An Economic Analysis of Same-Sex Marriage

The institution of marriage is the foundation of the family and of society. Even though it is a private institution, it has been regulated by society, depending on the specific time and history, religious perceptions, legal rules or customs, and norms. According to historical judicial interpretation, marriage has been viewed as a heterosexual union, same-sex rela-tionships are precluded from the definition of "marriage". Same-sex relationships, regardless of their duration, have not been legally recognised in most countries and, as a result, homosexual partners are denied many of the legal and eco-nomic privileges automatically granted with the marital status. Only recently, some countries have become more open to grant rights for same-sex couples, but the justification is rather on egalitarian than on economic grounds. The aim of the paper is to examine whether restricting the marriage option to heterosexual couples is efficient. It will be argued that there are hardly any grounds for denying same-sex couples the rights heterosexuals are granted when they wish to enter a legally recognised relationship. Furthermore, legalising same-sex marriage and implementing a social change might bring about a welfare gain for society as a whole. Yet, tradition and social values might make it more desir-able to let the relationship be recognised under a different name than “marriage”: a domestic partnership.

Beyond Words – Art Between the Verbal and the Visual

Philipp Horsts Studie untersucht die Veränderung im Gebrauch von Sprache in der Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Der Autor definiert drei Stadien dieser Entwicklung, die er grob den Epochen des Modernismus und der Konzeptkunst sowie der zeitgenössischen Computerkunst zuordnet. Während die modernistischen Künstler von der Literatur (oder die Dichter von der Kunst) beeinflusst werden, bevorzugen sie in ihren Arbeiten doch explizit ein Medium, entweder das Visuelle oder das Verbale. Die Konzeptkünstler der sechziger Jahre dagegen versuchen, visuelle und verbale Elemente zu vermischen, um ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis der beiden Medien zu schaffen. Diese Entwicklung führt schließlich zu einer dritten Stufe zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts: Nun schaffen Computerkünstler Werke, die weder als visuell noch als verbal gelten können, da sie durch eine Fusion dieser Medien eine virtuelle Qualität erschaffen, die sich konventionellen Beschreibungen von Kunst entzieht.Philipp Horst's study examines the change in the use of language in the visual arts of the 20th and 21st century. The author observes three stages of this development which roughly correspond to the historical movements of modernism and conceptual art as well as contemporary computer art. Whereas modernist artists may be inspired by poetry (or poets by paintings), their works clearly favour the use of one medium, either the visual or the verbal. In the 1960s, however, conceptual artists attempt to merge visual and verbal elements in order to create an equal balance of the two media in their work. This development eventually leads to a third stage at the beginning of the 21st century, when computer artists create works which can neither be classified as visual nor verbal because these media are fused in order to invent a virtual quality which defies conventional descriptions of art

Control of neuronal input-output coupling by recurrent inhibition in the hippocampus

During different states of hippocampal network activity neurons receive excitatory synaptic input on dendritic compartments and transform it into axonal action potential output. The ensemble output of pyramidal neurons activates local inhibitory microcircuits, which provide recurrent compartment-specific inhibition. In the present study it was observed that neuronal activity patterns that are likely to be present during sharp-waves recruit recurrent inhibition differently than repetitive activity at theta frequency. The observed results suggest that this could adapt the efficacy of input-output conversion to the network-state. In the present study dendritic spikes and their activity-dependent plasticity were identified as specialized signals, which endow correlated excitatory branch input with the ability to withstand recurrent inhibition and to generate precisely timed action potential output independent of the previous activity. These findings suggest that dendritic spikes may provide a cellular correlate for reliable and temporally precise reactivation of behaviorally relevant neuronal assemblies during both exploration and sleep