Chemical plant protection is an essential element in integrated pest management and hence, in current crop production. The use of Plant Protection Products (PPPs) potentially involves ecological risk. This risk has to be characterised, assessed and managed. For the coming years, an increasing need for agricultural products is expected. At the same time, preserving our natural resources and biodiversity per se is of equally fundamental importance. The relationship of our economic success and cultural progress to protecting the environment has been made plain in the Ecosystem Service concept. These distinct 'services' provide the foundation for defining ecological protection goals (Specific Protection Goals, SPGs) which can serve in the development of methods for ecological risk characterisation, assessment and management. Ecological risk management (RM) of PPPs is a comprehensive process that includes different aspects and levels. RM is an implicit part of tiered risk assessment (RA) schemes and scenarios, yet RM also explicitly occurs as risk mitigation measures. At higher decision levels, RM takes further risks, besides ecological risk, into account (e.g., economic). Therefore, ecological risk characterisation can include RM (mitigation measures) and can be part of higher level RM decision-making in a broader Ecosystem Service context. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to improved quantification of ecological risk as a basis for RA and RM. The initial general objective had been entitled as "… to estimate the spatial and temporal extent of exposure and effects…" and was found to be closely related to forthcoming SPGs with their defined 'Risk Dimension'. An initial exploration of the regulatory framework of ecological RA and RM of PPPs and their use, carried out in the present thesis, emphasised the value of risk characterisation at landscape-scale. The landscape-scale provides the necessary and sufficient context, including abiotic and biotic processes, their interaction at different scales, as well as human activities. In particular, spatially (and temporally) explicit landscape-scale risk characterisation and RA can provide a direct basis for PPP-specific or generic RM. From the general need for tiered landscape-scale context in risk characterisation, specific requirements relevant to a landscape-scale model were developed in the present thesis, guided by the key objective of improved ecological risk quantification. In principle, for an adverse effect (Impact) to happen requires a sensitive species and life stage to co-occur with a significant exposure extent in space and time. Therefore, the quantification of the Probability of an Impact occurring is the basic requirement of the model. In a landscape-scale context, this means assessing the spatiotemporal distribution of species sensitivity and their potential exposure to the chemical. The core functionality of the model should reflect the main problem structures in ecological risk characterisation, RA and RM, with particular relationship to SPGs, while being adaptable to specific RA problems. This resulted in the development of a modelling framework (Xplicit-Framework), realised in the present thesis. The Xplicit-Framework provides the core functionality for spatiotemporally explicit and probabilistic risk characterisation, together with interfaces to external models and services which are linked to the framework using specific adaptors (Associated-Models, e.g., exposure, eFate and effect models, or geodata services). From the Xplicit-Framework, and using Associated-Models, specific models are derived, adapted to RA problems (Xplicit-Models). Xplicit-Models are capable of propagating variability (and uncertainty) of real-world agricultural and environmental conditions to exposure and effects using Monte Carlo methods and, hence, to introduce landscape-scale context to risk characterisation. Scale-dependencies play a key role in landscape-scale processes and were taken into account, e.g., in defining and sampling Probability Density Functions (PDFs). Likewise, evaluation of model outcome for risk characterisation is done at ecologically meaningful scales. Xplicit-Models can be designed to explicitly address risk dimensions of SPGs. Their definition depends on the RA problem and tier. Thus, the Xplicit approach allows for stepwise introduction of landscape-scale context (factors and processes), e.g., starting at the definitions of current standard RA (lower-tier) levels by centring on a specific PPP use, while introducing real-world landscape factors driving risk. With its generic and modular design, the Xplicit-Framework can also be employed by taking an ecological entity-centric perspective. As the predictive power of landscape-scale risk characterisation increases, it is possible that Xplicit-Models become part of an explicit Ecosystem Services-oriented RM (e.g., cost/benefit level).

It is widely known that especially for technology-based start-ups, entrepreneurs need to set up the boundaries of the business and define the product/service to offer in order to minimize the risk of failure. The goal of this thesis is to not only emphasize the importance of the business model development and evaluation but also show an example customer validation process for an emerging start-up named DoBeeDo, which is a mobile app operating on a two-sided market. During the process of customer validation a survey has been conducted to evaluate the interest of the target groups as well as the fit of their expectations using the Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept measures. The paper includes an analysis and evaluation of the gathered results and assesses whether the execution of the Customer Development Model can be continued.

Despite widespread plans of big companies like Amazon and Google to develop unmanned delivery drones, scholarly research in this field is scarce, especially in the information systems field. From technical and legal perspectives, drone delivery in last-mile scenarios is in a quite mature state. However, estimates of user acceptance are varying between high skepticism and exaggerated optimism. This research follows a mixed method approach consisting both qualitative and quantitative research, to identify and test determinants of consumer delivery drone service adoption. The qualitative part rests on ten interviews among average consumers, who use delivery services on a regular basis. Insights gained from the qualitative part were used to develop an online survey and to assess the influence of associated risks on adoption intentions. The quantitative results show that especially financial and physical risks impede drone delivery service adoption. Delivery companies who are currently thinking about providing a delivery drone service may find these results useful when evaluating usage behaviors in the future market for delivery drones.

Recent estimates have confirmed that inland waters emit a considerable amount of CH4 and CO2 to the atmosphere at the regional and global scale. But these estimates are based on extrapolated measured data and lack of data from inland waters in arid and semi-arid regions and carbon sources from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as well insufficient resolution of the spatiotemporal variability of these emissions. Through this study, we analyzed monthly hydrological, meteorological and water quality data from three irrigation and drinking water reservoirs in the lower Jordan River basin and estimated the atmospheric emission rates of CO2. We investigated the effect of WWTPs on surrounding aquatic systems in term of CH4 and CO2 emission by presenting seasonally resolved data for dissolved concentrations of both gases in the effluents and in the receiving streams at nine WWTPs in Germany. We investigated spatiotemporal variability of CH4 and CO2 emission from aquatic ecosystems by using of simple low-cost tools for measuring CO2 flux and bubble release rate from freshwater systems. Our estimates showed that reservoirs in semi-arid regions are oversaturated with CO2 and acted as net sources to the atmosphere. The magnitude of observed fluxes at the three water reservoirs in Jordan is comparable to those from tropical reservoirs (3.3 g CO2 m-2 d-1). The CO2 emission rate from these reservoirs is linked to changes of water surface area, which is the result of water management practices. WWTPs have been shown to discharge a considerable amount of CH4 (30.9±40.7 kg yr-1) and CO2 (0.06±0.05 Gg yr-1) to their surrounding streams, and emission rates of CH4 and CO2 from these streams are significantly enhanced by effluents of WWTPs up to 1.2 and 8.6 times, respectively. Our results showed that both diffusive flux and bubble release rate varied in time and space, and both of emission pathways should be included and variability should be resolved adequately in further sampling and measuring strategies. We conclude that future emission measurements and estimates from inland waters may consider water management practices, carbon sources from WWTPs as well spatial and temporal variability of emission.

This paper introduces Vocville, a causal online game for learning vocabularies. I am creating this application for my master thesis of my career as a "Computervisualist" (computer visions) for the University of Koblenz - Landau. The application is an online browser game based on the idea of the really successful Facebook game FarmVille. The application is seperated in two parts; a Grails application manages a database which holds the game objects like vocabulary, a Flex/Flash application generates the actual game by using these data. The user can create his own home with everything in it. For creating things, the user has to give the correct translation of the object he wants to create several times. After every query he has to wait a certain amount of time to be queried again. When the correct answer is given sufficient times, the object is builded. After building one object the user is allowed to build others. After building enough objects in one area (i.e. a room, a street etc.) the user can activate other areas by translating all the vocabularies of the previous area. Users can also interact with other users by adding them as neighbors and then visiting their homes or sending them gifts, for which they have to fill in the correct word in a given sentence.