Ausstiegsabsichten und tatsächliche Ausstiegsgründe von Biobauern und Biobäuerinnen in Österreich - Analyse von Befragungsergebnissen

Austria established an environmental program (ÖPUL) for agriculture in 1995, including direct payments for organic farming. To participate in this measure farmers have to commit themselves to a five year period. In 1999 a survey was conducted to find out, to which extent organic farmers intended to drop out of the measure organic farming and to collect information about their reasons for this intention. In 2002 a new survey was carried out to compare the intentions with the actual developments. In 2004 additional information was collected through telephone interviews. The aim of this study was a) to compare the intended with the actual behaviour, b) to compare the ex ante and ex post expressed reasons for leaving the measure organic farming and c) to find out the arguments of these farmers who chose to continue farming organically

Performance gains in an ESM using parallel ad-hoc file systems

Earth System Models (ESM) got much more demanding over the last years. Modelled processes got more complex and more and more processes are considered in models. In addition resolutions of the models got higher to improve weather and climate forecasts. This requires faster high performance computers (HPC) and better I/O performance. Within our Pilot Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling (PL-EESM) we do performance analysis of the ESM EMAC using a standard Lustre file system for output and compare it to the performance using a parallel ad-hoc overlay file system. We will show the impact for two scenarios: one for todays standard amount of output and one with artificial heavy output simulating future ESMs. An ad-hoc file system is a private parallel file system which is created on-demand for an HPC job using the node-local storage devices, in our case solid-state-disks (SSD). It only exists during the runtime of the job. Therefore output data have to be moved to a permanent file system before the job has finished. Quasi in-situ data analysis and post-processing allows to gain performance as it might result in a decreased amount of data which you have to store - saving disk space and time during the transfer of data to permanent storage. We will show first tests for quasi in-situ post-processing

Exact Gap Computation for Code Coverage Metrics in ISO-C

Test generation and test data selection are difficult tasks for model based testing. Tests for a program can be meld to a test suite. A lot of research is done to quantify the quality and improve a test suite. Code coverage metrics estimate the quality of a test suite. This quality is fine, if the code coverage value is high or 100%. Unfortunately it might be impossible to achieve 100% code coverage because of dead code for example. There is a gap between the feasible and theoretical maximal possible code coverage value. Our review of the research indicates, none of current research is concerned with exact gap computation. This paper presents a framework to compute such gaps exactly in an ISO-C compatible semantic and similar languages. We describe an efficient approximation of the gap in all the other cases. Thus, a tester can decide if more tests might be able or necessary to achieve better coverage.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2012, arXiv:1202.582

Інформаційна технологія для класифікації наукових текстів на основі методу модифікованої логістичної регресії

Об’єкт дослідження: процес класифікації наукових текстів та практичне використання технологій обробки природної мови в освітніх додатках, з метою підвищення ефективності освітнього процесу. Предмет дослідження: методи, моделі машинного навчання та обробки природньої мови у задачах класифікації наукових текстів. Мета магістерської роботи: вдосконалення та пришвидшення процесу класифікації текстів з допомогою моделі логістичної регресії, з метою застосування її у освітніх додатках для покращення освітнього процесу. Методи дослідження. Для створення рекомендаційного та навчального асистента були використані засоби та методи машинного навчання, теорії множин, лінейної алгебри й обробки природної мови. Наукова новизна полягає у тому, що вдосконалено та розширено можливості методу логістичної регресії на основі комбінування його з методом ранжування, що в результаті дозволило використати метод логістичної регресії для навчального асистенті. Практична цінність полягає у тому, що в результаті роботи, було створено прототип навчального асистента, що використовує скомбіновану з методом ранжування модель логістичної регресії для класифікації текстів. Використані методи та підходи у прототипі можуть застосовуватись як при розробці «інтелектуальних» навчальних систем, так й в практиці викладання дисциплін, пов’язаних з обробкою природної мови

Characterization of mouse cell line IMA 2.1 as a potential model system to study astrocyte functions

Astrocytes are activated in most chronic neurodegenerative diseases associated with inflammatory events such as Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease, but also in stroke. Due to an aging population worldwide, research efforts in these areas are likely to expand in the future. This will entail an increaseddemand for appropriate experimental models. We introduce here the new immortalized mouse astrocyte cell line IMA 2.1 as an alternative to currently used primary astrocyte cultures. IMA 2.1 were directly compared with primary mouse astrocytes with respect to their response to proinflammatory stimuli, expression of typical astrocyte markers, and to the cell line’s capacity to metabolize the parkinsonian toxin MPTP to its toxic metabolite MPP+. Under inflammatory conditions, mimicked with the addition of a cytokine mix, IMA 2.1 responded similarly to primary astrocytes with mRNA upregulation, expression of iNOS and COX-2, and the release of various inflammatory mediators. Analysis of astrocytic markers indicated that IMA 2.1 represent a relatively early, GFAP-negative stage of astrocyte development. Moreover, conversion of MPTP by monoamine oxidase-B proceeded in IMA at least as quickly as in primary cells. For all endpoints investigated, the cell line IMA 2.1, derived from a single clone, delivered reproducible results over a period of several years and allowed upscaling of experiments due to its easy handling compared with primary cells