Exposure to FX Rate Risk - A Qualitative Analysis of German Fair Trade Importers

The aim of this paper is to investigate the exposure of Fair Trade (FT) importers in Germany, operating based on the principles of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), to foreign exchange (FX) rate risk in the light of the current depreciation of the Euro. The ongoing high volatility of the Euro exchange rate strongly affects Fair Trade companies that import products mostly from developing countries and sell them in the European market. Previous research about hedging foreign exchange risk exposure focused either on large international corporations or on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in terms of their derivative use. However, these studies insufficiently discuss the exposure of micro and small Fair Trade businesses. Their distinctive feature is rooted in the Fair Trade principles such as non-interest bearing pre-financing, lack of pass-through possibilities and Minimum Price. Using a four-stage qualitative research approach, we gained a unique data set conducting semi-structured interviews with CEOs of Fair Trade companies and financial institutions. Thereby, we can make statements about how micro, small and medium sized Fair Trade importers perceive and manage their FX exposure. Furthermore, we investigated how the demand arising from this exposure can be hedged using derivates. Our results suggest that vast majority of Fair Trade importers perceive FX volatility to have a strong impact on their businesses. Moreover, most Fair Trade importers do not know how to deal with currency volatility. We find indication that Fair Trade Importers cannot draw on financial instruments provided by banks since their specific derivative demand is mostly below the invisible line of €50,000. This situation is condensed in the FX exposure framework. Our findings indicate that a possible solution can be achieved by pooling a number of smaller hedging demands into larger tradable batches

Challenges in IT Supply Chain Management

Multiple players are involved in the process of service provision in today’s IT industry. IT service is mostly a combination of process output of different IT service providers. A single IT department is still unable to produce and deliver the entirety of the desired IT service without the risk of inefficiency. Additionally, the emerging trend of IT outsourcing over the past years accelerates the separation of service provision. Therefore it could be useful to examine the entire IT service chain to avoid failures and to save time due to lacks of information or not standardized communication processes. As a possibility to face these problems, traditional industry branches developed and introduced a new management task called supply chain management. With this in mind the following paper focuses on challenges in IT supply chain management to improve communication processes between separate IT service providers of the IT industry

Variant configuration for IT-services and its impact on the service request fulfillment process

IT organizations are currently facing a trade-off between standardization and customer individuality. Standardization is onemeans to realize scale economies, is prerequisite to automate the delivery of IT-services and hence a possibility to cut costs.Best-practice frameworks like ITIL also drive the standardization efforts by defining IT-service catalogues and standardprocesses. Upcoming or rather ongoing trends like on-demand computing require standardization to assure efficientallocation of resources. But on the other hand customers of IT-services are confronted with increasing competition in theirbusiness that provokes individuality of their processes. Consequently IT-services must also be adjustable or customizable tomeet the customers’ needs. The resulting variety must be handled efficiently by the IT organization to stay or becomecompetitive. One means to cope with variety in the service request fulfillment process is variant configuration. In ourcontribution we discuss how variant configuration mechanisms can be applied on IT-services and what impact variantconfiguration has for the service request fulfillment process

Integrating metalloporphycenes into p-type NiO-based dye-sensitized solar cells

In the current work, we have explored a novel synthetic route towards metalated porphycenes and their use in p-type NiO-based dye-sensitized solar cells. Particular emphasis is placed on the influence that the relative positioning of the anchoring group exerts on the DSSC performance

Neurotophin Receptor p75NTR Regulates Immune Function of Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) regulate innate and adaptive immunity. Neurotrophins and their receptors control the function of neuronal tissue. In addition, they have been demonstrated to be part of the immune response but little is known about the effector immune cells involved. We report, for the first time, the expression and immune-regulatory function of the low affinity neurotrophin receptor p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) by the antigen-presenting pDCs, mediated by toll-like receptor (TLR) 9 activation and differential phosphorylation of interferon regulatory factor 3 and 7. The modulation of p75NTR on pDCs significantly influences disease progression of asthma in an ovalbumin-induced mouse model mediated by the TLR9 signaling pathway. p75NTR activation of pDCs from patients with asthma increased allergen-specific T cell proliferation and cytokine secretion in nerve growth factor concentration-dependent manner. Further, p75NTR activation of pDCs delayed the onset of autoimmune diabetes in RIP-CD80GP mice and aggravated graft-versus-host disease in a xenotransplantation model. Thus, p75NTR signaling on pDCs constitutes a new and critical mechanism connecting neurotrophin signaling and immune response regulation with great therapeutic potential for a variety of immune disorders

Accuracy of standard clinical 3T prostate MRI for pelvic lymph node staging: Comparison to 68Ga-PSMA PET-CT

The aim was to assess the performance of prostate 3T MRI for pelvic lymph node (LN) staging in prostate cancer (PCa), in comparison to 68Gallium-prostate specific membrane antigen PET-CT (68Ga-PSMA PET-CT) as reference standard for LN detection. 130 patients with PCa underwent non-contrast-enhanced multiparametric prostate 3T MRI and 68Ga-PSMA-PET-CT within 180 days at our institution. Overall, 187 LN metastases (n = 43 patients) detected by 68Ga-PSMA-PET-CT were characterized by calculating maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), area, diameter and anatomical location including iliac, obturator, presacral and inguinal region. MRI achieved an overall sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of 81.6% (CI 71.1-88.9%), 98.6% (CI 97.6-99.2%), 73.5% (CI 52.1-87.6%) and 99.5% (CI 98.8-99.8%), respectively. On a region-based analysis, detection rates differed non-significantly (ps > 0.12) in the anatomical regions. On a size-dependent analysis, detection of LN > 10 mm did not differ significantly (ps > 0.09) from LN ≤ 10 mm. In comparison to single T1 sequence evaluation, additional use of the T2 weighted sequences did not improve the overall performance significantly (p > 0.05). 3T prostate MRI represented an accurate tool for the detection of LN compared to 68Ga-PSMA-PET-CT. Especially for LN metastases smaller than 10 mm, MRI was less accurate compared to 68Ga-PSMA-PET-CT

How can Climate Learning be Initiated? Piloting Unconventional Interventions in Neighbourhoods

Bottom-up initiatives by citizens and communities are essential to increase acceptance of, and engagement in climate related actions. Yet, conventional approaches for raising awareness often fail to provoke a change in perspectives and actions. The CLEANcultures project conducts disruptive interventions in neighbourhoods to stimulate transformative learning processes to tackle climate change bottom-up at the neighbourhood level. The aim is not only to provide the neighbourhood with facts about the climate crisis, but also to trigger the citizens' emotions and attitudes, ultimately encouraging individual and collective action. Building on Transformative Learning Theory, local knowledge shall be activated, accepted norms questioned and alternative narratives of change co-created. A mixed-methods approach in two urban districts of Graz and the rural municipality of Admont combines 14 stakeholder interviews and a standardised postal survey of about 770 households with unconventional and interactive discussion formats involving 20 to 30 citizens per intervention. In the urban districts, commuter traffic, increasing heat stress, soil sealing and the decline of green spaces pose the biggest challenges. By contrast, the rural area struggles with insufficient public transport and lack of protection against extreme weather events. In line with Transformative Learning Theory, residents were first invited to critically assess their prevalent practices, prejudices and assumptions. Residents were confronted with the perceived climate-related threats in their direct surroundings as they appeared in the interviews and survey results, in order to generate reflection and self-examination. Next, the residents were engaged in iterative and interactive phases of stimulus, discussion, and reflection to discover local capacities to address the identified issues. The goal is to point out to the neighbourhoods their own possibilities for action and to strengthen their collective efficacy. The first intervention consisted of an impromusical play in which the climate-related problems were conveyed and reframed in a humorous way. The second intervention involved representatives of different religions who discussed various perspectives on ethics of climate responsibility with local citizens. Both interventions invited the audience to engage in an interactive and open discourse. As part of the transformative learning process, people realised that they were not alone in their thoughts and fears, and they were supported in developing ideas on how to get personally involved in their neighbourhood. Many mentioned that they were surprised by the relevance of climate-related issues in their residential surroundings. While citizens as individuals often do not feel heard and hardly see options for meaningful and effective contributions, the sense of belonging to a like-minded group can be empowering to explore new roles, relationships and actions. Working closely with (local) politicians also illustrated to decision makers the importance of the climate crisis in their neighbourhood and reinforced joint discourse. In all, unconventional interventions provide a promising entry point for introducing neighbourhood-level transformation processes in terms of climate change awareness, empowerment, and citizen involvement in decision-making

The Coronary Microcirculation in Hamster-to-Rat Cardiac Xenografts

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to establish a new experimental model to directly analyse the coronary microcirculation in cardiac xenografts. METHODS Intravital fluorescence microscopy (IVM) of the subepicardial microcirculation in heterotopically transplanted hamster-to-rat cardiac xenografts was performed at 30 and 90 min of reperfusion. We quantitatively assessed the microcirculatory perfusion characteristics as well as the interactions of leukocytes and platelets with the endothelium of postcapillary coronary venules in non-sensitised as well as sensitised recipients. RESULTS In this first experimental IVM study of cardiac xenografts, we successfully visualised the subepicardial microcirculation, i.e. feeding arterioles, nutritive capillaries and draining postcapillary venules, during reperfusion. Leukocyte-endothelial and platelet-endothelial cell interactions could be quantified. In the non-sensitised group, the myocardial microcirculation remained stable during the observation period of 90 min, whereas in the sensitised group, xenografts were rejected immediately. CONCLUSIONS We established a model for the assessment of the microcirculatory dysfunction and inflammation during ischaemia/reperfusion injury in hamster-to-rat cardiac xenografts

Automatic data quality control for understanding extreme climate event

The understanding of extreme events strongly depends on knowledge gained from data. Data integration of mul-tiple sources, scales and earth compartments is the fo-cus of the project Digital Earth, which also join efforts on the quality control of data. Automatic quality control is embedded in the ingest component of the O2A, the ob-servation-to-archive data flow framework of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute. In that framework, the O2A-Sensor provides observation properties to the O2A-Ingest, which delivers quality-flagged data to the O2A-dash-board. The automatic quality control currently follows a procedural approach, where modules are included to implement formulations found in the literature and other operational observatory networks. A set of plausibility tests including range, spike and gradient tests are cur-rently operational. The automatic quality control scans the ingesting data in near-real-time (NRT) format, builds a table of devices, and search - either by absolute or derivative values - for correctness and validity of obser-vations. The availability of observation properties, for in-stance tests parameters like physical or operation ranges, triggers the automatic quality control, which in turn iterates through the table of devices to set the qual-ity flag for each sample and observation. To date, the quality flags in use are sequential and qualitative, i.e. it describes a level of quality in the data. A new flagging system is under development to include a descriptive characteristic that will comprise technical and user inter-pretation. Within Digital Earth, data on flood and drought events along the Elbe River and methane emissions in the North Sea are to be reviewed using automatic qual-ity control. Fast and scalable automatic quality control will disentangle uncertainty raised by quality issues and thus improve our understanding of extreme events in those cases