MNE’s Regional Location Choice - A Comparative Perspective on East Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland

The focus of this article is the empirical identification of factors influencing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in transition economies on a regional level (NUTS 2). The analysis is designed as benchmark between three neighboring post-communist regions, i.e. East Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. Their different transition paths have not only resulted in economic differences. We can also observe today that the importance of pull factors for FDI varies significantly across the regions. This analysis shows that in comparison with Poland and the Czech Republic, East Germany’s major benefit is its purchasing power, its geographical proximity to West European markets, and its modern infrastructure. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that intra-industry linkages such as specialization and agglomeration economies are relevant factors for the location decision of foreign investors. This result can help to explain the regional divergence of FDI streams in transition economies.multinational enterprises, international business, regional economic activity: growth, development, and changes, discrete choice

Clonally resolved single-cell multi-omics identifies routes of cellular differentiation in acute myeloid leukemia

Inter-patient variability and the similarity of healthy and leukemic stem cells (LSCs) have impeded the characterization of LSCs in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and their differentiation landscape. Here, we introduce CloneTracer, a novel method that adds clonal resolution to single-cell RNA-seq datasets. Applied to samples from 19 AML patients, CloneTracer revealed routes of leukemic differentiation. Although residual healthy and preleukemic cells dominated the dormant stem cell compartment, active LSCs resembled their healthy counterpart and retained erythroid capacity. By contrast, downstream myeloid progenitors constituted a highly aberrant, disease-defining compartment: their gene expression and differentiation state affected both the chemotherapy response and leukemia's ability to differentiate into transcriptomically normal monocytes. Finally, we demonstrated the potential of CloneTracer to identify surface markers misregulated specifically in leukemic cells. Taken together, CloneTracer reveals a differentiation landscape that mimics its healthy counterpart and may determine biology and therapy response in AML

Studies on the optimisation and application of protein arrays

The sequencing of the human genome and other ongoing sequencing projects have accelerated the pace of gene discovery and caused the identification of thousands of new genes. However, it also entails realisation that the genome alone could not provide enough information to understand the complex cellular network on the molecular level. Although genetic information provides us with the sequence of each protein, it is currently not possible to entirely deduce its localisation, structure, modifications, interactions, activities, and, ultimately, their function from it sequence. This lack of information becomes especially obvious upon observation of a relatively closely linked relationship, the stoichiometry between RNA transcripts and their corresponding protein abundances. Although gene-protein dynamics were analysed for several tissues (1, 2), there is still no reliable correlation between gene activity and protein abundance. Besides this, protein abundances and their entirety, the proteome, are highly dynamic and therefore require tools that are amenable for describing several variables simultaneously. Up to today two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis for protein separation, followed by mass spectrometry (MS) and database searches for protein identification, are the only real high-throughput techniques for the complex description of a proteome. They are especially important in the classical proteome analysis, which focuses on studying complete proteomes, e.g. from two differentially treated cell lines, and the corresponding identification of single proteins

The Definitive Guide to CentOS

CentOS is just like Red Hat, but without the price tag and with the virtuous license. When belts have to be tightened, we want to read about an OS with all the features of a commercial Linux variety, but without the pain. The Definitive Guide to CentOS is the first definitive reference for CentOS and focuses on CentOS alone, the workhorse Linux distro, that does the heavy lifting in small and medium-size enterprises without drawing too much attention to itself. *Provides tutorial and hands-on learning but is also designed to be used as a reference*Bases all examples on real-world tasks that r