Engineered inorganic nanoparticles (EINPs) are produced and utilized on a large scale and will end up in surface waters. Once in surface waters, EINPs are subjected to transformations induced by environmental processes altering the particles’ fate and inherent toxicity. UV irradiation of photoactive EINPs is defined as one effect-inducing pathway, leading to the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), increasing EINP toxicity by exerting oxidative stress in aquatic life. Simultaneously, UV irradiation of photoactive EINP alters the toxicity of co-occurring micropollutants (e.g. pesticides) by affecting their degradation. The presence of natural organic matter (NOM) reduces the agglomeration and sedimentation of EINPs, extending the exposure of pelagic species, while delaying the exposure of benthic species living in and on the sediment, which is suggested as final sink for EINPs. However, the joint impact of NOM and UV irradiation on EINP-induced toxicity, but also EINP-induced degradation of micropollutants, and the resulting risk for aquatic biota, is poorly understood. Although potential effects of EINPs on benthic species are increasingly investigated, the importance of exposure pathways (waterborne or dietary) is unclear, along with the reciprocal pathway of EINPs, i.e. the transport back from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems. Therefore, this thesis investigates: (i) how the presence of NOM affects the UV-induced toxicity of the model EINP titanium dioxide (nTiO2) on the pelagic organism Daphnia magna, (ii) to which extent UV irradiation of nTiO2 in the presence and absence of NOM modifies the toxicity of six selected pesticides in D. magna, (iii) potential exposure pathway dependent effects of nTiO2 and silver (nAg) EINPs on the benthic organism Gammarus fossarum, and (iv) the transport of nTiO2 and gold EINPs (nAu) via the merolimnic aquatic insect Chaetopteryx villosa back to terrestrial ecosystems. nTiO2 toxicity in D. magna increased up to 280-fold in the presence of UV light, and was mitigated by NOM up to 12-fold. Depending on the pesticide, UV irradiation of nTiO2 reduced but also enhanced pesticide toxicity, by (i) more efficient pesticide degradation, and presumably (ii) formation of toxic by-products, respectively. Likewise, NOM reduced and increased pesticide toxicity, induced by (i) protection of D. magna against locally acting ROS, and (ii) mitigation of pesticide degradation, respectively. Gammarus’ energy assimilation was significantly affected by both EINPs, however, with distinct variation in direction and pathway dependence between nTiO2 and nAg. EINP presence delayed C. villosa emergence by up to 30 days, and revealed up to 40% reduced lipid reserves, while the organisms carried substantial amounts of nAu (~1.5 ng/mg), and nTiO2 (up to 2.7 ng/mg). This thesis shows, that moving test conditions of EINPs towards a more field-relevant approach, meaningfully modifies the risk of EINPs for aquatic organisms. Thereby, more efforts need to be made to understand the relative importance of EINP exposure pathways, especially since a transferability between different types of EINPs may not be given. When considering typically applied risk assessment factors, adverse effects on aquatic systems might already be expected at currently predicted environmental EINP concentrations in the low ng-µg/L range.

The distributed setting of RDF stores in the cloud poses many challenges. One such challenge is how the data placement on the compute nodes can be optimized to improve the query performance. To address this challenge, several evaluations in the literature have investigated the effects of existing data placement strategies on the query performance. A common drawback in theses evaluations is that it is unclear whether the observed behaviors were caused by the data placement strategies (if different RDF stores were evaluated as a whole) or reflect the behavior in distributed RDF stores (if cloud processing frameworks like Hadoop MapReduce are used for the evaluation). To overcome these limitations, this thesis develops a novel benchmarking methodology for data placement strategies that uses a data-placement-strategy-independent distributed RDF store to analyze the effect of the data placement strategies on query performance. With this evaluation methodology the frequently used data placement strategies have been evaluated. This evaluation challenged the commonly held belief that data placement strategies that emphasize local computation, such as minimal edge-cut cover, lead to faster query executions. The results indicate that queries with a high workload may be executed faster on hash-based data placement strategies than on, e.g., minimal edge-cut covers. The analysis of the additional measurements indicates that vertical parallelization (i.e., a well-distributed workload) may be more important than horizontal containment (i.e., minimal data transport) for efficient query processing. Moreover, to find a data placement strategy with a high vertical parallelization, the thesis tests the hypothesis that collocating small connected triple sets on the same compute node while balancing the amount of triples stored on the different compute nodes leads to a high vertical parallelization. Specifically, the thesis proposes two such data placement strategies. The first strategy called overpartitioned minimal edge-cut cover was found in the literature and the second strategy is the newly developed molecule hash cover. The evaluation revealed a balanced query workload and a high horizontal containment, which lead to a high vertical parallelization. As a result these strategies showed a better query performance than the frequently used data placement strategies.

Water uptake, respiration and exudation are some of the biological functions fulfilled by plant roots. They drive plant growth and alter the biogeochemical parameters of soil in the vicinity of roots, the rhizosphere. As a result, soil processes such as water fluxes, carbon and nitrogen exchanges or microbial activity are enhanced in the rhizosphere in comparison to the bulk soil. In particularly, the exudation of mucilage as a gel-like substance by plant roots seems to be a strategy for plants to overcome drought stress by increasing soil water content and soil unsaturated hydraulic conductivity at negative water potentials. Although the variations of soil properties due to mucilage are increasingly understood, a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms in the pore space leading to such variations is lacking. The aim of this work was to elucidate the gel properties of mucilage in the pore space, i.e. interparticulate mucilage, in order to link changes of the physico-chemical properties in the rhizosphere to mucilage. The fulfilment of this goal was confronted to the three following challenges: The lack of methods for in situ detection of mucilage in soil; The lack of knowledge concerning the properties of interparticulate mucilage; The unknown relationship between the composition and the properties of model substances and root mucilage produced by various species. These challenges are addressed in several chapters. In a first instance, a literature review picked information from various scientific fields about methods enabling the characterization of gels and gel phases in soil. The variation of soil properties resulting from biohydrogel swelling in soil was named the gel effect. The combined study of water entrapment of gels and gel phases in soil and soil structural properties in terms of mechanical stability or visual structures proved promising to disentangle the gel effect in soil. The acquired methodical knowledge was used in the next experiments to detect and characterize the properties of interparticulate gel. 1H NMR relaxometry allows the non-invasive measure of water mobility in porous media. A conceptual model based on the equations describing the relaxation of water protons in porous media was developed to integrate the several gel effects into the NMR parameters and quantify the influence of mucilage on proton relaxation. Rheometry was additionally used to assess mucilage viscosity and soil microstructural stability and ESEM images to visualize the network of interparticulate gel. Combination of the results enabled to identify three main interparticulate gel properties: The spider-web effect restricts the elongation of the polymer chains due to the grip of the polymer network to the surface of soil particles. The polymer network effect illustrates the organization of the polymer network in the pore space according to the environment. The microviscosity effect describes the increased viscosity of interparticulate gel in contrast to free gel. The impact of these properties on soil water mobility and microstructural stability were investigated. Consequences on soil hydraulic and soil mechanical properties found in the literature are further discussed. The influence of the chemical properties of polymers on gel formation mechanism and gel properties was also investigated. For this, model substances with various uronic acid content, degree of esterification and amount of calcium were tested and their amount of high molecular weight substances was measured. The substances investigated included pectic polysaccharides and chia seed mucilage as model polymers and wheat and maize root mucilage. Polygalacturonic acid and low-methoxy pectin proved as non-suitable model polymers for seed and root mucilage as ionic interactions with calcium control their properties. Mucilage properties rather seem to be governed by weak electrostatic interactions between the entangled polymer chains. The amount of high molecular weight material varies considerably depending on mucilage´s origin and seems to be a straight factor for mucilage’s gel effect in soil. Additionally to the chemical characterization of the high molecular weight compounds, determination of their molecular weight and of their conformation in several mucilages types is needed to draw composition-property profiles. The variations measured between the various mucilages also highlight the necessity to study how the specific properties of the various mucilages fulfill the needs of the plant from which they are exuded. Finally, the integration of molecular interactions in gel and interparticulate gel properties to explain the physical properties of the rhizosphere was discussed. This approach offers numerous perspectives to clarify for example how water content or hydraulic conductivity in the rhizosphere vary according to the properties of the exuded mucilage. The hypothesis that the gel effect is general for all soil-born exudates showing gel properties was considered. As a result, a classification of soil-born gel phases including roots, seeds, bacteria, hyphae and earthworm’s exuded gel-like material according to their common gel physico-chemical properties is recommended for future research. An outcome could be that the physico-chemical properties of such gels are linked with the extent of the gel effect, with their impact on soil properties and with the functions of the gels in soil.

Molecular dynamics (MD) as a field of molecular modelling has great potential to revolutionize our knowledge and understanding of complex macromolecular structures. Its field of application is huge, reaching from computational chemistry and biology over material sciences to computer-aided drug design. This thesis on one hand provides insights into the underlying physical concepts of molecular dynamics simulations and how they are applied in the MD algorithm, and also briefly illustrates different approaches, as for instance the molecular mechanics and molecular quantum mechanics approaches. On the other hand an own all-atom MD algorithm is implemented utilizing and simplifying a version of the molecular mechanics based AMBER force field published by \big[\cite{cornell1995second}\big]. This simulation algorithm is then used to show by the example of oxytocin how individual energy terms of a force field function. As a result it has been observed, that applying the bond stretch forces alone caused the molecule to be compacted first in certain regions and then as a whole, and that with adding more energy terms the molecule got to move with increasing flexibility.

On-screen interactive presentations have got immense popularity in the domain of attentive interfaces recently. These attentive screens adapt their behavior according to the user's visual attention. This thesis aims to introduce an application that would enable these attentive interfaces to change their behavior not just according to the gaze data but also facial features and expressions. The modern era requires new ways of communications and publications for advertisement. These ads need to be more specific according to people's interests, age, and gender. When advertising, it's important to get a reaction from the user but not every user is interested in providing feedback. In such a context more, advance techniques are required that would collect user's feedback effortlessly. The main problem this thesis intends to resolve is, to apply advanced techniques of gaze and face recognition to collect data about user's reactions towards different ads being played on interactive screens. We aim to create an application that enables attentive screens to detect a person's facial features, expressions, and eye gaze. With eye gaze data we can determine the interests and with facial features, age and gender can be specified. All this information will help in optimizing the advertisements.

Because silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are broadly applied in consumer products, their leaching will result in the continuous release of Ag NPs into the natural aquatic environment. Therefore, bacterial biofilms, as the prominent life form of microorganisms in the aquatic environment, are most likely confronted with Ag NPs as a pollutant stressor. Notwithstanding the significant ecological relevance of bacterial biofilms in aquatic systems, and though Ag NPs are expected to accumulate within these biofilms in the environment, the knowledge on the environmental and ecological impact of Ag NPs, is still lagging behind the industrial growth of nanotechnology. Consequently, aim of this thesis was to perform effect assessment of Ag NP exposure on bacterial biofilms with ambient Ag NPs concentrations and under environmentally relevant conditions. Therefore, a comprehensive set of methods was applied in this work to study if and how Ag NPs of two different sizes (30 and 70 nm) affect bacterial biofilms i.e. both monospecies biofilms and freshwater biofilms in environmentally relevant concentrations (600 - 2400 µg l-1). Within the first part of this work, a newly developed assay to test the mechanical stability of monospecies biofilms of the freshwater model bacterium Aquabacterium citratiphilum was validated. In the first study, to investigate the impact of Ag NPs on the mechanical stability of bacterial biofilms, sublethal effects on the mechanical stability of the biofilms were observed with negative implications for biostabilization. Furthermore, as it is still challenging to monitor the ecotoxicity of Ag NPs in natural freshwater environments, a mesocosm study was performed in this work to provide the possibility for the detailed investigation of effects of Ag NPs on freshwater biofilms under realistic environmental conditions. By applying several approaches to analyze biofilms as a whole in response to Ag NP treatment, insights into the resilience of bacterial freshwater biofilms were obtained. However, as revealed by t-RFLP fingerprinting combined with phylogenetic studies based on the 16S gene, a shift in the bacterial community composition, where Ag NP-sensitive bacteria were replaced by more Ag NP-tolerant species with enhanced adaptability towards Ag NP stress was determined. This shift within the bacterial community may be associated with potential detrimental effects on the functioning of these biofilms with respect to nutrient loads, transformation and/or degradation of pollutants, and biostabilization. Overall, bringing together the key findings of this thesis, 4 general effect mechanisms of Ag NP treatment have been identified, which can be extrapolated to natural freshwater biofilms i.e. (i) the identification of Comamonadaceae as Ag NP-tolerant, (ii) a particular resilient behaviour of the biofilms, (iii) the two applied size fractions of Ag NPs exhibited similar effects independent of their sizes and their synthesis method, and (iv) bacterial biofilms show a high uptake capacity for Ag NPs, which indicates cumulative enrichment.

With the appearance of modern virtual reality (VR) headsets on the consumer market, there has been the biggest boom in the history of VR technology. Naturally, this was accompanied by an increasing focus on the problems of current VR hardware. Especially the control in VR has always been a complex topic. One possible solution is the Leap Motion, a hand tracking device that was initially developed for desktop use, but with the last major software update it can be attached to standard VR headsets. This device allows very precise tracking of the user’s hands and fingers and their replication in the virtual world. The aim of this work is to design virtual user interfaces that can be operated with the Leap Motion to provide a natural method of interaction between the user and the VR environment. After that, subject tests are performed to evaluate their performance and compare them to traditional VR controllers.

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.

Lakes and reservoirs are important sources of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Although freshwaters cover only a small fraction of the global surface, their contribution to global methane emission is significant and this is expected to increase, as a positive feedback to climate warming and exacerbated eutrophication. Yet, global estimates of methane emission from freshwaters are often based on point measurements that are spatio-temporally biased. To better constrain the uncertainties in quantifying methane fluxes from inland waters, a closer examination of the processes transporting methane from sediment to atmosphere is necessary. Among these processes, ebullition (bubbling) is an important transport pathway and is a primary source of uncertainty in quantifying methane emissions from freshwaters. This thesis aims to improve our understanding of ebullition in freshwaters by studying the processes of methane bubble formation, storage and release in aquatic sediments. The laboratory experiments demonstrate that aquatic sediments can store up to ~20% (volumetric content) gas and the storage capacity varies with sediment properties. The methane produced is stored as gas bubbles in sediment with minimal ebullition until the storage capacity is reached. Once the sediment void spaces are created by gas bubble formation, they are stable and available for future bubble storage and transport. Controlled water level drawdown experiments showed that the amounts of gas released from the sediment scaled with the total volume of sediment gas storage and correlated linearly to the drop in hydrostatic pressure. It was hypothesized that not only the timing of ebullition is controlled by sediment gas storage, but also the spatial distribution of ebullition. A newly developed freeze corer, capable of characterizing sediment gas content under in situ environments, enabled the possibility to test the hypothesis in a large subtropical lake (Lake Kinneret, Israel). The results showed that gas content was variable both vertically and horizontally in the lake sediment. Sediment methane production rate and sediment characteristics could explain these variabilities. The spatial distribution of ebullition generally was in a good agreement with the horizontal distribution of depth-averaged (surface 1 m) sediment gas content. While discrepancies were found between sediment depth-integrated methane production and the snapshot ebullition rate, they were consistent in a long term (multiyear average). These findings provide a solid basis for the future development of a process-based ebullition model. By coupling a sediment transport model with a sediment diagenetic model, general patterns of ebullition hotspots can be predicted at a system level and the uncertainties in ebullition flux measurements can be better constrained both on long-term (months to years) and short-term (minutes to hours) scales.

In this thesis, I present the results of my studies on taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography of Impatiens (Balsaminaceae) in Madagascar and the Comoro islands. In Chapter 1 I reviewed the literature on taxonomy and classification of Balsaminaceae, on habitat, world distribution, morphology, molecular phylogenetics and infrageneric classification of the genus Impatiens. In Chapters 2-15 (Fischer & Rahelivololona 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016, Fischer et al. 2004. 2017, 2018a, b submitted, Rahelivololona et al. 2003) I presented the first results of a revision of Balsaminaceae of Madagascar and the Comoro islands including the description of 78 new species. In Chapter 16 (Yuan et al. 2004) we worked on the phylogeny and biogeography of Balsaminaceae inferred from ITS sequences using combined results from molecular phylogenetic and morphological analyses. In Chapter 17 (Rahelivololona et al. 2018) we conducted a phylogeny and assessment of the infrageneric classification of species in the Malagasy Impatiens (Balsaminaceae) with a particular emphasis on taxa collected from Marojejy. Below I summarise the most important findings of each chapter and provide an outlook for future studies. How many species of Impatiens occur in Madagascar and the Comoro islands? To provide additional information on the taxonomic revision of Impatiens in Madagascar and the Comoro islands, the identification of already described species as well as the description of new species was conducted. Based on herbarium specimens from BR, G, K, NEU, P, TAN and on living plants collected during several field trips, 78 new species and 6 nomina nova have been published and another 70 new taxa are already identified. Actually more than 260 species occur in Madagascar and the Comoro islands and all of them are endemic. For each species, a description of the morphology, phenology, ecology and known distribution range was provided. Apart from new taxa, the delimitation of already described species like Impatiens firmula Baker and Impatiens hildebrandtii Baill. could be clarified by studying the types and by observing the variability in the field. Are the groups of Impatiens in Madagascar monophyletic, and what is the systematic position of Trimorphopetalum? Yuan & al. (2004) conducted a molecular phylogenetic study to examine the morphological and karyological evolution, and the historical biogeography of the Balsaminaceae family by using nucleotide sequence data of internal transcribed spacer regions of nuclear ribosomal DNA. The results support the monophyly of the Malagasy endemic section Trimorphopetalum and show that the cleistogamous Impatiens inaperta should be included in the sect. Trimorphopetalum which is the most derived within Impatiens. Therefore, the section Preimpatiens proposed by Perrier de la Bâthie (1934) is paraphyletic. Rahelivololona & al. (2018) provided a phylogenetic study focused on three subdivisions (based on macromorphological characters) proposed by Perrier de la Bâthie (1934). The analysis was done using two nuclear AP3/DEF homologues (ImpDEF1 and ImpDEF2) and the plastid atpB-rbcL spacer to reassess or assess the monophyly of the Malagasy Impatiens, of the sections Preimpatiens (Humblotianae and Vulgare groups) and Trimorphopetalum. A focus was on the species of Impatiens from the Marojejy National Park and of the morphologically variable species I. elatostemmoides, I. “hammarbyoides”, I. inaperta and I. manaharensis, using monophyly as the primary criterion. As results the Malagasy Impatiens are paraphyletic and the section Preimpatiens sensu Perrier de la Bâthie (1934) (= subgen. Impatiens sensu Fischer & Rahelivololona 2002) was not resolved as a monophyletic group. The section Trimorphopetalum sensu Perrier de la Bâthie (1934) (= subgen. Trimorphopetalum sensu Fischer & Rahelivololona 2002), however, was strongly confirmed as a monophyletic lineage (BS: 92; BPP: 1). Neither the Humblotianae group nor the Vulgare group was supported as monophyletic. None of the morphologically variable species appeared to be monophyletic and the sampled species of Impatiens from the Marojejy National Park do also not form a monophyletic group. What are the biogeographical position and the distribution patterns of Impatiens in Madagascar and the Comoro islands? Investigation of the geographical affinities and species distribution of section Impatiens (including Humblotianae group and Vulgare group) and section Trimorphopetalum were conducted and the origin and evolution as well as species richness and endemism were discussed. The isolation, the climate and the complex topography of Madagascar have generated the microhabitats and ecological niches favourable to the diversification of Impatiens species. Impatiens of Madagascar with 260 endemic species is actually the largest genus in Madagascar. Therefore, Madagascar and the Comoro islands are among the most species-rich regions in the world for Impatiens. Future studies In Impatiens on Madagascar, there remain numerous unresolved questions that need to be adressed: • A further study based on a much larger molecular data set and sampling from the entire geographic ranges of Impatiens in Madagascar is needed to retest the monophyly of the different subgenera and sections, as well as a molecular dating of the Malagasy Impatiens. • The study of pollinators as a key for understanding the radiation and species richness is required: Within Impatiens the different shapes of spur are related to pollinators (bees, birds, butterflies and moths). Therefore pollinator observation of specific species need to be done to understand the radiation of species by adaptation and coevolution with these pollinators. A pollination study with a large number of species within section Trimorphopetalum will help to understand the mechanism of complete disappearance of the spur, the shift of pollinators and the evolution of species richness. • The destruction of the natural habitats of Impatiens and the subsequent reduction of humidity in logged area constitute a severe threat for the survival of many species. The conservation and reforestation of vulnerable areas such as Ankaratra, Daraina, Mandraka and Col des Tapia near Antsirabe is required. • In terms of conservation and to mitigate the threat on the genus, a study on the ex-situ-conservation of Malagasy Impatiens species is very important as long as some species are suitable for horticultural purposes (e.g. Impatiens mayae-valeriae, Impatiens emiliae and species with broad red spur). • Finally, the publication of the revision of Impatiens of Madagascar and the Comoro islands will help other botanists to identify the species and will thus increase our knowledge on the group.

Over the past few decades society’s dependence on software systems has grown significantly. These systems are utilized in nearly every matter of life today and often handle sensitive, private data. This situation has turned software security analysis into an essential and widely researched topic in the field of computer science. Researchers in this field tend to make the assumption that the quality of the software systems' code directly affects the possibility for security gaps to arise in it. Because this assumption is based on properties of the code, proving it true would mean that security assessments can be performed on software, even before a certain version of it is released. A study based on this implication has already attempted to mathematically assess the existence of such a correlation, studying it based on quality and security metric calculations. The present study builds upon that study in finding an automatic method for choosing well-fitted software projects as a sample for this correlation analysis and extends the variety of projects considered for the it. In this thesis, the automatic generation of graphical representations both for the correlations between the metrics as well as for their evolution is also introduced. With these improvements, this thesis verifies the results of the previous study with a different and broader project input. It also focuses on analyzing the correlations between the quality and security metrics to real-world vulnerability data metrics. The data is extracted and evaluated from dedicated software vulnerability information sources and serves to represent the existence of proven security weaknesses in the studied software. The study discusses some of the difficulties that arise when trying to gather such information and link it to the difference in the information contained in the repositories of the studied projects. This thesis confirms the significant influence that quality metrics have on each other. It also shows that it is important to view them together as a whole and suppose that their correlation could influence the appearance of unwanted vulnerabilities as well. One of the important conclusions I can draw from this thesis is that the visualization of metric evolution graphs, helps the understanding of the values as well as their connection to each other in a more meaningful way. It allows for better grasp of their influence on each other as opposed to only studying their correlation values. This study confirms that studying metric correlations and evolution trends can help developers improve their projects and prevent them from becoming difficult to extend and maintain, increasing the potential for good quality as well as more secure software code.

Our work finds the fine grained edits in context of neighbouring tokens in Wikipedia articles. We cluster those edits according to similar neighbouring context. We encode neighbouring context into vector space using word vectors. We evaluate clusters returned by our algorithm on extrinsic and intrinsic metric and compare it with previous work. We analyse the relation between extrinsic and intrinsic measurements of fine grained edit tokens.

The status of Business Process Management (BPM) recommender systems is not quite clear as research states. The use of recommenders familiarized itself with the world during the rise of technological evolution in the past decade.Ever since then, several BPM recommender systems came about. However, not a lot of research is conducted in this field. It is not well known to what broad are the technologies used and how are they used. Moreover, this master’s thesis aims at surveying the BPM recommender systems existing. Building on this, the recommendations come in different shapes. They can be positionbased where an element is to be placed at an element’s front, back or to autocomplete a missing link. On the other hand, Recommendations can be textual, to fill the labels of the elements. Furthermore, the literature review for BPM recommender systems took place under the guides of a literature review framework. The framework suggests 5stages of consecutive stages for this sake. The first stage is defining a scope for the research. Secondly, conceptualizing the topic by choosing key terms for literature research. After that in the third stage, comes the research stage.As for the fourth stage, it suggests choosing analysis features over which the literature is to be synthesized and compared. Finally, it recommends defining the research agenda to describe the reason for the literature review. By invoking the mentioned methodology, this master’s thesis surveyed 18 BPM recommender systems. It was found as a result of the survey that there are not many different technologies for implementing the recommenders. It was also found that the majority of the recommenders suggest nodes that are yet to come in the model, which is called forward recommending. Also, one of the results of the survey indicated the scarce use of textual recommendations to BPM labels. Finally, 18 recommenders are considered less than excepted for a developing field therefore as a result, the survey found a shortage in the number of BPM recommender systems. The results indicate several shortages in several aspects in the field of BPM recommender systems. On this basis, this master’s thesis recommends the future work on it the results.

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.

Sediment transport contributes to the movement of inorganic and organic material in rivers. The construction of a dam interrupts the continuity of this sediment transport through rivers, causing sediments to accumulate within the reservoir. Reservoirs can also act as carbon sinks and methane can be released when organic matter in the sediment is degraded under anoxic conditions. Reservoir sedimentation poses a great threat to the sustainability of reservoirs worldwide, and can emit the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere. Sediment management measures to rehabilitate silted reservoirs are required to achieve both better water quantity and quality, as well as to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. This thesis aims at the improvement of sediment sampling techniques to characterize sediment deposits as a basis for accurate and efficient water jet dredging and to monitor the dredging efficiency by measuring the sediment concentration. To achieve this, we investigated freeze coring as a method to sample (gas-bearing) sediment in situ. The freeze cores from three reservoirs obtained were scanned using a non-destructive X-Ray CT scan technique. This allows the determination of sediment stratification and character-ization of gas bubbles to quantify methane emissions and serve as a basis for the identi-fication of specific (i.e. contaminated) sediment layers to be dredged. The results demon-strate the capability of freeze coring as a method for the characterization of (gas-bearing) sediment and overcomes certain limitations of commonly used gravity cores. Even though the core’s structure showed coring disturbances related to the freezing process, the general core integrity seems to not have been disturbed. For dredging purposes, we analyzed the impact pressure distribution and spray pattern of submerged cavitating wa-ter jets and determined the effects of impinging distances and angles, pump pressures and spray angles. We used an adapted Pressure Measurement Sensing technique to enhance the spatial distribution, which proved to be a comparatively easy-to-use meas-urement method for an improved understanding of the governing factors on the erosional capacity of cavitating water jets. Based on this data, the multiple linear regression model can be used to predict the impact pressure distribution of those water jets to achieve higher dredging accuracy and efficiency. To determine the dredging operational efficien-cy, we developed a semi-continuous automated measurement device to measure the sediment concentration of the slurry. This simple and robust device has lower costs, compared to traditional and surrogate sediment concentration measurement technolo-gies, and can be monitored and controlled remotely under a wide range of concentrations and grain-sizes, unaffected by entrained gas bubbles

Student misbehavior and its treatment is a major challenge for teachers and a threat to their well-being. Indeed, teachers are obliged to punish student misbehavior on a regular basis. Additionally, teachers’ punishment decisions are among the most frequently reported situations when it comes to students’ experiences of injustice in school. By implication, it is crucial to understand teachers’ treatment of student misbehavior vis-à-vis students’ perceptions. One key dimension of punishment behavior reflects its underlying motivation and goals. People generally intend to achieve three goals when punishing misbehavior, namely, retribution (i.e., evening out the harm caused), special prevention (i.e., preventing recidivism of the offender), and general prevention (i.e., preventing imitation of others). Importantly, people’s support of these punishment goals is subject to hierarchy and power, implying that teachers’ and students’ punishment goal preferences differ. In this dissertation, I present three research projects that shed first light on teachers’ punishment and its goals along with the students’ perception of classroom intervention strategies pursuing these goals. More specifically, I first examined students’ (i.e., children’s) general support of each of the three punishment goals sketched above. Furthermore, I applied an attributional approach to understand and study the goals teachers intend to achieve when punishing student misbehavior. Finally, I investigated teachers’ and students’ support of the punishment goals regarding the same student misbehavior to directly compare their views on these goals and reactions pursuing them. In sum, the findings show that students generally prefer retribution and special prevention to general prevention, whereas teachers prefer general prevention and special prevention to retribution. This ultimately translates into a "mismatch" of teachers and students in their preferences for specific punishment goals, and the findings suggest that this may indeed enhance students’ perception of injustice. Overall, the results of the present research program may be valuable for the development of classroom intervention strategies that may reduce rather than enhance conflicts in student-teacher-interactions.

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.

Grapevine growers have struggled with defending their crops against pests and diseases since the domestication of grapevine over 6000 ears ago. Since then, new growing methods paired with a better nderstanding of the ecological processes in the vineyard ecosystem continue to improve quality and quantity of grape harvests. In this thesis I am describing the effects of two recent innovations in viticulture on pest and beneficial arthropods in vineyards; Fungus-resistant grapevine cultivars (PIWIs) and the pruning system semi-minimal pruned hedge (SMPH). The SMPH pruning system allows for a drastic reduction of manual labor in the vineyard, and PIWIs are resistant to two of the most common fungal diseases of grapevine and therefore allow a drastic reduction of fungicide applications compared to conventional varieties. Heavy use of pesticides is linked to a number of problems, including pollution of waterways, negative effects on human health, and biodiversity loss. Here, I studied the effects of fungicide reduction and minimal pruning on arthropods that are beneficial for natural pest suppression in the vineyard ecosystem such as predatory mites, spiders, ants, earwigs, and lacewings. All of these groups either benefitted from the reduction of fungicide sprayings or were not significantly affected. Structural changes in the canopy of SMPH grapevines altered the microclimate in the canopy which in turn influenced some of the arthropods living in it. Overall, my findings suggest that PIWIs and SMPH, both in combination or separately, improve conditions for natural pest control. This adds to other advantages of these innovative management practices such as a reduction in production cost and a smaller impact on the environment.

Abstract This bachelor thesis delivers a comprehensive overview of the topic Internet of Things (IoT). With the help of a first literature review, important characteristics, architectures, and properties have been identified. The main aim of this bachelor thesis is to determine whether the use of IoT in the transport of food, considering the compliance with the cold chain, can provide advantages for companies to reduce food waste. For this purpose, a second literature review has been carried out with food transport systems without the use, as well as with the use of IoT. Based on the literature review, it is possible at the end to determine a theoretical ‘ideal’ system for food transport in refrigerated trucks. The respective used technologies are also mentioned. The findings of several authors have shown that often significant improvements can be achieved in surveillance, transport in general, or traceability of food, and ultimately food waste can be reduced. However, benefits can also be gained using new non-IoT-based technologies. Thus, the main knowledge of this bachelor thesis is that a theoretical ‘ideal’ transport system contains a sensible combination of technologies with and without IoT. This system includes the use of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for real-time food monitoring, as well as an alarm function when the temperature exceeds a maximum. Real-time monitoring with GPS coupled with a monitoring center to prevent traffic jams is another task. Smart and energy-efficient packaging, and finally the use of the new supercooling-technology, make the system significantly more efficient in reducing food waste. These highlights, that when choosing a transport system, which is as efficient and profitable as possible for food with refrigerated transport, companies need not just rely on the use of IoT. On this basis, it is advisable to combine the systems and technologies used so far with IoT in order to avoid as much food waste as possible.

Groundwater is essential for the provision of drinking water in many areas around the world. The ecosystem services provided by groundwater-related organisms are crucial for the quality of groundwater-bearing aquifers. Therefore, if remediation of contaminated groundwater is necessary, the remediation method has to be carefully selected to avoid risk-risk trade-offs that might impact these valuable ecosystems. In the present thesis, the ecotoxicity of the in situ remediation agent Carbo-Iron (a composite of zero valent nano-iron and active carbon) was investigated, an estimation of its environmental risk was performed, and the risk and benefit of a groundwater remediation with Carbo-Iron were comprehensively analysed. At the beginning of the work on the present thesis, a sound assessment of the environmental risks of nanomaterials was impeded by a lack of guidance documents, resulting in many uncertainties on selection of suitable test methods and a low comparability of test results from different studies with similar nanomaterials. The reasons for the low comparability were based on methodological aspects of the testing procedures before and during the toxicity testing. Therefore, decision trees were developed as a tool to systematically decide on ecotoxicity test procedures for nanomaterials. Potential effects of Carbo-Iron on embryonic, juvenile and adult life stages of zebrafish (Danio rerio) and the amphipod Hyalella azteca were investigated in acute and chronic tests. These tests were based on existing OECD and EPA test guidelines (OECD, 1992a, 2013a, 2013b; US EPA, 2000) to facilitate the use of the obtained effect data in the risk assessment. Additionally, the uptake of particles into the test organisms was investigated using microscopic methods. In zebrafish embryos, effects of Carbo-Iron on gene expression were investigated. The obtained ecotoxicity data were complemented by studies with the waterflea Daphnia magna, the algae Scenedesmus vacuolatus, larvae of the insect species Chironomus riparius and nitrifying soil microorganisms. In the fish embryo test, no passage of Carbo-Iron particles into the perivitelline space or the embryo was observed. In D. rerio and H. azteca, Carbo-Iron was detected in the gut at the end of exposure, but no passage into the surrounding tissue was detected. Carbo-Iron had no significant effect on soil microorganisms and on survival and growth of fish. However, it had significant effects on the growth, feeding rate and reproduction of H. azteca and on survival and reproduction in D. magna. Additionally, the development rate of C. riparius and the cell volume of S. vacuolatus were negatively influenced. A predicted no effect concentration of 0.1 mg/L was derived from the ecotoxicity studies based on the no-effect level determined in the reproduction test with D. magna and an assessment factor of 10. It was compared to measured and modelled environmental concentrations for Carbo-Iron after application to an aquifer contaminated with chlorohydrocarbons in a field study. Based on these concentrations, risk quotients were derived. Additionally, the overall environmental risk before and after Carbo-Iron application was assessed to verify whether the chances for a risk-risk trade-off by the remediation of the contaminated site could be minimized. With the data used in the present study, a reduced environmental risk was identified after the application of Carbo-Iron. Thus, the benefit of remediation with Carbo-Iron outweighs potential negative effects on the environment.

Data visualization is an effective way to explore data. It helps people to get a valuable insight of the data by placing it in a visual context. However, choosing a good chart without prior knowledge in the area is not a trivial job. Users have to manually explore all possible visualizations and decide upon ones that reflect relevant and desired trend in the data, are insightful and easy to decode, have a clear focus and appealing appearance. To address these challenges we developed a Tool for Automatic Generation of Good viSualizations using Scoring (TAG²S²). The approach tackles the problem of identifying an appropriate metric for judging visualizations as good or bad. It consists of two modules: visualization detection: given a data-set it creates a list of combination of data attributes for scoring and visualization ranking: scores each chart and decides which ones are good or bad. For the later, an utility metric of ten criteria was developed and each visualization detected in the first module is evaluated on these criteria. Only those visualizations that received enough scores are then presented to the user. Additionally to these data parameters, the tool considers user perception regarding the choice of visual encoding when selecting a visualization. To evaluate the utility of the metric and the importance of each criteria, test cases were developed, executed and the results presented.

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.

To construct a business process model manually is a highly complex and error-prone task which takes a lot of time and deep insights into the organizational structure, its operations and business rules. To improve the output of business analysts dealing with this process, different techniques have been introduced by researchers to support them during construction with helpful recommendations. These supporting recommendation systems vary in their way of what to recommend in the first place as well as their calculations taking place under the hood to recommend the most fitting element to the user. After a broad introduction into the field of business process modeling and its basic recommendation structures, this work will take a closer look at diverse proposals and descriptions published in current literature regarding implementation strategies to effectively and efficiently assist modelers during their business process model creation. A critical analysis of presentations in the selected literature will point out strengths and weaknesses of their approaches, studies and descriptions of those. As a result, the final concept matrix in this work will give a precise and helpful overview about the key features and recommendation methods used and implemented in previous research studies to pinpoint an entry into future works without the downsides already spotted by fellow researchers.

Sustainable water management requires methods for assessing ecological stream quality. Many years of limnological research are needed to provide a basis for developing such methods. However, research of this kind is still lacking in Turkey. Therefore, the aim of this doctoral thesis was to provide basic research in the field of aquatic ecology and to present methods for the assessment of ecological stream quality based on benthic invertebrates. For this purpose, I selected 17 tributaries of the Euphrates with a similar typology/water order and varying levels of pollution or not affected by pollution at all. The characterisation of the natural mountain streams was the first important step in the analysis of ecological quality. Based on community indices, I found that the five selected streams had a very good ecological status. I also compared the different biological indications, collected on two occasions ¬– once in spring (May) and once in autumn (September) – to determine the optimal sampling time. The macroinvertebrate composition differed considerably between the two seasons, with the number of taxa and Shannon index being significantly higher in autumn than in spring. In the final step, I examined the basal resources of the macroinvertebrates in the reference streams with an isotope analysis. I found that FPOM and biofilm were the most relevant basal resources of benthic invertebrates. Subsequently, based on the similarity of their community structures, I divided the 17 streams into three quality classes, supported by four community indices (EPT [%], EPTCBO [%], number of individuals, evenness). In this process, 23 taxa were identified as indicators for the three quality classes. In the next step, I presented two new or adapted indices for the assessment of quality class. Firstly, I adapted the Hindu Kush-Himalaya biotic index to the catchment area of the Euphrates and created a new, ecoregion-specific score list (Euph-Scores) for 93 taxa. The weighted ASPT values, which were renamed the Euphrates Biotic Score (EUPHbios) in this study, showed sharper differentiations of quality classes compared to the other considered ASPT values. Thus, this modified index has proved to be very effective and easy to implement in practical applications. As a second biological index, I suggested the proportion of habitat specialists. To calculate this index, the habitat preferences of the 20 most common benthic invertebrates were identified using the new habitat score. The proportion of habitat specialists differed significantly among the three quality classes with higher values in natural streams than in polluted streams. The methods and results presented in this doctoral thesis can be used in a multi-metric index for a Turkish assessment programme.

Software systems have an increasing impact on our daily lives. Many systems process sensitive data or control critical infrastructure. Providing secure software is therefore inevitable. Such systems are rarely being renewed regularly due to the high costs and effort. Oftentimes, systems that were planned and implemented to be secure, become insecure because their context evolves. These systems are connected to the Internet and therefore also constantly subject to new types of attacks. The security requirements of these systems remain unchanged, while, for example, discovery of a vulnerability of an encryption algorithm previously assumed to be secure requires a change of the system design. Some security requirements cannot be checked by the system’s design but only at run time. Furthermore, the sudden discovery of a security violation requires an immediate reaction to prevent a system shutdown. Knowledge regarding security best practices, attacks, and mitigations is generally available, yet rarely integrated part of software development or covering evolution. This thesis examines how the security of long-living software systems can be preserved taking into account the influence of context evolutions. The goal of the proposed approach, S²EC²O, is to recover the security of model-based software systems using co-evolution. An ontology-based knowledge base is introduced, capable of managing common, as well as system-specific knowledge relevant to security. A transformation achieves the connection of the knowledge base to the UML system model. By using semantic differences, knowledge inference, and the detection of inconsistencies in the knowledge base, context knowledge evolutions are detected. A catalog containing rules to manage and recover security requirements uses detected context evolutions to propose potential co-evolutions to the system model which reestablish the compliance with security requirements. S²EC²O uses security annotations to link models and executable code and provides support for run-time monitoring. The adaptation of running systems is being considered as is round-trip engineering, which integrates insights from the run time into the system model. S²EC²O is amended by prototypical tool support. This tool is used to show S²EC²O’s applicability based on a case study targeting the medical information system iTrust. This thesis at hand contributes to the development and maintenance of long-living software systems, regarding their security. The proposed approach will aid security experts: It detects security-relevant changes to the system context, determines the impact on the system’s security and facilitates co-evolutions to recover the compliance with the security requirements.

This paper describes the robots TIAGo and Lisa used by team homer@UniKoblenz of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, for the participation at the RoboCup@Home 2019 in Sydney, Australia. We ended up first at RoboCup@Home 2019 in the Open Platform League and won the competition in our league now three times in a row (four times in total) which makes our team the most successful in RoboCup@Home. We demonstrated approaches for learning from demonstration, touch enforcing manipulation and autonomous semantic exploration in the finals. A special focus is put on novel system components and the open source contributions of our team. We have released packages for object recognition, a robot face including speech synthesis, mapping and navigation, speech recognition interface, gesture recognition and imitation learning. The packages are available (and new packages will be released) on http://homer.uni-koblenz.de.

Current political issues are often reflected in social media discussions, gathering politicians and voters on common platforms. As these can affect the public perception of politics, the inner dynamics and backgrounds of such debates are of great scientific interest. This thesis takes user generated messages from an up-to-date dataset of considerable relevance as Time Series, and applies a topic-based analysis of inspiration and agenda setting to it. The Institute for Web Science and Technologies of the University Koblenz-Landau has collected Twitter data generated beforehand by candidates of the European Parliament Election 2019. This work processes and analyzes the dataset for various properties, while focusing on the influence of politicians and media on online debates. An algorithm to cluster tweets into topical threads is introduced. Subsequently, Sequential Association Rules are mined, yielding wide array of potential influence relations between both actors and topics. The elaborated methodology can be configured with different parameters and is extensible in functionality and scope of application.

Hands-free text editing using multimodal approach (Voice and Gaze) can improve the text editing process than using unimodal approach (Voice only)

This paper describes the robot Lisa used by team homer@UniKoblenz of the University of Koblenz Landau, Germany, for the participation at the RoboCup@Home 2017 in Nagoya, Japan. A special focus is put on novel system components and the open source contributions of our team. We have released packages for object recognition, a robot face including speech synthesis, mapping and navigation, speech recognition interface via android and a GUI. The packages are available (and new packages will be released) on http://wiki.ros.org/agas-ros-pkg.

Companies try to utilise Knowledge Management (KM) to gain more efficiency and effectiveness in business. The major problem is that most of these KM projects are not or rarely based on sustainable analyses or established theories about KM. Often there is a big gap between the expectations and the real outcome of such KM initiatives. So the research question to be answered is: What challenges arise in KM projects, which KM requirements can be derived from them and which recommendations support the goal of meeting the requirements for KM? As theoretical foundation a set of KM frameworks is examined. Subsequently KM challenges from literature are analysed and best practices from case studies are used to provide recommendations for action on this challenges. The main outcome of this thesis is a best practice guideline,which allows Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and KM project managers to examine the challenges mentioned in this thesis closely, and to find a suitable method to master these challenge in an optimal way. This guideline shows that KM can be positively and negatively influenced in a variety of ways. Mastering Knowledge Management (KM) in a company is a big and far-reaching venture and that technology respectively Information Technology (IT) is only a part of the big picture.

Homonegative discrimination such as the denial of leadership qualities and higher salaries concern not only lesbians and gay men but also individuals who were perceived as lesbian or gay (Fasoli et al., 2017). Hence, it is assumed that especially straight people become victims of homonegative discrimination (Plöderl, 2014). The perception of sexual orientation is indeed stereotype-driven (e.g., Cox et al., 2015) but there is a lack of knowledge on how accurate stereotypes are – particularly those referring to speech. Despite a variety of sociophonetic and social psychological research related to sexual orientation and gender, an encompassing understanding is missing on how sexual orientation is expressed and perceived. The present thesis aims to fill these gaps. The two major aims of the present work are a) the examination of the accuracy of speech stereotypes in the context of sexual orientation and b) the development of a model on how sexual orientation is interpersonally construed. Overall, the present thesis comprises five manuscripts with the following aspects in common: They integratively deal with social psychological and sociophonetic perspectives, share a social identity approach, and primarily center speech instead of facial appearance. Moreover, mostly German and German native speaking participants, respectively, have been investigated. Manuscript 1 establishes the Traditional Masculinity/Femininity-Scale as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing gender-role self-concept. The invention was necessary because existing scales insufficiently represented the self-ascribed masculinity/femininity yet (e.g., Abele, 2003; Evers & Sieverding, 2014). Manuscripts 2, 3, and 4 address the (in)accuracy of speech stereotypes regarding stereotypic content and suggested within-group homogeneity. This is carried out by the application of different methodological approaches. On the one hand, relevant acoustic parameters of lesbian/gay and straight women and men were averaged for each group. On the other hand, voice morphing was applied in order to create prototypical and naturally sounding voice averages (Kawahara et al., 2008). Lesbians and straight women differed in none, gay and straight men in one of the analyzed acoustic parameters only. In contrast, a fine-grained psychological analysis yielded various evidence for acoustic within-group heterogeneity. In particular, the exclusivity of sexual orientation and gender-role self-concept have been acoustically indexicalized which suggests that speech stereotypes are inaccurate. However, voice averages do carry perceivable sexual orientation information. Hence, speech stereotypes can be considered as exaggerations of tiny kernels of truth. In Manuscript 5, previous literature on the interpersonal construction of sexual orientation is integrated in a model: The Expression and Perception of Sexual Orientation Model (EPSOM). This model postulates an indirect route and describes how sexual orientation information is transmitted from producer to perceiver by proposing three mediating components. Thereby, the model is able to offer an explanation why sexual orientation can be perceived with above-chance but far-away-from-perfect accuracy. Overall, the present thesis provides meaningful impulses for enhancements of research on social markers of sexual orientation and gender. This thesis offers a model on how sexual orientation is expressed and perceived, shows the benefits of combining sociophonetic and social psychological approaches, and points out the value of applying novel methods and technologies. Beyond that, the present thesis offers useful implications for practice. Speech stereotypes in the context of sexual orientation can be rejected as inaccurate – for example, native German straight men do not nasalize more or less than gay men. Thereby, the present thesis contributes to an erosion of stereotypes and a potential reduction of homonegative discrimination.

This paper describes the robot Lisa used by team homer@UniKoblenz of the University of Koblenz Landau, Germany, for the participation at the RoboCup@Home 2016 in Leipzig, Germany. A special focus is put on novel system components and the open source contributions of our team. We have released packages for object recognition, a robot face including speech synthesis, mapping and navigation, speech recognition interface via android and a GUI. The packages are available (and new packages will be released) on http://wiki.ros.org/agas-ros-pkg.

In the present thesis, the initial conditions for the development of RES potentials for the production of wind, solar and biomass energy in the Krasnodar region (southwestern region of the Russian Federation) are examined using a multi-criteria assessment methodology. For the assessment of the RES potentials at regional scale, the prosed multi-criteria methodology based on the geographic information systems (GIS) and has been complemented by the evaluation and analysis of primary and secondary data as well as economic calculations relevant related to economic feasibility of RES projects.

The physical-biological interactions that affect the temporal variability of benthic oxygen fluxes were investigated to gain improved understanding of the factors that control these processes. This study, for the first time is able to resolve benthic diffusive boundary layer (DBL) dynamics using the newly developed lifetime-based laser induced fluorescence (τLIF) oxygen imaging system, which enables study of the role of small-scale fluid mechanics generated by benthic organism activity, and hence a more detailed analysis of oxygen transport mechanisms across the sediment-water interface (SWI). The net benthic oxygen flux across the sediment-water interface is controlled by sediment oxygen uptake and oxygen transport. While the oxygen transport is largely influenced by turbulence driven by large-scale flows, sediment oxygen uptake is mainly affected by oxygen production and biological- and chemical-oxygen degradation of organic matter. Both processes can be enhanced by the presence of fauna and are intimately coupled. The benthic oxygen flux can be influenced by fauna in two ways, i.e. by modulating the availability of oxygen, which enhances the sediment oxygen uptake, and by enhancing the transport of oxygen. In-situ and a series of laboratory measurements were conducted to estimate the short- and seasonal variability of benthic fluxes including the effects of burrow ventilation activity by tube-dwelling animals using eddy correlation (EC) and τLIF oxygen imaging techniques, respectively. The in-situ benthic oxygen fluxes showed high variability at hourly and seasonal timescales, where statistical analysis indicated that current velocity and water depth were the most significant predictors of benthic oxygen flux at the waterside, which co-varied with the discharge, temperature, and oxygen concentration. The range of variability of seasonal fluxes corresponded to the friction velocities which were driven by large-scale flows. Application of a simplified analytical model that couples the effect of hydrodynamic forcing of the diffusive boundary layer with a temperature-dependent oxygen consumption rate within the sediment showed that friction velocity and temperature cause similar variability of the steady-state benthic oxygen flux. The application of τLIF oxygen imaging system in bioturbation experiments enabled the investigation and discovery of insights into oxygen transport mechanisms across the sediment-water interface. Distinct oxygen structures above burrow openings were revealed, these were associated with burrow ventilation. The DBL was degraded in the presence of burrow ventilation. Advective transport generated by the energetic plumes released at burrow outlets was the dominant transport driving mechanism. The contribution of diffusive flux to the total estimated decreased with increasing larval density. For a range of larvae densities, commonly observed in ponds and lakes, sediment oxygen uptake rates increased up to 2.5-fold in the presence of tube-dwelling animals, and the oxygen transport rate exceeded chironomid respiration by up to a factor of 4. The coupled physical-biological factors affecting net benthic oxygen flux can be represented by temperature, which is a prominent factor that accounts for both oxygen transport and sediment oxygen uptake. Low oxygen transport by flow coincided with high summer temperatures, amplified by a reduction of benthic population density and pupation. It can also, however, be offset by increased ventilation activity. In contrast, low temperature coincided with high oxygen concentrations, an abundance of larvae, and higher flow is offset by less burrow ventilation activity. Investigation of the effect of hydrodynamics on oxygen transport alone suggested that the expected increase of benthic oxygen flux under global warming can be offset by a reduction in flow velocity, which could ultimately lead to increasing carbon burial rates, and in a growing importance of anaerobic mineralization pathways with increasing emission rates of methane. This study suggests a significant contribution of biological induced benthic oxygen flux to physical transport driven by large-scale flow-fields contributing to bottom-boundary layer turbulence.

The primary aims of the study are (1) to identify classroom instructional factors which have a crucial effect on the academic growth of ninth-graders in EFL in Vietnam, and (2) to gain insight into their interplay with each other and with context factors. Besides, this study has a strong focus on methodological approaches: (a) using multiple methods in order to deal with the “large p, small n” problem, (b) to understand the relevance of the scaling model used for the results. Data from a research project carried out in Vietnam during the school year 2006–2007 were used in this study. Besides a longitudinal design with two measurement points (MPs) using adapted English tests and questionnaires from the DESI-study in Germany, a video study was conducted in the middle of the school year between two MPs. The recorded video data were transcribed, micro-analytically coded, and lessons were rated to gain indicators of classroom instruction. Different IRT scaling models were chosen to estimate student ability in the pretest and posttest. For the C-test, the unidimensional 1PL and 2PL models, the Rasch testlet model, and testlet 2PL model were selected to model student ability. To estimate student ability via the listening comprehension test (LC-test), the Rasch model, the unidimensional 2PL, and 3PL models were applied. The student ability estimates at the two MPs were linked to one common scale using the concurrent calibration approach with different a priori ability distributions. The plausible values (PVs) were generated and treated as student ability estimates for all analyses. To understand the relationship between the instructional variables and student growth, we explored the hypothesized linear and nonlinear, additive and interactive effects of classroom instructional factors. To examine these hypothetical effects, OLS and regularized regression models using lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operators) were applied, including main effects as well as quadratic and interaction terms of instructional variables. Initial student ability and the socioeconomic status of students were treated as context variables. The results show, on the one hand, a positive view of important general instructional quality dimensions of teaching effectiveness and, on the other hand, a strongly teacher-centered and textbook-driven instruction and poor instructional quality from the point of view of EFL didactics. The most important instructional factors of student growth in the C-test were quality aspects of motivation in instruction as well as aspects related to the teaching language. Regarding the LC-test results, language-related aspects together with the relative frequency of repeated questions were the most important predictors of student growth. While the findings confirmed all the hypothesized instructional effects on student growth, aptitude treatment interaction effects of instruction were only confirmed with regard to student growth in the C-test. The different scaling models produced significant differences in the results regarding instructional effects on student growth.

Navigation is a natural way to explore and discover content in a digital environment. Hence, providers of online information systems such as Wikipedia---a free online encyclopedia---are interested in providing navigational support to their users. To this end, an essential task approached in this thesis is the analysis and modeling of navigational user behavior in information networks with the goal of paving the way for the improvement and maintenance of web-based systems. Using large-scale log data from Wikipedia, this thesis first studies information access by contrasting search and navigation as the two main information access paradigms on the Web. Second, this thesis validates and builds upon existing navigational hypotheses to introduce an adaptation of the well-known PageRank algorithm. This adaptation is an improvement of the standard PageRank random surfer navigation model that results in a more "reasonable surfer" by accounting for the visual position of links, the information network regions they lead to, and the textual similarity between the link source and target articles. Finally, using agent-based simulations, this thesis compares user models that have a different knowledge of the network topology in order to investigate the amount and type of network topological information needed for efficient navigation. An evaluation of agents' success on four different networks reveals that in order to navigate efficiently, users require only a small amount of high-quality knowledge of the network topology. Aside from the direct benefits to content ranking provided by the "reasonable surfer" version of PageRank, the empirical insights presented in this thesis may also have an impact on system design decisions and Wikipedia editor guidelines, i.e., for link placement and webpage layout.

Fresh water resources like rivers and reservoirs are exposed to a drastically changing world. In order to safeguard these lentic ecosystems, they need stronger protection in times of global change and population growth. In the last years, the exploitation pressure on drinking water reservoirs has increased steadily worldwide. Besides securing the demands of safe drinking water supply, international laws especially in Europe (EU Water Framework Directive) stipulate to minimize the impact of dams on downstream rivers. In this study we investigate the potential of a smart withdrawal strategy at Grosse Dhuenn Reservoir to improve the temperature and discharge regime downstream without jeopardizing drinking water production. Our aim is to improve the existing withdrawal strategy for operating the reservoir in a sustainable way in terms of water quality and quantity. First, we set-up and calibrated a 1D numerical model for Grosse Dhuenn Reservoir with the open-source community model “General Lake Model” (GLM) together with its water quality module “Aquatic Ecodynamics” library (AED2). The reservoir model reproduced water temperatures and hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen concentrations accurately over a 5 year period. Second, we extended the model source code with a selective withdrawal functionality (adaptive offtake) and added operational rules for a realistic reservoir management. Now the model is able to autonomously determine the best withdrawal height according to the temperature and flow requirements of the downstream river and the raw water quality objectives. Criteria for the determination of the withdrawal regime are selective withdrawal, development of stratification and oxygen content in the deep hypolimnion. This functionality is not available in current reservoir models, where withdrawal heights are generally provided a priori to the model and kept fixed during the simulation. Third, we ran scenario simulations identifying an improved reservoir withdrawal strategy to balance the demands for downstream river and raw water supply. Therefore we aimed at finding an optimal parallel withdrawal ratio between cold hypolimnetic water and warm epilimnetic or metalimnetic water in order to provide a pre-defined temperature in the downstream river. The reservoir model and the proposed withdrawal strategy provide a simple and efficient tool to optimize reservoir management in a multi-objective view for mastering future reservoir management challenges.

With 47% land coverage in 2016, agricultural land was one of the largest terrestrial biomes in Germany. About 70% of the agricultural land was cropped area with associated pesticide applications. Agricultural land also represents an essential habitat for amphibians. Therefore, exposure of amphibians to agrochemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, seems likely. Pesticides can be highly toxic for amphibians, even a fraction of the original application rate may result in high amphibian mortality. To evaluate the potential risk of pesticide exposure for amphibians, the temporal coincidence of amphibian presence on agricultural land and pesticide applications (N = 331) was analyzed for the fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina), moor frog (Rana arvalis), spadefoot toad (Pelobates fuscus) and crested newt (Triturus cristatus) during spring migration. In 2007 and 2008, up to 80% of the migrating amphibians temporally coincided with pesticide applications in the study area of Müncheberg, about 50 km east of Berlin. Pesticide interception by plants ranged between 50 to 90% in winter cereals and 80 to 90% in winter rape. The highest coincidence was observed for the spadefoot toad, where 86.6% of the reproducing population was affected by a single pesticide in winter rape during stem elongation with 80% pesticide interception by plants. Late migrating species, such as the fire-bellied toad and the spadefoot toad, overlapped more with pesticide applications than early migrating species, such as the moor frog, did. Under favorable circumstances, the majority of early migrants may not coincide with the pesticide applications of arable fields during spring migration. To evaluate the potential effect of pesticide applications on populations of the common frog (Rana temporaria), a landscape genetic study was conducted in the vinicultural area of Southern Palatinate. Due to small sample sizes at breeding sites within viniculture, several DNA sampling methods were tested. Furthermore, the novel repeated randomized selection of genotypes approach was developed to utilize genetic data from siblings for more reliable estimates of genetic parameters. Genetic analyses highlighted three of the breeding site populations located in viniculture as isolated from the meta-population. Genetic differentiation among breeding site populations in the viniculture (median pairwise FST=0.0215 at 2.34 km to 0.0987 at 2.39 km distance) was higher compared to genetic differentiation among breeding site populations in the Palatinate Forest (median pairwise FST=0.0041 at 5.39 km to 0.0159 at 9.40 km distance). The presented studies add valuable information about the risk of pesticide exposure for amphibians in the terrestrial life stage and possible effects of agricultural land on amphibian meta-populations. To conserve endemic amphibian species and their (genetic) diversity in the long run, the risk assessment of pesticides and applied agricultural management measures need to be adjusted to protect amphibians adequately. In addition, other conservation measures such as the creation of new suitable breeding site should be considered to improve connectivity between breeding site populations and ensure the persistence of amphibians in the agricultural land.

Ontologies are valuable tools for knowledge representation and important building blocks of the Semantic Web. They are not static and can change over time. Changing an ontology can be necessary for various reasons: the domain that is represented by an ontology can change or an ontology is reused and must be adapted to the new context. In addition, modeling errors could have been introduced into the ontology which must be found and removed. The non-triviality of the change process has led to the emerge of ontology change as an own field of research. The removal of knowledge from ontologies is an important aspect of this change process, because even the addition of new knowledge to an ontology potentially requires the removal of older, conflicting knowledge. Such a removal must be performed in a thought-out way. A naïve change of concepts within the ontology can easily remove other, unrelated knowledge or alter the semantics of concepts in an unintended way [2]. For these reasons, this thesis introduces a formal operator for the fine-grained retraction of knowledge from EL concepts which is partially based on the postulates for belief set contraction and belief base contraction [3, 4, 5] and the work of Suchanek et al. [6]. For this, a short introduction to ontologies and OWL 2 is given and the problem of ontology change is explained. It is then argued why a formal operator can support this process and why the Description Logic EL provides a good starting point for the development of such an operator. After this, a general introduction to Description Logic is given. This includes its history, an overview of its applications and common reasoning tasks in this logic. Following this, the logic EL is defined. In a next step, related work is examined and it is shown why the recovery postulate and the relevance postulate cannot be naïvely employed in the development of an operator that removes knowledge from EL concepts. Following this, the requirements to the operator are formulated and properties are given which are mainly based on the postulates for belief set and belief base contraction. Additional properties are developed which make up for the non-applicability of the recovery and relevance postulates. After this, a formal definition of the operator is given and it is shown that the operator is applicable to the task of a fine-grained removal of knowledge from EL concepts. In a next step, it is proven that the operator fulfills all the previously defined properties. It is then demonstrated how the operator can be combined with laconic justifications [7] to assist a human ontology editor by automatically removing unwanted consequences from an ontology. Building on this, a plugin for the ontology editor Protégé is introduced that is based on algorithms that were derived from the formal definition of the operator. The content of this work is then summarized and a final conclusion is drawn. The thesis closes with an outlook into possible future work.

Social entrepreneurship is a form of entrepreneurship that marries a social mission to a competitive value proposition. Notably, social entrepreneurship fosters a more equitable society by addressing social issues and trying to achieve an ongoing sustainable impact through a social mission rather than purely profit maximization. The topic of social entrepreneurship has appealed considerably to many different streams of research. The focus on understanding how and why entrepreneurs think and act is a significant justification for future research. Nevertheless, the theoretical examination of this phenomenon is in its infancy. Social entrepreneurship research is still largely phenomenon-driven. Specifically, Social Entrepreneurial Intention is in an early stage and lacks quantitative research. Therefore, this thesis proposes to address this need. The thesis’ objectives are twofold: (1) develop a formation model for Social Entrepreneurial Intentions in general and (2) test the model by conducting an empirical study. Based on these objectives, the two research questions guiding the thesis are (1) what factors influence the intention of a person to become a social entrepreneur and (2) what relationships exist among these factors. In order to answer these two research questions, this thesis uses purposeful research design, which is a combination of literature review and empirical study. The literature review is based on a comprehensive range of books, articles, and research papers published in leading academic journals and conference proceedings in different disciplines such as entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, management, social psychology, and social economics. The empirical study is conducted via a survey of 600 last-year students from four universities in three regions in Vietnam: Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh. The data are analyzed with SPSS-AMOS version 24, using screening data, scale development, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmation factor analysis. The thesis ascertains that Entrepreneurship Experience/Extra-curricular Activity, Role Model, Social Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy, and Social Entrepreneurial Outcome Expectation directly and positively affect the intention of the Vietnamese students to be social entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship Education also influences the Social Entrepreneurial Intention, but not directly, otherwise indirectly via Social Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Social Entrepreneurial Outcome Expectation. Similarly, Perceived Support has no direct relationship to Social Entrepreneurial Intention; however, it shows an indirect link via the mediator ‘Social Entrepreneurial Outcome Expectation’. Furthermore, the dissertation brings new insights to the social entrepreneurship literature and provides important implications for practice. Limitations and future directions are also provided in the thesis.

The concept of hard and soft news (HSN) is regarded as one of the most important concepts in journalism research. Despites this popularity, two major research voids can be assigned to the concept. First, it lacks conceptual clarity: the concept gets used interchangeably with related concepts such as sensationalism, which has led to fuzzy demarcations of HSN. Also, it is still not agreed on of which dimensions the concept in composed. Second, little is known about the factors that influence the production of news in terms of their hard or soft nature. The present disserta-tion casts a twofold glance on the HSN concept – it aims to assess the conceptual status of the concept and production of hard and soft news. At the outset, this dissertation delineates the theoretical base for three manuscripts in total and presented considerations on concepts in social sciences in general and hard and soft news in particular as well as the production of news, particularly of hard and soft news. The first paper proposed a theoretical frame-work model to distinguish HSN and related concepts. Based on a literature review of in total five concepts, this model suggested a hierarchy in which these concepts can be discerned according to their occurrence in media content. The second pa-per focused on the inner coherence of the HSN concept in its most recent academ-ic understanding. The results of a factorial survey with German newspaper jour-nalists showed that, indeed, four out of five dimensions of the HSN concept com-prised what the journalists understood by it. Hence, the most recent academic un-derstanding is to a great extent coherent. The third study shed light on the produc-tion of HSN, focusing on the influence of individual journalists’ and audience’s characteristics on whether news was presented in hard or soft way. The findings of a survey with simulated decision scenarios among German print journalists showed that the HSN dimensions were susceptible to different journalistic influ-ences and that a perceived politically uninterested audience led to a softer cover-age. The dissertation concluded with connecting these findings with the considera-tions on concept evaluation and the production of news. Implications for research on and with the concept of HSN were presented, before concluding with limitations and suggestions for future research.

We examine the systematic underrecognition of female scientists (Matilda effect) by exploring the citation network of papers published in the American Physical Society (APS) journals. Our analysis shows that articles written by men (first author, last author and dominant gender of authors) receive more citations than similar articles written by women (first author, last author and dominant gender of authors) after controlling for the journal of publication, year of publication and content of the publication. Statistical significance of the overlap between the lists of references was considered as the measure of similarity between articles in our analysis. In addition, we found that men are less likely to cite articles written by women and women are less likely to cite articles written by men. This pattern leads to receiving more citations by articles written by men than similar articles written by women because the majority of authors who published in APS journals are male (85%). We also observed Matilda effect reduces when articles are published in journals with the highest impact factors. In other words, people’s evaluation of articles published in these journals is not affected by the gender of authors significantly. Finally, we suggested a method that can be applied by editors in academic journals to reduce the evaluation bias to some extent. Editors can identify missing citations using our proposed method to complete bibliographies. This policy can reduce the evaluation bias because we observed papers written by female scholars (first author, last author, the dominant gender of authors) miss more citations than articles written by male scholars (first author, last author, the dominant gender of authors).

This paper describes the robots TIAGo and Lisa used by team homer@UniKoblenz of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, for the participation at the RoboCup@Home 2018 in Montreal, Canada. Further this paper serves as qualification material for the RoboCup-@Home participation in 2018. A special focus is put on novel system components and the open source contributions of our team. This year the team from Koblenz won the biggest annual scientianc robot competition in Montreal in the RoboCup@Home Open Platform track for the third time and also won the RoboCup@Home German Open for the second time. As a research highlight a novel symbolic imitation learning approach was demonstrated during the annals. The TIAGo robotic research platform was used for the first time by the team. We have released packages for object recognition, a robot face including speech synthesis, mapping and navigation, speech recognition interface via android and a GUI. The packages are available (and new packages will be released) on http://wiki.ros.org/agas-ros-pkg. Further information can be found on our project page http://homer.uni-koblenz.de.

Different techniques (weight loss, electrochemical, and spray corrosion measurements) have been used to evaluate four sarcosine derivatives to inhibit corrosion and one commercial compound as synergist. The basic metal was low carbon steel CR4 tested at different conditions. As working media mainly neutral water and 0.1 M NaCl was applied. The protective film was formed on the steel surface via direct absorption of the tested substances during the immersion process. A highly improved corrosion protection with direct correlation to the molecular weight and carbon chain length of the tested compounds was detected. The protection of steel CR4 against corrosion in 0.1 M NaCl enhanced with increasing concentration of selected sarcosine compounds. The best inhibitor throughout all tested concentrations and all evaluation systems was Oleoylsarcosine (O) with efficiencies up to 97 % in potentiodynamic polarization (PP), 83 % electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and 85 % weight loss (WL) at 100 mmol/L as highest concentration tested here. The second best inhibitor was Myristoylsarcosine (M) with efficiencies up to 82 % in PP, 69 % in EIS, and 75 % in WL at highest concentration. The inhibitor with the shortest hydrocarbon chain in this series is Lauroylsarcosine (L). It showed lowest effects to inhibit corrosion compared to O and M. The efficiencies of L were a bit more than 50 % at 75 and 100 mmol/L and less than 50 % at 25 and 50 mmol/L in all used evaluation systems. Furthermore, the overall efficiency is promoted with longer dip coating times during the steel CR4 immersion as shown for 50 mmol/L for all present derivatives. This survey indicated 10 min as best time in respect of cost and protection efficiency. The commercial inhibitor Oley-Imidazole (OI) improved significantly the effectiveness of compound Cocoylsarcosine (C), which contains the naturally mixture of carbon chain lengths from coconut oil (C8 - C18), and enhanced protection when used in combination (C+OI, 1:1 molar ration). In this system the efficiency increased from 47 % to 91 % in PP, from 40 % to 84 % in EIS, and from 45 % to 82 % in WL at highest concentration. Spray corrosion tests were used to evaluate all present sarcosine substances on steel CR4 in a more realistic system. The best inhibitor after a 24 h test was O followed by the combination C+OI and M with efficiencies up to 99 %, 80 %, and 79 %, respectively. The obtained results indicate a good stability of the protective film formed by the present inhibitors even after 24 h. All evaluation systems used in the current investigation were in good agreement and resulted in the same inhibitor sequence. Furthermore, the adsorption process of the tested compounds is assumed to follow the Langmuir type isotherm. Response surface methodology (RSM) is an optimization method depending on Box- Behnken Design (BBD). It was used in the current system to find the optimum efficiency for inhibitor O to protect steel CR4 against corrosion in salt water. Four independent variables were used here: inhibitor concentration (A), dip coating time (B), temperature (C), and NaCl concentration (D); each with three respective levels: lower (-1), mid (0), and upper (+1). According to the present result, temperature has the greatest effect on the protection process as individual parameter followed by the inhibitor concentration itself. In this investigation an optimum efficiency of 99 % is calculated by the following parameter and level combination: upper level (+1) for inhibitor concentration, dip coating time, and NaCl concentration while lower level (-1) for temperature.

Systemic neonicotinoids are one of the most widely used insecticide classes worldwide. In addition to their use in agriculture, they are increasingly applied on forest trees as a protective measure against insect pests. However, senescent leaves containing neonicotinoids might, inter alia during autumn leaf fall, enter nearby streams. There, the hydrophilic neonicotinoids may be remobilized from leaves to water resulting in waterborne exposure of aquatic non-target organisms. Despite the insensitivity of the standard test species Daphnia magna (Crustacea, Cladocera) toward neonicotinoids, a potential risk for aquatic organisms is evident as many other aquatic invertebrates (in particular insects and amphipods) display adverse effects when exposed to neonicotinoids in the ng/L- to low µg/L-range. In addition to waterborne exposure, in particular leaf-shredding invertebrates (= shredders) might be adversely affected by the introduction of neonicotinoid-contaminated leaves into the aquatic environment since they heavily rely on leaf litter as food source. However, dietary neonicotinoid exposure of aquatic shredders has hardly received any attention from researchers and is not considered during aquatic environmental risk assessment. The primary aim of this thesis is, therefore, (1) to characterize foliar neonicotinoid residues and exposure pathways relevant for aquatic shredders, (2) to investigate ecotoxicological effects of waterborne and dietary exposure on two model shredders, namely Gammarus fossarum (Crustacea, Amphipoda) and Chaetopteryx villosa (Insecta, Trichoptera), and (3) to identify biotic and abiotic factors potentially modulating exposure under field conditions. During the course of this thesis, ecotoxicologically relevant foliar residues of the neonicotinoids imidacloprid, thiacloprid and acetamiprid were quantified in black alder trees treated at field relevant levels. A worst-case model – developed to simulate imidacloprid water concentrations resulting from an input of contaminated leaves into a stream – predicted only low aqueous imidacloprid concentrations (i.e., ng/L-range). However, the model identified dietary uptake as an additional exposure pathway relevant for shredders up to a few days after the leaves’ introduction into the stream. When test organisms were simultaneously exposed (= combined exposure) to neonicotinoids leaching from leaves into the water and via the consumption of contaminated leaves, adverse effects exceeded those observed under waterborne exposure alone. When exposure pathways were separated using a flow-through system, dietary exposure towards thiacloprid-contaminated leaves caused similar sublethal adverse effects in G. fossarum as observed under waterborne exposure. Moreover, the effect sizes observed under combined exposure were largely predictable using the reference model “independent action”, which assumes different molecular target sites to be affected. Dietary toxicity for shredders might, however, be reduced under field conditions since UV-induced photodegradation and leaching decreased imidacloprid residues in leaves and thereby the toxicity for G. fossarum. In contrast, both shredders were found unable to actively avoid dietary exposure. This thesis thus recommends considering dietary exposure towards systemic insecticides, such as neonicotinoids, already during their registration to safeguard aquatic shredders, associated ecosystem functions (e.g., leaf litter breakdown) and ultimately ecosystem integrity.

Knowledge-based authentication methods are vulnerable to Shoulder surfing phenomenon. The widespread usage of these methods and not addressing the limitations it has could result in the user’s information to be compromised. User authentication method ought to be effortless to use and efficient, nevertheless secure. The problem that we face concerning the security of PIN (Personal Identification Number) or password entry is shoulder surfing, in which a direct or indirect malicious observer could identify the user sensitive information. To tackle this issue we present TouchGaze which combines gaze signals and touch capabilities, as an input method for entering user’s credentials. Gaze signals will be primarily used to enhance targeting and touch for selecting. In this work, we have designed three different PIN entry method which they all have similar interfaces. For the evaluation, these methods were compared based on efficiency, accuracy, and usability. The results uncovered that despite the fact that gaze-based methods require extra time for the user to get familiar with yet it is considered more secure. In regards to efficiency, it has the similar error margin to the traditional PIN entry methods.

Carabids, which are frequently distributed in agricultural landscapes, are natural enemies of different pests including slugs. Semi-natural habitats are known to affect carabids and thus, their potential to support natural pest control. The impact of semi-natural habitats was investigated on carabids and slugs within different non-crop habitats (chapter 2). Most carabids and Deroceras reticulatum showed preferences for herbaceous semi-natural habitats, while Arion spp. occured mainly in woody habitats. An increase of predatory carabid abundance, which was linked to an inclining amount of semi-natural habitats in the landscape, and a decrease of Arion spp. densities, indicated a high potential for slug control in structural rich landscapes. Effects of semi-natural habitats were investigated on predatory carabids and slugs in 18 wheat fields (chapter 3). Predatory carabid species richness was positively affected by the increasing amount of semi-natural habitats in the landscape, whereas predatory carabid abundance was neither influenced by adjacent habitat type nor by the proportion of semi-natural habitats in the landscape. The target pest species showed divergent patterns, whereas Arion spp. densities were highest in structural poor landscapes near woody margins. D. reticulatum was not affected by habitat type or landscape, reflecting its adaptation to agriculture. Results indicate an increased control of Arion spp. by carabids in landscapes with a high amount of semi-natural habitats. Effects of semi-natural habitats and the influence of farming system was tested on carabid distribution within 18 pumpkin fields (chapter 4). Carabid species richness generally increased with decreasing distance to the field margins, whereas carabid abundance responded differently according to the adjacent habitat type. Farming system had no effect on carabids and landscape heterogeneity only affected carabids in organic pumpkin fields. Slug and slug egg predation of three common carabid species was tested in single and double species treatments in the laboratory (chapter 5). Results show additive and synergistic effects depending on the carabid species. In general, semi-natural habitats can enhance the potential of slug control by carabids. This counts especially for Arionid slugs. Semi-natural habitats can support carabid communities by providing shelter, oviposition and overwintering sites as wells as complementary food sources. Therefore, it is important to provide a certain amount of non-crop habitats in agricultural landscapes. 

Freshwaters are of immense importance for human well-being. Nevertheless, they are currently facing unprecedented levels of threat from habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation, invasive species and pollution. To prevent risks to aquatic ecosystems, chemical substances, like agricultural pesticides, have to pass environmental risk assessment (ERA) before entering the market. Concurrently, large-scale environmental monitoring is used for surveillance of biological and chemical conditions in freshwaters. This thesis examines statistical methods currently used in ERA. Moreover, it presents a national-scale compilation of chemical monitoring data, an analysis of drivers and dynamics of chemical pollution in streams and, provides a large-scale risk assessment by combination with results from ERA. Additionally, software tools have been developed to integrate different datasets used in ERA. The thesis starts with a brief introduction to ERA and environmental monitoring and gives an overview of the objectives of the thesis. Chapter 2 addresses experimental setups and their statistical analyses using simulations. The results show that current designs exhibit unacceptably low statistical power, that statistical methods chosen to fit the type of data provide higher power and that statistical practices in ERA need to be revised. In chapter 3 we compiled all available pesticide monitoring data from Germany. Hereby, we focused on small streams, similar to those considered in ERA and used threshold concentrations derived during ERA for a large-scale assessment of threats to freshwaters from pesticides. This compilation resulted in the most comprehensive dataset on pesticide exposure currently available for Germany. Using state-of-the-art statistical techniques, that explicitly take the limits of quantification into account, we demonstrate that 25% of small streams are at threat from pesticides. In particular neonicotinoid pesticides are responsible for these threats. These are associated with agricultural intensity and can be detected even at low levels of agricultural use. Moreover, our results indicated that current monitoring underestimates pesticide risks, because of a sampling decoupled from precipitation events. Additionally, we provide a first large-scale study of annual pesticide exposure dynamics. Chapters 4 and 5 describe software solutions to simplify and accelerate the integration of data from ERA, environmental monitoring and ecotoxicology that is indispensable for the development of landscape-level risk assessment. Overall, this thesis contributes to the emerging discipline of statistical ecotoxicology and shows that pesticides pose a large-scale threat to small streams. Environmental monitoring can provide a post-authorisation feedback to ERA. However, to protect freshwater ecosystems ERA and environmental monitoring need to be further refined and we provide software solutions to utilise existing data for this purpose.

Pelagic oxyclines, the transition zone between oxygen rich surface waters and oxygen depleted deep waters, are a common characteristic of eutrophic lakes during summer stratification. They can have tremendous effects on the biodiversity and the ecosystem functioning of lakes and, to add insult to injury, are expected to become more frequent and more pronounced as climate warming progresses. On these grounds, this thesis endeavors to advance the understanding of formation, persistence, and consequences of pelagic oxyclines: We test, whether the formation of metalimnetic oxygen minima is intrinsically tied to a locally enhanced oxygen consuming process, investigate the relative importance of vertical physical oxygen transport and biochemical oxygen consumption for the persistence of pelagic oxyclines, and finally assess their potential consequences for whole lake cycling. To pursue these objectives, the present thesis nearly exclusively resorts to in situ measurements. Field campaigns were conducted at three lakes in Germany featuring different types of oxyclines and resolved either a short (hours to days) or a long (weeks to months) time scale. Measurements comprised temperature, current velocity, and concentrations of oxygen and reduced substances in high temporal and vertical resolution. Additionally, vertical transport was estimated by applying the eddy correlation technique within the pelagic region for the first time. The thesis revealed, that the formation of metalimnetic oxygen minima does not necessarily depend on locally enhanced oxygen depletion, but can solely result from gradients and curvatures of oxygen concentration and depletion and their relative position to each other. Physical oxygen transport was found to be relevant for oxycline persistence when it considerably postponed anoxia on a long time scale. However, its influence on oxygen dynamics was minor on short time scales, although mixing and transport were highly variable. Biochemical consumption always dominated the fate of oxygen in pelagic oxyclines. It was primarily determined by the oxidative breakdown of organic matter originating from the epilimnion, whereas in meromictic lakes, the oxidation of reduced substances dominated. Beyond that, the results of the thesis emphasize that pelagic oxyclines can be a hotspot of mineralization and, hence, short-circuit carbon and nutrient cycling in the upper part of the water column. Overall, the present thesis highlights the importance of considering physical transport as well as biochemical cycling in future studies.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of addressable, physical objects that contain embedded sensing, communication and actuating technologies to sense and interact with their environment (Geschickter 2015). Like every novel paradigm, the IoT sparks interest throughout all domains both in theory and practice, resulting in the development of systems pushing technology to its limits. These limits become apparent when having to manage an increasing number of Things across various contexts. A plethora of IoT architecture proposals have been developed and prototype products, such as IoT platforms, been introduced. However, each of these architectures and products apply their very own interpretations of an IoT architecture and its individual components so that IoT is currently more an Intranet of Things than an Internet of Things (Zorzi et al. 2010). Thus, this thesis aims to develop a common understanding of the elements forming an IoT architecture and provide high-level specifications in the form of a Holistic IoT Architecture Framework. Design Science Research (DSR) is used in this thesis to develop the architecture framework based on the pertinent literature. The development of the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework includes the identification of two new IoT Architecture Perspectives that became apparent during the analysis of the IoT architecture proposals identified in the extant literature. While applying these novel perspectives, the need for a new component for the architecture framework, which was merely implicitly mentioned in the literature, became obvious as well. The components of various IoT architecture proposals as well as the novel component, the Thing Management System, were combined, consolidated and related to each other to develop the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework. Subsequently, it was shown that the specifications of the architecture framework are suitable to guide the implementation of a prototype. This contribution provides a common understanding of the basic building blocks, actors and relations of an IoT architecture.