Verunreinigungen von biologisch erzeugten Nahrungsmitteln mit chemisch-synthetischen Pestiziden: Fallstudie Biowein

Bioprodukte können nur so rein sein wie die Umwelt, in der sie produziert werden. Dies gilt auch für die Bioweine. Den Biowinzern gelingt es trotz schwierigem Umfeld, qualitativ hochstehende, rückstandsarme Weine zu produzieren. Erste Voraussetzung, damit diese Höchstleistung erbracht werden kann, ist dass die nicht-biologisch wirtschaftenden Winzer die vom Gesetzgeber vorgeschriebene gute landwirtschaftliche Praxis einhalten (Problem Abdrift als Folge von unsorgfältigem Umgang mit Pestiziden). Die Untersuchung zeigte, dass viele nicht-biologisch bewirtschaftende Produzenten sich professionell und fair verhalten. Die Praxis zeigte aber auch, dass sich einzelne Produzenten nicht an die Regeln des gutnachbarlichen und respektvollen Umgangs halten. Hier sind konsequente Massnahmen von Branchenorganisationen und Vollzug gefordert. Zudem zeigten unsere Resultate, dass trotz der eingeführten Massnahmen mit einer allgemeinen Hintergrundbelastung im Spurenbereich gerechnet werden muss. Hintergrundkontaminationen sind eine Tatsache und können nur durch ein Verbot von chemisch-synthetischen Fungiziden reduziert werden. Biologische Weine werden auch in Zukunft Spuren von Fungiziden aufweisen. Ohne sorgfältigen Umgang mit dem Biotraubengut und ohne konsequente Reinhaltung von Gerätschaften nützt die beste Arbeit im Wingert nichts. Das ist keine leichte Aufgabe, denn der Teufel steckt oft im Detail. Probleme ergaben sich häufig dort, wo Risikofaktoren kumuliert wurden. Mit konsequenter Einhaltung der beschriebenen Massnahmen sollten überhöhte Werte vermieden werden können. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse sind in der Praxis umgesetzt worden, fliessen in die Qualitätssicherung der Bioweine ein und werden bei der Kontrolle auch berücksichtigt. Die Bioweinbaubranche und der Vollzug haben in einer exemplarischen Zusammenarbeit vorhandene Schwachstellen identifizieren können und entsprechende Massnahmen entwickelt

Synthetic aperture radar signal processing on the MPP

Satellite-borne Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) sense areas of several thousand square kilometers in seconds and transmit phase history signal data several tens of megabits per second. The Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B) has a variable swath of 20 to 50 km and acquired data over 100 kms along track in about 13 seconds. With the simplification of separability of the reference function, the processing still requires considerable resources; high speed I/O, large memory and fast computation. Processing systems with regular hardware take hours to process one Seasat image and about one hour for a SIR-B image. Bringing this processing time closer to acquisition times requires an end-to-end system solution. For the purpose of demonstration, software was implemented on the present Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) configuration for processing Seasat and SIR-B data. The software takes advantage of the high processing speed offered by the MPP, the large Staging Buffer, and the high speed I/O between the MPP array unit and the Staging Buffer. It was found that with unoptimized Parallel Pascal code, the processing time on the MPP for a 4096 x 4096 sample subset of signal data ranges between 18 and 30.2 seconds depending on options

Histochemical investigations on the interrenal system of the brook lamprey (Lapetra planeri Bloch). [Translation from: Acta biol.med.germ. 24, 553-554, 1970. ]

Histochemical experiments are conducted in order to study the interrenal cells of European brook lamprey (Lampetra planeri)

Robust Region-of-Attraction Estimation

We propose a method to compute invariant subsets of the region-of-attraction for asymptotically stable equilibrium points of polynomial dynamical systems with bounded parametric uncertainty. Parameter-independent Lyapunov functions are used to characterize invariant subsets of the robust region-of-attraction. A branch-and-bound type refinement procedure reduces the conservatism. We demonstrate the method on an example from the literature and uncertain controlled short-period aircraft dynamics

Comment on `Hawking radiation from fluctuating black holes'

Takahashi & Soda (2010 Class. Quantum Grav. v27 p175008, arXiv:1005.0286) have recently considered the effect (at lowest non-trivial order) of dynamical, quantized gravitational fluctuations on the spectrum of scalar Hawking radiation from a collapsing Schwarzschild black hole. However, due to an unfortunate choice of gauge, the dominant (even divergent) contribution to the coefficient of the spectrum correction that they identify is a pure gauge artifact. I summarize the logic of their calculation, comment on the divergences encountered in its course and comment on how they could be eliminated, and thus the calculation be completed.Comment: 12 pages, 1 fig; feynmp, amsref

Development of a protocol for maintaining viability while shipping organoid-derived retinal tissue.

Retinal organoid technology enables generation of an inexhaustible supply of three-dimensional retinal tissue from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) for regenerative medicine applications. The high similarity of organoid-derived retinal tissue and transplantable human fetal retina provides an opportunity for evaluating and modeling retinal tissue replacement strategies in relevant animal models in the effort to develop a functional retinal patch to restore vision in patients with profound blindness caused by retinal degeneration. Because of the complexity of this very promising approach requiring specialized stem cell and grafting techniques, the tasks of retinal tissue derivation and transplantation are frequently split between geographically distant teams. Delivery of delicate and perishable neural tissue such as retina to the surgical sites requires a reliable shipping protocol and also controlled temperature conditions with damage-reporting mechanisms in place to prevent transplantation of tissue damaged in transit into expensive animal models. We have developed a robust overnight tissue shipping protocol providing reliable temperature control, live monitoring of the shipment conditions and physical location of the package, and damage reporting at the time of delivery. This allows for shipping of viable (transplantation-competent) hPSC-derived retinal tissue over large distances, thus enabling stem cell and surgical teams from different parts of the country to work together and maximize successful engraftment of organoid-derived retinal tissue. Although this protocol was developed for preclinical in vivo studies in animal models, it is potentially translatable for clinical transplantation in the future and will contribute to developing clinical protocols for restoring vision in patients with retinal degeneration

An index of access to essential infrastructure to identify where physical distancing is impossible

To identify areas at highest risk of infectious disease transmission in Africa, we develop a physical distancing index (PDI) based on the share of households without access to private toilets, water, space, transportation, and communication technology and weight it with population density. Our results highlight that in addition to improving health systems, countries across Africa, especially in the western part of Africa, need to address the lack of essential domestic infrastructure. Missing infrastructure prevents societies from limiting the spread of communicable diseases by undermining the effectiveness of governmental regulations on physical distancing. We also provide high-resolution risk maps that show which regions are most limited in protecting themselves. We find considerable spatial heterogeneity of the PDI within countries and show that it is highly correlated with detected COVID-19 cases. Governments could pay specific attention to these areas to target limited resources more precisely to prevent disease transmission