"Eine Bombe im Taschenbuchformat"? Die "Grenzen des Wachstums" und die öffentliche Resonanz

Wer es wieder oder erstmals zur Hand nimmt, dem fällt sofort auf, wie flott sich das handliche Buch mit seinen 180 Seiten und weit über 50 Abbildungen und Tabellen lesen lässt. Kurz und bündig formuliert das Team um Dennis Meadows bereits in der Einführung seine Grundaussage: Rasches Handeln sei erforderlich, denn wenn "die gegenwärtige Zunahme der Weltbevölkerung, der Industrialisierung, der Umweltverschmutzung, der Nahrungsmittelproduktion und der Ausbeutung von natürlichen Ressourcen unverändert anhält, werden die absoluten Wachstumsgrenzen auf der Erde im Laufe der nächsten hundert Jahre erreicht" (S. 17). Dieser Schlussfolgerung lagen etwa 18 Monate Forschung und ein computergestütztes Weltmodell zugrunde, mit dessen Hilfe Ursachen und Folgen exponentiellen Wachstums anhand der genannten fünf makroökonomischen Basistrends und ihrer Wechselwirkungen berechnet werden sollten

Parking violations as an economic gamble for public space

Parking fees and fines represent contested issues in cities, as they conflict with vehicle owners' opinion over 'rights' to public space. As cities have moved to regulate vehicle density by introducing parking fees, a share of drivers may feel compelled to 'cheat', weighing the price of parking fees against the cost of fines, or to simply park illegally outside designated areas. To better understand these interrelationships, this paper considers negotiations of public space as an economic gamble that can be assessed on the basis of parking violations. The study is situated in Freiburg, Germany, and relies on a mixed-methods approach that investigates the views of the regulatory agency and its enforcement officers, as well as registered parking violations (n = 181,735, in 2019). Time-spatial probabilities of being fined when parking illegally are calculated as risks, defined as detection probability per "hexagon-hour", an indicator integrating space and time. Results confirm that in the inner city, it is economically rational not to pay parking fees during 86.1% of hexagon-hours, and in surrounding areas during 99.9% of the time. Findings confirm that urban space can be negotiated in an equilibrium of fees, fines and controls. To make vehicle ownership and use less attractive, the price of parking needs to be high. Fines need to be high in relation to fees, and control densities need to constitute significant detection risks

FORUM: Joachim Radkau: Max Weber. The passion of thinking

Freytag N, Gerhardt U, Hahn B, Hübinger G, Radkau J. FORUM: "Joachim Radkau: Max Weber. Die Leidenschaft des Denkens". Historical social research. 2008;33(2):331-350.Debatte zu: Joachim Radkau: Max Weber. Die Leidenschaft des Denkens, München: Carl Hanser 2005, 1008 S., 30 Abb., ISBN 3-446-20675-2

DNVF Memorandum: Health Services Research in the Last Year of Life

This memorandum outlines current issues concerning health services research on seriously ill and dying people in the last year of their lives as well as support available for their relatives. Patients in the last phase of life can belong to different disease groups, they may have special characteristics (e. g., people with cognitive and complex impairments, economic disadvantage or migration background) and be in certain phases of life (e. g., parents of minor children, (old) age). The need for a designated memorandum on health services research in the last year of life results from the special situation of those affected and from the special features of health services in this phase of life. With reference to these special features, this memorandum describes methodological and ethical specifics as well as current issues in health services research and how these can be adequately addressed using quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. It has been developed by the palliative medicine section of the German Network for Health Services Research (DNVF) according to the guidelines for DNVF memoranda

Genome-Wide Temporal Expression Profiling in Caenorhabditis elegans Identifies a Core Gene Set Related to Long-Term Memory

The identification of genes related to encoding, storage, and retrieval of memories is a major interest in neuroscience. In the current study, we analyzed the temporal gene expression changes in a neuronal mRNA pool during an olfactory long-term associative memory (LTAM) in Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites. Here, we identified a core set of 712 (538 upregulated and 174 downregulated) genes that follows three distinct temporal peaks demonstrating multiple gene regulation waves in LTAM. Compared with the previously published positive LTAM gene set (Lakhina et al., 2015), 50% of the identified upregulated genes here overlap with the previous dataset, possibly representing stimulus-independent memory-related genes. On the other hand, the remaining genes were not previously identified in positive associative memory and may specifically regulate aversive LTAM. Our results suggest a multistep gene activation process during the formation and retrieval of long-term memory and define general memory-implicated genes as well as conditioning-type-dependent gene sets.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The identification of genes regulating different steps of memory is of major interest in neuroscience. Identification of common memory genes across different learning paradigms and the temporal activation of the genes are poorly studied. Here, we investigated the temporal aspects of Caenorhabditis elegans gene expression changes using aversive olfactory associative long-term memory (LTAM) and identified three major gene activation waves. Like in previous studies, aversive LTAM is also CREB dependent, and CREB activity is necessary immediately after training. Finally, we define a list of memory paradigm-independent core gene sets as well as conditioning-dependent genes