THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF ART INVESTMENTS – THE APPLICABILITY OF EU and US INVESTOR PROTECTION REGULATIONS TO THE ART MARKET

In the face of increasing inflation rates and global political as well as economic turmoil, investors are looking for alternatives to securities and bonds to store values. Among those asset classes benefitting from this trend is art. Record-breaking results at auctions, a quick market recovery following the pandemic as well as stable compound annual growth rated of the art market have stirred the interest of a growing number of investors in this form of alternative investment which promises stability in times of economic uncertainty. This trend is furthermore spurred by technological advancements; especially DLT-based business models add to the practicability and accessibility of investment models. For the art market, which previously used to be an investment option reserved rather for high-net worth individuals, the digitalization of values brings the opportunity to address new market participants. As an example, concepts such as the “tokenization” of artworks and “fractional ownership” invite a broader public, who would otherwise hardly have access to this asset. By extending the offer to invest in an artwork to many instead of just to a single collector, the costs for each individual investor are reduced to only a share of the actual sales price. Accordingly, art has become a widely recognized alternative asset class, which is constantly compared to conservative forms of investment, such as stocks and bonds. Against this background, the question arises as to what extent art is regulated as an asset class. The importance of an in-depth analysis of the applicable investor protection rules becomes even more apparent in consideration of the opacity of the art market, which also accounts for a reason why this sector has been only scarcely addressed by legal academia so far. The relatively new practical accessibility of the art investment market stands in stark contrast to the lack of available information on the traded properties. The deep-rooted tradition of discretion in art trades continues to shroud a cloak of silence over essential data on past and ongoing sales, with the result of there being an insufficient informational basis for investors to predict price developments. This dissertation project aims to shed light on the opaque structures of art investments and examine the currently applicable level of investor protection rules in direct comparison to that in traditional securities markets. The jurisdictional scope of this paper extends to both, the financial market laws of the European Union as well as of the United States of America. In this context, also the question will be raised as to how art investment instruments can be categorized from a legal point of view, in particular, whether they fit into the existing framework of financial instruments

Report on Mooring Processing of PS99.2/PS100/PS101 Recoveries

This report documents the processing applied to the physical oceanography sensors on moorings recovered during the Arctic summer cruises of Polarstern in 2016 PS99.2/PS100/PS101

Moored observations of shelfbreak processes at the inflow to and outflow from the Arctic Ocean

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2013Two high-resolution mooring arrays extending from the outer shelf to the mid continental slope are used to elucidate shelf-basin exchange at the inflow to and the outflow from the Arctic Ocean. Pacific Water entering the Arctic Ocean forms the Western Arctic shelfbreak current along the Beaufort Sea slope. Data from the mooring array at 152°W—approximately 150 km east of Pt. Barrow, AK—reveals that this current has two distinct states in summer depending on the water mass it transports. When advecting Alaskan Coastal Water it is surface-intensified and both baroclinically and barotropically unstable. This configuration lasts about a month with an average transport of 0.7 Sv. When advecting Chukchi Summer Water the current is bottom-intensified and is only baroclinically unstable. This state also exists for approximately a month with an average transport of 0.6 Sv. The strong mean-to-eddy energy conversion causes both configurations of the current to spin down over a distance of a few hundred kilometers, suggesting that warm Pacific Water does not enter the Canadian Arctic Archipelago via this route. Dense water formed in the Nordic Seas overflows the Denmark Strait and undergoes vortex stretching, forming intense cyclones that propagate along the East Greenland slope. Data from the mooring array at 65°N—roughly 300 km downstream of Denmark Strait—was used to determine the full water column structure of the cyclones. On average a cyclone passes the array every other day in the vicinity of the 900 m isobath, although the depth range of individual cyclones ranges between the 500 m and 1600 m isobaths. The cyclones self-propagate at 0.45 m/s and are also advected by the mean flow of 0.27 m/s, resulting in a total propagation speed of 0.72 m/s. They have a peak azimuthal speed of 0.22 m/s at a radius of 7.8 km and contain overflow water in their core. In the absence of the cyclones, the background flow is dominated by the East Greenland Spill Jet. This is shown to be a year-round feature transporting 2–4 Sv of dense water equatorward along the upper continental slope.Financial support for this work was provided by National Science Foundation grants OCE-0726640 and OCE-0612143, by the Arctic Research Initiative at WHOI, by the Y-S Anonymous Fellowship from the Office of the Dean of Graduate Education at MIT, and by WHOI Academic Programs Office funds

Physical and ecological processes at a moving ice edge in the Fram Strait as observed with an AUV

Small-scale investigations of physical and biogeochemical parameters have been carried out with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) at a moving ice edge in the Fram Strait. The AUV was equipped with various sensors to study the complex interactions between physical and ecological processes along the ice edge and the associated meltwater front. The AUV covered two cross-front sections of 9 km and recorded high resolution vertical profiles of the physical and biogeochemical properties between 0 and 50 m water depth at a horizontal station spacing of 800–1000 m. In both physical and biogeochemical terms, the measurements revealed a complex structure of the water column. The distribution of phytoplankton biomass (chlorophyll a) and nutrients was highly in- homogeneous. Chlorophyll a concentrations of 5 micro g/l were detected at the frontal interface in a small corridor just 2–4 km wide and only 5 m deep. Nutrients at the surface were depleted, yet, compared to previous studies of this region, were still present in the euphotic zone. Below the euphotic zone, nitrate concentrations of 8 micro mol/l and oxygen saturation values of 100% resulted in a “dome-like” pattern – suggestive of vertical transport processes. Based on these measurements, three different zones featuring individual biogeochemical characteristics were identified in the cross-front sections. Atmospheric forcing and the presence of the melt water front are assumed to be mainly responsible for the complexity of the water column. Localized vertical transport events seem to have occurred before our investigations. Furthermore, wind driven frontogenesis likely contributed to vertical water movements. All processes had an effect on the biological processes along the observed meltwater front

AUV based study on physical and ecological processes at fronts

AUV based study on physical and ecological processes at fronts Sandra Tippenhauer, Thorben Wulff, Wilken-Jon Von Appen Small-scale processes and their effects get more and more attention when it comes to understanding processes and changes in the (Arctic) ocean. Here we present a study on physical processes and ecological responses at submesoscale frontal systems in the Fram Strait investigated using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The AUV is equipped with physical and biogeochemical sensors such as an acoustic Doppler current profiler, a turbulence probe, a conductivity-temperature-depth probe, and sensors for Oxygen, Nitrate, Chlorophyll a, and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). The study is designed such that the AUV covers tracks of several kilometers length in cross-frontal direction with the front roughly located in the middle of the track. On its way, the AUV records high-resolution vertical or zigzag profiles of the physical and biogeochemical properties in the upper 50 m which includes the euphotic zone. In both, physical and biogeochemical terms, the measurements revealed a complex structure of the water column. At the fronts the distribution of phytoplankton and nutrients was highly inhomogeneous, possibly due to wind-driven frontogenesis or the growth of mixed layer eddies. To set the observations into a larger context we also examine ship-based and satellite data. We investigate how the observed patterns of the potential vorticity and the biogeochemical properties may be formed and which processes could lead to a smoothing of the observed gradients