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The past and future evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is largely controlled by interactions between the ocean and floating ice shelves. To investigate these interactions, coupled ocean and ice sheet model configurations are required. Previous modelling studies have mostly relied on high-resolution configurations, limiting these studies to individual glaciers or regions over short timescales of decades to a few centuries. We present a framework to couple the dynamic ice sheet model PISM (Parallel Ice Sheet Model) with the global ocean general circulation model MOM5 (Modular Ocean Model) via the ice shelf cavity model PICO (Pots-dam Ice-shelf Cavity mOdel). As ice shelf cavities are not resolved by MOM5 but are parameterized with the PICO box model, the framework allows the ice sheet and ocean components to be run at resolutions of 16 km and 3 degrees respectively. This approach makes the coupled configuration a useful tool for the analysis of interactions between the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the global ocean over time spans of the order of centuries to millennia. In this study, we describe the technical implementation of this coupling framework: sub-shelf melting in the ice sheet component is calculated by PICO from modelled ocean temperatures and salinities at the depth of the continental shelf, and, vice versa, the resulting mass and energy fluxes from melting at the ice-ocean interface are transferred to the ocean component. Mass and energy fluxes are shown to be conserved to machine precision across the considered component domains. The implementation is computationally efficient as it introduces only minimal overhead. Furthermore, the coupled model is evaluated in a 4000 year simulation under constant present-day climate forcing and is found to be stable with respect to the ocean and ice sheet spin-up states. The framework deals with heterogeneous spatial grid geometries, varying grid resolutions, and timescales between the ice and ocean component in a generic way; thus, it can be adopted to a wide range of model set-ups.
The Anthropocene is the era of urbanization. The accelerating expansion of cities occurs at the expense of natural reservoirs of biodiversity and presents animals with challenges for which their evolutionary past might not have prepared them. Cognitive and behavioral adjustments to novelty could promote animals’ persistence under these altered conditions. We investigated the structure of, and covariance between, different aspects of responses to novelty in rural and urban small mammals of two non-commensal rodent species. We ran replicated experiments testing responses to three novelty types (object, food, or space) of 47 individual common voles (Microtus arvalis) and 41 individual striped field mice (Apodemus agrarius). We found partial support for the hypothesis that responses to novelty are structured, clustering (i) speed of responses, (ii) intensity of responses, and (iii) responses to food into separate dimensions. Rural and urban small mammals did not differ in most responses to novelty, suggesting that urban habitats do not reduce neophobia in these species. Further studies investigating whether comparable response patters are found throughout different stages of colonization, and along synurbanization processes of different duration, will help illuminate the dynamics of animals’ cognitive adjustments to urban life.
CxNy
(2021)
The search for metal-free and visible light-responsive materials for photocatalytic applications has attracted the interest of not only academics but also the industry in the last decades. Since graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) was first reported as a metal-free photocatalyst, this has been widely investigated in different light-driven reactions. However, the high recombination rate, low electrical conductivity, and lack of photoresponse in most of the visible range have elicited the search for alternatives. In this regard, a broad family of carbon nitride (CxNy) materials was anticipated several decades ago. However, the attention of the researchers in these materials has just been awakened in the last years due to the recent success in the syntheses of some of these materials (i.e., C3N3, C2N, C3N, and C3N5, among others), together with theoretical simulations pointing at the excellent physico-chemical properties (i.e., crystalline structure and chemical morphology, electronic configuration and semiconducting nature, or high refractive index and hardness, among others) and optoelectronic applications of these materials. The performance of CxNy, beyond C3N4, has been barely evaluated in real applications, including energy conversion, storage, and adsorption technologies, and further work must be carried out, especially experimentally, in order to confirm the high expectations raised by simulations and theoretical calculations. Herein, we have summarized the scarce literature related to recent results reporting the synthetic routes, structures, and performance of these materials as photocatalysts. Moreover, the challenges and perspectives at the forefront of this field using CxNy materials are disclosed. We aim to stimulate the research of this new generation of CxNy-based photocatalysts, beyond C3N4, with improved photocatalytic efficiencies by harnessing the striking structural, electronic, and optical properties of this new family of materials.
Computerspiele sind wichtige und zugleich besondere geschichtskulturelle Quellen. Sie prägen in zunehmendem Maße die Vorstellungen, die wir uns von historischen Gesellschaften und Ereignissen machen. Der Geschichtsunterricht, der sich auch die Befähigung zu einem kritischen Umgang mit geschichtskulturellen Angeboten zum Ziel setzt, muss sich entsprechend mit diesen auseinandersetzen. Eine Möglichkeit, wie dies im Rahmen formaler Unterrichtsprozesse und unter Berücksichtigung der Besonderheiten dieses Mediums geschehen kann, ist Thema des folgenden Beitrags.
Data driven high resolution modeling and spatial analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany
(2021)
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread around the world with over 100 million infections to date, and currently many countries are fighting the second wave of infections. With neither sufficient vaccination capacity nor effective medication, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) remain the measure of choice.
However, NPIs place a great burden on society, the mental health of individuals, and economics. Therefore the cost/benefit ratio must be carefully balanced and a target-oriented small-scale implementation of these NPIs could help achieve this balance.
To this end, we introduce a modified SEIRD-class compartment model and parametrize it locally for all 412 districts of Germany. The NPIs are modeled at district level by time varying contact rates. This high spatial resolution makes it possible to apply geostatistical methods to analyse the spatial patterns of the pandemic in Germany and to compare the results of different spatial resolutions.
We find that the modified SEIRD model can successfully be fitted to the COVID-19 cases in German districts, states, and also nationwide. We propose the correlation length as a further measure, besides the weekly incidence rates, to describe the current situation of the epidemic.
Die vorliegende Studie zeigt, dass Daten in der Krise eine herausragende Bedeutung für die wissenschaftliche Politikberatung, administrative Entscheidungsvorbereitung und politische Entscheidungsfindung haben. In der Krise gab es jedoch gravierende Kommunikationsprobleme und Unsicherheiten in der wechselseitigen Erwartungshaltung von wissenschaftlichen Datengebern und politisch-administrativen Datennutzern. Die Wissensakkumulation und Entscheidungsabwägung wurde außerdem durch eine unsichere und volatile Datenlage zum Pandemiegeschehen, verbunden mit einer dynamischen Lageentwicklung, erschwert. Nach wie vor sind das Bewusstsein und wechselseitige Verständnis für die spezifischen Rollenprofile der am wissenschaftlichen Politikberatungsprozess beteiligten Akteure sowie insbesondere deren Abgrenzung als unzureichend einzuschätzen.
Die Studie hat darüber hinaus vielfältige Defizite hinsichtlich der Verfügbarkeit, Qualität, Zugänglichkeit, Teilbarkeit und Nutzbarkeit von Daten identifiziert, die Datenproduzenten und -verwender vor erhebliche Herausforderungen stellen und einen umfangreichen Reformbedarf aufzeigen, da zum einen wichtige Datenbestände für eine krisenbezogene Politikberatung fehlen. Zum anderen sind die Tiefenschärfe und Differenziertheit des verfügbaren Datenbestandes teilweise unzureichend. Dies gilt z.B. für sozialstrukturelle Daten zur Schwere der Pandemiebetroffenheit verschiedener Gruppen oder für kleinräumige Daten über Belastungs- und Kapazitätsparameter, etwa zur Personalabdeckung auf Intensivstationen, in Gesundheitsämtern und Pflegeeinrichtungen. Datendefizite sind ferner im Hinblick auf eine ganzheitliche Pandemiebeurteilung festzustellen, zum Beispiel bezüglich der Gesundheitseffekte im weiteren Sinne, die aufgrund der ergriffenen Maßnahmen entstanden sind (Verschiebung oder Wegfall von Operationen, Behandlungen und Prävention, aber auch häusliche Gewalt und psychische Belastungen). Mangels systematischer Begleitstudien und evaluativer Untersuchungen, u.a. auch zu lokalen Pilotprojekten und Experimenten, bestehen außerdem Datendefizite im Hinblick auf die Wirkungen von Eindämmungsmaßnahmen oder deren Aufhebung auf der gebietskörperschaftlichen Ebene.
Insgesamt belegt die Studie, dass es zur Optimierung der datenbasierten Politikberatung und politischen Entscheidungsfindung in und außerhalb von Krisen nicht nur darum gehen kann, ein „Mehr“ an Daten zu produzieren sowie deren Qualität, Verknüpfung und Teilung zu verbessern. Vielmehr müssen auch die Anreizstrukturen und Interessenlagen in Politik, Verwaltung und Wissenschaft sowie die Kompetenzen, Handlungsorientierungen und kognitiv-kulturellen Prägungen der verschiedenen Akteure in den Blick genommen werden. Es müssten also Anreize gesetzt und Strukturen geschaffen werden, um das Interesse, den Willen und das Können (will and skill) zur Datennutzung auf Seiten politisch-administrativer Entscheider und zur Dateneinspeisung auf Seiten von Wissenschaftlern zu stärken. Neben adressatengerechter Informationsaufbereitung geht es dabei auch um die Gestaltung eines normativen und institutionellen Rahmens, innerhalb dessen die Nutzung von Daten für Entscheidungen effektiver, qualifizierter, aber auch transparenter, nachvollziehbarer und damit demokratisch legitimer erfolgen kann.
Vor dem Hintergrund dieser empirischen Befunde werden acht Cluster von Optimierungsmaßnahmen vorgeschlagen:
(1) Etablierung von Datenstrecken und Datenteams,
(2) Schaffung regionaler Datenkompetenzzentren,
(3) Stärkung von Data Literacy und Beschleunigung des Kulturwandels in der öffentlichen Verwaltung,
(4) Datenstandardisierung, Interoperabilität und Registermodernisierung,
(5) Ausbau von Public Data Pools und Open Data Nutzung,
(6) Effektivere Verbindung von Datenschutz und Datennutzung,
(7) Entwicklung eines hochfrequenten, repräsentativen Datensatzes,
(8) Förderung der europäischen Daten-Zusammenarbeit.
The computational costs associated with coupled reactive transport simulations are mostly due to the chemical subsystem: replacing it with a pre-trained statistical surrogate is a promising strategy to achieve decisive speedups at the price of small accuracy losses and thus to extend the scale of problems which can be handled. We introduce a hierarchical coupling scheme in which "full-physics" equation-based geochemical simulations are partially replaced by surrogates. Errors in mass balance resulting from multivariate surrogate predictions effectively assess the accuracy of multivariate regressions at runtime: inaccurate surrogate predictions are rejected and the more expensive equation-based simulations are run instead. Gradient boosting regressors such as XGBoost, not requiring data standardization and being able to handle Tweedie distributions, proved to be a suitable emulator. Finally, we devise a surrogate approach based on geochemical knowledge, which overcomes the issue of robustness when encountering previously unseen data and which can serve as a basis for further development of hybrid physics-AI modelling.
In recent years, computer vision algorithms based on machine learning have seen rapid development. In the past, research mostly focused on solving computer vision problems such as image classification or object detection on images displaying natural scenes. Nowadays other fields such as the field of cultural heritage, where an abundance of data is available, also get into the focus of research. In the line of current research endeavours, we collaborated with the Getty Research Institute which provided us with a challenging dataset, containing images of paintings and drawings. In this technical report, we present the results of the seminar "Deep Learning for Computer Vision". In this seminar, students of the Hasso Plattner Institute evaluated state-of-the-art approaches for image classification, object detection and image recognition on the dataset of the Getty Research Institute. The main challenge when applying modern computer vision methods to the available data is the availability of annotated training data, as the dataset provided by the Getty Research Institute does not contain a sufficient amount of annotated samples for the training of deep neural networks. However, throughout the report we show that it is possible to achieve satisfying to very good results, when using further publicly available datasets, such as the WikiArt dataset, for the training of machine learning models.
Increasingly fast development cycles and individualized products pose major challenges for today's smart production systems in times of industry 4.0. The systems must be flexible and continuously adapt to changing conditions while still guaranteeing high throughputs and robustness against external disruptions. Deep rein- forcement learning (RL) algorithms, which already reached impressive success with Google DeepMind's AlphaGo, are increasingly transferred to production systems to meet related requirements. Unlike supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, deep RL algorithms learn based on recently collected sensor- and process-data in direct interaction with the environment and are able to perform decisions in real-time. As such, deep RL algorithms seem promising given their potential to provide decision support in complex environments, as production systems, and simultaneously adapt to changing circumstances. While different use-cases for deep RL emerged, a structured overview and integration of findings on their application are missing. To address this gap, this contribution provides a systematic literature review of existing deep RL applications in the field of production planning and control as well as production logistics. From a performance perspective, it became evident that deep RL can beat heuristics significantly in their overall performance and provides superior solutions to various industrial use-cases. Nevertheless, safety and reliability concerns must be overcome before the widespread use of deep RL is possible which presumes more intensive testing of deep RL in real world applications besides the already ongoing intensive simulations.
Deliberative and paternalistic interaction styles for conversational agents in digital health
(2021)
Background:
Recent years have witnessed a constant increase in the number of people with chronic conditions requiring ongoing medical support in their everyday lives. However, global health systems are not adequately equipped for this extraordinarily time-consuming and cost-intensive development. Here, conversational agents (CAs) can offer easily scalable and ubiquitous support. Moreover, different aspects of CAs have not yet been sufficiently investigated to fully exploit their potential. One such trait is the interaction style between patients and CAs. In human-to-human settings, the interaction style is an imperative part of the interaction between patients and physicians. Patient-physician interaction is recognized as a critical success factor for patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and subsequent treatment outcomes. However, so far, it remains effectively unknown how different interaction styles can be implemented into CA interactions and whether these styles are recognizable by users.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to develop an approach to reproducibly induce 2 specific interaction styles into CA-patient dialogs and subsequently test and validate them in a chronic health care context.
Methods:
On the basis of the Roter Interaction Analysis System and iterative evaluations by scientific experts and medical health care professionals, we identified 10 communication components that characterize the 2 developed interaction styles: deliberative and paternalistic interaction styles. These communication components were used to develop 2 CA variations, each representing one of the 2 interaction styles. We assessed them in a web-based between-subject experiment. The participants were asked to put themselves in the position of a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These participants were randomly assigned to interact with one of the 2 CAs and subsequently asked to identify the respective interaction style. Chi-square test was used to assess the correct identification of the CA-patient interaction style.
Results:
A total of 88 individuals (42/88, 48% female; mean age 31.5 years, SD 10.1 years) fulfilled the inclusion criteria and participated in the web-based experiment. The participants in both the paternalistic and deliberative conditions correctly identified the underlying interaction styles of the CAs in more than 80% of the assessments (X-1(,8)8(2)=38.2; P<.001; phi coefficient r(phi)=0.68). The validation of the procedure was hence successful.
Conclusions:
We developed an approach that is tailored for a medical context to induce a paternalistic and deliberative interaction style into a written interaction between a patient and a CA. We successfully tested and validated the procedure in a web-based experiment involving 88 participants. Future research should implement and test this approach among actual patients with chronic diseases and compare the results in different medical conditions. This approach can further be used as a starting point to develop dynamic CAs that adapt their interaction styles to their users.
Der deutsche Mineraloge und Bergingenieur August
Schmidt (1802 – 1832) nahm im Jahr 1829 an einer Etappe der „Russisch-Sibirischen Reise“ Alexander von Humboldts teil. Bisher war über Schmidt so wenig bekannt, dass die Forschungsliteratur nicht einmal seinen richtigen Vornamen verwendete. Dieser Artikel präsentiert neue Erkenntnisse über seine Biografie und verfolgt den Weg, der ihn zu einer Anstellung als Bergwerksdirektor in den Ural und zur Teilnahme an Humboldts Reise führte. Humboldt erwartete ebenso wie die anderen an der Reise teilnehmenden Mineralogen, im Ural Diamanten zu finden. Diese Erwartungshaltung war bereits in den Jahren vor der Reise durch einen internationalen Wissensaustausch zu den geologischen Ähnlichkeiten der Kontinente entstanden, an dem Alexander von Humboldt maßgeblich beteiligt war.
As the complexity of learning task requirements, computer infrastruc- tures and knowledge acquisition for artificial neuronal networks (ANN) is in- creasing, it is challenging to talk about ANN without creating misunderstandings. An efficient, transparent and failure-free design of learning tasks by models is not supported by any tool at all. For this purpose, particular the consideration of data, information and knowledge on the base of an integration with knowledge- intensive business process models and a process-oriented knowledge manage- ment are attractive. With the aim of making the design of learning tasks express- ible by models, this paper proposes a graphical modeling language called Neu- ronal Training Modeling Language (NTML), which allows the repetitive use of learning designs. An example ANN project of AI-based dynamic GUI adaptation exemplifies its use as a first demonstration.
Insufficient endothelialization of cardiovascular grafts is a major hurdle in vascular surgery and regenerative medicine, bearing a risk for early graft thrombosis. Neither of the numerous strategies pursued to solve these problems were conclusive. Endothelialization is regulated by the endothelial basement membrane (EBM), a highly specialized part of the vascular extracellular matrix. Thus, a detailed understanding of the structure-function interrelations of the EBM components is fundamental for designing biomimetic materials aiming to mimic EBM functions. In this review, a detailed description of the structure and functions of the EBM are provided, including the luminal and abluminal interactions with adjacent cell types, such as vascular smooth muscle cells. Moreover, in vivo as well as in vitro strategies to build or renew EBM are summarized and critically discussed. The spectrum of methods includes vessel decellularization and implant biofunctionalization strategies as well as tissue engineering-based approaches and bioprinting. Finally, the limitations of these methods are highlighted, and future directions are suggested to help improve future design strategies for EBM-inspired materials in the cardiovascular field.
The numerous applications of rare earth elements (REE) has lead to a growing global demand and to the search for new REE deposits. One promising technique for exploration of these deposits is laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Among a number of advantages of the technique is the possibility to perform on-site measurements without sample preparation. Since the exploration of a deposit is based on the analysis of various geological compartments of the surrounding area, REE-bearing rock and soil samples were analyzed in this work. The field samples are from three European REE deposits in Sweden and Norway. The focus is on the REE cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and yttrium. Two different approaches of data analysis were used for the evaluation. The first approach is univariate regression (UVR). While this approach was successful for the analysis of synthetic REE samples, the quantitative analysis of field samples from different sites was influenced by matrix effects. Principal component analysis (PCA) can be used to determine the origin of the samples from the three deposits. The second approach is based on multivariate regression methods, in particular interval PLS (iPLS) regression. In comparison to UVR, this method is better suited for the determination of REE contents in heterogeneous field samples. View Full-Text
Mycotoxins and pesticides regularly co-occur in agricultural products worldwide. Thus, humans can be exposed to both toxic contaminants and pesticides simultaneously, and multi-methods assessing the occurrence of various food contaminants and residues in a single method are necessary. A two-dimensional high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for the analysis of 40 (modified) mycotoxins, two plant growth regulators, two tropane alkaloids, and 334 pesticides in cereals was developed. After an acetonitrile/water/formic acid (79:20:1, v/v/v) multi-analyte extraction procedure, extracts were injected into the two-dimensional setup, and an online clean-up was performed. The method was validated according to Commission Decision (EC) no. 657/2002 and document N° SANTE/12682/2019. Good linearity (R2 > 0.96), recovery data between 70-120%, repeatability and reproducibility values < 20%, and expanded measurement uncertainties < 50% were obtained for a wide range of analytes, including very polar substances like deoxynivalenol-3-glucoside and methamidophos. However, results for fumonisins, zearalenone-14,16-disulfate, acid-labile pesticides, and carbamates were unsatisfying. Limits of quantification meeting maximum (residue) limits were achieved for most analytes. Matrix effects varied highly (−85 to +1574%) and were mainly observed for analytes eluting in the first dimension and early-eluting analytes in the second dimension. The application of the method demonstrated the co-occurrence of different types of cereals with 28 toxins and pesticides. Overall, 86% of the samples showed positive findings with at least one mycotoxin, plant growth regulator, or pesticide.
Diagenetic trends of synthetic reservoir sandstone properties assessed by digital rock physics
(2021)
Quantifying interactions and dependencies among geometric, hydraulic and mechanical properties of reservoir sandstones is of particular importance for the exploration and utilisation of the geological subsurface and can be assessed by synthetic sandstones comprising the microstructural complexity of natural rocks. In the present study, three highly resolved samples of the Fontainebleau, Berea and Bentheim sandstones are generated by means of a process-based approach, which combines the gravity-driven deposition of irregularly shaped grains and their diagenetic cementation by three different schemes. The resulting evolution in porosity, permeability and rock stiffness is examined and compared to the respective micro-computer tomographic (micro-CT) scans. The grain contact-preferential scheme implies a progressive clogging of small throats and consequently produces considerably less connected and stiffer samples than the two other schemes. By contrast, uniform quartz overgrowth continuously alters the pore space and leads to the lowest elastic properties. The proposed stress-dependent cementation scheme combines both approaches of contact-cement and quartz overgrowth, resulting in granulometric, hydraulic and elastic properties equivalent to those of the respective micro-CT scans, where bulk moduli slightly deviate by 0.8%, 4.9% and 2.5% for the Fontainebleau, Berea and Bentheim sandstone, respectively. The synthetic samples can be further altered to examine the impact of mineral dissolution or precipitation as well as fracturing on various petrophysical correlations, which is of particular relevance for numerous aspects of a sustainable subsurface utilisation.
Welche Eigenschaften machen das Computerspiel zum geeigneten Medium, das den pädagogischen Einsatz im Unterricht bereichern kann? Welche Computerspiele bieten welche Möglichkeiten zur Auseinandersetzung mit welchen Themen? Wie kann das Computerspiel auch im schulischen Umfeld den für den Lernprozess so wichtigen Lebensweltbezug herstellen?
Diese und viele weitere Fragen beantworten die Autor*innen des Bandes „Didaktik des digitalen Spielens“. Dafür begeben sie sich in einen Dialog der Wissenschaftsdisziplinen, leiten Möglichkeiten zum Einsatz von Computerspielen ab und werten Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz von Computerspielen – auch in der Lehrendenbildung – aus. Mit ihren verschiedenen Zugängen zu Fragestellungen rund um eine „Didaktik des digitalen Spielens“ liefern sie einen Beitrag zu einem Diskurs, der besonders in Zeiten von Distanzunterricht notwendig und folgerichtig geführt werden muss. Die im Rahmen der gleichnamigen interdisziplinären Ringvorlesung im Wintersemester 2018/19 an der Universität Potsdam gehaltenen Vorträge sind durch die Diskussionen mit Studierenden geprägt und ausgewertet worden, so dass sie in der nun veröffentlichten Form auf mehreren Ebenen einen mehrperspektivischen Blick auf den Gegenstand „Computerspiel im Unterricht“ legen.
Der Verfasser beschäftigt sich mit der Frage des Glaubensübertritts in einem Asylverfahren. Dabei nimmt er Zeitpunkt, Art und Umstände des Religionswechsels in den Blick. Ferner untersucht er, wie die sogenannte Konversion von den zuständigen Behörden und Gerichten zu behandeln und zu bewerten ist. Einführend gibt er einen Überblick zum völkerrechtlichen Schutz der Religions- und Weltanschauungsfreiheit sowie typischen Gefährdungslagen. Überdies befasst er sich mit den Rechtsgrundlagen des Asyl- und Flüchtlingsschutzrechts und stellt Verbindungen zum Flucht- und Verfolgungsgrund der Religion her.
Schwerpunkt bildet die Untersuchung der Verfahrensstadien, in denen die Konversion relevant wird. Dabei berücksichtigt der Verfasser die nationale und europäische Rechtsprechung. Von besonderer Bedeutung sind die Ausführungen zum Zusammenspiel von staatlichen Ermittlungspflichten und Mitwirkungsgeboten von Asylantragstellenden, wobei den Besonderheiten des grund- und menschenrechtlichen Mehrebenensystems Rechnung getragen wird.
Zentral sind ferner die Ausführungen zum Umgang mit Taufurkunden und sonstigen Bescheinigungen über die religiöse Überzeugung. Besonderes Gewicht liegt auf der verfassungsrechtlichen Stellung der Religionsgemeinschaften und der Frage, ob die Entscheidung einer Religionsgemeinschaft, ein neues Mitglied aufzunehmen, die Behörde im Asylverfahren bindet. Diesem Problem widmet sich der Verfasser unter Heranziehung der relevanten Literaturstimmen und einschlägigen Rechtsprechung.
Der rechtswissenschaftliche Beitrag bietet den beteiligten Akteuren nicht nur eine Einführung in das Themengebiet des Glaubensübertritts im Asylverfahren, sondern gibt den Lesenden auch eine praxistaugliche Handlungsunterstützung rund um die wichtigsten Fragen einer Konversion im Asylverfahren an die Hand. Praktische Bezüge entstehen beispielsweise dadurch, dass wichtige Impulse und Empfehlungen für eine gleichermaßen moderne, rechtsstaatliche und grundrechtsorientierte Verfahrensführung entwickelt werden.
The ubiquitous freshwater cyanobacterium Microcystis is remarkably successful, showing a high tolerance against fluctuations in environmental conditions. It frequently forms dense blooms which can accumulate significant amounts of the hepatotoxin microcystin, which plays an extracellular role as an infochemical but also acts intracellularly by interacting with proteins of the carbon metabolism, notably with the CO2 fixing enzyme RubisCO. Here we demonstrate a direct link between external microcystin and its intracellular targets. Monitoring liquid cultures of Microcystis in a diel experiment revealed fluctuations in the extracellular microcystin content that correlate with an increase in the binding of microcystin to intracellular proteins. Concomitantly, reversible relocation of RubisCO from the cytoplasm to the cell’s periphery was observed. These variations in RubisCO localization were especially pronounced with cultures grown at higher cell densities. We replicated these effects by adding microcystin externally to cultures grown under continuous light. Thus, we propose that microcystin may be part of a fast response to conditions of high light and low carbon that contribute to the metabolic flexibility and the success of Microcystis in the field.
Laser-based additive manufacturing methods allow the production of complex metal structures within a single manufacturing step. However, the localized heat input and the layer-wise manufacturing manner give rise to large thermal gradients. Therefore, large internal stress (IS) during the process (and consequently residual stress (RS) at the end of production) is generated within the parts. This IS or RS can either lead to distortion or cracking during fabrication or in-service part failure, respectively. With this in view, the knowledge on the magnitude and spatial distribution of RS is important to develop strategies for its mitigation. Specifically, diffraction-based methods allow the spatial resolved determination of RS in a non-destructive fashion. In this review, common diffraction-based methods to determine RS in laser-based additive manufactured parts are presented. In fact, the unique microstructures and textures associated to laser-based additive manufacturing processes pose metrological challenges. Based on the literature review, it is recommended to (a) use mechanically relaxed samples measured in several orientations as appropriate strain-free lattice spacing, instead of powder, (b) consider that an appropriate grain-interaction model to calculate diffraction-elastic constants is both material- and texture-dependent and may differ from the conventionally manufactured variant. Further metrological challenges are critically reviewed and future demands in this research field are discussed.
Digitale Diagnostik
(2021)
Digitale Logopädie
(2021)
The layered dichalcogenide MoS2 is relevant for electrochemical Li adsorption/intercalation, in the course of which the material undergoes a concomitant structural phase transition from semiconducting 2H-MoS2 to metallic 1T-LixMoS2. With the core hole clock approach at the S L1 X-ray absorption edge we quantify the ultrafast directional charge transfer of excited S3p electrons in-plane () and out-of-plane (perpendicular to) for 2H-MoS2 as tau 2H,=0.38 +/- 0.08 fs and tau 2H,perpendicular to =0.33 +/- 0.06 fs and for 1T-LixMoS2 as tau 1T,=0.32 +/- 0.12 fs and tau 1T,perpendicular to =0.09 +/- 0.07 fs. The isotropic charge delocalization of S3p electrons in the semiconducting 2H phase within the S-Mo-S sheets is assigned to the specific symmetry of the Mo-S bonding arrangement. Formation of 1T-LixMoS2 by lithiation accelerates the in-plane charge transfer by a factor of similar to 1.2 due to electron injection to the Mo-S covalent bonds and concomitant structural repositioning of S atoms within the S-Mo-S sheets. For excitation into out-of-plane orbitals, an accelerated charge transfer by a factor of similar to 3.7 upon lithiation occurs due to S-Li coupling.
The olfactomotor system is especially investigated by examining the sniffing in reaction to olfactory stimuli. The motor output of respiratory-independent muscles was seldomly considered regarding possible influences of smells. The Adaptive Force (AF) characterizes the capability of the neuromuscular system to adapt to external forces in a holding manner and was suggested to be more vulnerable to possible interfering stimuli due to the underlying complex control processes. The aim of this pilot study was to measure the effects of olfactory inputs on the AF of the hip and elbow flexors, respectively. The AF of 10 subjects was examined manually by experienced testers while smelling at sniffing sticks with neutral, pleasant or disgusting odours. The reaction force and the limb position were recorded by a handheld device. The results show, inter alia, a significantly lower maximal isometric AF and a significantly higher AF at the onset of oscillations by perceiving disgusting odours compared to pleasant or neutral odours (p < 0.001). The adaptive holding capacity seems to reflect the functionality of the neuromuscular control, which can be impaired by disgusting olfactory inputs. An undisturbed functioning neuromuscular system appears to be characterized by a proper length tension control and by an earlier onset of mutual oscillations during an external force increase. This highlights the strong connection of olfaction and motor control also regarding respiratory-independent muscles.
We study the probability density function (PDF) of the first-reaction times between a diffusive ligand and a membrane-bound, immobile imperfect target region in a restricted 'onion-shell' geometry bounded by two nested membranes of arbitrary shapes. For such a setting, encountered in diverse molecular signal transduction pathways or in the narrow escape problem with additional steric constraints, we derive an exact spectral form of the PDF, as well as present its approximate form calculated by help of the so-called self-consistent approximation. For a particular case when the nested domains are concentric spheres, we get a fully explicit form of the approximated PDF, assess the accuracy of this approximation, and discuss various facets of the obtained distributions. Our results can be straightforwardly applied to describe the PDF of the terminal reaction event in multi-stage signal transduction processes.
Don’t settle for less
(2021)
Background: The relationship between exercise-induced intratendinous blood flow (IBF) and tendon pathology or training exposure is unclear.
Objective: This study investigates the acute effect of running exercise on sonographic detectable IBF in healthy and tendinopathic Achilles tendons (ATs) of runners and recreational participants.
Methods: 48 participants (43 ± 13 years, 176 ± 9 cm, 75 ± 11 kg) performed a standardized submaximal 30-min constant load treadmill run with Doppler ultrasound “Advanced dynamic flow” examinations before (Upre) and 5, 30, 60, and 120 min (U5-U120) afterward. Included were runners (>30 km/week) and recreational participants (<10 km/week) with healthy (Hrun, n = 10; Hrec, n = 15) or tendinopathic (Trun, n = 13; Trec, n = 10) ATs. IBF was assessed by counting number [n] of intratendinous vessels. IBF data are presented descriptively (%, median [minimum to maximum range] for baseline-IBF and IBF-difference post-exercise). Statistical differences for group and time point IBF and IBF changes were analyzed with Friedman and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA (α = 0.05).
Results: At baseline, IBF was detected in 40% (3 [1–6]) of Hrun, in 53% (4 [1–5]) of Hrec, in 85% (3 [1–25]) of Trun, and 70% (10 [2–30]) of Trec. At U5 IBF responded to exercise in 30% (3 [−1–9]) of Hrun, in 53% (4 [−2–6]) of Hrec, in 70% (4 [−10–10]) of Trun, and in 80% (5 [1–10]) of Trec. While IBF in 80% of healthy responding ATs returned to baseline at U30, IBF remained elevated until U120 in 60% of tendinopathic ATs. Within groups, IBF changes from Upre-U120 were significant for Hrec (p < 0.01), Trun (p = 0.05), and Trec (p < 0.01). Between groups, IBF changes in consecutive examinations were not significantly different (p > 0.05) but IBF-level was significantly higher at all measurement time points in tendinopathic versus healthy ATs (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: Irrespective of training status and tendon pathology, running leads to an immediate increase of IBF in responding tendons. This increase occurs shortly in healthy and prolonged in tendinopathic ATs. Training exposure does not alter IBF occurrence, but IBF level is elevated in tendon pathology. While an immediate exercise-induced IBF increase is a physiological response, prolonged IBF is considered a pathological finding associated with Achilles tendinopathy.
Elaeidobius kamerunicus Faust. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is an essential insect pollinator in oil palm plantations. Recently, researches have been undertaken to improve pollination efficiency using this species. A fundamental understanding of the genes related to this pollinator behavior is necessary to achieve this goal. Here, we present the draft genome sequence, annotation, and simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker data for this pollinator. In total, 34.97 Gb of sequence data from one male individual (monoisolate) were obtained using Illumina short-read platform NextSeq 500. The draft genome assembly was found to be 269.79 Mb and about 59.9% of completeness based on Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) assessment. Functional gene annotation predicted about 26.566 genes. Also, a total of 281.668 putative SSR markers were identified. This draft genome sequence is a valuable resource for understanding the population genetics, phylogenetics, dispersal patterns, and behavior of this species.
Coastal areas are particularly sensitive because they are complex, and related land use conflicts are more intense than those in noncoastal areas. In addition to representing a unique encounter of natural and socioeconomic factors, coastal areas have become paradigms of progressive urbanisation and economic development. Our study of the infrastructural mega project of Patimban Seaport in Indonesia explores the factors driving land use changes and the subsequent land use conflicts emerging from large-scale land transformation in the course of seaport development and mega project governance. We utilised interviews and questionnaires to investigate institutional aspects and conflict drivers. Specifically, we retrace and investigate the mechanisms guiding how mega project governance, land use planning, and actual land use interact. Therefore, we observe and analyse where land use conflicts emerge and the roles that a lack of stakeholder interest involvement and tenure-responsive planning take in this process. Our findings reflect how mismanagement and inadequate planning processes lead to market failure, land abandonment and dereliction and how they overburden local communities with the costs of mega projects. Enforcing a stronger coherence between land use planning, participation and land tenure within the land governance process in coastal land use development at all levels and raising the capacity of stakeholders to interfere with governance and planning processes will reduce conflicts and lead to sustainable coastal development in Indonesia.
Stripe rust (Pst) is a major disease of wheat crops leading untreated to severe yield losses. The use of fungicides is often essential to control Pst when sudden outbreaks are imminent. Sensors capable of detecting Pst in wheat crops could optimize the use of fungicides and improve disease monitoring in high-throughput field phenotyping. Now, deep learning provides new tools for image recognition and may pave the way for new camera based sensors that can identify symptoms in early stages of a disease outbreak within the field. The aim of this study was to teach an image classifier to detect Pst symptoms in winter wheat canopies based on a deep residual neural network (ResNet). For this purpose, a large annotation database was created from images taken by a standard RGB camera that was mounted on a platform at a height of 2 m. Images were acquired while the platform was moved over a randomized field experiment with Pst-inoculated and Pst-free plots of winter wheat. The image classifier was trained with 224 x 224 px patches tiled from the original, unprocessed camera images. The image classifier was tested on different stages of the disease outbreak. At patch level the image classifier reached a total accuracy of 90%. To test the image classifier on image level, the image classifier was evaluated with a sliding window using a large striding length of 224 px allowing for fast test performance. At image level, the image classifier reached a total accuracy of 77%. Even in a stage with very low disease spreading (0.5%) at the very beginning of the Pst outbreak, a detection accuracy of 57% was obtained. Still in the initial phase of the Pst outbreak with 2 to 4% of Pst disease spreading, detection accuracy with 76% could be attained. With further optimizations, the image classifier could be implemented in embedded systems and deployed on drones, vehicles or scanning systems for fast mapping of Pst outbreaks.
Pathways toward limiting global warming to well below 2 ∘C, as used by the IPCC in the Fifth Assessment Report, do not consider the climate impacts already occurring below 2 ∘C. Here we show that accounting for such damages significantly increases the near-term ambition of transformation pathways. We use econometric estimates of climate damages on GDP growth and explicitly model the uncertainty in the persistence time of damages. The Integrated Assessment Model we use includes the climate system and mitigation technology detail required to derive near-term policies. We find an optimal carbon price of $115 per tonne of CO2 in 2030. The long-term persistence of damages, while highly uncertain, is a main driver of the near-term carbon price. Accounting for damages on economic growth increases the gap between the currently pledged nationally determined contributions and the welfare-optimal 2030 emissions by two thirds, compared to pathways considering the 2 ∘C limit only.
Purpose
The objective of the investigation was to determine the concomitant effects of upper arm blood flow restriction (BFR) and inversion on elbow flexors neuromuscular responses.
Methods
Randomly allocated, 13 volunteers performed four conditions in a within-subject design: rest (control, 1-min upright position without BFR), control (1-min upright with BFR), 1-min inverted (without BFR), and 1-min inverted with BFR. Evoked and voluntary contractile properties, before, during and after a 30-s maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) exercise intervention were examined as well as pain scale.
Results
Inversion induced significant pre-exercise intervention decreases in elbow flexors MVC (21.1%, Z2p = 0.48, p = 0.02) and resting evoked twitch forces (29.4%, Z2p = 0.34, p = 0.03). The 30-s MVC induced significantly greater pre- to post-test decreases in potentiated twitch force (Z2p = 0.61, p = 0.0009) during inversion (75%) than upright (65.3%) conditions. Overall, BFR decreased MVC force 4.8% (Z2p = 0.37, p = 0.05). For upright position, BFR induced 21.0% reductions in M-wave amplitude (Z2p = 0.44, p = 0.04). There were no significant differences for electromyographic activity or voluntary activation as measured with the interpolated twitch technique. For all conditions, there was a significant increase in pain scale between the 40-60 s intervals and post-30-s MVC (upright< inversion, and without BFR< BFR).
Conclusion
The concomitant application of inversion with elbow flexors BFR only amplified neuromuscular performance impairments to a small degree. Individuals who execute forceful contractions when inverted or with BFR should be cognizant that force output may be impaired.
The objective of this work was to investigate the potential effect of cereal α-amylase/trypsin inhibitors (ATIs) on growth parameters and selective digestive enzymes of Tenebrio molitor L. larvae. The approach consisted of feeding the larvae with wheat, sorghum and rice meals containing different levels and composition of α-amylase/trypsin inhibitors. The developmental and biochemical characteristics of the larvae were assessed over feeding periods of 5 h, 5 days and 10 days, and the relative abundance of α-amylase and selected proteases in larvae were determined using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Overall, weight gains ranged from 21% to 42% after five days of feeding. The larval death rate significantly increased in all groups after 10 days of feeding (p < 0.05), whereas the pupation rate was about 25% among larvae fed with rice (Oryza sativa L.) and Siyazan/Esperya wheat meals, and only 8% and 14% among those fed with Damougari and S35 sorghum meals. As determined using the Lowry method, the protein contents of the sodium phosphate extracts ranged from 7.80 ± 0.09 to 9.42 ± 0.19 mg/mL and those of the ammonium bicarbonate/urea reached 19.78 ± 0.16 to 37.47 ± 1.38 mg/mL. The total protein contents of the larvae according to the Kjeldahl method ranged from 44.0 and 49.9 g/100 g. The relative abundance of α-amylase, CLIP domain-containing serine protease, modular serine protease zymogen and C1 family cathepsin significantly decreased in the larvae, whereas dipeptidylpeptidase I and chymotrypsin increased within the first hours after feeding (p < 0.05). Trypsin content was found to be constant independently of time or feed material. Finally, based on the results we obtained, it was difficult to substantively draw conclusions on the likely effects of meal ATI composition on larval developmental characteristics, but their effects on the digestive enzyme expression remain relevant.
Effect of endothelial culture medium composition on platelet responses to polymeric biomaterials
(2021)
Near-physiological in vitro thrombogenicity test systems for the evaluation of blood-contacting endothelialized biomaterials requires co-cultivation with platelets (PLT). However, the addition of PLT has led to unphysiological endothelial cell (EC) detachment in such in vitro systems. A possible cause for this phenomenon may be PLT activation triggered by the applied endothelial cell medium, which typically consists of basal medium (BM) and nine different supplements. To verify this hypothesis, the influence of BM and its supplements was systematically analyzed regarding PLT responses. For this, human platelet rich plasma (PRP) was mixed with BM, BM containing one of nine supplements, or with BM containing all supplements together. PLT adherence analysis was carried out in six-channel slides with plasma-treated cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) and poly(tetrafluoro ethylene) (PTFE, as a positive control) substrates as part of the six-channel slides in the absence of EC and under static conditions. PLT activation and aggregation were analyzed using light transmission aggregometry and flow cytometry (CD62P). Medium supplements had no effect on PLT activation and aggregation. In contrast, supplements differentially affected PLT adherence, however, in a polymer- and donor-dependent manner. Thus, the use of standard endothelial growth medium (BM + all supplements) maintains functionality of PLT under EC compatible conditions without masking the differences of PLT adherence on different polymeric substrates. These findings are important prerequisites for the establishment of a near-physiological in vitro thrombogenicity test system assessing polymer-based cardiovascular implant materials in contact with EC and PLT.
Odd-chain fatty acids (OCFA) are inversely associated with type-2-diabetes in epidemiological studies. They are considered as a biomarker for dairy intake because fermentation in ruminants yields high amounts of propionate, which is used as the primer for lipogenesis. Recently, we demonstrated endogenous OCFA synthesis from propionate in humans and mice, but how this is affected by microbial colonization is still unexplored. Here, we investigated the effect of increasing microbiota complexity on hepatic lipid metabolism and OCFA levels in different dietary settings. Germ-free (GF), gnotobiotic (SIH, simplified human microbiota) or conventional (CONV) C3H/HeOuJ-mice were fed a CHOW or high-fat diet with inulin (HFI) to induce microbial fermentation. We found that hepatic lipogenesis was increased with increasing microbiota complexity, independently of diet. In contrast, OCFA formation was affected by diet as well as microbiota. On CHOW, hepatic OCFA and intestinal gluconeogenesis decreased with increasing microbiota complexity (GF > SIH > CONV), while cecal propionate showed a negative correlation with hepatic OCFA. On HFI, OCFA levels were highest in SIH and positively correlated with cecal propionate. The propionate content in the CHOW diet was 10 times higher than that of HFI. We conclude that bacterial propionate production affects hepatic OCFA formation, unless this effect is masked by dietary propionate intake.
The detection and quantification of nut allergens remains a major challenge. The liquid chroma-tography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is emerging as one of the most widely used methods, but sample preparation prior to the analysis is still a key issue. The objective of this work was to establish optimized protocols for extraction, tryptic digestion and LC-MS analysis of almond, cashew, hazelnut, peanut, pistachio and walnut samples. Ammonium bicar-bonate/urea extraction (Ambi/urea), SDS buffer extraction (SDS), polyvinylpolypyrroli-done (PVPP) extraction, trichloroacetic acid/acetone extraction (TCA/acetone) and chloro-form/methanol/sodium chloride precipitation (CM/NaCl) as well as the performances of con-ventional tryptic digestion and microwave-assisted breakdown were investigated. Overall, the protein extraction yields ranged from 14.9 ± 0.5 (almond extract from CM/NaCl) to 76.5 ± 1.3% (hazelnut extract from Ambi/urea). Electrophoretic profiling showed that the SDS extraction method clearly presented a high amount of extracted proteins in the range of 0–15 kDa, 15–35 kDa, 35–70 kDa and 70–250 kDa compared to the other methods. The linearity of the LC-MS methods in the range of 0 to 0.4 µg equivalent defatted nut flour was assessed and recovery of internal standards GWGG and DPLNV(d8)LKPR ranged from 80 to 120%. The identified bi-omarkers peptides were used to relatively quantifier selected allergenic protein form the inves-tigated nut samples. Considering the overall results, it can be concluded that SDS buffer allows a better protein extraction from almond, peanut and walnut samples while PVPP buffer is more appropriate for cashew, pistachio and hazelnut samples. It was also found that conventional overnight digestion is indicated for cashew, pistachio and hazelnut samples, while microwave assisted tryptic digestion is recommended for almond, hazelnut and peanut extracts.
Plants are often challenged by an array of unfavorable environmental conditions. During cold exposure, many changes occur that include, for example, the stabilization of cell membranes, alterations in gene expression and enzyme activities, as well as the accumulation of metabolites. In the presented study, the carbohydrate metabolism was analyzed in the very early response of plants to a low temperature (2 degrees C) in the leaves of 5-week-old potato plants of the Russet Burbank cultivar during the first 12 h of cold treatment (2 h dark and 10 h light). First, some plant stress indicators were examined and it was shown that short-term cold exposure did not significantly affect the relative water content and chlorophyll content (only after 12 h), but caused an increase in malondialdehyde concentration and a decrease in the expression of NDA1, a homolog of the NADH dehydrogenase gene. In addition, it was shown that the content of transitory starch increased transiently in the very early phase of the plant response (3-6 h) to cold treatment, and then its decrease was observed after 12 h. In contrast, soluble sugars such as glucose and fructose were significantly increased only at the end of the light period, where a decrease in sucrose content was observed. The availability of the monosaccharides at constitutively high levels, regardless of the temperature, may delay the response to cold, involving amylolytic starch degradation in chloroplasts. The decrease in starch content, observed in leaves after 12 h of cold exposure, was preceded by a dramatic increase in the transcript levels of the key enzymes of starch degradation initiation, the alpha-glucan, water dikinase (GWD-EC 2.7.9.4) and the phosphoglucan, water dikinase (PWD-EC 2.7.9.5). The gene expression of both dikinases peaked at 9 h of cold exposure, as analyzed by real-time PCR. Moreover, enhanced activities of the acid invertase as well as of both glucan phosphorylases during exposure to a chilling temperature were observed. However, it was also noticed that during the light phase, there was a general increase in glucan phosphorylase activities for both control and cold-stressed plants irrespective of the temperature. In conclusion, a short-term cold treatment alters the carbohydrate metabolism in the leaves of potato, which leads to an increase in the content of soluble sugars.
Effects of manganese on genomic integrity in the multicellular model organism Caenorhabditis elegans
(2021)
Although manganese (Mn) is an essential trace element, overexposure is associated with Mn-induced toxicity and neurological dysfunction. Even though Mn-induced oxidative stress is discussed extensively, neither the underlying mechanisms of the potential consequences of Mn-induced oxidative stress on DNA damage and DNA repair, nor the possibly resulting toxicity are characterized yet. In this study, we use the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans to investigate the mode of action of Mn toxicity, focusing on genomic integrity by means of DNA damage and DNA damage response. Experiments were conducted to analyze Mn bioavailability, lethality, and induction of DNA damage. Different deletion mutant strains were then used to investigate the role of base excision repair (BER) and dePARylation (DNA damage response) proteins in Mn-induced toxicity. The results indicate a dose- and time-dependent uptake of Mn, resulting in increased lethality. Excessive exposure to Mn decreases genomic integrity and activates BER. Altogether, this study characterizes the consequences of Mn exposure on genomic integrity and therefore broadens the molecular understanding of pathways underlying Mn-induced toxicity. Additionally, studying the basal poly(ADP-ribosylation) (PARylation) of worms lacking poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase (PARG) parg-1 or parg-2 (two orthologue of PARG), indicates that parg-1 accounts for most of the glycohydrolase activity in worms.
Background
To improve propulsion during running, athletes often wear spike shoes designed for training and/or competition. Running with spike shoes may cause pain and/or injuries. To address this problem, a modified spike shoe was tested. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of running with dual-versus single-stiffness spike running shoes on running mechanics in long-distance runners with pronated feet.
Methods
Sixteen male elite (national competitive level) runners (5000 or 10,000 m) aged 28.2 ± 2.5 years with pronated feet volunteered to participate in this study. To be included, participants had to have achieved personal best race times over 5- and/or 10-km races under 17 or 34 min during official running competitions. All participants were heel strikers and had a history of 11.2 ± 4.2 years of training. For the assessment of running kinetics, a force plate was imbedded into a walkway. Running kinematics were recorded using a Vicon-motion-capture system. Nike Zoom Rival shoes (Nike, Nike Zoom Rival, USA) were selected and adapted according to spike softness and stiffness. Participants ran at a constant speed of ~4.0 m/s across the walkway with both shoe conditions in randomized order. Six trials were recorded per condition. The main outcomes included peak ground reaction forces and their time-to-peak, average and instantaneous vertical loading rates, free moments, and peak ankle eversion angles.
Results
Paired t-tests revealed significantly lower lateral (p = 0.021, d = 0.95) and vertical (p = 0.010, d = 1.40) forces at heel contact during running with dual-stiffness spike shoes. Running with dual-stiffness spike shoes resulted in a significantly longer time-to-peak vertical (p = 0.004, d = 1.40) force at heel contact. The analysis revealed significantly lower average (p = 0.005, d = 0.46) and instantaneous (p = 0.021, d = 0.49) loading rates and peak negative free moment amplitudes (p = 0.016, d = 0.81) when running with dual-stiffness spike shoes. Finally, significantly lower peak ankle eversion angles were observed with dual-stiffness spike shoes (p < 0.001, d = 1.29).
Conclusions
Running in dual- compared with single-stiffness spike distance running shoes resulted in lower loading rates, free moment amplitudes, and peak ankle eversion angles of long-distance runners with pronated feet.
Postural balance represents a fundamental movement skill for the successful performance of everyday and sport-related activities. There is ample evidence on the effectiveness of balance training on balance performance in athletic and non-athletic population. However, less is known on potential transfer effects of other training types, such as plyometric jump training (PJT) on measures of balance. Given that PJT is a highly dynamic exercise mode with various forms of jump-landing tasks, high levels of postural control are needed to successfully perform PJT exercises. Accordingly, PJT has the potential to not only improve measures of muscle strength and power but also balance. To systematically review and synthetize evidence from randomized and non-randomized controlled trials regarding the effects of PJT on measures of balance in apparently healthy participants. Systematic literature searches were performed in the electronic databases PubMed, Web of Science, and SCOPUS. A PICOS approach was applied to define inclusion criteria, (i) apparently healthy participants, with no restrictions on their fitness level, sex, or age, (ii) a PJT program, (iii) active controls (any sport-related activity) or specific active controls (a specific exercise type such as balance training), (iv) assessment of dynamic, static balance pre- and post-PJT, (v) randomized controlled trials and controlled trials. The methodological quality of studies was assessed using the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale. This meta-analysis was computed using the inverse variance random-effects model. The significance level was set at p <0.05. The initial search retrieved 8,251 plus 23 records identified through other sources. Forty-two articles met our inclusion criteria for qualitative and 38 for quantitative analysis (1,806 participants [990 males, 816 females], age range 9–63 years). PJT interventions lasted between 4 and 36 weeks. The median PEDro score was 6 and no study had low methodological quality (≤3). The analysis revealed significant small effects of PJT on overall (dynamic and static) balance (ES = 0.46; 95% CI = 0.32–0.61; p < 0.001), dynamic (e.g., Y-balance test) balance (ES = 0.50; 95% CI = 0.30–0.71; p < 0.001), and static (e.g., flamingo balance test) balance (ES = 0.49; 95% CI = 0.31–0.67; p < 0.001). The moderator analyses revealed that sex and/or age did not moderate balance performance outcomes. When PJT was compared to specific active controls (i.e., participants undergoing balance training, whole body vibration training, resistance training), both PJT and alternative training methods showed similar effects on overall (dynamic and static) balance (p = 0.534). Specifically, when PJT was compared to balance training, both training types showed similar effects on overall (dynamic and static) balance (p = 0.514). Conclusion: Compared to active controls, PJT showed small effects on overall balance, dynamic and static balance. Additionally, PJT produced similar balance improvements compared to other training types (i.e., balance training). Although PJT is widely used in athletic and recreational sport settings to improve athletes' physical fitness (e.g., jumping; sprinting), our systematic review with meta-analysis is novel in as much as it indicates that PJT also improves balance performance. The observed PJT-related balance enhancements were irrespective of sex and participants' age. Therefore, PJT appears to be an adequate training regime to improve balance in both, athletic and recreational settings.
Non-geminate recombination, as one of the most relevant loss mechanisms in organic and perovskite solar cells, deserves special attention in research efforts to further increase device performance. It can be subdivided into first, second, and third order processes, which can be elucidated by the effects that they have on the time-dependent open-circuit voltage decay. In this study, analytical expressions for the open-circuit voltage decay exhibiting one of the aforementioned recombination mechanisms were derived. It was possible to support the analytical models with experimental examples of three different solar cells, each of them dominated either by first (PBDBT:CETIC-4F), second (PM6:Y6), or third (irradiated CH3NH3PbI3) order recombination. Furthermore, a simple approach to estimate the dominant recombination process was also introduced and tested on these examples. Moreover, limitations of the analytical models and the measurement technique itself were discussed.
Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Zusammenhänge zwischen integrativem Schulleitungshandeln, das transformationale und instruktionale Komponenten enthält, und der Nutzungshäufigkeit verschiedener Datenquellen durch Lehrkräfte. Die Ergebnisse eines Strukturgleichungsmodells zeigen, dass integrative Führung direkte und indirekte Zusammenhänge mit der Nutzung verschiedener Datenquellen aufweist. Die Effekte scheinen vorwiegend durch die Kooperationsaktivität der Lehrkräfte vermittelt zu sein.
Identification of protein complexes from protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks is a key problem in PPI mining, solved by parameter-dependent approaches that suffer from small recall rates. Here we introduce GCC-v, a family of efficient, parameter-free algorithms to accurately predict protein complexes using the (weighted) clustering coefficient of proteins in PPI networks. Through comparative analyses with gold standards and PPI networks from Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Homo sapiens, we demonstrate that GCC-v outperforms twelve state-of-the-art approaches for identification of protein complexes with respect to twelve performance measures in at least 85.71% of scenarios. We also show that GCC-v results in the exact recovery of similar to 35% of protein complexes in a pan-plant PPI network and discover 144 new protein complexes in Arabidopsis thaliana, with high support from GO semantic similarity. Our results indicate that findings from GCC-v are robust to network perturbations, which has direct implications to assess the impact of the PPI network quality on the predicted protein complexes. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology.
The presence of impermeable surfaces in urban areas hinders natural drainage and directs the surface runoff to storm drainage systems with finite capacity, which makes these areas prone to pluvial flooding. The occurrence of pluvial flooding depends on the existence of minimal areas for surface runoff generation and concentration. Detailed hydrologic and hydrodynamic simulations are computationally expensive and require intensive resources. This study compared and evaluated the performance of two simplified methods to identify urban pluvial flood-prone areas, namely the fill–spill–merge (FSM) method and the topographic wetness index (TWI) method and used the TELEMAC-2D hydrodynamic numerical model for benchmarking and validation. The FSM method uses common GIS operations to identify flood-prone depressions from a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM). The TWI method employs the maximum likelihood method (MLE) to probabilistically calibrate a TWI threshold (τ) based on the inundation maps from a 2D hydrodynamic model for a given spatial window (W) within the urban area. We found that the FSM method clearly outperforms the TWI method both conceptually and effectively in terms of model performance.
A characterization of the essential spectrum of Schrodinger operators on infinite graphs is derived involving the concept of R-limits. This concept, which was introduced previously for operators on N and Z(d) as "right-limits," captures the behaviour of the operator at infinity. For graphs with sub-exponential growth rate, we show that each point in sigma(ss)(H) corresponds to a bounded generalized eigenfunction of a corresponding R-limit of H. If, additionally, the graph is of uniform sub-exponential growth, also the converse inclusion holds.
An amperometric trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) biosensor is reported, where TMAO reductase (TorA) and glucose oxidase (GOD) and catalase (Cat) were immobilized on the electrode surface, enabling measurements of mediated enzymatic TMAO reduction at low potential under ambient air conditions. The oxygen anti-interference membrane composed of GOD, Cat and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel, together with glucose concentration, was optimized until the O-2 reduction current of a Clark-type electrode was completely suppressed for at least 3 h. For the preparation of the TMAO biosensor, Escherichia coli TorA was purified under anaerobic conditions and immobilized on the surface of a carbon electrode and covered by the optimized O-2 scavenging membrane. The TMAO sensor operates at a potential of -0.8 V vs. Ag/AgCl (1 M KCl), where the reduction of methylviologen (MV) is recorded. The sensor signal depends linearly on TMAO concentrations between 2 mu M and 15 mM, with a sensitivity of 2.75 +/- 1.7 mu A/mM. The developed biosensor is characterized by a response time of about 33 s and an operational stability over 3 weeks. Furthermore, measurements of TMAO concentration were performed in 10% human serum, where the lowest detectable concentration is of 10 mu M TMAO.
Elevation-dependent compensation effects in snowmelt in the Rhine River Basin upstream gauge Basel
(2021)
In snow-dominated river basins, floods often occur during early summer, when snowmelt-induced runoff superimposes with rainfall-induced runoff. An earlier onset of seasonal snowmelt as a consequence of a warming climate is often expected to shift snowmelt contribution to river runoff and potential flooding to an earlier date. Against this background, we assess the impact of rising temperatures on seasonal snowpacks and quantify changes in timing, magnitude and elevation of snowmelt. We analyse in situ snow measurements, conduct snow simulations and examine changes in river runoff at key gauging stations. With regard to snowmelt, we detect a threefold effect of rising temperatures: snowmelt becomes weaker, occurs earlier and forms at higher elevations. Due to the wide range of elevations in the catchment, snowmelt does not occur simultaneously at all elevations. Results indicate that elevation bands melt together in blocks. We hypothesise that in a warmer world with similar sequences of weather conditions, snowmelt is moved upward to higher elevation. The movement upward the elevation range makes snowmelt in individual elevation bands occur earlier, although the timing of the snowmelt-induced runoff stays the same. Meltwater from higher elevations, at least partly, replaces meltwater from elevations below.
Organic solar cells have the potential to become the cheapest form of electricity. Rapid increase in the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs) has been achieved with the development of non-fullerene small-molecule acceptors. Next generation photovoltaics based upon environmentally benign "green solvent" processing of organic semiconductors promise a step-change in the adaptability and versatility of solar technologies and promote sustainable development. However, high-performing OSCs are still processed by halogenated (non-environmentally friendly) solvents, so hindering their large-scale manufacture. In this perspective, we discuss the recent progress in developing highly efficient OSCs processed from eco-compatible solvents, and highlight research challenges that should be addressed for the future development of high power conversion efficiencies devices.
Elucidation of the reaction mechanism for the synthesis of ZnGeN2 through Zn2GeO4 ammonolysis
(2021)
Ternary II-IV-N-2 materials have been considered as a promising class of materials that combine photovoltaic performance with earth-abundance and low toxicity. When switching from binary III-V materials to ternary II-IV-N-2 materials, further structural complexity is added to the system that may influence its optoelectronic properties. Herein, we present a systematic study of the reaction of Zn2GeO4 with NH3 that produces zinc germanium oxide nitrides, and ultimately approach stoichiometric ZnGeN2, using a combination of chemical analyses, X-ray powder diffraction and DFT calculations. Elucidating the reaction mechanism as being dominated by Zn and O extrusion at the later reaction stages, we give an insight into studying structure-property relationships in this emerging class of materials.
EMOOCs 2021
(2021)
From June 22 to June 24, 2021, Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, hosted the seventh European MOOC Stakeholder Summit (EMOOCs 2021) together with the eighth ACM Learning@Scale Conference.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, the conference was held fully online.
The boost in digital education worldwide as a result of the pandemic was also one of the main topics of this year’s EMOOCs. All institutions of learning have been forced to transform and redesign their educational methods, moving from traditional models to hybrid or completely online models at scale. The learnings, derived from practical experience and research, have been explored in EMOOCs 2021 in six tracks and additional workshops, covering various aspects of this field. In this publication, we present papers from the conference’s Experience Track, the Policy Track, the Business Track, the International Track, and the Workshops.
Energy system developments and investments in the decisive decade for the Paris Agreement goals
(2021)
The Paris Agreement does not only stipulate to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C, it also calls for 'making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions'. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand the implications of climate targets for energy systems and quantify the associated investment requirements in the coming decade. A meaningful analysis must however consider the near-term mitigation requirements to avoid the overshoot of a temperature goal. It must also include the recently observed fast technological progress in key mitigation options. Here, we use a new and unique scenario ensemble that limit peak warming by construction and that stems from seven up-to-date integrated assessment models. This allows us to study the near-term implications of different limits to peak temperature increase under a consistent and up-to-date set of assumptions. We find that ambitious immediate action allows for limiting median warming outcomes to well below 2 °C in all models. By contrast, current nationally determined contributions for 2030 would add around 0.2 °C of peak warming, leading to an unavoidable transgression of 1.5 °C in all models, and 2 °C in some. In contrast to the incremental changes as foreseen by current plans, ambitious peak warming targets require decisive emission cuts until 2030, with the most substantial contribution to decarbonization coming from the power sector. Therefore, investments into low-carbon power generation need to increase beyond current levels to meet the Paris goals, especially for solar and wind technologies and related system enhancements for electricity transmission, distribution and storage. Estimates on absolute investment levels, up-scaling of other low-carbon power generation technologies and investment shares in less ambitious scenarios vary considerably across models. In scenarios limiting peak warming to below 2 °C, while coal is phased out quickly, oil and gas are still being used significantly until 2030, albeit at lower than current levels. This requires continued investments into existing oil and gas infrastructure, but investments into new fields in such scenarios might not be needed. The results show that credible and effective policy action is essential for ensuring efficient allocation of investments aligned with medium-term climate targets.
Macrophages in pathologically expanded dysfunctional white adipose tissue are exposed to a mix of potential modulators of inflammatory response, including fatty acids released from insulin-resistant adipocytes, increased levels of insulin produced to compensate insulin resistance, and prostaglandin E-2 (PGE(2)) released from activated macrophages. The current study addressed the question of how palmitate might interact with insulin or PGE(2) to induce the formation of the chemotactic pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-8 (IL-8). Human THP-1 cells were differentiated into macrophages. In these macrophages, palmitate induced IL-8 formation. Insulin enhanced the induction of IL-8 formation by palmitate as well as the palmitate-dependent stimulation of PGE(2) synthesis. PGE(2) in turn elicited IL-8 formation on its own and enhanced the induction of IL-8 release by palmitate, most likely by activating the EP4 receptor. Since IL-8 causes insulin resistance and fosters inflammation, the increase in palmitate-induced IL-8 formation that is caused by hyperinsulinemia and locally produced PGE(2) in chronically inflamed adipose tissue might favor disease progression in a vicious feed-forward cycle.
Macrophages in pathologically expanded dysfunctional white adipose tissue are exposed to a mix of potential modulators of inflammatory response, including fatty acids released from insulin-resistant adipocytes, increased levels of insulin produced to compensate insulin resistance, and prostaglandin E₂ (PGE₂) released from activated macrophages. The current study addressed the question of how palmitate might interact with insulin or PGE₂ to induce the formation of the chemotactic pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-8 (IL-8). Human THP-1 cells were differentiated into macrophages. In these macrophages, palmitate induced IL-8 formation. Insulin enhanced the induction of IL-8 formation by palmitate as well as the palmitate-dependent stimulation of PGE₂ synthesis. PGE₂ in turn elicited IL-8 formation on its own and enhanced the induction of IL-8 release by palmitate, most likely by activating the EP4 receptor. Since IL-8 causes insulin resistance and fosters inflammation, the increase in palmitate-induced IL-8 formation that is caused by hyperinsulinemia and locally produced PGE₂ in chronically inflamed adipose tissue might favor disease progression in a vicious feed-forward cycle.
Dysfunctional islets of Langerhans are a hallmark of type 2 diabetes (T2D). We hypothesize that differences in islet gene expression alternative splicing which can contribute to altered protein function also participate in islet dysfunction. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) data from islets of obese diabetes-resistant and diabetes-susceptible mice were analyzed for alternative splicing and its putative genetic and epigenetic modulators. We focused on the expression levels of chromatin modifiers and SNPs in regulatory sequences. We identified alternative splicing events in islets of diabetes-susceptible mice amongst others in genes linked to insulin secretion, endocytosis or ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis pathways. The expression pattern of 54 histones and chromatin modifiers, which may modulate splicing, were markedly downregulated in islets of diabetic animals. Furthermore, diabetes-susceptible mice carry SNPs in RNA-binding protein motifs and in splice sites potentially responsible for alternative splicing events. They also exhibit a larger exon skipping rate, e.g., in the diabetes gene Abcc8, which might affect protein function. Expression of the neuronal splicing factor Srrm4 which mediates inclusion of microexons in mRNA transcripts was markedly lower in islets of diabetes-prone compared to diabetes-resistant mice, correlating with a preferential skipping of SRRM4 target exons. The repression of Srrm4 expression is presumably mediated via a higher expression of miR-326-3p and miR-3547-3p in islets of diabetic mice. Thus, our study suggests that an altered splicing pattern in islets of diabetes-susceptible mice may contribute to an elevated T2D risk.
Epigenetic DNA methylation of EBI3 modulates human interleukin-35 formation via NFkB signaling
(2021)
Ulcerative colitis (UC), a severe chronic disease with unclear etiology that is associated with increased risk for colorectal cancer, is accompanied by dysregulation of cytokines. Epstein-Barr virus-induced gene 3 (EBI3) encodes a subunit in the unique heterodimeric IL-12 cytokine family of either pro- or anti-inflammatory function. After having recently demonstrated that upregulation of EBI3 by histone acetylation alleviates disease symptoms in a dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-treated mouse model of chronic colitis, we now aimed to examine a possible further epigenetic regulation of EBI3 by DNA methylation under inflammatory conditions. Treatment with the DNA methyltransferase inhibitor (DNMTi) decitabine (DAC) and TNF alpha led to synergistic upregulation of EBI3 in human colon epithelial cells (HCEC). Use of different signaling pathway inhibitors indicated NF kappa B signaling was necessary and proportional to the synergistic EBI3 induction. MALDI-TOF/MS and HPLC-ESIMS/MS analysis of DAC/TNF alpha-treated HCEC identified IL-12p35 as the most probable binding partner to form a functional protein. EBI3/IL-12p35 heterodimers (IL-35) induce their own gene upregulation, something that was indeed observed in HCEC cultured with media from previously DAC/TNF alpha-treated HCEC. These results suggest that under inflammatory and demethylating conditions the upregulation of EBI3 results in the formation of anti-inflammatory IL-35, which might be considered as a therapeutic target in colitis.
Background
Over the last 20 years, a decreasing trend in external skeletal robusticity and an increasing trend in overweight and obesity was observed worldwide in adults and children as modern lifestyles in nutritional and activity behavior have changed. However, body mass index (BMI) as a measure for overweight is not an ideal predictor of % body fat (%BF) either in children and adolescents or in adults. On the contrary, it disguises a phenomenon called “hidden obesity”.
Objectives
We aim to approximate %BF by combining skeletal robusticity and BMI and develop an estimation-based tool to identify normal weight obese children and adolescents.
Sample and Methods
We analyzed cross-sectional data on height, weight, elbow breadth, and skinfold thickness (triceps and subscapular) of German children aged 6 to 18 years (N=15,034). We used modified Hattori charts and multiple linear regression to develop a tool, the “%BF estimator”, to estimate %BF by using BMI and skeletal robusticity measured as Frame Index.
Results
Independent of sex and age an increase in BMI is associated with an increase in %BF, an increase in Frame Index is associated with a decrease in %BF. The developed tool “%BF estimator” allows the estimation of %BF per sex and age group after calculation of BMI and Frame Index.
Conclusion
The “%BF estimator” is an easily applicable tool for the estimation of %BF in respect of body composition for clinical practice, screening, and public health research. It is non-invasive and has high accuracy. Further, it allows the identification of normal weight obese children and adolescents.
This paper aims to present the results of a higher education experience promoted by the research centres INTELLECT (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and CDM (University of Roma Tre), as part of difference master’s degrees programme of the academic years 2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021. Through different online activities, 37 students attended and evaluated a MOOC on museum education content, such promoting their professionals and transverse skills, such as critical thinking, and developing their knowledge relative to OERs, within culture and heritage education contexts. Moreover, results from the online evaluation activities support the implementation of the MOOC in a collaborative way: during the academic years, evaluation data have been used by researcher to make changes to the course modules, thus realizing a more effective online path from and educational point of view.
Already successfully used products or designs, past projects or our own experiences can be the basis for the development of new products. As reference products or existing knowledge, it is reused in the development process and across generations of products. Since further, products are developed in cooperation, the development of new product generations is characterized by knowledge-intensive processes in which information and knowledge are exchanged between different kinds of knowledge carriers. The particular knowledge transfer here describes the identification of knowledge, its transmission from the knowledge carrier to the knowledge receiver, and its application by the knowledge receiver, which includes embodied knowledge of physical products. Initial empirical findings of the quantitative effects regarding the speed of knowledge transfers already have been examined. However, the factors influencing the quality of knowledge transfer to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transfer in product development have not yet been examined empirically. Therefore, this paper prepares an experimental setting for the empirical investigation of the quality of knowledge transfers.
In this contribution the dissociative electron attachment to metabolites found in aerobic organisms, namely oxaloacetic and citric acids, was studied both experimentally by means of a crossed-beam setup and theoretically through density functional theory calculations. Prominent negative ion resonances from both compounds are observed peaking below 0.5 eV resulting in intense formation of fragment anions associated with a decomposition of the carboxyl groups. In addition, resonances at higher energies (3–9 eV) are observed exclusively from the decomposition of the oxaloacetic acid. These fragments are generated with considerably smaller intensities. The striking findings of our calculations indicate the different mechanism by which the near 0 eV electron is trapped by the precursor molecule to form the transitory negative ion prior to dissociation. For the oxaloacetic acid, the transitory anion arises from the capture of the electron directly into some valence states, while, for the citric acid, dipole- or multipole-bound states mediate the transition into the valence states. What is also of high importance is that both compounds while undergoing DEA reactions generate highly reactive neutral species that can lead to severe cell damage in a biological environment.
Eastern Africa has been a prime target for scientific drilling because it is rich in key paleoanthropological sites as well as in paleolakes, containing valuable paleoclimatic information on evolutionary time scales. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) explores these paleolakes with the aim of reconstructing environmental conditions around critical episodes of hominin evolution. Identification of biological taxa based on their sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) traces can contribute to understand past ecological and climatological conditions of the living environment of our ancestors. However, sedaDNA recovery from tropical environments is challenging because high temperatures, UV irradiation, and desiccation result in highly degraded DNA. Consequently, most of the DNA fragments in tropical sediments are too short for PCR amplification. We analyzed sedaDNA in the upper 70 m of the composite sediment core of the HSPDP drill site at Chew Bahir for eukaryotic remnants. We first tested shotgun high throughput sequencing which leads to metagenomes dominated by bacterial DNA of the deep biosphere, while only a small fraction was derived from eukaryotic, and thus probably ancient, DNA. Subsequently, we performed cross-species hybridization capture of sedaDNA to enrich ancient DNA (aDNA) from eukaryotic remnants for paleoenvironmental analysis, using established barcoding genes (cox1 and rbcL for animals and plants, respectively) from 199 species that may have had relatives in the past biosphere at Chew Bahir. Metagenomes yielded after hybridization capture are richer in reads with similarity to cox1 and rbcL in comparison to metagenomes without prior hybridization capture. Taxonomic assignments of the reads from these hybridization capture metagenomes also yielded larger fractions of the eukaryotic domain. For reads assigned to cox1, inferred wet periods were associated with high inferred relative abundances of putative limnic organisms (gastropods, green algae), while inferred dry periods showed increased relative abundances for insects. These findings indicate that cross-species hybridization capture can be an effective approach to enhance the information content of sedaDNA in order to explore biosphere changes associated with past environmental conditions, enabling such analyses even under tropical conditions.
When he founded Schocken Books in 1945, department store magnate, philanthropist, and publisher Salman Schocken (1877–1959) called his new American publishing business an imitation of its German predecessor, which had functioned from 1931 until 1938. He intended it to replicate the success of the Berlin Schocken Verlag by spiritually fortifying a Jewish community uncertain in its identity. The new company reflected the transnational transfer of people, ideas, and texts between Germany, Palestine/Israel, and the United States. Its success and near-failure raise questions about transnationalism and American Jewish culture: Can a culture be imposed on a population which has its own organs and agencies of cultural production? Had American Jewish culture developed organically to the specific place where several million Jews found themselves and according to uniquely American cultural patterns? The answers suggest that the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer complement each other as tools to analyze American Jewry in its American and Jewish contexts.
Extracellular vesicles
(2021)
Osteoporosis is characterized by low bone mass and damage to the bone tissue’s microarchitecture, leading to increased fracture risk. Several studies have provided evidence for associations between psychosocial stress and osteoporosis through various pathways, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis, the sympathetic nervous system, and other endocrine factors. As psychosocial stress provokes oxidative cellular stress with consequences for mitochondrial function and cell signaling (e.g., gene expression, inflammation), it is of interest whether extracellular vesicles (EVs) may be a relevant biomarker in this context or act by transporting substances. EVs are intercellular communicators, transfer substances encapsulated in them, modify the phenotype and function of target cells, mediate cell-cell communication, and, therefore, have critical applications in disease progression and clinical diagnosis and therapy. This review summarizes the characteristics of EVs, their role in stress and osteoporosis, and their benefit as biological markers. We demonstrate that EVs are potential mediators of psychosocial stress and osteoporosis and may be beneficial in innovative research settings.
Fast Holocene slip and localized strain along the Liquiñe-Ofqui strike-slip fault system, Chile
(2021)
In active tectonic settings dominated by strike-slip kinematics, slip partitioning across subparallel faults is a common feature; therefore, assessing the degree of partitioning and strain localization is paramount for seismic hazard assessments. Here, we estimate a slip rate of 18.8 +/- 2.0 mm/year over the past 9.0 +/- 0.1 ka for a single strand of the Liquirie-Ofqui Fault System, which straddles the Main Cordillera in Southern Chile. This Holocene rate accounts for similar to 82% of the trench-parallel component of oblique plate convergence and is similar to million-year estimates integrated over the entire fault system. Our results imply that strain localizes on a single fault at millennial time scale but over longer time scales strain localization is not sustained. The fast millennial slip rate in the absence of historical Mw> 6.5 earthquakes along the Liquine-Ofqui Fault System implies either a component of aseismic slip or Mw similar to 7 earthquakes involving multi-trace ruptures and > 150-year repeat times. Our results have implications for the understanding of strike-slip fault system dynamics within volcanic arcs and seismic hazard assessments.
Identification of unknown parameters on the basis of partial and noisy data is a challenging task, in particular in high dimensional and non-linear settings. Gaussian approximations to the problem, such as ensemble Kalman inversion, tend to be robust and computationally cheap and often produce astonishingly accurate estimations despite the simplifying underlying assumptions. Yet there is a lot of room for improvement, specifically regarding a correct approximation of a non-Gaussian posterior distribution. The tempered ensemble transform particle filter is an adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method, whereby resampling is based on optimal transport mapping. Unlike ensemble Kalman inversion, it does not require any assumptions regarding the posterior distribution and hence has shown to provide promising results for non-linear non-Gaussian inverse problems. However, the improved accuracy comes with the price of much higher computational complexity, and the method is not as robust as ensemble Kalman inversion in high dimensional problems. In this work, we add an entropy-inspired regularisation factor to the underlying optimal transport problem that allows the high computational cost to be considerably reduced via Sinkhorn iterations. Further, the robustness of the method is increased via an ensemble Kalman inversion proposal step before each update of the samples, which is also referred to as a hybrid approach. The promising performance of the introduced method is numerically verified by testing it on a steady-state single-phase Darcy flow model with two different permeability configurations. The results are compared to the output of ensemble Kalman inversion, and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods results are computed as a benchmark.
Eccentric exercise is discussed as a treatment option for clinical populations, but specific responses in terms of muscle damage and systemic inflammation after repeated loading of large muscle groups have not been conclusively characterized. Therefore, this study tested the feasibility of an isokinetic protocol for repeated maximum eccentric loading of the trunk muscles. Nine asymptomatic participants (5 f/4 m; 34±6 yrs; 175±13 cm; 76±17 kg) performed three isokinetic 2-minute all-out trunk strength tests (1x concentric (CON), 2x eccentric (ECC1, ECC2), 2 weeks apart; flexion/extension, 60°/s, ROM 55°). Outcomes were peak torque, torque decline, total work, and indicators of muscle damage and inflammation (over 168 h). Statistics were done using the Friedman test (Dunn’s post-test). For ECC1 and ECC2, peak torque and total work were increased and torque decline reduced compared to CON. Repeated ECC bouts yielded unaltered torque and work outcomes. Muscle damage markers were highest after ECC1 (soreness 48 h, creatine kinase 72 h; p<0.05). Their overall responses (area under the curve) were abolished post-ECC2 compared to post-ECC1 (p<0.05). Interleukin-6 was higher post-ECC1 than CON, and attenuated post-ECC2 (p>0.05). Interleukin-10 and tumor necrosis factor-α were not detectable. All markers showed high inter-individual variability. The protocol was feasible to induce muscle damage indicators after exercising a large muscle group, but the pilot results indicated only weak systemic inflammatory responses in asymptomatic adults.
FIBER
(2021)
Objectives:
The development of clinical predictive models hinges upon the availability of comprehensive clinical data. Tapping into such resources requires considerable effort from clinicians, data scientists, and engineers. Specifically, these efforts are focused on data extraction and preprocessing steps required prior to modeling, including complex database queries. A handful of software libraries exist that can reduce this complexity by building upon data standards. However, a gap remains concerning electronic health records (EHRs) stored in star schema clinical data warehouses, an approach often adopted in practice. In this article, we introduce the FlexIBle EHR Retrieval (FIBER) tool: a Python library built on top of a star schema (i2b2) clinical data warehouse that enables flexible generation of modeling-ready cohorts as data frames.
Materials and Methods:
FIBER was developed on top of a large-scale star schema EHR database which contains data from 8 million patients and over 120 million encounters. To illustrate FIBER's capabilities, we present its application by building a heart surgery patient cohort with subsequent prediction of acute kidney injury (AKI) with various machine learning models.
Results:
Using FIBER, we were able to build the heart surgery cohort (n = 12 061), identify the patients that developed AKI (n = 1005), and automatically extract relevant features (n = 774). Finally, we trained machine learning models that achieved area under the curve values of up to 0.77 for this exemplary use case.
Conclusion:
FIBER is an open-source Python library developed for extracting information from star schema clinical data warehouses and reduces time-to-modeling, helping to streamline the clinical modeling process.
Fibrous shape-memory polymer (SMP) scaffolds were investigated considering the fiber as basic microstructural feature. By reduction of the fiber diameter in randomly oriented electrospun polyetherurethane (PEU) meshes from the micro-to the nano-scale, we observed changes in the molecular orientation within the fibers and its impact on the structural and shape-memory performance. It was assumed that a spatial restriction by reduction of the fiber diameter increases molecular orientation along the orientation of the fiber. The stress-strain relation of random PEU scaffolds is initially determined by the 3D arrangement of the fibers and thus is independent of the molecular orientation. Increasing the molecular orientation with decreasing single fiber diameter in scaffolds composed of randomly arranged fibers did not alter the initial stiffness and peak stress but strongly influenced the elongation at break and the stress increase above the Yield point. Reduction of the single fiber diameter also distinctly improved the shape-memory performance of the scaffolds. Fibers with nanoscale diameters (< 100 nm) possessed an almost complete shape recovery, high recovery stresses and fast relaxation kinetics, while the shape fixity was found to decrease with decreasing fiber diameter. Hence, the fiber diameter is a relevant design parameter for SMP.
Filología nómada
(2021)
Este artículo aprovecha el próximo 65º aniversario de Ottmar Ette para realizar una lectura contrastada de las líneas centrales de la obra de Ette en relación con el programa de investigación de Humboldt. Al hacerlo, se pone de manifi esto que el examen de Ette de la vida y la obra del explorador “nómada” (Ette) Alexander von Humboldt, que se inició en 1988 y que entretanto ha abarcado cinco décadas, no sólo ha tenido una infl uencia innovadora en el campo de la investigación humboldtiana internacional, sino que, a la inversa, también hay claras huellas del pensamiento humboldtiano en la obra de Ette.
We study the first passage dynamics for a diffusing particle experiencing a spatially varying diffusion coefficient while driven by correlated additive Gaussian white noise and multiplicative coloured non-Gaussian noise. We consider three functional forms for position dependence of the diffusion coefficient: power-law, exponential, and logarithmic. The coloured non-Gaussian noise is distributed according to Tsallis' q-distribution. Tracks of the non-Markovian systems are numerically simulated by using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta algorithm and the first passage times (FPTs) are recorded. The FPT density is determined along with the mean FPT (MFPT). Effects of the noise intensity and self-correlation of the multiplicative noise, the intensity of the additive noise, the cross-correlation strength, and the non-extensivity parameter on the MFPT are discussed.
Floral volatiles and reward traits are major drivers for the behavior of mutualistic as well as antagonistic flower visitors, i.e., pollinators and florivores. These floral traits differ tremendously between species, but intraspecific differences and their consequences on organism interactions remain largely unknown. Floral volatile compounds, such as terpenoids, function as cues to advertise rewards to pollinators, but should at the same time also repel florivores. The reward composition, e.g., protein and lipid contents in pollen, differs between individuals of distinct plant families. Whether the nutritional value of rewards within the same plant species is linked to their chemotypes, which differ in their pattern of specialized metabolites, has yet not been investigated. In the present study, we compared Tanacetum vulgare plants of five terpenoid chemotypes with regard to flower production, floral headspace volatiles, pollen macronutrient and terpenoid content, and floral attractiveness to florivorous beetles. Our analyses revealed remarkable differences between the chemotypes in the amount and diameter of flower heads, duration of bloom period, and pollen nutritional quality. The floral headspace composition of pollen-producing mature flowers, but not of premature flowers, was correlated to that of pollen and leaves in the same plant individual. For two chemotypes, florivorous beetles discriminated between the scent of mature and premature flower heads and preferred the latter. In semi-field experiments, the abundance of florivorous beetles and flower tissue miners differed between T. vulgare chemotypes. Moreover, the scent environment affected the choice and beetles were more abundant in homogenous plots composed of one single chemotype than in plots with different neighboring chemotypes. In conclusion, flower production, floral metabolic composition and pollen quality varied to a remarkable extend within the species T. vulgare, and the attractiveness of floral scent differed also intra-individually with floral ontogeny. We found evidence for a trade-off between pollen lipid content and pollen amount on a per-plant-level. Our study highlights that chemotypes which are more susceptible to florivory are less attacked when they grow in the neighborhood of other chemotypes and thus gain a benefit from high overall chemodiversity.
Damit die EU ihre ambitionierten Klimaschutzziele erreichen kann, werden die Preise für Treibhausgasemissionen in den nächsten Jahren spürbar steigen. Das hat ökonomische Auswirkungen für die EU-Mitgliedsländer, aber auch den Rest der Welt. Einzelne Sektoren und auch Volkswirtschaften werden davon unterschiedlich stark getroffen.
Foreign Entanglements
(2021)
Forschungsdatenmanagement
(2021)
Forschungsdatenmanagement ist ein informationswissenschaftliches Thema, dessen Bedeutung kontinuierlich, spätestens aber seit dem Start der Nationalen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) immer präsenter wird. Zur Abbildung und Verortung von Arbeitsschwerpunkten für Informationswissenschaftler*innen wurde in der vorliegenden Arbeit ein aktuelles Korpus von 162 Stellenanzeigen, in denen Forschungsdatenmanagement erwähnt wird, ausgewertet. Das Korpus umfasst Stellenanzeigen, die über das Portal Open-BiblioJobs und die DFN-Mailingliste Forschungsdaten beworben wurden und deckt einen Zeitraum vom 01.03.2020 bis zum 22.11.2020 ab. Zur Auswertung des Korpus wurde eine Analysematrix erstellt, in welcher die Inhalte jeder Stellenanzeige nach formalen, administrativen und inhaltlichen Kriterien verzeichnet wurden. Die aus den Stellenanzeigen stammenden Anforderungen wurden in einem Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus mit insgesamt acht Teilaspekten verortet, hiervon sechs Stationen des Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus: „Forschungsvorhaben planen“, „Daten erheben“, „Daten aufbereiten und analysieren“, „Daten teilen und publizieren“, „Daten archivieren“, „Daten nachnutzen“, zusätzlich wurden die zwei Teilaspekte „allgemeine Kern- und Schlüsselkompetenzen“ und „übergreifende Querschnittsthemen“ hinzugefügt.
Dieser Praxisrepräsentation wurde eine Literaturanalyse gegenübergestellt, welche sich mit Anforderungen und Kompetenzen im Forschungsdatenmanagement, besonders aus informationswissenschaftlicher, infrastruktureller Sicht beschäftigt. Hierbei wurden exemplarisch Frameworks (international, national, institutionell), Praxisberichte (universitärer und außeruniversitärer Einrichtungen) und der Individualbericht eines Forschungsdatenmanagers ausgewertet. Zur Gewährleistung einer späteren Vergleichbarkeit wurden auch hier die genannten Kompetenzen und Aufgaben in einem gleichen Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus verortet und analysiert. Die abschließende Zusammenführung und Auswertung der um Aufgaben und Kompetenzen angereicherten Forschungsdatenlebenszyklen ermöglichte einen direkten Vergleich von Theorie und Praxis. Hierbei konnte eine große Kongruenz der Schwerpunktverteilung innerhalb des Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus aufgezeigt werden. Diese Aufgabenkonzentration, besonders in den Teilaspekten „allgemeine Kern- und Schlüsselkompetenzen“ und „übergreifende Querschnittsthemen“ bilden die Verteilung von Arbeitsschwerpunkten im Forschungsdatenmanagement für Informationswissenschaftler* innen deutlich ab.
In the context of the Fostering Women to STEM MOOCs (FOSTWOM) project, we present here the general ideas of a gender balance Toolkit, i.e. a collection of recommendations and resources for instructional designers, visual designers, and teaching staff to apply while designing and preparing storyboards for MOOCs and their visual components, so that future STEM online courses have a greater chance to be more inclusive and gender-balanced. Overall, The FOSTWOM project intends to use the inclusive potential of Massive Open Online Courses to propose STEM subjects free of stereotyping assumptions on gender abilities. Moreover, the consortium is interested in attracting girls and young women to science and technology careers, through accessible online content, which can include role models’ interviews, relevant real-world situations, and strong conceptual frameworks.
From laggards to leaders
(2021)
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change embraces the participation of non-state actors in a separate governance track – the ‘Non-state actor zone for global action’ (nazca) – that runs alongside the formal track of unfccc negotiations and the implementation of the Paris Agreement by State Parties through ‘nationally determined contributions’. unfccc Secretariat is entrusted with orchestrating non-state global and transnational initiatives, partnerships and networks. The involvement of non-state actors in the implementation of the Paris Agreement helps to address an action gap by countries that are unable or unwilling to implement ambitious ndcs.
However, the increased prominence of initiatives driven by non-state actors also increases their direct and indirect influence on processes and rules which raises a number of questions with regards to the legitimacy of action and the democratic deficit of the global climate regime. Balancing legitimacy with effectiveness requires non-state initiatives to ensure transparent and inclusive governance, and accountability towards progress against their goals and pledges.
Despite its encouragement towards private initiatives, the Paris Agreement creates surprisingly little regulatory space for non-state actors to gain hold. Neither are there measures that would link ndcs to nazca initiatives, nor are functional requirements such as transparency or reporting extended to non-state initiatives. While the Paris Agreement marks an important step towards harnessing private sector ability and ambition for climate action, more remains to be done to create a truly enabling framework for private action to strive and complement public efforts to address climate change.
Sedimentary ancient DNA-based studies have been used to probe centuries of climate and environmental changes and how they affected cyanobacterial assemblages in temperate lakes. Due to cyanobacteria containing potential bloom-forming and toxin-producing taxa, their approximate reconstruction from sediments is crucial, especially in lakes lacking long-term monitoring data. To extend the resolution of sediment record interpretation, we used high-throughput sequencing, amplicon sequence variant (ASV) analysis, and quantitative PCR to compare pelagic cyanobacterial composition to that in sediment traps (collected monthly) and surface sediments in Lake Tiefer See. Cyanobacterial composition, species richness, and evenness was not significantly different among the pelagic depths, sediment traps and surface sediments (p > 0.05), indicating that the cyanobacteria in the sediments reflected the cyanobacterial assemblage in the water column. However, total cyanobacterial abundances (qPCR) decreased from the metalimnion down the water column. The aggregate-forming (Aphanizomenon) and colony-forming taxa (Snowella) showed pronounced sedimentation. In contrast, Planktothrix was only very poorly represented in sediment traps (meta- and hypolimnion) and surface sediments, despite its highest relative abundance at the thermocline (10 m water depth) during periods of lake stratification (May-October). We conclude that this skewed representation in taxonomic abundances reflects taphonomic processes, which should be considered in future DNA-based paleolimnological investigations.
Full-length transcriptome
(2021)
Fish is considered as a supreme model for clarifying the evolution and regulatory mechanism of vertebrate immunity. However, the knowledge of distinct immune cell populations in fish is still limited, and further development of techniques advancing the identification of fish immune cell populations and their functions are required. Single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) has provided a new approach for effective in-depth identification and characterization of cell subpopulations. Current approaches for scRNA-seq data analysis usually rely on comparison with a reference genome and hence are not suited for samples without any reference genome, which is currently very common in fish research. Here, we present an alternative, i.e. scRNA-seq data analysis with a full-length transcriptome as a reference, and evaluate this approach on samples from Epinephelus coioides-a teleost without any published genome. We show that it reconstructs well most of the present transcripts in the scRNA-seq data achieving a sensitivity equivalent to approaches relying on genome alignments of related species. Based on cell heterogeneity and known markers, we characterized four cell types: T cells, B cells, monocytes/macrophages (Mo/M phi) and NCC (non-specific cytotoxic cells). Further analysis indicated the presence of two subsets of Mo/M phi including M1 and M2 type, as well as four subsets in B cells, i.e. mature B cells, immature B cells, pre B cells and early-pre B cells. Our research will provide new clues for understanding biological characteristics, development and function of immune cell populations of teleost. Furthermore, our approach provides a reliable alternative for scRNA-seq data analysis in teleost for which no reference genome is currently available.
Biodiversity decline causes a loss of functional diversity, which threatens ecosystems through a dangerous feedback loop: This loss may hamper ecosystems’ ability to buffer environmental changes, leading to further biodiversity losses. In this context, the increasing frequency of human-induced excessive loading of nutrients causes major problems in aquatic systems. Previous studies investigating how functional diversity influences the response of food webs to disturbances have mainly considered systems with at most two functionally diverse trophic levels. We investigated the effects of functional diversity on the robustness, that is, resistance, resilience, and elasticity, using a tritrophic—and thus more realistic—plankton food web model. We compared a non-adaptive food chain with no diversity within the individual trophic levels to a more diverse food web with three adaptive trophic levels. The species fitness differences were balanced through trade-offs between defense/growth rate for prey and selectivity/half-saturation constant for predators. We showed that the resistance, resilience, and elasticity of tritrophic food webs decreased with larger perturbation sizes and depended on the state of the system when the perturbation occurred. Importantly, we found that a more diverse food web was generally more resistant and resilient but its elasticity was context-dependent. Particularly, functional diversity reduced the probability of a regime shift toward a non-desirable alternative state. The basal-intermediate interaction consistently determined the robustness against a nutrient pulse despite the complex influence of the shape and type of the dynamical attractors. This relationship was strongly influenced by the diversity present and the third trophic level. Overall, using a food web model of realistic complexity, this study confirms the destructive potential of the positive feedback loop between biodiversity loss and robustness, by uncovering mechanisms leading to a decrease in resistance, resilience, and potentially elasticity as functional diversity declines.
When inferring on the magnitude of future heat-related mortality due to climate change, human adaptation to heat should be accounted for. We model long-term changes in minimum mortality temperatures (MMT), a well-established metric denoting the lowest risk of heat-related mortality, as a function of climate change and socio-economic progress across 3820 cities. Depending on the combination of climate trajectories and socio-economic pathways evaluated, by 2100 the risk to human health is expected to decline in 60% to 80% of the cities against contemporary conditions. This is caused by an average global increase in MMTs driven by long-term human acclimatisation to future climatic conditions and economic development of countries. While our adaptation model suggests that negative effects on health from global warming can broadly be kept in check, the trade-offs are highly contingent to the scenario path and location-specific. For high-forcing climate scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5) the maintenance of uninterrupted high economic growth by 2100 is a hard requirement to increase MMTs and level-off the negative health effects from additional scenario-driven heat exposure. Choosing a 2 degrees C-compatible climate trajectory alleviates the dependence on fast growth, leaving room for a sustainable economy, and leads to higher reductions of mortality risk.
Gamification als Motivator in der Sprachtherapie bei Menschen mit intellektueller Beeinträchtigung
(2021)
Due to their isolated and often fragmented nature, range margin populations are especially vulnerable to rapid environmental change. To maintain genetic diversity and adaptive potential, gene flow from disjunct populations might therefore be crucial to their survival. Translocations are often proposed as a mitigation strategy to increase genetic diversity in threatened populations. However, this also includes the risk of losing locally adapted alleles through genetic swamping. Human-mediated translocations of southern lineage specimens into northern German populations of the endangered European fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) provide an unexpected experimental set-up to test the genetic consequences of an intraspecific introgression from central population individuals into populations at the species range margin. Here, we utilize complete mitochondrial genomes and transcriptome nuclear data to reveal the full genetic extent of this translocation and the consequences it may have for these populations. We uncover signs of introgression in four out of the five northern populations investigated, including a number of introgressed alleles ubiquitous in all recipient populations, suggesting a possible adaptive advantage. Introgressed alleles dominate at the MTCH2 locus, associated with obesity/fat tissue in humans, and the DSP locus, essential for the proper development of epidermal skin in amphibians. Furthermore, we found loci where local alleles were retained in the introgressed populations, suggesting their relevance for local adaptation. Finally, comparisons of genetic diversity between introgressed and nonintrogressed northern German populations revealed an increase in genetic diversity in all German individuals belonging to introgressed populations, supporting the idea of a beneficial transfer of genetic variation from Austria into North Germany.
Soziale Medien sind ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Alltags von Schüler*innen und gleichzeitig zunehmend wichtig in Wirtschaft, Politik und Wissenschaft. Am Beispiel von Twitter zeigt dieser Beitrag, dass soziale Medien im Unterricht auch für die Beantwortung geographischer Fragestellungen verwendet werden können. Hierfür eignen sich Twitter-Daten aufgrund ihrer Georeferenzierung und weiterer interessanter Inhalte besonders. Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die Verwendung von Twitter für sozialwissenschaftliche und humangeographische Fragestellungen und reflektiert die Nutzung von Twitter im Unterricht. Für die Unterrichtspraxis werden Beispiele zu den Themen Braunkohle, Flutereignisse und Raumwahrnehmungen sowie Anleitungen zur Auswertung, Anwendung und Reflexion von Twitter-Analysen vorgestellt.
Die Nutzung von Computerspielen im Musik- und Instrumentalunterricht wird nicht nur in den Erziehungswissenschaften oder der Medienpädagogik, sondern auch in jenem Teilgebiet der Game Studies verhandelt, welches sich auf die Erforschung von Computerspielen und Musik spezialisiert hat: der Ludomusicology. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird aus ludomusikologischer Perspektive anhand einiger Beispiele aus dem kommerziellen Musikspielbereich überlegt, inwieweit sich diese für den Instrumental-, Musik- und Sportunterricht eignen könnten.
BACKGROUND
Anticipating changes in international migration patterns is useful for demographic studies and for designing policies that support the well-being of those involved. Existing forecasting methods do not account for a number of stylized facts that emerge from large-scale migration observations and theories: existing migrant communities - diasporas - act to lower migration costs and thereby provide a mechanism of self-amplification; return migration and transit migration are important components of global migration flows; and poverty constrains emigration.
OBJECTIVE
Here we present hindcasts and future projections of international migration that explicitly account for these nonlinear features.
METHODS
We develop a dynamic model that simulates migration flows by origin, destination, and place of birth. We calibrate the model using recently constructed global datasets of bilateral migration.
RESULTS
We show that the model reproduces past patterns and trends well based only on initial migrant stocks and changes in national incomes. We then project migration flows under future scenarios of global socioeconomic development.
CONCLUSIONS
Different assumptions about income levels and between-country inequality lead to markedly different migration trajectories, with migration flows either converging towards net zero if incomes in presently poor countries catch up with the rest of the world; or remaining high or even rising throughout the 21st century if economic development is slower and more unequal. Importantly, diasporas induce significant inertia and sizable return migration flows.
Closing the emissions gap between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the global emissions levels needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate goals will require a comprehensive package of policy measures. National and sectoral policies can help fill the gap, but success stories in one country cannot be automatically replicated in other countries. They need to be adapted to the local context. Here, we develop a new Bridge scenario based on nationally relevant, short-term measures informed by interactions with country experts. These good practice policies are rolled out globally between now and 2030 and combined with carbon pricing thereafter. We implement this scenario with an ensemble of global integrated assessment models. We show that the Bridge scenario closes two-thirds of the emissions gap between NDC and 2 °C scenarios by 2030 and enables a pathway in line with the 2 °C goal when combined with the necessary long-term changes, i.e. more comprehensive pricing measures after 2030. The Bridge scenario leads to a scale-up of renewable energy (reaching 52%–88% of global electricity supply by 2050), electrification of end-uses, efficiency improvements in energy demand sectors, and enhanced afforestation and reforestation. Our analysis suggests that early action via good-practice policies is less costly than a delay in global climate cooperation.
Groundwater arsenic contamination in the Bengal Delta Plain is an important public health issue
(2021)
There is a close association between human biology, epidemiology and public health. Exposure to toxic elements is one area of such associations and global concerns. The Bengal Delta Plain (BDP) is a region where contamination of ground water by arsenic has assumed epidemic proportions. Apart from dermatological manifestations, chronic exposure to arsenic causes a heavy toll through several carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic disorders. This article provides a global overview of groundwater arsenic contamination in the BDP region, especially the sources, speciation, and mobility of arsenic, and critically reviews the effects of arsenic on human health. The present review also provides a summary of comprehensive knowledge on various measures required for mitigation and social consequences of the problem of arsenic contaminated groundwater in the BDP region.
Twenty-one scientists met for this year’s virtual conference on Auxology held at the University Potsdam, Germany, to discuss child and adolescent growth during times of fear and emotional stress. Growth within the broad range of normal for age and sex is considered a sign of good general health whereas fear and emotional stress can lead to growth faltering. Stunting is a sign of social disadvantage and poor parental education. Adverse childhood experiences affect child development, particularly in families with low parental education and low socioeconomic status. Negative effects were also shown in Indian children exposed prenatally and in early postnatal life to the cyclone Aila in 2009. Distrust, fears and fake news regarding the current Corona pandemic received particular attention though the effects generally appeared weak. Mean birth weight was higher; rates of low, very and extremely low birth weight were lower. Other topics discussed by the participants, were the influences of economic crises on birth weight, the measurement of self-confidence and its impact on growth, the associations between obesity, peer relationship, and behavior among Turkish adolescents, height trends in Indonesia, physiological neonatal weight loss, methods for assessing biological maturation in sportsmen, and a new method for skeletal age determination. The participants also discussed the association between acute myocardial infarction and somatotype in Estonia, rural-urban growth differences in Mongolian children, socio-environmental conditions and sexual dimorphism, biological mortality bias, and new statistical techniques for describing inhomogeneity in the association of bivariate variables, and for detecting and visualizing extensive interactions among variables.
Twenty-three scientists met at Krobielowice, Poland to discuss the role of growth, nutrition and economy on body size. Contrasting prevailing concepts, re-analyses of studies in Indonesian and Guatemalan school children with high prevalence of stunting failed to provide evidence for an association between nutritional status and body height. Direct effects of parental education on growth that were not transmitted via nutrition were shown in Indian datasets using network analysis and novel statistical methods (St. Nicolas House Analysis) that translate correlation matrices into network graphs. Data on Polish children suggest significant impact of socioeconomic sensitivity on child growth, with no effect of maternal money satisfaction. Height and maturation tempo affect the position of a child among its peers. Correlations also exist between mood disorders and height. Secular changes in height and weight varied across decades independent of population size. Historic and recent Russian data showed that height of persons whose fathers performed manual work were on average four cm shorter than persons whose fathers were high-degree specialists. Body height, menarcheal age, and body proportions are sensitive to socioeconomic variables. Additional topics included delayed motherhood and its associations with newborn size; geographic and socioeconomic indicators related to low birth weight, prematurity and stillbirth rate; data on anthropometric history of Brazil, 1850-1950; the impact of central nervous system stimulants on the growth of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; and pituitary development and growth hormone secretion. Final discussions debated on reverse causality interfering between social position, and adolescent growth and developmental tempo.
Im Projekt „Forschungsdatenmanagement in Brandenburg (FDM-BB)“ wurden grundlegende Erkenntnisse bezüglich der Anforderungen und des Status Quo im Bereich Forschungsdatenmanagement (FDM) an den acht brandenburgischen Hochschulen generiert mit dem Ziel, daraus konkrete Handlungs- und Implementierungsempfehlungen für Brandenburg abzuleiten.
Mit Hilfe von spezifischen Umfragen (FactSheets, FDM-Palette) an den Hochschulen und Interviews mit den anderen geförderten FDM-Bundeslandinitiativen konnte eine Priorisierung der nächsten Schritte auf dem Weg hin zu einem institutionellen und nachhaltigen Forschungsdatenmanagement identifiziert werden, die jeweils in den Verantwortungsbereichen der folgenden drei Akteursgruppen liegen: Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Forschung und Kultur in Brandenburg (MWFK), die einzelne Hochschule und für gemeinsame Maßnahmen die kooperative Umsetzung durch (fast) alle Hochschulen.
Zusätzlich wurden Implementierungsempfehlungen erarbeitet, wie der lokale Kompetenzaufbau an den einzelnen Hochschulen in Brandenburg, die kooperative Bereitstellung landesweit relevanter IT-Dienste und Dienstleistungen sowie die Koordinierung FDM-BB.
Ziel ist auch, für Brandenburg gemeinsam eine Forschungsdatenstrategie zu formulieren, die alle brandenburgischen Einrichtungen einbezieht und mit Hilfe von kooperativ verteilten Verantwortlichkeiten dem (noch) sehr dynamischen Thema Forschungsdatenmanagement gerecht werden kann.
Heteromeric HSFA2/HSFA3 complexes drive transcriptional memory after heat stress in Arabidopsis
(2021)
Adaptive plasticity in stress responses is a key element of plant survival strategies. For instance, moderate heat stress (HS) primes a plant to acquire thermotolerance, which allows subsequent survival of more severe HS conditions. Acquired thermotolerance is actively maintained over several days (HS memory) and involves the sustained induction of memory-related genes. Here we show that FORGETTER3/ HEAT SHOCK TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR A3 (FGT3/HSFA3) is specifically required for physiological HS memory and maintaining high memory-gene expression during the days following a HS exposure. HSFA3 mediates HS memory by direct transcriptional activation of memory-related genes after return to normal growth temperatures. HSFA3 binds HSFA2, and in vivo both proteins form heteromeric complexes with additional HSFs. Our results indicate that only complexes containing both HSFA2 and HSFA3 efficiently promote transcriptional memory by positively influencing histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4) hyper-methylation. In summary, our work defines the major HSF complex controlling transcriptional memory and elucidates the in vivo dynamics of HSF complexes during somatic stress memory. Moderate heat stress primes plants to acquire tolerance to subsequent, more severe heat stress. Here the authors show that the HSFA3 transcription factor forms a heteromeric complex with HSFA2 to sustain activated transcription of genes required for acquired thermotolerance by promoting H3K4 hyper-methylation.
High-salt (HS) diets have recently been linked to oxidative stress in the brain, a fact that may be a precursor to behavioral changes, such as those involving anxiety-like behavior. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has evaluated the amygdala redox status after consuming a HS diet in the pre- or postweaning periods. This study aimed to evaluate the amygdala redox status and anxiety-like behaviors in adulthood, after inclusion of HS diet in two periods: preconception, gestation, and lactation (preweaning); and only after weaning (postweaning). Initially, 18 females and 9 male Wistar rats received a standard (n = 9 females and 4 males) or a HS diet (n = 9 females and 5 males) for 120 days. After mating, females continued to receive the aforementioned diets during gestation and lactation. Weaning occurred at 21-day-old Wistar rats and the male offspring were subdivided: control-control (C-C)—offspring of standard diet fed dams who received a standard diet after weaning (n = 9–11), control-HS (C-HS)—offspring of standard diet fed dams who received a HS diet after weaning (n = 9–11), HS-C—offspring of HS diet fed dams who received a standard diet after weaning (n = 9–11), and HS-HS—offspring of HS diet fed dams who received a HS diet after weaning (n = 9–11). At adulthood, the male offspring performed the elevated plus maze and open field tests. At 152-day-old Wistar rats, the offspring were euthanized and the amygdala was removed for redox state analysis. The HS-HS group showed higher locomotion and rearing frequency in the open field test. These results indicate that this group developed hyperactivity. The C-HS group had a higher ratio of entries and time spent in the open arms of the elevated plus maze test in addition to a higher head-dipping frequency. These results suggest less anxiety-like behaviors. In the analysis of the redox state, less activity of antioxidant enzymes and higher levels of the thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) in the amygdala were shown in the amygdala of animals that received a high-salt diet regardless of the period (pre- or postweaning). In conclusion, the high-salt diet promoted hyperactivity when administered in the pre- and postweaning periods. In animals that received only in the postweaning period, the addition of salt induced a reduction in anxiety-like behaviors. Also, regardless of the period, salt provided amygdala oxidative stress, which may be linked to the observed behaviors.
-Ingo Schwarz, Vera M. Kutzinski: A Letter from Alexander von Humboldt to Joseph Albert Wright – Archival Traces
-Foni Le Brun-Ricalens, Leonardo López Luján, Claude Wey: Alexander von Humboldts „Aztekische Priesterin“ alias die Chalchiuhtlicue aus der Sammlung Guillermo Dupaix. Historiografischer Essay einer Translokation von Mexico-Stadt nach London
-Eberhard Knobloch: Leibniz und Alexander von Humboldt
-Irene Prüfer Leske: Wie stand es nun wirklich um Bonpland? Kritische Überlegungen zu Frank Holls Untersuchung zu Bonpland, seiner Beziehung zu Alexander von Humboldt und der Darstellung der letzten Tage von Bonpland durch Avé-Lallemant
-Leonhard Salzer, Anna Nöbauer: (Auf) Humboldts Spuren Eine bauforscherische Untersuchung der „Casa Humboldt“ am Antisana in Ecuador
-Renate Sternagel: Alexander von Humboldt, Therese von Bacheracht, und die „verhängnissvolle Prosa des Lebens“
-Ulrich Stottmeister: Der Mineraloge August Schmidt und die Entdeckung der Ural-Diamanten 1829 Teil I: Schmidts Weg in den Ural und die Diamanten-Vorhersage
-Kurt-R. Biermann (1919 – 2002) und Ingo Schwarz: Der polyglotte Alexander von Humboldt (mit einer Vorbemerkung von Jürgen Trabant)
-Tobias Kraft: Filología nómada. Repensar la obra de Alexander von Humboldt con la obra de Ottmar Ette (y viceversa)