Paying for Green?: Payment for Ecosystem Services in Practice - Successful Examples of PES from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Diverse studies have shown that despite various efforts the state of our natural resources as well as the development of biodiversity and climate change are still a cause for concern. This is the case at the global level as well as at the level of individual countries and regions. In the industrialized countries in particular, they have been trying to solve environmental problems by regulatory means for many decades. And still the problems are increasing. It is not surprising, therefore, that different and complementary means of exerting influence have repeatedly been sought. Against this background, the attention given to economic instruments to resolve environmental problems has increased worldwide in recent years. In the wake of large international studies such as the "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment" of the UN and the international as well as national TEEB studies on the economic value of ecosystem services and biodiversity, there is growing interest in particular in Payments for Ecosystem Services, PES for short. How can this interest be explained, and what is the distinguishing feature of PES? The increased attention given to PES is closely related to the establishment of the ecosystem services approach, whereby a social and economic value is attached to nature. This is the basis of PES reasoning: When such a value is ascribed to an ecosystem service, then this value can be realized specifically at the moment when that service is scarce. Someone should be ready to pay money for a scarce ecosystem service. Hence the users of ecosystem services are the starting point of the discourse: Who uses clean drinking water? Who enjoys a scenice landscape? Who benefits when our rivers and lakes are less nutrient-rich? If we carry this further we can conclude that when the benefits decline ("we have an environmental problem!") those users would in their own self-interest pay to have the benefits restored or continued

Participatory research in times of COVID-19 and beyond: Adjusting your methodological toolkits

Solving grand environmental societal challenges calls for transdisciplinary and participatory methods in social-ecological research. These methods enable co-designing the research, co-producing the results, and co-creating the impacts together with concerned stakeholders. COVID-19 has had serious impacts on the choice of research methods, but reflections on recent experiences of "moving online"are still rare. In this perspective, we focus on the challenge of adjusting different participatory methods to online formats used in five transdisciplinary social-ecological research projects. The key added value of our research is the lessons learned from a comparison of the pros and cons of adjusting a broader set of methods to online formats. We conclude that combining the adjusted online approaches with well-established face-to-face formats into more inclusive hybrid approaches can enrich and diversify the pool of available methods for postpandemic research. Furthermore, a more diverse group of participants can be engaged in the research process

Participatory research in times of COVID-19 and beyond: Adjusting your methodological toolkits

Solving grand environmental societal challenges calls for transdisciplinary and participatory methods in social-ecological research. These methods enable co-designing the research, co-producing the results, and co-creating the impacts together with concerned stakeholders. COVID-19 has had serious impacts on the choice of research methods, but reflections on recent experiences of "moving online"are still rare. In this perspective, we focus on the challenge of adjusting different participatory methods to online formats used in five transdisciplinary social-ecological research projects. The key added value of our research is the lessons learned from a comparison of the pros and cons of adjusting a broader set of methods to online formats. We conclude that combining the adjusted online approaches with well-established face-to-face formats into more inclusive hybrid approaches can enrich and diversify the pool of available methods for postpandemic research. Furthermore, a more diverse group of participants can be engaged in the research process

Key concepts to investigate agri-environmental contracts – shared conceptual framework

The Contracts2.0 project aims to develop novel contract-based approaches to incentivise farmers for the increased provision of environmental public goods alongside private goods. The background to this work is the current imbalance in the provision of private and public goods from agricultural land management. This complex problem can best be addressed by using insights and methods from a range of disciplines. However, for methods and researchers to complement each other and contribute to the project aim, the parts must be brought together as a coherent whole. We developed a conceptual framework which draws on different concepts to explain the issues underlying the delivery of private and public environmental goods from agriculture

FSP1 is a glutathione-independent ferroptosis suppressor

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent form of necrotic cell death marked by oxidative damage to phospholipids1,2. To date, ferroptosis has been believed to be controlled only by the phospholipid hydroperoxide-reducing enzyme glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4)3,4 and radical-trapping antioxidants5,6. However, elucidation of the factors that underlie the sensitivity of a given cell type to ferroptosis7 is critical to understand the pathophysiological role of ferroptosis and how it may be exploited for the treatment of cancer. Although metabolic constraints8 and phospholipid composition9,10 contribute to ferroptosis sensitivity, no cell-autonomous mechanisms have been identified that account for the resistance of cells to ferroptosis. Here we used an expression cloning approach to identify genes in human cancer cells that are able to complement the loss of GPX4. We found that the flavoprotein apoptosis-inducing factor mitochondria-associated 2 (AIFM2) is a previously unrecognized anti-ferroptotic gene. AIFM2, which we renamed ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1) and which was initially described as a pro-apoptotic gene11, confers protection against ferroptosis elicited by GPX4 deletion. We further demonstrate that the suppression of ferroptosis by FSP1 is mediated by ubiquinone (also known as coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)): the reduced form, ubiquinol, traps lipid peroxyl radicals that mediate lipid peroxidation, whereas FSP1 catalyses the regeneration of CoQ10 using NAD(P)H. Pharmacological targeting of FSP1 strongly synergizes with GPX4 inhibitors to trigger ferroptosis in a number of cancer entities. In conclusion, the FSP1–CoQ10–NAD(P)H pathway exists as a stand-alone parallel system, which co-operates with GPX4 and glutathione to suppress phospholipid peroxidation and ferroptosis

Entwurf eines robusten, filterintegrierten Aktuatorreglers zur Erhöhung der Stabilitätsreserve bei der Dämpfung von Strukturschwingungen

Zur Verringerung der Anregung von Strukturschwingungen der primären Steuerflächen werden im Flugzeug Notch-Filter (Bandsperren) eingesetzt. Diese filtern neben den entsprechenden Messsignalen auch die Sollwerte der Primäraktuatoren. Die daraus resultierenden Phasenverluste beeinträchtigen die Stabilitätsreserve der Flugregelung. Zur Erhöhung der Stabilitätsreserve wird in dieser Arbeit ein Konzept vorgestellt, das einen gemeinsamen Entwurf von Notch-Filter und Aktuatorregler gewährleistet. Dieser filterintegrierte Regler wird mit Hilfe eines robusten Reglerentwurfsverfahrens, der µ-Synthese, entworfen. Am Beispiel eines elektrohydraulischen Seitenruderaktuators mit dynamischer Lastankopplung wird dieses Konzept untersucht