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

„Pregnant, so what?“ : a Analyse about the Movie „ Juno“

Diese Bachelorarbeit analysiert den Spielfilm „Juno“ von Jason Reitman aus dem Jahr 2007. In der folgenden Filmanalyse wird die technische Umsetzung, sowie die erzählerische Ebene der Dramaturgie analysiert und interpretiert. Besonderes Augenmerk liegt hierbei auf der Warhnehmungsdimension und der Emotionalisierung des Zuschauers

Detecting the Disengaged Reader:Using Scrolling Data to Predict Disengagement during Reading

When reading long and complex texts, students may disengage and miss out on relevant content. In order to prevent disengaged behavior or to counteract it by means of an intervention, it is ideally detected an early stage. In this paper, we present a method for early disengagement detection that relies only on the classification of scrolling data. The presented method transforms scrolling data into a time series representation, where each point of the series represents the vertical position of the viewport in the text document. This time series representation is then classified using time series classification algorithms. We evaluated the method on a dataset of 565 university students reading eight different texts. We compared the algorithm performance with different time series lengths, data sampling strategies, the texts that make up the training data, and classification algorithms. The method can classify disengagement early with up to 70% accuracy. However, we also observe differences in the performance depending on which of the texts are included in the training dataset. We discuss our results and propose several possible improvements to enhance the method

Comparing computer-aided therapy with conventional physiotherapy in Parkinson’s disease: An equivalence study

Objective: The present study investigated, whether computer-aided therapy in patients with Parkinson’s disease is equivalent/non-inferior to conventional Lee Silvermann Voice Treatment (LSVT)-BIG-therapy in respect to motor outcome as measured by the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS-III) and quality of life as measured by the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39). Methods: In this controlled, rater-blinded study, 34 patients were included and 24 patients randomized to train seven standard exercises of the BIG-therapy either by a computer (BeBIG-group) or by a certified LSVT-BIG therapist (ThBIG-group) over four weeks. Equivalence was assessed by comparing the confidence interval of the BeBIG-group to the equivalence margin of the ThBIG-group. Results: There were no significant group differences in respect to age, disease duration, L-dopa equivalent daily dose or clinical stage of the disease. Both groups profited significantly from the therapy as demonstrated by an improvement in the MDS-UPDRS-III of 9.17 point in the BeBIG-group and of 8.92 points in the ThBIG-group. There was a non-significant decrease in the PDQ-39 of 9.23 points in the BeBIG-group and 4.23 points in the ThBIG-group. However, equivalence could not be demonstrated as the improvement of the BeBIG-group exceeded the confidence interval of the ThBIG-group. Conclusion: Physical training by a computer as well as by a therapist improves motor symptoms and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease. Both therapies are not equivalent, superiority of the computerized training can however not be concluded, as the study was only designed to test for non-inferiority. Therefore, computerized training can be considered as an add-on-therapy

Confirmation of the topology of the Wendelstein 7-X magnetic field to better than 1:100,000

Fusion energy research has in the past 40 years focused primarily on the tokamak concept, but recent advances in plasma theory and computational power have led to renewed interest in stellarators. The largest and most sophisticated stellarator in the world, Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), has just started operation, with the aim to show that the earlier weaknesses of this concept have been addressed successfully, and that the intrinsic advantages of the concept persist, also at plasma parameters approaching those of a future fusion power plant. Here we show the first physics results, obtained before plasma operation: that the carefully tailored topology of nested magnetic surfaces needed for good confinement is realized, and that the measured deviations are smaller than one part in 100,000. This is a significant step forward in stellarator research, since it shows that the complicated and delicate magnetic topology can be created and verified with the required accuracy

Major results from the first plasma campaign of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

After completing the main construction phase of Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) and successfully commissioning the device, first plasma operation started at the end of 2015. Integral commissioning of plasma start-up and operation using electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) and an extensive set of plasma diagnostics have been completed, allowing initial physics studies during the first operational campaign. Both in helium and hydrogen, plasma breakdown was easily achieved. Gaining experience with plasma vessel conditioning, discharge lengths could be extended gradually. Eventually, discharges lasted up to 6 s, reaching an injected energy of 4 MJ, which is twice the limit originally agreed for the limiter configuration employed during the first operational campaign. At power levels of 4 MW central electron densities reached 3 1019 m-3, central electron temperatures reached values of 7 keV and ion temperatures reached just above 2 keV. Important physics studies during this first operational phase include a first assessment of power balance and energy confinement, ECRH power deposition experiments, 2nd harmonic O-mode ECRH using multi-pass absorption, and current drive experiments using electron cyclotron current drive. As in many plasma discharges the electron temperature exceeds the ion temperature significantly, these plasmas are governed by core electron root confinement showing a strong positive electric field in the plasma centre.Peer reviewe