Discriminating depression, physical and social anhedonia by neurotransmitter related challenge tests

The aim of this study was to investigate, if anhedonia, a salient component of depression, shows similar response patterns to neurotransmitter challenge tests as depression, and if the two questionnaire based components Physical (PA) and Social (SA) Anhedonia can be discriminated by differences in drug related size and time of cortisol responses elicited by the specific serotonin (5- HT) and noradrenaline (NA) reuptake inhibitors citalopram and reboxetine and prolactin responses to the dopamine (DA) agonist bromocriptine orally applied to 36 male volunteers in a double blind balanced cross-over design. Analyses of variance applied to placebo corrected hormone responses revealed that low and late DA responses were characteristics of global Depression and of Physical Anhedonia, and that low DA responses were associated with high NA responses in PA, and with low 5-HT responses in SA. These patterns were explained by differences in transmitter production and receptor sensitivities and proved to be suitable to discriminate PA from SA and from global depression by analysing neurochemical response patterns rather than single means of variables

Biaxial prestressing of brittle materials

Strengthening of chemically consolidated zirconia with tungsten fibers, graphite fibers, sapphire whiskers, and silicon carbide whiskers is investigated. Addition of silicon carbide whiskers gives the highest increase in strength of zirconia at room and elevated temperatures. Prestressing with tungsten cables increases tensile strength and ductilit

Privatization and the Market for Corporate Control

We study the wealth effects of the mergers of privatized firms. Our sample entails 39 privatized firms that subsequently become targets of a takeover and 52 privatized firms that become bidders in mergers. Our results indicate that target firms experience a 12 percent increase in equity value at the announcement of a merger. The bidding firms experience a positive but insignificant change in equity value at merger announcement. The results indicate that mergers result in net wealth creation for privatized firms and are consistent with property rights/agency cost theory. The results also offer global, non-U.S. evidence that mergers create wealth.

From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization

This study surveys the academic and professional literature examining the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), with a focus on empirical studies. Privatisation has been instrumental in reducing state ownership in many countries and had a transforming effect on global stock markets, although the role of SOEs in many other countries is similar to what it was two decades ago. Countries have adopted large-scale privatisation programs primarily for two reasons: first, the conclusive evidence that privately-owned firms outperform SOEs and, second, the empirical evidence clearly shows that privatisation significantly (often dramatically) improves the operating and financial performance of divested firms. Governments can also raise significant revenues by selling SOEs. While the choice between privatisation via public share offering versus through asset sales is still imperfectly understood, factors such as firm size, government fiscal condition, and the state of national economic development are important influences. Further, those countries which have chosen the mass (voucher) privatisation route have done so largely out of necessity--and face ongoing efficiency problems as a result. Governments have great discretion in pricing the SOEs they sell, especially those being sold via public share offering, and they use this discretion to pursue political and economic ends. Finally, investors who purchase the shares of firms being privatised earn significantly positive excess returns both in the short-run (due to deliberate underpricing of share issues by the government) and over one, three, and five-year investment horizons.Capital, Investment, Employment, Financing policy, Ownership structure, Investment banking, Venture capital, Brokerage, Public economics, Sources of revenue, Public enterprises, Boundaries of public and private enterprise, Privatisation, Contracting out

Size and Impact of Privatisation – A Survey of Empirical Studies

Privatisierung, Theorie, Empirische Methode, Privatization, Theory, Empirical method

Clause union and verb raising phenomena in German

In this paper we discuss a class of constructions in German syntax which have been known as coherent infinitive, clause union or verb raising constructions. These data run against the predictions of strictly configurational theories by apparently having a syntactic structure where the subcategorization frames of two or more verbal heads are merged into one. Thus, in addition to a fully bi-clausal structure with two clearly separated verbal heads, we also have to envisage the case where a verb is apparently raised from an embedded to form a verb cluster together with its governing verb, while the sets of their arguments are merged into a single set, representing the case of clause union. In addition, there are constructions where there is no evidence for clause union, but where one could nevertheless argue for the formation of a verb cluster. We investigate these data by looking at a series of constructions which bear evidence on the issue. Among these are extraposition, which appears a reliable test for nonobligatory verb raising; subjectless constructions, which are possible only as the complements of so-called raising verbs but not of control verbs; S-pronominalization, which seems to be limited to equi-verbs; scrambling and long reflexivization, which we can take as evidence for clause union; the scope of adjuncts and negation which argues in favour of verb raising, but does not necessarily presuppose clause union; and finally certain topicalization phenomena which appear to violate almost any of the generalizations set up so far by configurational theories

Language-based multimedia information retrieval

This paper describes various methods and approaches for language-based multimedia information retrieval, which have been developed in the projects POP-EYE and OLIVE and which will be developed further in the MUMIS project. All of these project aim at supporting automated indexing of video material by use of human language technologies. Thus, in contrast to image or sound-based retrieval methods, where both the query language and the indexing methods build on non-linguistic data, these methods attempt to exploit advanced text retrieval technologies for the retrieval of non-textual material. While POP-EYE was building on subtitles or captions as the prime language key for disclosing video fragments, OLIVE is making use of speech recognition to automatically derive transcriptions of the sound tracks, generating time-coded linguistic elements which then serve as the basis for text-based retrieval functionality