The governance of urban shrinkage in cities of post-socialist Europe: policies,strategies and actors

This paper presents results of an international comparative research project ‘Smart governance of shrinking cities in a European context’. In recent years, many European cities have experienced urban shrinkage (population decline). Whereas there has been a wealth of research into the governance of growing cities, little consideration has been given to the governance of and policy responses to shrinking cities, particularly in relation to the declining cities of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. The aim of this paper is to compare the governance responses to shrinkage in different national contexts and assess the policy responses applied. This is done through the comparison of case studies examining the governance of shrinkage in Leipzig (Germany), Bytom (Poland), Ostrava (Czechia) and Timisoara (Romania). Two different strategies have been identified. First, Leipzig – due to its inclusion in the (former Western) German welfare state – followed a reasonably holistic strategy implemented by strong public actors focused not only on economic growth, but also on tackling issues of falling housing demand and the need to strengthen the attractivity of city centre. Second, in Ostrava, Bytom and Timisoara strategies have been inspired by neoliberal thinking, denying the important role of public sector city planning and ignoring the fact of shrinkage. In these cities, the main reply to shrinkage has been to seek economic development through the attraction of private investment (especially FDI) into the cities and using pragmatically any EU structural funding.     

Ruthenium‐Catalyzed Synthesis of Secondary Alkylamines: Selective Alkylation with Aliphatic Amines

The chemoselective N‐alkylation of tert‐alkylamines applying aliphatic amines is described for the first time. In the presence of the Shvo catalyst 1 , tert‐octylamine 4 and 1‐adamantylamine 5 are alkylated using primary, secondary, and even tertiary amines to give the corresponding monoalkylated tert‐alkylamine in moderate to very good yields and excellent selectivity. This novel reaction proceeds without an additional hydrogen source and ammonia is formed as the only by‐product.     

An efficiently implementable Gauss-Newton-like method for solving singular nonlinear equations

A Gauss-Newton-like method for solving singular nonlinear equations is presented. The local convergence analysis shows that this method converges quadratically. The algorithm requires second derivative information in the formF″ ab only, which makes it attractive from the viewpoint of computational effort.     

Fatigue crack propagation in weathering weldable steel KT 315 Si

Complex loading conditions are typical for structural materials, especially for steels. Fatigue crack propagation measurements during bend loading were carried out with different load ratios on a newly developed weathering steel KT 315 Si. This steel indicates an improved corrosion resistance in comparison with the weathering steel KT 315. Scanning electron microscopy of the fracture surfaces and quantitative microstructure analysis by means of light microscopy were applied to elucidate relations between microstructure and mechanical properties. An important result of the investigation is that the steel KT 315 Si reveals a lowered mean stress sensitivity of the fatigue threshold value ΔK_th in comparison with that of other ferritic-pearlitic steels of the same strength level.     

Locating New Stops in a Railway Network

Given a railway network together with information on the population and their use of the railway infrastructure, we are considering the effects of introducing new train stops in the existing railway network. One effect concerns the accessibility of the railway infrastructure to the population, measured in how far people live from their nearest train stop. The second effect we study is the change in travel time for the railway customers that is induced by new train stops. Based on these two models, we introduce two combinatorial optimization problems and give NP-hardness results for them. We suggest an algorithmic approach for the model based on travel time and present a real-world application with its first experimental results.     

Introducing pinMOS Memory: A Novel,Nonvolatile Organic Memory Device

In recent decades, organic memory devices have been researched intensely and they can, among other application scenarios, play an important role in the vision of an internet of things. Most studies concentrate on storing charges in electronic traps or nanoparticles while memory types where the information is stored in the local charge up of an integrated capacitance and presented by capacitance received far less attention. Here, a new type of programmable organic capacitive memory called p‐i‐n‐metal‐oxide‐semiconductor (pinMOS) memory is demonstrated with the possibility to store multiple states. Another attractive property is that this simple, diode‐based pinMOS memory can be written as well as read electrically and optically. The pinMOS memory device shows excellent repeatability, an endurance of more than 10⁴ write‐read‐erase‐read cycles, and currently already over 24 h retention time. The working mechanism of the pinMOS memory under dynamic and steady‐state operations is investigated to identify further optimization steps. The results reveal that the pinMOS memory principle is promising as a reliable capacitive memory device for future applications in electronic and photonic circuits like in neuromorphic computing or visual memory systems.     

Enhanced Survival of High-Risk Medulloblastoma-Bearing Mice after Multimodal Treatment with Radiotherapy,Decitabine, and Abacavir

Children with high-risk SHH/TP53-mut and Group 3 medulloblastoma (MB) have a 5-year overall survival of only 40%. Innovative approaches to enhance survival while preventing adverse effects are urgently needed. We investigated an innovative therapy approach combining irradiation (RT), decitabine (DEC), and abacavir (ABC) in a patient-derived orthotopic SHH/TP53-mut and Group 3 MB mouse model. MB-bearing mice were treated with DEC, ABC and RT. Mouse survival, tumor growth (BLI, MRT) tumor histology (H/E), proliferation (Ki-67), and endothelial (CD31) staining were analyzed. Gene expression was examined by microarray and RT-PCR (Ki-67, VEGF, CD31, CD15, CD133, nestin, CD68, IBA). The RT/DEC/ABC therapy inhibited tumor growth and enhanced mouse survival. Ki-67 decreased in SHH/TP53-mut MBs after RT, DEC, RT/ABC, and RT/DEC/ABC therapy. CD31 was higher in SHH/TP53-mut compared to Group 3 MBs and decreased after RT/DEC/ABC. Microarray analyses showed a therapy-induced downregulation of cell cycle genes. By RT-PCR, no therapy-induced effect on stem cell fraction or immune cell invasion/activation could be shown. We showed for the first time that RT/DEC/ABC therapy improves survival of orthotopic SHH/TP53-mut and Group 3 MB-bearing mice without inducing adverse effects suggesting the potential for an adjuvant application of this multimodal therapy approach in the human clinic.     

The combinatorics of modeling and analyzing biological systems

The purpose of this paper is to present a strictly mathematical model for interaction networks, to address the question of steady-state analysis, and to outline an approach for reconstructing models from experimental data. Our expositions require notations and basic results from discrete mathematics. Therefore, we also introduce some elementary background material from this field.