Erfahrungen mit der Geschichte des Akademieverlags, 11. Oktober 2006

Siegfried Lokatis bietet in diesem Vortrag zum 60-jährigen Verlagsjubiläum des Akademie-Verlages einen kurzen Überblick über dessen Verlagsgeschichte mit dem thematischen Schwerpunkt der Zensurgeschichte des Akademie-Verlages in DDR-Zeiten

Mapping hypotheses and evidence in urban ecology: A perspective on knowledge synthesis with a focus on biotic homogenization

A city is a highly complex, anthropogenically constructed system – an urban ecosystem. Researchers that study this system come from very different academic fields, bringing with them their own methods and research questions. From the perspective of (biological) urban ecology, this thesis first takes a step back, and focuses on knowledge production in general academia (chapter 1). The concept knowledge in the dark, or short: dark knowledge, describes the gap between potential and actual knowledge. In chapter 1, several potential reasons for dark knowledge in general are discussed. Focusing on the acasemic system, these are for example loss of academic freedom, research and publication biases, a lack of reproducibility, financial interests and barriers in understanding each other among disciplines and different areas of society. We also discuss potential solutions. One important aspect is rethinking and improving research synthesis and finding ways to bridge language and information barriers both within and beyond the academic system. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 then take up a main theme from chapter 1: research synthesis, and within the setting of urban ecology show how different approaches to synthesis can help bridge communication between researchers within and beyond one discipline (biological urban ecology), identify biases and knowledge gaps, and visualize and summarize available knowledge. The chapters proceed from a very broad perspective on urban ecology to the topic of urban biotic homogenization, and then a very specific aspect within urban biodiversity research: the influence of mowing of urban lawns on arthropods, which is one specific cause of biotic homogenization in cities. In Chapter 2, together with a group of urban ecologists predominantly based in Berlin, I collected 62 research hypotheses from urban ecology. In a second step, my co-authors and I present a first map of these hypotheses in a structured, bipartite network. As urban ecology is a multi-disciplinary field that is of high interest to urban planners and administrations, knowledge transfer between different stakeholders is particularly important. The network we propose consists of four distinct clusters, into which the hypotheses we previously identified can be grouped: (i) Urban species traits & evolution, (ii) Urban communities, (iii) Urban habitats and (iv) Urban ecosystems. This work is intended to grow, and as an invitation to researchers, practitioners and others interested in urban ecology to contribute to collecting additional hypotheses, jointly fill the network (or rather the underlying Wikidata project) with empirical data. Chapter 2 is thus intended as a first step towards an open and community curated knowledge base for urban ecology. Chapter 3 focuses on one of the hypotheses from our network: urban biotic homogenization (UBH). Urbanization, which is restructuring ecosystems at an unprecedented pace, is hypothesized to cause the homogenization of urban species communities. This idea has also been applied to other biodiversity levels like genetic diversity, behavioural diversity, functional diversity, and the like. There is, however, good reason to also formulate a hypothesis predicting the opposite effect: biotic diversification, that predicts species communities (and other levels of biodiversity) to become biologically more diverse because of ongoing urbanization. In chapter 3, I disentangle the different connotations, scales and “auxiliary hypotheses”, i.e., hypotheses that often unspokenly accompany a tested research hypothesis, which have been applied in the research literature on urban biotic homogenization and diversification. Applying the hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach, I systematically map and structure the comprehensive body of literature on UBH, comprising 225 individual tests of the hypothesis from 145 publications. Interestingly, UBH is generally used with two very different connotations in relation to scale (i.e., homogenization across cities versus within cities). There are several strong research biases, for example in relation to taxonomic focus, scale, and study systems. We visualize support and biases in an evidence gap map and provide a bibliographic network of the field. Chapter 4 is a meta-analysis of the impact of reduced mowing frequencies on the abundance and diversity of arthropods on urban grassland sites. It is based on 46 datasets on arthropod abundance and 23 datasets on taxa richness, respectively. As in chapter 3, we report severe geographical biases. While we find a medium positive effect (effect size: g = 0.54) of reduced mowing on arthropod abundance, the effect that reduced mowing has on urban arthropod taxa richness is larger (g = 1.25). Some functional groups benefit more from reduced mowing, especially winged insects, and perceived non-pest species. In the final, General Discussion, I try to connect several points that can be traced to all four chapters and discuss them in the context of urban ecology. These are: knowledge gaps and biases, with a brief discussion of how the concept of dark knowledge can (and should) be relevant to researchers from urban ecology, and research and knowledge synthesis. I finish my thesis by reflecting on how these are important in the context of urban ecological knowledge in the Anthropocene, and how they should be extended in the face of planetary crisis

Knowledge in the dark: scientific challenges and ways forward

A key dimension of our current era is Big Data, the rapid rise in produced data and information; a key frustration is that we are nonetheless living in an age of ignorance, as the real knowledge and understanding of people does not seem to be substantially increasing. This development has critical consequences, for example it limits the ability to find and apply effective solutions to pressing environmental and socioeconomic challenges. Here, we propose the concept of “knowledge in the dark”—or short: dark knowledge—and outline how it can help clarify key reasons for this development: (i) production of biased, erroneous, or fabricated data and information; (ii) inaccessibility and (iii) incomprehensibility of data and information; and (iv) loss of previous knowledge. Even in the academic realm, where financial interests are less pronounced than in the private sector, several factors lead to dark knowledge, that is they inhibit a more substantial increase in knowledge and understanding. We highlight four of these factors—loss of academic freedom, research biases, lack of reproducibility, and the Scientific tower of Babel—and offer ways to tackle them, for example establishing an international court of arbitration for research and developing advanced tools for research synthesis

Urban biotic homogenization: Approaches and knowledge gaps

Abstract Urbanization is restructuring ecosystems at an unprecedented pace, with complex and profound consequences for life on Earth. One of the hypothesized trajectories of urban ecosystems and species communities is biotic homogenization, possibly leading to very similar species assemblages in cities across the globe. Urbanization can, however, also have the opposite effect: biotic diversification, with cities, at least at the local scale, becoming biologically more diverse, mainly as a consequence of high species introduction rates and habitat diversification. Applying the hierarchy‐of‐hypotheses approach, we systematically map and structure the comprehensive body of literature on the urban biotic homogenization (UBH) hypothesis, comprising 225 individual studies (i.e., tests of the hypothesis) retrieved from 145 publications. The UBH hypothesis is studied at multiple levels with a multitude of approaches and underlying assumptions. We show that UBH is generally used with two very different connotations: about half of the studies investigated a potential increase in community similarity across cities, whereas the other half investigated biotic homogenization within cities, the latter being supported more frequently. We also found strong research biases: (1) a taxonomic bias towards birds and plants, (2) a bias towards small and medium distances (<5000 km) in comparisons across cities, (3) a dominance of studies substituting space for time versus true temporal studies, (4) a strong focus on terrestrial versus aquatic systems, (5) more extraurban (including periurban) areas than natural or rural ecosystems for comparison to urban systems, (6) a bias towards taxonomic versus functional, phylogenetic, and temporal homogenization, and (7) more studies undertaken in Europe and North America than in other continents. The overall level of empirical support for the UBH hypothesis was mixed, with 55% of the studies reporting supporting evidence. Results significantly differed when a natural/nature reserve, an extraurban, or rural/agricultural area served as reference to infer biotic homogenization, with homogenization being detected least frequently when urban systems were compared to agricultural, i.e., other anthropogenically influenced, study sites. We provide an evidence map and a bibliographic network and identify key references on UBH with the goal to enhance accessibility and orientation for future research on this topic

Urban pavements as a novel habitat for wild bees and other ground-nesting insects

Municipal authorities around the world have come to recognize the importance of making conservation and restoration a priority. Multiple urban restoration programs now foster insects and other pollinators through planting and sowing flowering plants, many of them within residential areas. But residents are not only walking next to pollinators visiting flowering sidewalk grass verges, they are also walking on top of them, nesting in the cracks and interstices of urban pavements. Combining morphological and molecular monitoring schemes, we conducted a survey of urban pavements at twelve locations across Berlin and found that pavements can foster a surprising number and quantity of soil dwelling insects—in particular wild bees and wasps. Pavements located within 200 m to an insect-friendly flower garden were covered with significantly more nests of wild bees and solitary wasps, and showed higher species richness of these groups, while the degree of sealed surfaces in the surrounding had no effect per se. This underlines the positive impact that insect-friendly gardens can have for pollinators and other insects, even in highly sealed areas. Also, it shows the potential of cobbled pavements as valuable nesting sites in highly sealed urban areas. We provide a list of 55 species of ground-nesting Hymenoptera found in Berlin pavements, including 28 species of wild bees and 22 apoid wasps. In our study, the molecular approach only detected three Hymenoptera species and did not yield comparable results to classical monitoring. Nonetheless, using eDNA methods might be a promising tool for further studying soil nesting insects in the future, and to gain insights into the web of life in urban pavements

The frequent five: Insights from interviews with urban wildlife professionals in Germany

1. Wildlife in cities divides people, with some animals bringing positive benefits and others causing conflict, for example due to property damage. 2. Urban wildlife professionals from municipal administration, nature conservation, and hunting associations have a crucial role in shaping human-wildlife relationships in cities and fostering conflict-free coexistence. While many studies on urban wildlife have focused on the views of citizens, few have investigated the perspectives of experts to date. To address this knowledge gap, we interviewed 36 urban wildlife professionals giving guidance in the context of urban wildlife management, either in one of the four largest German cities by population (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne) or at the national level. 3. Red foxes, wild boars, raccoons, stone martens and Eurasian beavers were the five mammal species most frequently highlighted in interviews to cause human-wildlife conflicts. The interviewees saw wild boars and raccoons as the most controversial urban wild mammals but emphasized the need to create refuges for beavers and better inform the public about foxes. 4. Management in terms of public outreach, urban planning and population control, as well as establishing official contact points and stricter fines of activities violating regulations were highlighted as important elements of a toolkit to manage urban wildlife conflicts

Hypotheses in urban ecology: building a common knowledge base

Urban ecology is a rapidly growing research field that has to keep pace with the pressing need to tackle the sustainability crisis. As an inherently multi-disciplinary field with close ties to practitioners and administrators, research synthesis and knowledge transfer between those different stakeholders is crucial. Knowledge maps can enhance knowledge transfer and provide orientation to researchers as well as practitioners. A promising option for developing such knowledge maps is to create hypothesis networks, which structure existing hypotheses and aggregate them according to topics and research aims. Combining expert knowledge with information from the literature, we here identify 62 research hypotheses used in urban ecology and link them in such a network. Our network clusters hypotheses into four distinct themes: (i) Urban species traits & evolution, (ii) Urban biotic communities, (iii) Urban habitats and (iv) Urban ecosystems. We discuss the potentials and limitations of this approach. All information is openly provided as part of an extendable Wikidata project, and we invite researchers, practitioners and others interested in urban ecology to contribute additional hypotheses, as well as comment and add to the existing ones. The hypothesis network and Wikidata project form a first step towards a knowledge base for urban ecology, which can be expanded and curated to benefit both practitioners and researchers

The Adaptability of Full Cast Crown in Preclinical Practice

A study was made to evaluate the adaptability of full cast crowns in preclinical practice of the fifth year students at Matsumoto Dental College in 1984. Gap space between the inner surface of the full cast crown and the surface of the abutment tooth was investigated with silicon material. The results were as follows: 1) The adaptability of crowns was better at the mesial surface than at the distal surface, and better at the lingual surface than at the buccal surface. 2) The adaptability of crowns was better at the axial walls, especialy in the middle, than in the cervical margin. 3) At the occulusal surface, the adaptability of crowns was worst

Managerial power in the German model: the case of Bertelsmann and the antecedents of neoliberalism

Our article extends the research on authoritarian neoliberalism to Germany, through a history of the Bertelsmann media corporation – sponsor and namesake of Germany’s most influential neoliberal think-tank. Our article makes three conceptual moves. Firstly, we argue that conceptualizing German neoliberalism in terms of an ‘ordoliberal paradigm’ is of limited use in explaining the rise and fall of Germany’s distinctive socio-economic model (Modell Deutschland). Instead, we locate the origins of authoritarian tendencies in the corporate power exercised by managers rather than in the power of state-backed markets imagined by ordoliberals. Secondly, we focus on the managerial innovations of Bertelsmann as a key actor enmeshed with Modell Deutschland. We show that the adaptation of business management practices of an endogenous ‘Cologne School’ empowered Bertelsmann’s postwar managers to overcome existential crises and financial constraints despite being excluded from Germany’s corporate support network. Thirdly, we argue that their further development in the 1970s also enabled Bertelsmann to curtail and circumvent the forms of labour representation associated with Modell Deutschland. Inspired by cybernetic management theories that it used to limit and control rather than revive market competition among its workforce, Bertelsmann began to act and think outside the postwar settlement between capital and labour before the settlement’s hotly-debated demise since the 1990s