Prices, Margins and Liquidity Constraints: Swedish Newspapers 1990-1996

For Swedish newspaper firms, a market with high switching costs, the subscription market, and a market with low switching costs, the advertising market, are of approximately equal importance. When Sweden enters a deep recession, we find that liquidity constraints influence the pricing decision in the former, but not the latter market. This gives support to theories stressing the magnifying effect of liquidity constraints on the business cycle.Liquidity constraints; switching costs; price adjustment; newspaper industry

RECENT STUDIES OF COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY IN THE BALKANS: INTERVIEW WITH JANA S. ROŠKER

ADAS&M

Assessing Driver Acceptability of the PROSPECT Systems

Final Event of the European Projects on the Traffic Safety of Vulnerable Road Users, TARRAGONA, ESPAGNE, 12-/10/2018 - 12/10/2018Acceptance testing provides knowledge on users' perception of the systems developed within the PROSPECT project, and an indication of their likelihood to purchase such a system. Results show a high likelihood of acceptance of PROSPECT systems. Participants were most positive towards the warning function, but also indicated a high likelihood of using the braking and steering functions

Phenotypic diversity of human adipose tissue-resident NK cells in obesity

Natural killer (NK) cells have emerged as key mediators of obesity-related adipose tissue inflammation. However, the phenotype of NK cell subsets residing in human adipose tissue are poorly defined, preventing a detailed understanding of their role in metabolic disorders. In this study, we applied multicolor flow cytometry to characterize CD56bright and CD56dim NK cells in blood and adipose tissue depots in individuals with obesity and identified surface proteins enriched on adipose tissue-resident CD56bright NK cells. Particularly, we found that adipose tissue harbored clusters of tissue-resident CD56bright NK cells signatured by the expression of CD26, CCR5 and CD63, possibly reflecting an adaptation to the microenvironment. Together, our findings provide broad insights into the identity of NK cells in blood and adipose tissue in relation to obesity.publishedVersio

Retained NK cell phenotype and functionality in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and the progressive stage non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), is the predominant cause of chronic liver disease globally. As part of the complex pathogenesis, natural killer (NK) cells have been implicated in the development of liver inflammation in experimental murine models of NASH. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how NK cells are affected in humans with this disease. Here, we explored the presence of disease-specific changes within circulating and tissue-resident NK cell populations, as well as within other major immune cell subsets, in patients with liver biopsy-confirmed NAFLD. Using 18-color-flow cytometry, substantial changes were observed in certain myeloid populations in patients as compared to controls. NK cell numbers, on the other hand, were not altered. Furthermore, only minor differences in expression of activating and inhibitory NK cell receptors were noted, with the exception of an increased expression of NKG2D on NK cells from patients with NASH. NK cell differentiation remained constant, and NK cells from these patients retain their ability to respond adequately upon stimulation. Instead, considerable alterations were observed between liver, adipose tissue, and peripheral blood NK cells, independently of disease status. Taken together, these results increase our understanding of the importance of the local microenvironment in shaping the NK cell compartment and stress the need for further studies exploring how NASH affects intrahepatic NK cells in humans.publishedVersio

D7.3 Report on simulator test results and driver acceptance of PROSPECT functions

The process of developing new automotive systems includes various testing cycles to assure a save operation in traffic. Physical system testing on test tracks is very important for this purpose, but rather expensive and might only become possible in later stages of the development process. Using a virtual simulation environment offers a safe possibility of testing new systems in early stages of development. Aditionally, driver-in-the-loop tests at test track and in a virtual simulator make it possible to evaluate driver reaction and potential acceptance by the future users of those systems. Within PROSPECT the new functions are investigated under various aspects in several simulator studies and test track studies. This deliverable D7.3 gives detailed information of conduction and results of the each study. Three studies focus exclusively on the for Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) specifically dangerous urban intersection scenarios. The first of those studies examines the driver behaviour in a turning situation when a byciclist might be crossing. The described phenomena are looked-but-failed-to-see and failed-to-look. The second study, which provides an initial step in this line of research, analyzed the acceptance of issued forward collision warning times. The positioning of the potential accident opponent and the subjective feeling towards the criticality of the situation by the driver were key parameters taken into account. Last, but not least the acceptance of an intersection assist autonomous emergency braking systems was tested regarding the acceptance of potential buyers. The study was run for five days in a row for each participant to be able to judge the behaviour in a comuting situation. Two studies focused on longitudinal scenarios. Both studies followed the same design, but one was conducted on a test track and the other one in a simulator. The main objective was to investigate drivers reactions to FCW warnings and Active Steering interventions in critical VRU scenarios in case of a distraction of the driver. Additionally, the test track study was used to validate the results from the simulator study. The results of those studies are the basis for a wide acceptance evaluation of the systems. No system is an asset in increasing road safety if it is not accepted by the user and therefore turned off, if it is not required the system to be default on in consumer tests. Complemented by an additional acceptance study where the participants had to give their opinion of those systems after they watched videos of dangerous situations, the acceptance was analyzed based on questionnaires developed in PROSPECT and reported in Deliverable 7.2. This wholistic approach allows an expert discussion on the potentials of the PROSPECT functions in the future

Subtype-specific surface proteins on adipose tissue macrophages and their association to obesity-induced insulin resistance

A chronic low-grade inflammation, originating in the adipose tissue, is considered a driver of obesity-associated insulin resistance. Macrophage composition in white adipose tissue is believed to contribute to the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases, but a detailed characterization of pro- and anti-inflammatory adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs) in human obesity and how they are distributed in visceral- and subcutaneous adipose depots is lacking. In this study, we performed a surface proteome screening of pro- and anti-inflammatory ATMs in both subcutaneous- (SAT) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and evaluated their relationship with systemic insulin resistance. From the proteomics screen we found novel surface proteins specific to M1-like- and M2-like macrophages, and we identified depot-specific immunophenotypes in SAT and VAT. Furthermore, we found that insulin resistance, assessed by HOMA-IR, was positively associated with a relative increase in pro-inflammatory M1-like macrophages in both SAT and VAT.publishedVersio

Separating species and environmental determinants of leaf functional traits in temperate rainforest plants along a soil-development chronosequence

We measured a diverse range of foliar characteristics in shrub and tree species in temperate rainforest communities along a soil chronosequence (six sites from 8 to 120 000 years) and used multilevel model analysis to attribute the proportion of variance for each trait into genetic (G, here meaning species-level), environmental (E) and residual error components. We hypothesised that differences in leaf traits would be driven primarily by changes in soil nutrient availability during ecosystem progression and retrogression. Several leaf structural, chemical and gas-exchange traits were more strongly driven by G than E effects. For leaf mass per unit area (MA), foliar [N], net CO2 assimilation and dark respiration rates and foliar carbohydrate concentration, the G component accounted for 60–87% of the total variance, with the variability associated with plot, the E effect, much less important. Other traits, such as foliar [P] and N : P, displayed strong E and residual effects. Analyses revealed significant reductions in the slopes of G-only bivariate relationships when compared with raw relationships, indicating that a large proportion of trait–trait relationships is species based, and not a response to environment per se. This should be accounted for when assessing the mechanistic basis for using such relationships in order to make predictions of responses of plants to short-term environmental change

Allometry of fine roots in forest ecosystems

We thank Chensen Xu for drawing Figure 1. This synthesis benefits directly from different sources of dataset, including the forest flux database (Luyssaert et al. 2007), BAAD (Falster et al. 2015), ForC‐db (https://github.com/forc-db), dataset of Malhi et al. (2011) and Litton et al. (2007). We are grateful to all these authors, site investigators and their funding agencies contributing to these dataset. We thank the various regional flux networks (Afriflux, AmeriFlux, AsiaFlux, CarboAfrica, CarboEurope‐IP, ChinaFlux, Fluxnet‐Canada, KoFlux, LBA, NECC, OzFlux, TCOS‐Siberia, USCCC), and the Fluxnet project, for support in obtaining these measurements. We also thank two reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31422012 and 31830014).Peer reviewedPostprin