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Vertebrate biodiversity is rapidly decreasing worldwide with amphibians being the most endangered vertebrate group. In the EU, 21 of 89 amphibian species are recognized as being endangered. The intensively used European agricultural landscape is one of the major causes for these declines. As agriculture represents an essential habitat for amphibians, exposure to pesticides can have adverse effects on amphibian populations. Currently, the European risk assessment of pesticides for vertebrates requires specific approaches for fish regarding aquatic vertebrate toxicity and birds as well as mammals for terrestrial vertebrate toxicity but does not address the unique characteristics of amphibians. Therefore, the overall goal of this thesis was to investigate the ecotoxicological effects of pesticides on Central European anuran amphibians. For this, effects on aquatic and terrestrial amphibian life stages as well as on reproduction were investigated. Then, in anticipation of a risk assessment of pesticides for amphibians, this thesis discussed potential regulatory risk assessment approaches.
For the investigated pesticides and amphibian species, it was observed that the acute aquatic toxicity of pesticides can be addressed using the existing aquatic risk assessment approach based on fish toxicity data. However, lethal as well as sublethal effects were observed in terrestrial juveniles after dermal exposure to environmentally realistic pesticide concentrations, which cannot be covered using an existing risk assessment approach. Therefore, pesticides should also be evaluated for potential terrestrial toxicity using risk assessment tools before approval. Additionally, effects of co-formulants and adjuvants of pesticides need specific consideration in a future risk assessment as they can increase toxicity of pesticides to aquatic and terrestrial amphibian stages. The chronic duration of combined aquatic and terrestrial exposure was shown to affect amphibian reproduction. Currently, such effects cannot be captured by the existing risk assessment as data involving field scenarios analysing effects of multiple pesticides on amphibian reproduction are too rare to allow comparison to data of other terrestrial vertebrates such as birds and mammals. In the light of these findings, future research should not only address acute and lethal effects, but also chronic and sublethal effects on a population level. As pesticide exposure can adversely affect amphibian populations, their application should be considered even more carefully to avoid further amphibian declines. Overall, this thesis emphasizes the urgent need for a protective pesticide risk assessment for amphibians to preserve and promote stable amphibian populations in agricultural landscapes.
Human action recognition from a video has received growing attention in computer vision and has made significant progress in recent years. Action recognition is described as a requirement to decide which human actions appear in videos. The difficulties involved in distinguishing human actions are due to the high complexity of human behaviors as well as appearance variation, motion pattern variation, occlusions, etc. Many applications use human action recognition on captured video from cameras, resulting in video surveillance systems, health monitoring, human-computer interaction, and robotics. Action recognition based on RGB-D data has increasingly drawn more attention to it in recent years. RGB-D data contain color (Red, Green, and Blue (RGB)) and depth data that represent the distance from the sensor to every pixel in the object (object point). The main problem that this thesis deals with is how to automate the classification of specific human activities/actions through RGB-D data. The classification process of these activities utilizes a spatial and temporal structure of actions. Therefore, the goal of this work is to develop algorithms that can distinguish these activities by recognizing low-level and high-level activities of interest from one another. These algorithms are developed by introducing new features and methods using RGB-D data to enhance the detection and recognition of human activities. In this thesis, the most popular state-of-the-art techniques are reviewed, presented, and evaluated. From the literature review, these techniques are categorized into hand-crafted features and deep learning-based approaches. The proposed new action recognition framework is based on these two categories that are approved in this work by embedding novel methods for human action recognition. These methods are based on features extracted from RGB-D data that are
evaluated using machine learning techniques. The presented work of this thesis improves human action recognition in two distinct parts. The first part focuses on improving current successful hand-crafted approaches. It contributes into two significant areas of state-of-the-art: Execute the existing feature detectors, and classify the human action in the 3D spatio-temporal domains by testing a new combination of different feature representations. The contributions of this part are tested based on machine learning techniques that include unsupervised and supervised learning to evaluate this suitability for the task of human action recognition. A k-means clustering represents the unsupervised learning technique, while the supervised learning technique is represented by: Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbor, Naive Bayes, and Artificial Neural Networks classifiers. The second part focuses on studying the current deep-learning-based approach and how to use it with RGB-D data for the human action recognition task. As the first step of each contribution, an input video is analyzed as a sequence of frames. Then, pre-processing steps are applied to the video frames, like filtering and smoothing methods to remove the noisy data from each frame. Afterward, different motion detection and feature representation methods are used to extract features presented in each frame. The extracted features
are represented by local features, global features, and feature combination besides deep learning methods, e.g., Convolutional Neural Networks. The feature combination achieves an excellent accuracy performance that outperforms other methods on the same RGB-D datasets. All the results from the proposed methods in this thesis are evaluated based on publicly available datasets, which illustrate that using spatiotemporal features can improve the recognition accuracy. The competitive experimental results are achieved overall. In particular, the proposed methods can be better applied to the test set compared to the state-of-the-art methods using the RGB-D datasets.
Efficient Cochlear Implant (CI) surgery requires prior knowledge of the cochlea’s size and its characteristics. This information helps to select suitable implants for different patients. Registered and fused images helps doctors by providing more informative image that takes advantages of different modalities. The cochlea’s small size and complex structure, in addition to the different resolutions and head positions during imaging, reveals a big challenge for the automated registration of the different image modalities. To obtain an automatic measurement of the cochlea length and the volume size, a segmentation method of cochlea medical images is needed. The goal of this dissertation is to introduce new practical and automatic algorithms for the human cochlea multi-modal 3D image registration, fusion, segmentation and analysis. Two novel methods for automatic cochlea image registration (ACIR) and automatic cochlea analysis (ACA) are introduced. The proposed methods crop the input images to the cochlea part and then align the cropped images to obtain the optimal transformation. After that, this transformation is used to align the original images. ACIR and ACA use Mattes mutual information as similarity metric, the adaptive stochastic gradient descent (ASGD) or the stochastic limited memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (s-LBFGS) optimizer to estimate the parameters of 3D rigid transform. The second stage of nonrigid registration estimates B-spline coefficients that are used in an atlas-model-based segmentation to extract cochlea scalae and the relative measurements of the input image. The image which has segmentation is aligned to the input image to obtain the non-rigid transformation. After that the segmentation of the first image, in addition to point-models are transformed to the input image. The detailed transformed segmentation provides the scala volume size. Using the transformed point-models, the A-value, the central scala lengths, the lateral and the organ of corti scala tympani lengths are computed. The methods have been tested using clinical 3D images of total 67 patients: from Germany (41 patients) and Egypt (26 patients). The atients are of different ages and gender. The number of images used in the experiments is 217, which are multi-modal 3D clinical images from CT, CBCT, and MRI scanners. The proposed methods are compared to the state of the arts ptimizers related medical image registration methods e.g. fast adaptive stochastic gradient descent (FASGD) and efficient preconditioned tochastic gradient descent (EPSGD). The comparison used the root mean squared distance (RMSE) between the ground truth landmarks and the resulted landmarks. The landmarks are located manually by two experts to represent the round window and the top of the cochlea. After obtaining the transformation using ACIR, the landmarks of the moving image are transformed using the resulted transformation and RMSE of the transformed landmarks, and at the same time the fixed image landmarks are computed. I also used the active length of the cochlea implant electrodes to compute the error aroused by the image artifact, and I found out an error ranged from 0.5 mm to 1.12 mm. ACIR method’s RMSE average was 0.36 mm with a standard deviation (SD) of 0.17 mm. The total time average required for registration of an image pair using ACIR was 4.62 seconds with SD of 1.19 seconds. All experiments are repeated 3 times for justifications. Comparing the RMSE of ACIR2017 and ACIR2020 using paired T-test shows no significant difference (p-value = 0.17). The total RMSE average of ACA method was 0.61 mm with a SD of 0.22 mm. The total time average required for analysing an image was 5.21 seconds with SD of 0.93 seconds. The statistical tests show that there is no difference between the results from automatic A-value method and the manual A-value method (p-value = 0.42). There is no difference also between length’s measurements of the left and the right ear sides (p-value > 0.16). Comparing the results from German and Egypt dataset shows there is no difference when using manual or automatic A-value methods (p-value > 0.20). However, there is a significant difference when using ACA2000 method between the German and the Egyptian results (p-value < 0.001). The average time to obtain the segmentation and all measurements was 5.21 second per image. The cochlea scala tympani volume size ranged from 38.98 mm3 to 57.67 mm3 . The combined scala media and scala vestibuli volume size ranged from 34.98 mm 3 to 49.3 mm 3 . The overall volume size of the cochlea should range from 73.96 mm 3 to 106.97 mm 3 . The lateral wall length of scala tympani ranged from 42.93 mm to 47.19 mm. The organ-of-Corti length of scala tympani ranged from 31.11 mm to 34.08 mm. Using the A-value method, the lateral length of scala tympani ranged from 36.69 mm to 45.91 mm. The organ-of-Corti length of scala tympani ranged from 29.12 mm to 39.05 mm. The length from ACA2020 method can be visualised and has a well-defined endpoints. The ACA2020 method works on different modalities and different images despite the noise level or the resolution. In the other hand, the A-value method works neither on MRI nor noisy images. Hence, ACA2020 method may provide more reliable and accurate measurement than the A-value method. The source-code and the datasets are made publicly available to help reproduction and validation of my result.
The role of alternative resources for pollinators and aphid predators in agricultural landscapes
(2021)
The world wide decline of insects is often associated with loss of natural and semi-natural habitat caused by intensified land-use. Many insects provide important ecosystem services to agriculture, such as pest control or pollination. To efficiently promote insects on remaining semi-natural habitat we need precise knowledge of their requirements to non-crop habitat. This thesis focuses on identifying
the most important semi-natural habitats (forest edges, grasslands, and semi-open habitats) for pollinators and natural enemies of crop pests with respect to their food resource requirements. Special
attention is given to floral resources and their spatio-temporal distribution in agricultural landscapes.
Floral resource maps might get closer at characterizing landscapes the way they are experienced by insects compared to classical habitat maps. Performance of the two map types was compared on the prediction of wild bees and natural enemies that consume nectar and pollen, identifying habitats of special importance in the process. In wild bees, influences of spatio-temporal floral resource availability were analysed as well as habitat preferences of specific groups of bees. Understanding dietary needs of natural enemies of crop pests requires additional knowledge on prey use. To this end, ladybird gut contents have been analysed by means of high-throughput sequencing for insight into aphid prey-use.
Results showed, that wild bees were predicted better by floral resource maps compared to classical habitat maps. Forest edge area, as well as floral resources in forest edges had positive effects on abundance and diversity of rare bees and important crop pollinators. Similar patterns were retained for grassland diversity. Especially early floral resources seemed to have positive effects on wild bees. Crops and fruit trees produced a resource pulse in April that exceeded floral resource availability in May and June by tenfold. Most floral resources in forest edges appeared early in the season, with the highest floral density per area. Grasslands provided the lowest amount of floral resources but highest diversity, which was evenly distributed over the season.
Despite natural enemies need for floral resources, classical habitat maps performed better at predicting natural enemies of crop pests compared to floral resource maps. Classical habitat maps revealed a positive effect of forest edge habitat on the abundance of pest enemies, which translated into improved aphid control. Results from gut content analysis reveal high portions of pest aphid species and nettle aphids as well as a broader insight into prey spectra retained from ladybirds collected from sticky traps compared to individuals collected by hand. The aphid specific primer designed for this purpose will be helpful for identifying aphid consumption by ladybirds in future studies.
Findings of this thesis show the potential of floral resource maps for understanding interactions of wild bees and the landscape but also indicate that natural enemies are limited by other resources. I would like to highlight the positive effects of forest edges for different groups of bees as well as natural enemies and their performance on pest control.
Over the past few decades, Single-Particle Analysis (SPA), in combination with cryo-transmission electron microscopy, has evolved into one of the leading technologies for structural analysis of biological macromolecules. It allows the investigation of biological structures in a close to native state at the molecular level. Within the last five years the achievable resolution of SPA surpassed 2°A and is now approaching atomic resolution, which so far has only been possible with Xray crystallography in a far from native environment. One remaining problem of Cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) is the weak image contrast. Since the introduction of cryo-EM in the 1980s phase plates have been investigated as a potential tool to overcome these contrast limitations. Until now, technical problems and instrumental deficiencies have made the use of phase plates difficult; an automated workflow, crucial for the acquisition of 1000s of micrographs needed for SPA, was not possible. In this thesis, a new Zernike-type Phase Plate (PP) was developed and investigated. Freestanding metal films were used as a PP material to overcome the ageing and contamination problems of standard carbon-based PPs. Several experiments, evaluating and testing various metals, ended with iridium as the best-suited material. A thorough investigation of the properties of iridium PP followed in the second part of this thesis. One key outcome is a new operation mode, the rocking PP. By using this rocking-mode, fringing artifacts, another obstacle of Zernike PPs, could be solved. In the last part of this work, acquisition and reconstruction of SPA data of apoferritin was performed using the iridium PP in rocking-mode. A special semi-automated workflow for the acquisition of PP data was developed and tested. The recorded PP data was compared to an additional reference dataset without a PP, acquired following a conventional workflow.
SUMMARY
Buildings and infrastructures characterize the appearance of our cultural landscapes and provide essential services for the human society. However, they inevitably impact the natural environment e.g. by the structural change of habitats. Additionally, they potentially cause further negative environmental impacts due to the release of chemical substances from construction materials. Galvanic anodes and organic coatings regularly used for corrosion protection of steel structures are building materials of particular importance for the transport infrastructure. In direct contact with a water body or indirectly via the runoff after rainfall, numerous chemicals can be released into the environment and pose a risk to aquatic organisms. Up to now, there is no uniform investigation and evaluation approach for the assessment of the environmental compatibility of building products. Furthermore, galvanic anodes and organic coatings pose particular challenges for their ecotoxicological characterization due to their composition. Therefore, the objective of the presented thesis was the ecotoxicological assessment of emissions from galvanic anodes and protective coatings as well as the development of standardized assessment procedures for these materials.
The possible environmental hazard posed by the use of anodes on offshore installations was investigated on three trophic levels. To ensure a realistic and reliable evaluation, the experiments were carried out in natural seawater and under natural pH conditions. Moreover, the anode material and its main components zinc and aluminum were exposed while simulating a worst-case scenario. The anode material examined caused a weak inhibition of algae growth; no acute toxicity was observed on the luminescent bacteria and amphipods. However, an increase of aluminum and indium levels in the crustacean species was found. On the basis of these results, no direct threat has been identified for marine organisms from the use of galvanic aluminum anodes. However, an accumulation of metals in crustaceans and a resulting entry into the marine food web cannot be excluded.
The environmental compatibility of organic coating systems was exemplarily evaluated using a selection of relevant products based on epoxy resins (EP) and polyurethanes. For this purpose, coated test plates were dynamically leached over 64 days. The eluates obtained were systematically analyzed for their ecotoxicological effects (acute toxicity to algae and luminescent bacteria, mutagenic and estrogenic effects) and their chemical composition. In particular, the EP-based coatings caused significant bacterial toxicity and estrogen-like effects. The continuously released 4-tert-butylphenol was identified as a main contributor to these effects and was quantified in concentrations exceeding the predicted no effect concentration for freshwater in all samples. Interestingly, the overall toxicity was not governed by the content of 4-tert-butylphenol in the products but rather by the release mechanism of this compound from the investigated polymers. This finding indicates that an optimization of the composition can result in the reduction of emissions and thus of environmental impacts - possibly due to a better polymerization of the compounds.
Coatings for corrosion protection are exposed to rain, changes in temperature and sun light leading to a weathering of the polymer. To determine the influence of light-induced aging on the ecotoxicity of top coatings, the emissions and associated adverse effects of UV-irradiated and untreated EP-based products were compared. To that end, the investigation of static leachates was focused on estrogenicity and bacterial toxicity, which were detected in the classic microtiter plate format and in combination with thin-layer plates. Both materials examined showed a significant decrease of the ecotoxicological effects after irradiation with a simultaneous reduction of the 4-tert-butylphenol emission. However, bisphenol A and various structural analogues were detected as photolytic degradation products of the polymers, which also contributed to the observed effects. In this context, the identification of bioactive compounds was supported by the successful combination of in-vitro bioassays with chemical analysis by means of an effect-directed analysis. The presented findings provide important information to assess the general suitability of top coatings based on epoxy resins.
Within the scope of the present study, an investigation concept was developed and successfully applied to a selection of relevant construction materials. The adaptation of single standard methods allowed an individual evaluation of these products. At the same time, the suitability of the ecotoxicological methods used for the investigation of materials of unknown and complex composition was confirmed and the basis for a systematic assessment of the environmental compatibility of corrosion protection products was created. Against the background of the European Construction Products Regulation, the chosen approach can facilitate the selection of environmentally friendly products and contributes to the optimization of individual formulations by the simple comparison of different building materials e.g. within a product group.
Lernen in Citizen Science
(2021)
Unsere Welt und die technischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse verändern sich aktuell sehr schnell. Dies betrifft auch die naturwissenschaftliche Forschung und erfordert vermehrten Einsatz der Wissenschaftskommunikation und der Bildung. Ein Instrument der Wissenschaftskommunikation und eine Erweiterung des schulischen Unterrichts kann die Beteiligung von Freiwilligen bei wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten sein, welches auch als Citizen Science (CS) bezeichnet wird. CS Projekte erfreuen sich einer wachsenden Beliebtheit, unter anderem von Schulen (Burger, 2016). Dabei werden unter anderem die Förderung des Kontextwissens, der Scientific Literacy, der Umwelteinstellung und des –verhaltens versprochen (Peter et al., 2019). Interventionsstudien zu den Bildungspotentialen kommen jedoch zu unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen (Gommermann & Monroe, 2012; Turrini et al., 2018). Diese inkonsistenten Ergebnisse der Studien können auf die unterschiedliche Gestaltung der einzelnen evaluierten CS Projekte zurückgeführt werden. Es wird angenommen, dass Teilnehmende, die in mehr Schritten des wissenschaftlichen Prozesses eingebunden werden, ein größeres Bildungspotential haben, als Teilnehmende, die nur in wenige Schritte eingebunden werden (Burger, 2016; Shirk & Bonney, 2018). Bonney, Ballard et al. (2009) haben dazu ein dreistufiges Modell entwickelt. Das Modell wird unter anderem auch von Shirk et al. (2012) und Jordan et al. (2015) unterstützt, ist jedoch bezüglich der Lernwirksamkeit nicht empirisch überprüft (Edwards et al., 2018; Jordan et al., 2015). Deswegen schließt die Forschungsfrage dieser Studie hier an: Unter welchem Partizipationsansatz sind die Lerneffekte in einem CS Projekt am größten für Schülerinnen und Schüler? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, wurde ein CS Projekt mit drei Experimentalgruppen geplant und durchgeführt. Insgesamt nahmen 199 Schülerinnen und Schüler an dem Projekt teil. Innerhalb der Interventionsstudie wurden die Schülerinnen und Schüler zu drei Testzeitpunkten zur Umwelteinstellung und -verhalten, Nature of Science, Einstellung zur Wissenschaft und dem Kontextwissen befragt. Die Analysen über die Messzeitpunkte zeigen keine statistisch signifikanten Einflüsse der Experimentalgruppen auf die abhängigen Variablen. Jedoch ist die Teststärke bei allen Tests zu gering, um abschließende Aussagen über die Annahmen zu treffen. Wird jedoch die generelle Wirkung der Intervention betrachtet, zeigen sich signifikante Effekte auf alle Schülerinnen und Schüler, unter anderem steigt das Verständnis über Nature of Science. Diese Ergebnisse stimmen mit früheren Schlussfolgerungen von Phillips (2017), Phillips et al. (2019) und Del Bianco (2018) überein, die ebenfalls Zweifel an dem Modell von Bonney, Ballard et al. (2009) äußerten. Innerhalb dieses CS Projektes konnte sich keiner der drei Partizipationsansätze bezüglich des Bildungspotential für Schülerinnen und Schüler hervorheben lassen. Jedoch ist diese Studie unter anderem durch die geringe Teststärke limitiert und endgültige Aussagen bedürfen weiterer systematischer Forschung.
Method development for the quantification of pharmaceuticals in aqueous environmental matrices
(2021)
As a consequence of the world population increase and the resulting water scarcity, water quality is the object of growing attention. In that context, organic anthropogenic molecules — often defined as micropollutants— represent a threat for water resources. Among them, pharmaceuticals are the object of particular concerns due to their permanent discharge, their increasing consumption and their effect-based structures. Pharmaceuticals are mainly introduced in the environment via wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), along with their metabolites and the on-site formed transformation products (TPs). Once in the aquatic environment, they partition between the different environmental compartments in particular the aqueous phase, suspended particulate matter(SPM) and biota. In the last decades, pharmaceuticals have been widely investigated in the water phase. However, extreme polar pharmaceuticals have rarely been monitored due to the lack of robust analytical methods. Moreover, metabolites and TPs have seldom been included in routine analysis methods although their environmental relevance is proven. Furthermore, pharmaceuticals have been only sporadically investigated in SPM and biota and adequate multi-residue methods are lacking to obtain comprehensive results about their occurrence in these matrices. This thesis endeavors to cover these gaps of knowledge by the development of generic multi-residue methods for pharmaceuticals determination in the water phase, SPM and biota and to evaluate the occurrence and partition of pharmaceuticals into these compartments. For a complete overview, a particular focus was laid on extreme polar pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical metabolites and TPs. In total, three innovative multi-residue methods were developed, they include analytes covering a broad range of physico-chemical properties. First, a reliable multi-residue method was developed for the analysis of extreme polar pharmaceuticals, metabolites and TPs dissolved in water. The selected analytes covered a significant range of elevated polarity and the method would be easily expendable to further analytes. This versatility could be achieved by the utilization of freeze-drying as sample preparation and zwitterionic hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) in gradient elution mode. The suitability of HILIC chromatography to simultaneously quantify a large range of micropollutants in aqueous environmental samples was thoroughly studied. Several limitations were pointed out: a very complex and time-consuming method development, a very high sensitivity with regards to modification of the acetonitrile to water ratio in the eluent or the diluent and high positive matrix effects for certain analytes. However, these limitations can be overcome by the utilization of a precise protocol and appropriate labeled internal standards. They are overmatched by the benefits of HILIC which permits the chromatographic separation of extreme polar micropollutants. Investigation of environmental samples showed elevated concentrations of the analytes in the water phase. In particular, gabapentin, metformin, guanylurea and oxypurinol were measured at concentrations in the µg/L range in surface water. Subsequently, a reliable multi-residue method was established for the determination of 57 pharmaceuticals, 47 metabolites and TPs sorbed to SPM down to the low ng/g range. This method was conceived to cover a large range of polarity in particular with the inclusion of extreme polar pharmaceuticals. The extraction procedure was based on pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) followed by a clean-up via solvent exchange and detection via direct injection-reversed-phase LC-MS/MS and freeze-drying HILIC-MS/MS. Pharmaceutical sorption was examined using laboratory experiments. Derived distribution coefficients Kd varied by five orders of magnitude among the analytes and confirmed a high sorption potential for positively charged and nonpolar pharmaceuticals. The occurrence of pharmaceuticals in German rivers SPM was evaluated by the investigation of annual composite SPM samples taken at four sites at the river Rhine and one site at the river Saar between the years 2005 and 2015. It revealed the ubiquitous presence of pharmaceuticals sorbed to SPM in these rivers. In particular, positively charged analytes, even very polar and nonpolar pharmaceuticals showed appreciable concentrations. For many pharmaceuticals, a distinct correlation was observed between the annual quantities consumed in Germany and the concentrations measured in SPM. Studies of composite SPM spatial distribution permitted to get hints about specific industrial discharge by comparing the pollution pattern along the river. For the first time, these results showed the potential of SPM for the monitoring of positively charged and nonpolar pharmaceuticals in surface water. Finally, a reliable and generic multi residue method was developed to investigate 35 pharmaceuticals and 28 metabolites and TPs in fish plasma, fish liver and fish fillet. For this matrix, it was very challenging to develop an adequate clean-up allowing for the sufficient separation of the matrix disturbances from the analytes. In the final method, fish tissue extraction was performed by cell disruption followed by a non-discriminating clean-up based on silica gel solid-phase extraction(SPE) and restrictive access media (RAM) chromatography. Application of the developed method to the measurement of bream and carp tissues from German rivers revealed that even polar micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals are ubiquitously present in fish tissues. In total, 17 analytes were detected for the first time in fish tissues, including 10 metabolites/TPs. The importance of monitoring metabolites and TPs in fish tissues was confirmed with their detection at similar concentrations as their parents. Liver and fillet were shown to be appropriate for the monitoring of pharmaceuticals in fish, whereas plasma is more inconvenient due to very low concentrations and collection difficulties. Elevated concentrations of certain metabolites suggest possible formation of human metabolites in fish. Measured concentrations indicate a low bioaccumulation potential for pharmaceuticals in fish tissues.
Within the field of Business Process Management, business rules are commonly used to model company decision logic and govern allowed company behavior. An exemplary business rule in the financial sector could be for example:
”A customer with a mental condition is not creditworthy”. Business rules are
usually created and maintained collaboratively and over time. In this setting,
modelling errors can occur frequently. A challenging problem in this context is
that of inconsistency, i.e., contradictory rules which cannot hold at the same
time. For instance, regarding the exemplary rule above, an inconsistency would
arise if a (second) modeller entered an additional rule: ”A customer with a mental condition is always creditworthy”, as the two rules cannot hold at the same
time. In this thesis, we investigate how to handle such inconsistencies in business
rule bases. In particular, we develop methods and techniques for the detection,
analysis and resolution of inconsistencies in business rule bases
Die bisherige Forschung zur Diagnosekompetenz hat trotz langjähriger Forschungstraditionen für die Praxis kaum relevante Befunde erbracht. Dies wurde in der vorliegenden Arbeit als Anlass für den Vorschlag genommen, diagnostische Kompetenz als reine Urteilsgenauigkeit, gemäß der Komponentenanalyse nach Cronbach (1955), zu erweitern. Mit der Einführung der Beobachtungskompetenz als einer weiteren Facette diagnostischer Kompetenz knüpft die vorliegende Studie zudem an der Forschung zu formativem Assessment an.
Die zentralen Fragen der Arbeit beziehen sich darauf, wie die beiden Facetten der diagnostischen Kompetenz Urteilsgenauigkeit und Beobachtungskompetenz von pädagogischen Fachkräften im Elementarbereich ausgeprägt sind, ob diese Facetten zusammenhängen und wie sie durch bereichsspezifische Fortbildungen und explizit durch verschiedene Fortbildungsansätze (Lehrgangs- vs. Lernwegsorientierung) verändert werden können. Untersucht wurden insgesamt 103 Erzieherinnen aus 21 Einrichtungen mit eigens für die Arbeit entwickelten Instrumenten (Fragebögen, Filmvignetten).
Zur Beantwortung der ersten Forschungsfrage, wie die bereichsspezifische diagnostische Kompetenz von Erzieherinnen hinsichtlich der Facetten Urteilsgenauigkeit und Beobachtungskompetenz ausgeprägt ist, zeigt sich, dass Erzieherinnen das Niveau ihrer Gruppe im Vergleich der Urteilsgenauigkeits-Komponenten am besten einschätzen können (Niveaukomponente), mit Tendenz zur Überschätzung. Auch die Wahrnehmung von Unterschieden zwischen den Kindern ihrer Gruppe gelingt ihnen gut (Personenkomponente), dabei neigen sie eher zu einer Überschätzung der Heterogenität. Wesentlich schwerer fällt es ihnen, spezifische Aufgabenschwierigkeiten im mathematischen Bereich korrekt einzuschätzen (Merkmalskomponente) und Unterschiede zwischen den Kindern im Hinblick auf einzelne Aufgaben (Wechselwirkungskomponente) zu beurteilen. Die Erzieherinnen sind jedoch sehr gut in der Lage, die Kinder entsprechend ihrer Leistungen in eine Rangreihenfolge zu bringen, wie es die Korrelationskomponente der Personenkomponente zeigt. Die Beobachtungskompetenz von Erzieherinnen zeigt sich in der Anzahl erkannter Fähigkeiten von Kindern während verschiedener Tätigkeiten mit mathematischem Bezug. Dabei wurde der Schwierigkeitsgrad der Beobachtung mittels Expertinneneinschätzung berücksichtigt. Die Erzieherinnen erkennen durchschnittlich die Hälfte der mathematischen Fähigkeiten von Kindern in verschiedenen komplexen Alltagssituationen bei mathematischen Tätigkeiten. Die zweite Forschungsfrage, ob es einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Urteilsgenauigkeit und der Beobachtungskompetenz gibt, kann klar beantwortet werden. Erwartungswidrig zeigt die vorliegende Untersuchung, dass die Facetten Urteilsgenauigkeit und Beobachtungskompetenz voneinander unabhängig sind. Damit konnte die Annahme, dass auf der einen Seite eine genaue summative Beurteilung auf einer Vielzahl kompetenter Einzelbeobachtungen beruht, auf der anderen Seite aber häufige gezielte Einzelbeobachtungen in ihrer Summe zu einem genaueren Gesamturteil führen, nicht bestätigt werden. Die dritte Forschungsfrage, ob eine bereichsspezifische Fortbildung von Erzieherinnen zur Verbesserung ihrer Urteilsgenauigkeit führt, muss verneint werden. Dagegen beeinflusst der Faktor Zeit (neun Monate zwischen Prä- und Posttest) die Fähigkeit der Erzieherinnen, Unterschiede zwischen den Kindern signifikant besser wahrzunehmen (Personenkomponente) und spezifische Aufgabenschwierigkeiten signifikant besser einzuschätzen (Merkmalskomponente). Damit verbessert sich auch die globale Urteilsgenauigkeit über die Zeit signifikant. Auf die Einschätzung des Leistungsniveaus der Gruppe (Niveaukomponente) sowie von Unterschieden zwischen den Kindern für einzelne Items (Wechselwirkungskomponente) hat jedoch auch der Faktor Zeit keinen signifikanten Einfluss.
Die vierte Forschungsfrage, ob die Unterschiede in der Veränderung der Urteilsgenauigkeit von Erzieherinnen davon abhängig sind, nach welchem Ansatz sie Kinder bereichsspezifisch fördern, lässt sich zusammenfassend verneinen. Die Art und Weise der bereichsspezifischen Förderung spielt keine Rolle für die Variabilität der Urteilsgenauigkeit von Erzieherinnen. Auch die Unterschiedlichkeit in den einzelnen Urteilsgenauigkeitskomponenten lässt sich nicht auf die Art der Fortbildung zurückführen.
Die fünfte Forschungsfrage, ob sich die Beobachtungskompetenz von Erzieherinnen durch eine bereichsspezifische Fortbildung beeinflussen lässt, kann aufgrund einer signifikanten Zunahme der Beobachtungskompetenz nach nur zwei Fortbildungstagen bejaht werden. Damit wird die These gestützt, dass eine Fortbildung zur bereichsspezifischen Förderung für eine gezielte und damit fokussiertere Wahrnehmung früher bereichsspezifischer Kompetenzen bedeutsam ist, selbst wenn sie nicht explizit auf diagnostische Kompetenz, sondern allgemein auf Förderung ausgerichtet ist
Die sechste Forschungsfrage zielt auf Veränderungen der Beobachtungskompetenz von Erzieherinnen in Abhängigkeit von Fortbildungen in verschiedenen bereichsspezifischen Förderansätzen ab. Für eine Zunahme der Beobachtungskompetenz, so zeigt sich, spielt der bereichsspezifische Ansatz, welcher der Fortbildung zugrunde gelegt ist, keine Rolle.
Die vorliegende Studie ist die erste Arbeit, die sowohl Beobachtungskompetenz (Forschung zu formativem Assessment) als auch Urteilsgenauigkeit (Accuracy-Forschung) anhand derselben Stichprobe untersucht. Trotz des im Ergebnis nicht nachgewiesenen Zusammenhangs zwischen Urteilsgenauigkeit und Beobachtungskompetenz stellt die Studie für die zukünftige Forschung bedeutsame Hinweise für die weitere Untersuchung der Facetten diagnostischer Kompetenz bereit.
Im Hinblick auf den frühpädagogischen Kontext zeigt die vorliegende Arbeit zum einen, dass ein ökologisch valides Treatment (Fortbildung) in einem Umfang von zwei Tagen implizit zu einer Verbesserung diagnostischer Kompetenzen führen kann. Zum anderen wird hier erstmalig im deutschsprachigen Raum die Messung der Urteilsgenauigkeit unter vollumfänglicher Erfüllung eines auf Hoge und Coladarci (1989) beruhenden Anforderungsprofils durchgeführt. Ein weiteres Alleinstellungsmerkmal dieser Studie ist die erstmals mit einer Mindestanzahl von vier Einschätzungen pro Erzieherin unter Berücksichtigung der Kontaktzeiten zwischen Erzieherinnen und Bezugskindern erfolgte Erhebung der Urteilsgenauigkeit von Erzieherinnen.