Die Mühen der Ebenen - das "wasteland" wird kleiner

Sammelbesprechnung: (1) Platzer, H.-W./ Müller, T. (2009): Die globalen und europäischen Gewerkschaftsverbände. Handbuch und Analysen zur transnationalen Gewerkschaftspolitik. edition sigma - Forschung aus der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. (2) Croucher, R./ Cotton, E. (2009): Global Unions, Global Business. London: Middlesex University Press. (3) Erne, R. (2008): European Unions. Labor’s Quest for a Transnational Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (4) Rüb, S. (2009): Die Transnationalisierung der Gewerkschaften. Eine empirische Untersuchung am Beispiel der IG Metall. Berlin. edition sigma - Forschung aus der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. (5) Institut für soziale Bewegungen (2009): Deutsche Gewerkschaften und europäische Integration im 20. Jahrhundert. Bochum. Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen. (6) Scholz, D./ Schmidt-Hullmann, F./ Karrass, A./Martens, H./ Paust-Lassen, P./ Pieper, W./ Wolf, F.O. (Hrsg) (2009): "Europa sind wir" - Gewerkschaftspolitik für ein anderes Europa. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot

Armerika - Richistan

Sammelbesprechung: (1) Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson (2010): Winner-Take-All Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster. (2) Paul Krugman (2007): The Conscience of a Liberal. New York: Norton & Company. (3) Paul Krugman (2012): End This Depression Now! New York: Norton & Company. (4) Paul Krugman (2012): Vergesst die Krise! Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. (5) Joseph E. Stiglitz (2010): Freefall - America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. New York: Norton & Company. (6) Joseph E. Stiglitz (2011): Im freien Fall. München: Pantheon. (7) Joel Berg (2011): All You Can Eat - How Hungry is America? New York: Seven Stories Press. (8) Nelson Lichtenstein (2009): The Retail Revolution - How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company

Transnational industrial relations in Europe

This is the third volume dedicated to a World Congress of the IIRA: the one for the Tokyo Congress in 2000 and it is dealing with the European scene. The perspective reflects the fact that Europe has reached a stage where it does no longer make too much sense to analyse national systems in isolation: they have to be put into the European context. The development of structural elements for a European industrial relations pattern has become an even more urgent task in view of the introduction of the European monetary union. Whether and how far collective bargaining can be coordinated throughout Europe or whether the trade unions are already in a stage to be a relevant actor on European level, are burning questions to be asked. The impact of already existing patterns of workers' participation on the spirit of European industrial relations has to be reflected. The still dramatic unemployment situation has led to a joint job creation strategy on EU level whose functioning needs careful analysis. In view of the forthcoming enlargement of the EU it has in addition become of utmost importance to reflect on the question how the industrial relations systems of the newcomers can be integrated in the already existing pattern. These and other aspects of the generation of a European industrial relations machinery are dealt with in this volume

Social embedding and the integration of markets: An opportunity for transnational trade union action or an impossible task?

Increasing signs seem to indicate that, in the areas of both politics and thought, the age of neoliberal supremacy is approaching its end. An ideology based exclusively on the free play of the market is bound, ultimately, to lose its attraction. Growing inequality and social exclusion, with new forms of underclass suffering new forms of insecurity, cause the neoliberal conceptions to forfeit all moral credibility. Increasing conviction is attaching to the notion of social embedding, according to which transnational political and economic areas - such as the European Union - require democratic governance in order to foster social cohesion and environmental sustainability. The change in political climate has also reached the trade unions, whose members are becoming increasingly vocal in their rejection of shareholder capitalism. The trade unions have acknowledged that, on the other side of the nation state, they now have their second home in Europe. As such, they are developing new strategies for deployment in the European arena and seeking to make use of the opportunities offered by coordination of their policies at European level

Kalman Filter based team navigation for multiple unmanned marine vehicles

In applications employing Multiple Unmanned Marine Vehicles (MUMVs), the navigation has a very great importance to guarantee formation preservation and collision avoidance. While single vehicles usually base their navigation on absolute measurements (GPS, inertial navigation) to determine their position relative to the world, it may be reasonable to perform a relative navigation within vehicle teams. In this paper, we propose relative team navigation based on Kalman Filters to enable a velocity controller to establish a close formation under the typical marine constraints (narrow band width communication with low reliability). We will simulate a team of three marine vehicles and compare the results of different strategies for team navigation

Hypothermic Oxygenated Machine Perfusion (HOPE) Prior to Liver Transplantation Mitigates Post-Reperfusion Syndrome and Perioperative Electrolyte Shifts

(1) Background: Post-reperfusion syndrome (PRS) and electrolyte shifts (ES) represent considerable challenges during liver transplantation (LT) being associated with significant morbidity. We aimed to investigate the impact of hypothermic oxygenated machine perfusion (HOPE) on PRS and ES in LT. (2) Methods: In this retrospective study, we compared intraoperative parameters of 100 LTs, with 50 HOPE preconditioned liver grafts and 50 grafts stored in static cold storage (SCS). During reperfusion phase, prospectively registered serum parameters and vasopressor administration were analyzed. (3) Results: Twelve percent of patients developed PRS in the HOPE cohort vs. 42% in the SCS group (p = 0.0013). Total vasopressor demand in the first hour after reperfusion was lower after HOPE pretreatment, with reduced usage of norepinephrine (-26%;p = 0.122) and significant reduction of epinephrine consumption (-52%;p = 0.018). Serum potassium concentration dropped by a mean of 14.1% in transplantations after HOPE, compared to a slight decrease of 1% (p < 0.001) after SCS. The overall incidence of early allograft dysfunction (EAD) was reduced by 44% in the HOPE group (p = 0.04). (4) Conclusions: Pre-transplant graft preconditioning with HOPE results in higher hemodynamic stability during reperfusion and lower incidence of PRS and EAD. HOPE has the potential to mitigate ES by preventing hyperpotassemic complications that need to be addressed in LT with HOPE-pre-treated grafts

Machine learning assisted real-time deformability cytometry of CD34+ cells allows to identify patients with myelodysplastic syndromes

Diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) mainly relies on a manual assessment of the peripheral blood and bone marrow cell morphology. The WHO guidelines suggest a visual screening of 200 to 500 cells which inevitably turns the assessor blind to rare cell populations and leads to low reproducibility. Moreover, the human eye is not suited to detect shifts of cellular properties of entire populations. Hence, quantitative image analysis could improve the accuracy and reproducibility of MDS diagnosis. We used real-time deformability cytometry (RT-DC) to measure bone marrow biopsy samples of MDS patients and age-matched healthy individuals. RT-DC is a high-throughput (1000 cells/s) imaging flow cytometer capable of recording morphological and mechanical properties of single cells. Properties of single cells were quantified using automated image analysis, and machine learning was employed to discover morpho-mechanical patterns in thousands of individual cells that allow to distinguish healthy vs. MDS samples. We found that distribution properties of cell sizes differ between healthy and MDS, with MDS showing a narrower distribution of cell sizes. Furthermore, we found a strong correlation between the mechanical properties of cells and the number of disease-determining mutations, inaccessible with current diagnostic approaches. Hence, machine-learning assisted RT-DC could be a promising tool to automate sample analysis to assist experts during diagnosis or provide a scalable solution for MDS diagnosis to regions lacking sufficient medical experts

Nonlinear deterministic equations in biological evolution

We review models of biological evolution in which the population frequency changes deterministically with time. If the population is self-replicating, although the equations for simple prototypes can be linearised, nonlinear equations arise in many complex situations. For sexual populations, even in the simplest setting, the equations are necessarily nonlinear due to the mixing of the parental genetic material. The solutions of such nonlinear equations display interesting features such as multiple equilibria and phase transitions. We mainly discuss those models for which an analytical understanding of such nonlinear equations is available.Comment: Invited review for J. Nonlin. Math. Phy

Peroxyactyl nitrate (PAN) distribution over the South Atlantic Ocean

The atmospheric concentration of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) was measured over the South Atlantic Ocean in the range between 37° and 70° S inMarch 1999 in order to investigate its latitudinal distribution and its role in the NOy chemistry of the remote marine boundary layer (MBL) in the high latitudes of thesouthern hemisphere. The measurements were performed using an automatic gas chromatographic system aboard RV Polarstern. Mean mixing ratios of 62 (+/- 21)pptv were obtained between 37° and 49° S. South of 55° S, PAN concentrations were very low with values of the order of 10-30 pptv.Pronounced diurnal cycles could not be observed. The concentrations over the South Atlantic were considerably lower compared with the North Atlantic where theMBL is influenced by continental air masses