Arctic warming and your weather: Public belief in the connection

Will Arctic warming affect mid-latitude weather? Many researchers think so, and have addressed this question through scientific articles and news media. Much of the public accepts such a connection as well. Across three New Hampshire surveys with more than 1500 interviews, 60% of respondents say they think future Arctic warming would have major effects on their weather. Arctic/weather responses changed little after Superstorm Sandy brushed the region, but exhibit consistently strong partisan divisions that grow wider with education. Belief in an Arctic/weather connection also varies, in a nonlinear pattern, with the temperature anomaly around day of interview. Interviewed on unseasonably warm or cool days, respondents are more likely to think that Arctic warming would have major effects on their weather. This unscientific response seems to mirror the scientific discussion about extremes

Was December Warm? Family, Politics, and Recollections of Weather

In 2015 New Hampshire experienced its warmest December on record. The temperature exceeded twentieth century average temperatures by a wider margin than for any month in historical records dating back to 1895. In February 2016, as part of an ongoing study of environmental perceptions, the Granite State Poll asked state residents whether they thought the recent December had been generally colder, warmer, or about average for that month. Only 63 percent remembered it had been above average. The remainder of the winter set a new warmth record as well, so in April 2016 another Granite State Poll asked residents about the season as a whole. This time, 73 percent accurately recalled recent warmth. Political independents and Tea Party supporters, as well as people who do not believe that humans are changing the climate, were less likely to think temperatures had been warm. These results suggest that, even for such immediate phenomena as recent local weather, climate-change beliefs exert some influence on perceptions

Baustellenmanagement-Konzept „Feste Warnowquerung Rostock“

In Erstanwendung des Fernstraßenbauprivatfinanzierungsgesetzes wurde der Konzessionär in einer frühen Projektphase noch vor der Planfeststellung beauftragt. Nur hierdurch war es möglich, ein umfassendes, speziell auf die Technologie eines Ausführungsbetriebes zugeschnittenes Baustellenmanagement-Konzept als Basis für die Planfeststellung zu erarbeiten. Vorstellung des Vorhabens, Baumanagement-Konzept: Grobbauablaufplanung, Baustelleneinrichtung, Arbeitskräfteeinsatz, Bodenmanagement, Hauptbaustoffversorgung und Erdstofftransporte im öffentlichen Bauraum, Verkehrsumleitungskonzeption für den öffentlichen Verkehr entsprechend den Bauphasen

Promoting physical activity among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and related disorders: testing a skills-based curiculum

Individuals diagnosed with serious mental illnesses die, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population. This early mortality rate is attributed to negative symptoms that make healthy behaviors, such as exercise, difficult, as well as to antipsychotic medications that carry significant physical side effects. Exercise has been shown to improve life expectancy and studies have shown that even chronically mentally ill individuals are capable of participating in physical exercise with support. Mental skills such as goal setting, visualization, self-talk, and energy management have been taught to the general population to improve exercise behavior. These skills have also been taught successfully to individuals diagnosed with serious mental illnesses for the purpose of symptom management. This, however, is the first study to examine the effects of teaching these mental skills to people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses for the purpose of promoting exercise. This dissertation examines a six-week skills-based curriculum highlighting the benefits of exercise as well as teaching a set of mental skills described above. Ten individuals participated, most were in their early twenties and all carried a diagnosis of schizophrenia or a related disorder. Participants were assessed at baseline, immediately following the intervention, six weeks after the intervention, and 12 weeks after the intervention. Measures included the Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity (RAPA), a semi-structured interview inquiring about the different mental skills and a quality of life questionnaire. Participants also completed helping alliance and consumer satisfaction surveys at the end of the intervention. A 73% attendance rate was noted and statistically significant differences were seen in physical activity and mental skills knowledge between baseline and immediately following the intervention and between baseline and 6 weeks post-intervention. No quality of life change was indicated. These results indicate that the intervention was acceptable to the population as evidenced by an adequate attendance rate and that further research is warranted due to the statistically significant improvements in two outcome areas. These findings indicate that a skills-based curriculum teaching motivational skills to individuals diagnosed with serious mental illnesses is an intervention worth exploring further with larger and more diverse samples

Successfull Blossom Thinning and Crop Load Regulation for Organic Apple Growing with Potassium-bi-carbonate (Armicarb(R)): Results of Field Experiments over 3 Years and with 11 Cultivars

With field trials over 3 years in a commercial organic orchard in Switzerland we have tested the efficacy of Armicarb® (potassium-bi-carbonate) for flower thinning in organic apple production. Over time, Armicarb was tested on 11 cultivars, at different application periods, in different concentrations, and always in comparison to other agents that are already allowed for thinning in organic fruit production in the European Union as e.g. lime sulphur, molasses, mechanical rope-thinner or combinations of methods. Armicarb proved to be an efficient and reliable thinning agent with an efficacy similar to the now recommended methods with rope device, molasses or lime sulphur but has the advantage to be an environmentally very friendly product. On the other hand, the risk for fruit russeting is comparably elevated especially with cultivars ‘Elstar’, ‘Golden Del.’ ’and ‘Gala’. Finally, we have elaborated cultivar-specific recommendations for the use of Armicarb for thinning purposes, which were the basis for the Swiss Federal approval to use Armicarb for thinning in conventional and organic apple production in 2011/2012

Composing Web-service-like abstract state machines (ASM)

The presentation provides an overview on semi-automatic design of Collaborative Business Processes for B2B/EAI integration in the EU project FUSION. The introduced Enterprise Application Integration Ontology and a mediator-based run-time architecture for CBPs integrating heterogeneous web services enabled enterprise systems build the corner stones of the FUSION solution. The functionality and the building blocks of the Collaborative Business Process Designer are discussed in detail. The talk provides then an example demonstrating initial ideas for generating an executable collaborative business process out of a CBP template automatically

Integration of Migrant Populations into Health Monitoring in Germany: Results from a Feasibility Study

Background: Persons with migrant backgrounds (PMB) are considered ‘hard to reach’. To sustainably integrate migrant populations into health monitoring in Germany, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has launched the project Improving Health Monitoring in Migrant Populations (IMIRA), providing results on response rates, sample composition and the effectiveness of sequential interventions. Method: A multilingual feasibility study had been conducted in two German federal states, utilizing data from the residents’ registry. The target populations were persons with Turkish, Polish, Romanian, Syrian and Croatian citizenship living in Germany (n=9,068). Different modes of administration and interventions (study hotline, home visits) were used sequentially. To evaluate their usability, an experimental design was applied for Turkish and Syrian migrants. Results: Besides the overall response rate of 15.9%, there were different response rates by citizenship, ranging from 8.6% in the Turkish group to 24.3% in the Syrian group. Whereas the online mode, telephone mode and the study hotline showed little differences between the groups, the home visits led to an remarkable increase (+5.4% in the Turkish group; +7.3% in the Syrian group). Conclusion: The offer of multilingual survey modes and materials is strongly advised. Furthermore, the response rates of some PMB can be increased by tailored interventions, such as home visits and multilingual face-to-face interviews

A Review of Reporting Standards in Academic Journals: A Research Note

Response rates can be calculated by various means, allowing the researchers the usage of different disposition codes, which in turn can result in vastly different response rates for the same survey. One of the most comprehensive reporting conventions is the ‘Standard Definitions’ by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), which describes specific definitions of disposition codes and various outcome rates in great detail, allowing for only a marginal variance of results. In this inquiry, we aim to document the reporting of response rates and other survey characteristics in recent publications of scientific journals. Our analyses are based on two sample of articles, which allow a comparison with earlier reviews as well as between different scientific disciplines. Our findings show, that while there is an overall increase in the reporting of response rates and other defining survey characteristics, these improvements are from universal. While the AAPOR standard might be considered an established convention within the survey research community, other disciplines of the social sciences can be considered far more heterogeneous in their reporting styles. A comparison between social sciences and public health journals reveals further a mostly similar reporting pattern, with only specific details underreported in the latter

Optimierung der kardialen Programmierung von Stammzellen und der Reifung in vitro generierter Kardiomyozyten

Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen sind mit 17,9 Mio. Sterbefällen pro Jahr die Haupttodesursache in der westlichen Welt. Stammzellderivierte Kardiomyozyten bieten hier neue Möglichkeiten zur Verbesserung der kardialen Regeneration. Die vorliegende Habilitationsschrift beschäftigt sich mit der Optimierung der kardialen Stammzellprogrammierung mit dem Ziel der Herstellung reifer kardialer Zelltypen für Zellersatztherapie und in vitro Anwendungen

The role of gap junctional intercellular communication and connexins in the differentiation of human neural progenitor cells

Our findings provide a dual function of connexin43 (Cx43) and gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) in the neural development of human progenitor cells. 1) GJIC accompanied by high Cx43 expression is necessary to maintain cells in a proliferative state by mediating the mitogenic effects of growth factors. 2) GJIC is required to complete neuronal differentiation, including the establishment of a neural network. However, uncoupling of cells is crucial in the early stage of differentiation during cell fate commitment. Further, we showed that Cx43 regulates neuronal cell-fate