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Die vorliegende Arbeit trägt den Titel: Intellektuellen-Rolle in Günter Grass Werken : „Die Plebejer proben den Aufstand“(1966), „Örtlich betäubt“(1969), „Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke“(1972), und „Ein weites Feld“(1995).
Das erste Kapitel befasst sich insgesamt mit drei Haupttiteln
II. Der Intellektuelle
II.1 Das allgemeine Umfeld
In diesem Teil der Dissertation sollen Aussagen getroffen werden, die auf folgende und weitere Fragen eine Antwort geben: Was ist ein Intellektueller? Wie kam der Begriff zustande? Gibt es Unterschiede zwischen den Intellektuellen und wie werden sie eingeteilt?
II.2 Das deutsche Umfeld
Die Behandlung des Nazisystems und dessen historische Hintergründe vermittelt bedeutsame Lehren. Aber wozu braucht man diese Lehren? Gibt es Spuren von Nationalsozialismus heutzutage? Wo waren die Intellektuellen bei der Bildung des Nationalsozialismus? Ist der Nationalsozialismus erst mit Hitler aufgetaucht? Wenn zuvor, in welcher Phase hat er sich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen verankert? Ob theoretische bzw. geistige Tendenzen dazu beigetragen haben?
II.3 Das Bild von Grass als Intellektueller
II.3.1 Positionierung
Eine Hauptthese für Grass intellektuelle Positionierung wird durch die Verbindung zwischen Grass’ Grundkonzeption der gesellschaftspolitischen Intellektualität und der Gruppe 47 ermittelt. Dann bezweckt die Behandlung von Grass Bild nach Erscheinen seines autobiographischen Werks: „Beim Häuten der Zwiebel“ (2006), dass seine Intellektualität nicht nur aus dem positiven, sondern auch aus dem negativen Profil beleuchtet wird.
Aus der Darstellung zahlreicher Ansichten von Günter Grass werden fünf thematische Kernpunkte als Konzepte behandelt. Unter jedem Konzept sollen spezifische Vorschläge zur gesellschaftlichen Positionierung aufgezeigt werden.
II.3.2 Grass’ politische Merkmale
Es handelt sich hier um die intellektuellen Charaktereigenschaften. Dadurch kommen manche Fragen zu Wort: Hat Günter Grass gesellschaftliche Aktivitäten? Hat er die Voraussetzungen dafür? Wie ist der Umfang seiner Aktivitäten? Hat die Gruppe 47 Einfluss auf Grass intellektuelle Merkmale? Steht bei Grass eine Methode der gesellschaftspolitischen Arbeit zur Verfügung?
Dann wird die politische Sprache von Günter Grass und ihre Wirkung auf den Rezipienten untersucht. Danach wird nach Grass’ Auffassung von der Revision gefragt und ob sie mit seiner Auffassung der Aufklärung zusammenpasst. Darauf wird die Funktion der Revision in seinem literarischen Werk und in seiner gesellschaftspolitischen Aktivität gezeigt.
Abschließend werden die Argumente seiner Intellektualität untersucht:
Wie hat Grass’ gesellschaftspolitische Aktivität den konkreten politischen Rahmen berücksichtigt? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, muss der Zusammenhang zwischen Politik und Moral verdeutlicht werden.
III. Historischer Kontext und Inhalt der Werke
Unter diesem Titel wird erstens der historische Zusammenhang der untersuchten Werke skizziert. Dann werden meistens durch Argumente aus jedem Werk selbst nicht nur der Kern des Werkes und sein Handlungsverlauf, sondern auch die dafür angewandte Methode dargestellt.
IV. Bezug der untersuchten Werke zu konkreten gesellschaftspolitischen Fragen
IV.1 Interaktionswege des Intellektuellen mit der Gesellschaft, vor allem beim Wandel gesellschaftspolitischer Prozesse
Zentralkonzepte des ersten Werkes sind: Vermittlung, Engagement, Solidarität und die Aktualität als Maßstab. Diese werden durch zwei Konzepte des zweiten Werkes: Appell an Generationen beim Wechsel und Zusammenhaltsprinzip an Revision gebunden, sowie durch die Behandlung vom Prozess der Meinungsbildung im vierten Werk ausgearbeitet.
IV.2 Thematische Aspekte zur Vermeidung eines Naziregimes
Aus den thematischen Perspektiven der drei letzten Werke geht eine bunte Sammlung intellektueller Konzepte aus, die zur Bekämpfung von Nazivorsprünge verwendet werden können.
V. Pädagogische Strategien der untersuchten Werke
Die pädagogischen Aspekte der untersuchten Werke sollen intellektuelle Werte vermitteln, die einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Lösung gesellschaftspolitischer Probleme und Konflikte leisten.
VI. Entwicklung der literarischen und gesellschaftspolitischen Vision
Hier wird die Entwicklungslinie der gesellschaftspolitischen Vision in den untersuchten Werken verfolgt.
VII. Zur Rezeption der vier Werke
Durch die Auseinandersetzung mit der negativen Kritik wird angestrebt, ihre Subjektivität darzulegen, damit der gesellschaftspolitische Wert der vier Werke enthüllt wird.
Assimilation of pseudo-tree-ring-width observations into an atmospheric general circulation model
(2017)
Paleoclimate data assimilation (DA) is a promising technique to systematically combine the information from climate model simulations and proxy records. Here, we investigate the assimilation of tree-ring-width (TRW) chronologies into an atmospheric global climate model using ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) techniques and a process-based tree-growth forward model as an observation operator. Our results, within a perfect-model experiment setting, indicate that the "online DA" approach did not outperform the "off-line" one, despite its considerable additional implementation complexity. On the other hand, it was observed that the nonlinear response of tree growth to surface temperature and soil moisture does deteriorate the operation of the time-averaged EnKF methodology. Moreover, for the first time we show that this skill loss appears significantly sensitive to the structure of the growth rate function, used to represent the principle of limiting factors (PLF) within the forward model. In general, our experiments showed that the error reduction achieved by assimilating pseudo-TRW chronologies is modulated by the magnitude of the yearly internal variability in themodel. This result might help the dendrochronology community to optimize their sampling efforts.
This article considers Isabella Bird’s representation of medicine in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) and Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891), the two books in which she engages most extensively with both local (Chinese/Islamic) and Western medical science and practice. I explore how Bird uses medicine to assert her narrative authority and define her travelling persona in opposition to local medical practitioners. I argue that her ambivalence and the unease she frequently expresses concerning medical practice (expressed particularly in her later adoption of the Persian appellation “Feringhi Hakīm” [European physician] to describe her work) serves as a means for her to negotiate the colonial and gendered pressures on Victorian medicine. While in Japan this attitude works to destabilise her hierarchical understanding of science and results in some acknowledgement of traditional Japanese traditions, in Persia it functions more to disguise her increasing collusion with overt British colonial ambitions.
The title compound was prepared by the reaction of 1,4,10,13-tetraoxa-7,16-diazacyclo-octadecane with 4-chloro-2-methyl-phenoxyacetic acid in a ratio of 1:2. The structure has been proved by the data of elemental analysis, IR spectroscopy, NMR ( 1 H, 13 C) technique and by X-ray diffraction analysis. Intermolecular hydrogen bonds between the azonium protons and oxygen atoms of the carboxylate groups were found. Immunoactive properties of the title compound have been screened. The compound has the ability to suppress spontaneous and Con A-stimulated cell proliferation in vitro and therefore can be considered as immunodepressant.
The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension—a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition.
The temporal dynamics of climate processes are spread across different timescales and, as such, the study of these processes at only one selected timescale might not reveal the complete mechanisms and interactions within and between the (sub-) processes. To capture the non-linear interactions between climatic events, the method of event synchronization has found increasing attention recently. The main drawback with the present estimation of event synchronization is its restriction to analysing the time series at one reference timescale only. The study of event synchronization at multiple scales would be of great interest to comprehend the dynamics of the investigated climate processes. In this paper, the wavelet-based multi-scale event synchronization (MSES) method is proposed by combining the wavelet transform and event synchronization. Wavelets are used extensively to comprehend multi-scale processes and the dynamics of processes across various timescales. The proposed method allows the study of spatio-temporal patterns across different timescales. The method is tested on synthetic and real-world time series in order to check its replicability and applicability. The results indicate that MSES is able to capture relationships that exist between processes at different timescales.
Climate or land use?
(2017)
This study intends to contribute to the ongoing discussion on whether land use and land cover changes (LULC) or climate trends have the major influence on the observed increase of flood magnitudes in the Sahel. A simulation-based approach is used for attributing the observed trends to the postulated drivers. For this purpose, the ecohydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) with a new, dynamic LULC module was set up for the Sahelian part of the Niger River until Niamey, including the main tributaries Sirba and Goroul. The model was driven with observed, reanalyzed climate and LULC data for the years 1950–2009. In order to quantify the shares of influence, one simulation was carried out with constant land cover as of 1950, and one including LULC. As quantitative measure, the gradients of the simulated trends were compared to the observed trend. The modeling studies showed that for the Sirba River only the simulation which included LULC was able to reproduce the observed trend. The simulation without LULC showed a positive trend for flood magnitudes, but underestimated the trend significantly. For the Goroul River and the local flood of the Niger River at Niamey, the simulations were only partly able to reproduce the observed trend. In conclusion, the new LULC module enabled some first quantitative insights into the relative influence of LULC and climatic changes. For the Sirba catchment, the results imply that LULC and climatic changes contribute in roughly equal shares to the observed increase in flooding. For the other parts of the subcatchment, the results are less clear but show, that climatic changes and LULC are drivers for the flood increase; however their shares cannot be quantified. Based on these modeling results, we argue for a two-pillar adaptation strategy to reduce current and future flood risk: Flood mitigation for reducing LULC-induced flood increase, and flood adaptation for a general reduction of flood vulnerability.
Although it has become common practice to build applications based on the reuse of existing components or services, technical complexity and semantic challenges constitute barriers to ensuring a successful and wide reuse of components and services. In the geospatial application domain, the barriers are self-evident due to heterogeneous geographic data, a lack of interoperability and complex analysis processes.
Constructing workflows manually and discovering proper services and data that match user intents and preferences is difficult and time-consuming especially for users who are not trained in software development. Furthermore, considering the multi-objective nature of environmental modeling for the assessment of climate change impacts and the various types of geospatial data (e.g., formats, scales, and georeferencing systems) increases the complexity challenges.
Automatic service composition approaches that provide semantics-based assistance in the process of workflow design have proven to be a solution to overcome these challenges and have become a frequent demand especially by end users who are not IT experts. In this light, the major contributions of this thesis are:
(i) Simplification of service reuse and workflow design of applications for climate impact analysis by following the eXtreme Model-Driven Development (XMDD) paradigm.
(ii) Design of a semantic domain model for climate impact analysis applications that comprises specifically designed services, ontologies that provide domain-specific vocabulary for referring to types and services, and the input/output annotation of the services using the terms defined in the ontologies.
(iii) Application of a constraint-driven method for the automatic composition of workflows for analyzing the impacts of sea-level rise. The application scenario demonstrates the impact of domain modeling decisions on the results and the performance of the synthesis algorithm.
תקציר
מצוות הפריון הינה אחת מן המצוות החשובות ביהדות ומגדירה במובנים רבים את מהות קיומו של האדם היהודי הדתי. זוגות דתיים אשר סובלים מבעיית פריון נקרעים לא פעם בין מחוייבותם הדתית והלחץ החברתי בקהילתם לבין אי יכולתם להביא ילדים לעולם בדרך טבעית. החל מאמצע המאה ה 20- הפכו טכנולוגיות פריון רפואיות לנגישות לציבור הרחב בישראל ובעולם והובילו למהפכה חברתית אשר אפשרה לזוגות חשוכי ילדים להגשים את חלומם בפעם הראשונה ולהפוך להורים. פריצת דרך רפואית זו לא נעלמה מעיני הציבור הדתי על זרמיו השונים וגרמה לטלטלה בתפיסת עולמם של מנהיגיהם, אשר נדרשו לתת מענה הלכתי הולם המאזן בין רווחת קהילותיהם לבין שמירה על ערכי ומצוות הדת היהודית. על רקע תמורות אלו התפתח שיח הלכתי ואקדמי חשוב ומעניין באשר למקומה של טכנולוגיה מודרנית בחברה המתנהלת על פי קודים מסורתיים. עם זאת, הדיאלוג החי המתקיים בין מנהיגי היהדות לבין קהילותיהם, אשר מתועד כאוסף שאלות ותשובות (שו"ת) לבעיות הלכתיות אקטואליות בתחום הפריון, לא נחקר דיו.
עבודתנו עוסקת במחקר ספרות השו"ת ובגישת פוסקי ההלכה להסתייעות בטכנולוגיית ההזרעה המלאכותית ובטיפולי פוריות חדשניים נוספים שהתפתחו בעקבותיה כגון הפריה חוץ גופית, פונדקאות ותרומת ביציות. העבודה סוקרת את התגבשות ועיצוב ההלכה בשאלה זו, כפי שעולה מספרות השו"ת החל מתקופת הראשונים (המאות ה 11- עד ה- 16 ) ועד לפוסקים מתקופת האחרונים (המאה ה- 16 ואילך), ומתמקדת בעיקר בתקופה המודרנית של המאה האחרונה. במרכז העבודה יעמדו מעמדם ההלכתי של האם והוולד בעקבות שימוש בהזרעה והפריה מלאכותית וכן השלכותיהן ההלכתיות של השימוש הרפואי בזרע.
תרומתו של מחקר זה הינה בהצגת וניתוח התמודדות הפוסקים עם העימות הערכי וההלכתי שמעוררות תמורות במבנה המשפחה ובדפוסי הורות מסורתיים כתוצאה משימוש הולך וגובר בטכנולוגיות פריון מתקדמות בחברה המודרנית. יתר על כן, מחקר זה מרחיב את הדיון ההלכתי אל מעבר לעמדות הפוסקים ביהדות האורתודוקסית, הנצמדים לעקרונות ההלכה ההיסטורית, ומציג לראשונה אף את קשת הדעות של רבנים המשתייכים לזרמי היהדות המתקדמת והקונסרבטיבית, הדוגלים בפיתוח ההלכה והתאמתה למציאות החיים המשתנה. כך, מעניקה עבודת מחקר זו תמונה שלמה ומקיפה יותר באשר להתמודדות הרבנים עם שאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית ומציגה את רב גוניותה של ההלכה כפי שמשתקפת בזרמי היהדות השונים בישראל ובתפוצות.
העבודה מחולקת לשישה חלקים אשר יפורטו בקצרה להלן.
חלק ראשון - מבוא לשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית בספרות השו"ת
חלק זה מהווה מבוא והקדמה תיאורטית ומחקרית לשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית ומטרתו לצייד את הקורא ברקע ההיסטורי ובכלים המחקריים הדרושים להמשך העבודה. הפרק הראשון סוקר מצוות דתיות והשקפות תרבותיות בנוגע לילודה בחברה היהודית ואילו הפרק השני מניח יסודות מתודולוגיים והיסטוריים הנחוצים לחקר שאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית בספרות השו"ת.
פרק ראשון - מצוות דתיות והשקפות תרבותיות בנוגע לילודה בחברה היהודית
פרק זה מציג את המשנה האידיאולוגית העומדת בבסיס ההצדקה ההלכתית להתרתם של טיפולי הפוריות. הפרק דן בחשיבות מצוות הפריון כפי שעולה ממקורות הלכתיים קדומים וברקע ההיסטורי והתרבותי למרכזיותה של מצווה זו ומצוות נלוות לה בדת היהודית. הפרק מדגים כיצד עיצבה חשיבות המצווה את דפוס המשפחה היהודית לאורך ההיסטוריה ועד לימינו ומסתיים בדיון קצר בשאלות רפואיות מוסריות העולות מהנגשת טכנולוגיות פריון מתקדמות במדינת ישראל המודרנית.
פרק שני - יסודות מתודולוגיים והיסטוריים בחקר שאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית בספרות השו"ת
בפרק זה מוצגים תחילה מטרות ושיטות המחקר אשר נבחרו לשם ניתוח הפסיקה בשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית. מכיוון שהעבודה עוסקת בשאלה רפואית חדשנית והשפעתה על העולם הדתי, יערך מחקר זה תוך שימוש בניתוח רב מימדי המשלב מספר שיטות מחקר ובראשן השיטה הדוגמטית-היסטורית, כמו גם בניתוח ביקורתי של שיקולי המדיניות העומדים בבסיס שיקולי הפוסקים לפי אסוכלת הריאליזים ההלכתי. לאחר מכן נסקרים ונידונים המקורות ההיסטוריים העיקריים אשר עוסקים בהתעברות על טבעית באמבט או באמצעות שכיבה על סדינים והעומדים בבסיס הכרעות הפוסקים בהשלכות הזרעה מלאכותית על מעמדם ההלכתי של האישה והילוד.
חלק שני- ספרות השו"ת האורתודוקסית בשאלת הזרעה מלאכותית מן הבעל
חלקו שני של המחקר עוסק בניתוח ספרות השו"ת האורתודוקסית בשאלת הזרעה מלאכותית מן הבעל ובוחן את התפתחותו הרעיונית של איסור השחתת זרע ואת עמדות הפוסקים בשאלת הזרעה מלאכותית מן הבעל כפי שנידונה בספרות השו"ת.
פרק ראשון - התפתחותו הרעיונית של איסור השחתת זרע
בפרק זה נסקרים מקורותיו ההיסטוריים של האיסור להשחתת זרע. איסור זה נושק לכל תחומי חייו של הזוג הדתי ובעיקר לתחום המיניות והפריון ובעל השפעה מהותית על מגבלות הצניעות שהוחלו בעקבותיו על המיניות הגברית. קיים ויכוח בין החוקרים האם נובע האיסור מן המקורות העתיקים כגון התלמוד או לחילופין התעצם בעקבות החמרות הרבנים. מחקרינו מציע כי האפשרות השניה היא הסבירה יותר. חכמי התלמוד מפגינים גישה מקלה כלפי האיסור אך מביעים סלידה מהוצאת זרע לבטלה מתוך חשיבה חסידית או אמונה כי עיסוק בעינוג מיני עצמי עלול להסיט את האדם מקיום מצוות הפריון. לעומת זאת, בספרות הקבלה ובמיוחד בזוהר ניכרת החמרה במימדי האיסור החודרת מאוחר יותר אל עולם ההלכה.
פרק שני - דיון בהזרעה מן הבעל בספרות השו"ת
הפרק דן בפסיקותיהם של רבנים בולטים בזרם האורתודוקסי בשאלת ההזרעה מן הבעל. בספרות השו"ת האורתודוקסית ניכרת השפעתו של איסור הוצאת זרע לבטלה על שיקולי הפוסקים באם להתיר את הטיפול בהזרעה מלאכותית מן הבעל. פוסקים מקלים כגון הרבנים פיינשטיין, נבנצל ויוסף מייחסים משקל רב יותר לחשיבות מצוות הפריון ומצמצמים בשל כך את תחולת האיסור. לעומתם, פוסקים מחמירים ובראשם הרבנים טננבוים, קוק, עוזיאל, הדאיה ולדנברג מתנגדים לטיפולי פוריות מחשש השחתת זרע ובשל השלכותיה הרוחניות של העבירה על האיסור. שאלה מהותית נוספת בשיח ההלכתי בה נחלקו הרבנים הינה באשר לאפשרות קיומה של מצוות הפריה והרביה באמצעות הריון שהושג בסיוע רפואי. פוסקים מדור האחרונים, כגון הרבנים טננבוים, סגל ואזולאי (החיד"א), ובעקבותיהם פוסקים בולטים במאה ה- 20 וה- 21 כמו הרבנים עוזיאל, הדאיה, ולדנברג וקניבסקי סברו כי ניתן לקיים את המצווה באופן טבעי בלבד. לעומת זאת, הרבנים נבנצל, יוסף, וינברג ואוירבך ייחסו חשיבות רבה יותר לכוונת העושה ולתוצאה המיוחלת של ההריון אשר מגשימה לדעתם את הרציונל העומד בבסיס מצוות הפרייה הרבייה ובמצוות ישוב העולם.
שאלה נוספת המתעוררת בעניין הזרעה מן הבעל ונידונה בפרק זה עוסקת בבעיית העקרות ההלכתית. התעקשות הרבנים לשמור על הלכות הנידה במתכונתן המסורתית חושפת נשים דתיות לאי ודאות באשר לטהרתן ומכפיפה את חיי המין והפריון של משפחות שלמות למרות הסמכות הרבנית.
חלק שלישי- ספרות השו"ת האורתודוקסית בשאלת הזרעה מלאכותית מתורם
חלקו השלישי של המחקר עוסק בדיון ההלכתי האורתודוקסי בשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית מתורם יהודי או נוכרי לאישה נשואה. מרבית הפוסקים הסתייגו מתרומת זרע לאישה נשואה מתורם יהודי כמו גם מנוכרי משיקולים הלכתיים ואידיאולוגיים.
פרק ראשון - שאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית מתורם יהודי
תרומת זרע מתורם יהודי זר מעלה חששות הלכתיים רבים לגבי מעמדה ההלכתי של האישה כגון ניאוף וקיום מצוות הייבום והחליצה. כמו כן הועלו חששות לגבי יחוסו וכשרותו ההלכתית של הקטין כגון חשש ממזרות, גילוי עריות בין ילדי התורם, פגיעה במעמד הכהונה ובעיות בתחום המעמד האישי בשל אי ודאות לגבי זהות התורם. בנוסף, משליכה הכרעה בשאלות אלה על זכאות הקטין לזכויות סוציאליות המגיעות לו מאביו, כגון הזכות למזונות ולירושה. פסיקת ההלכה במאה האחרונה אימצה את עמדתו של הרב פיינשטיין, לפיה רק הריון הנובע ממגע מיני ישיר בין אישה נשואה לגבר זר, בניגוד להזרעה מלאכותית, יכול לפגוע במעמד האישה והילוד. עם זאת, פוסקים רבים אסרו לבצע הזרעה מלאכותית מגבר יהודי מטעמי זהירות, בגין חששות אלו.
פרק שני - הזרעה מלאכותית מתורם לא יהודי לאישה נשואה
על אף שבמקרה של תרומת זרע מנוכרי נעדר הילוד יחוס לאביו הנוכרי וכשרותו נקבעת על פי מעמד האם בלבד, מסתייגים פוסקים רבים מן הפעולה. הפוסקים מונים טיעונים רבים לאיסור תרומת זרע מגבר נוכרי וביניהם חילול השם, פגיעה בביצוע מנהג הייבום והחליצה, ספקות לגבי זכויות הירושה, עידוד ההפקרות המינית ופגיעה ביציבות התא המשפחתי המסורתי. בנוסף חוששים הם מבלבול לגבי זהות אבי הילוד ופגיעה במעמד הכהונה. במהלך המאה ה- 20 ניכרת מגמה בקרב פוסקים העוסקים בקבלה לייחוס תכונות שליליות לזרע נוכרי, אשר עוברות לילוד ובאופן זה פוגעות בקדושת העם היהודי. מעבר לשאלות ההלכתיות מועלים בפרק זה קשיים אתיים אשר מעוררת תרומת זרע אנונימית, המונעת מן הילוד לברר את שורשיו הביולוגיים.
חלק רביעי- יחס הפסיקה האורתודוקסית לשינויים במבנה המשפחה המסורתית
בעקבות שימוש בטכנולוגיות פריון חלק זה מנתח את יחס הפסיקה האורתודוקסית לשינויים במבנה המשפחה המסורתית בעקבות שימוש בטכנולוגיות פריון ומורכב משלושה פרקים: הזרעה מלאכותית לאישה פנויה, הפריה חוץ גופית והקמת משפחה אלטרנטיבית בפרספקטיבה הלכתית אורתודוקסית.
פרק ראשון - הזרעה מלאכותית לאישה פנויה
המוסכמה ההלכתית הינה כי ילדה של אישה פנויה לא ייחשב לממזר, אפילו אם אביו הביולוגי הוא יהודי. למרות זאת אסרו פוסקים מסויימים על הזרעה מלאכותית במקרה זה בגין חששות לייחוס הילוד, גילוי עריות וגזילת ירושת שאר האחים. חלק מן הפוסקים קוראים לאסור הזרעה מלאכותית לאישה פנויה בשם טובת הילד ולא מסיבות הלכתיות. אפשרות נוספת אשר השלכותיה ההלכתיות נידונות בפרק זה הינה ביצוע הזרעה מלאכותית באישה רווקה או אלמנה באמצעות שימוש בזרעו של אדם שנפטר. חשוב לציין כי השימוש בטכנולוגיה זו שנוי במחלוקת בקרב הרבנים בגין החשיבות אותה מייחסת היהדות לערך כבוד המת.
פרק שני - הפריה חוץ גופית
הפריית מבחנה יכולה להתבצע בין בני זוג נשואים בסיוע או ללא היזקקות לתרומת ביצית או זרע. פוסקים אשר התירו את השימוש בטכנולוגיה זו הביעו את חששותיהם בנוגע להשלכותיה ההלכתיות של הפריה החוץ גופית בשל הקושי לפקח על התהליך, הנעשה מחוץ לגוף האדם. מתנגדי הפריית המבחנה סברו כי היא מתערבת במלאכת הבריאה האלוהית ועשויה לדרדר את האנושות מבחינה מוסרית לתכנון ולשיבוט בני אדם.
הפריה חוץ גופית מעוררות שאלות הלכתיות חדשניות ובראשן שאלת הגדרת האמהות, כגון במקרי פונדקאות ותרומת ביציות, מהן הסתייגו מרבית פוסקי הדור במאה ה 20- . הקביעה שאומצה בשיח ההלכתי העכשווי גורסת כי אמו של התינוק תהיה האישה שילדה אותו, גם אם נולד מתרומת ביצית. הכרעה זו מובלעת ברציונל החוקים המסדירים את הפונדקאות במדינת ישראל ואשר מטילים מגבלות הלכתיות על בחירת הפונדקאית לשם מניעת חשש ממזרות או שאלה לגבי יהדותו של הילוד.
פרק שלישי - הקמת משפחה אלטרנטיבית בפרספקטיבה הלכתית אורתודוקסית
קיימת בעיה הלכתית מהותית במיסוד הקשר החד-מיני ביהדות האורתודוקסית. ספרות השו"ת האורתודוקסית אינה עוסקת במפורש בשאלת השימוש בהזרעה מלאכותית לצורך הקמת המשפחה החד- מינית. עם זאת, ניתן ללמוד רבות על גישת האורתודוקסיה משו"תים עכשוויים העוסקים בתופעת ההומוסקסואליות ובקיום מצוות הפריון במקרה זה. הדעה הרווחת היום בקרב הפוסקים הינה כי קשר חד- מיני אסור, כמו גם מיסודו וקיום מצוות פרו ורבו במסגרת זו. בשל כך ניתן להסיק כי הרבנים לא יתירו שימוש בהזרעה מלאכותית לצורך קיום מצוות הפריון במשפחה חד-מינית.
חלק חמישי- עמדת רבני הזרם רפורמי והקונסרבטיבי בשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית
חלק זה מתמקד בזרמי היהדות הרפורמית והקונסרבטיבית ומציג את עמדות רבני זרמים אלו בעניין ההזרעה המלאכותית תוך עימותן עם עמדות פוסקים אורתודוקסיים.
פרק ראשון - עמדת הרבנות הרפורמית בשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית
חשיבות מצוות הפריון מודגשת בספרות השו"ת הרפורמית, אולם טיפולי פוריות אינם מתפרשים כדרך היחידה לקיומה. על מנת שלא לפגוע במרקם החיים המשפחתי מוצעת לא אחת חלופת האימוץ לטיפולי פוריות מייגעים, תרומת זרע והיזקקות לפונדקאות ותרומת ביציות. שאלת השחתת הזרע, המעסיקה רבות את רבני הזרם האורתודוקסי, כמעט שאינה נידונה על ידי רבני הזרם הרפורמי. באשר לשאלות של כשרות וייחוס, רווחת הדעה בקרב רבנים רפורמיים בולטים כגון הרב הומולקה ורומיין, כי מעמד הממזרות איננו רלוונטי עוד בימינו ולכן ממילא לא נשקפת לילד הסכנה שזכויותיו הדתיות ייפגעו.
ועד הרבנים הרפורמיים התיר לחבריו לפעול לפי שיקול דעתם בעניין עריכת טקס נישואין דתי בין בני זוג בני אותו המין, תוך הדגשת הויכוח הפנימי בתנועה ומורת הרוח הקיימת מצד הזרמים האחרים ביהדות.
פרק שני - עמדת הרבנות הקונסרבטיבית בשאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית
עמדת רבני היהדות הקונסרבטיבית גורסת כי טיפולי פוריות מהווים רשות, אך אינם בגדר חובה עבור זוגות הרוצים לקיים את מצוות הפריה והרבייה ומתקשים בכך. בדומה לביטולה של גזירת הממזרות בזרם הרפורמי, בוטל מעמד זה לאחרונה גם ביהדות הקונסרבטיבית. אוננות במסגרת טיפולי פוריות הינה מותרת ואיננה מוגדרת כהשחתת זרע לבטלה ואף מותרת גם לשם תרומת זרע של יהודי לאישה לא יהודיה. כמו בזרם הרפורמי גם כאן מונחת אופציית האימוץ על סדר היום.
כנסת הרבנים הקונסרבטיבים בארצות הברית קיבלה החלטה ברוב זעום להכרה אזרחית בהומוסקסואלים, אך עם זאת השאירה על כנו את האיסור לקדש זוגות אלה. אין בהחלטה זו הכרה הלכתית בזוגיות החד-מינית אלא קבלתם החברתית של זוגות אלה ועידודם להשתלב בקהילות הקונסרבטיביות.
חלק שישי - סיכום ודיון בהשלכות המחקר
בחלקו השישי והאחרון בעבודת מחקר זו נסכם ונדון בהשלכותיה האתיות והגלובליולת של הפסיקה ההלכית בשאלה הנידונה.
כפי שניתן לראות מעבודת מחקר זו, הרבנים האורתודוקסיים מסתמכים בהכרעותיהם בעיקר על שיקולים הלכתיים ופחות על שיקולים אתיים ואוניברסליים. מחד, מסתייגים פוסקים אורתודוקסיים מסויימים משימוש לרעה בטיפולי פוריות, אך מאידך מוכנים הם בשם עקרונות דתיים להתיר שימוש בטכנולוגיות אלו במקרים שאינם מצריכים זאת משיקולים רפואיים. במיוחד בולט העדר התייחסותם של הפוסקים האורתודוקסיים לשיקולים מוסריים חברתיים, כמו גם לרצונה ולרווחתה של האישה העוברת טיפולי פוריות. לעומתם מביעים רבני הזרם הרפורמי והקונסרבטיבי את דאגתם להשלכותיהם של טיפולים אלו על נשים הנזקקות להתערבות רפואית מעין זו לשם התעברות ואלו העובדות בתעשיית הפריון. יש לציין כי הדיון ההלכתי עוסק בהיבט צר בלבד של שאלת ההזרעה המלאכותית ואינו נוגע ברבות מן השאלות המורכבות שמעוררות טכנולוגיות פריון מתקדמות. עם זאת הדיון ההלכתי הינו חשוב ביותר ומציף אף שאלות נוספות בדבר הסכנה הצפויה מהפיכתן של טכנולוגיות אלה לכלי שרת בידי אידאולוגיות דתיות או פוליטיות.
Mildred Harnack, geb. Fish, stammte ursprünglich aus Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Zusammen mit ihrem Ehemann Arvid Harnack zog sie nach Deutschland und lebte seit 1930 in Berlin. Hier lehrte die Literaturwissenschaftlerin an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (heute Humboldt-Universität) und am Berliner Abendgymnasium (heute Peter A. Silbermann-Schule). Bereits kurz nach der Machtübernahme von Adolf Hitler hatte sich um das Ehepaar Harnack ein Kreis von Freunden gebildet, der gegen die Herrschaft der Nationalsozialisten opponierte. Dazu zählten auch Karl Behrens und Bodo Schlösinger, die beide Schüler Mildred Harnacks am Berliner Abendgymnasium waren. Mildred Harnack konnte mit Hilfe ihrer Kontakte zur amerikanischen Botschaft ihren Schülern im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland ansonsten nicht zugängliche Informationen besorgen.
Aufgrund von Funkkontakten des Freundeskreises zur Sowjetunion wurde die Gruppe von den Nationalsozialisten Rote Kapelle genannt – „rot“ bezog sich auf deren linke Haltung und mit „Kapelle“ wurden Funker assoziiert, die wie Pianisten in einer Kapelle spielen. Der Berliner Oppositionszirkel umfasste bis zu seiner Zerschlagung durch die Nationalsozialisten etwa 150 Personen verschiedenster Berufsgruppen, unterschiedlicher parteipolitischer Einstellungen und Konfessionen. Die Gruppe verfertigte oppositionelle Flugblätter und lieferte Informationen an die amerikanische Botschaft sowie an die Sowjetunion. Mildred Harnack wurde – wie viele ihrer Mitstreiterinnen und Mitstreiter – nach ihrer Verhaftung vom Reichskriegsgericht zum Tode verurteilt und am 16. Februar 1943 in Plötzensee guillotiniert.
In diesem Band stellen Studierende der Universität Potsdam sowie Hörerinnen und Hörer der Peter A. Silbermann-Schule (Berlin) nach einem kurzen Überblick zum Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland das Netzwerk der Roten Kapelle sowie die Biographien von Mildred Harnack und ihren Schülern Karl Behrens und Bodo Schlösinger vom Berliner Abendgymnasium eindrücklich vor.
Galaxies are among the most complex systems that can currently be modelled with a computer. A realistic simulation must take into account cosmology and gravitation as well as effects of plasma, nuclear, and particle physics that occur on very different time, length, and energy scales. The Milky Way is the ideal test bench for such simulations, because we can observe millions of its individual stars whose kinematics and chemical composition are records of the evolution of our Galaxy. Thanks to the advent of multi-object spectroscopic surveys, we can systematically study stellar populations in a much larger volume of the Milky Way. While the wealth of new data will certainly revolutionise our picture of the formation and evolution of our Galaxy and galaxies in general, the big-data era of Galactic astronomy also confronts us with new observational, theoretical, and computational challenges.
This thesis aims at finding new observational constraints to test Milky-Way models, primarily based on infra-red spectroscopy from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) and asteroseismic data from the CoRoT mission. We compare our findings with chemical-evolution models and more sophisticated chemodynamical simulations. In particular we use the new powerful technique of combining asteroseismic and spectroscopic observations that allows us to test the time dimension of such models for the first time. With CoRoT and APOGEE (CoRoGEE) we can infer much more precise ages for distant field red-giant stars, opening up a new window for Galactic archaeology.
Another important aspect of this work is the forward-simulation approach that we pursued when interpreting these complex datasets and comparing them to chemodynamical models.
The first part of the thesis contains the first chemodynamical study conducted with the APOGEE survey. Our sample comprises more than 20,000 red-giant stars located within 6 kpc from the Sun, and thus greatly enlarges the Galactic volume covered with high-resolution spectroscopic observations. Because APOGEE is much less affected by interstellar dust extinction, the sample covers the disc regions very close to the Galactic plane that are typically avoided by optical surveys. This allows us to investigate the chemo-kinematic properties of the Milky Way's thin disc outside the solar vicinity. We measure, for the first time with high-resolution data, the radial metallicity gradient of the disc as a function of distance from the Galactic plane, demonstrating that the gradient flattens and even changes its sign for mid-plane distances greater than 1 kpc.
Furthermore, we detect a gap between the high- and low-[$\alpha$/Fe] sequences in the chemical-abundance diagram (associated with the thin and thick disc) that unlike in previous surveys can hardly be explained by selection effects. Using 6D kinematic information, we also present chemical-abundance diagrams cleaned from stars on kinematically hot orbits. The data allow us to confirm without doubt that the scale length of the (chemically-defined) thick disc is significantly shorter than that of the thin disc.
In the second part, we present our results of the first combination of asteroseismic and spectroscopic data in the context of Galactic Archaeology. We analyse APOGEE follow-up observations of 606 solar-like oscillating red giants in two CoRoT fields close to the Galactic plane. These stars cover a large radial range of the Galactic disc (4.5 kpc $\lesssim R_{\rm Gal}\lesssim15$ kpc) and a large age baseline (0.5 Gyr $\lesssim \tau\lesssim$ 13 Gyr), allowing us to study the age- and radius-dependence of the [$\alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] distributions. We find that the age distribution of the high-[$\alpha$/Fe] sequence appears to be broader than expected from a monolithically-formed old thick disc that stopped to form stars 10 Gyr ago. In particular, we discover a significant population of apparently young, [$\alpha$/Fe]-rich stars in the CoRoGEE data whose existence cannot be explained by standard chemical-evolution models. These peculiar stars are much more abundant in the inner CoRoT field LRc01 than in the outer-disc field LRc01, suggesting that at least part of this population has a chemical-evolution rather than a stellar-evolution origin, possibly due to a peculiar chemical-enrichment history of the inner disc. We also find that strong radial migration is needed to explain the abundance of super-metal-rich stars in the outer disc.
Finally, we use the CoRoGEE sample to study the time evolution of the radial metallicity gradient in the thin disc, an observable that has been the subject of observational and theoretical debate for more than 20 years. By dividing the CoRoGEE dataset into six age bins, performing a careful statistical analysis of the radial [Fe/H], [O/H], and [Mg/Fe] distributions, and accounting for the biases introduced by the observation strategy, we obtain reliable gradient measurements. The slope of the radial [Fe/H] gradient of the young red-giant population ($-0.058\pm0.008$ [stat.] $\pm0.003$ [syst.] dex/kpc) is consistent with recent Cepheid data. For the age range of $1-4$ Gyr, the gradient steepens slightly ($-0.066\pm0.007\pm0.002$ dex/kpc), before flattening again to reach a value of $\sim-0.03$ dex/kpc for stars with ages between 6 and 10 Gyr. This age dependence of the [Fe/H] gradient can be explained by a nearly constant negative [Fe/H] gradient of $\sim-0.07$ dex/kpc in the interstellar medium over the past 10 Gyr, together with stellar heating and migration. Radial migration also offers a new explanation for the puzzling observation that intermediate-age open clusters in the solar vicinity (unlike field stars) tend to have higher metallicities than their younger counterparts. We suggest that non-migrating clusters are more likely to be kinematically disrupted, which creates a bias towards high-metallicity migrators from the inner disc and may even steepen the intermediate-age cluster abundance gradient.
The phrase form and function was established in architecture and biology and refers to the idea that form and functionality are closely correlated, influence each other, and co-evolve. We suggest transferring this idea to hydrological systems to separate and analyze their two main characteristics: their form, which is equivalent to the spatial structure and static properties, and their function, equivalent to internal responses and hydrological behavior. While this approach is not particularly new to hydrological field research, we want to employ this concept to explicitly pursue the question of what information is most advantageous to understand a hydrological system. We applied this concept to subsurface flow within a hillslope, with a methodological focus on function: we conducted observations during a natural storm event and followed this with a hillslope-scale irrigation experiment. The results are used to infer hydrological processes of the monitored system. Based on these findings, the explanatory power and conclusiveness of the data are discussed. The measurements included basic hydrological monitoring methods, like piezometers, soil moisture, and discharge measurements. These were accompanied by isotope sampling and a novel application of 2-D time-lapse GPR (ground-penetrating radar). The main finding regarding the processes in the hillslope was that preferential flow paths were established quickly, despite unsaturated conditions. These flow paths also caused a detectable signal in the catchment response following a natural rainfall event, showing that these processes are relevant also at the catchment scale. Thus, we conclude that response observations (dynamics and patterns, i.e., indicators of function) were well suited to describing processes at the observational scale. Especially the use of 2-D time-lapse GPR measurements, providing detailed subsurface response patterns, as well as the combination of stream-centered and hillslope-centered approaches, allowed us to link processes and put them in a larger context. Transfer to other scales beyond observational scale and generalizations, however, rely on the knowledge of structures (form) and remain speculative. The complementary approach with a methodological focus on form (i.e., structure exploration) is presented and discussed in the companion paper by Jackisch et al. (2017).
The Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) is effective in measuring dynamic postural control (DPC). This research aimed to determine whether DPC measured by the SEBT in young athletes (YA) with back pain (BP) is different from those without BP (NBP). 53 BP YA and 53 NBP YA matched for age, height, weight, training years, training sessions/week and training minutes/session were studied. Participants performed 4 practice trials after which 3 measurements in the anterior, posteromedial and posterolateral SEBT reach directions were recorded. Normalized reach distance was analyzed using the mean of all 3 measurements. There was no statistical significant difference (p > 0.05) between the reach distance of BP (87.2 ± 5.3, 82.4 ± 8.2, 78.7 ± 8.1) and NBP (87.8 ± 5.6, 82.4 ± 8.0, 80.0 ± 8.8) in the anterior, posteromedial and posterolateral directions respectively. DPC in YA with BP, as assessed by the SEBT, was not different from NBP YA.
Over the last few decades, the methodology for the identification of customary international law (CIL) has been changing. Both elements of CIL – practice and opinio juris – have assumed novel and broader forms, as noted in the Reports of the Special Rapporteur of the International Law Commission (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). This paper discusses these Reports and the draft conclusions, and reaction by States in the Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), highlighting the areas of consensus and contestation. This ties to the analysis of the main doctrinal positions, with special attention being given to the two elements of CIL, and the role of the UNGA resolutions. The underlying motivation is to assess the real or perceived crisis of CIL, and the author develops the broader argument maintaining that in order to retain unity within international law, the internal limits of CIL must be carefully asserted.
The rule of law is the cornerstone of the international legal system. This paper shows, through analysis of intergovernmental instruments, statements made by representatives of States, and negotiation records, that the rule of law at the United Nations has become increasingly contested in the past years. More precisely, the argument builds on the process of integrating the notion of the rule of law into the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in September 2015 in the document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The main sections set out the background of the rule of law debate at the UN, the elements of the rule of law at the goal- and target-levels in the 2030 Agenda – especially in the SDG 16 –, and evaluate whether the rule of law in this context may be viewed as a normative and universal foundation of international law. The paper concludes, with reflections drawn from the process leading up to the 2030 Agenda and the final outcome document that the rule of law – or at least strong and precise formulations of the concept – may be in decline in institutional and normative settings. This can be perceived as symptomatic of a broader crisis of the international legal order.
In light of possible future restrictions on the use of fossil fuel, due to climate change obligations and continuous depletion of global fossil fuel reserves, the search for alternative renewable energy sources is expected to be an issue of great concern for policy stakeholders. This study assessed the feasibility of bioenergy production under relatively low-intensity conservative, eco-agricultural settings (as opposed to those produced under high-intensity, fossil fuel based industrialized agriculture). Estimates of the net energy gain (NEG) and the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) obtained from a life cycle inventory of the energy inputs and outputs involved reveal that the energy efficiency of bioenergy produced in low-intensity eco-agricultural systems could be as much as much as 448.5–488.3 GJ·ha−1 of NEG and an EROEI of 5.4–5.9 for maize ethanol production systems, and as much as 155.0–283.9 GJ·ha−1 of NEG and an EROEI of 14.7–22.4 for maize biogas production systems. This is substantially higher than for industrialized agriculture with a NEG of 2.8–52.5 GJ·ha−1 and an EROEI of 1.2–1.7 for maize ethanol production systems, as well as a NEG of 59.3–188.7 GJ·ha−1 and an EROEI of 2.2–10.2 for maize biogas production systems. Bioenergy produced in low-intensity eco-agricultural systems could therefore be an important source of energy with immense net benefits for local and regional end-users, provided a more efficient use of the co-products is ensured.
The aim of our study was to examine the extent to which linguistic
approaches to sentence comprehension deficits in aphasia can
account for differential impairment patterns in the comprehension
of wh-questions in bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA). We investi-
gated the comprehension of subject and object wh-questions in both
Turkish, a wh-in-situ language, and German, a wh-fronting language,
in two bilingual PWA using a sentence-to-picture matching task. Both
PWA showed differential impairment patterns in their two languages.
SK, an early bilingual PWA, had particular difficulty comprehending
subject which-questions in Turkish but performed normal across all
conditions in German. CT, a late bilingual PWA, performed more
poorly for object which-questions in German than in all other condi-
tions, whilst in Turkish his accuracy was at chance level across all
conditions. We conclude that the observed patterns of selective
cross-linguistic impairments cannot solely be attributed either to
difficulty with wh-movement or to problems with the integration of
discourse-level information. Instead our results suggest that differ-
ences between our PWA’s individual bilingualism profiles (e.g. onset
of bilingualism, premorbid language dominance) considerably
affected the nature and extent of their impairments.
This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions in individuals with aphasia (IWA) speaking Turkish, a non-wh-movement language, and German, a wh-movement language. We examined six German-speaking and 11 Turkish-speaking IWA using picture-pointing tasks. Findings from our experiments show that the Turkish IWA responded more accurately to both object who and object which questions than to subject questions, while the German IWA performed better for subject which questions than in all other conditions. Using random forest models, a machine learning technique used in tree-structured classification, on the individual data revealed that both the Turkish and German IWA’s response accuracy is largely predicted by the presence of overt and unambiguous case marking. We discuss our results with regard to different theoretical approaches to the comprehension of wh-questions in aphasia.
Integral Fourier operators
(2017)
This volume of contributions based on lectures delivered at a school on Fourier Integral Operators
held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 14–26 September 2015, provides an introduction to Fourier Integral Operators (FIO) for a readership of Master and PhD students as well as any interested layperson. Considering the wide
spectrum of their applications and the richness of the mathematical tools they involve, FIOs lie the cross-road of many a field. This volume offers
the necessary background, whether analytic or geometric, to get acquainted with FIOs, complemented by more advanced material presenting various aspects of active research in that area.
Rezensiertes Werk
Theresa Biberauer u. George Walkden (Hgg.): Syntax over Time: Lexical, Morphological, and Information – Structural Interactions - Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 418 S.
Cities to the rescue?
(2017)
Despite the proliferation and promise of subnational climate initiatives, the institutional architecture of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) is not well understood. With a view to close this research gap, the article empirically assesses the assumption that TMNs are a viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It addresses the aggregate phenomenon in terms of geographical distribution, central players, mitigation ambition and monitoring provisions. Examining thirteen networks, it finds that membership in TMNs is skewed toward Europe and North America while countries from the Global South are underrepresented; that only a minority of networks commit to quantified emission reductions and that these are not more ambitious than Parties to the UNFCCC; and finally that the monitoring provisions are fairly limited. In sum, the article shows that transnational municipal networks are not (yet) the representative, ambitious and transparent player they are thought to be.
The ecological benefits of polyploidy are intensely debated. Some authors argue that plants with duplicated chromosome sets (polyploids) are more stress-resistant and superior colonizers and may thus outnumber their low ploidy conspecifics in more extreme habitats. Brachypodium distachyon (sensu lato), for example, a common annual grass in Israel and the entire Mediterranean basin, comprises three cytotypes of differing chromosome numbers that were recently proposed as distinct species. It was suggested that increased aridity increases the occurrence of its polyploid cytotype. Here, we tested at two spatial scales whether polyploid plants of B. distachyon s.l. are more frequently found in drier habitats in Israel. We collected a total of 430 specimens (i) along a largescale climatic gradient with 15 thoroughly selected sites (spanning 114–954 mm annual rainfall), and (ii) from corresponding Northern (more mesic) and Southern (more arid) hill slopes to assess the micro-climatic difference between contrasting exposures. Cytotypes were then determined via flow cytometry. Polyploid plants comprised 90% of all specimens and their proportion ranged between 0% and 100% per site. However, this proportion was not correlated with aridity along the large-scale gradient, nor were polyploids more frequently found on Southern exposures. Our results show for both spatial scales that increasing aridity is not the principal driver for the distribution of polyploids in B. distachyon s.l. in Israel. Notably, though, diploid plants were restricted essentially to four intermediate sites, while polyploids dominated the most arid and the most mesic sites. This, to some degree, clustered pattern suggests that the distribution of cytotypes is not entirely random and calls for future studies to assess further potential drivers.
Soil properties show high heterogeneity at different spatial scales and their correct characterization remains a crucial challenge over large areas. The aim of the study is to quantify the impact of different types of uncertainties that arise from the unresolved soil spatial variability on simulated hydrological states and fluxes. Three perturbation methods are presented for the characterization of uncertainties in soil properties. The methods are applied on the soil map of the upper Neckar catchment (Germany), as an example. The uncertainties are propagated through the distributed mesoscale hydrological model (mHM) to assess the impact on the simulated states and fluxes. The model outputs are analysed by aggregating the results at different spatial and temporal scales. These results show that the impact of the different uncertainties introduced in the original soil map is equivalent when the simulated model outputs are analysed at the model grid resolution (i.e. 500 m). However, several differences are identified by aggregating states and fluxes at different spatial scales (by subcatchments of different sizes or coarsening the grid resolution). Streamflow is only sensitive to the perturbation of long spatial structures while distributed states and fluxes (e.g. soil moisture and groundwater recharge) are only sensitive to the local noise introduced to the original soil properties. A clear identification of the temporal and spatial scale for which finer-resolution soil information is (or is not) relevant is unlikely to be universal. However, the comparison of the impacts on the different hydrological components can be used to prioritize the model improvements in specific applications, either by collecting new measurements or by calibration and data assimilation approaches. In conclusion, the study underlines the importance of a correct characterization of uncertainty in soil properties. With that, soil maps with additional information regarding the unresolved soil spatial variability would provide strong support to hydrological modelling applications.
Objective: A key challenge in ancient DNA research is massive microbial DNA contamination from the deposition site which accumulates post mortem in the study organism’s remains. Two simple and cost-effective methods to enrich the relative endogenous fraction of DNA in ancient samples involve treatment of sample powder with either bleach or Proteinase K pre-digestion prior to DNA extraction. Both approaches have yielded promising but vary-ing results in other studies. Here, we contribute data on the performance of these methods using a comprehensive and systematic series of experiments applied to a single ancient bone fragment from a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca).Results: Bleach and pre-digestion treatments increased the endogenous DNA content up to ninefold. However, the absolute amount of DNA retrieved was dramatically reduced by all treatments. We also observed reduced DNA damage patterns in pre-treated libraries compared to untreated ones, resulting in longer mean fragment lengths and reduced thymine over-representation at fragment ends. Guanine–cytosine (GC) contents of both mapped and total reads are consistent between treatments and conform to general expectations, indicating no obvious biasing effect of the applied methods. Our results therefore confirm the value of bleach and pre-digestion as tools in palaeog-enomic studies, providing sufficient material is available.
Konzepte, nach denen sich die demokratische Mitwirkung der Bürger vornehmlich in Wahlen erschöpft, gehören spätestens seit „Stuttgart 21“ der Vergangenheit an. Indes ist die Bürgerbeteiligung auch jenseits solcher Großprojekte längst zu einem beherrschenden Thema der Zeit herangewachsen. Das gilt zumal für die kommunale Ebene. Dort werden traditionsreiche Partizipationsformen nicht nur intensiv genutzt, sondern zunehmend um neue Beteiligungsvarianten ergänzt und in innovativen Modellprojekten fortentwickelt. Dabei treten zwei Antriebskräfte besonders hervor. Zum einen fordern die Bürger nach den Maximen „Mitmachen, Mitwirken, Mitentscheiden“ deutlich verbesserte Partizipationsmöglichkeiten ein. Zum anderen setzen die Kommunen verstärkt auf bürgerschaftliches Engagement zur Erschließung Ressourcen privater Akteure für die Bereitstellung öffentlicher Leistungen. Übergreifende Perspektive ist die Ausbildung einer Neuen Partizipationskultur in der Bürgerkommune zur Optimierung des Gemeinwohls.
Für die kommunale Praxis ist das partizipationsgestützte Miteinander von Verwaltung. Politik und Bürgerschaft in Systementwürfen, Leitbildern, Organisations- und Verfahrensmodellen sowie lokalen Beteiligungsformaten konkretisiert. Doch verbinden sich mit den alten und neuen Ansätzen der Bürgerbeteiligung noch eine ganze Reihe offener Fragen – so etwa nach den rechtlichen Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der neuen kommunalen Beteiligungskultur, nach Erfolgsbedingungen und konkreten Erfahrungen mit der Umsetzung von Partizipationsmodellen.
Auf der 21. Fachtagung des Kommunalwissenschaftlichen Instituts (KWI) der Universität Potsdam wurden Schlüsselthemen der Neuen Partizipationskultur in der Bürgerkommune, namentlich der normativen Rahmenbedingungen und politischen Direktiven, Modernisierungsimpulse und Aktivierungsstrategien, Erfolgsbedingungen und spezifische Problemlagen einschließlich der Fallstricke in der Praxis und nicht zuletzt ausgewählter Einsatzfelder mit den dazugehörigen Erfahrungen diskutiert.
Temperature is a key factor controlling plant growth and vitality in the temperate climates of the mid-latitudes like in vast parts of the European continent. Beyond the effect of average conditions, the timings and magnitudes of temperature extremes play a particularly crucial role, which needs to be better understood in the context of projected future rises in the frequency and/or intensity of such events. In this work, we employ event coincidence analysis (ECA) to quantify the likelihood of simultaneous occurrences of extremes in daytime land surface temperature anomalies (LSTAD) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). We perform this analysis for entire Europe based upon remote sensing data, differentiating between three periods corresponding to different stages of plant development during the growing season. In addition, we analyze the typical elevation and land cover type of the regions showing significantly large event coincidences rates to identify the most severely affected vegetation types. Our results reveal distinct spatio-temporal impact patterns in terms of extraordinarily large co-occurrence rates between several combinations of temperature and NDVI extremes. Croplands are among the most frequently affected land cover types, while elevation is found to have only a minor effect on the spatial distribution of corresponding extreme weather impacts. These findings provide important insights into the vulnerability of European terrestrial ecosystems to extreme temperature events and demonstrate how event-based statistics like ECA can provide a valuable perspective on environmental nexuses.
Aufgrund verschiedener wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse wird jungen Sporttreibenden vom Gebrauch von Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln (NEM) abgeraten. Diese Dissertation verfolgt vor dem Hintergrund der Theorie der Zielsysteme (TDZ) das Ziel der Erstellung anwendungsorientieren Handlungswissens, anhand dessen Interventionsempfehlungen zur Reduzierung des prävalenten NEM-Konsums im Nachwuchssport ableitbar sind. Insgesamt wurden sechs Untersuchungen durchgeführt. Die Versuchsteilnehmenden absolvierten in sämtlichen Studien eine Variante der lexikalischen Entscheidungsaufgabe. Diese Aufgabe diente der Operationalisierung von automatisch aktivier- und abrufbaren nahrungsergänzungsmittelbezogenen Ziel-Mittel-Relationen.
In einer Stichprobe von Sportstudierenden zeigte sich, dass NEM mit dem Ziel Leistung assoziiert sind (Studie 1). Unter Berücksichtigung des NEM-Konsums wurde dieses Ergebnis für Nachwuchsathletinnen und -athleten aus dem Breitensport repliziert (Studie 2). Zusätzlich konnte in beiden Studien die Bedeutung dieser Ziel-Mittel-Relationen für das Verhalten nachgewiesen werden. In den nachfolgenden Untersuchungen wurden spezifische Veränderungsmechanismen der verhaltensleitenden Ziel-Mittel-Relation aus Leistung und NEM zunächst an Sportstudierenden experimentell evaluiert. Durch das Herausstellen der fehlenden leistungssteigernden Wirkung von NEM konnte diese Zielassoziation nicht modifiziert werden (Studie 3). Das Betonen gesundheitsschädigender Konsequenzen (Studie 4) und das Akzentuieren einer gesunden Ernährung (Studie 5) erwiesen sich demgegenüber als geeignet zur Veränderung der Ziel-Mittel-Relation. Das Herausstellen einer gesunden Ernährung führte deskriptiv bei Nachwuchsathletinnen und -athleten ebenfalls zur Modifikation der Zielassoziation (Studie 6). Die inferenzstatistische Bestätigung der Ergebnisse dieser Studie steht aufgrund der geringen Teststärke der Untersuchung noch aus.
Insgesamt verdeutlichen die Ergebnisse, dass die auf Ebene automatischer Kognitionen bestehende und verhaltensleitende Assoziation des Gebrauchs von NEM mit Leistung durch die Akzentuierung gesundheitlicher Perspektiven experimentell verändert werden kann. Abschließend wird die theoretische und praktische Bedeutung des erstellten Handlungswissen für künftige Interventionsempfehlungen zur Reduzierung des Gebrauchs von NEM diskutiert.
Genome-wide association studies of birth weight have focused on fetal genetics, whereas relatively little is known about the role of maternal genetic variation. We aimed to identify maternal genetic variants associated with birth weight that could highlight potentially relevant maternal determinants of fetal growth. We meta-analysed data on up to 8.7 million SNPs in up to 86 577 women of European descent from the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium and the UK Biobank. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) and analyses of mother–child pairs to quantify the separate maternal and fetal genetic effects. Maternal SNPs at 10 loci (MTNR1B, HMGA2, SH2B3, KCNAB1, L3MBTL3, GCK, EBF1, TCF7L2, ACTL9, CYP3A7) were associated with offspring birth weight at P < 5 Â 10 À8 . In SEM analyses, at least 7 of the 10 associations were consistent with effects of the maternal genotype acting via the intrauterine environment, rather than via effects of shared alleles with the fetus. Variants, or correlated proxies, at many of the loci had been previously associated with adult traits, including fasting glucose (MTNR1B, GCK and TCF7L2) and sex hormone levels (CYP3A7), and one (EBF1) with gestational duration. The identified associations indicate that genetic effects on maternal glucose, cytochrome P450 activity and gestational duration, and potentially on maternal blood pressure and immune function, are relevant for fetal growth. Further characterization of these associations in mechanistic and causal analyses will enhance understanding of the potentially modifiable maternal determinants of fetal growth, with the goal of reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with low and high birth weights.
Aus dem Inhalt:
- Themenschwerpunkt: „Gefährdungen der Menschenrechte und Demokratie am Beispiel von TTIP“
◦ TTIP und die Funktionsbedingungen moralisch rechtfertigbarer Märkte
◦ Ist TTIP alternativlos? Ein Problemaufriss aus sozialliberaler Perspektive
◦ Freihandelsabkommen und Steuergerechtigkeit: eine menschenrechtliche Perspektive
- Die Europäische Union im Menschenrechtsrat der Vereinten Nationen
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden zum einen erste Oligospiro(thio)ketal (OS(T)K)-basierte Modellsysteme (molekulare Sonden) für abstandsabhängige Messungen mittels Förster-Resonanz-Energietransfer (FRET) und zum anderen Sensorfluorophore, basierend auf einem DBD-Fluorophor und BAPTA, zur Messung der intrazellulären Calcium-Konzentration dargestellt.
Für die Synthese von molekularen Sonden für abstandsabhängige Messungen wurden verschiedenste einfach- und doppelt-markierte OS(T)K-Stäbe entwickelt und spektroskopisch untersucht. Die OS(T)K-Stäbe, sogenannte molekulare Stäbe, dienten als starre Abstandshalter zwischen den Fluorophoren. Als Fluorophore wurden Derivate von 6,7-Dihydroxy-4-methylcoumarin (Donor) und Acyl-DBD (Akzeptor) verwendet, die zusammen ein FRET-Paar bilden. Die Fluorophore wurden so funktionalisiert, dass sie sowohl unbeweglich bzw. „starr“, als auch beweglich bzw. „flexibel“ an den OS(T)K-Stab gebunden werden konnten. Für die Synthese der OS(T)K-Stäbe wurden ebenfalls eine Reihe an unterschiedlich langen und kurzen Stabbausteinen synthetisiert. Auf diese Weise wurden eine Vielzahl an verschiedensten einfach- und doppelt-markierten OS(T)K-Stäben dargestellt, deren Fluorophore sowohl „starr“ als auch „flexibel“ gebunden sind. Die dargestellten Stäbe wurden in verschiedensten Lösungsmitteln spektroskopisch untersucht, um anschließend das Verhalten in Vesikel, die eine biomimetische Umgebung darstellen, zu beurteilen. Es wurde festgestellt, dass sich die Stäbe erfolgreich in die Vesikelmembran einlagerten und hohe FRET-Effizienzen aufweisen.
Des Weiteren wurde ein FRET-Paar dargestellt, das sich durch 2-Photonenabsorpion im NIR-Bereich anregen lässt. Es wurde in den lebenden Zellen mittels Fluoreszenzlebenszeitmikroskopie (FLIM) untersucht.
Zur Untersuchung von intrazellulärem Calcium wurden zwei verschiedene DBD-Fluorophore über einen kurzen Linker mit dem Calcium-Chelator BAPTA verknüpft. Die dargestellten Fluorophore wurden sowohl in vitro als auch in vivo auf ihre Calcium-Sensitivität überprüft. Mittels FLIM wurden in lebenden Zellen die Fluoreszenzlebenszeitverteilungen der Fluorophore nach Calcium-Konzentrationsänderungen detektiert.
The work done during the PhD studies has been focused on measurements of distribution functions of rotating galaxies using integral field spectroscopy observations.
Throughout the main body of research presented here we have been using CALIFA (Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area) survey stellar velocity fields to obtain robust measurements of circular velocities for rotating galaxies of all morphological types. A crucial part of the work was enabled by well-defined CALIFA sample selection criteria: it enabled reconstructing sample-independent distributions of galaxy properties.
In Chapter 2, we measure the distribution in absolute magnitude - circular velocity space for a well-defined sample of 199 rotating CALIFA galaxies using their stellar kinematics. Our aim in this analysis is to avoid subjective selection criteria and to take volume and large-scale structure factors into account. Using stellar velocity fields instead of gas emission line kinematics allows including rapidly rotating early type galaxies. Our initial sample contains 277 galaxies with available stellar velocity fields and growth curve r-band photometry. After rejecting 51 velocity fields that could not be modelled due to the low number of bins, foreground contamination or significant interaction we perform Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) modelling of the velocity fields, obtaining the rotation curve and kinematic parameters and their realistic uncertainties. We perform an extinction correction and calculate the circular velocity v_circ accounting for pressure support a given galaxy has. The resulting galaxy distribution on the M_r - v_circ plane is then modelled as a mixture of two distinct populations, allowing robust and reproducible rejection of outliers, a significant fraction of which are slow rotators. The selection effects are understood well enough that the incompleteness of the sample can be corrected and the 199 galaxies can be weighted by volume and large-scale structure factors enabling us to fit a volume-corrected Tully-Fisher relation (TFR). More importantly, we also provide the volume-corrected distribution of galaxies in the M_r - v_circ plane, which can be compared with cosmological simulations. The joint distribution of the luminosity and circular velocity space densities, representative over the range of -20 > M_r > -22 mag, can place more stringent constraints on the galaxy formation and evolution scenarios than linear TFR fit parameters or the luminosity function alone.
In Chapter 3, we measure one of the marginal distributions of the M_r - v_circ distribution: the circular velocity function of rotating galaxies. The velocity function is a fundamental observable statistic of the galaxy population, being of a similar importance as the luminosity function, but much more difficult to measure. We present the first directly measured circular velocity function that is representative between 60 < v_circ < 320 km s^-1 for galaxies of all morphological types at a given rotation velocity. For the low mass galaxy population 60 < v_circ < 170 km s^-1, we use the HIPASS velocity function. For the massive galaxy population 170 < v_circ < 320 km s^-1, we use stellar circular velocities from CALIFA. The CALIFA velocity function includes homogeneous velocity measurements of both late and early-type rotation-supported galaxies. It has the crucial advantage of not missing gas-poor massive ellipticals that HI surveys are blind to. We show that both velocity functions can be combined in a seamless manner, as their ranges of validity overlap. The resulting observed velocity function is compared to velocity functions derived from cosmological simulations of the z = 0 galaxy population. We find that dark matter-only simulations show a strong mismatch with the observed VF. Hydrodynamic Illustris simulations fare better, but still do not fully reproduce observations.
In Chapter 4, we present some other work done during the PhD studies, namely, a method that improves the precision of specific angular measurements by combining simultaneous Markov Chain Monte Carlo modelling of ionised gas 2D velocity fields and HI linewidths. To test the method we use a sample of 25 galaxies from the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field (SAMI) survey that had matching ALFALFA HI linewidths. Such a method allows constraining the rotation curve both in the inner regions of a galaxy and in its outskirts, leading to increased precision of specific angular momentum measurements. It could be used to further constrain the observed relation between galaxy mass, specific angular momentum and morphology (Obreschkow & Glazebrook 2014).
Mathematical and computational methods are presented in the appendices.
I. Einleitung
II. Soziale Sicherung als Bestandteil entwicklungspolitischer Agenden – Eine internationale Perspektive
III. Internationale Politikdiffusion und nationaler Politikwandel – Konzeptionelle Grundlagen
IV. Die Rolle internationaler Politikdiffusion für den Wandel sozialer Sicherungssysteme
– Empirische Evidenz
V. Schlussfolgerungen
We introduce an abstract concept of quantum field theory on categories fibered in groupoids over the category of spacetimes. This provides us with a general and flexible framework to study quantum field theories defined on spacetimes with extra geometric structures such as bundles, connections and spin structures. Using right Kan extensions, we can assign to any such theory an ordinary quantum field theory defined on the category of spacetimes and we shall clarify under which conditions it satisfies the axioms of locally covariant quantum field theory. The same constructions can be performed in a homotopy theoretic framework by using homotopy right Kan extensions, which allows us to obtain first toy-models of homotopical quantum field theories resembling some aspects of gauge theories.
Menschen mit chronisch entzündlichen Darmerkrankungen (CED) leiden unter vielfältigen körperlichen und psychosozialen Einschränkungen. Wie auch bei anderen chronischen Erkrankungen könnten Patientenschulungen ihr psychisches Befinden verbessern (z.B. De Ridder & Schreurs, 2001; Faller, Reusch & Meng, 2011a; Küver, Becker & Ludt, 2008; Schüssler, 1998; Warsi, Wang, LaValley, Avorn & Solomon, 2004). Für CED liegen jedoch nur wenige Schulungsevaluationen vor (z.B. Bregenzer et al., 2005; Mussell, Böcker, Nagel, Olbrich & Singer, 2003; Oxelmark, Magnusson, Löfberg & Hillerås, 2007), deren Aussagekraft i.d.R. durch methodische Mängel eingeschränkt ist. Daher ist die Bedeutung von Schulungsprogrammen für CED-Betroffene weiterhin offen. Überdies gibt es für den deutschen Sprachraum noch keine Schulung, die zu psychischen Verbesserungen führt. Aus diesem Grunde wurde ein 1,5-tägiges Wochenend-Seminar mit medizinischen und psychologischen Inhalten konzeptionalisiert, manualisiert und in der vorliegenden Studie evaluiert.
Zur summativen Evaluation nahmen 181 ambulante CED-Patienten an einer prospektiven, multizentrischen, randomisierten, kontrollierten Studie mit vier Messzeitpunkten teil: vor (T1), zwei Wochen (T2) und drei Monate (T3) nach dem Seminar. Zur 12-Monatskatamnese (T4EG) wurde die Stabilität der Effekte in der Experimentalgruppe (EG; n = 86) überprüft. Die Wartekontrollgruppe (n = 95) erhielt zunächst die Standardbehandlung, also keine Patientenschulung, und konnte an dieser nach der dritten Datenerhebung ebenfalls teilnehmen. Kovarianzanalysen (ANCOVAs) mit Kontrolle für die jeweilige Ausgangslage wurden durchgeführt. Weitere Analysen legten eine Adjustierung für die Krankheitsaktivität zu T1 nahe, weshalb diese als zusätzliche Kovariate in die ANCOVAs aufgenommen wurde. Krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen (PS-CEDE Gesamtwert zu T3; Krebs, Kachel & Faller, 1998) fungierten als primärer Zielparameter. Zu den sekundären Zielkriterien gehörten Progredienzangst und Angstbewältigung (PA-F-KF und PA-F; Mehnert, Herschbach, Berg, Henrich & Koch, 2006 bzw. Dankert et al., 2003; Herschbach et al., 2005) sowie die Gesundheitskompetenzen Positive Grundhaltung, Aktive Lebensgestaltung und Erwerb von Fertigkeiten und Handlungsstrategien (heiQ; Osborne, Elsworth & Whitfield, 2007; Schuler et al., 2013). Weitere sekundäre Zielparameter waren gesundheitsbezogene Lebensqualität (SF-12; Bullinger & Kirchberger, 1998), Symptome einer Angststörung oder Depression (PHQ-4; Kroenke, Spitzer, Williams & Löwe, 2009; Löwe et al., 2010), Wissen, der Umgang mit der CED bzw. von ihr ausgelösten negativen Gefühlen sowie die Zufriedenheit der Teilnehmenden mit dem Seminar. Von Interesse war außerdem, ob Geschlecht, Alter, Art, Dauer oder Aktivität der Erkrankung vor der Schulung einen Einfluss auf die genannten Variablen hatten und ob für sie differentielle Wirksamkeitseffekte bestanden. Darüber hinaus wurden krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen von ungeschulten Studienteilnehmern untersucht.
Zwei Wochen und drei Monate nach der Schulung ließen sich im Vergleich von Experimental- und Kontrollgruppe signifikante, mittlere bis große Effekte auf krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen, Progredienzangst und deren Bewältigung sowie eine Positive Grundhaltung der CED gegenüber erzielen (stets p ≤ .001). Außerdem kam es zu beiden Messzeitpunkten zu signifikanten, großen Interventionseffekten auf den Erwerb von Fertigkeiten und Handlungsstrategien im Umgang mit der Erkrankung, das Wissen um sie und den Umgang mit ihr (stets p < .001) sowie zu moderaten Effekten auf den Umgang mit CED-bedingten negativen Gefühlen (T2: p = .001; T3: p = .008). Alle beschriebenen Effekte waren auch nach zwölf Monaten noch stabil. Für Aktive Lebensgestaltung, gesundheitsbezogene Lebensqualität sowie Angst- und Depressionssymptomatik konnten keine Schulungseffekte nachgewiesen werden.
Die zusätzliche Kontrolle für die Krankheitsaktivität zu T1 führte zu keinen wesentlichen Änderungen in den Ergebnissen. Auch bei den Subgruppenanalysen hatte die Krankheitsaktivität keinen relevanten Einfluss auf die Wirksamkeit der Schulung. Gleiches gilt für Geschlecht, Alter, Art und Dauer der CED. Mit Ausnahme der Krankheitsaktivität deuteten dies bereits die zur Baseline durchgeführten t-Tests an, bei denen insgesamt nur sehr wenige signifikante, höchstens moderate Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Subgruppen auftraten.
Sowohl bei der formativen als auch der summativen Evaluation zeigte sich überdies die hohe Zufriedenheit der Teilnehmenden mit der Schulung. Neben der Akzeptanz konnte außerdem die Durchführbarkeit bestätigt werden. Die Auswertung der Ängste und Sorgen der Studienteilnehmenden lieferte zudem Hinweise für die Entwicklung und Modifikation von Interventionen für CED-Betroffene.
Es lässt sich festhalten, dass für die hier evaluierte Schulung für CED-Patienten ein Wirksamkeitsnachweis erbracht werden konnte und sie sehr positiv von den Teilnehmenden bewertet wurde. Sie führte sowohl kurz-, mittel- als auch langfristig zu substantiellen Verbesserungen in psychischer Belastung, Selbstmanagement-Fähigkeiten, der Bewältigung der Erkrankung sowie im Wissen und war gleichermaßen wirksam bei Betroffenen, die sich in Geschlecht, Alter, Art, Dauer oder Aktivität ihrer CED unterschieden.
Region – Sprache – Literatur
(2017)
Mit dem neuen Rahmenlehrplan für die Länder Brandenburg und Berlin wird der Kompetenzentwicklung der Schülerinnen und Schüler unter den Bedingungen lebensweltlicher Erfahrungen ein besonderer Stellenwert beigemessen. Der Sammelband enthält Beiträge, in denen den Lehrerinnen und Lehrern vielfältige Unterrichtsmaterialien und didaktische Anregungen für einen praxisnahen, entdeckenden Unterricht in der Primar- und Sekundarstufe für den Deutschunterricht vorgestellt werden. Diese reichen von theoretischen Grundlagen, über einzelne Unterrichtssequenzen und Projekte bis zur Darstellung einer Lernspirale für die Jahrgangsstufen 1 bis 10. Vielfältige, auch multimediale Zugänge bis zum spielerischen Umgang mit der Sprache zeigen, dass Sprache kein „trockener“ Lerngegenstand sein muss. Die Beiträge geben darüber hinaus Einblicke in die fachlichen Hintergründe, die helfen sollen, den Zugang zu den einzelnen Gegenständen zu erleichtern. Das thematische Zentrum „Region“ bildet den Ausgangspunkt für die Einbeziehung des Niederdeutschen, Sorbischen, Berlinischen, Kiezdeutschen sowie der Dialekte. Dabei werden sowohl literarische als auch Sachtexte berücksichtigt.
In Zeiten eines sich schnell ändernden und vielseitigen Energiemarktes müssen Kohlenstoffmaterialien für verschiedene Anforderungen einsetzbar sein. Dies erfordert flexibel synthetisierbare Kohlenstoffmaterialien bevorzugt aus günstigen und nachhaltigen Kohlenstoffquellen. Es ist allerdings nicht leicht Vorläuferverbindungen auszumachen, welche sich einerseits für verschiedene Herstellungsverfahren eignen und deren Kohlenstoffprodukte andererseits in spezifischen Eigenschaften, wie der Struktur, des Stickstoffanteils, der Oberfläche und der Porengrößen, eingestellt werden können. In diesem Zusammenhang können natürliche Polyphenole, etwa überschüssige Tannine aus der Weinproduktion, eine neue Welt zu hoch funktionalen und vielseitig einstellbaren Kohlenstoffmaterialien mit hohen Ausbeuten öffnen.
Das Hauptziel dieser vorliegenden Thesis war es neue funktionale, einstellbare und skalierbare nanostrukturierte Kohlenstoffmaterialien aus Tanninen (insbesondere Tanninsäure) für unterschiedliche elektrochemische Zwecke zu synthetisieren und zu charakterisieren. Ermöglicht wurde dies durch unterschiedliche synthetische Herangehensweisen, wie etwa der polymeren Strukturdirektion, dem ionothermalen Templatieren und der weichen Templatierung. An Stelle des weitläufig gebräuchlichen, aber kanzerogenen Vernetzungsagens Formaldehyd wurden bei den vorgestellten Synthesen Harnstoff und Thioharnstoff gewählt, um zugleich die synthetisierten Kohlenmaterialien variabel dotieren zu können.
Daher wurden im ersten Teil der Arbeit die Wechselwirkungen, Reaktionen und thermischen Verhaltensweisen von Tanninsäure und Mixturen von Tanninsäure und Harnstoff bzw. Thioharnstoff untersucht, um daraus wichtige Erkenntnisse für die verschiedenen Kohlenstoffsynthesen zu gewinnen.
Durch die Verwendung eines polymeren Strukturierungsagenz Pluronic P123 konnten in einer ersten Kohlenstoffsynthese nachhaltige und dotierbare Kohlenstoffpartikel mit Durchmessern im Nanometerbereich aus Tanninsäure und Harnstoff hergestellt werden. Es konnte dabei gezeigt werden, dass durch die Modifikation der verschiedenen Syntheseparameter die Kohlenstoffnanopartikel gemäß ihres gemittelten Partikeldurchmessers, ihrer BET-Oberfläche, ihrer Komposition, ihrer Leitfähigkeit und ihrer chemischen Stabilität einstellbar sind. Dies eröffnete die Möglichkeit diese Kohlenstoffpartikel als alternatives und nachhaltiges Rußmaterial einzusetzen.
Weiterhin war es durch die ionothermale Templatierung möglich poröse, dotierte und kontrollierbare Kohlenstoffpartikel mit hohen spezifischen Oberflächen aus den gewählten Präkursorverbindungen zu synthetisieren, die sich für den Einsatz in Superkondensatoren eignen.
Auf diesen Erkenntnissen aufbauend konnten mittels der Rotationsbeschichtung poröse binderfreie und strukturierte Kohlenstofffilme synthetisiert werden, die eine spinodale Struktur aufwiesen. Anhand der Modifikation der Stammlösungskonzentration, der Rotationsgeschwindigkeit und der verwendeten Substrate konnten die Filmdicke (100-1000 nm), die Morphologie und Gesamtoberfläche gezielt beeinflusst werden. Die erweiterte elektrochemische Analyse zeigte außerdem ein sehr gut zugängliches Porensystem der porösen Kohlenstofffilme.
Allumfassend konnten demnach verschiedene Synthesewege für Kohlenstoffmaterialien aus Tanninen aufgezeigt werden, die verschiedenartig strukturiert und kontrolliert werden können und sich für diverse Anwendungsgebiete eignen.
Nowadays, graph data models are employed, when relationships between entities have to be stored and are in the scope of queries. For each entity, this graph data model locally stores relationships to adjacent entities. Users employ graph queries to query and modify these entities and relationships. These graph queries employ graph patterns to lookup all subgraphs in the graph data that satisfy certain graph structures. These subgraphs are called graph pattern matches. However, this graph pattern matching is NP-complete for subgraph isomorphism. Thus, graph queries can suffer a long response time, when the number of entities and relationships in the graph data or the graph patterns increases.
One possibility to improve the graph query performance is to employ graph views that keep ready graph pattern matches for complex graph queries for later retrieval. However, these graph views must be maintained by means of an incremental graph pattern matching to keep them consistent with the graph data from which they are derived, when the graph data changes. This maintenance adds subgraphs that satisfy a graph pattern to the graph views and removes subgraphs that do not satisfy a graph pattern anymore from the graph views.
Current approaches for incremental graph pattern matching employ Rete networks. Rete networks are discrimination networks that enumerate and maintain all graph pattern matches of certain graph queries by employing a network of condition tests, which implement partial graph patterns that together constitute the overall graph query. Each condition test stores all subgraphs that satisfy the partial graph pattern. Thus, Rete networks suffer high memory consumptions, because they store a large number of partial graph pattern matches. But, especially these partial graph pattern matches enable Rete networks to update the stored graph pattern matches efficiently, because the network maintenance exploits the already stored partial graph pattern matches to find new graph pattern matches. However, other kinds of discrimination networks exist that can perform better in time and space than Rete networks. Currently, these other kinds of networks are not used for incremental graph pattern matching.
This thesis employs generalized discrimination networks for incremental graph pattern matching. These discrimination networks permit a generalized network structure of condition tests to enable users to steer the trade-off between memory consumption and execution time for the incremental graph pattern matching. For that purpose, this thesis contributes a modeling language for the effective definition of generalized discrimination networks. Furthermore, this thesis contributes an efficient and scalable incremental maintenance algorithm, which updates the (partial) graph pattern matches that are stored by each condition test. Moreover, this thesis provides a modeling evaluation, which shows that the proposed modeling language enables the effective modeling of generalized discrimination networks. Furthermore, this thesis provides a performance evaluation, which shows that a) the incremental maintenance algorithm scales, when the graph data becomes large, and b) the generalized discrimination network structures can outperform Rete network structures in time and space at the same time for incremental graph pattern matching.
Research in legal decision making has demonstrated the tendency to blame the victim and exonerate the perpetrator of sexual assault. This study examined the hypothesis of a special leniency bias in rape cases by comparing them to cases of robbery. N = 288 participants received descriptions of rape and robbery of a female victim by a male perpetrator and made ratings of victim and perpetrator blame. Case scenarios varied with respect to the prior relationship (strangers, acquaintances, ex-partners) and coercive strategy (force vs. exploiting victim intoxication). More blame was attributed to the victim and less blame was attributed to the perpetrator for rape than for robbery. Information about a prior relationship between victim and perpetrator increased ratings of victim blame and decreased perceptions of perpetrator blame in the rape cases, but not in the robbery cases. The findings support the notion of a special leniency bias in sexual assault cases.
This study aimed to determine the relative and absolute reliability of ultrasound (US) measurements of the thickness and echogenicity of the plantar fascia (PF) at different measurement stations along its length using a standardized protocol. Twelve healthy subjects (24 feet) were enrolled. The PF was imaged in the longitudinal plane. Subjects were assessed twice to evaluate the intra-rater reliability. A quantitative evaluation of the thickness and echogenicity of the plantar fascia was performed using Image J, a digital image analysis and viewer software. A sonography evaluation of the thickness and echogenicity of the PF showed a high relative reliability with an Intra class correlation coefficient of 0.88 at all measurement stations. However, the measurement stations for both the PF thickness and echogenicity which showed the highest intraclass correlation coefficient (ICCs) did not have the highest absolute reliability. Compared to other measurement stations, measuring the PF thickness at 3 cm distal and the echogenicity at a region of interest 1 cm to 2 cm distal from its insertion at the medial calcaneal tubercle showed the highest absolute reliability with the least systematic bias and random error. Also, the reliability was higher using a mean of three measurements compared to one measurement. To reduce discrepancies in the interpretation of the thickness and echogenicity measurements of the PF, the absolute reliability of the different measurement stations should be considered in clinical practice and research rather than the relative reliability with the ICC.
There is growing evidence to support change in the rehabilitation strategy of patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) from traditional quadriceps strengthening exercises to inclusion of hip musculature strengthening in individuals with PFPS. Several studies have evaluated effects of quadriceps and hip musculature strengthening on PFPS with varying outcomes on pain and function. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to synthesize outcomes of pain and function post-intervention and at follow-up to determine whether outcomes vary depending on the exercise strategy in both the short and long term. Electronic databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, PubMed, Pedro database, Proquest, Science direct, and EBscoHost databases were searched for randomized control trials published between 1st of January 2005 and 31st of June 2015, comparing the outcomes of pain and function following quadriceps strengthening and hip musculature strengthening exercises in patients with PFPS. Two independent reviewers assessed each paper for inclusion and quality. Means and SDs were extracted from each included study to allow effect size calculations and comparison of results. Six randomized control trials met the inclusion criteria. Limited to moderate evidence indicates that hip abductor strengthening was associated with significantly lower pain post-intervention (SMD −0.88, −1.28 to −0.47 95% CI), and at 12 months (SMD −3.10, −3.71 to −2.50 95% CI) with large effect sizes (greater than 0.80) compared to quadriceps strengthening. Our findings suggest that incorporating hip musculature strengthening in management of PFPS tailored to individual ability will improve short-term and long-term outcomes of rehabilitation. Further research evaluating the effects of quadriceps and hip abductors strengthening focusing on reduction in anterior knee pain and improvement in function in management of PFPS is needed.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden verschiedene Polymere hergestellt, die bestimmte funktionelle Gruppen beinhalten. Diese Gruppen werden zum Teil durch Alkylketten geschützt, zum Teil liegen sie ungeschützt im Polymer vor. Mit diesen Polymeren wurden Untersuchungen mit knochenähnlichen Materialien sogenanntem Calciumphosphat durchgeführt. Es wurde der Einfluss der verschiedenen Polymere auf die Bildung dieser knochenähnlichen Substanzen untersucht und auch der Einfluss auf die Stabilität und das Auflösungsverhalten der Calciumphosphate. Dabei sollte ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die funktionellen Gruppen, sogenannte Phosphonsäuren und deren Ester, die die Phosphonsäuren schützen, gesetzt werden. Es stellte sich heraus, dass bei der Bildung der knochenähnlichen Materialien die Polymere mit Estergruppen eine leichte Förderung der Calciumphosphat-Bildung verursachen, während die ungeschützten Polymere die Bildung des „Knochenmaterials“ sehr stark verzögern. Dieser Effekt verstärkt sich noch, wenn eine weitere bestimmte Komponente zum Polymer hinzukommt und somit ein Copolymer gebildet wird. Diese Copolymere beschleunigen bzw. verlangsamen die Calciumphosphatbildung noch stärker. Werden Polymere mit einem anderen Polymergerüst aber den gleichen Phosphonsäuresetern in den Seitenketten verwendet, ändert sich der Einfluss der Calciumphosphat-Bildung wenig. Verglichen mit Polymeren ohne solche Phosphonsäuregruppen wird erkennbar, dass es weniger die Phosphonsäuregruppe ist, die die Mineralisation beeinflusst, sondern es eher eine Folge der Säure im Polymer ist.
Wird die Stabilisierung und Auflösung der Knochenähnlichen Substanzen betrachtet, fällt auf, dass auch hier wieder die Säuren den größten Effekt ausüben. Die Phosphonsäuregruppen scheinen dabei jedoch tatsächlich einen besonderen Effekt auszuüben, da bei diesen die Stabilisierung und auch das Auflösungsvermögen von Calciumphospaht von allen untersuchten Polymeren am größten sind.
In der Arbeit konnte außerdem gezeigt werden, dass die Polymere und Copolymere mit Phosphonsäuregruppen einen leicht positiven Effekt auf die Zahngesundheit zeigen. Die Zahl von Bakterien auf der Zahnoberfläche konnte reduziert werden und bei der Untersuchung der Zahnauflösung wurde eine glattere Zahnoberfläche erhalten, jedoch wurde auch mit den untersuchten Polymeren der Zahn im Inneren angegriffen. Weitere Untersuchungen können hier noch genaueren Aufschluss geben. Außerdem sollten auch die Polymere mit dem unterschiedlichen Polymergerüst und Phosphonsäureestergruppen untersucht werden.
Letztere Polymere wurden verwendet, um festere “gelartige“ Polymernetzwerke herzustellen und deren Einfluss auf die Calciumphosphatmineralisation zu untersuchen. Es stellte sich heraus, dass ohne das Einbetten einiger Calciumphosphatteilchen keine Bildung von Calciumphospaht an den Materialien ausgelöst wurde, wurden die sogenannten Hydrogele jedoch mit Calciumphosphatpartikeln geimpft, konnte deutliches weiteres Calciumphosphatwachstum beobachtet werden. Das Material lässt sich auch in verschiedene Formen bringen. Somit könnte das System nach weiteren Untersuchungen zur Verträglichkeit mit Zellen oder Geweben ein mögliches Material für Implantate darstellen, mit denen gezielt Knochenwachstum eingeleitet werden könnte.
Accurate time series representation of paleoclimatic proxy records is challenging because such records involve dating errors in addition to proxy measurement errors. Rigorous attention is rarely given to age uncertainties in paleoclimatic research, although the latter can severely bias the results of proxy record analysis. Here, we introduce a Bayesian approach to represent layer-counted proxy records - such as ice cores, sediments, corals, or tree rings - as sequences of probability distributions on absolute, error-free time axes. The method accounts for both proxy measurement errors and uncertainties arising from layer-counting-based dating of the records. An application to oxygen isotope ratios from the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) record reveals that the counting errors, although seemingly small, lead to substantial uncertainties in the final representation of the oxygen isotope ratios. In particular, for the older parts of the NGRIP record, our results show that the total uncertainty originating from dating errors has been seriously underestimated. Our method is next applied to deriving the overall uncertainties of the Suigetsu radiocarbon comparison curve, which was recently obtained from varved sediment cores at Lake Suigetsu, Japan. This curve provides the only terrestrial radiocarbon comparison for the time interval 12.5-52.8 kyr BP. The uncertainties derived here can be readily employed to obtain complete error estimates for arbitrary radiometrically dated proxy records of this recent part of the last glacial interval.
Die klassische Physik/Chemie unterscheidet zwischen drei Bindungstypen: Der kovalenten Bindung, der ionischen Bindung und der metallischen Bindung. Moleküle untereinander werden hingegen durch schwache Wechselwirkungen zusammen gehalten, sie sind trotz ihrer schwachen Kräfte weniger verstanden, aber dabei nicht weniger wichtig. In zukunftsweisenden Gebieten wie der Nanotechnologie, der Supramolekularen Chemie und Biochemie sind sie von elementarer Bedeutung.
Um schwache, intermolekulare Wechselwirkungen zu beschreiben, vorauszusagen und zu verstehen, sind sie zunächst theoretisch zu erfassen. Hierzu gehören verschiedene quantenchemische Methoden, die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellt, verglichen, weiterentwickelt und schließlich auch exemplarisch auf Problemstellungen in der Chemie angewendet werden. Aufbauend auf einer Hierarchie von Methoden unterschiedlicher Genauigkeit werden sie für diese Ziele eingesetzt, ausgearbeitet und kombiniert.
Berechnet wird die Elektronenstruktur, also die Verteilung und Energie von Elektronen, die im Wesentlichen die Atome zusammen halten. Da Ungenauigkeiten von der Beschreibung der Elektronenstruktur von den verwendeten Methoden abhängen, kann man die Effekte detailliert untersuchen, sie beschreiben und darauf aufbauend weiter entwickeln, um sie anschließend an verschiedenen Modellen zu testen. Die Geschwindigkeit der Berechnungen mit modernen Computern ist eine wesentliche, zu berücksichtigende Komponente, da im Allgemeinen die Genauigkeit mit der Rechenzeit exponentiell steigt, und die damit an die Grenzen der Möglichkeiten stoßen muss.
Die genaueste der verwendeten Methoden basiert auf der Coupled-Cluster-Theorie, die sehr gute Voraussagen ermöglicht. Für diese wird eine sogenannte spektroskopische Genauigkeit mit Abweichungen von wenigen Wellenzahlen erzielt, was Vergleiche mit experimentellen Daten zeigen. Eine Möglichkeit zur Näherung von hochgenauen Methoden basiert auf der Dichtefunktionaltheorie: Hier wurde das „Boese-Martin for Kinetics“ (BMK)-Funktional entwickelt, dessen Funktionalform sich in vielen nach 2010 veröffentlichten Dichtefunktionalen wiederfindet.
Mit Hilfe der genaueren Methoden lassen sich schließlich semiempirische Kraftfelder zur Beschreibung intermolekularer Wechselwirkungen für individuelle Systeme parametrisieren, diese benötigen weit weniger Rechenzeit als die Methoden, die auf der genauen Berechnung der Elektronenstruktur von Molekülen beruhen.
Für größere Systeme lassen sich auch verschiedene Methoden kombinieren. Dabei wurden Einbettungsverfahren verfeinert und mit neuen methodischen Ansätzen vorgeschlagen. Sie verwenden sowohl die symmetrieadaptierte Störungstheorie als auch die quantenchemische Einbettung von Fragmenten in größere, quantenchemisch berechnete Systeme.
Die Entwicklungen neuer Methoden beziehen ihren Wert im Wesentlichen durch deren Anwendung:
In dieser Arbeit standen zunächst die Wasserstoffbrücken im Vordergrund. Sie zählen zu den stärkeren intermolekularen Wechselwirkungen und sind nach wie vor eine Herausforderung. Im Gegensatz dazu sind van-der-Waals Wechselwirkungen relativ einfach durch Kraftfelder zu beschreiben. Deshalb sind viele der heute verwendeten Methoden für Systeme, in denen Wasserstoffbrücken dominieren, vergleichsweise schlecht.
Eine Untersuchung molekularer Aggregate mit Auswirkungen intermolekularer Wechselwirkungen auf die Schwingungsfrequenzen von Molekülen schließt sich an. Dabei wird auch über die sogenannte starrer-Rotor-harmonischer-Oszillator-Näherung hinausgegangen.
Eine weitreichende Anwendung behandelt Adsorbate, hier die von Molekülen auf ionischen/metallischen Oberflächen. Sie können mit ähnlichen Methoden behandelt werden wie die intermolekularen Wechselwirkungen, und sind mit speziellen Einbettungsverfahren sehr genau zu beschreiben. Die Resultate dieser theoretischen Berechnungen stimulierten eine Neubewertung der bislang bekannten experimentellen Ergebnisse.
Molekulare Kristalle sind ein äußerst wichtiges Forschungsgebiet. Sie werden durch schwache Wechselwirkungen zusammengehalten, die von van-der-Waals Kräften bis zu Wasserstoffbrücken reichen. Auch hier wurden neuentwickelte Methoden eingesetzt, die eine interessante, mindestens ebenso genaue Alternative zu den derzeit gängigen Methoden darstellen.
Von daher sind die entwickelten Methoden, als auch deren Anwendung äußerst vielfältig. Die behandelten Berechnungen der Elektronenstruktur erstrecken sich von den sogenannten post-Hartree-Fock-Methoden über den Einsatz der Dichtefunktionaltheorie bis zu semiempirischen Kraftfeldern und deren Kombinationen. Die Anwendung reicht von einzelnen Molekülen in der Gasphase über die Adsorption auf Oberflächen bis zum molekularen Festkörper.
High precipitation quantiles tend to rise with temperature, following the so-called Clausius–Clapeyron (CC) scaling. It is often reported that the CC-scaling relation breaks down and even reverts for very high temperatures. In our study, we investigate this reversal using observational climate data from 142 stations across Germany. One of the suggested meteorological explanations for the breakdown is limited moisture supply. Here we argue that, instead, it could simply originate from undersampling. As rainfall frequency generally decreases with higher temperatures, rainfall intensities as dictated by CC scaling are less likely to be recorded than for moderate temperatures. Empirical quantiles are conventionally estimated from order statistics via various forms of plotting position formulas. They have in common that their largest representable return period is given by the sample size. In small samples, high quantiles are underestimated accordingly. The small-sample effect is weaker, or disappears completely, when using parametric quantile estimates from a generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) fitted with L moments. For those, we obtain quantiles of rainfall intensities that continue to rise with temperature.
The aim was to analyze the risk of hip fracture in German primary care patients with dementia. This study included patients aged 65-90 from 1072 primary care practices who were first diagnosed with dementia between 2010 and 2013. Controls were matched (1:1) to cases for age, sex, and type of health insurance. The primary outcome was the diagnosis of hip fracture during the three-year follow-up period. A total of 53,156 dementia patients and 53,156 controls were included. A total of 5.3% of patients and 0.7% of controls displayed hip fracture after three years. Hip fracture occurred more frequently in dementia subjects living in nursing homes than in those living at home (9.2% versus 4.3%). Dementia, residence in nursing homes, and osteoporosis were risk factors for fracture development. Antidementia, antipsychotic, and antidepressant drugs generally had no significant impact on hip fracture risk when prescribed for less than six months. Dementia increased hip fracture risk in German primary care practices.
Earth observation data have become an outstanding basis for analyzing environmental
aspects. The increasing availability of remote sensing data is accompanied
by an increasing user demand. Within the scope of the COOPERNICUS-initiative,
the automatic processing of remote sensing data is important for supplying value-
added-information products. The use of additional data like land-water-masks
in the context of deriving value-added information products can stabilize and
improve the product quality of information products.
The authors of this contribution would like to discuss different automated
processing algorithms which are based on land-water masks for value-added
data interpretation. These developments were supported or accompanied by Prof.
Hartmut Asche.
Einleitung
(2017)
Einleitung
(2017)
Sprache im Musikunterricht
(2017)
Mit dem vorliegenden Band 5 der Potsdamer Schriftenreihe zur Musikpädagogik wird die bildungspolitische Diskussion um den Stellenwert bewussten Sprachhandelns im Fach aufgegriffen. Ausgehend vom aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Thema „Sprache und Sprechen im Musikunterricht“ werden Forschungsarbeiten vorgestellt, die in diesem Kontext zwischen 2013 und 2016 am Lehrstuhl für Musikpädagogik und Musikdidaktik der Universität Potsdam entstanden sind. Die Beiträge skizzieren sowohl Möglichkeiten zur Umsetzung eines sprachbildenden Fachunterrichts Musik als auch soziale Aspekte sprachlichen Lehrerhandelns und setzen damit neue Impulse im musikpädagogischen Diskurs.
Die Veröffentlichung der vorliegenden Forschungsergebnisse wurde durch die Unterstützung des Ministeriums für Arbeit, Soziales, Gesundheit, Frauen und Familie des Landes Brandenburg und der Integrationsbeauftragten sowie durch die Universitätsgesellschaft Potsdam e. V. ermöglicht.
Die zweiteilige Publikation „Musikarbeit im Kontext von Inklusion und Integration“ der Potsdamer Schriftenreihe zur Musikpädagogik beinhaltet Erträge aus Veranstaltungen und Qualifikationsarbeiten mehrerer Jahre, die am Lehrstuhl für Musikpädagogik und Musikdidaktik der Universität Potsdam entstanden sind. Beide Bände enthalten neben theoretischen Beiträgen auch Beiträge aus Praxis und Ausbildung in verschiedenen Berufsfeldern, die das besondere Potenzial musikalischer Betätigung für Inklusion und Integration anhand von best-practise-Beispielen darstellen und sind somit als umfassendes Studienmaterial konzipiert.
Der erste Band legt den Schwerpunkt auf die Dokumentation der am Lehrstuhl für Musikpädagogik und Musikdidaktik durchgeführten internationalen Fachtagung „Musik in sozialen Feldern und Inklusionskontexten“ sowie auf Qualifikationsarbeiten, die im Anschluss an die Tagung entstanden sind.
Die Veröffentlichung der vorliegenden Arbeits- und Forschungsergebnisse wurde durch die Unterstützung des Ministeriums für Arbeit, Soziales, Gesundheit, Frauen und Familie des Landes Brandenburg und der Integrationsbeauftragten sowie durch die Universitätsgesellschaft Potsdam e. V. ermöglicht.
The valorization of carbohydrates is one of the most promising fields in green chemistry, as it enables to produce bulk chemicals and fuels out of renewable and abundant resources, instead of further exploiting fossil feedstocks. The focus in this thesis is the conversion of fructose, using dehydration and hydrodeoxygenation reactions. The main goal is to find an easy continuous process, including the solubility of the sugar in a green solvent, the conversion over a solid acid as well as over a metal@tungsten carbide catalyst.
At the beginning of this thesis, solid acid catalysts are synthesized by using carbohydrate material like glucose and starch at high temperatures (up to 600 °C). Additionally a third carbon is synthesized, using an activation method based on Ca(OH)2. After carbonization and further sulfonation, using fuming sulfuric acid, the three resulting catalysts are characterized together with sulfonated carbon black and Amberlyst 15 as references. In order to test all solid acid catalysts in reaction, a 250 mm x 4.6 mm stainless steel column is used as a fixed-bed continuous reactor. The temperature (110 °C to 250 °C) and residence time (2 to 30 minutes) is varied, and a direct relationship between contact time and selectivity is determined. The reaction mechanism, as well as the product distribution is showing a dehydration step of fructose towards 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). These furan-ring molecules are considered as “sleeping giants”, due to the possibility of using them as fuel, but also for upgrading them to chemicals like terephthalic acid or p-xylene. Consecutive reactions are producing levulinic acid, as well as condensation products with ethanol and formic acid. The activated carbon is additionally showing a 2 % yield of 2,5-Dimethylfuran (DMF) production, pointing towards the extraordinary properties of this catalyst. Without a metal catalyst present, what is normally necessary for hydrogenation reactions, a transferhydrogenation (with formic acid) is observed. The active catalyst was therefore carbon itself, what activated the hydrogen on its surface. This phenomenon was just very rarely observed so far. Expensive noble metals are the material of choice, when it comes to hydrogenation reactions nowadays and cheaper alternatives are necessary.
By postulating a similar electronic structure of tungsten carbide (WC) to platinum by Lewy and Boudart, research is focusing on the replacement of Pt. The production of nano-sized tungsten carbide particles (7.5 ± 2.5 nm, 70 m2 g-1) is enabled by the so called “urea glass route” and its catalytic performances are compared to commercial material. It is shown, that the activity is strongly dependent on the size of the particles as well as the surface area. Nano-sized tungsten carbide is showing activity for hydrogenation reactions under mild conditions (maximum 150 °C, 30 bar). This material therefore opens up new possibilities for replacing the rare and expensive platinum with tungsten carbide based catalysts.
Additionally different metal nanoparticles of palladium, copper and nickel are deposited on top of WC to further promote its reactivity. The nickel nanoparticles are strongly connected to WC and showed the best activity as well as selectivity for upgrading HMF with hydrodeoxygenation. The Ni@WC is not leaching and is showing very good hydrodeoxygenation properties with DMF yields up to 90 percent. Copper@WC is not showing good activity and palladium@WC enables undesired consecutive reactions, hydrogenating the furan ring system.
In order to enable the upgrade of fructose to DMF directly in a continuous system, the current H CUBE Pro TM hydrogenation system is customized with a second reaction column. A 250 mm x 4.6 mm stainless steel reactor column is connected ahead of the hydrogen insertion, enabling the dehydration of fructose to HMF derivatives, before pumping these products into the second column for hydrogenation. The overall residence time in the two column reactor system is 14 minutes. The overall results are an almost full conversion with a yield of 38.5 % DMF and 47 % yield of EL. The main disadvantage is the formation of higher mass products, so called humins, which start depositing on top of the catalysts, blocking their active sites.
In general it can be stated, that a two column system goes along with a higher investment as well as more maintenance costs, compared to a one column catalytic approach. To develop a catalyst, which is on the one hand able to dehydrate as well as hydrodeoxygenate the reactants, is aimed for at the last part of the thesis. The activated carbon however shows already activity for hydrodeoxygenation without any metal present and offers itself therefore as an alternative to overcome the temperature instability of Amberlyst 15 (max. 120 °C) for a combined DMF production directly from fructose. The activity for the upgrade to DMF is increased from 2 % to 12 % DMF yield in one mixed continuous column.
In order to scale up the entire one column approach, an 800 mm x 28.5 mm inner diameter column was planned and manufactured. The system is scaled up and assembled, whereas this flow reactor system is able to be run with 50 mL min-1 maximum flow rate, to stand a pressure of maximum 100 bar and be heated to around 500 °C. The tubing and connections, as well as the used devices are planned according to be safe and easy in use. The scaled-up approach offers a reaction column 120 times bigger (510 ml) then the first extension of the commercial system. This further extension offers the possibility of ranging between 1 and 1000 mL min-1, making it possible to use the approach in pilot plant applications.
According to the classical plume hypothesis, mantle plumes are localized upwellings of hot, buoyant material in the Earth’s mantle. They have a typical mushroom shape, consisting of a large plume head, which is associated with the formation of voluminous flood basalts (a Large
Igneous Province) and a narrow plume tail, which generates a linear, age-progressive chain of volcanic edifices (a hotspot track) as the tectonic plate migrates over the relatively stationary plume. Both plume heads and tails reshape large areas of the Earth’s surface over many tens of millions of years.
However, not every plume has left an exemplary record that supports the classical hypothesis. The main objective of this thesis is therefore to study how specific hotspots have created the crustal thickness pattern attributed to their volcanic activities. Using regional geodynamic
models, the main chapters of this thesis address the challenge of deciphering the three individual (and increasingly complex) Réunion, Iceland, and Kerguelen hotspot histories, especially focussing on the interactions between the respective plume and nearby spreading ridges.
For this purpose, the mantle convection code ASPECT is used to set up three-dimensional numerical models, which consider the specific local surroundings of each plume by prescribing time-dependent boundary conditions for temperature and mantle flow. Combining reconstructed plate boundaries and plate motions, large-scale global flow velocities and an inhomogeneous lithosphere thickness distribution together with a dehydration rheology represents a novel setup for regional convection models.
The model results show the crustal thickness pattern produced by the plume, which is compared to present-day topographic structures, crustal thickness estimates and age determinations of volcanic provinces associated with hotspot activity. Altogether, the model results agree well
with surface observations. Moreover, the dynamic development of the plumes in the models provide explanations for the generation of smaller, yet characteristic volcanic features that were previously unexplained. Considering the present-day state of a model as a prediction for the
current temperature distribution in the mantle, it cannot only be compared to observations on the surface, but also to structures in the Earth’s interior as imaged by seismic tomography.
More precisely, in the case of the Réunion hotspot, the model demonstrates how the distinctive gap between the Maldives and Chagos is generated due to the combination of the ridge geometry and plume-ridge interaction. Further, the Rodrigues Ridge is formed as the surface expression
of a long-distance sublithospheric flow channel between the upwelling plume and the closest ridge segment, confirming the long-standing hypothesis of Morgan (1978) for the first time in a dynamic context. The Réunion plume has been studied in connection with the seismological
RHUM-RUM project, which has recently provided new seismic tomography images that yield an excellent match with the geodynamic model.
Regarding the Iceland plume, the numerical model shows how plume material may have accumulated in an east-west trending corridor of thin lithosphere across Greenland and resulted in simultaneous melt generation west and east of Greenland. This provides an explanation for the
extremely widespread volcanic material attributed to magma production of the Iceland hotspot and demonstrates that the model setup is also able to explain more complicated hotspot histories. The Iceland model results also agree well with newly derived seismic tomographic images.
The Kerguelen hotspot has an extremely complex history and previous studies concluded that the plume might be dismembered or influenced by solitary waves in its conduit to produce the reconstructed variable melt production rate. The geodynamic model, however, shows that a constant plume influx can result in a variable magma production rate if the plume interacts with nearby mid-ocean ridges. Moreover, the Ninetyeast Ridge in the model is created by on-ridge activities, while the Kerguelen plume was located beneath the Australian plate. This is also a contrast to earlier studies, which described the Ninetyeast Ridge as the result of the Indian plate passing over the plume. Furthermore, the Amsterdam-Saint Paul Plateau in the model is the result of plume material flowing from the upwelling toward the Southeast Indian Ridge, whereas previous geochemical studies attributed that volcanic province to a separate deep plume.
In summary, the three case studies presented in this thesis consistently highlight the importance of plume-ridge interaction in order to reconstruct the overall volcanic hotspot record as well as specific smaller features attributed to a certain hotspot. They also demonstrate that it is not necessary to attribute highly complicated properties to a specific plume in order to account for complex observations. Thus, this thesis contributes to the general understanding of plume dynamics and extends the very specific knowledge about the Réunion, Iceland, and Kerguelen mantle plumes.
Background
Much of the organismal variation we observe in nature is due to differences in organ size. The observation that even closely related species can show large, stably inherited differences in organ size indicates a strong genetic component to the control of organ size. Despite recent progress in identifying factors controlling organ growth in plants, our overall understanding of this process remains limited, partly because the individual factors have not yet been connected into larger regulatory pathways or networks. To begin addressing this aim, we have studied the upstream regulation of expression of BIG BROTHER (BB), a central growth-control gene in Arabidopsis thaliana that prevents overgrowth of organs. Final organ size and BB expression levels are tightly correlated, implying the need for precise control of its expression. BB expression mirrors proliferative activity, yet the gene functions to limit proliferation, suggesting that it acts in an incoherent feedforward loop downstream of growth activators to prevent over-proliferation.
Results
To investigate the upstream regulation of BB we combined a promoter deletion analysis with a phylogenetic footprinting approach. We were able to narrow down important, highly conserved, cis-regulatory elements within the BB promoter. Promoter sequences of other Brassicaceae species were able to partially complement the A. thaliana bb-1 mutant, suggesting that at least within the Brassicaceae family the regulatory pathways are conserved.
Conclusions
This work underlines the complexity involved in precise quantitative control of gene expression and lays the foundation for identifying important upstream regulators that determine BB expression levels and thus final organ size.
The German sibilant /integral/ is produced with a constriction in the postalveolar region and often with protruded lips. By covarying horizontal lip and tongue position speakers can keep a similar acoustic output even if the articulation varies. This study investigates whether during two weeks of adaptation to an artificial palate speakers covary these two articulatory parameters, whether tactile landmarks have an influence on the covariation and to what extent speakers can foresee the acoustic result of the covariation without auditory feedback. Six German speakers were recorded with EMA. Four of them showed a covariation of lip and tongue, which is consistent with the motor equivalence hypothesis. The acoustic output, however, does not stay entirely constant but varies with the tongue position. The role of tactile landmarks is negligible. To a certain extent, speakers are able to adapt even without auditory feedback.
Between-school variation in students' achievement, motivation, affect, and learning strategies
(2017)
To plan group-randomized trials where treatment conditions are assigned to schools, researchers need design parameters that provide information about between-school differences in outcomes as well as the amount of variance that can be explained by covariates at the student (L1) and school (L2) levels. Most previous research has offered these parameters for U.S. samples and for achievement as the outcome. This paper and the online supplementary materials provide design parameters for 81 countries in three broad outcome categories (achievement, affect and motivation, and learning strategies) for domain-general and domain-specific (mathematics, reading, and science) measures. Sociodemographic characteristics were used as covariates. Data from representative samples of 15-year-old students stemmed from five cycles of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA; total number of students/schools: 1,905,147/70,098). Between-school differences as well as the amount of variance explained at L1 and L2 varied widely across countries and educational outcomes, demonstrating the limited generalizability of design parameters across these dimensions. The use of the design parameters to plan group-randomized trials is illustrated.
Plant functional traits reflect individual and community ecological strategies. They allow the detection of directional changes in community dynamics and ecosystemic processes, being an additional tool to assess biodiversity than species richness. Analysis of functional patterns in plant communities provides mechanistic insight into biodiversity alterations due to anthropogenic activity. Although studies have considered of either anthropogenic management or nutrient availability on functional traits in temperate grasslands, studies combining effects of both drivers are scarce. Here, we assessed the impacts of management intensity (fertilization, mowing, grazing), nutrient stoichiometry (C, N, P, K), and vegetation composition on community-weighted means (CWMs) and functional diversity (Rao's Q) from seven plant traits in 150 grasslands in three regions in Germany, using data of 6 years. Land use and nutrient stoichiometry accounted for larger proportions of model variance of CWM and Rao's Q than species richness and productivity. Grazing affected all analyzed trait groups; fertilization and mowing only impacted generative traits. Grazing was clearly associated with nutrient retention strategies, that is, investing in durable structures and production of fewer, less variable seed. Phenological variability was increased. Fertilization and mowing decreased seed number/mass variability, indicating competition-related effects. Impacts of nutrient stoichiometry on trait syndromes varied. Nutrient limitation (large N:P, C:N ratios) promoted species with conservative strategies, that is, investment in durable plant structures rather than fast growth, fewer seed, and delayed flowering onset. In contrast to seed mass, leaf-economics variability was reduced under P shortage. Species diversity was positively associated with the variability of generative traits. Synthesis. Here, land use, nutrient availability, species richness, and plant functional strategies have been shown to interact complexly, driving community composition, and vegetation responses to management intensity. We suggest that deeper understanding of underlying mechanisms shaping community assembly and biodiversity will require analyzing all these parameters.
Dieser Band knüpft an die repräsentative Dokumentation des Fortbildungsprojektes Belcantare Brandenburg. Jedes Kind kann singen! für musikunterrichtende Grundschullehrkräfte im Land Brandenburg und seine begleitendende Evaluationsforschung an. Inhaltlicher Schwerpunkt dieses Bandes ist die Vorstellung der explorativen Evaluationsstudie mit ihren sensiblen Konzepten, Fragenstellungen, ihrem triangulierenden Forschungsdesign und ausgewählten Forschungsergebnissen aus den Staffeln 1 und 2.
Die fachdidaktischen, musikpsychologischen und methodischen Kontexte der Evaluationsforschung werden durch Fachartikel entsprechender Autoren in diesem Band transparent und bereichern ihn im besonderen Maße. Die Mitwirkung von Studierenden am Forschungsprozess erforderte Anwendungsleitfäden zur methodischen Handhabung verschiedener Erhebungsinstrumente und Auswertungsmethoden zu entwickeln, denen hier der Raum zur Veröffentlichung gegeben wurde.
In this study, an in situ application for identifying neodymium (Nd) enriched surface materials that uses multitemporal hyperspectral images is presented (HySpex sensor). Because of the narrow shape and shallow absorption depth of the neodymium absorption feature, a method was developed for enhancing and extracting the necessary information for neodymium from image spectra, even under illumination conditions that are not optimal. For this purpose, the two following approaches were developed: (1) reducing noise and analyzing changing illumination conditions by averaging multitemporal image scenes and (2) enhancing the depth of the desired absorption band by deconvolving every image spectrum with a Gaussian curve while the rest of the spectrum remains unchanged (Richardson-Lucy deconvolution). To evaluate these findings, nine field samples from the Fen complex in Norway were analyzed using handheld X-ray fluorescence devices and by conducting detailed laboratory-based geochemical rare earth element determinations. The result is a qualitative outcrop map that highlights zones that are enriched in neodymium. To reduce the influences of non-optimal illumination, particularly at the studied site, a minimum of seven single acquisitions is required. Sharpening the neodymium absorption band allows for robust mapping, even at the outer zones of enrichment. From the geochemical investigations, we found that iron oxides decrease the applicability of the method. However, iron-related absorption bands can be used as secondary indicators for sulfidic ore zones that are mainly enriched with rare earth elements. In summary, we found that hyperspectral spectroscopy is a noninvasive, fast and cost-saving method for determining neodymium at outcrop surfaces
A new sedimentary sequence from Lago di Venere on Pantelleria Island, located in the Strait of Sicily between Tunisia and Sicily was recovered. The lake is located in the coastal infra-Mediterranean vegetation belt at 2 m a.s.l. Pollen, charcoal and sedimentological analyses are used to explore linkages among vegetation, fire and climate at a decadal scale over the past 1200 years. A dry period from ad 800 to 1000 that corresponds to the Medieval Warm Period' (WMP) is inferred from sedimentological analysis. The high content of carbonate recorded in this period suggests a dry phase, when the ratio of evaporation/precipitation was high. During this period the island was dominated by thermophilous and drought-tolerant taxa, such as Quercus ilex, Olea, Pistacia and Juniperus. A marked shift in the sediment properties is recorded at ad 1000, when carbonate content became very low suggesting wetter conditions until ad 1850-1900. Broadly, this period coincides with the Little Ice Age' (LIA), which was characterized by wetter and colder conditions in Europe. During this time rather mesic conifers (i.e. Pinus pinaster), shrubs and herbs (e.g. Erica arborea and Selaginella denticulata) expanded, whereas more drought-adapted species (e.g. Q. ilex) declined. Charcoal data suggest enhanced fire activity during the LIA probably as a consequence of anthropogenic burning and/or more flammable fuel (e.g. resinous Pinus biomass). The last century was characterized by a shift to high carbonate content, indicating a change towards drier conditions, and re-expansion of Q. ilex and Olea. The post-LIA warming is in agreement with historical documents and meteorological time series. Vegetation dynamics were co-determined by agricultural activities on the island. Anthropogenic indicators (e.g. Cerealia-type, Sporormiella) reveal the importance of crops and grazing on the island. Our pollen data suggest that extensive logging caused the local extinction of deciduous Quercus pubescens around ad1750.
Cancer cachexia, of which the most notable symptom is severe and rapid weight loss, is present in the majority of patients with advanced cancer. Inflammatory mediators play an important role in the development of cachexia, envisaged as a chronic inflammatory syndrome. The white adipose tissue (WAT) is one of the first compartments affected in cancer cachexia and suffers a high rate of lipolysis. It secretes several cytokines capable of directly regulating intermediate metabolism. A common pathway in the regulation of the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines in WAT is the activation of the nuclear transcription factor kappa-B (NF-κB). We have examined the gene expression of the subunits NF-κBp65 and NF-κBp50, as well as NF-κBp65 and NF-κBp50 binding, the gene expression of pro-inflammatory mediators under NF-κB control (IL-1β, IL-6, INF-γ, TNF-α, MCP-1), and its inhibitory protein, nuclear factor of kappa light polypeptide gene enhancer in B-cells inhibitor, alpha (IκB-α). The observational study involved 35 patients (control group, n = 12 and cancer group, n = 23, further divided into cachectic and non-cachectic). NF-κBp65 and its target genes expression (TNF-α, IL-1β, MCP-1 and IκB-α) were significantly higher in cachectic cancer patients. Moreover, NF-κBp65 gene expression correlated positively with the expression of its target genes. The results strongly suggest that the NF-κB pathway plays a role in the promotion of WAT inflammation during cachexia.
Landscape evolution models (LEMs) allow the study of earth surface responses to changing climatic and tectonic forcings. While much effort has been devoted to the development of LEMs that simulate a wide range of processes, the numerical accuracy of these models has received less attention. Most LEMs use first-order accurate numerical methods that suffer from substantial numerical diffusion. Numerical diffusion particularly affects the solution of the advection equation and thus the simulation of retreating landforms such as cliffs and river knickpoints. This has potential consequences for the integrated response of the simulated landscape. Here we test a higher-order flux-limiting finite volume method that is total variation diminishing (TVD-FVM) to solve the partial differential equations of river incision and tectonic displacement. We show that using the TVD-FVM to simulate river incision significantly influences the evolution of simulated landscapes and the spatial and temporal variability of catchment-wide erosion rates. Furthermore, a two-dimensional TVD-FVM accurately simulates the evolution of landscapes affected by lateral tectonic displacement, a process whose simulation was hitherto largely limited to LEMs with flexible spatial discretization. We implement the scheme in TTLEM (TopoToolbox Landscape Evolution Model), a spatially explicit, raster-based LEM for the study of fluvially eroding landscapes in TopoToolbox 2.
Background: Athletes may differ in their resting metabolic rate (RMR) from the general population. However, to estimate the RMR in athletes, prediction equations that have not been validated in athletes are often used. The purpose of this study was therefore to verify the applicability of commonly used RMR predictions for use in athletes. Methods: The RMR was measured by indirect calorimetry in 17 highly trained rowers and canoeists of the German national teams (BMI 24 ± 2 kg/m2, fat-free mass 69 ± 15 kg). In addition, the RMR was predicted using Cunningham (CUN) and Harris-Benedict (HB) equations. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was calculated to test for differences between predicted and measured RMR (α = 0.05). The root mean square percentage error (RMSPE) was calculated and the Bland-Altman procedure was used to quantify the bias for each prediction. Results: Prediction equations significantly underestimated the RMR in males (p < 0.001). The RMSPE was calculated to be 18.4% (CUN) and 20.9% (HB) in the entire group. The bias was 133 kcal/24 h for CUN and 202 kcal/24 h for HB. Conclusions: Predictions significantly underestimate the RMR in male heavyweight endurance athletes but not in females. In athletes with a high fat-free mass, prediction equations might therefore not be applicable to estimate energy requirements. Instead, measurement of the resting energy expenditure or specific prediction equations might be needed for the individual heavyweight athlete.
Estuarine marshes are ecosystems that are situated at the transition zone between land and water and are thus controlled by physical and biological interactions. Marsh vegetation offers important ecosystem services by filtrating solid and dissolved substances from the water and providing habitat. By buffering a large part of the arriving flow velocity, attenuating wave energy and serving as erosion control for riverbanks, tidal marshes furthermore reduce the destructive effects of storm surges and storm waves and thus contribute to ecosystem-based shore protection. However, in many estuaries, extensive embankments, artificial bank protection, river dredging and agriculture threaten tidal marshes. Global warming might entail additional risks, such as changes in water levels, an increase of the tidal amplitude and a resulting shift of the salinity zones. This can affect the dynamics of the shore and foreland vegetation, and vegetation belts can be narrowed or fragmented. Against this background, it is crucial to gain a better understanding of the processes underlying the spatio temporal vegetation dynamics in brackish marshes. Furthermore, a better understanding of how plant-habitat relationships generate patterns in tidal marsh vegetation is vital to maintain ecosystem functions and assess the response of marshes to environmental change as well as the success of engineering and restoration projects.
For this purpose, three research objectives were addressed within this thesis: (1) to explore the possibility of vegetation serving as self-adaptive shore protection by quantifying the reduction of current velocity in the vegetation belt and the morphologic plasticity of a brackish marsh pioneer, (2) to disentangle the roles of abiotic factors and interspecific competition on species distribution and stand characteristics in brackish marshes, and (3) to develop a mechanistic vegetation model that helps analysing the influence of habitat conditions on the spatio-temporal dynamic of tidal marsh vegetation. These aspects were investigated using a combination of field studies and statistical as well as process-based modelling.
To explore the possibility of vegetation serving as self-adaptive coastal protection, in the first study, we measured current velocity with and without living vegetation, recorded ramet density and plant thickness during two growing periods at two locations in the Elbe estuary and assessed the adaptive value of a larger stem diameter of plants at locations with higher mechanical stress by biomechanical measurements. The results of this study show that under non-storm conditions, the vegetation belt of the marsh pioneer Bolboschoenus maritimus is able to buffer a large proportion of the flow velocity. We were furthermore able to show that morphological traits of plant species are adapted to hydrodynamic forces by demonstrating a positive correlation between ramet thickness and cross-shore current. In addition, our measurements revealed that thicker ramets growing at the front of the vegetation belt have a significantly higher stability than ramets inside the vegetation belt. This self-adaptive effect improves the ability of B. maritimus to grow and persist in the pioneer zone and could provide an adaptive value in habitats with high mechanical stress.
In the second study, we assessed the distribution of the two marsh species and a set of stand characteristics, namely aboveground and belowground biomass, ramet density, ramet height and the percentage of flowering ramets. Furthermore, we collected information on several abiotic habitat factors to test their effect on plant growth and zonation with generalised linear models (GLMs). Our results demonstrate that flow velocity is the main factor controlling the distribution of Bolboschoenus maritimus and Phragmites australis. Additionally, inundation height and duration, as well as intraspecific competition affect distribution patterns. This study furthermore shows that cross-shore flow velocity does not only directly influence the distribution of the two marsh species, but also alters the plants’ occurrence relative to inun-dation height and duration. This suggests an effect of cross-shore flow velocity on their tolerance to inundation. The analysis of the measured stand characteristics revealed a negative effect of total flow velocity on all measured parameters of B. maritimus and thus confirmed our expectation that flow velocity is a decisive stressor which influences the growth of this species.
To gain a better understanding of the processes and habitat factors influencing the spatio-temporal vegetation dynamics in brackish marshes, I built a spatially explicit, mechanistic model applying a pattern-oriented modelling approach. A sensitivity analysis of the para-meters of this dynamic habitat-macrophyte model HaMac suggests that rhizome growth is the key process for the lateral dynamics of brackish marshes. From the analysed habitat factors, P. australis patterns were mainly influenced by flow velocity. The competition with P. australis was of key importance for the belowground biomass of B. maritimus. Concerning vegetation dynamics, the model results emphasise that without the effect of flow velocity the B. maritimus vegetation belt would expand into the tidal flat at locations with present vegetation recession, suggesting that flow velocity is the main reason for vegetation recession at exposed locations.
Overall, the results of this thesis demonstrate that brackish marsh vegetation considerably contributes to flow reduction under average flow conditions and can hence be a valuable component of shore-protection schemes. At the same time, the distribution, growth and expansion of tidal marsh vegetation is substantially influenced by flow. Altogether, this thesis provides a clear step forward in understanding plant-habitat interactions in tidal marshes. Future research should integrate studies of vertical marsh accretion with research on the factors that control the lateral position of marshes.
Increased Achilles (AT) and Patellar tendon (PT) thickness in adolescent athletes compared to non-athletes could be shown. However, it is unclear, if changes are of pathological or physiological origin due to training. The aim of this study was to determine physiological AT and PT thickness adaptation in adolescent elite athletes compared to non-athletes, considering sex and sport. In a longitudinal study design with two measurement days (M1/M2) within an interval of 3.2 ± 0.8 years, 131 healthy adolescent elite athletes (m/f: 90/41) out of 13 different sports and 24 recreationally active controls (m/f: 6/18) were included. Both ATs and PTs were measured at standardized reference points. Athletes were divided into 4 sport categories [ball (B), combat (C), endurance (E) and explosive strength sports (S)]. Descriptive analysis (mean ± SD) and statistical testing for group differences was performed (α = 0.05). AT thickness did not differ significantly between measurement days, neither in athletes (5.6 ± 0.7 mm/5.6 ± 0.7 mm) nor in controls (4.8 ± 0.4 mm/4.9 ± 0.5 mm, p > 0.05). For PTs, athletes presented increased thickness at M2 (M1: 3.5 ± 0.5 mm, M2: 3.8 ± 0.5 mm, p < 0.001). In general, males had thicker ATs and PTs than females (p < 0.05). Considering sex and sports, only male athletes from B, C, and S showed significant higher PT-thickness at M2 compared to controls (p ≤ 0.01). Sport-specific adaptation regarding tendon thickness in adolescent elite athletes can be detected in PTs among male athletes participating in certain sports with high repetitive jumping and strength components. Sonographic microstructural analysis might provide an enhanced insight into tendon material properties enabling the differentiation of sex and influence of different sports.
White adipose tissue (WAT) is actively involved in the regulation of whole-body energy homeostasis via storage/release of lipids and adipokine secretion. Current research links WAT dysfunction to the development of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). The expansion of WAT during oversupply of nutrients prevents ectopic fat accumulation and requires proper preadipocyte-to-adipocyte differentiation. An assumed link between excess levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), WAT dysfunction and T2D has been discussed controversially. While oxidative stress conditions have conclusively been detected in WAT of T2D patients and related animal models, clinical trials with antioxidants failed to prevent T2D or to improve glucose homeostasis. Furthermore, animal studies yielded inconsistent results regarding the role of oxidative stress in the development of diabetes. Here, we discuss the contribution of ROS to the (patho)physiology of adipocyte function and differentiation, with particular emphasis on sources and nutritional modulators of adipocyte ROS and their functions in signaling mechanisms controlling adipogenesis and functions of mature fat cells. We propose a concept of ROS balance that is required for normal functioning of WAT. We explain how both excessive and diminished levels of ROS, e.g. resulting from over supplementation with antioxidants, contribute to WAT dysfunction and subsequently insulin resistance.
We present an approach for reconstructing networks of pulse-coupled neuronlike oscillators from passive observation of pulse trains of all nodes. It is assumed that units are described by their phase response curves and that their phases are instantaneously reset by incoming pulses. Using an iterative procedure, we recover the properties of all nodes, namely their phase response curves and natural frequencies, as well as strengths of all directed connections.
This project was focused on generating ultra thin stimuli responsive membranes with an embedded transmembrane protein to act as the pore. The membranes were formed by crosslinking of transmembrane protein polymer conjugates. The conjugates were self assembled on air water interface and the polymer chains crosslinked using a UV crosslinkable comonomer to engender the membrane. The protein used for the studies reported herein was one of the largest transmembrane channel proteins, ferric hydroxamate uptake protein component A (FhuA), found in the outer membrane of Escherichia coli (E. coli). The wild type protein and three genetic variants of FhuA were provided by the group of Prof. Schwaneberg in Aachen. The well known thermo responsive poly(N isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) and the pH and thermo responsive polymer poly((2-dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA) were conjugated to FhuA and the genetic variants via controlled radical polymerization (CRP) using grafting from technique. These polymers were chosen because they would provide stimuli handles in the resulting membranes. The reported polymerization was the first ever attempt to attach polymer chains onto a membrane protein using site specific modification.
The conjugate synthesis was carried out in two steps – a) FhuA was first converted into a macroinitiator by covalently linking a water soluble functional CRP initiator to the lysine residues. b) Copper mediated CRP was then carried out in pure buffer conditions with and without sacrificial initiator to generate the conjugates.
The challenge was carrying out the modifications on FhuA without denaturing it. FhuA, being a transmembrane protein, requires amphiphilic species to stabilize its highly hydrophobic transmembrane region. For the experiments reported in this thesis, the stabilizing agent was 2 methyl 2,4-pentanediol (MPD). Since the buffer containing MPD cannot be considered a purely aqueous system, and also because MPD might interfere with the polymerization procedure, the reaction conditions were first optimized using a model globular protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA). The optimum conditions were then used for the generation of conjugates with FhuA.
The generated conjugates were shown to be highly interfacially active and this property was exploited to let them self assemble onto polar apolar interfaces. The emulsions stabilized by particles or conjugates are referred to as Pickering emulsions. Crosslinking conjugates with a UV crosslinkable co monomer afforded nano thin micro compartments. Interfacial self assembly at the air water interface and subsequent UV crosslinking also yielded nano thin, stimuli responsive membranes which were shown to be mechanically robust. Initial characterization of the flux and permeation of water through these membranes is also reported herein. The generated nano thin membranes with PNIPAAm showed reduced permeation at elevated temperatures owing to the resistance by the hydrophobic and thus water-impermeable polymer matrix, hence confirming the stimulus responsivity.
Additionally, as a part of collaborative work with Dr. Changzhu Wu, TU Dresden, conjugates of three enzymes with current/potential industrial relevance (candida antarctica lipase B, benzaldehyde lyase and glucose oxidase) with stimuli responsive polymers were synthesized. This work aims at carrying out cascade reactions in the Pickering emulsions generated by self assembled enzyme polymer conjugate.
In this era of high-speed informatization and globalization, online education is no longer an exquisite concept in the ivory tower, but a rapidly developing industry closely relevant to people's daily lives. Numerous lectures are recorded in form of multimedia data, uploaded to the Internet and made publicly accessible from anywhere in this world. These lectures are generally addressed as e-lectures. In recent year, a new popular form of e-lectures, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), boosts the growth of online education industry and somehow turns "learning online" into a fashion.
As an e-learning provider, besides to keep improving the quality of e-lecture content, to provide better learning environment for online learners is also a highly important task. This task can be preceded in various ways, and one of them is to enhance and upgrade the learning materials provided: e-lectures could be more than videos. Moreover, this process of enhancement or upgrading should be done automatically, without giving extra burdens to the lecturers or teaching teams, and this is the aim of this thesis.
The first part of this thesis is an integrated framework of multi-lingual subtitles production, which can help online learners penetrate the language barrier. The framework consists of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Sentence Boundary Detection (SBD) and Machine Translation (MT), among which the proposed SBD solution is major technical contribution, building on Deep Neural Network (DNN) and Word Vector (WV) and achieving state-of-the-art performance. Besides, a quantitative evaluation with dozens of volunteers is also introduced to measure how these auto-generated subtitles could actually help in context of e-lectures.
Secondly, a technical solution "TOG" (Tree-Structure Outline Generation) is proposed to extract textual content from the displaying slides recorded in video and re-organize them into a hierarchical lecture outline, which may serve in multiple functions, such like preview, navigation and retrieval. TOG runs adaptively and can be roughly divided into intra-slide and inter-slides phases. Table detection and lecture video segmentation can be implemented as sub- or post-application in these two phases respectively. Evaluation on diverse e-lectures shows that all the outlines, tables and segments achieved are trustworthily accurate.
Based on the subtitles and outlines previously created, lecture videos can be further split into sentence units and slide-based segment units. A lecture highlighting process is further applied on these units, in order to capture and mark the most important parts within the corresponding lecture, just as what people do with a pen when reading paper books. Sentence-level highlighting depends on the acoustic analysis on the audio track, while segment-level highlighting focuses on exploring clues from the statistical information of related transcripts and slide content. Both objective and subjective evaluations prove that the proposed lecture highlighting solution is with decent precision and welcomed by users.
All above enhanced e-lecture materials have been already implemented in actual use or made available for implementation by convenient interfaces.
We introduce three strategies for the analysis of financial time series based on time averaged observables. These comprise the time averaged mean squared displacement (MSD) as well as the ageing and delay time methods for varying fractions of the financial time series. We explore these concepts via statistical analysis of historic time series for several Dow Jones Industrial indices for the period from the 1960s to 2015. Remarkably, we discover a simple universal law for the delay time averaged MSD. The observed features of the financial time series dynamics agree well with our analytical results for the time averaged measurables for geometric Brownian motion, underlying the famed Black–Scholes–Merton model. The concepts we promote here are shown to be useful for financial data analysis and enable one to unveil new universal features of stock market dynamics.
Contemporary multi-core processors are parallel systems that also provide shared memory for programs running on them. Both the increasing number of cores in so-called many-core systems and the still growing computational power of the cores demand for memory systems that are able to deliver high bandwidths. Caches are essential components to satisfy this requirement. Nevertheless, hardware-based cache coherence in many-core chips faces practical limits to provide both coherence and high memory bandwidths. In addition, a shift away from global coherence can be observed. As a result, alternative architectures and suitable programming models need to be investigated.
This thesis focuses on fast communication for non-cache-coherent many-core architectures. Experiments are conducted on the Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCC), a non-cache-coherent many-core processor with 48 mesh-connected cores. Although originally designed for message passing, the results of this thesis show that shared memory can be efficiently used for one-sided communication on this kind of architecture. One-sided communication enables data exchanges between processes where the receiver is not required to know the details of the performed communication. In the notion of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, this type of communication allows to access memory of remote processes. In order to support this communication scheme on non-cache-coherent architectures, both an efficient process synchronization and a communication scheme with software-managed cache coherence are designed and investigated.
The process synchronization realizes the concept of the general active target synchronization scheme from the MPI standard. An existing classification of implementation approaches is extended and used to identify an appropriate class for the non-cache-coherent shared memory platform. Based on this classification, existing implementations are surveyed in order to find beneficial concepts, which are then used to design a lightweight synchronization protocol for the SCC that uses shared memory and uncached memory accesses. The proposed scheme is not prone to process skew and also enables direct communication as soon as both communication partners are ready. Experimental results show very good scaling properties and up to five times lower synchronization latency compared to a tuned message-based MPI implementation for the SCC.
For the communication, SCOSCo, a shared memory approach with software-managed cache coherence, is presented. According requirements for the coherence that fulfill MPI's separate memory model are formulated, and a lightweight implementation exploiting SCC hard- and software features is developed. Despite a discovered malfunction in the SCC's memory subsystem, the experimental evaluation of the design reveals up to five times better bandwidths and nearly four times lower latencies in micro-benchmarks compared to the SCC-tuned but message-based MPI library. For application benchmarks, like a parallel 3D fast Fourier transform, the runtime share of communication can be reduced by a factor of up to five. In addition, this thesis postulates beneficial hardware concepts that would support software-managed coherence for one-sided communication on future non-cache-coherent architectures where coherence might be only available in local subdomains but not on a global processor level.
Organizations continue building virtual working teams (Teleworkers) to become more dynamic as part of their strategic innovation, with great benefits to individuals, business and society. However, during such transformations it is important to note that effective knowledge communication is particularly difficult in distributed environments as well as in non-interactive settings, because the interlocutors cannot use gestures or mimicry and have to adapt their expressions without receiving any feedback, which may affect the creation of tacit knowledge. Collective Intelligence appears to be an encouraging alternative for creating knowledge. However, in this scenario it faces an important goal to be achieved, as the degree of ability of two or more individuals increases with the need to overcome barriers through the aggregation of separately processed information, whereby all actors follow similar conditions to participate in the collective. Geographically distributed organizations have the great challenge of managing people’s knowledge, not only to keep operations running, but also to promote innovation within the organization in the creation of new knowledge. The management of knowledge from Collective Intelligence represents a big difference from traditional methods of information allocation, since managing Collective Intelligence poses new requirements. For instance, semantic analysis has to merge information, coming both from the content itself and the social/individual context, and in addition, the social dynamics that emerge online have to be taken into account. This study analyses how knowledge-based organizations working with decentralized staff may need to consider the cognitive styles and social behaviors of individuals participating in their programs to effectively manage knowledge in virtual settings. It also proposes assessment taxonomies to analyze online comportments at the levels of the individual and community, in order to successfully identify characteristics to help evaluate higher effectiveness of communication. We aim at modeling measurement patterns to identify effective ways of interaction of individuals, taking into consideration their cognitive and social behaviors.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Funktion verschiedener Bibelbezüge im Romanwerk Theodor Fontanes untersucht. Dabei wird die These vertreten, dass Fontanes Verweise auf biblische Texte nicht etwa bloß als theologische Positionierungen zu lesen seien, sondern dass er die Bibel als Speicher an kulturellem Wissen in Form von Narrativen, Personen, Geflügelten Worten etc. begreift, den er in seiner Leserschaft voraussetzen kann und durch den er Themen wie Normativität und Diskursivität mit einer besonderen Tiefe in der Spannung von Text und Prätext verhandeln kann. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung stehen dabei Verwendungen von Bibelbezügen als hochkommunikative Diskursschablonen für poetologische Selbstreflexionen sowie für politische oder frömmigkeits-praktische Kontroversen.
The dynamics of fragmentation and vibration of molecular systems with a large number of coupled degrees of freedom are key aspects for understanding chemical reactivity and properties. Here we present a resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) study to show how it is possible to break down such a complex multidimensional problem into elementary components. Local multimode nuclear wave packets created by X-ray excitation to different core-excited potential energy surfaces (PESs) will act as spatial gates to selectively probe the particular ground-state vibrational modes and, hence, the PES along these modes. We demonstrate this principle by combining ultra-high resolution RIXS measurements for gas-phase water with state-of-the-art simulations.
The large variety of atmospheric circulation systems affecting the eastern Asian climate is reflected by the complex Asian vegetation distribution. Particularly in the transition zones of these circulation systems, vegetation is supposed to be very sensitive to climate change. Since proxy records are scarce, hitherto a mechanistic understanding of the past spatio-temporal climate-vegetation relationship is lacking. To assess the Holocene vegetation change and to obtain an ensemble of potential mid-Holocene biome distributions for eastern Asia, we forced the diagnostic biome model BIOME4 with climate anomalies of different transient Holocene climate simulations performed in coupled atmosphere-ocean(-vegetation) models. The simulated biome changes are compared with pollen-based biome records for different key regions.
In all simulations, substantial biome shifts during the last 6000 years are confined to the high northern latitudes and the monsoon-westerly wind transition zone, but the temporal evolution and amplitude of change strongly depend on the climate forcing. Large parts of the southern tundra are replaced by taiga during the mid-Holocene due to a warmer growing season and the boreal treeline in northern Asia is shifted northward by approx. 4 degrees in the ensemble mean, ranging from 1.5 to 6 degrees in the individual simulations, respectively. This simulated treeline shift is in agreement with pollen-based reconstructions from northern Siberia. The desert fraction in the transition zone is reduced by 21% during the mid-Holocene compared to pre-industrial due to enhanced precipitation. The desert-steppe margin is shifted westward by 5 degrees (1-9 degrees in the individual simulations). The forest biomes are expanded north-westward by 2 degrees, ranging from 0 to 4 degrees in the single simulations. These results corroborate pollen-based reconstructions indicating an extended forest area in north-central China during the mid-Holocene. According to the model, the forest-to-non-forest and steppe-to-desert changes in the climate transition zones are spatially not uniform and not linear since the mid-Holocene.
The right to privacy in the digital age generates new challenges for the international jurisdiction. The following article deals with such challenges. Therefore it firstly defines the term of privacy in general and presents an international legal framework. With whisteblower Snowden a huge political discourse was initiated and the article gives insights into its further development. In 2015 the Human Rights Council for the first time announced a special rapporteur on the right to privacy. However, the discourse is not only taking place on a political level, also civil society organizations advocate more stringent regulations and prosecutions against violations of the right to privacy. Moreover the importance of the technology sector becomes clear. Companies like Microsoft are increasingly taking responsibility to protect digital media against unjustified data misuse, surveillance, collection and storage. But whereas the IT sector is developing very quickly, legislative processes do so rather slowly. Lastly, the individual is also hold to account. To protect oneself against data misuse is to a great extent acting self-responsible. Still, therefore information on protection must be clear and accessible for everyone.
Background: Rodents of the genus Rattus are among the most pervasive and successful invasive species, causing major vicissitudes in native ecological communities. A broad and flexible generalist diet has been suggested as key to the invasion success of Rattus spp. Here, we use an indirect approach to better understand foraging niche width, plasticity, and overlap within and between introduced Rattus spp. in anthropogenic habitats and natural humid forests of Madagascar.
Results: Based on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values measured in hair samples of 589 individual rodents, we found that Rattus rattus had an extremely wide foraging niche, encompassing the isotopic space covered by a complete endemic forest-dwelling Malagasy small mammal community. Comparisons of Bayesian standard ellipses, as well as (multivariate) mixed-modeling analyses, revealed that the stable isotope niche of R. rattus tended to change seasonally and differed between natural forests and anthropogenic habitats, indicating plasticity in feeding niches. In co-occurrence, R. rattus and Rattus norvegicus partitioned feeding niches. Isotopic mismatch of signatures of individual R. rattus and the habitat in which they were captured, indicate frequent dispersal movements for this species between natural forest and anthropogenic habitats.
Conclusions: Since R. rattus are known to transmit a number of zoonoses, potentially affecting communities of endemic small mammals, as well as humans, these movements presumably increase transmission potential. Our results suggest that due to their generalist diet and potential movement between natural forest and anthropogenic habitats, Rattus spp. might affect native forest-dependent Malagasy rodents as competitors, predators, and disease vectors. The combination of these effects helps explain the invasion success of Rattus spp. and the detrimental effects of this genus on the endemic Malagasy rodent fauna.
The thesis focuses on the inter-departmental coordination of adaptation and mitigation of demographic change in East Germany. All Eastern German States (Länder) have set up inter-departmental committees (IDCs) that are expected to deliver joint strategies to tackle demographic change. IDCs provide an organizational setting for potential positive coordination, i.e. a joint approach to problem solving that pools and utilizes the expertise of many departments in a constructive manner from the very beginning. Whether they actually achieve positive coordination is contested within the academic debate. This motivates the first research question of this thesis: Do IDCs achieve positive coordination?
Interdepartmental committees and their role in horizontal coordination within the core executive triggered interest among scholars already more than fifty years ago. However, we don’t know much about their actual importance for the inter-departmental preparation of cross-cutting policies. Until now, few studies can be found that analyzes inter-departmental committees in a comparative way trying to identify whether they achieve positive coordination and what factors shape the coordination process and output of IDCs.
Each IDC has a chair organization that is responsible for managing the interactions within the IDCs. The chair organization is important, because it organizes and structures the overall process of coordination in the IDC. Consequently, the chair of an IDC serves as the main boundary-spanner and therefore has remarkable influence by arranging meetings and the work schedule or by distributing internal roles. Interestingly, in the German context we find two organizational approaches: while some states decided to put a line department (e.g. Department of Infrastructure) in charge of managing the IDC, others rely on the State Chancelleries, i.e. the center of government.
This situation allows for comparative research design that can address the role of the State Chancellery in inter-departmental coordination of cross-cutting policies. This is relevant, because the role of the center is crucial when studying coordination within central government. The academic debate on the center of government in the German politico-administrative system is essentially divided into two camps. One camp claims that the center can improve horizontal coordination and steer cross-cutting policy-making more effectively, while the other camp points to limits to central coordination due to departmental autonomy. This debate motivates the second research question of this thesis: Does the State Chancellery as chair organization achieve positive coordination in IDCs?
The center of government and its role in the German politic-administrative system has attracted academic attention already in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a research desiderate regarding the center’s role during the inter-departmental coordination process. There are only few studies that explicitly analyze centers of government and their role in coordination of cross-cutting policies, although some single case studies have been published. This gap in the academic debate will be addressed by the answer to the second research question.
The dependent variable of this study is the chair organization of IDCs. The value of this variable is dichotomous: either an IDC is chaired by a Line department or by a State Chancellery. We are interested whether this variable has an effect on two dependent variables. First, we will analyze the coordination process, i.e. interaction among bureaucrats within the IDC. Second, the focus of this thesis will be on the coordination result, i.e. the demography strategies that are produced by the respective IDCs.
In terms of the methodological approach, this thesis applies a comparative case study design based on a most-similar-systems logic. The German Federalism is quite suitable for such designs. Since the institutional framework largely is the same across all states, individual variables and their effect can be isolated and plausibly analyzed. To further control for potential intervening variables, we will limit our case selection to states located in East Germany, because the demographic situation is most problematic in the Eastern part of Germany, i.e. there is a equal problem pressure. Consequently, we will analyze five cases: Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt (line department) and Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony (State Chancellery).
There is no grand coordination theory that is ready to be applied to our case studies. Therefore, we need to tailor our own approach. Our assumption is that the individual chair organization has an effect on the coordination process and output of IDCs, although all cases are embedded in the same institutional setting, i.e. the German politico-administrative system. Therefore, we need an analytical approach than incorporates institutionalist and agency-based arguments. Therefore, this thesis will utilize Actor-Centered Institutionalism (ACI). Broadly speaking, ACI conceptualizes actors’ behavior as influenced - but not fully determined - by institutions. Since ACI is rather abstract we need to adapt it for the purpose of this thesis. Line Departments and State Chancelleries will be modeled as distinct actors with different action orientations and capabilities to steer the coordination process. However, their action is embedded within the institutional context of governments, which we will conceptualize as being comprised of regulative (formal rules) and normative (social norms) elements.