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Cities can be severely affected by climate change. Hence, many of them have started to develop climate adaptation strategies or implement measures to help prepare for the challenges it will present. This study aims to provide an overview of climate adaptation in 104 German cities. While existing studies on adaptation tracking rely heavily on self-reported data or the mere existence of adaptation plans, we applied the broader concept of adaptation readiness, considering five factors and a total of twelve different indicators, when making our assessments. We clustered the cities depending on the contribution of these factors to the overall adaptation readiness index and grouped them according to their total score and cluster affiliations. This resulted in us identifying four groups of cities. First, a pioneering group comprises twelve (mainly big) cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, which showed high scores for all five factors of adaptation readiness. Second, a set of 36 active cities, which follow different strategies on how to deal with climate adaptation. Third, a group of 28 cities showed considerably less activity toward climate adaptation, while a fourth set of 28 mostly small cities (with between 50,000 and 99,999 inhabitants) scored the lowest. We consider this final group to be pursuing a 'wait-and-see' approach. Since the city size correlates with the adaptation readiness index, we recommend policymakers introduce funding schemes that focus on supporting small cities, to help them prepare for the impact of a changing climate.
Many researchers and politicians believe that the COVID-19 crisis may have opened a "window of opportunity " to spur sustainability transformations. Still, evidence for such a dynamic is currently lacking. Here, we propose the linkage of "big data " and "thick data " methods for monitoring debates on transformation processes by following the COVID-19 discourse on ecological sustainability in Germany. We analysed variations in the topics discussed by applying text mining techniques to a corpus with 84,500 newspaper articles published during the first COVID-19 wave. This allowed us to attain a unique and previously inaccessible "bird's eye view " of how these topics evolved. To deepen our understanding of prominent frames, a qualitative content analysis was undertaken. Furthermore, we investigated public awareness by analysing online search behaviour. The findings show an underrepresentation of sustainability topics in the German news during the early stages of the crisis. Similarly, public awareness regarding climate change was found to be reduced. Nevertheless, by examining the newspaper data in detail, we found that the pandemic is often seen as a chance for sustainability transformations-but not without a set of challenges. Our mixed-methods approach enabled us to bridge knowledge gaps between qualitative and quantitative research by "thickening " and providing context to data-driven analyses. By monitoring whether or not the current crisis is seen as a chance for sustainability transformations, we provide insights for environmental policy in times of crisis.
Following stroke, neuronal death takes place both in the infarct region and in brain areas distal to the lesion site including the hippocampus. The hippocampus is critically involved in learning and memory processes and continuously generates new neurons. Dysregulation of adult neurogenesis may be associated with cognitive decline after a stroke lesion. In particular, proliferation of precursor cells and the formation of new neurons are increased after lesion. Within the first week, many new precursor cells die during development. How dying precursors are removed from the hippocampus and to what extent phagocytosis takes place after stroke is still not clear. Here, we evaluated the effect of a prefrontal stroke lesion on the phagocytic activity of microglia in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. Three-months-old C57BL/6J mice were injected once with the proliferation marker BrdU (250 mg/kg) 6 hr after a middle cerebral artery occlusion or sham surgery. The number of apoptotic cells and the phagocytic capacity of the microglia were evaluated by means of immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, and 3D-reconstructions. We found a transient but significant increase in the number of apoptotic cells in the DG early after stroke, associated with impaired removal by microglia. Interestingly, phagocytosis of newly generated precursor cells was not affected. Our study shows that a prefrontal stroke lesion affects phagocytosis of apoptotic cells in the DG, a region distal to the lesion core. Whether disturbed phagocytosis might contribute to inflammatory- and maladaptive processes including cognitive impairment following stroke needs to be further investigated.
Tropical cyclones range among the costliest disasters on Earth. Their economic repercussions along the supply and trade network also affect remote economies that are not directly affected. We here simulate possible global repercussions on consumption for the example case of Hurricane Sandy in the US (2012) using the shock-propagation model Acclimate. The modeled shock yields a global three-phase ripple: an initial production demand reduction and associated consumption price decrease, followed by a supply shortage with increasing prices, and finally a recovery phase. Regions with strong trade relations to the US experience strong magnitudes of the ripple. A dominating demand reduction or supply shortage leads to overall consumption gains or losses of a region, respectively. While finding these repercussions in historic data is challenging due to strong volatility of economic interactions, numerical models like ours can help to identify them by approaching the problem from an exploratory angle, isolating the effect of interest. For this, our model simulates the economic interactions of over 7000 regional economic sectors, interlinked through about 1.8 million trade relations. Under global warming, the wave-like structures of the economic response to major hurricanes like the one simulated here are likely to intensify and potentially overlap with other weather extremes.
Der Band versammelt verschiedenen Beiträge, die sich mit dem Leben und Werk von Peter Weiss auseinandersetzen. Die Beiträge wurden auf der Konferenz "Peter Weiss - 100" anläßlich des hundertsten Geburtstages des Autors im Jahre 2016 in Potsdam gehalten. Dabei wirkten unterschiedliche Einrichtungen und Institutionen erstmals gemeinsam im Geburtsort des Künstlers.
Climate change entails an intensification of extreme weather events that can potentially trigger socioeconomic and energy system disruptions. As we approach 1 degrees C of global warming we should start learning from historical extremes and explicitly incorporate such events in integrated climate-economy and energy systems models.
After the United Kingdom has left the European Union it remains unclear whether the two parties can successfully negotiate and sign a trade agreement within the transition period. Ongoing negotiations, practical obstacles and resulting uncertainties make it highly unlikely that economic actors would be fully prepared to a “no-trade-deal” situation. Here we provide an economic shock simulation of the immediate aftermath of such a post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario by computing the time evolution of more than 1.8 million interactions between more than 6,600 economic actors in the global trade network. We find an abrupt decline in the number of goods produced in the UK and the EU. This sudden output reduction is caused by drops in demand as customers on the respective other side of the Channel incorporate the new trade restriction into their decision-making. As a response, producers reduce prices in order to stimulate demand elsewhere. In the short term consumers benefit from lower prices but production value decreases with potentially severe socio-economic consequences in the longer term.
After the United Kingdom has left the European Union it remains unclear whether the two parties can successfully negotiate and sign a trade agreement within the transition period. Ongoing negotiations, practical obstacles and resulting uncertainties make it highly unlikely that economic actors would be fully prepared to a “no-trade-deal” situation. Here we provide an economic shock simulation of the immediate aftermath of such a post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario by computing the time evolution of more than 1.8 million interactions between more than 6,600 economic actors in the global trade network. We find an abrupt decline in the number of goods produced in the UK and the EU. This sudden output reduction is caused by drops in demand as customers on the respective other side of the Channel incorporate the new trade restriction into their decision-making. As a response, producers reduce prices in order to stimulate demand elsewhere. In the short term consumers benefit from lower prices but production value decreases with potentially severe socio-economic consequences in the longer term.
Specialized glial subtypes provide support to developing and functioning neural networks. Astrocytes modulate information processing by neurotransmitter recycling and release of neuromodulatory substances, whereas ensheathing glial cells have not been associated with neuromodulatory functions yet. To decipher a possible role of ensheathing glia in neuronal information processing, we screened for glial genes required in the Drosophila central nervous system for normal locomotor behavior. Shopper encodes a mitochondrial sulfite oxidase that is specifically required in ensheathing glia to regulate head bending and peristalsis. shopper mutants show elevated sulfite levels affecting the glutamate homeostasis which then act on neuronal network function. Interestingly, human patients lacking the Shopper homolog SUOX develop neurological symptoms, including seizures. Given an enhanced expression of SUOX by oligodendrocytes, our findings might indicate that in both invertebrates and vertebrates more than one glial cell type may be involved in modulating neuronal activity.
Specialized glial subtypes provide support to developing and functioning neural networks. Astrocytes modulate information processing by neurotransmitter recycling and release of neuromodulatory substances, whereas ensheathing glial cells have not been associated with neuromodulatory functions yet. To decipher a possible role of ensheathing glia in neuronal information processing, we screened for glial genes required in the Drosophila central nervous system for normal locomotor behavior. Shopper encodes a mitochondrial sulfite oxidase that is specifically required in ensheathing glia to regulate head bending and peristalsis. shopper mutants show elevated sulfite levels affecting the glutamate homeostasis which then act on neuronal network function. Interestingly, human patients lacking the Shopper homolog SUOX develop neurological symptoms, including seizures. Given an enhanced expression of SUOX by oligodendrocytes, our findings might indicate that in both invertebrates and vertebrates more than one glial cell type may be involved in modulating neuronal activity.