"Wir müssen experimentierfreudig sein"

Seit April 2014 leitet Jürgen Christof die Bibliothek der Technischen Universität Berlin. Er hat sie zum Motor der Open-Access-Bewegung für die gesamte Uni gemacht. Im b.i.t.online-Gespräch gibt er ein erstes Fazit seiner bisherigen Amtszeit und spricht über konkrete Vorhaben für die Zukunft

Shifting corporate geographies in global cities of the South: Mexico City and Johannesburg as case studies

oai:ojs.die-erde.org:article/1Global city research links the expansion of advanced producer services in major cities to the internationalisation of real estate markets as well as to the spread of (mainly) high-rise office complexes. This research, however, has based its findings mainly on cases of the Global North. This paper examines, based on Grant and Nijman’s (2002) suggestion that the “internal spatial organisation of gateway cities in the less-developed world” reflects “the city’s role in the global political economy”, which patterns occur in two metropoles of the Global South. In addition to this, the analysis focuses especially on the driving forces behind the changes in corporate geographies. The analysis is placed in Mexico City and Johannesburg and based on real estate market data (offices) as well as background documents on urban development. The outcome shows that in these cities, local transformation processes of the real estate market and office space location are indeed considerably shaped by global market dynamics. However, the findings also indicate that there is no clear scale dependence of the territorial form. In order to comprehensively understand the changes in the corporate geographies therefore, it is necessary to direct more attention to local and national dynamics. The restructuring of the built environment in both cities can only be grasped fully by considering the particular role of local and national governments. This additional entry point to an understanding of shifting corporate geographies helps to put recent dynamics of global capitalism and politics of urban neoliberalism in perspective

Internet of Energy - ICT as a Key Technology for the Energy System of the Future

Since the appearance of the special focus of “IT in the Utilities Industry” (WI 49) in the journal WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK in autumn 2007, a dynamic development has taken place in the field. The ongoing effects of liberalization and the accelerated development of renewable energies have driven sustainable market changes leading to a transformation of the in- dustry. In parallel, the research program E-Energy of the Federal German Government started in 2008. Within this framework, projects in six model regions applied novel concepts and conducted systematic empirical research with extensive field trials. The federal research program in the field of infrastructure and processes for electric mobil- ity also played an important role in the research landscape of the recent years

Call for Papers Issue 1/2012: Internet of Energy/Smart Grids

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Statistical analysis of tipping pathways in agent-based models

Agent-based models are a natural choice for modeling complex social systems. In such models simple stochastic interaction rules for a large population of individuals on the microscopic scale can lead to emergent dynamics on the macroscopic scale, for instance a sudden shift of majority opinion or behavior. Here we are introducing a methodology for studying noise-induced tipping between relevant subsets of the agent state space representing characteristic configurations. Due to a large number of interacting individuals, agent-based models are high-dimensional, though usually a lower-dimensional structure of the emerging collective behaviour exists. We therefore apply Diffusion Maps, a non-linear dimension reduction technique, to reveal the intrinsic low-dimensional structure. We characterize the tipping behaviour by means of Transition Path Theory, which helps gaining a statistical understanding of the tipping paths such as their distribution, flux and rate. By systematically studying two agent-based models that exhibit a multitude of tipping pathways and cascading effects, we illustrate the practicability of our approach

Decreased Susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus Small-Colony Variants toward Human Antimicrobial Peptides

Staphylococcus aureus is a frequent resident of human nose and skin in many individuals, but it is also able to cause a variety of serious infections including those of the skin and soft tissue. There is increasing evidence that particularly persistent, relapsing, and difficult-to-treat infections caused by S. aureus are associated with the formation of the small-colony variant (SCV) phenotype. The aim of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that (i) skin-derived antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) exhibit a reduced activity against SCVs and (ii) that switching into the SCV phenotype may endow S. aureus with a decreased susceptibility toward the killing activity of human stratum corneum. Here, we show that clinically derived S. aureus SCVs are less susceptible to the bactericidal activity of different human skin-derived AMPs as compared with their isogenic corresponding wild-type strains. Similarly, a S. aureus hemB mutant displaying the SCV phenotype was less susceptible to the antimicrobial activity of AMPs than its hemB-complemented mutant. These findings were accompanied by a higher resistance of SCVs to the killing activity of human stratum corneum. Switching into the SCV phenotype may help S. aureus to subvert cutaneous innate defense, thus contributing to the establishment and persistence of infection

Radiation-induced leiomyosarcoma of the oropharynx

Leiomyosarcoma is a malignant mesenchymal tumor originating from smooth muscle cells, which most frequently develops in the myometrium and in the gastro-intestinal tract. Reviewing the international literature, radiation-induced sarcoma arise in 0.035 to 0.2 % of all irradiated patients. Especially in the head and neck region, radiation-induced leiomyosarcoma is an extremely rare lesion. The authors report a case of a radiation-induced leiomyosarcoma of the tonsillar region of the oropharynx in a 51-year-old male patient, who had undergone radiation therapy of this region 38 years before. The lesion was treated by radical surgery. Diagnostic steps, histological presentation and therapy are described in detail and the literature concerning radiation induced malignancies in general as well as radiation induced leiomyosarcoma in particular is reviewed. The highlights of this case are an extremely uncommon location and a rare pathological entity of radiation induced malignancies

Exciton dynamics in solid-state green fluorescent protein

We study the decay characteristics of Frenkel excitons in solid-state enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) dried from solution. We further monitor the changes of the radiative exciton decay over time by crossing the phase transition from the solved to the solid state. Complex interactions between protonated and deprotonated states in solid-state eGFP can be identified from temperature-dependent and time-resolved fluorescence experiments that further allow the determination of activation energies for each identified process.PostprintPeer reviewe

SAP HANA Database: Data Management for Modern Business Applications

The SAP HANA database is positioned as the core of the SAP HANA Appliance to support complex business analytical processes in combination with transactionally consistent operational workloads. Within this paper, we outline the basic characteristics of the SAP HANA database, emphasizing the distinctive features that differentiate the SAP HANA database from other classical relational database management systems. On the technical side, the SAP HANA database consists of multiple data processing engines with a distributed query processing environment to provide the full spectrum of data processing -- from classical relational data supporting both row- and column-oriented physical representations in a hybrid engine, to graph and text processing for semi- and unstructured data management within the same system. From a more application-oriented perspective, we outline the specific support provided by the SAP HANA database of multiple domain-specific languages with a built-in set of natively implemented business functions. SQL -- as the lingua franca for relational database systems -- can no longer be considered to meet all requirements of modern applications, which demand the tight interaction with the data management layer. Therefore, the SAP HANA database permits the exchange of application semantics with the underlying data management platform that can be exploited to increase query expressiveness and to reduce the number of individual application-to-database round trips