Heating and thermoelectric transport in a molecular junction

The energy dissipation and heat flows associated with the particle current in a system with a molecular junction are considered. In this connection, we determine the effective temperature of the molecular oscillator that is compatible with the existence of a steady state. The calculations based on the Kadanov-Baym nonequilibrium Green function formalism are carried out supposing a strong coupling of the dot electrons with the molecular vibrations. Accordingly, the representation given by the Lang-Firsov polaron transformation is used and the dependence of results on the electron-phonon interaction strength is investigated.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to EPJ

The Employment Panel of the German Federal Employment Agency

Aufgrund der zunehmenden Nachfrage nach Daten zur Arbeits- und Berufsforschung wird im Bereich der Statistik der Zentrale der Bundesagentur für Arbeit ein Forschungsvorhaben zur Bereitstellung anonymisierter Mikrodaten zu sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigungen bearbeitet. Ziel ist es, Verwaltungsdaten auch für Forschungszwecke zu erschließen und in breiterer Form zugänglich zu machen. Beginnend mit dem Jahr 1998 beinhaltet der als Panel aufgebaute Datensatz 18 Wellen mit je 600.000 Beschäftigten und wird einmal jährlich aktualisiert. Seit 1999 werden auch geringfügige Beschäftigungen erfasst. Als Datenquelle dienen die Quartalsdaten des Beschäftigungsstatistik der BA, die aus dem Meldeverfahren zur Sozialversicherung stammen. Der Datensatz umfasst 52 Merkmale, sowohl individuelle Merkmale der Beschäftigten als auch betriebliche Merkmale der Beschäftigungsbetriebe. Da die Daten dem Sozialdatenschutz des Sozialgesetzbuches unterliegen dürfen lediglich anonymisierte Datensätze an Forschungseinrichtungen übermittelt werden. Zur Anonymisierung wird u.a. die Sozialversicherungsnummer durch eine zufallsgenerierte Personennummer ersetzt, sensible Merkmale werden entfernt und Merkmalsausprägungen werden vergröbert. Zudem basiert das Beschäftigtenpanel auf einem Stichprobenverfahren, nach dem Beschäftigte anhand ihres Geburtsdatums ausgewählt werden. Von der IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe unterscheidet sich das BA-Beschäftigtenpanel in Hinblick auf Datenaufbereitung und Auswertungsdesign. Während bei der Beschäftigtenstichprobe der Schwerpunkt auf Verlaufsanalysen liegt, stehen beim Beschäftigtenpanel Untersuchungen stichtagsorientierter Querschnitte im Mittelpunkt. (IAB

The AAP gene family for amino acid permeases contributes to development of the cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii in roots of Arabidopsis

The beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii is able to infect Arabidopsis plants and induce feeding sites in the root. These syncytia are the only source of nutrients for the nematodes throughout their life and are a nutrient sink for the host plant. We have studied here the role of amino acid transporters for nematode development. Arabidopsis contains a large number of different amino acid transporters in several gene families but those of the AAP family were found to be especially expressed in syncytia. Arabidopsis contains 8 AAP genes and they were all strongly expressed in syncytia with the exception of AAP5 and AAP7, which were slightly downregulated. We used promoter::GUS lines and in situ RT-PCR to confirm the expression of several AAP genes and LHT1, a lysine- and histidine-specific amino acid transporter, in syncytia. The strong expression of AAP genes in syncytia indicated that these transporters are important for the transport of amino acids into syncytia and we used T-DNA mutants for several AAP genes to test for their influence on nematode development. We found that mutants of AAP1, AAP2, and AAP8 significantly reduced the number of female nematodes developing on these plants. Our study showed that amino acid transport into syncytia is important for the development of the nematodes

The development of guidelines for the treatment of patients with mental disorders under particular consideration of rehabilitative aspects

Inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment is quite extensive in Germany. Three treatment systems (psychosomatic/psychotherapeutic healthcare, psychiatric/psychotherapeutic healthcare and rehabilitation of patients with mental disorders) exist relatively independently from one another. They show large areas of overlap, however, with regard to various criteria. This is due to the fact that, as opposed to many somatic illnesses, a clear distinction between acute-medical and rehabilitative elements cannot be made in the treatment of mental disorders

SINGLE TREE DELINEATION USING AIRBORNE LIDAR DATA

In this paper, single tree extraction was carried out using the first and last pulse airborne LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) data. The LIDAR data was collected from TopoSys in May 2007 in the Milicz forest district, Poland, with a density of 7 points m-2. The total study area contains 25 circular plots of different radius according to the age of the trees. The absolute height of each point was obtained by normalizing the LIDAR raw data points using a digital terrain model (DTM) of the area. The value of σ used while smoothing was found higher for the deciduous tree dominating plots as compared to the coniferous plots. A modified k-means clustering algorithm was applied to extract the clusters of single tree above 4m height in each plot from the normalized LIDAR point clouds. 3-D convex polytope reconstruction from the extracted clusters of each tree was carried out using QHull algorithm. The validated result shows that an average of nearly 86% of the matured deciduous and 93% of the matured coniferous trees were extracted by the presented approach. Almost equal average accuracies were obtained in the case of young deciduous and coniferous tree species (58%). It seems that the algorithm did not work well with relatively younger tree types even after varying the parameters at pre-processing steps. The study showed that the adjustment of certain parameters like threshold distance, smoothing factor and scaling factor for the height before initialising the main process, has a substantial impact on the number and shape of the trees to be extracted more appropriately by applying the modified k-means procedure. There is a future scope of improving and testing the algorithm with different density of LIDAR data in different forest conditions