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For a comprehensive understanding of evolutionary processes and for providing reliable prognoses about the future consequences of environmental change, it is essential to reveal the genetic basis underlying adaptive responses. The importance of this goal increases in light of ongoing climate change, which confronts organisms worldwide with new selection pressures and requires rapid evolutionary change to avoid local extinction. Thereby, freshwater ectotherms like daphnids are particularly threatened. Unraveling the genetic basis of local adaptation is complicated by the interplay of forces affecting patterns of genetic divergence among populations. Due to their key position in freshwater communities, cyclic parthenogenetic mode of reproduction and resting propagules (which form biological archives), daphnids are particularly suited for this purpose.
The aim of this thesis was to assess the impact of local thermal selection on the Daphnia longispina complex and to reveal the underlying genetic loci. Therefore, I compared genetic differentiation among populations containing Daphnia galeata, Daphnia longispina and their interspecific hybrids across time, space, and species boundaries. I revealed strongly contrasting patterns of genetic differentiation between selectively neutral and functional candidate gene markers, between the two species, and among samples from different lakes, suggesting (together with a correlation with habitat temperatures) local thermal selection acting on candidate gene TRY5F and indicating adaptive introgression. To reveal the candidate genes’ impact on fitness, I performed association analyses among data on genotypes and phenotypic traits of D. galeata clones from seven populations. The tests revealed a general temperature effect as well as inter-population differences in phenotypic traits and imply a possible contribution of the candidate genes to life-history traits. Finally, utilizing a combined population transcriptomic and reverse ecology approach, I introduced a methodology with a wide range of applications in evolutionary biology and revealed that local thermal selection was probably a minor force in shaping sequence and gene expression divergence among four D. galeata populations, but contributed to sequence divergence among two populations. I identified many transcripts possibly under selection or contributing strongly to population divergence, a large amount thereof putatively under local thermal selection, and showed that genetic and gene expression variation is not depleted specifically in temperature-related candidate genes.
In conclusion, I detected signs of local adaptation in the D. longispina complex across space, time, and species barriers. Populations and species remained genetically divergent, although increased gene flow possibly contributed, together with genotypes recruited from the resting egg bank, to the maintenance of standing genetic variation. Further work is required to accurately determine the influence of introgression and the effects of candidate genes on individual fitness. While I found no evidence suggesting a response to intense local thermal selection, the high resilience and adaptive potential regarding environmental change I observed suggest positive future prospects for the populations of the D. longispina complex. However, overall, due to the continuing environmental degradation, daphnids and other aquatic invertebrates remain vulnerable and threatened.
The presence of anthropogenic chemicals in the natural environment may impact both habitats and human use of natural resources. In particular the contamination of aquatic resources by organic compounds used as pharmaceuticals or household chemicals has become evident. The newly identified environmental pollutants, also known as micropollutants, often have i) unknown ecotoxicological impacts, ii) unknown partitioning mechanisms, e.g. sorption to sediments, and iii) limited regulation to control their emission. Furthermore, like any compound, micropollutants can be transformed while in the environmental matrix to unknown transformation products (TPs), which add to the number of unknown chemicals to consider and thus increase the complexity of risk management. Transformation is at the same time a natural mechanism for the removal of anthropogenic compounds, either by complete degradation (mineralisation) or to innocuous TPs. However, how transformation occurs in real-world conditions is still largely unknown. During the transport of micropollutants from household wastewater to surface water, a large amount of transformation can occur during wastewater treatment—specifically during biological nitrifying–denitrifying treatment processes. The thesis considers the systematic optimisation of laboratory investigative techniques, application of sensitive mass-spectrometry-based analysis techniques and the monitoring of full-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to elucidate transformation processes of five known micropollutants.
The first of the five compounds investigated was the antibiotic trimethoprim. Incubation experiments were conducted at different analyte spike concentrations and different sludge to wastewater ratios. Using high-resolution mass spectrometry, a total of six TPs were identified from trimethoprim. The types of TPs formed was clearly influenced by the spike concentration. To the best of our knowledge, such impacts have not been previously described in the literature. Beginning from the lower spike concentration, a relatively stable final TP was formed (2,4-diaminopyrimidine-5-carboxylic acid, DAPC), which could account for almost all of the transformed trimethoprim quantity. The results were compared to the process in a reference reactor. Both by the detection of TPs (e.g., DAPC) and by modelling the removal kinetics, it could be concluded that only experimental results at the low spike concentrations mirrored the real reactor. The limits of using elevated spike concentrations in incubation experiments could thus be shown.
Three phenolic micropollutants, the antiseptic ortho-phenylphenol (OPP), the plastics additive bisphenol A (BPA) and the psychoactive drug dextrorphan were investigated with regard to the formation of potentially toxic, nitrophenolic TPs. Nitrite is an intermediate in the nitrification– denitrification process occurring in activated sludge and was found to cause nitration of these phenols. To elucidate the processes, incubation experiments were conducted in purified water in the presence of nitrite with OPP as the test substance. The reactive species HNO2, N2O3 and the radicals ·NO and ·NO2 were likely involved as indicated by scavenger experiments. In conditions found at WWTPs the wastewater is usually at neutral pH, and nitrite, being an intermediate, usually has a low concentration. By conducting incubation experiments inoculated with sludge from a conventional WWTP, it was found that the three phenolic micropollutants, OPP, BPA and dextrorphan were quickly transformed to biological TPs. Nitrophenolic TPs were only formed after artificial increase of the nitrite concentration or lowering of the pH. However, nitrophenolic-TPs can be formed as sample preparation artefacts through acidification or freezing for preservation, creating optimal conditions for the reaction to take place.
The final micropollutant to be studied was the pain-reliever diclofenac, a micropollutant on the EU-watch list due to ecotoxicological effects on rainbow trout. The transformation was compared in two different treatment systems, one employing a reactor with suspended carriers as a biofilm growth surface, while the other system employed conventional activated sludge. In the biofilm-based system, the pathway was found to produce many TPs each at relatively low concentration, many of which were intermediate TPs that were further degraded to unknown tertiary TPs. In the conventional activated sludge system some of the same reactions took place but all at much slower rates. The main difference between the two systems was due to different reaction rates rather than different transformation pathways. The municipal WWTPs were monitored to verify these results. In the biofilm system, a 10-day monitoring campaign confirmed an 88% removal of diclofenac and the formation of the same TPs as those observed in the laboratory experiments. The proposed environmental quality standard of 0.05 μg/L might thus be met without the need for additional treatment processes such as activated carbon filtration or ozonation.
Coordination and awareness mechanisms are important in systems for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and traditional groupware systems. It has been a key focus of research into collaborative groupware and its capability to enable people to efficiently collaborate and coordinate work. Until now, no classification of the mechanisms has been undertaken to identify commonalities and differences in coordination and awareness mechanisms and to show their significance in collaborative environments. In addition, there is a little investigation of coordination and awareness mechanisms in new forms of groupware such as socially enabled Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS). Indeed, both in science and in practices, ECS incorporating social software have become increasingly important. Based on the combination of traditional groupware and social software, ECS also include coordination and awareness mechanisms that may simplify collaboration, but these have not yet been investigated.
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to identify coordination and awareness mechanisms in the academic literature to provide a general overview of those mechanisms examples. Additionally, this thesis aims to classify the mechanism examples. Based on a deep literature analysis, concepts described in literature are chosen and applied with the intension to analyse the mechanisms and to reach a classification. Based on the classification of the identified mechanisms their commonalities and differences are examined and described to gain a better understanding of them. For illustration purpose, examples of coordination and awareness mechanisms and their application are portrayed. The mechanisms examples refer to the classification groups derived. The selection of the mechanisms for the visualization is based on significant differences in their functionality. Subsequently, the selected mechanisms, more based on traditional groupware, are checked to a limited extend whether they can be found in socially enabled ECS. The collaborative platform of IBM Connections serves as a practical example of ECS incorporating social software. IBM Connections is used at the University of Koblenz to run the platform "UniConnect". On the platform it is investigated which of the identified mechanisms examples of the literature are applied in IBM Connections and which additional mechanisms are created by users. This work is the first step in the study of coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially-enabled ECS. In addition, it is expected to detect new mechanisms which are used while the social factor to collaborative work is new.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine and collect coordination and awareness mechanisms examples in literature to analyse them. Additionally, the purpose is to provide a first overview of mechanisms and to classify them by investigating their commonalities. Beside this thesis should give incentive for further investigations to investigate coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially integrated ECS.
Grassland management has been increasingly intensified throughout centuries since mankind started to control and modify the landscape. Species communities were always shaped alongside management changes leading to huge alterations in species richness and diversity up to the point where land use intensity exceeded the threshold. Since then biodiversity became increasingly lost. Today, global biodiversity and especially grassland biodiversity is pushed beyond its boundaries. Policymakers and conservationists seek for management options which fulfill the requirements of agronomic interests as well as biodiversity conservation alongside with the maintenance of ecosystem processes. However, there is and will always be a trade-off.
Earlier in history, natural circumstances in a landscape mainly determined regionally adapted land use. These regional adaptions shaped islands for many specialist species, and thus diverse species communities, favoring the establishment of a high β-diversity. With the raising food demand, these regional and traditional management regimes became widely unprofitable, and the invention of mineral fertilizers ultimately led to a wide homogenization of grassland management and, as follows, the loss of biotic heterogeneity. In the course of the green revolution, this immediate coherence and the dependency between grassland biodiversity and traditional land use practices becomes increasingly noticed. Indeed, some traditional forms of management such as meadow irrigation have been preserved in a few regions and thus give us the opportunity to directly investigate their long-term relevance for the species communities and ecosystem processes. Traditional meadow irrigation was a common management practice to improve productivity in lowland, but also alpine hay meadows throughout Europe until the 20th century. Nowadays, meadow irrigation is only practiced as a relic in a few remnant areas. In parts of the Queichwiesen meadows flood irrigation goes back to the Middle Ages, which makes them a predestined as a model region to study the long- and short-term effects of lowland meadow irrigation on the biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
Our study pointed out the conservation value of traditional meadow irrigation for the preservation of local species communities as well as the plant diversity at the landscape scale. The structurally more complex irrigated meadows lead to the assumption of a higher arthropod diversity (Orthodoptera, Carabidae, Araneae), which could not be detected. However, irrigated meadows are a significant habitat for moisture dependent arthropod species. In the light of the agronomic potential, flood irrigation could be a way to at least reduce fertilizer costs to a certain degree and possibly prevent overfertilization pulses which are necessarily hazardous to non-target ecosystems. Still, the reestablishment of flood irrigation in formerly irrigated meadows, or even the establishment of new irrigation systems needs ecological and economic evaluation dependent on regional circumstances and specific species communities, at which this study could serve as a reference point.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of addressable, physical objects that contain embedded sensing, communication and actuating technologies to sense and interact with their environment (Geschickter 2015). Like every novel paradigm, the IoT sparks interest throughout all domains both in theory and practice, resulting in the development of systems pushing technology to its limits. These limits become apparent when having to manage an increasing number of Things across various contexts. A plethora of IoT architecture proposals have been developed and prototype products, such as IoT platforms, been introduced. However, each of these architectures and products apply their very own interpretations of an IoT architecture and its individual components so that IoT is currently more an Intranet of Things than an Internet of Things (Zorzi et al. 2010). Thus, this thesis aims to develop a common understanding of the elements forming an IoT architecture and provide high-level specifications in the form of a Holistic IoT Architecture Framework.
Design Science Research (DSR) is used in this thesis to develop the architecture framework based on the pertinent literature. The development of the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework includes the identification of two new IoT Architecture Perspectives that became apparent during the analysis of the IoT architecture proposals identified in the extant literature. While applying these novel perspectives, the need for a new component for the architecture framework, which was merely implicitly mentioned in the literature, became obvious as well. The components of various IoT architecture proposals as well as the novel component, the Thing Management System, were combined, consolidated and related to each other to develop the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework. Subsequently, it was shown that the specifications of the architecture framework are suitable to guide the implementation of a prototype.
This contribution provides a common understanding of the basic building blocks, actors and relations of an IoT architecture.
Mapping ORM to TGraph
(2017)
Object Role Modeling (ORM) is a semantic modeling language used to describe objects and their relations amongst each other. Both objects and relations may be subject to rules or ORM constraints.
TGraphs are ordered, attributed, typed and directed graphs. The type of a TGraph and its components, the edges and vertices, is defined using the schema language graph UML (grUML), a profiled version of UML class diagrams. The goal of this thesis is to map ORM schemas to grUML schemas in order to be able to represent ORM schema instances as TGraphs.
Up to this point, the preferred representation for ORM schema instances is in form of relational tables. Though mappings from ORM schemas to relational schemas exist, those publicly available do not support most of the constraints ORM has to offer.
Constraints can be added to grUML schemas using the TGraph query language GReQL, which can efficiently check whether a TGraph validates the constraint or not. The graph library JGraLab provides efficient implementations of TGraphs and their query language GReQL and supports the generation of grUML schemas.
The first goal of this work is to perform a complete mapping from ORM schemas to grUML schemas, using GReQL to sepcify constraints. The second goal is to represent ORM instances in form of TGraphs.
This work gives an overview of ORM, TGraphs, grUML and GReQL and the theoretical mapping from ORM schemas to grUML schemas. It also describes the implementation of this mapping, deals with the representation of ORM schema instances as TGraphs and the question how grUML constraints can be validated.
Natural pest control and pollination are important ecosystem services for agriculture. They can be supported by organic farming and by seminatural habitats at the local and landscape scale.
The potential of seminatural habitats to support predatory flies (chapters 2 and 3) and bees(chapter 7) at the local and landscape scale was investigated in seminatural habitats. Predatory flies were more abundant in woody habitats and positively related to landscape complexity. The diversity and the abundance of honey and wild bees were positively related to the supply of flowers offered in the seminatural habitats.
The influence of organic farming, adjacent seminatural habitats and landscape complexity on pest control (chapter 4) and pollination (chapter 6) was investigated in 18 pumpkin fields. Organic farming lacked strong effects both on the pest control and on the pollination of pumpkin.
Pest control is best supported at the local scale by the flower abundance in the adjacent habitat. The flower supply positively affected the density of natural enemies and tended to reduce aphid densities in pumpkin fields.
Pumpkin provides a striking example for a dominant role of wild pollinators for pollination success, because bumble bees are the key pollinators of pumpkin in Germany, despite a higher visitation frequency of honey bees. Pollination is best supported by landscape complexity. Bumble bee visits and as a result pollen delivery in pumpkin were negatively related to the dominance of agricultural land in the surrounding landscape.
The influence of aphid density (chapter 8) and pollination (chapter 5) on pumpkin yield was evaluated. Pumpkin yields were not affected by aphid densities observed in the pumpkin fields and not limited by pollination at the current levels of bee visitation.
In conclusion, especially seminatural habitats, that provide diverse, continuous floral resources, are important for natural enemies and pollinators. A sufficient proportion of different seminatural habitat types in agricultural landscapes should be maintained and restored. Thereby natural enemies such as predatory flies, wild pollinators such as bumble bees, and the pest control and pollination provided by them can be supported.
The extensive literature in the data visualization field indicates that the process of creating efficient data visualizations requires the data designer to have a large set of skills from different fields (such as computer science, user experience, and business expertise). However, there is a lack of guidance about the visualization process itself. This thesis aims to investigate the different processes for creating data visualizations and develop an integrated framework to guide the process of creating data visualizations that enable the user to create more useful and usable data visualizations. Firstly, existing frameworks in the literature will be identified, analyzed and compared. During this analysis, eight views of the visualization process are developed. These views represent the set of activities which should be done in the visualization process. Then, a preliminary integrated framework is developed based on an analysis of these findings. This new integrated framework is tested in the field of Social Collaboration Analytics on an example from the UniConnect platform. Lastly, the integrated framework is refined and improved based on the results of testing with the help of diagrams, visualizations and textual description. The results show that the visualization process is not a waterfall type. It is the iterative methodology with the certain phases of work, demonstrating how to address the eight views with different levels of stakeholder involvement. The findings are the basis for a visualization process which can be used in future work to develop the fully functional methodology.
The Internet of Things (IoT) recently developed from the far-away vision of ubiquitous computing into very tangible endeavors in politics and economy, implemented in expensive preparedness programs. Experts predict considerable changes in business models that need to be addressed by organizations in order to respond to competition. Although there is a need to develop strategies for upcoming transformations, organizational change literature did not turn to the specific change related to the new technology yet. This work aims at investigating IoT-related organizational change by identifying and classifying different change types. It therefore combines the methodological approach of grounded theory with a discussion and classification of identified change informed by a structured literature review of organizational change literature. This includes a meta-analysis of case studies using a qualitative, exploratory coding approach to identify categories of organizational change related to the introduction of IoT. Furthermore a comparison of the identified categories to former technology-related change is provided using the example of Electronic Business (e-business), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. As a main result, this work develops a comprehensive model of IoT-related business change. The model presents two main themes of change indicating that personal smart things will transform businesses by means of using more personal devices, suggesting and scheduling actions of their users, and trying to avoid hazards. At the same time, the availability of information in organizations will further increase to a state where information is available ubiquitously. This will ultimately enable accessing real time information about objects and persons anytime and from any place. As a secondary result, this work gives an overview on concepts of technology-related organizational change in academic literature.
Key mechanisms for the release of metal(loid)s from a construction material in hydraulic engineering
(2017)
Hydraulic engineering and thus construction materials are necessary to enable the navigability of water ways. Since, a variety of natural as well as artificial materials are used, this materials are world wide tested on a potential release of dangerous substances to prevent adverse effects on the environment. To determine the potential release, it is important to identify and to understand key mechanisms which are decisive for the release of hazardous substances. A limited correlation between the conditions used in regulatory tests and those found in environmental systems is given and hence, often the significance of results from standardised tests on construction materials is questioned, since they are not designed to mimic environmental conditions.
In Germany industrial by-products are used as armour stones in hydraulic engineering. Especially the by-product copper slag is used during the last 40 years for the construction of embankments, groynes and coastal protection. On the one hand, this material has a high density and natural resources (landscape) are protected. One the other hand, the material contains high quantities of metal(loid)s. Therefore the copper slag (product name: iron silicate stones) is very suitable as test material. Metal(loid)s examined were As, Sb and Mo as representatives for (hydr)oxide forming elements and Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb and Zn were studied as representatives for elements forming cations during the release.
Questions addressed in this Thesis were: (i) can we transfer the results from batch experiments to construction scenarios under the prevalent environmental conditions, (ii) which long-term trends exist for the release of metal(loid)s from copper slags and (iii) how environmental conditions influence the leaching of metal(loid)s from water construction materials?
To answer the first question the surface depending release of the metal(loid)s from the construction materials was examined. Therefore, batch leaching experiments with different particle sizes and a constant liquid/solid ratio were performed. In a second step a comparison between different methods for the determination of the specific surface area of armour stones with a 3D laser scanning method as a reference were performed. In a last step it was possible to show that via a roughness factor the results of the specific surface area from small stones, measured with gas adsorption, can be connected with the results from armour stones, determined with an aluminium foil method. Based on calculations of the specific surface area, it was possible to significantly improve catchment scale calculation about the release of metal(loid)s and to evaluate a potential impact of construction materials in hydraulic engineering on the water chemistry of rivers and streams.
To answer the second question long-term leaching diffuse gradient in thin films supported experiments were performed for half a year. Diffuse gradients in thin films (DGT) is an in situ method to passive sample metal(loid)s in water, sediments and soils. They were used as a sink for metal(loid)s in the eluate to provide solution equilibriums. Thus the exchange of the eluent, which is performed normally in long-term experiments, was superfluous and long-term effects under undisturbed conditions were studied. The long-term leaching experiments with DGT have proven to be capable (i) to differentiate between the depletion of the material surface and the solution equilibriums and (ii) to study sorption processes with or without a further release of the analytes. This means for the practically relevant test material copper slag that: (i) the cations Cd, Co, Cu, Ni and Pb are confirmed to be released from the slag over the whole time period of six months, (ii) a surface depletion of Zn was detected, and (iii) that the (hydr)oxide forming elements As, Mo and Sb were released from the slag over the hole periods of six months but the release was masked by adsorption to Fe-oxide colloids, which were formed during the leaching experiments. It was confirmed, that sulphide minerals are the main source for long-term release of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Mo.
To answer the third question short-term leaching experiments simulating environmental conditions in hydraulic engineering were performed. One factor is the salinity. The influence of this parameter was tested in batch experiments with sea salt solution (30 g/l), river Rhine water, ultra pure water and in addition with different NaCl concentration (5, 10, 20 and 30 g/l). In general, the ionic strength is an important factor for the metal(loid) release but the composition of the water (e.g. the HCO3- content) may superimpose this effect. Therefore, the concentrations of the metal(loid)s in the experiments with ultra-pure water spiked with sea salt or native river water and the ultra-pure water spiked with NaCl were significantly different. In a second experiment the influence of the environmental parameters and the interactions between the environmental parameters pH (4–10), sediment content (0 g–3.75 g), temperature (4 °C–36 °C) and ionic strength (0 g/l–30 g/l NaCl) on the release of metal(loid)s from the test material was examined. The statistical Design of Experiments (DoE) was used to study the influence of these factors as well as their interactions. All studied factors may impact the release of metal(loid)s from the test material to the eluent, whereas the release and the partitioning between sediment and eluate of metal(loid)s was impacted by interactions between the studied factors. The main processes were sorption, complexation, solubility, buffering and ion exchange. In addition, by separating the sediment from the slag after the experiments by magnetic separation, the enrichment of metal(loid)s in the sediment was visible. Thus, the sediment was the most important factor for the release of the metal(loid)s, via pH, temperature and ionic strength, because the sediment acted as a sink.