“Mittelstand” businesses are the backbone of the German economy. To operate effectively, these businesses require sufficient financing provided through adequate financing instruments. Yet, which characteristics do capital seekers value in adequate financing instruments? Despite the macroeconomic relevance of the topic, only few empirical studies exist to this date, which examine the financing behaviour of “Mittelstand”. For the paper at hand, all PREPS financed German businesses were asked to fill out an online survey. PREPS is a standardized mezzanine financing instrument, which was offered to “Mittelstand” businesses with a high degree of credit worthiness - primarily to finance business growth. PREPS financed businesses are of particular interest for this research as they can choose from the greatest variety of financing options amongst their peers due to their size and credit worthiness. Financing instruments differ in terms of rights and obligations associated with them. Depending on their design, financing contracts can fulfil a variety of functions beyond the obvious supply of liquidity, such as financial transformation, influencing of behaviours, and signalling private information. The paper at hand suggests that the businesses in question selected the same financing instrument, however, for different reasons. Furthermore, the degree of appreciation for certain characteristics of the financing instrument varies with business and situation specific context. When exploring individual hypotheses on how individual factors influence this degree of appreciation for certain financing characteristics, this paper builds on core capital structure theories as well as recent empirical insights in regards to financing behaviour. In addition, the paper examines several explorative hypotheses.

Meeting growing demands for agricultural products requires management solutions that enhance food production, whilst minimizing negative environmental impacts. Conventional agricultural intensification jeopardizes farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services through excessive anthropogenic inputs and landscape simplification. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are commonly implemented to mitigate the adverse effects of conventional intensification on biodiversity. However the moderate success of such schemes thus far would strongly benefit from more explicit goals regarding ecosystem service provisioning. Providing key resources to beneficial organisms may improve their abundance, fitness, diversity and the ecosystem services they provide. With targeted habitat management, AES may synergistically enhance biodiversity and agricultural production and thus contribute to ecological intensification. We demonstrate that sown perennial wildflower strips, as implemented in current AES focusing on biodiversity conservation also benefit biological pest control in nearby crops (Chapter 2). Comparing winter wheat fields adjacent to wildflower strips with fields without wildflower strips we found strongly reduced cereal leaf beetle (Oulema sp.) density and plant damage near wildflower strips. In addition, winter wheat yield was 10 % higher when fields adjoined wildflower strips. This confirms previous assumptions that wildflower strips, known for positive effects on farmland biodiversity, can also enhance ecosystem services such as pest control and the positive correlation of yield with flower abundance and diversity suggests that floral resources are key. Refining sown flower strips for enhanced service provision requires mechanistic understanding of how organisms benefit from floral resources. In climate chamber experiments investigating the impact of single and multiple flowering plant species on fitness components of three key arthropod natural enemies of aphids, we demonstrate that different natural enemies benefit differently from the offered resources (Chapter 3). Some flower species were hereby more valuable to natural enemies than others overall. Additionally, the mixture with all flowers generally performed better than monocultures, yet with no transgressive overyielding. By explicitly tailoring flower strips to the requirements of key natural enemies of crop pests we aimed to maximise natural enemy mediated pest control in winter wheat (Chapter 4)and potato (Chapter 5) crops. Respecting the manifold requirements of diverse natural enemies but not pests, in terms of temporal and spatial provisioning of floral, extra floral and structural resources, we designed targeted annual flower strips that can be included in crop rotation to support key arthropods at the place and time they are needed. Indeed, field experiments revealed that cereal leaf beetle density and plant damage in winter wheat can be reduced by 40 % to 61 % and aphid densities in potatoes even by 77 %, if a targeted flower strip is sown into the field. These effects were not restricted to the vicinity of flower strips and, in contrast to fields without flower strip, often prevented action thresholds from being reached. This suggests that targeted flower strips could replace insecticides. All adult natural enemies were enhanced inside targeted flower strips when compared to control strips. Yet, spillover to the field was restricted to key natural enemies such as ground beetles (winter wheat), hoverflies (potato) and lacewings (winter wheat and potato), suggesting their dominant role in biological control. In potatoes, targeted flower strips also enhanced hoverfly species richness in strips and crop, highlighting their additional benefits for diversity. The present results provide more insights into the mechanisms underlying conservation biological control and highlight the potential of tailored habitat management for ecological intensification.

Das Thema dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung einer hardwarebeschleunigten Einzelbildkompression zur Videoübertragung. Verfahren zur Einzelbildkompressionrn existieren bereits seit längerer Zeit. Jedoch genügen die gängigen Verfahren nicht den Anforderungen der Echtzeit und Performanz, um während einer Videoübertragung ohne spürbare Latenz zum Einsatz zu kommen. In dieser Arbeit soll einer der geläufigsten Algorithmen zur Bildkompression auf Parallelisierbarkeit, unter zu Hilfenahme der Grafikkarte, untersucht werden, um Echtzeitfähigkeit während der Kompression und Dekompression von computergenerierten Bildern zu erreichen. Die Ergebnisse werden evaluiert und in den Rahmen aktueller Verfahren parallelisierter Kompressionstechniken eingeordnet.

Vorlesungsskript für eine vierstündige Vorlesung im Master Mathematik oder Informatik

This thesis shows an interaction of primitives in a three-dimensional space which is done by gestures. Functions which are difficult to do by gestures without any absolute feeling of the position are implemented with a touchscreen. Besides the touchscreen a second input device, a Leap-Motion, is used to obtain data of the motion of the hand. To get its data the Leap-Motion uses two CCD-cameras and three infrared LEDs. The interactions that can be done without any feedback of the absolute position are the translation, rotation and scale. These three and the movement through space are implemented as gestures in this thesis. This is done in Blender with the BlenderrnGame Engine and Python. The only function which has been implemented for the touchscreen is to select an object. Later on, a comparative control of the mouse was invented to contrast it with the control of the gestures. There are two big differences between these two controls. On the one hand, the gesture controls can be done in a three-dimensional space but most people aren't used to it yet. On the other hand, there is just a two-dimensional input possibility with the mouse control. Otherwise it is familiar to most persons. The evaluation should reveal if people prefer interaction by mouse control or by gestures. The result shows that the prefered control is done by the mouse. However in some categories of the tests the gestures are quite close to the result of the mouse.