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Over the last three decades researchers of Cognitive Metaphor Theory have shown conclusively that metaphor is motivated rather than arbitrary and often used to systematically map out conceptual territory. This cognitive semantic proposal holds the potential for alternative L2 teaching strategies. As an abstract domain, business discourse is naturally rich in metaphors and is additionally filled with consciously used metaphorical language to strategically manipulate clients and business partners. Business English courses especially stand to profit from metaphor-oriented language teaching, as (future) managers aim to quickly improve their language performance to be prepared for international business communication. In using metaphors, speakers as well as hearers conceptualize and thus experience one thing in terms of another. Having been made aware of the conceptual linkage, students are immediately equipped with a whole set of vocabulary they may already have learned for a concrete domain and are then able to elaborate in the more abstract area of business discourse. Enhanced metaphor awareness may thus prove to be a valuable vehicle for vocabulary acquisition as well as for vocabulary retention. This thesis is subdivided into ten chapters. With each successive chapter, the focus will increasingly sharpen on the main hypothesis that metaphor awareness raising and explicit teaching in the business English classroom assists the students to dip into their savings' and transfer already acquired vocabulary to abstract business discourse and thus to become more proficient business communicators. After an introduction to the main objectives, chapter two critically looks at the different strands of Cognitive Linguistic contributions to metaphor theory made within the last three decades and discusses the structure, function and processing of figurative language to single out relevant aspects of the language classroom applications. Chapter three narrows the perspective to the socio-economic discourse as the very target domain in focus and surveys the conceptual metaphors that have been identified for this target domain, namely the source domains most productive for the target and therefore most valuable for the language classroom. In chapter four Cognitive Linguistic findings are put in contact with language didactics; i.e., the Cognitive Linguistic basis is discussed in the context of language teaching and learning theories and a first classification of metaphor teaching in the theoretical framework of language didactics is proposed. Ten cornerstones summarize the theoretical output of the previous chapters and the respective didactic consequences are considered. Theories of cognitive psychology pertaining to noticing, processing, and storing metaphors are systematically revisited and expanded to formulate further didactic implications for metaphor teaching. The consequences drawn from both linguistic as well as didactic theory are translated into a list of ten short guidelines identifying essentials for the explicit integration of metaphors into the language classroom. In chapter five those experimental studies that have already been conducted in the field of Cognitive Linguistic-inspired figurative language teaching are systematically summarized and possible contributions to set up a didactic framework for metaphor teaching are investigated. Chapters six to nine then present a piece of original research. Starting out from five research questions tackling receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition and retention as well as the influence of and on the learner- level of language proficiency, a three-fold study was designed and conducted in a regular business English classroom and results are discussed in detail. The last chapter deals again with specific implications for teaching. Earlier statements about and claims for the language classroom are revisited and refined on the basis of the theoretical linguistic, didactic and empirical findings, and an agenda for further empirical investigations is sketched out.
The PhD thesis offers a long-term investigation of German TV debates with regard to the extent to which the topics dealt with in the debates correspond to the political problems perceived by the voters and whether the actor-specific topics discussed in the TV debates have an influence on the voters' perception of the problems and the perceived responsiveness of the political actors. To this purpose, contents and effects of the Chancellor debates 2002-2013 and the TV debates between 1997 and 2016 are examined at the state level. The empirical investigation is based on an implementation and evaluation of content analyses, the evaluation of opinion polls and the investigation of experimental data on the occasion of the chancellor duels in 2002, 2009 and 2013. The analyses show that TV debates are not only show events, but that the focus of TV debates is on political content (rather than entertaining elements), that the (camp-specific) responsiveness of the format has increased over time, and that successful persuasion - as one of two theme management strategies - by challengers in particular can lead viewers to better assess the effectiveness of the political system.
"Da wollten ich und mein Bruder jetzt so ein Lied machen und das heißt "Vergangenheitsträume" so. (...) Und da wollten wir so über alles, was wir beide so erlebt haben, schreiben." (Karsten, 17 Jahre). Dieses Zitat entstammt einem Interview, das, neben weiteren, im Rahmen dieser Forschungsarbeit ausgewertet und interpretiert wurde. Es fasst in komprimierter Form zusammen, worum es in dieser Arbeit gehen soll: Bildung und Biografie. Ein junger Menschen, Karsten, berichtet in einem Interview, dass er angefangen hat zu rappen. Die Texte handeln von Erlebnissen und Erfahrungen seines Lebens. Er blickt gemeinsam mit seinem jüngeren Bruder zurück und hält Gedanken und Gefühle hierzu fest. "Bildung" soll verstanden werden, als eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit sich und der Welt. Hierbei steht das eigene Leben im Fokus. "Biografie" soll verstanden werden als ein soziales Konstrukt. Ereignisse und Handlungen werden in eine Ordnung, in einen Zusammenhang gebracht. Der Prozess, sich mit seinem Leben auseinanderzusetzen dient dem Selbstverstehen und dem Fremdverstehen. Es ist mit "aktivem Tun" verbunden. Es passiert nicht einfach mit einem Menschen, vielmehr stellt es einen aktiven Prozess dar. Das Ordnen, Zusammenführen, in-Beziehung-setzen und Verstehen von Erlebnissen, Erfahrungen und Träumen des eigenen Lebens steht im Vordergrund von Bildungs- und Biografisierungsprozessen. Daher wurde der Titel für diese Forschungsarbeit ausgewählt. Im Fokus dieser Studie stehen Veränderungsprozesse der Konstruktionen von "Selbstbildern" und "Weltbildern" vier junger Menschen sowie von ihren Handlungsmustern. Die Begriffe "Selbstbild" und "Weltbild" enthalten die Vorstellung, dass Menschen die Bilder, die sie von sich selbst und von der Welt in sich tragen, im Laufe des Lebens entwickeln. Kinder entfalten eine Vorstellung davon, wie sie aussehen, welche Eigenschaften sie besitzen und was sie gut oder weniger gut können. Vielfältige Faktoren tragen zur Entstehung und Entwicklung dieser konstruierten Selbst- und Weltbilder bei (vgl. beispielhaft zu Traumaerlebnissen Dillig 1983).
Es wird in dieser Arbeit versucht nachzuzeichnen, ob bzw. wie sich diese Selbst- und Weltbilder der jungen Menschen und ihre Handlungsmuster im Verlauf verändern. Dies ist dadurch möglich, weil es sich bei der vorliegenden Untersuchung um eine Langzeituntersuchung handelt. Mit den vier jungen Menschen (Anni, Ben, Julia und Karsten) wurden zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten Interviews geführt, in denen sie über ihr Leben berichteten. In § 1 SGB VIII wird an die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe der Auftrag formuliert, die Entwicklung von Kindern zu fördern. Jugendhilfe hat den Auftrag, Einfluss auf den Prozess der Bildung zu nehmen und die Entwicklung der jungen Menschen zu fördern, sie soll Bildungsprozesse anstoßen. Kinder machen vielfältige Erfahrungen in ihrem Leben. Sie lernen ihre "Lebenswelt" kennen und entwickeln in Auseinandersetzung mit der Welt, "eigene-sinnige" Vorstellungen von sich und von ihrer Lebenswelt (vgl. dazu Tenorth / Tippelt 2007; Marotzki 2004). Die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe muss sich mit den Selbst- und Weltkonstruktionen der jungen Menschen beschäftigen, wenn sie sich als eine an der Lebenswelt orientierte Jugendhilfe verstehen will. Sie muss sich mit den Lebensgeschichten ihrer Adressaten befassen, mit ihnen gemeinsam Biografiearbeit leisten. Dazu benötigt sie unbedingt einen verstehenden Zugang zu den jungen Menschen und ihren Interpretationen vergangener Erfahrungen (Vergangenheitsträume), um mit ihnen (neue) Lebensentwürfe, Zukunftsträume entwickeln zu können.
Des Weiteren geht es in der Arbeit um Überlebensmuster junger Menschen. Vielleicht ruft die Wahl des Begriffs Verwunderung oder Unverständnis hervor. Die Vorstellung, dass es um Muster geht, die das "Überleben" sichern sollen, mutet dramatisch an. Doch zeigen die Ergebnisse der Fallrekonstruktionen, dass dieser Vergleich durchaus angemessen erscheint (vgl. dazu auch Schrapper 2002). Für die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe stellt sich zudem die Frage nach der Wirksamkeit ihrer Bemühungen. Ist die Jugendhilfe ihrem Auftrag nachgekommen? Kann dies in den Interviews mit den jungen Menschen gezeigt werden? Wenn davon ausgegangen werden kann, dass (öffentliche) Erziehung (nachhaltig) Einfluss auf das (Er)Leben und Erzählen von Jugendlichen hat und damit auch auf die Selbst- und Weltbilder und ihre Überlebensmuster, so bieten Interviews, die zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten geführt wurden, die Chance, dieser Frage nachzugehen. Die Forschungsfragen, die dieser Arbeit zu Grunde liegen, sind jedoch Fragen die nicht auf das Thema "Geschlossene Unterbringung" begrenzt sind. Sie können in allen anderen pädagogischen Zusammenhängen gestellt und bearbeitet werden, da der theoretische Kerngedanke der Fragestellungen nicht von einer bestimmten Intervention oder vom Setting einer Hilfe abhängt. Es werden in dieser Arbeit Anforderungen an die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe formuliert, die verdeutlichen, welche Aufgaben die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe leisten muss, damit sie Kindern und Jugendlichen Bildungserfahrungen ermöglichen kann.
Die formulierten Anforderungen werden im Verlauf nochmals aufgegriffen und sollen anhand der Forschungsergebnisse diskutiert werden. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Fallrekonstruktionen vier junger Menschen. Hier werden in einem ersten Schritt jeweils Lebens- und Hilfegeschichten der jungen Menschen tabellarisch dargelegt. Es folgt eine Darstellung des Verlaufs der Selbstbilder, der Weltbilder und der Handlungsmuster der Jugendlichen, die jeweils mit einem Fazit enden. In der Zusammenfassung werden jeweils die Bezüge und Zusammenhänge zwischen den konstruierten Selbstbildern, Weltbildern und Handlungs- bzw, Überlebensmustern vorgestellt.
"Wer kann ich werden - Wer soll ich sein?" Selbstbildungsprozesse junger Menschen in der Jugendhilfe
(2011)
"Wer kann ich werden - Wer soll ich sein?" - Mit diesen beiden grundlegende Lebensfragen resümieren die beiden Jugendlichen, deren individuellen Verarbeitungsprozesse Gegenstand der Untersuchung sind, ihren (Selbst-)Bildungsprozess. Sie verweisen dabei auf ein wesentliches Ergebnis dieser Studie: Selbstbildungsprozesse formieren sich als einen aktiven Balanceakt der jungen Menschen zwischen individuellen Selbstkonstruktionen und Fragen der Sozialintegration. Der Blick wird dabei auf die prozesshafte Entwicklung der subjektiven Bildungsbemühungen gerichtet. Es handelt sich um ein ambivalentes Spannungsgefüge, welches sich darin ausdrückt, dass einerseits "von Außen (durch den Erzieher) geleitet" und andererseits "von Innen (durch den Jugendlichen) gesteuert" wird. Letztendlich haben jedoch viele Jahrhunderte von (praktischen) Erziehungsversuchen und vielfaches (theoretisches) Nachdenken über Erziehung und Bildung gezeigt, dass der Erfolg zum großen Teil von den jungen Menschen selbst abhängt. Damit rückt in der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung die Selbsttätigkeit des Menschen in den Fokus. Die Beschäftigung mit Prozessen der Selbstbildung stellt eine äußert komplexe Herausforderung dar. Sie läuft schnell Gefahr, dies unter normativen Aspekten zu diskutieren. In diesen Forschungszusammenhang soll der Blick explizit nicht auf die normativen Anteile des Themas gelenkt werden, sondern es ist vielmehr ein Ziel der Arbeit, empirische Befunde dazu zu erarbeiten und Kontextwissen zu generieren.rnDie Untersuchung thematisiert sowohl die Verbindungen zwischen Selbstdeutungskonstruktionen junger Menschen und Fremddeutungen relevanter Erwachsener, sowie die sich daraus entwickelten Muster der Lebensbewältigung der Jugendlichen. Im Mittelpunkt der Auseinandersetzung stehen die jungen Menschen und ihre Bildungsanstrengungen. Anhand ihrer Selbstkonstruktionen, in denen sie ihre relevanten Themen zum Ausdruck bringen und den Fremddeutungen der am Fall beteiligten Erwachsenen, wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob und wie die unterschiedlichen Deutungsfolien anschlussfähig sind und welchen Einfluss sie auf die jugendlichen Selbstbildungsprozesse nehmen. Durch die Rekonstruktion der Deutungs- und Konstruktionsmuster der unterschiedlichen Fallbeteiligten sollen sowohl praxis- wie auch forschungsrelevante Erkenntnisse über Selbstbildungsprozesse junger Menschen gewonnen werden, die im Verlauf ihrer Lebensgeschichten Adressaten der Jugendhilfe geworden sind. Ein solch komplexes Forschungsvorhaben gewinnt im Bezug auf die Diskurse zur adressatenbezogenen Jugendhilfe an Bedeutung, da es möglich wird, einen Einblick in Verarbeitungsmuster und Bewältigungsstrategien der Heranwachsenden zu gewinnen. Die vorliegende Arbeit nimmt die subjektiven Sinnzuschreibungen in den Blick, um darüber einen erkenntnisgeleiteten Zugang zu den Deutungs- und Konstruktionsmustern in ihren jeweiligen Sinnzusammenhängen zu erschließen. Gesamtgesellschaftliche Modernisierungs- und Wandlungsprozesse beeinflussen individuelle Lebensverläufe und damit auch subjektive Deutungen unterschiedlichster Lebensereignisse. Biographische Werdungsprozesse weichen von vermeintlichen "Normalbiographien" ab. Aufgabe pädagogischer Fachkräfte ist es, die selbstreflexiven Verarbeitungsprozesse junger Menschen zu begleiten und zu unterstützen. Von daher scheint es erforderlich, dass Fachkräfte ihre Kompetenzen zur Entschlüsselung individueller Bildungsbemühungen und zur Wahrnehmung biographischer Deutungskonzepte weiter entwickeln und schulen, um einen verstehenden Zugang zu den Wirklichkeitskonstruktionen junger Menschen zu gewinnen. Welche subjektive Bedeutung die Heranwachsenden den Einflüssen der Jugendhilfe zusprechen ist entscheidend für die Frage, inwieweit sie diese Erfahrungen als Unterstützung für ihre individuellen Bildungsprozesse begreifen. "Selbstbildungsprozesse junger Menschen in der Jugendhilfe" setzen sich mit der Frage auseinander, über welche Bewältigungsstrategien und Interaktionsmuster die Heranwachsenden verfügen. "Mit diesem Zugang wird der Blick auf die "Eigensinnigkeit" subjektiver Äußerungen in ihren biografisch verorteten und gesellschaftsrelevanten Bezügen gelegt." (Normann 2003, 10). Es geht also um die Rekonstruktion sozialer Wirklichkeitsbezüge aus der Sicht der jungen Menschen. Die Jugendlichen werden als aktiv Handelnde und als ExpertInnen ihrer Lebenswelt verstanden, die in der Interaktion mit Anderen die Balance zwischen sozialer Anpassungsleistung und Entwicklung ihres individuellen Lebenskonzeptes finden müssen. Subjektive Deutungs- und Konstruktionsprozesse sollen in diesem Kontext herausgearbeitet und dargestellt werden.
Der Arbeitsmarkt in Deutschland erlebt einen technologisch bedingten Strukturwandel. Durch Digitalisierung werden Tätigkeiten substituierbar, Berufsbilder und dafür benötigte Qualifikationsprofile wandeln sich. Für die Arbeitskräfte resultiert daraus ein Anpassungsdruck, sich zum Erhalt ihres Humankapitals bzw. ihrer Beschäftigungsfähigkeit weiterzubilden. Fraglich ist, inwieweit die Individuen diesen Druck wahrnehmen und mit entsprechenden Weiterbildungen reagieren. Um einen Erklärungsbeitrag zum Weiterbildungsverhalten der Arbeitskräfte in Bezug auf den technologischen Wandel zu leisten, widmet sich das Promotionsvorhaben der Forschungsfrage: „Inwieweit reagieren Arbeitskräfte bezüglich ihres Weiterbildungsverhaltens auf einen sich digitalisierungsbedingt wandelnden Arbeitsmarkt?“
Business rules have become an important tool to warrant compliance at their business processes. But the collection of these business rules can have various conflicting elements. This can lead to a violation of the compliance to be achieved. This conflicting elements are therefore a kind of inconsistencies, or quasi incon- sistencies in the business rule base. The target for this thesis is to investigate how those quasi inconsistencies in business rules can be detected and analyzed. To this aim, we develop a comprehensive library which allows to apply results from the scientific field of inconsistency measurement to business rule formalisms that are actually used in practice.
In this thesis, the methods of a feasibility study are applied to analyze whether or not the foundation of an academic based startup focusing on IT-consulting is possible. For this purpose the concept of consulting, the demand for the offering of consulting services as well as the relevant market are analyzed. Furthermore, empirical research through face-to-face interviews with IT-companies located in the region of Koblenz is utilized in order to gain further insight about the feasibility of said business venture. The result of the research is to be presented in a concrete recommendation for further actions.
In this work the Navier-Stokes equations for non-stationary incompressible
flow of the Newtonian fluid in time dependent domain are studied. The geometry of the flow domain changes in time according to fluid properties such as stress tensor. The motivation for our study comes from medicine—the simulation of blood flow in arteries and veins.
After choosing an appropriate mathematical model of the flow in a domain with viscoelastic compliant walls, we deal with its theoretical analysis. We prove the existence of a weak solution using the weak compressible approximation in a moving domain with given deformation function. In our approach the fluid-structure interface condition is treated using a permeable-wall approach decoupling the fluid and the deformable structure.
Finally we present some numerical experiments illustrating the convergence of the iteration with respect to the domain deformation function as well as the behavior of the moving wall for decreased permeability.
The mitral valve is one of four human heart valves. It is located in the left heart and acts as a unidirectional passageway for blood between the left atrium and the left ventricle. A correctly functioning mitral valve prevents a backflow of blood into the pulmonary circulation (lungs) and thus constitutes a vital part of the cardiac cycle. Pathologies of the mitral valve can manifest in a variety of symptoms with severity ranging from chest pain and fatigue to pulmonary edema (fluid accumulation in the tissue and air space of lungs), which may ultimately cause respiratory failure.
Malfunctioning mitral valves can be restored through complex surgical interventions, which greatly benefit from intensive planning and pre-operative analysis. Visualization techniques provide a possibility to enhance such preparation processes and can also facilitate post-operative evaluation. The work at hand extends current research in this field, building upon patient-specific mitral valve segmentations developed at the German Cancer Research Center, which result in triangulated 3D models of the valve surface. The core of this work will be the construction of a 2D-view of these models through global parameterization, a method that can be used to establish a bijective mapping between a planar parameter domain and a surface embedded in higher dimensions.
A flat representation of the mitral valve provides physicians with a view of the whole surface at once, similar to a map. This allows assessment of the valve's area and shape without the need for different viewing angles. Parts of the valve that are occluded by geometry in 3D become visible in 2D.
An additional contribution of this work will be the exploration of different visualizations of the 3D and 2D mitral valve representations. Features of the valve can be highlighted by associating them with specified colors, which can for instance directly convey pathology indicators.
Quality and effectiveness of the proposed methods were evaluated through a survey conducted at the Heidelberg University Hospital.
Today, augmented reality is becoming more and more important in several areas like industrial sectors, medicine, or tourism. This gain of importance can easily be explained by its powerful extension of real world content. Therefore, augmented realty became a way to explain and enhance the real world information. Yet, to create a system which can enhance a scene with additional information, the relation between the system and the real world must be known. In order to establish this relationship a commonly used method is optical tracking. The system calculates its relation to the real world from camera images. To do so, a reference which is known is needed in the scene to serve as an orientation. Today, this is mostly a 2D-marker or a 2D-texture. These are placed in the real world scenery to serve as a reference. But, this is an intrusion in the scene. That is why it is desirable that the system works without such an additional aid. An strategy without manipulating the scene is object-tracking. In this approach, any object from the scene can be used as a reference for the system. As an object is far more complex than a marker, it is harder for the system to establish its relationship with the real world. That is why most methods for 3D-object-tracking reduce the object by not using the whole object as reference. The focus of this thesis is to research how a whole object can be used as a reference in a way that either the system or the camera can be moved in any 360 degree angle around the object without loosing the relation to the real world. As a basis the augmented reality framework, the so called VisionLib, is used. Extensions to this system for 360 degree tracking are implemented in different ways and analyzed in the scope of this work. Also, the different extensions are compared. The best results were achieved by improving the reinitialization process. With this extension, current camera images of the scene are given to the system. With the hek of these images, the system can calculate the relation to the real world faster in case the relation went missing.
3D-Curve-Skeletons are often used, because the object surface repesentation is less complex and also needs less computing power in further processing, compared to the representation created by the Medial Axis Transformation introduced 1967 by Harry Blum.
This theses aims at developing a 3D curve skelton approximation algorithm that keeps these advantages and is also able to handle different scenarios of the object surface input data.
3D-models are getting more important in many areas such as multimedia applications, robotics or film industries. Of particular interest is the creation of 3D-models from a series of monocular images. This is because the cameras that are required for this purpose are becoming cheaper, smaller and more sophisticated at the same time. Increasingly often, suitable cameras are already integrated in devices like smartphones, tablet PCs or cars for example. Hence, there is a great potential for applications of this reconstruction technique.
This thesis is based on the use of a series of images that were taken with arncalibrated camera. The first step is to extract point correspondences from this image series making use of the well-known SURF- and A-KAZE-features. Starting from the point correspondences, it is possible to reconstruct a 3D-Modell with different algorithms that consists of a point cloud and camera poses. To reduce errors in the 3D-model, this thesis especially focuses on explaining the bundle adjustment algorithm, which is being used for a non-linear error minimization of a cost function.
The thesis also introduces the application for the 3D-reconstruction and the visualization of the results, that was developed in the course of this thesis.
The implemented system is evaluated based on statistics and the newly aquiredrnknowledge is presented. The thesis concludes with a summary of its results, and a number of ideas for potential future applications and developments.
Das Hauptziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Absicherung der Qualität eines pharmazeutischen Produktionsprozesses durch die Überprüfung des Volumens mikroskopischer Polymerstäbchen mit einem hochgenauen 3D Messverfahren. Die Polymerstäbchen werden für pharmazeutische Anwendungen hergestellt. Aus Gründen der Qualitätssicherung muss das Istgewicht überprüft werden. Derzeit werden die Polymerstäbchen stichprobenartig mit einer hochpräzisen Waage gewogen. Für die nächste Generation von Polymeren wird angenommen, dass die Produktabmessungen weiter reduziert werden sollen und die Produktionstoleranzen auf 2,5% gesenkt werden. Die daraus resultierenden Genauigkeitsanforderungen übersteigen jedoch die Möglichkeiten der Wiegetechnik. Bei homogenen Materialien ist die Masse proportional zum Volumen. Aus diesem Grund kommt dessen Bestimmung als Alternative in Frage. Dies verschafft Zugang zu optischen Messverfahren und deren Flexibilität und Genauigkeitpotenzial. Für den Entwurf eines auf die Fragestellung angepassten Messkonzeptes sind weiterhin von Bedeutung, dass das Objekt kontaktlos, mit einer Taktzeit von maximal fünf Sekunden vermessen und das Volumen approximiert wird. Die Querschnitte der Polymerstäbchen sind etwa kreisförmig. Aufgrund der Herstellung der Fragmente kann nicht davon ausgegangen werden, dass die Anlageflächen orthogonal zur Symmetrieachse des Objektes sind. Daher muss analysiert werden, wie sich kleine Abweichungen von kreisförmigen Querschnitten sowie die nicht idealen Anlageflächen auswirken. Die maximale Standardabweichung für das Volumen, die nicht überschritten werden sollte, beträgt 2,5%. Dies entspricht einer maximalen Abweichung der Querschnittsfläche um 1106 µm² (Fehlerfortpfanzung). Als Bewertungskriterium wird der Korrelationskoeffzient zwischen den gemessenen Volumina und den Massen bestimmt. Ein ideales Ergebnis wäre 100%. Die Messung zielt auf einen Koeffzienten von 98% ab. Um dies zu erreichen, ist ein präzises Messverfahren für Volumen erforderlich. Basierend auf dem aktuellen Stand der Technik können die vorhandenen optischen Messverfahren nicht verwendet werden. Das Polymerstäbchen wird von einer Kamera im Durchlicht beobachtet. Daher sind der Durchmesser und die Länge sichtbar. Das Objekt wird mittels einer mechanischen Vorrichtung um die Längsachse gedreht. So können Bilder von allen Seiten aufgenommen werden. Der Durchmesser und die Länge werden mit der Bildverarbeitung berechnet. Das neue Konzept vereint die Vorteile der Verfahren: Es ist unempfindlich gegen Farb-/Helligkeitsänderungen und die Bilder können in beliebiger Anzahl aufgenommen werden. Außerdem sind die Erfassung und Auswertung wesentlich schneller. Es wird ein Entwurf und die Umsetzung einer Lösung zur hochpräzisen Volumenmessung von Polymerstäbchen mit optischer Messtechnik und Bildverarbeitung ausgearbeitet. Diese spezielle Prozesslösung in der Prozesslinie (inline) sollte eine 100%ige Qualitätskontrolle während der Produktion garantieren. Die Zykluszeiten des Systems sollte fünf Sekunden pro Polymerstäbchen nicht überschreiten. Die Rahmenbedienungen für den Prozess sind durch die Materialeigenschaften des Objekts, die geringe Objektgröße (Breite = 199 µm, Länge = 935 µm bis 1683 µm) und die undeffinierte Querschnittsform (durch den Trocknungsprozess) vorgegeben. Darüber hinaus sollten die Kosten für den Prozess nicht zu hoch sein. Der Messaufbau sollte klein sein und ohne Sicherheitsvorkehrungen oder Abschirmungen arbeiten. Das entstandene System nimmt die Objekte in verschiedenen Winkelschritten auf, wertet mit Hilfe der Bildverarbeitung die Aufnahmen aus und approximiert das Volumen. Der Korrelationskoffizient zwischen Volumen und Gewicht beträgt für 77 Polymerstäbchen mit einem Gewicht von 37 µg bis 80 µg 99; 87%. Mit Hilfe eines Referenzsystems kann die Genauigkeit der Messung bestimmt werden. Die Standardabweichung sollte maximal 2,5% betragen. Das entstandene System erzielt eine maximale Volumenabweichung von 1,7%. Die Volumenvermessung erfüllt alle Anforderungen und kann somit als Alternative für die Waage verwendet werden.
English prepositions take only a small proportion of the language but play a substantial role. Although prepositions are of course also frequently used in English textbooks for secondary school, students fail to incidentally acquire them and often show low achievements in using prepositions correctly. The strategy commonly employed by language instructors is teaching the multiple senses of prepositions by rote which fails to help the students to draw links between the different meanings in usage. New findings in Cognitive Linguistics (CL) suggest a different approach to teaching prepositions and thus might have a strong impact on the methodologies of foreign language teaching and learning on the aspects of meaningful learning. Based on the Theory of Domains (Langacker, 1987), the notions of image schemas (Johnson, 1987) as well as the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), the present study developed a CL-inspired approach to teaching prepositions, which was compared to the traditional teaching method by an empirical study conducted in a German school setting. Referring to the participants from the higher track and the medium track, who are at different proficiency levels, the results indicate that the CL-inspired teaching approach improved students" performance significantly more than the traditional approach in all the cases for the higher track and in some cases for the medium track. Thus, these findings open up a new perspective of the CL-inspired meaningful learning approach on language teaching. In addition, the CL-inspired approach demonstrates the unification of the integrated model of text and picture comprehension (the ITPC model) in integrating the new knowledge with related prior knowledge in the cognitive structure. According to the learning procedure of the ITPC model, the image schema as visual image is first perceived through the sensory register, then is processed in the working memory by conceptual metaphor, and finally it is integrated with cognitive schemata in the long term memory. Moreover, deep-seated factors, such as transfer of mother tongue, the difficulty of teaching materials, and the influence of prior knowledge, have strong effects on the acquisition of English prepositions.
The Internet of Things is still one of the most relevant topics in the field of economics and research powered by the increasing demand of innovative services. Cost reductions in manufacturing of IoT hardware and the development of completely new communication ways has led to the point of bil-lions of devices connected to the internet. But in order to rule this new IoT landscape a standardized solution to conquer these challenges must be developed, the IoT Architecture.
This thesis examines the structure, purpose and requirements of IoT Architecture Models in the global IoT landscape and proposes an overview across the selected ones. For that purpose, a struc-tured literature analysis on this topic is conducted within this thesis, including an analysis on three existing research approaches trying to frame this topic and a tool supported evaluation of IoT Archi-tecture literature with over 200 accessed documents.
Furthermore, a coding of literature with the help of the specialised coding tool ATLAS.ti 8 is conduct-ed on 30 different IoT Architecture Models. In a final step these Architecture Models are categorized and compared to each other showing that the environment of IoT and its Architectures gets even more complex the further the research goes.
Water is used in a way as if it were available infinitely. Droughts, increased rainfall or flooding already lead to water shortages and, thus, deprive entire population groups of the basis of their livelihoods. There is a growing fear that conflicts over water will increase, especially in arid climate zones, because life without water - whether for humans, animals or plants - is not possible.
More than 60 % of the African population depend on land and water resources for their livelihoods through pastoralism, fishing and farming. The water levels of rivers and lakes are decreasing. Hence, the rural population which is dependent on land and water move towards water-rich and humid areas. This internal migration increases the pressure on available water resources. Driven by the desire to strengthen the economic development, African governments align their political agendas with the promotion of macro international and national economic projects.
This doctoral thesis examines the complex interrelationships between water shortages, governance, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and violent and non-violent conflicts at Lake Naivasha in Kenya and Lake Wamala in Uganda. In order to satisfy the overall complexity, this doctoral thesis combines various theoretical and empirical aspects in which a variety of methods are applied to different geographical regions, across disciplines, and cultural and political boundaries.
The investigation reveals that Lake Naivasha is more affected by violent conflicts than Lake Wamala. Reasons for this include population growth, historically grown ethnic conflicts, corruption and the preferential treatment of national and international economic actors. The most common conflict response tools are raiding and the blockage of water access. However, deathly encounters, destruction of property and cattle slaughtering are increasingly used to gain access to water and land.
The insufficient implementation of the political system and the governments’ prioritization to foster economic development results, on the one hand, in the commercialization of water resources and increases, on the other hand, non-violent conflict between national and sub-national political actors. While corruption, economic favours and patronage defuse this conflict, resource access becomes more difficult for the local population. Resulting thereof, a final hypothesis is developed which states that the localization of the political conflict aggravates the water situation for the local population and, thereby, favours violent conflicts over water access and water use in water-rich areas.
Web application testing is an active research area. Garousi et al. did a systematic mapping study and classified 79 papers published between 2000-2011. However, there seems to be a lack of information exchange between the scientific community and tool developers.
This thesis systematically analyzes the field of functional, system level web application testing tools. 194 candidate tools were collected in the tool search and screened, with 23 tools being selected as foundation of this thesis. These 23 tools were systematically used to generate a feature model of the domain. The methodology to support this is an additional contribution of this thesis. It processes end user documentation of tools belonging to an examined domain and creates a feature model. The feature model gives an overview over the existing features, their alternatives and their distribution. It can be used to identify trends and problems, extraordinary features, help decision making of tool purchase or guide scientists how to focus research.
The term "Augmented Reality (AR)" denotes the superposition of additional virtual objects and supplementary information over real images. The joint project Enhanced Reality (ER)1 aims at a generic AR-system. The ER-project is a cooperation of six different research groups of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Koblenz-Landau. According to Ronald Azuma an AR-system combines real and virtual environments, where the real and virtual objects are registered in 3-D, and it provides interactivity in real time [Azu97]. Enhanced Reality extends Augmented Reality by requiring the virtual objects to be seamlessly embedded into the real world as photo-realistic objects according to the exact lighting conditions. Furthermore, additional information supplying value-added services may be displayed and interaction of the user may even be immersive. The short-term goal of the ER-project is the exploration of ER-fundamentals using some specific research scenarios; the long-term goal is the development of a component-based ER-framework for the creation of ER-applications for arbitrary application areas. ER-applications are developed as single-user applications for users who are moving in a real environment and are wearing some kind of visual output device like see-through glasses and some mobile end device. By these devices the user is able to see reality as it is, but he can also see the virtual objects and the additional information about some value-added service. Furthermore he might have additional devices whereby he can interact with the available virtual objects. The development of a generic framework for ER-applications requires the definition of generic components which are customizable and composable to build concrete applications and it requires a homogeneous data model which supports all components equally well. The workgroup "Software Technology"2 is responsible for this subproject. This report gives some preliminary results concerning the derivation of a component-based view of ER. There are several augmented reality frameworks like ARVIKA, AMIRE, DWARF, MORGAN, Studierstube and others which offer some support for the development of AR-applications. All of them ease the use of existing subsystems like AR-Toolkit, OpenGL and others and leverage the generation process for realistic systems by making efficient use of those subsystems. Consequently, they highly rely on them.
Robotics research today is primarily about enabling autonomous, mobile robots to seamlessly interact with arbitrary, previously unknown environments. One of the most basic problems to be solved in this context is the question of where the robot is, and what the world around it, and in previously visited places looks like " the so-called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. We present a GraphSLAM system, which is a graph-based approach to this problem. This system consists of a frontend and a backend: The frontend- task is to incrementally construct a graph from the sensor data that models the spatial relationship between measurements. These measurements may be contradicting and therefore the graph is inconsistent in general. The backend is responsible for optimizing this graph, i. e. finding a configuration of the nodes that is least contradicting. The nodes represent poses, which do not form a regular vector space due to the contained rotations. We respect this fact by treating them as what they really are mathematically: manifolds. This leads to a very efficient and elegant optimization algorithm.
This thesis presents an analysis of API usage in a large corpus of Java software retrieved from the open source repositories hosted at SourceForge. Most larger software projects use software libraries, which offer a public "application programming interface" or API as an interface for the programmer. In order to facilitate the transition between different APIs, there are emerging research projects in the field of automated API migration. However, there is a lack of basic statistical background information about in-the-wild usage of APIs as such measurements have, until now, only been done on rather small corpora. We thus present an analysis method suitable for measurements with large corpora. First, we create a corpus of open source projects hosted on SourceForge, as well as a corpus of software libraries. Then, all projects in the corpus are compiled with an instrumented compiler. We use a compiler plugin for javac that gives detailed information about every method created by the compiler. This information is stored in a database and analyzed.
Global crop production increased substantially in recent decades due to agricultural intensification and expansion and today agricultural areas occupy about 38% of Earth’s terrestrial surface - the largest use of land on the planet. However, current high-intensity agricultural practices fostered in the context of the Green Revolution led to serious consequences for the global environment. Pesticides, in particular, are highly biologically active substances that can threaten the ecological integrity of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Although the global pesticide use increases steadily, our field-data based knowledge regarding exposure of non-target ecosystems such as surface waters is very restricted. Available studies have by now been limited to spatially restricted geographical areas or had rather specific objectives rendering the extrapolation to larger spatial scales questionable.
Consequently, this thesis evaluated based on four scientific publications the exposure, effects, and regulatory implications of particularly toxic insecticides` concentrations detected in global agricultural surface waters. FOCUS exposure modelling was used to characterise the highly specific insecticide exposure patterns and to analyse the resulting implications for both monitoring and risk assessment (publication I). Based on more than 200,000 scientific database entries, 838 peer-reviewed studies finally included, and more than 2,500 sites in 73 countries, the risks of agricultural insecticides to global surface waters were analysed by means of a comprehensive meta-analysis (publication II). This meta-analysis evaluated whether insecticide field concentrations exceed legally accepted regulatory threshold levels (RTLs) derived from official EU and US pesticide registration documents and, amongst others, how risks depend on insecticide development over time and stringency of environmental regulation. In addition, an in-depth analysis of the current EU pesticide regulations provided insights into the level of protection and field relevance of highly elaborated environmental regulatory risk assessment schemes (publications III and IV).
The results of this thesis show that insecticide surface water exposure is characterized by infrequent and highly transient concentration peaks of high ecotoxicological relevance. We thus argue in publication I that sampling based on regular intervals is inadequate for the detection of insecticide surface water concentrations and that traditional risk assessment concepts based on all insecticide concentrations including non-detects lead to severely biased results and critical underestimations of risks. Based on these considerations, publication II demonstrates that out of 11,300 measured insecticide concentrations (MICs; i.e., those actually detected and quantified), 52.4% (5,915 cases; 68.5%) exceeded the RTL for either water (RTLSW) or sediments. This indicates a substantial risk for the biological integrity of global water resources as additional analyses on pesticide effects in the field clearly evidence that the regional aquatic biodiversity is reduced by approximately 30% at pesticide concentrations equalling the RTLs. In addition, publication II shows that there is a complete lack of scientific monitoring data for ~90% of global cropland and that both the actual insecticide contamination of surface waters and the resulting ecological risks are most likely even greater due to, for example, inadequate sampling methods employed in the studies and the common occurrence of pesticide mixtures. A linear model analysis identified that RTLSW exceedances depend on the catchment size, sampling regime, sampling date, insecticide substance class, and stringency of countries` environmental regulations, as well as on the interactions of these factors. Importantly, the risks are significantly higher for newer-generation insecticides (i.e., pyrethroids) and are high even in countries with stringent environmental regulations. Regarding the latter, an analysis of the EU pesticide regulations revealed critical deficiencies and the lack of protectiveness and field-relevance for current presumed highly elaborated FOCUS exposure assessment (publication IV) and overall risk assessment schemes (publication III). Based on these findings, essential risk assessment amendments are proposed.
In essence, this thesis analyses the agriculture–environment linkages for pesticides at the global scale and it thereby contributes to a new research frontier in global ecotoxicology. The overall findings substantiate that agricultural insecticides are potential key drivers for the global freshwater biodiversity crisis and that the current regulatory risk assessment approaches for highly toxic anthropogenic chemicals fail to protect the global environment. This thesis provides an integrated view on the environmental side effects of global high-intensity agriculture and alerts that beside worldwide improvements to current pesticide regulations and agricultural pesticide application practices, the fundamental reformation of conventional agricultural systems is urgently needed to meet the twin challenges of providing sufficient food for a growing human population without destroying the ecological integrity of global ecosystems essential to human existence.
This dissertation introduces a methodology for formal specification and verification of user interfaces under security aspects. The methodology allows to use formal methods pervasively in the specification and verification of human-computer interaction. This work consists of three parts. In the first part, a formal methodology for the description of human-computer interaction is developed. In the second part, existing definitions of computer security are adapted for human-computer interaction and formalized. A generic formal model of human-computer interaction is developed. In the third part, the methodology is applied to the specification and verification of a secure email client.
The lack of a formal event model hinders interoperability in distributed event-based systems. Consequently, we present in this paper a formal model of events, called F. The model bases on an upper-level ontology and pro-vides comprehensive support for all aspects of events such as time and space, objects and persons involved, as well as the structural aspects, namely mereological, causal, and correlational relationships. The event model provides a flexible means for event composition, modeling of event causality and correlation, and allows for representing different interpretations of the same event. The foundational event model F is developed in a pattern-oriented approach, modularized in different ontologies, and can be easily extended by domain specifific ontologies.
This paper describes a parallel algorithm for selecting activation functionsrnof an artifcial network. For checking the efficiency of this algorithm a count of multiplicative and additive operations is used.
In this article we analyze the privacy aspects of a mobile sensor application used for recording urban travel patterns as part of a travel-survey service. This service has been developed and field-tested within the Live+Gov EU Project. The privacy analysis follows a structured approach established in. Eight privacy recommendations are derived, and have already led to corresponding enhancements of the travel-survey service.
Conventional security infrastructures in the Internet cannot be directly adopted to ambient systems, especially if based on short-range communication channels: Personal, mobile devices are used and the participants are present during communication, so privacy protection is a crucial issue. As ambient systems cannot rely on an uninterrupted connection to a Trust Center, certiffed data has to be veriffed locally. Security techniques have to be adjusted to the special environment. This paper introduces a public key infrastructure (PKI) to provide secure communication channels with respect to privacy, confidentiality, data integrity, non-repudiability, and user or device authentication. It supports three certiffcate levels with a different balance between authenticity and anonymity. This PKI is currently under implementation as part of the iCity project.
The development of a pan-European public E-Procurement system is an important target of the European Union to enhance the efficiency, transparency and competitiveness of public procurement procedures conducted within the European single market. A great obstacle for cross-border electronic procurement is the heterogeneity of national procurement systems in terms of technical, organizational and legal differences. To overcome this obstacle the European Commission funds several initiatives that contribute to the aim of achieving interoperability for pan-European public procurement. Pan European Public Procurement OnLine (PEPPOL) is one of these initiatives that aims at piloting an interoperable pan-European E-Procurement solution to support businesses and public purchasing entities from different member states to conduct their procurement processes electronically.rnrnAs interoperability and inter-connection of distributed heterogeneous information systems are the major requirements in the European procurement domain, and the VCD sub-domain in particular, service-oriented architecture (SOA) seems to provide a promising approach to realize such an architecture, as it promotes loose coupling and interoperability. This master thesis therefore discusses the SOA approach and how its concepts, methodologies and technologies can be used for the development of interoperable IT systems for electronic public procurement. This discussion is enhanced through a practical application of the discussed SOA methodologies by conceptualizing and prototyping of a sub-system derived from the overall system domain of the Virtual Company Dossier. For that purpose, important aspects of interoperability and related standards and technologies will be examined and put into the context of public electronic procurement. Furthermore, the paradigm behind SOA will be discussed, including the derivation of a top-down development methodology for service-oriented systems.
This thesis deals with the mapping from Ecore to grUML. Thereby the transformation of models in Ecore to graphs in grUML is as well considered as the conversion of Ecore metamodels to grUML schemas. At first the modeling languages Ecore and grUML are described separately. Thereby the metamodels of the languages are explained and the API is presented. Subsequent differences and similarities of grUML and Ecore are exemplified and based on this a mapping is defined. Also requirements for the implementation of the transformation are noted. After that details of the realisation follow. Finally the results of the transformation are shown with the help of some examples.
Dieses Dokument legt den Standard für die Transformation von grUML-Schemas (GraphUML, [BHR+09]) nach XSD (XML Schema Definition) fest und ist im Rahmen des Arbeitspakets 5.2 "Prototypische SOAMIG-Parser und -Unparser realisieren" im SOAMIG-Projekt entstanden. Das Ziel ist der Austausch von TGraphen (typisierten, attributierten, angeordneten, gerichte Graphen [ERW08]) über XML-Dokumente. Zur Spezifikation des Austauschformats wird XSD eingesetzt. Dies erlaubt eine Validierung der XML-Instanzen auf syntaktischer Ebene. Der Ausgangspunkt ist ein gegebenes Schemas in grUML-Notation1, welches nach XSD transformiert werden soll. Mit der generierten XSD existiert ein Beschreibungsmittel für Graph-Instanzen in XML. Die dadurch beschriebenen XML-Dokumente sind flach, d.h. alle Elemente sind direkt dem root-Element untergeordnet.
Abdriftbedingte Pflanzenschutzmittelrückstände in unbehandelten Kulturen auf angrenzenden Flächen
(2020)
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Abdrift von Pflanzenschutzmitteln (PSM), die auf Lebensmittelkulturen in angrenzenden Flächen, insbesondere in benachbarte Haus- und Kleingärten, gelangt. In einer Reihe von Windtunnelversuchen wurde die Abdrift von PSM aus Flächen- und Raumkulturen während der Applikation mit zwei verschiedenen Testsystemen nachgestellt. Das Testsystem Flächenkultur simuliert die Applikation auf Flächenkulturen, das Testsystem Raumkultur die auf Raumkulturen. Auf der Nicht-Zielfläche wurden die auf Grund von Abdrift entstandenen Rückstände des verwendeten Tracers Pyranin nach der Applikation entfernungsabhängig auf den Lebensmittelkulturen Kopfsalat, Erdbeeren und Tomaten gemessen. Durch die gleichzeitige Messung der Bodendeposition konnten die Messwerte mit Hilfe von Regressionsgleichungen (R² = 0,88 bis 0,97) in Bezug zu den Abdrifteckwerten (AEW) gebracht werden. Dadurch war es möglich, erste Abschätzungen der Höhe von Rückständen vorzunehmen, die über Abdrift von landwirtschaftlichen Flächen auf benachbarte Lebensmittelkulturen im Freiland gelangen können. Diese Abschätzung ist zunächst limitiert auf die drei Versuchspflanzen. Die Versuche zeigen, dass sich die meisten durch Abdrift entstehenden Rückstände auf Salatköpfen wieder finden, gefolgt von Erdbeeren und Tomaten.
Neben dem experimentellen Teil wurden Analysen mit Geoinformationssystemen (GIS) durchgeführt, um die Nachbarschaftsverhältnisse zwischen landwirtschaftlich genutzten Flächen und Gartenflächen für ganz Deutschland und speziell für Rheinland-Pfalz (RLP) zu analysieren. Dazu wurden für die deutschlandweiten Berechnungen die Daten des amtlichen topographisch-kartographischen Informationssystems (ATKIS) und für die RLP-weiten Berechnungen die Daten des amtlichen Liegenschaftskatasterinformationssystem (ALKIS) verwendet. Beachtet werden muss, dass auf Grund der Datenbeschaffenheit eine Abgrenzung der Gartenflächen zu Wohnflächen nicht möglich ist. Deutschlandweit liegen etwa 1,1 % aller potentiellen Gartenflächen innerhalb eines 5 m Pufferbereichs um Raumkulturen bzw. innerhalb eines 2 m Pufferbereichs um Flächenkulturen. Für RLP sind es 0,75 %. Mit Hilfe eines Landbedeckungsdatensatzes der Fa. RLP AgroScience GmbH und den ALKIS-Daten konnte jedoch die exakte Gartenfläche für RLP auf 47.437 ha bestimmt werden. Basierend auf dieser Datengrundlage liegen 1,2 % der Gartenfläche von RLP innerhalb der genannten Pufferbereiche. Des Weiteren ergaben Berechnungen, dass 3 % der Gärten in RLP direkt angrenzend zu landwirtschaftlich genutzten Flächen liegen.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden nicht nur Gärten betrachtet, die an landwirtschaftliche Flächen grenzen, sondern auch Nachbarschaftsverhältnisse zwischen ökologisch und konventionell bewirtschafteten Flächen untersucht. Diese Berechnungen erfolgten mit den Daten des Integrierten Verwaltungs- und Kontrollsystems (InVeKoS). Insgesamt grenzen in RLP 47,1 % aller ökologisch bewirtschafteten Flächen unmittelbar an konventionell bewirtschaftete Flächen an.
Absicherung der analytischen Interpretation von Geolokalisierungsdaten in der Mobilfunkforensik
(2019)
Abstract
Location based services maybe are within one of the most outstanding features of modern mobile devices. Despite the fact, that cached geolocation data could be used to reconstruct motion profiles, the amount of devices capable to provide these information in the field of criminal investigations is growing.
Motivation
The aim of this work is to generate in-depth knowledge to questions concerning geolocation in the field of mobile forensics, making especially somehow cached geolocation data forensically valuable. On top, tools meeting the specific requirements of law enforcement personnel shall be developed.
Problems
Geolocation processes within smartphones are quite complex. For the device to locate its position, different reference systems like GPS, cell towers or WiFi hot\-spots are used in a variety of ways. The whole mobile geolocation mechanism is proprietary to the device manufacturer and not build with forensic needs in mind. One major problem regarding forensic investigations is, that mainly reference points are being extracted and processed instead of real life device location data. In addition, these geolocation information only consist of bits and bytes or numeric values that have to be securely assigned to their intended meaning. The location data recovered are full of gaps providing only a part of the process or device usage. This possible loss of data has to be determined deriving a reliable measurement for the completeness, integrity and accuracy of data. Last but not least, as for every evidence within a criminal investigation, it has to be assured, that manipulations of the data or errors in position estimation have no disadvantageous effect on the analysis.
Research Questions
In the context of localisation services in modern smartphones, it always comes back to similar questions during forensic everyday life:
* Can locations be determined at any time?
* How accurate is the location of a smartphone?
* Can location data from smartphones endure in court?
Approach
For a better understanding of geolocation processes in modern smartphones and to evaluate the quality and reliability of the geolocation artefacts, information from different platforms shall be theoretically analysed as well as observed in-place during the geolocation process. The connection between data points and localisation context will be examined in predefined live experiments as well as desktop- and native applications on smartphones.
Results
Within the scope of this thesis self developed tools have been used for forensic investigations as well as analytical interpretation of geodata from modern smartphones. Hereby a generic model for assessing the quality of location data has emerged, which can be generally applied to geodata from mobile devices.
Absicherung und Verifikation einer Instant Messaging-Kommunikation über Diffie Hellman Key Agreement
(2009)
Im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit soll die Absicherung und Verifikation einer Instant Messaging-Kommunikation beschrieben und in Form eines Plugins für ein bestehendes Instant Messaging-System realisiert werden. Dazu werden zunächst die Anforderungen an das System erhoben und mit Vorhandenen Konzepten und Systemen am Markt verglichen. Darauf aufbauend wird ein eigenes Konzept entwickelt und die Umsetzung in der Programmiersprache Java beschrieben. Der Fokus dieser Arbeit liegt dabei auf der Absicherung des Chat-Kanals einer Instant Messaging-Kommunikation, aber es werden geeignete Schnittstellen beschrieben und implementiert, die eine Erweiterung der angewendeten Verfahren für beliebige Datensätze ermöglicht.
Bio-medical data comes in various shapes and with different representations.
Domain experts use such data for analysis or diagnosis,
during research or clinical applications. As the opportunities to obtain
or to simulate bio-medical data become more complex and productive,
the experts face the problem of data overflow. Providing a
reduced, uncluttered representation of data, that maintains the data’s
features of interest falls into the area of Data Abstraction. Via abstraction,
undesired features are filtered out to give space - concerning the
cognitive and visual load of the viewer - to more interesting features,
which are therefore accentuated. To address this challenge, the dissertation
at hand will investigate methods that deal with Data Abstraction
in the fields of liver vasculature, molecular and cardiac visualization.
Advanced visualization techniques will be applied for this purpose.
This usually requires some pre-processing of the data, which will also
be covered by this work. Data Abstraction itself can be implemented
in various ways. The morphology of a surface may be maintained,
while abstracting its visual cues. Alternatively, the morphology may
be changed to a more comprehensive and tangible representation.
Further, spatial or temporal dimensions of a complex data set may
be projected to a lower space in order to facilitate processing of the
data. This thesis will tackle these challenges and therefore provide an
overview of Data Abstraction in the bio-medical field, and associated
challenges, opportunities and solutions.
With the emergence of current generation head-mounted displays (HMDs), virtual reality (VR) is regaining much interest in the field of medical imaging and diagnosis. Room-scale exploration of CT or MRI data in virtual reality feels like an intuitive application. However in VR retaining a high frame rate is more critical than for conventional user interaction seated in front of a screen. There is strong scientific evidence suggesting that low frame rates and high latency have a strong influence on the appearance of cybersickness. This thesis explores two practical approaches to overcome the high computational cost of volume rendering for virtual reality. One lies within the exploitation of coherency properties of the especially costly stereoscopic rendering setup. The main contribution is the development and evaluation of a novel acceleration technique for stereoscopic GPU ray casting. Additionally, an asynchronous rendering approach is pursued to minimize the amount of latency in the system. A selection of image warping techniques has been implemented and evaluated methodically, assessing the applicability for VR volume rendering.
Successful export sectors in manufacturing and agribusiness are important drivers of structural transformation in Sub-Sahara African countries. Backed by industrial policies and active state involvement, a small number of successful productive export sectors has emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa. This thesis asks the question: How do politics shape the promotion of export-driven industrialisation and firm-level upgrading in Sub-Saharan Africa? It exemplifies this question with an in-depth, qualitative study of the cashew processing industry in Mozambique in the period from 1991 until 2019. Mozambique used to be one of the world’s largest producers and processors of cashew nuts in the 1960s and 1970s. At the end of the 20th century, the cashew processing industry broke down completely but has re-emerged as one of the country’s few successful agro-processing exports.
The thesis draws on theoretical approaches from the fields of political science, notably the political settlements framework, global value chain analysis and the research on technological capabilities to explore why the Mozambican Government supported the cashew processing industry and how Mozambican cashew processors acquired the technological capabilities needed to access the global cashew value chain and to upgrade. It makes an important theoretical contribution by linking the political settlements framework and the literature on upgrading in global value chains to study how politics shaped productive sector promotion and upgrading in the Mozambican cashew processing industry. The findings of the thesis are based on extensive primary data, including 58 expert interviews and 10 firm surveys, that was collected in Mozambique in 2018 as well as a broad base of secondary literature.
The thesis argues that the Mozambican Government supported the cashew processing industry because it became important for the Government’s political survival. Promoting the cashew sector formed part of an electoral strategy for the ruling FRELIMO coalition and a means to keep FRELIMO factions united by offering economic opportunities to key constituencies. In 1999, it adopted a protectionist cashew law that created strong incentives for cashew processing in Mozambique. This not only facilitated the re-emergence of the cashew processing industry after its breakdown. The law and the active involvement of the National Cashew Institute (INCAJU) also affected the governance of the local cashew value chain, the creation of backward linkages, and the upgrading paths of cashew processors. The findings of the thesis suggest that the cashew law reduced the pressure on the cashew processing industry to upgrade. The law further created opportunities for formal and informal rent creation for members of the political elite and lower level FRELIMO officials that prevented a far-reaching reform of the law. The thesis shows that international buyers do not promote upgrading among Sub-Sahara African firms in global value chains with market-based or modular governance. Moreover, firms that operate in countries where industrial policies are not enforced effectively cannot draw on the support of government institutions to enhance their capabilities and to upgrade. Firms therefore mainly depended on costly learning channels at firm level, e.g. learning by doing or hiring skilled labour, and/or on technical assistance from donors to build the technological capabilities needed to access global value chains and to remain competitive.
The findings of the thesis suggest that researchers, governments, development practitioners and consultants need to rethink their understanding of upgrading in GVCs in four ways. First, they need to move away from understanding upgrading in terms of moving towards more complex, higher value-added activities in GVCs (functional upgrading). Instead, it is important to consider the potential of other, more realistic types of upgrading for firms in low-income countries, such reducing risks by diversifying suppliers and buyers or increasing rewards by making production processes more efficient. Second, they need to replace an overly positive view on upgrading that neglects possible side-effects at sector and/or country level. Third, GVC participation on its own does not promote upgrading among local supplier firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. The interests of lead firms and Sub-Sahara African supplier firms may not be aligned or even conflicting. Targeted industrial policies and the creation of institutions that effectively promote capability building among firms therefore become even more important. Finally, upgrading needs to be understood as a process that is not only shaped by interactions between firms, but also by local domestic politics.
The findings of the thesis are highly relevant for scholars from the fields of political science, development studies, and economics. Its practical implications and tools, e.g. a technological capabilities matrix for the cashew industry, are of interest for development practitioners, members of public institutions in Sub-Sahara African countries, local entrepreneurs, and representatives of local business associations that are involved in promoting export sectors and upgrading among local firms.
Im Vergleich zu herkömmlicher Computergrafik (perspektivische Projektion) bietet Raytracing entscheidende Vorteile, die hauptsächlich in der vergleichsweise hohen physikalischen Korrektheit der Methode begründet sind. Die Schwächen liegen hingegen im immensen Rechenaufwand.
Ein Raytracer ist vergleichsweise so rechenintensiv, weil für jeden Pixel mindestens ein Strahl verschickt werden muss. Dieser muss gegen alle Objekte im Raum geschnitten werden. Hinzu kommen noch die Strahlen, die entstehen, wenn Strahlen an Objekten reflektiert werden (Rekursion). Um diesen Rechenaufwand zu verkleinern und zusätzlich ein besseres Bild zu erzeugen, soll der adaptive Sampler den Raytracer unterstützen. Der adaptive Sampler soll während des Rendervorgangs den progressiven Fortschritt in der Bildgenerierung beobachten und Pixel von der weiteren Berechnung ausschließen, für die sich ein zusätzliches Verschießen von Strahlen nicht mehr lohnt.
Anders als der rein progressive Raytracer hört der adaptive Sampler mit dem Konvergieren des Bildes auf zu rechnen. Der adaptive Sampler soll so dafür sorgen, dass schneller ein besseres Bild erzeugt wird und somit die Performanz gesteigert wird. Insgesamt erwartet man sich vom adaptiven Sampler Vorteile bei der Berechnung von bestimmten Szenen. Unter anderem eine Verbesserung bei Szenen mit rein diffus beleuchteten Bildbereichen, sowie eine Verbesserung bei Szenen mit unterschiedlich rechenintensiven Bildbereichen. Ein normaler Raytracer kann nicht beurteilen, wie sinnvoll seine Schüsse sind. Er kann nur mehr Strahlen verschießen, in der Hoffnung, das Bild damit effektiv zu verbessern.
Es gibt jedoch viele Szenarien, bei denen eine linear steigende Schussanzahl pro Pixel keine gleichmäßige Verbesserung im Bild erzeugt. Das bedeutet, dass Bereiche im Bild schon gut aussehen, während andere noch sehr verrauscht sind. Man möchte nun Bildbereiche, die bereits konvergiert sind, in denen sich ein weiterer Beschuss also nicht mehr bemerkbar macht, ausschließen und die Rechenleistung dort nutzen, wo man sie noch braucht.
Wichtig dabei ist, dass Pixel nicht ungewollt zu früh von der Berechnung ausgeschlossen werden, die nicht weit genug konvergiert sind. Der adaptive Sampler soll so lange arbeiten, bis jeder Pixel dauerhaft keine Änderungen mehr vorweist. Das bedeutet, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit für eine signifikante Farbänderung eines Pixels durch Verschießen eines Strahls (bei mehreren Lichtquellen in RenderGin mehrere Strahlen pro Pixel) klein genug ist. Es wird zwar intern keine Wahrscheinlichkeit berechnet, jedoch bekommt der Raytracer eine Art Gedächtnis: Er speichert die Veränderungen im beleuchteten Bild und deren Verlauf in eigenen Gedächtnisbildern. Das "Gedächtnis" für das alte Bild (Zustand des Bildes in der letzten Iteration über die Pixel) repräsentiert dabei das Kurzzeitgedächtnis. Es ist absolut genau. Das Langzeitgedächtnis wird von drei verschiedenen Bildern repräsentiert. Das erste gibt die Anzahl der verschossenen Strahlen pro Pixel an. Das zweite ist ein Wahrheitswertebild, das für jeden Pixel angibt, ob dieser noch in die Berechnung einbezogen werden soll. Das dritte Bild gibt an, wie oft jeder Pixel eine Farbänderung vollzogen hat, die geringer ist als der geforderte Maximalabstand eines Pixels zu sich selbst (vor und nach dem Verschießen eines weiteren Strahls).
Mit diesen drei Bildern ist es möglich, zusätzliche quantitative Informationen zu den qualitativen Informationen des Vergleichs vom neuen und alten Bild zu berücksichtigen.
In dieser Arbeit kläre ich die Frage, ob die gewünschten Effekte eintreten und ob bei Integration in die bestehende Struktur von RenderGin ein Performanzgewinn möglich ist. Die Umsetzung eines adaptiven Samplers ist als Plug-In in der Software RenderGin von Numenus GmbH geschehen. RenderGin ist ein echtzeitfähiger, progressiver Raytracer, der sich durch seine Performanz auszeichnet. Die Bildgenerierung geschieht allein auf der CPU, die Grafikkarte wird lediglich zur Anzeige des erzeugten Bildes benötigt.
Die Umsetzung und Programmierung des Plug-Ins ist in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 geschehen unter Verwendung des RenderGin SDK der Numenus GmbH.
Research has shown that people recognize personality, gender, inner states and many other items of information by simply observing human motion. Therefore the expressive human motion seems to be a valuable non-verbal communication channel. On the quest for more believable characters in virtual three dimensional simulations a great amount of visual realism has been achieved during the last decades. However, while interacting with synthetic characters in real-time simulations, often human users still sense an unnatural stiffness. This disturbance in believability is generally caused by a lack of human behavior simulation. Expressive motions, which convey personality and emotional states can be of great help to create more plausible and life-like characters. This thesis explores the feasibility of an automatic generation of emotionally expressive animations from given neutral character motions. Such research is required since common animation methods, such as manual modeling or motion capturing techniques, are too costly to create all possible variations of motions needed for interactive character behavior. To investigate how emotions influence human motion relevant literature from various research fields has been viewed and certain motion rules and features have been extracted. These movement domains were validated in a motion analysis and implemented in a system in an exemplary manner capable of automating the expression of angry, sad and happy states in a virtual character through its body language. Finally, the results were evaluated in user test.
Semantic descriptions of non-textual media available on the web can be used to facilitate retrieval and presentation of media assets and documents containing them. While technologies for multimedia semantic descriptions already exist, there is as yet no formal description of a high quality multimedia ontology that is compatible with existing (semantic) web technologies. We explain the complexity of the problem using an annotation scenario. We then derive a number of requirements for specifying a formal multimedia ontology, including: compatibility with MPEG-7, embedding in foundational ontologies, and modularisation including separation of document structure from domain knowledge. We then present the developed ontology and discuss it with respect to our requirements.
Ein Switch (engl. Schalter; auch Weiche) ist eine Netzwerk-Komponente zur Verbindung mehrerer Computer bzw. Netz-Segmente in einem lokalen Netzwerk (LAN). Da Switches den Netzwerkverkehr analysieren und logische Entscheidungen treffen, werden sie auch als intelligente Hubs bezeichnet. Die Funktionsweise eines Switches ist der einer Bridge sehr ähnlich, daher wurde anfangs auch der Begriff Multi-Port-Bridge genutzt 1. Ziel der Diplomarbeit ist es, eine Dokumentation auf die Beine zu stellen, der interessierten Studenten der Informationstechnologie die Möglichkeit bietet, einerseits anhand von physikalischen Switches Administrationsaufgaben nachzuempfinden und andererseits anhand von virtuellen Switches größere Netzwerktopologien aufzubauen. Diese Virtualisierung wird durch das von Virtual Square entwickelte Tool VDE erreicht. Die physikalischen Switches bestehen aus vier Catalyst 3500 XL. Im Laufe dieser Arbeit wird sowohl die Bedienung der einzelnen Systeme untereinander, wie auch die Vernetzung der virtuellen Switches mit den physikalischen Switches erläutert. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch auf Protokolle und Methoden wie das Spanning Tree Protokoll oder die Virtualisierung eines Netzes durch VLANs eingegangen. Zum Schluss kann der Leser das gelernte in einigen praktischen Aufgaben anwenden.
Das Just-in-Time - Verfahren ist ein neues Unterrichtskonzept aus den USA (auch in D. schon z.T. eingesetzt), bei dem ein oder zwei Tage vor der Unterrichtsstunde Fragen hauptsächlich zu qualitativem und konzeptuellem Verständnis an die SchülerInnen gestellt und von diesen per eMail beantwortet werden. Aus den Lösungen wird dann von der Lehrkraft eine Folie mit falschen und richtigen Vorschlägen erstellt (i.a. anonym), die dann in der Klasse diskutiert werden. Die besonderen Vorteile des Verfahrens sind: Adaptiver Unterricht mit kurzfristiger ("just-in-time") Reaktionsmöglichkeit auf Präkonzepte und andere Lernschwierigkeiten; Förderung der Selbsttätigkeit und Eigenverantwortung für die eingesendeten Beiträge; Schaffung einer schriftlichen (eMail-Beitrag) und mündlichen (Diskussion) Gelegenheit zur Spracharbeit an fachlichen Inhalten. Das Lernarrangement Die über Webspace verfügende Lehrkraft lädt eine themenrelevante Aufgabe ins Internet. Diese Aufgabe ist von den SchülerInnen ihres Kurses am Computer zu Hause zu bearbeiten; die Bearbeitung wird über ein Formularfenster als Mail an die Lehr-kraft gesendet. Mit den Statements ihrer SchülerInnen im Kopf begibt sich die Lehrkraft nun an die Planung der folgenden Unterrichtsstunde: Insbesondere werden die interessantesten Statements auf TLP-Folie kopiert . Sie bilden den roten Faden der in Planung befindlichen Unterrichtsstunde. Die Schülerantworten sind also zum einen Planungsgrundlage für die folgende Unterrichtsstunde, zum anderen werden sie zu einem besonderen Unterrichtsmedium des JiTT-Verfahrens (Folie o.ä. mit den interessantesten Statements). Der Unterrichtsverlauf enthält Phasen, in denen die Schüleraussagen gelesen, erörtert und diskutiert werden sowie Phasen, in denen die Gruppe mit üblichen Unterrichtsmedien und -methoden (Arbeitsblätter, Versuche) arbeitet. Im Idealfalle reduziert sich die Rolle des Lehrers in der Diskussionsphase auf die eines Moderators. Fachdidaktische und instruktionspsychologische Begründung JiTT kann als besondere Form des Adaptiven Unterrichts aufgefasst werden: Der Lehrkraft ist es möglich, insbesondere auf vorhandene Präkonzepte und andere Lernschwierigkeiten in adäquater Form zu reagieren und ihren Unterricht zu gestalten. Das Verfahren kann des weiteren auf der Ebene der Motivation wirksam sein, indem Selbstbestimmung (Mitgestaltung des Unterrichtes!) und soziale Einbindung (Diskussion der Schülerbeiträge in der Gruppe!) in besonderer Weise gefördert und gefordert werden. Selbstbestimmung und soziale Einbindung sind aber (zusammen mit Kompetenz) Hauptfaktoren in einer der führenden Theorien der Motivationspsychologie (Selbstbestimmungstheorie nach DECI & RYAN). Bemerkungen zum Design der Feldstudie In den Hauptteil der Feldstudie des Projektes zur Evaluation des Verfahrens waren zwei Physik-Leistungskurse eines rheinland-pfälzischen Gymnasiums (Teilgebiete "Mechanik" und "Elektrodynamik") eingebunden, ein Ergänzungsteil wurde im Rahmen einer Mechanik-Vorlesung des Lehramtsstudiums Physik an einer rheinland-pfälzischen Universität realisiert. Das erhobene Datenmaterial wurde insbesondere mit Hilfe des Verfahrens der multivariaten, hierarchischen Regressionsanalyse evaluiert. Ergebnis der Feldstudie und Diskussion Ein relevanter Effekt des JiTT-Verfahrens auf die Performanz der Lernenden kann nicht nachgewiesen werden. Im Hinblick auf mögliche Erklärungsmuster erscheinen folgende Aspekte von Bedeutung: Im Zuge der adäquaten Berücksichtigung von Schülervorstellungen ist es ausreichend, die "Mainstream-Päkonzepte" der Lernenden zu kennen. Detaillierte-res Wissen führt zu keinem signifikant erfolgreicheren Unterricht; Die vergleichsweise offen gestalteten JiTT-Phasen des Unterrichts scheinen insbesondere die leistungsschwächeren Lernenden zu überfordern; Ein eventuell doch vorhandener, auf JiTT zurückführbarer Einfluss auf die Performanz wird durch die Effizienz des im Unterricht eingesetzten methodischen Werkzeugs der Modellbildung überdeckt. Im Hinblick auf die motivationalen Einstellungen der Lernenden erscheint bemer-kenswert, dass man in JiTT zwar durchaus eine Bereicherung für den Unterricht sieht, dem gewachsenen zeitlichen Druck sowie den erweiterten Kontrollmöglichkeiten seitens der Lehrkraft jedoch kritisch gegenübersteht. Somit ist zweifelhaft, ob es durch den Einsatz des Verfahrens tatsächlich zu einer Verstärkung der autonom regulierten Varianten der Motivation kommt.
Advanced Auditing of Inconsistencies in Declarative Process Models using Clustering Algorithms
(2021)
To have a compliant business process of an organization, it is essential to ensure a onsistent process. The measure of checking if a process is consistent or not depends on the business rules of a process. If the process adheres to these business rules, then the process is compliant and efficient. For huge processes, this is quite a challenge. Having an inconsistency in a process can yield very quickly to a non-functional process, and that’s a severe problem for organizations. This thesis presents a novel auditing approach for handling inconsistencies from a post-execution perspective. The tool identifies the run-time inconsistencies and visualizes them in heatmaps. These plots aim to help modelers observe the most problematic constraints and help them make the right remodeling decisions. The modelers assisted with many variables can be set in the tool to see a different representation of heatmaps that help grasp all the perspectives of the problem. The heatmap sort and shows the run-time inconsistency patterns, so that modeler can decide which constraints are highly problematic and should address a re-model. The tool can be applied to real-life data sets in a reasonable run-time.
The formulation of the decoding problem for linear block codes as an integer program (IP) with a rather tight linear programming (LP) relaxation has made a central part of channel coding accessible for the theory and methods of mathematical optimization, especially integer programming, polyhedral combinatorics and also algorithmic graph theory, since the important class of turbo codes exhibits an inherent graphical structure. We present several novel models, algorithms and theoretical results for error-correction decoding based on mathematical optimization. Our contribution includes a partly combinatorial LP decoder for turbo codes, a fast branch-and-cut algorithm for maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of arbitrary binary linear codes, a theoretical analysis of the LP decoder's performance for 3-dimensional turbo codes, compact IP models for various heuristic algorithms as well as ML decoding in combination with higher-order modulation, and, finally, first steps towards an implementation of the LP decoder in specialized hardware. The scientific contributions are presented in the form of seven revised reprints of papers that appeared in peer-reviewed international journals or conference proceedings. They are accompanied by an extensive introductory part that reviews the basics of mathematical optimization, coding theory, and the previous results on LP decoding that we rely on afterwards.
Despite the inception of new technologies at a breakneck pace, many analytics projects fail mainly due to the use of incompatible development methodologies. As big data analytics projects are different from software development projects, the methodologies used in software development projects could not be applied in the same fashion to analytics projects. The traditional agile project management approaches to the projects do not consider the complexities involved in the analytics. In this thesis, the challenges involved in generalizing the application of agile methodologies will be evaluated, and some suitable agile frameworks which are more compatible with the analytics project will be explored and recommended. The standard practices and approaches which are currently applied in the industry for analytics projects will be discussed concerning enablers and success factors for agile adaption. In the end, after the comprehensive discussion and analysis of the problem and complexities, a framework will be recommended that copes best with the discussed challenges and complexities and is generally well suited for the most data-intensive analytics projects.
The loss of biodiversity is recognised on a global scale and also in the anthropogenic landscapes used for agriculture, now covering almost 50% of the global terrestrial land surface. In agriculture pesticides, biologically active chemicals are deliberately distributed to control pests, disease and weeds in the cropped areas. The quantification of remaining semi-naturals structures such as field margins and hedges is a prerequisite to understand the impact of pesticides on biodiversity, since these structures represent habitats for many organisms in agricultural landscapes. The presence of organisms in these habitats and crops is required to obtain an estimate of their potential pesticide exposure. In this text I provide studies on animal groups so far not addressed in risk assessment procedures for the regulation of pesticides such as amphibians, moths and bats. For all groups it becomes apparent that they are present in agricultural landscapes and potentially coincide with pesticide applications indicating a risk. Risk quantification also requires data on the sensitivity of organisms and here data for plants, amphibians and bees are presented. Effects translating to community level were studied for herbicide, insecticide and fertiliser effects in a natural system. After three years the treatments resulted in simplified plant communities with lower species numbers and a reduction in flowering plants. This reduction of flowers is used as an example for an indirect effect and was especially obvious for the effect of an herbicide on the common buttercup. Sublethal herbicide effects for a plant translated in an impact on feeding caterpillars, indicating a reduction in food quality. Insecticide inputs realistic for field margins also reduced moth pollination of white champion flowers by 30%. These indirect effects by distortions of food web characteristics are playing a critical role to understand declines in organism groups, however so far are not accounted for in pesticide risk assessment schemes. The current intense use of pesticides in agriculture and their inherent toxicity may lead to a chemical landscape fragmentation, where populations may not be connected anymore. Source-sink dynamics are important ecological processes and as a final result not only population size but also genetic population structure might be affected. Including potential pesticide impacts as costs in a model for amphibians migrating to breeding ponds in vineyards in Rhineland-Palatinate indicated the isolation of investigated populations. A first validation by analyzing the population structure of the European common frog confirmed the model prediction for some sites. For the regulation of pesticides in Europe a risk assessment is required and for the organisms of the terrestrial habitat a multitude of guidance documents is in place or is recently developed or improved. The results of the presented research indicate that wild plants and especially their reproductive flower stage are highly sensitive and risks are underestimated. Population recovery of arthropods needs a reevaluation at landscape scale and the addition of amphibian risk assessment in regulation procedures is suggested. However, developing or adopting risk assessment procedures and test systems is a time consuming task and therefore the establishment of risk management options is a pragmatic alternative with immediate effects. Artificial wetlands in the agricultural landscape proved to be important foraging sites for bats and their creation could mitigate negative pesticide effects. The integration of direct and indirect effects in a risk assessment scheme for all organism groups addressing also landscape scale and pesticide mixtures requires a long developing time. The establishment of model landscapes where management options and integrated pest management are applied on a larger scale would allow us to study pesticide effects in a realistic scenario and to develop an approach for the agriculture of the future.
The use of agricultural plastic covers has become common practice for its agronomic benefits such as improving yields and crop quality, managing harvest times better, and increasing pesticide and water use efficiency. However, plastic covers are suspected of partially breaking down into smaller debris and thereby contributing to soil pollution with microplastics. A better understanding of the sources and fate of plastic debris in terrestrial systems has so far been hindered by the lack of adequate analytical techniques for the mass-based and polymer-selective quantification of plastic debris in soil. The aim of this dissertation was thus to assess, develop, and validate thermoanalytical methods for the mass-based quantification of relevant polymers in and around agricultural fields previously covered with fleeces, perforated foils, and plastic mulches. Thermogravimetry/mass spectrometry (TGA/MS) enabled direct plastic analyses of 50 mg of soil without any sample preparation. With polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as a preliminary model, the method limit of detection (LOD) was 0.7 g kg−1. But the missing chromatographic separation complicated the quantification of polymer mixtures. Therefore, a pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) method was developed that additionally exploited the selective solubility of polymers in specific solvents prior to analysis. By dissolving polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS) in a mixture of 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene and p-xylene after density separation, up to 50 g soil became amenable to routine plastic analysis. Method LODs were 0.7–3.3 mg kg−1, and the recovery of 20 mg kg−1 PE, PP, and PS from a reference loamy sand was 86–105%. In the reference silty clay, however, poor PS recoveries, potentially induced by the additional separation step, suggested a qualitative evaluation of PS. Yet, the new solvent-based Py-GC/MS method enabled a first exploratory screening of plastic-covered soil. It revealed PE, PP, and PS contents above LOD in six of eight fields (6% of all samples). In three fields, PE levels of 3–35 mg kg−1 were associated with the use of 40 μm thin perforated foils. By contrast, 50 μm PE films were not shown to induce plastic levels above LOD. PP and PS contents of 5–19 mg kg−1 were restricted to single observations in four fields and potentially originated from littering. The results suggest that the short-term use of thicker and more durable plastic covers should be preferred to limit plastic emissions and accumulation in soil. By providing mass-based information on the distribution of the three most common plastics in agricultural soil, this work may facilitate comparisons with modeling and effect data and thus contribute to a better risk assessment and regulation of plastics. However, the fate of plastic debris in the terrestrial environment remains incompletely understood and needs to be scrutinized in future, more systematic research. This should include the study of aging processes, the interaction of plastics with other organic and inorganic compounds, and the environmental impact of biodegradable plastics and nanoplastics.