A 1,408 km bicycle tour with prostate cancer patients—results of a pilot study

Negative psychological and physical effects of prostate cancer and its medical treatment may persist many years after diagnosis. The influence of a long cycling tour on rehabilitative or health-related effects with prostate cancer patients has not yet been studied. In practice, physicians and therapists rarely recommend cycling to prostate cancer. In May 2010, eight prostate cancer patients rode their bikes for over 1,408 km from Cologne to Marseille within 5 weeks. Endurance test, blood examinations (prostate-specific antigen (PSA), total testosterone, interleukin-6, oxidative stress, and antioxidant capacity) and quality of life questionnaires were completed before and after the tour. All eight subjects reached Marseille. Significant improvements could be observed in physical performance and certain quality of life scores (p?=?0.008), as well as a reduction of total testosterone (p?=?0.19). PSA levels did not change. This pilot study suggests that long bicycle tours with prostate cancer patients are feasible. Due to the missing control group and the small sample size, the results of this pilot study are limited.     

Who Opts Out? The Customisation of Marriage in the German Matrimonial Property Regime

European Journal of Population - This study examines the prevalence of marital contracts across marriage cohorts (1990–2019) in Germany. We further investigate the characteristics of spouses...     

Fractional integration versus level shifts: the case of realized asset correlations

Long memory has been widely documented for realized financial market volatility. As a novelty, we consider daily realized asset correlations and we investigate whether the observed persistence is (i) due to true long memory (i.e. fractional integration) or (ii) artificially generated by some structural break processes. These two phenomena are difficult to be distinguished in practice. Our empirical results strongly indicate that the hyperbolic decay of the autocorrelation functions of pair-wise realized correlation series is indeed not driven by a truly fractionally integrated process. This finding is robust against user specific parameter choices in the applied test statistic and holds for all 15 considered time series. As a next step, we apply simple models with deterministic level shifts. When selecting the number of breaks, estimating the breakpoints and the corresponding structural break models we find a substantial degree of co-movement between the realized correlation series hinting at co-breaking. The estimated structural break models are interpreted in the light of the historic economic and financial development.     

The “ethical loneliness” of male sexual violence survivors in Northern Uganda: gendered reflections on silencing

In this article, I explore the gendered silencing of conflict-related sexual violence against men and of male survivors’ lived realities in Northern Uganda using the frame of masculinities. Utilizing Stauffer’s conceptual framework of “ethical loneliness,” I elucidate how male survivors’ experiences of sexual violence are characterized by various layers of externally imposed silences by different actors and institutions often over decades. I demonstrate that the harms experienced by survivors in Northern Uganda are characterized by silence, isolation and abandonment, “compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard” and constituted through multiple rounds of neglect. Exemplified through the narrative of a male survivor, I argue that in particular, the externally imposed silencing by institutions designed to listen entrenches further harms. I unpack how these layered silences are gendered and conditioned by socially constructed incompatibilities between masculinities and vulnerabilities, which disallow men to openly speak about their sexual violations and to seek services and support. Working with the concept of “ethical loneliness,” I propose a novel theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of externally imposed and gender-specific silencing with wider utility beyond male sexual violence, applicable to survivors of political and wartime gendered violence more broadly.     

Interkulturelle Kommunikation als Voraussetzung für interkulturelles Coaching unter Berücksichtigung der rumänischen Kultur

Professional coaching in intercultural contexts requires adapting the “tool” of coaching to this specific focus. Coaching in intercultural contexts is based on a thorough understanding of intercultural communication. History, and specifically social history, of cultures and nations are essential to understanding intercultural processes. The intercultural coach also needs to possess advanced foreign language competence in order to communicate meanings in the target language.     

Phillips-Perron-type unit root tests in the nonlinear ESTAR framework

Summary In this paper, we propose Phillips-Perron type, semi-parametric testing procedures to distinguish a unit root process from a mean-reverting exponential smooth transition autoregressive one. The limiting nonstandard distributions are derived under very general conditions and simulation evidence shows that the tests perform better than the standard Phillips-Perron or Dickey-Fuller tests in the region of the null. We would like to thank conference participants of the Pfingsttagung 2005 in Münster for their helpful comments.     

Notwendigkeit,Ziele und Inhalte einer Ethik-Ausbildung in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre

Although business administration scholars in German-speaking countries increasingly engage in business ethics research, their business schools have so far not systematically included ethics related contents into their standard curricula. Based on an understanding of business administration as an applied discipline that should not shun the scientific discussion of normative statements, this article argues that our field needs to address ethical questions not only in research but also in teaching. The subsequent analysis addresses aims, contents, and methods of teaching business ethics in higher education. Rather than teaching students ‘moral truths’, the main aim of business ethics education is seen in providing students with a variety of theories, concepts, and tools that are able to support them in ethical decision processes, which they are likely to encounter in their management careers.     

CLUSTERING IN N‐PLAYER PREEMPTION GAMES

We study a complete information preemption game in continuous time. A finite number of firms decide when to make an irreversible, observable investment. Upon investment, a firm receives flow profits, which decrease in the number of firms that have invested. The cost of investment declines over time exogenously. We characterize the subgame‐perfect equilibrium outcome, which is unique up to a permutation of players. When the preemption race among late investors is sufficiently intense, the preemption incentive for earlier investors disappears, and two or more investments occur at the same time. We identify a sufficient condition in terms of model parameters: clustering of investments occurs if the flow profits from consecutive investments are sufficiently close. This shows how clustering can occur in the absence of coordination failures, informational spillovers, or positive payoff externalities.     

The Bologna Process and the harmonisation of higher education systems in other world regions: a case from Southeast Asia

The Bologna Process has inspired harmonisation strategies for higher education systems in other parts of the world. However, developments in other contexts are not much under review in the European debate. The present article describes the case of Southeast Asia and the attempt to promote harmonisation of its higher education systems. It further compares the processes in ASEAN and the European Higher Education Area to then discuss open questions for future comparative research. To do so the authors re-contextualise data from a study in ASEAN against the background of future research needs in the field of higher education harmonisation.