International Cooperation in Competition Law Matters

The study outlines the status quo of international cooperation in competition law matters. This is done by examining, in chronological order, the various approaches of the many multi- and bi-lateral international agreements that have attempted to solve the problems of competition law (WTO, GATT, etc.). Subsequently, the focus of this thesis is on the analysis of bilateral trade agreements. Within the framework of this analysis, the potential of trade agreements for competition law cooperation is to be shown. For this reason, only those bilateral trade agreements are analyzed that deal with the topic of regulatory cooperation in competition law in specially provided competition chapters. In doing so, the different stages of cooperation will be analyzed along the different integration phases of any trade agreements. The highest form of trade agreement integration – customs unions – will be dealt with separately, using the EU as an example

International Cooperation in Competition Law Matters

The study outlines the status quo of international cooperation in competition law matters. This is done by examining, in chronological order, the various approaches of the many multi- and bi-lateral international agreements that have attempted to solve the problems of competition law (WTO, GATT, etc.). Subsequently, the focus of this thesis is on the analysis of bilateral trade agreements. Within the framework of this analysis, the potential of trade agreements for competition law cooperation is to be shown. For this reason, only those bilateral trade agreements are analyzed that deal with the topic of regulatory cooperation in competition law in specially provided competition chapters. In doing so, the different stages of cooperation will be analyzed along the different integration phases of any trade agreements. The highest form of trade agreement integration – customs unions – will be dealt with separately, using the EU as an example

Organogenesis: keeping in touch with the germ cells

AbstractDE-cadherin and its novel regulator, the transmembrane protein Fear of Intimacy, have been found to control the adhesive interactions between germline and somatic cells that lead to gonad formation in Drosophila

Profitiert der Feldhase vom ökologischen Landbau?

European brown hare numbers have dramatically declined in arable land throughout Europe. Loss of food abundance and cover due to mechanisation and intensification of agriculture are suggested to be the main reasons for this decline. Organic farming should sustain higher hare densities because of better habitat quality and higher food abundance. In our study hare densities estimated during spotlight counts increased from eight hares per km² (1998) up to 55 hares (2008) per km² after conversion of the study site from conventional to organic farming. Reasons for this increase in hare density may be higher abundance of year-round forage and cover as shown by preliminary results of radio-tracking data. Organic farming sustains good habitat quality for European hares and enhances their densities. Conservation strategies should therefore promote organic farming as a management tool

Improving predictive power of physically based rainfall-induced shallow landslide models: a probabilistic approach

Distributed models to forecast the spatial and temporal occurrence of rainfall-induced shallow landslides are based on deterministic laws. These models extend spatially the static stability models adopted in geotechnical engineering, and adopt an infinite-slope geometry to balance the resisting and the driving forces acting on the sliding mass. An infiltration model is used to determine how rainfall changes pore-water conditions, modulating the local stability/instability conditions. A problem with the operation of the existing models lays in the difficulty in obtaining accurate values for the several variables that describe the material properties of the slopes. The problem is particularly severe when the models are applied over large areas, for which sufficient information on the geotechnical and hydrological conditions of the slopes is not generally available. To help solve the problem, we propose a probabilistic Monte Carlo approach to the distributed modeling of rainfall-induced shallow landslides. For the purpose, we have modified the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-Based Regional Slope-Stability Analysis (TRIGRS) code. The new code (TRIGRS-P) adopts a probabilistic approach to compute, on a cell-by-cell basis, transient pore-pressure changes and related changes in the factor of safety due to rainfall infiltration. Infiltration is modeled using analytical solutions of partial differential equations describing one-dimensional vertical flow in isotropic, homogeneous materials. Both saturated and unsaturated soil conditions can be considered. TRIGRS-P copes with the natural variability inherent to the mechanical and hydrological properties of the slope materials by allowing values of the TRIGRS model input parameters to be sampled randomly from a given probability distribution. [..]Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 9 tables. Revised version; accepted for publication in Geoscientific Model Development on 13 February 201

Gd(III)-Gd(III) Relaxation-Induced Dipolar Modulation Enhancement for In-Cell Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Distance Determination

In-cell distance determination by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy reveals essential structural information about biomacromolecules under native conditions. We demonstrate that the pulsed EPR technique RIDME (relaxation induced dipolar modulation enhancement) can be utilized for such distance determination. The performance of in-cell RIDME has been assessed at Q-band using stiff molecular rulers labeled with Gd(III)-PyMTA and microinjected into Xenopus laevis oocytes. The overtone coefficients are determined to be the same for protonated aqueous solutions and inside cells. As compared to in-cell DEER (double electron-electron resonance, also abbreviated as PELDOR), in-cell RIDME features approximately 5 times larger modulation depth and does not show artificial broadening in the distance distributions due to the effect of pseudosecular terms

Bayesian Analysis of the Impact of Rainfall Data Product on Simulated Slope Failure for North Carolina Locations

In the past decades, many different approaches have been developed in the literature to quantify the load-carrying capacity and geotechnical stability (or the factor of safety, Fs) of variably saturated hillslopes. Much of this work has focused on a deterministic characterization of hillslope stability. Yet, simulated Fs values are subject to considerable uncertainty due to our inability to characterize accurately the soil mantles properties (hydraulic, geotechnical, and geomorphologic) and spatiotemporal variability of the moisture content of the hillslope interior. This is particularly true at larger spatial scales. Thus, uncertainty-incorporating analyses of physically based models of rain-induced landslides are rare in the literature. Such landslide modeling is typically conducted at the hillslope scale using gauge-based rainfall forcing data with rather poor spatiotemporal coverage. For regional landslide modeling, the specific advantages and/or disadvantages of gauge-only, radar-merged and satellite-based rainfall products are not clearly established. Here, we compare and evaluate the performance of the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope-stability analysis (TRIGRS) model for three different rainfall products using 112 observed landslides in the period between 2004 and 2011 from the North Carolina Geological Survey database. Our study includes the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis Version 7 (TMPA V7), the North American Land Data Assimilation System Phase 2 (NLDAS-2) analysis, and the reference truth Stage IV precipitation. TRIGRS model performance was rather inferior with the use of literature values of the geotechnical parameters and soil hydraulic properties from ROSETTA using soil textural and bulk density data from SSURGO (Soil Survey Geographic database). The performance of TRIGRS improved considerably after Bayesian estimation of the parameters with the DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm using Stage IV precipitation data. Hereto, we use a likelihood function that combines binary slope failure information from landslide event and null periods using multivariate frequency distribution-based metrics such as the false discovery and false omission rates. Our results demonstrate that the Stage IV-inferred TRIGRS parameter distributions generalize well to TMPA and NLDAS-2 precipitation data, particularly at sites with considerably larger TMPA and NLDAS-2 rainfall amounts during landslide events than null periods. TRIGRS model performance is then rather similar for all three rainfall products. At higher elevations, however, the TMPA and NLDAS-2 precipitation volumes are insufficient and their performance with the Stage IV-derived parameter distributions indicates their inability to accurately characterize hillslope stability

The toxicity of cadmium and resulting hazards for human health

Cadmium (Cd) has been in industrial use for a long period of time. Its serious toxicity moved into scientific focus during the middle of the last century. In this review, we discuss historic and recent developments of toxicological and epidemiological questions, including exposition sources, resorption pathways and organ damage processes