Sustainable Food Consumption of German Millennials: Exploring the "Attitude Behavior Gap"

This thesis picked up on the recent trend of sustainability and sustainable development by investigating the sustainable food consumption of German Millennials regarding an assumed gap between their attitude and their actual consumer behavior. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, a multi-step, qualitative research process was developed in order to find explanations for the attitude behavior gap. The process triangulated data from questioning ten German Millennial consumers via qualitative interviews, observing these consumers during a regular grocery shopping trip and analyzing the products they bought. The study revealed the following barriers preventing the participants from consuming according to their attitude: price, lack of knowledge on part of the consumers, insufficient sustainable product ranges, consumers minimizing the time spent for grocery shopping, habitualized purchase decisions and in exceptional cases a desire for unsustainable products. Accordingly, recommendations were derived for sustainable food manufacturers and supermarket chains, public policy and consumers. Additionally, this thesis contributes to consumer research on the attitude behavior gap as well as on behavioral research by applying and extending the Theory of Planned Behavior. Keywords: Sustainable consumption; attitude behavior gap; consumer behavior; food consumption Verbal Protocol Analysis;Theory of Planned Behavior.This thesis picked up on the recent trend of sustainability and sustainable development by investigating the sustainable food consumption of German Millennials regarding an assumed gap between their attitude and their actual consumer behavior. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, a multi-step, qualitative research process was developed in order to find explanations for the attitude behavior gap. The process triangulated data from questioning ten German Millennial consumers via qualitative interviews, observing these consumers during a regular grocery shopping trip and analyzing the products they bought. The study revealed the following barriers preventing the participants from consuming according to their attitude: price, lack of knowledge on part of the consumers, insufficient sustainable product ranges, consumers minimizing the time spent for grocery shopping, habitualized purchase decisions and in exceptional cases a desire for unsustainable products. Accordingly, recommendations were derived for sustainable food manufacturers and supermarket chains, public policy and consumers. Additionally, this thesis contributes to consumer research on the attitude behavior gap as well as on behavioral research by applying and extending the Theory of Planned Behavior. Keywords: Sustainable consumption; attitude behavior gap; consumer behavior; food consumption Verbal Protocol Analysis;Theory of Planned Behavior

In-vitro Major Arterial Cardiovascular Simulator to generate Benchmark Data Sets for in-silico Model Validation

A deeper understanding of the influence of common cardiovascular diseases like stenosis, aneurysm or atherosclerosis on the circulatory mechanism is required, to establish new methods for early diagnosis. Different types of simulators were developed in the past to simulate healthy and pathological conditions of blood flow, often based on computational models, which allow to generate large data sets. However, since computational models often lack some aspects of real world data, hardware simulators are used to close this gap and generate data for model validation. The aim of this study is the development and validation of a hardware simulator to generate benchmark data sets of healthy and pathological conditions. The in-vitro hardware simulator in this study includes the major 33 arteries and is driven by a ventricular assist device generating a parametrised input condition at the heart node. Physiologic flow conditions including heart rate, systolic/diastolic pressure, peripheral resistance and compliance are adjustable in a wide range. The pressure and flow waves at 17+1 different locations are measured by inverted fluid resistant pressure transducers and one ultrasound flow transducer supporting a detailed analysis of the measurement data. The pressure and flow waves show physiological conditions. Furthermore, the influence of stenoses degree and location on blood pressure and flow was investigated. The results indicate decreasing translesional pressure and flow with increasing degree of stenosis, as expected. The benchmark data set is made available to the research community, with the purpose to validate and compare in-silico models of different type.Comment: Data available at Zenodo with doi 10.5281/zenodo.641527

Probing alternative cosmologies through the inverse distance ladder

We study the implications of a combined analysis of cosmic standard candles and standard rulers on the viability of cosmological models beyond the cosmological concordance model. To this end, we employ data in the form of the joint light-curve analysis supernova compilation, baryon acoustic oscillations, cosmic microwave background data, and a recently proposed set of Quasars as objects of known brightness. The advantage of including the latter is that they extend the local distance measures to redshifts which have previously been out of reach and we investigate how this allows one to test cosmologies beyond $\Lambda$CDM. We focus on two particular modifications: One is the theory of a massive tensor field interacting with the standard metric of gravity, so-called bigravity, and the other conformal gravity, a theory of gravity that has no knowledge of fundamental length scales. The former of the two constitutes a veritable extension of General Relativity, given that it adds to the metric tensor of gravity a second dynamical tensor field. The resulting dynamics have been proposed as a self-accelerating cosmology. Conformal gravity on the other hand is a much more drastic change of the underlying gravitational theory. Its ignorance towards fundamental length scales offers a completely different approach to late time acceleration and the so-called cosmological constant problem. In this sense, both models offer - in one way or another - an explanation for the cosmological constant problem. We perform a combined cosmological fit which provides strong constraints on some of these extensions, while some alternative cosmologies are in fact favoured by the data. We also briefly comment on the implications of the long-standing $H_0$-tension.Comment: 36 pages, 15 figure

Video-based, student tutor- versus faculty staff-led ultrasound course for medical students - a prospective randomized study

Background Ultrasound education is propagated already during medical school due to its diagnostic importance. Courses are usually supervised by experienced faculty staff (FS) with patient bedside examinations or students among each other but often overbooked due to limited FS availability. To overcome this barrier, use of teaching videos may be advantageous. Likewise, peer teaching concepts solely with trained student tutors have shown to be feasible and effective. The aim was to evaluate 1) objective learning outcomes of a combined video-based, student-tutor (ViST) as compared to a FS-led course without media support, 2) acceptance and subjective learning success of the videos. Methods Two ultrasound teaching videos for basic and advanced abdominal ultrasound (AU) and transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) were produced and six students trained as tutors. Fourth-year medical students (N = 96) were randomized to either the ViST- or FS course (6 students per tutor). Learning objectives were defined equally for both courses. Acquired practical basic and advanced ultrasound skills were tested in an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) using modified validated scoring sheets with a maximum total score of 40 points. Acceptance and subjective learning success of both videos were evaluated by questionnaires based on Kirkpatrick's evaluation model with scale-rated closed and open questions. Results 79 of 96 medical students completed the OSCE and 77 could be finally analyzed. There was no significant difference in the mean total point score of 31.3 in the ViST (N = 42) and 32.7 in the FS course (N = 35, P = 0.31) or in any of the examined basic or advanced ultrasound skill subtasks. Of the 42 ViST participants, 29 completed the AU and 27 the TTE video questionnaire. Acceptance and subjective learning success of both videos was rated positively in 14-52% and 48-88% of the rated responses to each category, respectively. Attendance of either the student or faculty tutor was deemed necessary in addition to the videos. Conclusions A ViST versus FS teaching concept was able to effectively teach undergraduate students in AU and TTE, albeit acceptance of the teaching videos alone was limited. However, the ViST concept has the potential to increase course availability and FS resource allocation

USE OF THE FLIGHT TEST FACILITY MOCK-UPS IN THE EUROPEAN CLEAN SKY 2 PROGRAM

The Clean Sky 2 program unites all major European players in the aeronautical sector to conduct research on future, more energy efficient aircrafts with lower environmental footprint. Besides technologies developments, the demonstration of technologies in dedicated test environments is a key element of this research program. The Fraunhofer Flight Test Facility is such a platform for technology demonstration. Located in Holzkirchen, south of Munich, it hosts several aircraft fuselage structures and allows for indoor environmental tests under realistic temperature, moisture and pressure conditions. In this paper, demonstrations performed within Clean Sky 2 are highlighted. These include an adaptive ECS system, environmentally friendly fire protection, model validation tests for ETOPS considerations and cleaning and disinfection demonstrations