German banking and the rise of financial capitalism: a case of extraverted financialisation

This thesis examines the impact of the rise of US finance on the financialisation of German banking. The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) has highlighted that German banks have been deeply involved in US speculative practices. Departing from their traditional role as provider of long- term loans to corporations and broader commitment to German industry, it appears that German banks have become increasingly like US American banks. This shift towards a US form of finance is often understood as a process of ‘marketisation’. German banks supposedly adopted ‘market-based banking’ because they could make higher profits on global financial markets. However, the notion of market-based banking cannot account for the novel imperatives and constraints that the rise of US finance has raised for German banks. Market-based financial practices have a long history in German banking and, therefore, cannot explain the profound transformations of US-led financialisation. Consequently, scholars struggle to grasp why and how German banks changed their practices in response to the rise of US finance. To understand the trajectory of German banking, I propose the original concept of ‘extraverted financialisation’. The concept aims to capture the problems of financial agents seeking to imitate financial practices that others have developed in a different context. The concept more specifically portrays the rise of US style finance in Germany as an outcome of a major shift in the way US banks have funded themselves. In the 1960s, US banks started to fund themselves with short-term securities issued in US money markets, which allowed them quicker access to larger amounts of funds. This strategy, called liability management (LM), imposed novel and distinct imperatives for non-US banks: accessing US dollars (USD). I show how this forced German banks to find a way into foreign financial markets which were based in London and Luxemburg (the Eurodollar markets), and more importantly in the US. As a result, German banks had to gradually implement the practices of LM to obtain USD from US money markets to operate in these markets. I articulate my argument through historicising the strategies of the two biggest German banks: Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. Chapter two surveys the CPE literature on the transformation of German banking and establishes the concept of extraverted financialisation. Chapter three examines the strategies with respect to their original market-based funding, the Pfandbrief, to highlight that not all market-based practices lead to financialisation. In chapter four, I analyse how German banks started seeking dollars on the Euromarkets in the 1960s to regain their capacity to finance the internationalising German industry. Chapter five demonstrates how the attempts to access USD in US money markets since the 1970s drove German banks’ shift to LM. Finally, I scrutinise the banks’ internal power struggles over strategies of how to respond to the imperatives of LM. This will highlight the severity of LM’s impact and the banks’ dependence on USD it has caused. The conclusion emphasises the broader implications of the rise of US finance for (policy) initiatives to transform global banking

Bestimmung der Eigenstabilität von enoralen Zirkondioxid-Implantaten

Den deutlichen biologischen Vorteilen von ZrO2-Implantaten steht eine möglicherweise geringere Stabilität im Interfacebereich gegenüber. Es sollte daher die mechanische Stabilität zweiteiliger vollkeramischer ZrO2-Implantate geprüft und mit der von Ti-Implantaten verglichen werden. Durch das technisch ausgereifte und in der Zahnheilkunde bereits erprobte Rotationsschwinger-Verfahren (DIN 1331-2) wurden verschiedene Typen von ZrO2-Implantaten (geteilte Formen mit verschiedenen Interface-Levels, zementierte und verschraubte Abutments mit ZrO2- und Titanschrauben, einteilige Kontroll-Implantate) pseudorealistischen Belastungen von 15 und 50 Ncm im life time-Modus ausgesetzt. Vor, während und nach den Stresstests wurden die Lockerung der Verbindungsschraube, das Kipp- und Drehspiel sowie die Bruchfestigkeit im Verbundbereich zwischen Fixtur und Abutment bestimmt. Frakturen im Interface-Bereich traten bei 15 Ncm-Belastung in 3 %, bei 50 Ncm in 26 % der Fälle auf. Als besonders bruchanfällig erwiesen sich Implantate mit zementiertem Abutment sowie sog. Bone Level-Implantate mit ZrO2-Schrauben. Die Lösedrehmomente (Restdrehmomente) betrugen für Titan-Schrauben 64 % und für solche aus ZrO2 nur noch 36 % des initialen Anzugsdrehmoments. Das höchste Drehspiel im Verbundbereich (+2,5°) wurde bei Bone Level-Implantaten mit ZrO2-Schrauben beobachtet. Das Kippspiel aller Implantate blieb während der Tests weitgehend unabhängig vom Material und einer Zementierung der Fixierungsschrauben relativ stabil. Die höchste mechanische Stabilität des Verbundbereichs wurde unter Berücksichtigung aller Testkriterien bei sog. Tissue Level-Implantaten, die mit Titan-Schrauben befestigt waren, beobachtet. Durch das Rotationsschwinger-Verfahren kann eine langjährige Belastung von Implantaten innerhalb kurzer Zeit simuliert werden. Im Vergleich zu Ti-Implantaten zeigten dabei ZrO2-Implantate weitgehend bessere Ergebnisse bezüglich Bruchfestigkeit, Abnützungs- und Lockerungseffekten im Bereich des Verbunds zwischen Fixtur und Abutment

Energetic electron assisted synthesis of highly tunable temperature-responsive collagen/elastin gels for cyclic actuation: macroscopic switching and molecular origins

Thermoresponsive bio-only gels that yield sufficiently large strokes reversibly and without large hysteresis at a well-defined temperature in the physiological range, promise to be of value in biomedical application. Within the present work we demonstrate that electron beam modification of a blend of natural collagen and elastin gels is a route to achieve this goal, viz. to synthesize a bioresorbable gel with largely reversible volume contractions as large as 90% upon traversing a transition temperature that can be preadjusted between 36 °C and 43 °C by the applied electron dose. Employing circular dichroism and temperature depending confocal laser scanning microscopy measurements, we furthermore unravel the mechanisms underlying this macroscopic behavior on a molecular and network level, respectively and suggest a stringent picture to account for the experimental observations. © 2019, The Author(s)

High environmental ozone levels lead to enhanced allergenicity of Birch pollen

BACKGROUND: Evidence is compelling for a positive correlation between climate change, urbanisation and prevalence of allergic sensitisation and diseases. The reason for this association is not clear to date. Some data point to a pro-allergenic effect of anthropogenic factors on susceptible individuals. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of urbanisation and climate change on pollen allergenicity. METHODS: Catkins were sampled from birch trees from different sites across the greater area of Munich, pollen were isolated and an urbanisation index, NO(2) and ozone exposure were determined. To estimate pollen allergenicity, allergen content and pollen-associated lipid mediators were measured in aqueous pollen extracts. Immune stimulatory and modulatory capacity of pollen was assessed by neutrophil migration assays and the potential of pollen to inhibit dendritic cell interleukin-12 response. In vivo allergenicity was assessed by skin prick tests. RESULTS: The study revealed ozone as a prominent environmental factor influencing the allergenicity of birch pollen. Enhanced allergenicity, as assessed in skin prick tests, was mirrored by enhanced allergen content. Beyond that, ozone induced changes in lipid composition and chemotactic and immune modulatory potential of the pollen. Higher ozone-exposed pollen was characterised by less immune modulatory but higher immune stimulatory potential. CONCLUSION: It is likely that future climate change along with increasing urbanisation will lead to rising ozone concentrations in the next decades. Our study indicates that ozone is a crucial factor leading to clinically relevant enhanced allergenicity of birch pollen. Thus, with increasing temperatures and increasing ozone levels, also symptoms of pollen allergic patients may increase further

Kolloquium Forschende Frauen 2016 und 2017: Beiträge Bamberger Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen

Die Buchreihe „Forschende Frauen in Bamberg“ begleitet das gleichnamige Forschungskolloquium der Frauenbeauftragten der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Der neunte Band unserer Reihe umfasst als Besonderheit sowohl das Kolloquium 2016 als auch 2017. Anlässlich des von uns für 2016 ausgerufenen „Genderjahres“ haben alle in diesem Buch veröffentlichten Beiträge eine Gemeinsamkeit: Untersucht werden Fragestellungen, die sich mit Genderthemen befassen, beziehungsweise Geschlechterunterschiede aufzeigen oder Frauen in den Fokus nehmen

Ancient DNA of the pygmy marmoset type specimen Cebuella pygmaea (Spix, 1823) resolves a taxonomic conundrum

The pygmy marmoset, the smallest of the anthropoid primates, has a broad distribution in Western Amazonia. Recent studies using molecular and morphological data have identified two distinct species separated by the Napo and Solimões-Amazonas rivers. However, reconciling this new biological evidence with current taxonomy, i.e., two subspecies, Cebuella pygmaea pygmaea (Spix, 1823) and Cebuella pygmaea niveiventris (Lönnberg, 1940), was problematic given the uncertainty as to whether Spix's pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea pygmaea) was collected north or south of the Napo and Solimões-Amazonas rivers, making it unclear to which of the two newly revealed species the name pygmaea would apply. Here, we present the first molecular data from Spix's type specimen of Cebuella pygmaea, as well as novel mitochondrial genomes from modern pygmy marmosets sampled near the type locality (Tabatinga) on both sides of the river. With these data, we can confirm the correct names of the two species identified, i.e., C. pygmaea for animals north of the Napo and Solimões-Amazonas rivers and C. niveiventris for animals south of these two rivers. Phylogenetic analyses of the novel genetic data placed into the context of cytochrome b gene sequences from across the range of pygmy marmosets further led us to reevaluate the geographical distribution for the two Cebuella species. We dated the split of these two species to 2.54 million years ago. We discuss additional, more recent, subdivisions within each lineage, as well as potential contact zones between the two species in the headwaters of these rivers

Comparison of dental topography of marmosets and tamarins (Callitrichidae) to other platyrrhine primates using a novel freeware pipeline

Dental topographic metrics (DTMs), which quantify different aspects of the shape of teeth, are powerful tools for studying dietary adaptation and evolution in mammals. Current DTM protocols usually rely on proprietary software, which may be unavailable to researchers for reasons of cost. We address this issue in the context of a DTM analysis of the primate clade Platyrrhini (“New World monkeys”) by: 1) presenting a large comparative sample of scanned second lower molars (m2s) of callitrichids (marmosets and tamarins), previously underrepresented in publicly available datasets; and 2) giving full details of an entirely freeware pipeline for DTM analysis and its validation. We also present an updated dietary classification scheme for extant platyrrhines, based on cluster analysis of dietary data extracted from 98 primary studies. Our freeware pipeline performs equally well in dietary classification accuracy of an existing sample of platyrrhine m2s (excluding callitrichids) as a published protocol that uses proprietary software when multiple DTMs are combined. Individual DTMs, however, sometimes showed very different results in classification accuracies between protocols, most likely due to differences in smoothing functions. The addition of callitrichids resulted in high classification accuracy in predicting diet with combined DTMs, although accuracy was considerably higher when molar size was included (90%) than excluded (73%). We conclude that our new freeware DTM pipeline is capable of accurately predicting diet in platyrrhines based on tooth shape and size, and so is suitable for inferring probable diet of taxa for which direct dietary information is unavailable, such as fossil species