@phdthesis{Šustr2020, author = {Šustr, David}, title = {Molecular diffusion in polyelectrolyte multilayers}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-48903}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-489038}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {106}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Research on novel and advanced biomaterials is an indispensable step towards their applications in desirable fields such as tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, cell culture, or biotechnology. The work presented here focuses on such a promising material: polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) composed of hyaluronic acid (HA) and poly(L-lysine) (PLL). This gel-like polymer surface coating is able to accumulate (bio-)molecules such as proteins or drugs and release them in a controlled manner. It serves as a mimic of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in composition and intrinsic properties. These qualities make the HA/PLL multilayers a promising candidate for multiple bio-applications such as those mentioned above. The work presented aims at the development of a straightforward approach for assessment of multi-fractional diffusion in multilayers (first part) and at control of local molecular transport into or from the multilayers by laser light trigger (second part). The mechanism of the loading and release is governed by the interaction of bioactives with the multilayer constituents and by the diffusion phenomenon overall. The diffusion of a molecule in HA/PLL multilayers shows multiple fractions of different diffusion rate. Approaches, that are able to assess the mobility of molecules in such a complex system, are limited. This shortcoming motivated the design of a novel evaluation tool presented here. The tool employs a simulation-based approach for evaluation of the data acquired by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) method. In this approach, possible fluorescence recovery scenarios are primarily simulated and afterwards compared with the data acquired while optimizing parameters of a model until a sufficient match is achieved. Fluorescent latex particles of different sizes and fluorescein in an aqueous medium are utilized as test samples validating the analysis results. The diffusion of protein cytochrome c in HA/PLL multilayers is evaluated as well. This tool significantly broadens the possibilities of analysis of spatiotemporal FRAP data, which originate from multi-fractional diffusion, while striving to be widely applicable. This tool has the potential to elucidate the mechanisms of molecular transport and empower rational engineering of the drug release systems. The second part of the work focuses on the fabrication of such a spatiotemporarily-controlled drug release system employing the HA/PLL multilayer. This release system comprises different layers of various functionalities that together form a sandwich structure. The bottom layer, which serves as a reservoir, is formed by HA/PLL PEM deposited on a planar glass substrate. On top of the PEM, a layer of so-called hybrids is deposited. The hybrids consist of thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) -based hydrogel microparticles with surface-attached gold nanorods. The layer of hybrids is intended to serve as a gate that controls the local molecular transport through the PEM-solution-interface. The possibility of stimulating the molecular transport by near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation is being explored. From several tested approaches for the deposition of hybrids onto the PEM surface, the drying-based approach was identified as optimal. Experiments, that examine the functionality of the fabricated sandwich at elevated temperature, document the reversible volume phase transition of the PEM-attached hybrids while sustaining the sandwich stability. Further, the gold nanorods were shown to effectively absorb light radiation in the tissue- and cell-friendly NIR spectral region while transducing the energy of light into heat. The rapid and reversible shrinkage of the PEM-attached hybrids was thereby achieved. Finally, dextran was employed as a model transport molecule. It loads into the PEM reservoir in a few seconds with the partition constant of 2.4, while it spontaneously releases in a slower, sustained manner. The local laser irradiation of the sandwich, which contains the fluorescein isothiocyanate tagged dextran, leads to a gradual reduction of fluorescence intensity in the irradiated region. The release system fabricated employs renowned photoresponsivity of the hybrids in an innovative setting. The results of the research are a step towards a spatially-controlled on-demand drug release system that paves the way to spatiotemporally controlled drug release. The approaches developed in this work have the potential to elucidate the molecular dynamics in ECM and to foster engineering of multilayers with properties tuned to mimic the ECM. The work aims at spatiotemporal control over the diffusion of bioactives and their presentation to the cells.}, language = {en} } @techreport{ŠedovaČizmaziovaCook2021, type = {Working Paper}, author = {Šedov{\´a}, Barbora and Čizmaziov{\´a}, Lucia and Cook, Athene}, title = {A meta-analysis of climate migration literature}, series = {CEPA Discussion Papers}, journal = {CEPA Discussion Papers}, number = {29}, issn = {2628-653X}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-49982}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-499827}, pages = {83}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The large literature that aims to find evidence of climate migration delivers mixed findings. This meta-regression analysis i) summarizes direct links between adverse climatic events and migration, ii) maps patterns of climate migration, and iii) explains the variation in outcomes. Using a set of limited dependent variable models, we meta-analyze thus-far the most comprehensive sample of 3,625 estimates from 116 original studies and produce novel insights on climate migration. We find that extremely high temperatures and drying conditions increase migration. We do not find a significant effect of sudden-onset events. Climate migration is most likely to emerge due to contemporaneous events, to originate in rural areas and to take place in middle-income countries, internally, to cities. The likelihood to become trapped in affected areas is higher for women and in low-income countries, particularly in Africa. We uniquely quantify how pitfalls typical for the broader empirical climate impact literature affect climate migration findings. We also find evidence of different publication biases.}, language = {en} } @article{ŠedovaKalkuhl2020, author = {Šedov{\´a}, Barbora and Kalkuhl, Matthias}, title = {Who are the climate migrants and where do they go?}, series = {World development}, volume = {129}, journal = {World development}, publisher = {Elsevier Science}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0305-750X}, doi = {10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104848}, pages = {19}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In this paper, we move from the large strand of research that looks at evidence of climate migration to the questions: who are the climate migrants? and where do they go? These questions are crucial to design policies that mitigate welfare losses of migration choices due to climate change. We study the direct and heterogeneous associations between weather extremes and migration in rural India. We combine ERAS reanalysis data with the India Human Development Survey household panel and conduct regression analyses by applying linear probability and multinomial logit models. This enables us to establish a causal relationship between temperature and precipitation anomalies and overall migration as well as migration by destination. We show that adverse weather shocks decrease rural-rural and international migration and push people into cities in different, presumably more prosperous states. A series of positive weather shocks, however, facilitates international migration and migration to cities within the same state. Further, our results indicate that in contrast to other migrants, climate migrants are likely to be from the lower end of the skill distribution and from households strongly dependent on agricultural production. We estimate that approximately 8\% of all rural-urban moves between 2005 and 2012 can be attributed to weather. This figure might increase as a consequence of climate change. Thus, a key policy recommendation is to take steps to facilitate integration of less educated migrants into the urban labor market.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Šedova2022, author = {Šedov{\´a}, Barbora}, title = {Heterogeneous effects of weather and climate change on human migration}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-53673}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-536733}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xix, 284}, year = {2022}, abstract = {While estimated numbers of past and future climate migrants are alarming, the growing empirical evidence suggests that the association between adverse climate-related events and migration is not universally positive. This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of when and how climate migration emerges by analyzing heterogeneous climatic influences on migration in low- and middle-income countries. To this end, it draws on established economic theories of migration, datasets from physical and social sciences, causal inference techniques and approaches from systematic literature review. In three of its five chapters, I estimate causal effects of processes of climate change on inequality and migration in India and Sub-Saharan Africa. By employing interaction terms and by analyzing sub-samples of data, I explore how these relationships differ for various segments of the population. In the remaining two chapters, I present two systematic literature reviews. First, I undertake a comprehensive meta-regression analysis of the econometric climate migration literature to summarize general climate migration patterns and explain the conflicting findings. Second, motivated by the broad range of approaches in the field, I examine the literature from a methodological perspective to provide best practice guidelines for studying climate migration empirically. Overall, the evidence from this dissertation shows that climatic influences on human migration are highly heterogeneous. Whether adverse climate-related impacts materialize in migration depends on the socio-economic characteristics of the individual households, such as wealth, level of education, agricultural dependence or access to adaptation technologies and insurance. For instance, I show that while adverse climatic shocks are generally associated with an increase in migration in rural India, they reduce migration in the agricultural context of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the average wealth levels are much lower so that households largely cannot afford the upfront costs of moving. I find that unlike local climatic shocks which primarily enhance internal migration to cities and hence accelerate urbanization, shocks transmitted via agricultural producer prices increase migration to neighboring countries, likely due to the simultaneous decrease in real income in nearby urban areas. These findings advance our current understanding by showing when and how economic agents respond to climatic events, thus providing explicit contexts and mechanisms of climate change effects on migration in the future. The resulting collection of findings can guide policy interventions to avoid or mitigate any present and future welfare losses from climate change-related migration choices.}, language = {en} } @misc{Şener2017, author = {Şener, Ula{\c{s}}}, title = {Rodrik, Dani (2015): Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science / rezensiert von Ula{\c{s}} Şener}, series = {European journal of economics and economic policies : intervention ; EJEEP}, volume = {14}, journal = {European journal of economics and economic policies : intervention ; EJEEP}, publisher = {Elgar}, address = {Cheltenham}, issn = {2052-7764}, doi = {10.4337/ejeep.2017.03.08}, pages = {375 -- 377}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @misc{ŚlęzakMetzlerMagdziarz2019, author = {Ślęzak, Jakub and Metzler, Ralf and Magdziarz, Marcin}, title = {Codifference can detect ergodicity breaking and non-Gaussianity}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {748}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43617}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-436178}, pages = {25}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We show that the codifference is a useful tool in studying the ergodicity breaking and non-Gaussianity properties of stochastic time series. While the codifference is a measure of dependence that was previously studied mainly in the context of stable processes, we here extend its range of applicability to random-parameter and diffusing-diffusivity models which are important in contemporary physics, biology and financial engineering. We prove that the codifference detects forms of dependence and ergodicity breaking which are not visible from analysing the covariance and correlation functions. We also discuss a related measure of dispersion, which is a nonlinear analogue of the mean squared displacement.}, language = {en} } @misc{ŚlęzakMetzlerMagdziarz2018, author = {Ślęzak, Jakub and Metzler, Ralf and Magdziarz, Marcin}, title = {Superstatistical generalised Langevin equation}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-409315}, pages = {25}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Recent advances in single particle tracking and supercomputing techniques demonstrate the emergence of normal or anomalous, viscoelastic diffusion in conjunction with non-Gaussian distributions in soft, biological, and active matter systems. We here formulate a stochastic model based on a generalised Langevin equation in which non-Gaussian shapes of the probability density function and normal or anomalous diffusion have a common origin, namely a random parametrisation of the stochastic force. We perform a detailed analysis demonstrating how various types of parameter distributions for the memory kernel result in exponential, power law, or power-log law tails of the memory functions. The studied system is also shown to exhibit a further unusual property: the velocity has a Gaussian one point probability density but non-Gaussian joint distributions. This behaviour is reflected in the relaxation from a Gaussian to a non-Gaussian distribution observed for the position variable. We show that our theoretical results are in excellent agreement with stochastic simulations.}, language = {en} } @article{ŚlęzakMetzlerMagdziarz2018, author = {Ślęzak, Jakub and Metzler, Ralf and Magdziarz, Marcin}, title = {Superstatistical generalised Langevin equation}, series = {New Journal of Physics}, volume = {20}, journal = {New Journal of Physics}, number = {023026}, publisher = {Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft / Institute of Physics}, address = {Bad Honnef und London}, issn = {1367-2630}, doi = {10.1088/1367-2630/aaa3d4}, pages = {1 -- 25}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Recent advances in single particle tracking and supercomputing techniques demonstrate the emergence of normal or anomalous, viscoelastic diffusion in conjunction with non-Gaussian distributions in soft, biological, and active matter systems. We here formulate a stochastic model based on a generalised Langevin equation in which non-Gaussian shapes of the probability density function and normal or anomalous diffusion have a common origin, namely a random parametrisation of the stochastic force. We perform a detailed analysis demonstrating how various types of parameter distributions for the memory kernel result in exponential, power law, or power-log law tails of the memory functions. The studied system is also shown to exhibit a further unusual property: the velocity has a Gaussian one point probability density but non-Gaussian joint distributions. This behaviour is reflected in the relaxation from a Gaussian to a non-Gaussian distribution observed for the position variable. We show that our theoretical results are in excellent agreement with stochastic simulations.}, language = {en} } @article{ŚlęzakMetzlerMagdziarz2019, author = {Ślęzak, Jakub and Metzler, Ralf and Magdziarz, Marcin}, title = {Codifference can detect ergodicity breaking and non-Gaussianity}, series = {New Journal of Physics}, volume = {21}, journal = {New Journal of Physics}, publisher = {Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft}, address = {Bad Honnef}, issn = {1367-2630}, doi = {10.1088/1367-2630/ab13f3}, pages = {25}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We show that the codifference is a useful tool in studying the ergodicity breaking and non-Gaussianity properties of stochastic time series. While the codifference is a measure of dependence that was previously studied mainly in the context of stable processes, we here extend its range of applicability to random-parameter and diffusing-diffusivity models which are important in contemporary physics, biology and financial engineering. We prove that the codifference detects forms of dependence and ergodicity breaking which are not visible from analysing the covariance and correlation functions. We also discuss a related measure of dispersion, which is a nonlinear analogue of the mean squared displacement.}, language = {en} } @misc{ŚlęzakBurneckiMetzler2019, author = {Ślęzak, Jakub and Burnecki, Krzysztof and Metzler, Ralf}, title = {Random coefficient autoregressive processes describe Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion in heterogeneous systems}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {765}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43792}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437923}, pages = {18}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Many studies on biological and soft matter systems report the joint presence of a linear mean-squared displacement and a non-Gaussian probability density exhibiting, for instance, exponential or stretched-Gaussian tails. This phenomenon is ascribed to the heterogeneity of the medium and is captured by random parameter models such as 'superstatistics' or 'diffusing diffusivity'. Independently, scientists working in the area of time series analysis and statistics have studied a class of discrete-time processes with similar properties, namely, random coefficient autoregressive models. In this work we try to reconcile these two approaches and thus provide a bridge between physical stochastic processes and autoregressive models.Westart from the basic Langevin equation of motion with time-varying damping or diffusion coefficients and establish the link to random coefficient autoregressive processes. By exploring that link we gain access to efficient statistical methods which can help to identify data exhibiting Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion.}, language = {en} }