Organizational form with behavioral agents

The first chapter discusses how optimal incentive schemes should be set, when agents face limited cognitive capacities and react intuitively to complex incentive contracts. Following Arrows claim that “the scarcity of information-handling ability is an essential feature for the understanding of both individual and organizational behavior”(Arrow (1974), p.37), I analyze how increasing complexity can reverse optimal incentives into bad incentives. Agents face a multitude of different tasks in modern jobs. The increase in complexity is facilitated through new technological possibilities and a shift to flatter hierarchies. Standard contract theory predicts complex contracts, however, actual contracts are simpler. In order to explain this puzzle I propose a model in which agent’s limited attention leads to an instinctive focus on tasks with high outcome variation. Therefore agents end up exerting too much effort in those tasks. This provides an explanation of findings in field studies, where the reduction of incentives increases overall productivity or the introduction of new performance measures has negative effects on some tasks. The second chapter is methodological in the sense that it provides an experimental test for a widely used psychological model, Prospect Theory. We are interested in the role Prospect Theory plays for dynamic inconsistent behavior of decision makers. For Prospect Theory decision makers, there are massive spillovers between sequential choices. The outcomes of early decisions determine whether the decision makers face their subsequent choices from the gain or loss domain, which influences their preferences toward risk. So when it comes to early decisions, their choices can be driven by the anticipations of their own reactions to these domain shifts. We experimentally investigate the quality of Prospect Theory anticipations for a student subject pool and how individual differences in these anticipations are driven by the subjects’ cognitive ability, personality, demographics, and overall stability of Prospect Theory behavior. We find evidence that loss aversion drives dynamic inconsistent behavior. Contrary to our predictions individuals with higher cognitive reflection are not better planners. Businesses can exploit dynamic inconsistencies by offering sequential lotteries in form of products, e.g. trading card games, sticker albums, fantasy football leagues. In determining the role of Prospect Theory in dynamic inconsistent behavior we provide a angle for policy maker and consumer protection, i.e. organizations that protect behavioral agents from exploitation. The third chapter seems to be out of line with the previous two, because it does not assume behavioral agents. Rather we use a different perspective on the question how conflict within organizations, in this case firms, can be reduced through the introduction of a union. Unions reduce the cost of communication. We show that in a relational contracts model with imperfect public monitoring unions can mitigate equilibrium conflict and improve the efficiency of interaction. We modify the standard relational contracts model by assuming asymmetric information regarding the state of the world. Specifically, we assume there are some states of the world in which the firm is hit by an adverse shock, unobservable to the worker, and cannot honor its payment promises. In this situation, the firm always has an incentive to claim that it was hit by the adverse shock and to renege on its promises. We characterize an equilibrium that has periods of cooperation (high effort and bonus payment) and conflict (low effort and no bonus payments) along the quilibrium path. Though in equilibrium there is always truthful revelation of the state of the world, the conflict phases are needed to sustain cooperation. Unions help to communicate the state of the world and to reduce conflicts. Thus, we are able to provide a reason for an organization within an organization that helps to reduce conflicts even with purely self interested agents

Mitochondrial protein import

Transport of nuclear-encoded precursor proteins into mitochondria includes proteolytic cleavage of aminoterminal targeting sequences in the mitochondrial matrix. We have isolated the processing activity from Neurospora crassa. The final preparation (enriched ca. 10,000-fold over cell extracts) consists of two proteins, the matrix processing peptidase (MPP, 57 kd) and a processing enhancing protein (PEP, 52 kd). The two components were isolated as monomers. PEP is about 15-fold more abundant in mitochondria than MPP. It is partly associated with the inner membrane, while MPP is soluble in the matrix. MPP alone has a low processing activity whereas PEP alone has no apparent activity. Upon recombining both, full processing activity is restored. Our data indicate that MPP contains the catalytic site and that PEP has an enhancing function. The mitochondrial processing enzyme appears to represent a new type of “signal peptidase,” different from the bacterial leader peptidase and the signal peptidase of the endoplasmic reticulum

Standard and Non-Standard Inferences in the Description Logic FL₀ Using Tree Automata

Although being quite inexpressive, the description logic (DL) FL₀, which provides only conjunction, value restriction and the top concept as concept constructors, has an intractable subsumption problem in the presence of terminologies (TBoxes): subsumption reasoning w.r.t. acyclic FL₀ TBoxes is coNP-complete, and becomes even ExpTime-complete in case general TBoxes are used. In the present paper, we use automata working on infinite trees to solve both standard and non-standard inferences in FL₀ w.r.t. general TBoxes. First, we give an alternative proof of the ExpTime upper bound for subsumption in FL₀ w.r.t. general TBoxes based on the use of looping tree automata. Second, we employ parity tree automata to tackle non-standard inference problems such as computing the least common subsumer and the difference of FL₀ concepts w.r.t. general TBoxes

Cyclosporin A-binding protein (cyclophilin) of Neurospora crassa

Cyclophilin (cyclosporin A-binding protein) has a dual localization in the mitochondria and in the cytosol of Neurospora crassa. The two forms are encoded by a single gene which is transcribed into mRNAs having different lengths and 5' termini (approximately 1 and 0.8 kilobases). The shorter mRNA specifies the cytosolic protein consisting of 179 amino acids. The longer mRNA is translated into a precursor polypeptide with an amino-terminal extension of 44 amino acids which is cleaved in two steps upon entry into the mitochondrial matrix. Neurospora cyclophilin shows about 60% sequence homology to human and bovine cyclophilins

xVis: a web server for the schematic visualization and interpretation of crosslink-derived spatial restraints

The identification of crosslinks by mass spectrometry has recently been established as an integral part of the hybrid structural analysis of protein complexes and networks. The crosslinking analysis determines distance restraints between two covalently linked amino acids which are typically summarized in a table format that precludes the immediate and comprehensive interpretation of the topological data. xVis displays crosslinks in clear schematic representations in form of a circular, bar or network diagram. The interactive graphs indicate the linkage sites and identification scores, depict the spatial proximity of structurally and functionally annotated protein regions and the evolutionary conservation of amino acids and facilitate clustering of proteins into sub-complexes according to the crosslink density. Furthermore, xVis offers two options for the qualitative assessment of the crosslink identifications by filtering crosslinks according to identification scores or false discovery rates and by displaying the corresponding fragment ion spectrum of each crosslink for the manual validation of the mass spectrometric data. Our web server provides an easy-to-use tool for the fast topological and functional interpretation of distance information on protein complex architectures and for the evaluation of crosslink fragment ion spectra. xVis is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license at http://xvis.genzentrum.lmu.de/

xVis: a web server for the schematic visualization and interpretation of crosslink-derived spatial restraints

The identification of crosslinks by mass spectrometry has recently been established as an integral part of the hybrid structural analysis of protein complexes and networks. The crosslinking analysis determines distance restraints between two covalently linked amino acids which are typically summarized in a table format that precludes the immediate and comprehensive interpretation of the topological data. xVis displays crosslinks in clear schematic representations in form of a circular, bar or network diagram. The interactive graphs indicate the linkage sites and identification scores, depict the spatial proximity of structurally and functionally annotated protein regions and the evolutionary conservation of amino acids and facilitate clustering of proteins into sub-complexes according to the crosslink density. Furthermore, xVis offers two options for the qualitative assessment of the crosslink identifications by filtering crosslinks according to identification scores or false discovery rates and by displaying the corresponding fragment ion spectrum of each crosslink for the manual validation of the mass spectrometric data. Our web server provides an easy-to-use tool for the fast topological and functional interpretation of distance information on protein complex architectures and for the evaluation of crosslink fragment ion spectra. xVis is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license at http://xvis.genzentrum.lmu.de/

Automatische Codegenerierung für nutzerfreundliche mathematisch-epidemiologische Modelle

Infektionskrankheiten waren in der Vergangenheit eine große Gefahr für die Menschheit. Pandemien, wie die spanische Grippe von 1918-1920 oder die Pest von 1346-1353, führten zu Millionen von Todesfällen [33]. Anhand der derzeitigen Pandemie des Virus SARS-CoV-2 wird klar, dass solch eine Gefahr auch heute noch relevant ist. Der Beginn der Pandemie war für viele Menschen eine große Herausforderung. Sie waren in einer Situation mit sehr viel Ungewissheit. Eine Vorbereitung auf durch die Pandemie entstehende gesundheitliche, soziale und berufliche Probleme ist bei fehlendem Wissen über die Verbreitung von SARS-CoV-2 schwierig. Um die Infektionsausbreitung besser zu verstehen, bietet das Softwarepaket MEmilio C++-Simulationstools für die Covid-19 Pandemie unter Berücksichtigung von Faktoren wie Bevölkerungsgruppen, Infektionszuständen, Ortsauflösung, nichtpharmazeutische Interventionen, Verhalten der Bevölkerung und mehr. Die erhaltenen Daten können als Informationsquelle von Entscheidungsträger*innen in der Politik und Wirtschaft genutzt werden, um passende Regelungen im Umgang mit der Pandemie zu treffen. Um die Zielgruppe von MEmilio zu erhöhen, werden die Simulationstools zusätzlich für Python zugänglich gemacht. Python stellt als Programmiersprache eine große Basis an Benutzer*innen [38, 29, 27] und ist daher eine Möglichkeit die Software einem breiteren Anwendungskreis zu öffnen. Die Übertragung nach Python wird durch Python-Bindings implementiert. Diese sind für die Entwickler*innen zeitaufwändig zu erstellen. Sie brauchen über die Programmiersprache C++ hinaus auch ein Verständnis für Python, sowie die verwendete Bibliothek zum Binden des C++-Codes. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist somit, einen Ansatz zu erarbeiten, bei dem die Python-Bindings der C++-Modelle automatisch generiert werden. Ein Prototyp soll programmiert werden, der die automatische Generierung für die ODE-SIR-typischen Modelle von MEmilio durchführt. Für die spätere Implementierung von weiteren Modelltypen und das Ausbauen der bestehenden soll der Generator einfach erweiterbar gestaltet werden