidence is the fact that total-CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice manifest a deficit of extinction for the conditioned tone, providing first evidence that CB1 on glutamatergic neurons is essential for short-term extinction of auditory-cued fear memory. Any changes in memory performance might be obscured by altered emotionality in the knockout mouse lines. In classical tests for anxiety such as the elevated plusmaze and the light/dark box, we found a tendency of increased anxiety in total-CB1- ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice and a tendency of a decrease of anxiety in GABA-CB1-komice at most. Strikingly, we were able to show that CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice, in contrast to GABA-CB1-ko, avoid the open arms of the elevated plus-maze more than wildtype mice on a second exposure to the maze indicating an increased one-trial sensitisation. Furthermore remarkably, CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko mice showed increased anxiety-related behaviour whereas GABA-CB1-ko mice revealed an unchanged or anxiolytic phenotype in three different tests of emotionality: The open field test, the novel object exploration test and the novel juvenile exploration test. These tests were carried out under low and high light conditions. Here, as opposed to the elevated plus-maze and the light/dark box, the animals cannot retract from an aversive situation that is bright light in the testing environment which may cause sufficient activation of the endocannabinoid system thus leading to a detectable and profound phenotype in the animals. Interestingly, altered emotionality seems to depend on the averseness of the test situation, as CB1-ko and Glu-CB1-ko animals do not or only mildly differ from their wildtype littermates under lowly aversive conditions but show increased anxiety under highly aversive conditions in the aforementioned tests. This strongly suggests that the endocannabinoid system might dampen states of anxiety in highly aversive and stressful environments. More precisely, CB1 on GABAergic neurons rather leads to an anxiogenic effect, whereas CB1 on glutamatergic neurons prominently leads to an anxiolytic phenotype which we refer to as “the Yin and the Yang effect” of CB1 in emotionality. Altogether, our study illustrates the value of conditional mouse mutants for which celltype specific ablation of a gene of interest exist in order to understand the role of CB1 in synaptic plasticity, memory and emotionality. Our findings add another level of complexity to the picture of endocannabinoid action in fear and anxiety, which has to be considered if the endocannabinoid system is going to be exploited as a therapeutic target for the treatment of anxiety disorders

Bert Vallee—A 20th Century Adventure(r) in Zincology

Prelude [...

Experimental Atomic Spectroscopy of Iron Group Elements for Astrophysics

The quality of modern astrophysical spectra has made it clear that there is a lack of sufficiently accurate and robust laboratory atomic reference data sets. Particularly for spectra of the iron-group elements, the growing demand for critically evaluated sets of comprehensive atomic data is a direct result of advancing stellar astrophysics models and fundamental physics problems probing beyond the standard model. My thesis reports on my critical evaluation of the Ni V spectrum and the recent laboratory measurements I have conducted to improve the state of available reference data for astrophysical applications that rely on observations of Ni V. Additionally, I report my laboratory measurements of Fe II branching fraction values in the UV/VUV. Using high-resolution grating spectroscopy at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, I have carried out an analysis of quadruply ionized iron and nickel (Fe V & Ni V) in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region by both recording new spectra and critically evaluating previously published data sets. My analysis has resulted in highly accurate wavelengths, presented with calculated oscillator strengths, for roughly 1500 Ni V lines, 200 of which have uncertainties that are almost an order of magnitude lower than in previous publications. Additionally, I present over 300 Ni V energy levels derived from my evaluated wavelengths. This section of my thesis focuses on the large improvements made in the analysis of Ni V, but my work also strongly supports the previous evaluations of Fe V by another author. With the extreme accuracy requirements of modern astrophysics problems, confirming the wavelength scale and uncertainty evaluation of previous Fe V data sets is still significant. In addition to the above work, my thesis also presents measurements of singly ionized iron (Fe II) branching fractions (BFs) in the VUV using high-resolution Fourier-transform spectroscopy. BFs are essential values for interpreting complex astrophysical spectra, but are notoriously difficult to measure in the VUV; for this reason, VUV BFs of Fe II have only been reported by one other research group for just seven levels. My thesis reports accurate BFs for 11 Fe II levels, involving approximately 100 spectral lines (16 in the VUV), which roughly doubles the amount of reported Fe II BFs in VUV

Ultranarrow polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity

We have achieved a record high ratio (19) of the Rabi splitting (3.6 meV) to the polaritonlinewidth (190 μeV), in a semiconductor λ microcavity with a single 25 nm GaAsquantum well at the antinode. The narrow polariton lines are obtained with a special cavity design which reduces the exciton broadening due to scattering with free charges and has a very low spatial gradient of the cavity resonance energy. Since the static quantum-well disorder is very small, the polariton broadening is dominantly homogeneous. Still, the measured linewidths close to zero detuning cannot be correctly predicted using the linewidth averaging model

Need for nursing care support in cancer patients: Registry-linkage study in Germany

Aim: In Germany, very little is known about the need for assistance and nursing care support among cancer patients after hospitalization. The aim of this study was to describe nursing care support for cancer patients and to analyse whether these patients need more care assistance than other persons in need for care. Methods: This was a registry linkage study conducted in 2011. Cases were identified from the population-based cancer registry for the Muenster District in north-western Germany and in factually anonymised form linked by a semi-automatic probabilistic procedure (the standard procedure of the cancer registry) with medical examination records of patients applying for assistance and nursing care support from the regional statutory health insurance. The application records of 4,029 patients with colon, breast and prostate cancer were compared to a reference group of 13,104 non-cancer patients. Results: In only 41.7% of colon, 45.8% of breast and 37.4% of prostate cancer patients was the malignancy the main underlying diagnostic cause for the application of assistance and nursing care. These patients were on average younger (mean age 71.1 vs. 76.8 years) than the non-cancer reference group, required higher levels of support (79.5 vs. 58.1% “considerable” or higher level care need) and their applications were less likely to be rejected (odds ratios [ORs] 0.26, 0.28, and 0.31, respectively). By contrast, the proportion of successful applications and the level of support granted did not differ between multimorbid cancer patients with other main diagnoses as compared to non-cancer applicants. Conclusion: Patients with colon, breast or prostate cancer do not need per se more nursing care than non-cancer patients. Only if cancer is the main underlying diagnosis for nursing care support, higher levels of support are needed