IEA EBC Annex 72: Assessing Life Cycle Related Environmental Impacts Caused by Buildings: Guidelines for design decision-makers:Energy in Buildings and Communities Technology Collaboration Programme

The purpose of this report is to provide support to the design decisions-makers during the design process. For each of the defined design step decision the important topics to consider were identified, the key stakeholders are declared and the purpose of LCA at the selected design step is defined. The report covers: The definition of the design steps, the definition of the tasks in each design step and an overview of the relevant milestones for performing LCA; An overview of the systematic building decomposition methods and the appropriate levels at each design step; An overview of the tools that can be used for LCA and a selection process for choosing the right LCA tool. A special emphasize is given to the topic of Building Information Modelling (BIM), how the BIM tools can facilitate the LCA assessment and what information should be implemented in the BIM model; Strategies on how to reduce the design-related uncertainties; An overview of the visualization of the LCA results and which are appropriate in the selected design steps

<scp>ReSurveyEurope</scp>: A database of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe

AbstractAimsWe introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, including potential research questions.ResultsReSurveyEurope includes resurveyed vegetation plots from all habitats. Version 1.0 of ReSurveyEurope contains 283,135 observations (i.e., individual surveys of each plot) from 79,190 plots sampled in 449 independent resurvey projects. Of these, 62,139 (78%) are permanent plots, that is, marked in situ, or located with GPS, which allow for high spatial accuracy in resurvey. The remaining 17,051 (22%) plots are from studies in which plots from the initial survey could not be exactly relocated. Four data sets, which together account for 28,470 (36%) plots, provide only presence/absence information on plant species, while the remaining 50,720 (64%) plots contain abundance information (e.g., percentage cover or cover–abundance classes such as variants of the Braun‐Blanquet scale). The oldest plots were sampled in 1911 in the Swiss Alps, while most plots were sampled between 1950 and 2020.ConclusionsReSurveyEurope is a new resource to address a wide range of research questions on fine‐scale changes in European vegetation. The initiative is devoted to an inclusive and transparent governance and data usage approach, based on slightly adapted rules of the well‐established European Vegetation Archive (EVA). ReSurveyEurope data are ready for use, and proposals for analyses of the data set can be submitted at any time to the coordinators. Still, further data contributions are highly welcome.</jats:sec

Computational methods for investigating syntactic change

Diachrone syntaktische Analysen leiden bislang unter einem Mangel annotierter historischer Sprachdaten. In dieser Arbeit werden computerlinguistische Methoden zur automatischen syntaktischen Analyse von modernem und historischem Deutsch entwickelt, die die natürlichen Grenzen manueller Annotation überwinden. Die Arbeit beschreibt Experimente zur topologischen Felderanalyse, Chunking und Konstituentenparsing mit dem Ziel, automatisch Extrapositionen in beliebigen Daten zu erkennen. Alle Annotationsschritte werden mit der neu entwickelten FairEval-Methode evaluiert. Die besten Ergebnisse erzielen auf Wortarten trainierte statistische Modelle. In einer Beispielanalyse werden die entwickelten Methoden auf große Sammlungen moderner und historischer Texte angewandt, um Faktoren für die Extraposition von Relativsätzen zu erforschen und den praktischen Nutzen computergestützter Ansätze für die linguistische Forschung zu demonstrieren. Modelle, Code und Daten stehen online frei zur Verfügung.Diachronic syntactic analyses suffer from a lack of annotated historical language data. In this thesis, computational methods for the automatic syntactic analysis of modern and historical German are developed, which help to overcome the natural limitations of manual annotation. The thesis describes experiments on topological field analysis, chunking, and constituency parsing with the goal of automatically detecting extraposition in arbitrary data. All annotation steps are evaluated using the newly developed FairEval method. The best results are obtained with statistical models trained on part-of-speech tags as input. In an example analysis, the developed methods are applied to large collections of modern and historical texts to explore different factors for the extraposition of relative clauses, demonstrating the practical value of computational approaches for linguistic studies. Models, data, and code from the thesis are freely available online

The role of VLA-4 binding for experimental melanoma metastasis and its inhibition by heparin

Introduction: Heparin is known to efficiently attenuate metastasis in various tumour models by different mechanisms including inhibition of tumour cell contacts with soluble and cellular components such as inhibition of heparanase or P- and L-selectin. We recently showed that heparin efficiently binds to VLA-4 integrin in melanoma cells in vitro. Here we describe VLA-4 integrin as a mediator of melanoma metastasis that is inhibited by the low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) Tinzaparin. Materials and Methods: sh-RNA-mediated knock-down of VLA-4 integrin in B16F10 murine melanoma cells (B16F10-VLA-4kd) was performed and cell binding characteristics were investigated in vitro. Experimental metastasis of B16F10-VLA-4kd and B16F10 cells and interference by Tinzaparin were analysed in mice. Results: VLA-4 knock-down of B16F10 cells resulted in loss of VCAM-1 binding, but preserved the capacity to bind platelets through P-selectin. The observed reduced metastasis of B16F10-VLA-4kd cells confirmed the role of VLA-4 in this process. However, loss of melanoma VLA-4 function hardly further affected reduction of metastasis in P-selectin deficient mice. Tinzaparin treatment of mice injected with B16F10 and B16F10-VLA-4kd cells significantly reduced metastasis suggesting its potential to block both P- and L-selectin and VLA-4 in vivo. The use of N-acetylated heparin, which has no VLA-4 binding activity but blocks P- and L-selectin was less efficient than Tinzaparin in mice injected with B16F10 cells and B16F10-VLA-4kd cells. Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that heparin inhibits experimental melanoma metastasis primarily by blocking VLA-4 and P-selectin

Seed traits matter—Endozoochoric dispersal through a pervasive mobile linker

Although many plants are dispersed by wind and seeds can travel long distances across unsuitable matrix areas, a large proportion relies on co-evolved zoochorous seed dispersal to connect populations in isolated habitat islands. Particularly in agricultural landscapes, where remaining habitat patches are often very small and highly isolated, mobile linkers as zoochorous seed dispersers are critical for the population dynamics of numerous plant species. However, knowledge about the quali- or quantification of such mobile link processes, especially in agricultural landscapes, is still limited. In a controlled feeding experiment, we recorded the seed intake and germination success after complete digestion by the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus) and explored its mobile link potential as an endozoochoric seed disperser. Utilizing a suite of common, rare, and potentially invasive plant species, we disentangled the effects of seed morphological traits on germination success while controlling for phylogenetic relatedness. Further, we measured the landscape connectivity via hares in two contrasting agricultural landscapes (simple: few natural and semi-natural structures, large fields; complex: high amount of natural and semi-natural structures, small fields) using GPS-based movement data. With 34,710 seeds of 44 plant species fed, one of 200 seeds (0.51%) with seedlings of 33 species germinated from feces. Germination after complete digestion was positively related to denser seeds with comparatively small surface area and a relatively slender and elongated shape, suggesting that, for hares, the most critical seed characteristics for successful endozoochorous seed dispersal minimize exposure of the seed to the stomach and the associated digestive system. Furthermore, we could show that a hare's retention time is long enough to interconnect different habitats, especially grasslands and fields. Thus, besides other seed dispersal mechanisms, this most likely allows hares to act as effective mobile linkers contributing to ecosystem stability in times of agricultural intensification, not only in complex but also in simple landscapes

Manual für Methoden und Nutzung versorgungsnaher Daten zur Wissensgenerierung

There are more and more good reasons for using existing care data, with the focus in particular on the use of register data. The associated, clearly structured methodological procedure has so far been insufficiently combined, prepared and presented transparently. The German Network for Health Services Research (DNVF) has therefore set up an ad hoc commission for the use of routine practice data (RWE/RWD). The rapid report prepared by IQWiG on the scientific development of concepts for generation of care-related data and their evalua-tion for the purpose of benefit assessment of medicinal products according to 35a SGB V" is an essential step for the use of register data for the generation of evidence. The "Memorandum Register - Update 2019" published by DNVF 2020 also describes the requirements and methodological foundations of registers. Best practice examples from oncology, which are based on the uniform oncological basic data set for clinical cancer registration ( 65c SGB V), show, for example, that guidelines can be checked and recommendations for guidelines and necessary interventions can be derived in the sense of knowledge-generating health services research using register data. At the same time, however, there are no clear quality requirements and structured formal and content-related procedures in the areas of data consolidation, data verification and the use of specific methods depending on the question at hand. The previously inconsistent requirements are to be revised and a method guide for the use of suited data is to be developed and published. The first chapter of the manual on methods of care-related data explains the objective and structure of the manual. It explains why the use of the term "routine practice data" is more effective than the use of the terms Real Word Data (RWD) and Real World Evidence (RWE). By avoiding the term " real world" it should be emphasized in particular that high-quality research can also be based on routine practice data (e. g. register-based comparative studies)