Enhancing Market Power by Reducing Switching Costs

Competing firms often have the possibility to jointly determine the magnitude of consumers’ switching costs. Examples include compatibility decisions and the option of introducing number portability in telecom and banking. We put forward a model where firms jointly decide to reduce switching costs before competing in prices during two periods. We demonstrate that the outcome hinges crucially on how the joint action reduces consumers’ switching costs. In particular, firms will enhance their market power if they implementmeasures that reduce consumers’ switching costs by a lump sum. Conversely, they willpreserve market power by not implementing actions that reduce switching costsproportionally. Hence, when policy makers design consumer protection policies, they should not always adopt a favourable attitude towards efforts by firms to reduce switching costs.switching costs, market power, welfare

Seasonality and spatial heterogeneity of the surface ocean carbonate system in the northwest European continental shelf

In 2014–5 the UK NERC sponsored an 18 month long Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry research programme which collected over 1500 nutrient and carbonate system samples across the NW European Continental shelf, one of the largest continental shelves on the planet. This involved the cooperation of 10 different Institutes and Universities, using 6 different vessels. Additional carbon dioxide (CO2) data were obtained from the underway systems on three of the research vessels. Here, we present and discuss these data across 9 ecohydrodynamic regions, adapted from those used by the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). We observed strong seasonal and regional variability in carbonate chemistry around the shelf in relation to nutrient biogeochemistry. Whilst salinity increased (and alkalinity decreased) out from the near-shore coastal waters offshore throughout the year nutrient concentrations varied with season. Spatial and seasonal variations in the ratio of DIC to nitrate concentration were seen that could impact carbon cycling. A decrease in nutrient concentrations and a pronounced under-saturation of surface pCO2 was evident in the spring in most regions, especially in the Celtic Sea. This decrease was less pronounced in Liverpool Bay and to the North of Scotland, where nutrient concentrations remained measurable throughout the year. The near-shore and relatively shallow ecosystems such as the eastern English Channel and southern North Sea were associated with a thermally driven increase in pCO2 to above atmospheric levels in summer and an associated decrease in pH. Non-thermal processes (such as mixing and the remineralisation of organic material) dominated in winter in most regions but especially in the northwest of Scotland and in Liverpool Bay. The large database collected will improve understanding of carbonate chemistry over the North-Western European Shelf in relation to nutrient biogeochemistry, particularly in the context of climate change and ocean acidification

M & L Extra-nummer - Maagdentoren

Sonja Vanblaere - VoorwoordKjell Corens - De Maagdentoren. De rijkdom van een vergeten heerlijkheid.Frans Doperé - Bouwde Reinier II van Schoonvorst in Zichem een ongewone woontoren, een militaire versterking of een uniek prestige-symbool?Sofie Debruyne, Geert Vynckier en Marc Brion - Onder den toren. Het archeologisch bodemarchief van de reus van Zichem.Thomas Van Driessche - De Maagdentoren in de 19de en 20ste eeuw: van de aankoop door de Belgische staat in 1859 tot de bescherming als monument in 1962Hilde Thibaut, Marc Vanderauwera en Kristin Van den Abbeele - De restauratie van de MaagdentorenNorbert Provoost, Marc Vanderauwera en Hilde Thibaut - Stabiliteit van de MaagdentorenMarc Vanderauwera en Hilde Thibaut - Behandeling van het parement in Diestiaan ijzerzandsteenLinda Van Dijck - Het interieur van de MaagdentorenKoen Smets, Herman van den Bossche en Jan van Ormelingen - De Demervallei tussen Aarschot en Diest in de onmiddellijke omgeving van de MaagdentorenLiesbeth Tielens - De toekomst van de Maagdentoren als belangrijke toeristische trekpleister voor Zichem en omstrekenSummar

Aligning Standards Communities for Omics Biodiversity Data: Sustainable Darwin Core-MIxS Interoperability

The standardization of data, encompassing both primary and contextual information (metadata), plays a pivotal role in facilitating data (re-)use, integration, and knowledge generation. However, the biodiversity and omics communities, converging on omics biodiversity data, have historically developed and adopted their own distinct standards, hindering effective (meta)data integration and collaboration.In response to this challenge, the Task Group (TG) for Sustainable DwC-MIxS Interoperability was established. Convening experts from the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) alongside external stakeholders, the TG aimed to promote sustainable interoperability between the Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence (MIxS) and Darwin Core (DwC) specifications.To achieve this goal, the TG utilized the Simple Standard for Sharing Ontology Mappings (SSSOM) to create a comprehensive mapping of DwC keys to MIxS keys. This mapping, combined with the development of the MIxS-DwC extension, enables the incorporation of MIxS core terms into DwC-compliant metadata records, facilitating seamless data exchange between MIxS and DwC user communities.Through the implementation of this translation layer, data produced in either MIxS- or DwC-compliant formats can now be efficiently brokered, breaking down silos and fostering closer collaboration between the biodiversity and omics communities. To ensure its sustainability and lasting impact, TDWG and GSC have both signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on creating a continuous model to synchronize their standards. These achievements mark a significant step forward in enhancing data sharing and utilization across domains, thereby unlocking new opportunities for scientific discovery and advancement

Influence of Short-Term Glucocorticoid Therapy on Regulatory T Cells In Vivo

Background: Pre- and early clinical studies on patients with autoimmune diseases suggested that induction of regulatory T(Treg) cells may contribute to the immunosuppressive effects of glucocorticoids(GCs). Objective: We readdressed the influence of GC therapy on Treg cells in immunocompetent human subjects and naı¨ve mice. Methods: Mice were treated with increasing doses of intravenous dexamethasone followed by oral taper, and Treg cells in spleen and blood were analyzed by FACS. Sixteen patients with sudden hearing loss but without an inflammatory disease received high-dose intravenous prednisolone followed by stepwise dose reduction to low oral prednisolone. Peripheral blood Treg cells were analyzed prior and after a 14 day GC therapy based on different markers. Results: Repeated GC administration to mice for three days dose-dependently decreased the absolute numbers of Treg cells in blood (100 mg dexamethasone/kg body weight: 2.861.86104 cells/ml vs. 336116104 in control mice) and spleen (dexamethasone: 2.861.96105/spleen vs. 956226105/spleen in control mice), which slowly recovered after 14 days taper in spleen but not in blood. The relative frequency of FOXP3+ Treg cells amongst the CD4+ T cells also decreased in a dose dependent manner with the effect being more pronounced in blood than in spleen. The suppressive capacity of Treg cells was unaltered by GC treatment in vitro. In immunocompetent humans, GCs induced mild T cell lymphocytosis. However, it did not change the relative frequency of circulating Treg cells in a relevant manner, although there was some variation depending on the definition of the Treg cells (FOXP3+: 4.061.5% vs 3.461.5%*; AITR+: 0.660.4 vs 0.560.3%, CD127low: 4.061.3 vs 5.063.0%* and CTLA4+: 13.8611.5 vs 15.6612.5%; * p,0.05). Conclusion: Short-term GC therapy does not induce the hitherto supposed increase in circulating Treg cell frequency, neither in immunocompetent humans nor in mice. Thus, it is questionable that the clinical efficacy of GCs is achieved by modulating Treg cell numbers

Physiological responses to ocean acidification and warming synergistically reduce condition of the common cockle Cerastoderma edule

The combined effect of ocean acidification and warming on the common cockle Cerastoderma edule was investigated in a fully crossed laboratory experiment. Survival of the examined adult organisms remained high and was not affected by elevated temperature (+3 °C) or lowered pH (−0.3 units). However, the morphometric condition index of the cockles incubated under high pCO2 conditions (i.e. combined warming and acidification) was significantly reduced after six weeks of incubation. Respiration rates increased significantly under low pH, with highest rates measured under combined warm and low pH conditions. Calcification decreased significantly under low pH while clearance rates increased significantly under warm conditions and were generally lower in low pH treatments. The observed physiological responses suggest that the reduced food intake under hypercapnia is insufficient to support the higher energy requirements to compensate for the higher costs for basal maintenance and growth in future high pCO2

<scp>ReSurveyEurope</scp>: A database of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe

AbstractAimsWe introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, including potential research questions.ResultsReSurveyEurope includes resurveyed vegetation plots from all habitats. Version 1.0 of ReSurveyEurope contains 283,135 observations (i.e., individual surveys of each plot) from 79,190 plots sampled in 449 independent resurvey projects. Of these, 62,139 (78%) are permanent plots, that is, marked in situ, or located with GPS, which allow for high spatial accuracy in resurvey. The remaining 17,051 (22%) plots are from studies in which plots from the initial survey could not be exactly relocated. Four data sets, which together account for 28,470 (36%) plots, provide only presence/absence information on plant species, while the remaining 50,720 (64%) plots contain abundance information (e.g., percentage cover or cover–abundance classes such as variants of the Braun‐Blanquet scale). The oldest plots were sampled in 1911 in the Swiss Alps, while most plots were sampled between 1950 and 2020.ConclusionsReSurveyEurope is a new resource to address a wide range of research questions on fine‐scale changes in European vegetation. The initiative is devoted to an inclusive and transparent governance and data usage approach, based on slightly adapted rules of the well‐established European Vegetation Archive (EVA). ReSurveyEurope data are ready for use, and proposals for analyses of the data set can be submitted at any time to the coordinators. Still, further data contributions are highly welcome.</jats:sec

Semi-supervised learning for the BioNLP gene regulation network

Background: The BioNLP Gene Regulation Task has attracted a diverse collection of submissions showcasing state-of-the-art systems. However, a principal challenge remains in obtaining a significant amount of recall. We argue that this is nonetheless an important quality for Information Extraction tasks in this field. We propose a semi-supervised framework, leveraging a wide corpus of unannotated data available to us. In this framework, the annotated data is used to find plausible candidates for positive data points, which are included in the machine learning process. As this is a method principally designed for gaining recall, we further explore additional methods to improve precision on top of this. These are: differential regularisation in the SVM framework, and filtering out unlabelled examples based on a probabilistic rule-finding method. The latter method also allows us to add candidates for negatives from unlabelled data, a method not viable in the unaltered approach. Results: We replicate one of the original participant systems, and modify it to incorporate our methods. This allows us to test the extent of our proposed methods by applying them to the GRN task data. We find a considerable improvement in recall compared to the baseline system. We also investigate the evaluation metrics and find several mechanisms explaining a bias towards precision. Furthermore, these findings uncover an intricate precision-recall interaction, depriving recall of its habitual immediacy seen in traditional machine learning setups. Conclusion: Our contributions are twofold: 1 An exploration of a novel semi-supervised pipeline. We have succeeded in employing additional knowledge through adding unannotated data points, while responding to the inherent noise of this method by imposing an automated, rule-based pre-selection step. 2 A thorough analysis of the evaluation procedure in the Gene Regulation Shared Task. We have performed an in depth inquiry of the Slot Error Rate, responding to arguments that lead to some design choices of this task. We have furthermore uncovered complexities in the interplay of precision and recall that negate the customary behaviour commonplace to the machine learning engineer.status: publishe