The MIGenAS integrated bioinformatics toolkit for web-based sequence analysis

We describe a versatile and extensible integrated bioinformatics toolkit for the analysis of biological sequences over the Internet. The web portal offers convenient interactive access to a growing pool of chainable bioinformatics software tools and databases that are centrally installed and maintained by the RZG. Currently, supported tasks comprise sequence similarity searches in public or user-supplied databases, computation and validation of multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetic analysis and protein–structure prediction. Individual tools can be seamlessly chained into pipelines allowing the user to conveniently process complex workflows without the necessity to take care of any format conversions or tedious parsing of intermediate results. The toolkit is part of the Max-Planck Integrated Gene Analysis System (MIGenAS) of the Max Planck Society available at (click ‘Start Toolkit’)

the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a new form of governance in climate protection

Die Bewältigung des Klimawandels ist heute eine der bedeutendsten politischen Herausforderungen. Das Kyoto-Protokoll ist der am weitesten fortgeschrittene Prozess der internationalen Staatengemeinschaft im Hinblick auf die Herausforderungen des Klimawandels. Einer der interessantesten und innovativsten Bausteine des Kyoto-Protokolls ist der Clean Development Mechanismus (CDM). Seit seiner Initiierung ist dieser so genannte flexible Mechanismus der Schlüssel zur Schaffung von volatilen und boomenden Märkten für Zertifikate für die Reduktion von Kohlenstoffemissionen (CERs). Diese Zertifikate, kurz CERs, sind die ersten international gehandelten Güter, die durch ein internationales Umweltabkommen geschaffen wurden. Während des Prozesses der Marktetablierung sind private Akteure wie Firmen, Projektverifizierer, Carbon Funds und Zertifikatshändler zu den führenden Akteuren des globalen Kohlenstoffmarktes aufgestiegen. Dennoch ist der Markt weiterhin stark von den politischen Rahmenbedingungen abhängig. Die Nachfrage wird durch die Festlegung von Emissionsreduktionen für Nationalstaaten und deren Emissionsallokationen geschaffen. Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht die Transformation des Markts, der zunächst von öffentlichen Akteuren initiiert, durch Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) angestoßen, sich zu einem Markt entwickelt, wo sich die Regierungen nach und nach zurückziehen und private Akteure immer stärker Governancefunktionen wahrnehmen. Weiterhin wird der Status quo des CDM evaluiert und auf verbleibende Forschungsfragen hingewiesen

Staat, Gesellschaft und grüne Transformationen im globalen Süden

Die Anbahnung und Umsetzung grüner Transformationen ist ein komplexer, sektoren- und ebenenübergreifender Prozess, der auf die Unterstützung mächtiger Akteurskonstellationen angewiesen ist. Solche Transformationen müssen von staatlichen Akteuren angestoßen oder begleitet werden, wie das Beispiel der „grünen“ Republik Costa Rica zeigt

Max Weber in the tropics: How global climate politics facilitates the bureaucratization of forestry in Indonesia

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the most advanced global climate governance arrangements and we show that it contributes to the buildup of autonomous capacities and reliable procedures in areas of rather limited statehood. These partially unintended effects can be conceptualized as an increasing rational–legal bureaucratization, which has been initiated through both external and domestic actors as we illuminate in the case of Indonesia's forestry sector in the period from 2007 until 2017. Our finding is that a bureaucratization of a new kind is increasingly strengthened in Indonesia's forest despite enduring patterns of neopatrimonialism, emerging signs of new public management approaches, and the strengthening of functional equivalents such as community‐based forest management. We thus claim that Max Weber's perspective on the prospects and problems of rational–legal bureaucratization is still valuable, even when travelling to the tropics

The Reconfiguration of Public Authority in Developing Countries

In recent years, several scholars of world politics have observed a relocation of authority in different issue areas of global policy-making. This development appears to be particularly evident in the field of global climate politics where a number of authors have highlighted the gradual loss of authority by national governments and the emergence of new spheres of authority dominated by actors other than the nation-state. In fact, due to the existence of a regulatory gap in this policy domain, various new governance arrangements have emerged which work simultaneously at different levels (some top-down and others bottom-up) to cope with the problem of climate change. However, despite several broader descriptions and mapping exercises, we have little systematic knowledge about their workings, let alone their impact on political-administrative systems. Given these shortcomings, in this paper we explore how (and how far) different types of globally operating governance arrangements have caused changes in the distribution of authority within national governments and their public administration. We will focus on two stylized governance arrangements: one that operates bottom-up (i.e. Transnational City Networks, TCNs) and another that operates top-down (i.e. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, REDD+). Departing from our hypotheses that the former is likely to lead to more decentralization and the latter to more centralization of environmental policy making, we will present some preliminary findings from our case studies in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa

Uncertainty evaluation for velocity–area methods

Velocity–area methods are used for flow rate calculation in various industries. Applied within a fully turbulent flow regime, modest uncertainties can be expected. If the flow profile cannot be described as “log-like”, the recommended measurement positions and integration techniques exhibit larger errors. To reduce these errors, an adapted measurement scheme is proposed. The velocity field inside a Venturi contour is simulated using computational fluid dynamics and validated using laser Doppler anemometry. An analytical formulation for the Reynolds number dependence of the profile is derived. By assuming an analytical velocity profile, an uncertainty evaluation for the flow rate calculation is performed according to the “Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement”. The overall uncertainty of the flow rate inside the Venturi contour is determined to be 0.5 % compared to 0.67 % for a fully developed turbulent flow

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Transformative Change through the Sustainable Development Goals?

The 2030 Agenda of the United Nations comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 sub-targets which serve as a global reference point for the transition to sustainability. The agenda acknowledges that different issues such as poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, environmental degradation, among others, are intertwined and can therefore only be addressed together. Implementing the SDGs as an ‘indivisible whole’ represents the actual litmus test for the success of the 2030 Agenda. The main challenge is accomplishing a more integrated approach to sustainable development that encompasses new governance frameworks for enabling and managing systemic transformations. This thematic issue addresses the question whether and how the SDGs set off processes of societal transformation, for which cooperation between state and non-state actors at all political levels (global, regional, national, sub-national), in different societal spheres (politics, society, and economy), and across various sectors (energy, transportation, food, etc.) are indispensable. In this editorial, we first introduce the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs by providing an overview of the architecture of the agenda and the key challenges of the current implementation phase. In a second step, we present the eleven contributions that make up the thematic issue clustering them around three themes: integration, governance challenges, and implementation

Neue Formen des Regierens und Klimaschutz durch private Unternehmen?

"Ein unerwartetes Phänomen zeigte sich auf der Klimakonferenz in Bali im Dezember 2007: Am Bali Global Business Day forderten 350 Unternehmensvertreter von der internationalen Staatengemeinschaft die Fortsetzung des Kyoto-Protokolls und des dazugehörigen Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Verkehrte Welt? Durch das Kyoto-Protokoll wurden - erstmals in der Geschichte internationaler Umweltverträge - Unternehmen zu Hauptakteuren der Vertragsumsetzung gemacht. Die staatlichen Reduzierungsziele für Treibhausgase haben einen Markt für ein neues Produkt geschaffen. Unternehmen sollen nun kostengünstig das öffentliche Gut 'stabiles Klima' bereitstellen und zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung in den Gastländern beitragen. Mit der zentralen Einbindung von Wirtschaftsakteuren in die Umsetzung eines internationalen Vertrages wurde eine neue Form von Governance eingeführt, deren Effektivität jedoch noch in Frage steht. Neue Formen der Steuerung in der Umweltpolitik durch Wirtschaftsakteure und Marktkräfte können in OECD-Ländern Erfolge nachweisen. und nichtstaatlicher Akteure in partnerschaftlichen Arrangements gefragt. Diese Partnerschaften haben eine katalytische Funktion für die Marktetablierung, verlieren aber im Laufe einer erfolgreichen Marktentwicklung an Bedeutung und geben ihre Steuerungsfunktion an private Wirtschaftsakteure ab. Marktkräfte sorgen dafür, dass Treibhausgase besonders kostengünstig reduziert werden. Der Handel mit den Reduzierungszertifikaten ermöglicht Unternehmen auch den Einstieg in neue Märkte, die Verbesserung ihres Firmenimage und vielleicht neue Wettbewerbsfähigkeit." (Textauszug

Beyond PES and REDD+: Costa Rica on the way to climate-smart landscape management?

Costa Rica has a strong international reputation for conservation and sustainable management of forests, including through its national payments for environmental services (PES) system and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). However, to be able to take those achievements to the next level, new approaches need to be developed that integrate agriculture and environmental politics, e.g., to foster climate-smart landscape management. This would be in line with the idea of a green transformation as a necessary contribution to bring human social-ecological action back within planetary boundaries. We start from a general conceptualization of a green transformation and its potential drivers, then analyze the basis and prospects for such developments by providing a review of the country’s forest politics, including a mapping of relevant stakeholders that have been influential in designing and implementing the national PES and REDD+ approaches. Based on original empirical analysis that was conducted throughout 2017, we further analyze recent institutional developments of setting up a cross-sectoral policy for agriculture and environment as part of a broader landscape management approach, including the opportunities and challenges that might arise with a view to realizing this idea on the ground

Simulation-based determination of systematic errors of flow meters due to uncertain inflow conditions

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) provides well-established tools for the prediction of the velocity profiles in turbulent pipe flows. As far as industrial pipe and district heating systems are concerned, combinations of elbows are the most common pipe assemblies. Among the different pipe combinations, double elbows out-of-plane are of special interest, since they introduce strong disturbances into the flow profile and have a strong influence on many common types of flow meters. In front of a double elbow there is often another flow-disturbing installation. As a result the upstream conditions are unknown and an investigation of the resulting systematic bias on the measurement of the flow rate and the associated contribution to its measurement uncertainty is necessary. We demonstrate here that this can be achieved by a variation of the inlet profile in terms of swirls and asymmetry components. In particular, an ultrasonic and an electromagnetic flow meter are modeled in order to quantify the systematic errors stemming from uncertain inflow conditions. For this purpose, a generalized non-intrusive polynomial chaos method has been used in conjunction with a commercial CFD code. As the most influential parameters on the measured volume flow, the distance between the double elbow and the flow meter as well as the orientation of the flow meter are considered as random variables in the polynomial chaos approach. This approach allowed us to obtain accurate prediction of the systematic error for the ultrasonic and electromagnetic meter as functions of the distance to the double elbow. The resulting bias in the flow rate has been found to be in the range of 1.5–4.5% (0.1–0.5%) with a systematic uncertainty contribution of 2–2.4% (0.6–0.7%) for the ultrasonic (electromagnetic) flow meter if the distance to the double elbow is smaller than 40 pipe diameters. Moreover, it is demonstrated that placing the flow meters in a Venturi constriction leads to substantial decrease of the bias and the contribution to the measurement uncertainty stemming from the uncertain inflow condition