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In jüngerer Vergangenheit erlebt der zumeist auf Michel Foucault zurückgeführte Begriff des 'Dispositivs' – ähnlich wie zuvor der des 'Diskurses' – eine regelrechte Konjunktur in den Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. Seine Verwendung weist jedoch eine Reihe von Verkürzungen und Entstellungen auf; so werden damit recht pauschal meist bloß die architekturalen und/oder räumlichen Umstände bzw. Kontexte sozialer, medialer oder anderer Situationen bezeichnet, ohne die für Foucault so wichtigen Fragen nach Wissen, Macht und Subjektivität zu beachten. So gerät der Begriff in Gefahr, seine theoretische und analytische Potenz einzubüßen.
In „Im Dispositiv. Macht, Medium, Wissen“ legt die Autorin daher in einem ersten Schritt eine Präzisierung des Dispositivbegriffs vor, der den zugrundeliegenden Theoriehorizont Foucaults systematisch miteinbezieht. Dazu werden zunächst diskurstheoretische Grundlagen erläutert und anschließend deren strukturelle Analogien zu den machtanalytischen Befunden Foucaults mit Hilfe einer neuen Terminologie sichtbar gemacht.
Vor allem in den Medienwissenschaften ist der Begriff des Dispositivs prominent, um die gesellschaftliche Einbettung von Einzelmedien zu pointieren. Jedoch fällt auf, dass der dort in weiten Teilen vertretene Ansatz, Medien als Dispositive zu verstehen, den Blick auf medienspezifische Eigenlogiken verstellt. In einem zweiten Schritt weist die Autorin daher die strukturellen Analogien von Medialität, Wissen und Macht auf und kommt so zu einem integrativen Dispositivkonzept, das die drei Sphären als dynamisch miteinander verknüpfte, interdependente und reziproke Felder von Kultur modelliert.
Leaf litter breakdown is a fundamental process in aquatic ecosystems, being mainly mediated by decomposer-detritivore systems that are composed of microbial decomposers and leaf-shredding, detritivorous invertebrates. The ecological integrity of these systems can, however, be disturbed, amongst others, by chemical stressors. Fungicides might pose a particular risk as they can have negative effects on the involved microbial decomposers but may also affect shredders via both waterborne toxicity and their diet; the latter by toxic effects due to dietary exposure as a result of fungicides’ accumulation on leaf material and by negatively affecting fungal leaf decomposers, on which shredders’ nutrition heavily relies. The primary aim of this thesis was therefore to provide an in-depth assessment of the ecotoxicological implications of fungicides in a model decomposer-detritivore system using a tiered experimental approach to investigate (1) waterborne toxicity in a model shredder, i.e., Gammarus fossarum, (2) structural and functional implications in leaf-associated microbial communities, and (3) the relative importance of waterborne and diet-related effects for the model shredder.
Additionally, knowledge gaps were tackled that were related to potential differences in the ecotoxicological impact of inorganic (also authorized for organic farming in large parts of the world) and organic fungicides, the mixture toxicity of these substances, the field-relevance of their effects, and the appropriateness of current environmental risk assessment (ERA).
In the course of this thesis, major differences in the effects of inorganic and organic fungicides on the model decomposer-detritivore system were uncovered; e.g., the palatability of leaves for G. fossarum was increased by inorganic fungicides but deteriorated by organic substances. Furthermore, non-additive action of fungicides was observed, rendering mixture effects of these substances hardly predictable. While the relative importance of the waterborne and diet-related effect pathway for the model shredder seems to depend on the fungicide group and the exposure concentration, it was demonstrated that neither path must be ignored due to additive action. Finally, it was shown that effects can be expected at field-relevant fungicide levels and that current ERA may provide insufficient protection for decomposer-detritivore systems. To safeguard aquatic ecosystem functioning, this thesis thus recommends including leaf-associated microbial communities and long-term feeding studies using detritus feeders in ERA testing schemes, and identifies several knowledge gaps whose filling seems mandatory to develop further reasonable refinements for fungicide ERA.
The establishment of aquatic alien species can strongly affect community and food web structure of the invaded systems and thus represents a major threat to native biodiversity. One of the most important aquatic invasive species in European rivers is the Ponto-Caspian amphipod Dikerogammarus villosus. The species invaded most of the major European waterways within two decades, often associated with a decline of many other macroinvertebrate species, including other amphipods. Based on laboratory results predation by the so called ‘killer shrimp’ is often regarded as the key driver for observed displacement effects, but recent studies indicated a minor relevance of predation by D. villosus in the field. To allow the determination of exact predator-prey interactions from field samples, I established 22 group-specific rDNA primers for freshwater taxa suitable for prey species identification in dietary samples (Chapter II) and an approach for the screening of D. villosus gut contents using 16 of these primers. Combining genetic gut content analyses, with one of these primers, and stable isotope analyses, I examined the importance of intraguild predation (IGP) by D. villosus, which is often assumed the key driver for the displacement of native amphipod species, at an invasion front of the species in Switzerland (Chapter III). The results of this study revealed a low importance of IGP during this particular D. villosus invasion and indicated an overall sparsely predacious feeding behaviour of the species. As the feeding behaviour of D. villosus is supposed to differ between habitats and this study was only conducted at a few sampling sites of one river, I also investigated the role of predation by D. villosus at multiple sites of the River Rhine system, covering a broad range of microhabitats (Chapter IV). In keeping with the results from the invasion front results of this study strongly indicated a sparsely predacious feeding but rather a flexible feeding behaviour of D. villosus even within the same microhabitat.
However, established populations of D. villosus have changed aquatic food webs and can be expected to affect aquatic-terrestrial energy fluxes. In Chapter V of my thesis, I present a field study investigating the impact of D. villosus on the diet of two riparian spider taxa. The results of this study indicate an effect of D. villosus on the terrestrial food web via cross-ecosystem resource flow.
In conclusion, D. villosus influences terrestrial food webs by altering cross-ecosystem resource fluxes, but it is rather an opportunistic omnivore than a predator in the field.
The work presented in this thesis investigated interactions of selected biophysical processes that affect zooplankton ecology at smaller scales. In this endeavour, the extent of changes in swimming behaviour and fluid disturbances produced by swimming Daphnia in response to changing physical environments were quantified. In the first research question addressed within this context, size and energetics of hydrodynamic trails produced by Daphnia swimming in non-stratified still waters were characterized and quantified as a function of organisms’ size and their swimming patterns.
The results revealed that neither size nor the swimming pattern of Daphnia affects the width of induced trails or dissipation rates. Nevertheless, as the size and swimming velocity of the organisms increased, trail volume increased in proportional to the cubic power of Reynolds number, and the biggest trail volume was about 500 times the body volume of the largest daphnids. Larger spatial extent of fluid perturbation and prolonged period to decay caused by bigger trail volumes would play a significant role in zooplankton ecology, e.g. increasing the risk of predation.
The study also found that increased trail volume brought about significantly enhanced total dissipated power at higher Reynolds number, and the magnitudes of total dissipated power observed varied in the range of (1.3-10)X10-9 W.
Furthermore, this study provided strong evidence that swimming speed of Daphnia and total dissipated power in Daphnia trails exceeded those of some other selected zooplankton species.
In recognizing turbulence as an intrinsic environmental perturbation in aquatic habitats, this thesis also examined the response of Daphnia to a range of turbulence flows, which correspond to turbu-lence levels that zooplankton generally encounter in their habitats. Results indicated that within the range of turbulent intensities to which the Daphnia are likely to be exposed in their natural habitats, increasing turbulence compelled the organisms to enhance their swimming activity and swim-ming speed. However, as the turbulence increased to extremely high values (10-4 m2s-3), Daphnia began to withdraw from their active swimming behaviour. Findings of this work also demonstrated that the threshold level of turbulence at which animals start to alleviate from largely active swimming is about 10-6 m2s-3. The study further illustrated that during the intermediate range of turbu-lence; 10-7 - 10-6 m2s-3, kinetic energy dissipation rates in the vicinity of the organisms is consistently one order of magnitude higher than that of the background turbulent flow.
Swarming, a common conspicuous behavioural trait observed in many zooplankton species, is considered to play a significant role in defining freshwater ecology of their habitats from food exploitation, mate encountering to avoiding predators through hydrodynamic flow structures produced by them, therefore, this thesis also investigated implications of Daphnia swarms at varied abundance & swarm densities on their swimming kinematics and induced flow field.
The results showed that Daphnia aggregated in swarms with swarm densities of (1.1-2.3)x103 L-1, which exceeded the abundance densities by two orders of magnitude (i.e. 1.7 - 6.7 L-1). The estimated swarm volume decreased from 52 cm3 to 6.5 cm3, and the mean neighbouring distance dropped from 9.9 to 6.4 body lengths. The findings of this work also showed that mean swimming trajectories were primarily horizontal concentric circles around the light source. Mean flow speeds found to be one order of magnitude lower than the corresponding swimming speeds of Daphnia. Furthermore, this study provided evidences that the flow fields produced by swarming Daphnia differed considerably between unidirectional vortex swarming and bidirectional swimming at low and high abundances respectively.
In der vorliegenden Untersuchung stehen geometrische Aufgaben und die in den seit 2004 national verbindlichen Bildungsstandards im Fach Mathematik für den Primarbereich formulierten Anforderungsbereiche im Zentrum. Diese zeigen die kognitiven Anforderungen an Schülerinnen und Schüler bei der Bearbeitung von Aufgaben auf, wobei zwischen „Reproduzieren", „Zusammenhänge herstellen" und „Verallgemeinern und Reflektieren" unterschieden wird (KMK, 2005a, S. 13).
Durch die drei Anforderungsbereiche sollen Lehrkräfte unter anderem die Chance zur Entwicklung einer anforderungsbezogenen Aufgabenkultur erhalten. Des Weiteren soll die Integration von Aufgaben aus allen drei Anforderungsbereichen im Unterricht angeregt und einem einseitig ausgerichteten Unterricht entgegen gewirkt werden.
Da die Anforderungsbereiche bislang nicht empirisch validiert wurden und in den Veröffentlichungen der Kultusministerkonferenz nicht klar zur Schwierigkeit von Aufgaben abgegrenzt werden (KMK, 2005a, S. 13; KMK, 2005b, S. 17; KMK, 2004b, S. 13), wurde in der vorliegenden Untersuchung zum einen die Möglichkeit der eindeutigen Zuordnung geometrischer Aufgaben zu den drei Anforderungsbereichen geprüft.
Zum anderen wurde untersucht, inwiefern die in den geometrischen Aufgaben enthaltenen kognitiven Anforderungen in Zusammenhang mit der empirischen Schwierigkeit von Aufgaben, der mathematischen Leistungsfähigkeit von Schülerinnen und Schülern, dem Geschlecht und den Anforderungen der im Unterricht gestellten Aufgaben stehen.
Vor dem Hintergrund der dem deutschen Mathematikunterricht nachgesagten Kalkül- beziehungsweise Fertigkeitsorientierung (Baumert et al., 2001, S. 296; Granzer & Walther, 2008, S. 9) und den damit einhergehenden Stärken deutscher Schülerinnen und Schüler im Bereich von Routineaufgaben und Schwächen im Bereich von Aufgaben mit höheren kognitiven Anforderungen (Grassmann et al., 2014, S. 11; Reiss & Hammer, 2013, S. 82; Schütte, 2008, S. 41) wurde zudem die Verteilung der im Rahmen der Untersuchung gewonnenen, schriftlich fixierten geometrischen Schulbuch- und Unterrichtsaufgaben auf die drei Anforderungsbereiche analysiert.
Durch die Betrachtung geometrischer Aufgaben konnte stichprobenartig der quantitative Geometrieanteil in den Schulbüchern und im Unterricht der vierten Jahrgangsstufe ermittelt werden, um so den Forschungsstand zum Stellenwert des Geometrieunterrichts (Maier, 1999; Backe-Neuwald, 2000; Roick, Gölitz & Hasselhorn, 2004) zu aktualisieren beziehungsweise zu ergänzen.
La tesis doctoral examina los tres manuscritos conocidos hasta hoy de la Explicación de la Guitarra, primer método para guitarra de seis órdenes conocido hasta escrito por Juan Antonio de Vargas y Guzmán. Fue escrito primeramente cuando Vargas y Guzmán era vecino de la ciudad de Cádiz, en 1773; y copiado en dos ocasiones cuando el autor era maestro de este instrumento en la Ciudad de Veracruz, en 1776. Después de 200 años, específicamente en 1974, se dio la primera referencia de un manuscrito de este método, fechado en Veracruz en 1776, que se resguardaba en la Biblioteca Newberry de Chicago. Años más tarde, ya en 1980, la doctora María Fernanda García de los Arcos encontró en el Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) la segunda copia manuscrita, con la misma información de lugar y fecha que la anterior, pero que contenía una diferencia sustancial con el primero: 13 Sonatas para guitarra y bajo continuo. El tercero de ellos, fechado en Cádiz en 1773, fue adquirido por el investigador Ángel Medina Álvarez en una librería anticuaria a fines de los años 70; pero no fue sino hasta 1989, que decidió dar noticias de él y publicarlo posteriormente. A su vez, este manuscrito contiene una diferencia sustancial: un Tratado de Rasgueado. Además de esas diferencias sustanciales, la Explicación de la Guitarra, en su conjunto contiene, un Tratado de Punteado y un Tratado de Bajo continuo para guitarra.
El estudio establece la relación entre cada uno de los manuscritos; define sus contenidos y analiza los principios y fundamentos que sustentan las innovaciones de ellos sobre los ya conocidos por el autor; establece la relación entre los contenidos teóricos y prácticos; compara su evolución; los sitúa en un contexto histórico; establece su relación con otros métodos de la misma índole, así como con métodos de características similares; compila sus fuentes y determina la influencia que tuvieron éstas sobre la Explicación de la Guitarra y ésta sobre aquellas; y determina su importancia histórica y teórica en la música para este instrumento.
Die laserinduzierte Plasmaspektroskopie (”Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy”, im Folgenden auch ”LIBS” genannt) stellt eine schnelle und berührungslose Messmethode zur Elementanalyse von festen, flüssigen oder gasförmigen Stoffen unter normalen Umgebungsbedingungen ohne besondere Probenvorbereitung dar. Dazu wird ein gepulster Laser, dessen Intensität einen bestimmten Grenzwert überschreiten muss, auf eine Probe fokussiert. Das dort bestrahlte Material verdampft schlagartig und es bildet sich bei einer Temperatur von rund 10000 K ein Plasma aus. Die angeregten Atome und Ionen im Plasma strahlen bei der Rückkehr in energetisch niedrigere Zustände ein charakteristisches optisches Emissionsspektrum ab, welches über eine schnelle spektroskopische Analyse die Elementzusammensetzung des untersuchten Materials liefert. LIBS bietet in diesem Fall auch die Möglichkeit, ein unkompliziertes und bildgebendes Messverfahren aufzubauen, indem Elementverteilungen auf einer topographischen Oberfläche analysiert werden, um beispielsweise Materialübergänge, Einschlüsse oder Verschmutzungen sicher zu detektieren. Bei unebenen Oberflächen wird eine ständige Anpassung des Laserfokus an die Probenkontur benötigt, da die notwendige Intensität zur Erzeugung des Plasmas nur im Fokus aufgebracht werden kann. Als Grundlage dafür dient ein neu entwickelter Fokussieralgorithmus, der ohne jegliche Zusatzgeräte auskommt, und die Reproduzierbarkeit von LIBS-Messungen deutlich steigern kann, da die Messungen kontrolliert im Fokus stattfinden. Durch ihn ergeben sich neue Möglichkeiten des sogenannten „Element-Mappings", dem Erzeugen von Elementlandkarten, welche die Elementverteilungen in Falschfarben grafisch darstellen. Dabei ist das System nun nicht mehr auf eine ebene Oberfläche angewiesen, sondern kann beliebige Strukturen, auch mit scharfen Kanten und Löchern, sicher vermessen. Als Ergebnis erhält man ein flächiges Höhenprofil, welches zusätzlich die Elementinformationen für jeden Messpunkt beinhaltet. Dies erleichtert es dem Benutzer, gezielt Punkte von Interesse schnell wiederzufinden und zu analysieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt die Entwicklung eines bildgebenden Low-Power-LIBSSystems mit niedriger Pulsenergie und hoher Pulsrate, welches sich mit dem dazugehörigen
Fokussieralgorithmus automatisiert an unebene Probenoberflächen anpassen kann. Als Ergebnisse werden die Analysen von ausgewählten metallhaltigen, geologischen, organischen und archäologischen Proben bzw. Fundstücken gezeigt.
This study had two main aims. The first one was to investigate the quality of lesson plans. Two important features of lesson plans were used as a basis to determine the quality of lesson plans. These are adaptability to preconditions and cognitive activation of students. The former refers to how the planning teacher considers the diversity of students pre-existing knowledge and skills. The latter refers to how the planning teacher sequences deep learning tasks and laboratory activities to promote the cognitive activation of students.
The second aim of the study was to explore teachers thinking about and explanation of externally generated feedback data on their students’ performance. The emphasis here was to understand how the teachers anticipate planning differentiated lessons to accommodate the variations in students learning outcomes revealed by the feedback data.
The study followed a qualitative approach with multiple sources of data. Concept maps, questionnaires, an online lesson planning tool, standardized tests, and semi-structured interviews were the main data collection instruments used in the study. Participants of this study were four physics teachers teaching different grade levels. For the purpose of generating feedback for the participant teachers, a test was administered to 215 students. Teachers were asked to plan five lessons for their ongoing practices. The analysis showed that the planned lessons were not adapted to the diversity in students pre-existing knowledge and skills. The analysis also indicated that the lessons planned had limitations with regard to cognitive activation of students. The analysis of the interview data also revealed that the participant teachers do not normally consider differentiating lessons to accommodate the differences in students learning, and place less emphasis on the cognitive activation of students. The analysis of the planned lessons showed a variation in teachers approach in integrating laboratory activities in the sequence of the lessons ranging from a complete absence through a demonstrative to an investigative approach. Moreover, the findings from the interviews indicated differences between the participant teachers espoused theory (i.e. what they said during interview) and their theory- in –use (i.e. what is evident from the planned lessons). The analysis of the interview data demonstrated that teachers did not interpret the data, identify learning needs, draw meaningful information from the data for adapting (or differentiating) instruction. They attributed their students’ poor performance to task difficulty, students’ ability, students’ motivation and interest. The teachers attempted to use the item level and subscale data only to compare the relative position of their class with the reference group. However, they did not read beyond the data, like identifying students learning needs and planning for differentiated instruction based on individual student’s performance.
Conversion of natural vegetation into cattle pastures and croplands results in altered emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Their atmospheric concentration increase is attributed the main driver of climate change. Despite of successful private initiatives, e.g. the Soy Moratorium and the Cattle Agreement, Brazil was ranked the worldwide second largest emitter of GHG from land use change and forestry, and the third largest emitter from agriculture in 2012. N2O is the major GHG, in particular for the agricultural sector, as its natural emissions are strongly enhanced by human activities (e.g. fertilization and land use changes). Given denitrification the main process for N2O production and its sensitivity to external changes (e.g. precipitation events) makes Brazil particularly predestined for high soil-derived N2O fluxes.
In this study, we followed a bottom-up approach based on a country-wide literature research, own measurement campaigns, and modeling on the plot and regional scale, in order to quantify the scenario-specific development of GHG emissions from soils in the two Federal States Mato Grosso and Pará. In general, N2O fluxes from Brazilian soils were found to be low and not particularly dynamic. In addition to that, expected reactions to precipitation events stayed away. These findings emphasized elaborate model simulations in daily time steps too sophisticated for regional applications. Hence, an extrapolation approach was used to first estimate the influence of four different land use scenarios (alternative futures) on GHG emissions and then set up mitigation strategies for Southern Amazonia. The results suggested intensification of agricultural areas (mainly cattle pastures) and, consequently, avoided deforestation essential for GHG mitigation.
The outcomes of this study provide a very good basis for (a) further research on the understanding of underlying processes causing low N2O fluxes from Brazilian soils and (b) political attempts to avoid new deforestation and keep GHG emissions low.
While reading this sentence, you probably gave (more or less deliberately) instructions to approximately 100 to 200 muscles of your body. A sceptical face or a smile, your fingers scrolling through the text or holding a printed version of this work, holding your head, sitting, and much more.
All these processes take place almost automatically, so they seem to be no real achievement. In the age of digitalization it is a defined goal to transfer human (psychological and physiological) behavior to machines (robots). However, it turns out that it is indeed laborious to obtain human facial expression or walking from robots. To optimize this transfer, a deeper understanding of a muscle's operating principle is needed (and of course an understanding of the human brain, which will, however, not be part of this thesis).
A human skeletal muscle can be shortened willingly, but not lengthened, thereto it takes an antagonist. The muscle's change in length is dependent on the incoming stimulus from the central nervous system, the current length of the muscle itself, and certain muscle--specific quantities (parameters) such as the maximum force. Hence, a muscle can be mathematically described by a differential equation (or more exactly a coupled differential--algebraic system, DAE), whose structure will be revealed in the following chapters. The theory of differential equations is well-elaborated. A multitude of applicable methods exist that may not be known by muscle modelers. The purpose of this work is to link the methods from applied mathematics to the actual application in biomechanics.
The first part of this thesis addresses stability theory. Let us remember the prominent example from middle school physics, in which the resting position of a ball was obviously less susceptible towards shoves when lying in a bowl rather than balancing at the tip of a hill. Similarly, a dynamical (musculo-skeletal) system can attain equilibrium states that react differently towards perturbations.
We are going to compute and classify these equilibria.
In the second part, we investigate the influence of individual parameters on model equations or more exactly their solutions. This method is known as sensitivity analysis.
Take for example the system "car" containing a value for the quantity "pressure on the break pedal while approaching a traffic light". A minor deviation of this quantity upward or downward may lead to an uncomfortable, abrupt stop or even to a collision, instead of a smooth stop with a sufficient gap.
The considered muscle model contains over 20 parameters that, if changed slightly, have varying effects on the model equation solutions at different instants of time. We will investigate the sensitivity of those parameters regarding different sub--models, as well as the whole model among different dynamical boundary conditions.
The third and final part addresses the \textit{optimal control} problem (OCP).
The muscle turns a nerve impulse (input or control) into a length change and therefore a force response (output). This forward process is computable by solving the respective DAE. The reverse direction is more difficult to manage. As an everyday example, the OCP is present regarding self-parking cars, where a given path is targeted and the controls are the position of the
steering wheel as well as the gas pedal.
We present two methods of solving OCPs in muscle modeling: the first is a conjunction of variational calculus and optimization in function spaces, the second is a surrogate-based optimization.