Binaries play an important role in observational and theoretical astrophysics. Since the mass and the chemical composition are key ingredients for stellar evolution, high-resolution spectroscopy is an important and necessary tool to derive those parameters to high confidence in binaries. This involves carefully measured orbital motion by the determination of radial velocity (RV) shifts and sophisticated techniques to derive the abundances of elements within the stellar atmosphere. A technique superior to conventional cross-correlation methods to determine RV shifts in known as spectral disentangling. Hence, a major task of this thesis was the design of a sophisticated software package for this approach. In order to investigate secondary effects, such as flux and line-profile variations, imprinting changes on the spectrum the behavior of spectral disentangling on such variability is a key to understand the derived values, to improve them, and to get information about the variability itself. Therefore, the spectral disentangling code presented in this thesis and available to the community combines multiple advantages: separation of the spectra for detailed chemical analysis, derivation of orbital elements, derivation of individual RVs in order to investigate distorted systems (either by third body interaction or relativistic effects), the suppression of telluric contaminations, the derivation of variability, and the possibility to apply the technique to eclipsing binaries (important for orbital inclination) or in general to systems that undergo flux-variations. This code in combination with the spectral synthesis codes MOOG and SME was used in order to derive the carbon 12C/13C isotope ratio (CIR) of the benchmark binary Capella. The observational result will be set into context with theoretical evolution by the use of MESA models and resolves the discrepancy of theory and observations existing since the first measurement of Capella's CIR in 1976. The spectral disentangling code has been made available to the community and its applicability to completely different behaving systems, Wolf-Rayet stars, have also been investigated and resulted in a published article. Additionally, since this technique relies strongly on data quality, continues development of scientific instruments to achieve best observational data is of great importance in observational astrophysics. That is the reason why there has also been effort in astronomical instrumentation during the work on this thesis.

Software development tools that work and behave consistently across different programming languages are helpful for developers, because they do not have to familiarize themselves with new tooling whenever they decide to use a new language. Also, being able to combine multiple programming languages in a program increases reusability, as developers do not have to recreate software frameworks and libraries in the language they develop in and can reuse existing software instead. However, developers often have a broad choice with regard to tools, some of which are designed for only one specific programming language. Various Integrated Development Environments have support for multiple languages, but are usually unable to provide a consistent programming experience due to different features of language runtimes. Furthermore, common mechanisms that allow reuse of software written in other languages usually use the operating system or a network connection as the abstract layer. Tools, however, often cannot support such indirections well and are therefore less useful in debugging scenarios for example. In this report, we present a novel approach that aims to improve the programming experience with regard to working with multiple high-level programming languages. As part of this approach, we reuse the tools of a Smalltalk programming environment for other languages and build a multi-language virtual execution environment which is able to provide the same runtime capabilities for all languages. The prototype system Squimera is an implementation of our approach and demonstrates that it is possible to reuse development tools, so that they behave in the same way across all supported programming languages. In addition, it provides convenient means to reuse and even mix software libraries and frameworks written in different languages without breaking the debugging experience.

-Jill Rabea Zaun: Eduard Hildebrandts „Wunderbild“ in einem Brief von Alexander von Humboldt an Henriette Mendelssohn, geb. Meyer -Ottmar Ette: Paris/Berlin/Havanna: Alexander von Humboldts transareale Wissenschaft und die Revolution nach der Revolution -Frank Holl: Alexander von Humboldt und der Klimawandel Mythen und Fakten -Cettina Rapisarda: Antike Marmorarten nach Zoёga’s Bestimmungen. Alexander von Humboldts Sammlung und Gesteinsstudien in Rom -Sandra Rebok: De la pintura de viaje a la fotografía: Alexander von Humboldt y la representación artística del Nuevo Mundo -Ingo Schwarz: Der zweite Entdecker Kubas

Rund 40.000 Geflüchtete hat das Land Brandenburg im Zeitraum von 2015 bis 2017 aufgenommen. Viele von ihnen sind aus dem Mittleren Osten und Afrika, teilweise auch aus Russland (Tschetschenien) gekommen. Gefördert vom Bündnis für Brandenburg, haben Forscher des Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums (Universität Potsdam) zahlreiche Gruppeninterviews mit Menschen aus Syrien, Afghanistan, Eritrea und Tschetschenien geführt und einheimische Integrationsexperten befragt. Welche Integrationserfolge, Defizite und kulturellen Differenzen erleben Frauen, Männer, Jugendliche und Kinder aus den genannten Herkunftsländern? Was erschließt ihnen neue Welten, und wo ergeben sich objektive Konflikte? Aus den Ergebnissen der Studie wurden Handlungsempfehlungen für die Landes- und Kommunalpolitik abgeleitet. Alle interviewten Gruppen wünschten sich intensiveren Kontakt zu Einheimischen – eine Chance und Herausforderung zugleich für die hiesige Zivilgesellschaft.