Changing the mindset of pre-service librarians: Moving from library servants to public servants

In the summer of 2020, we engaged in a participatory design process (also known as co-design) with 137 library staff from across the United States. These library staff provided insight into how public libraries built services to support non-dominant youth and families during crises. Through this work, we learned that these staff had a library servant instead of a public servant mindset. Public servants make decisions with community members. Library servants make decisions for them. We designed and published a Field Guide to help public library staff better understand how to work with and for communities during crisis times. We share our findings related to library staff mindsets in this paper

Welche Kompetenzen befähigen zur landwirtschaftlichen Diversifizierung?

Agricultural diversification might be an answer to structural change in farming and demographic change in rural areas. Findings from empirical research highlight specific competences that enable farmers to successfully implement diversification strategies such as direct sales, social farming, or agro tourism. The identified competences are categorized as professional and personal competences based on the taxonomy of the National Qualifications Framework for Germany. The findings could serve as a guideline for designing courses that enable farmers to implement diversification strategies

\u3cem\u3eIn vivo\u3c/em\u3e Brainstem Imaging in Alzheimer’s Disease: Potential for Biomarker Development

The dearth of effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the largest public health issues worldwide, costing hundreds of billions of dollars per year. From a therapeutic standpoint, research efforts to date have met with strikingly little clinical success. One major issue is that trials begin after substantial pathological change has occurred, and it is increasingly clear that the most effective treatment regimens will need to be administered earlier in the disease process. In order to identify individuals within the long preclinical phase of AD who are likely to progress to dementia, improvements are required in biomarker development. One potential area of research that might prove fruitful in this regard is the in vivo detection of brainstem pathology. The brainstem is known to undergo pathological changes very early and progressively in AD. With an updated and harmonized AD research framework, and emerging advances in neuroimaging technology, the potential to leverage knowledge of brainstem pathology into biomarkers for AD will be discussed

A heme tag for in vivo synthesis of artificial cytochromes

A genetic approach is described here that enables the specific covalent attachment of heme via a short C-terminal peptide tag to an otherwise non-heme-binding protein. Covalent attachment of heme to the apo-protein is catalysed by the cytochrome c maturation system of Escherichia coli. While its original enzymatic activity is retained, the resulting heme-tagged protein is red, has peroxidase activity and is redox active. The presence or absence of a C-terminal histidine tag results in low-spin heme iron with six- or high-spin heme iron with five coordinate ligands, respectively. The heme tag can be used as a tool for the rational design of artificial c-type cytochromes and metalloenzymes, thereby overcoming previous limitations set by chemical approaches. Moreover, the tag allows direct visualisation of the red fusion protein during purificatio

Kartoffelschälung im Ökolandbau - Ein Betriebszweig mit Zukunft?

Das Poster gibt Einblicke in die Betriebsstruktur und den Wertschöpfungsprozess von Kartoffelschälbetrieben im ökologischem Landbau

Innovative Finanzierungsformen entlang der Wertschöpfungskette

Auf der Wissenschaftstagung Ökologischer Landbau 2015 gab es eine Veranstaltungsreihe "Praxis trifft Wissenschaft". Im Themenfeld "Wertschöpfungskette" zielte der Workshop zur Finanzierung in der Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft auf die Diskussion der Vor- und Nachteile alternativer Finanzierungsmodelle ab

Von Kompetenzbedarfen in der Sozialen Landwirtschaft zur Konzeption einer wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung

Social farming combines agricultural production with additional social services such as providing disadvantaged groups a possibility for inclusion. A special requirement of social farming activities is the combination of two professional knowledge systems, the agricultural and the social education knowledge system. Starting from the research question, which competences are in need to offer social farming activities, this paper continues to transform these findings in an innovative academic course. It addresses people with prior education in agriculture or social education and contributes to the general idea of lifelong learning

Die regionale Lücke: Herausforderungen für Bio-Gemüse im Berliner Schulessen

Lokale und biologische Lebensmittel spielen eine wichtige Rolle in der Diskussion um eine nachhaltigere Schulverpflegung. In Berlin fördert ein Gesetz über die Qualitätssteigerung des Schulmittagessens den Einsatz von Bio-Lebensmitteln. Bisher ist wenig darüber bekannt, wie diese gesetzliche Vorgabe die ökologische Agrar- und Ernährungswirtschaft in der Metropolregion unterstützt. Davon ausgehend untersucht die vorliegende Studie regionale Wertschöpfungsketten am Beispiel von Bio-Gemüse und -Kartoffeln und nutzt dafür einen strukturtheoretischen Ansatz. Strukturelle Faktoren beeinflussen die Verwendung von regionalen Bio-Lebensmitteln in der Schulverpflegung. Es besteht eine regionale Lücke. Ohne Intervention reproduzieren die Akteure durch ihr Handeln die bestehenden Wertschöpfungsstrukturen

Structures and Actors of the Organic Vegetable Value Chain for School Catering: a Case Study of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region

With the European Union’s move towards “green public procurement”, there is an opportunity to bring more local organic produce into school catering. The present study investigates the value chain supplying school catering with organic produce, using the organic vegetable industry in the Berlin-Brandenburg region as an example. It employs a qualitative case study approach to explore industry actors’ perspectives and their activities within the value chain. Data is collected by conducting ten in-depth interviews with actors on different supply chain levels (production, wholesale, and school catering) and is analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results suggest that, while organic food is generally important in school catering in Berlin, locally produced organic vegetables play only a minor role. Inter-organizational coordination of value-added activities could help to further utilize the potential for local organic vegetable production and enable joint investments into lacking infrastructure such as pre-processing facilities

Complexome profiling reveals association of PPR proteins with ribosomes in the mitochondria of plants

Mitochondrial transcripts are subject to a wealth of processing mechanisms including cis- and trans-splicing events, as well as base modifications (RNA editing). HUndreds of proteins are required for these processes in plant mitochondria, many of which belong to the pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) protein superfamily. The structure, localization, and function of these proteins is only poorly Understood. Here we present evidence that several PPR proteins are boUnd to mitoribosomes in plants. A novel complexome profiling strategy in combination with chemical crosslinking has been employed to systematically define the protein constituents of the large and the small ribosomal subunits in the mitochondria of plants. We identified more than 80 ribosomal proteins, which include several PPR proteins and other non-conventional ribosomal proteins. These findings reveal a potential coupling of transcriptional and translational events in the mitochondria of plants. Furthermore, the data indicate an extremely high molecular mass of the “small” subunit, even exceeding that of the “large” subunit