Reorganisation der Medienwirtschaft durch Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement? Explorative Analysen der Kommunikation von Unternehmensverantwortung

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung, die Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement für die anstehende weitere Reorganisation der Medienwirtschaft haben kann. Dazu wurde in zwei explorativen Studien einerseits die "interne" Selbstberichterstattung verschiedener Industrien in Bezug auf Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) der Vereinten Nationen untersucht, andererseits die "externe" Medienberichterstattung zu diesem Thema. Beide Studien liefern interessante Einblicke, die sowohl in Bezug auf Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation als auch auf Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement interessante neue Erkenntnisse liefern. Besonders deutlich werden diesbezüglich zahlreiche Defizite bezogen auf die kritische Selbstreflexion gerade in der Medienindustrie.This article deals with the significance that sustainability management can have for the upcoming further reorganization of the media industry. To this end, two explorative studies were conducted to examine, on the one hand, the "internal" self-reporting of various industries with regard to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and, on the other hand, the "external" media reporting on this topic. Both studies provide interesting insights that yield interesting new findings with regard to both sustainability communication and sustainability management. In this regard, numerous deficits related to critical self-reflection become particularly clear, especially in the media industry

Exploring the socio-economic dynamics and innovation capacities of rural food and farming microbusinesses

Non-technical summary: This report provides a range of data-informed insights significant to developing rural food systems, agricultural sustainability and rural innovation. We have found that the participants from the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) tend to be younger than their farming peers and run smaller enterprises. They are more likely to be new entrants and do not necessarily identify as 'farmers' having started to produce sustainable, healthy, local food. Most operate a portfolio of enterprises diversified mainly into the food system, processing and retailing food rather than selling along the food chain or servicing the agricultural sector. To that extent, they constitute the local food sector, with 90% selling their products within 25 miles of their business and 40% within five miles. Although many are owner-operators, a sizeable minority employ others. Given the scope and demands of these portfolios of enterprises, diverse skills and a highly entrepreneurial outlook are standard requirements. These businesses' social and environmental engagements are the primary motivation for the business operators, with profit as means to these ends. Volunteering opportunities are a crucial offer from these businesses, which brings a cascade of benefits to all those involved. Improving and regenerating the farmed environment is an equal priority, with aspirations to protect the soil, deepen the resilience of the farm biodiversity and minimise pollution. In these ways, these diverse, complex and sophisticated clusters of enterprises are making a distinctive contribution to the rural economy. The challenges reported are accessing appropriate finance, under-developed markets, insufficient targeted business support, inflexible planning arrangements, and agri-environmental schemes that do not embrace this group. This group falls between many policy stools, not traditional farmers, but not food or catering businesses. Yet, they are focused on delivering many of the ’public goods’ to which government policy is committed. The resilience and innovation they bring to rural areas are essential to the diversity of businesses that help rural areas thrive. We make 10 suggestions as to how rural actors – state, private and civil society – could provide support to these microbusinesses

The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone

We report on a search for artificial narrowband signals of 20 stars within the restricted Earth Transit Zone as a part of the ten-year Breakthrough Listen (BL) search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The restricted Earth Transit Zone is the region of the sky from which an observer would see the Earth transit the Sun with an impact parameter of less than 0.5. This region of the sky is geometrically unique, providing a potential way for an extraterrestrial intelligence to discover the Solar System. The targets were nearby (7-143 pc) and the search covered an electromagnetic frequency range of 3.95-8.00 GHz. We used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope to perform these observations with the standard BL data recorder. We searched these data for artificial narrowband ($\sim$Hz) signals with Doppler drift rates of $\pm 20$ Hz s$^{-1}$. We found one set of potential candidate signals on the target HIP 109656 which was then found to be consistent with known properties of anthropogenic radio frequency interference. We find no evidence for radio technosignatures from extraterrestrial intelligence in our observations. The observing campaign achieved a minimum detectable flux which would have allowed detections of emissions that were $10^{-3}$ to $0.88$ times as powerful as the signaling capability of the Arecibo radar transmitter, for the nearest and furthest stars respectively. We conclude that at least $8\%$ of the systems in the restricted Earth Transit Zone within 150 pc do not possess the type of transmitters searched in this survey. To our knowledge, this is the first targeted search for extraterrestrial intelligence of the restricted Earth Transit Zone. All data used in this paper are publicly available via the Breakthrough Listen Public Data Archive (http://seti.berkeley.edu/bldr2).Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Ap

A 4-8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures

Radio searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have mainly targeted the discovery of narrowband continuous-wave beacons and artificially dispersed broadband bursts. Periodic pulse trains, in comparison to the above technosignature morphologies, offer an energetically efficient means of interstellar transmission. A rotating beacon at the Galactic Center (GC), in particular, would be highly advantageous for galaxy-wide communications. Here, we present blipss, a CPU-based open-source software that uses a fast folding algorithm (FFA) to uncover channel-wide periodic signals in radio dynamic spectra. Running blipss on 4.5 hours of 4-8 GHz data gathered with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, we searched the central 6' of our Galaxy for kHz-wide signals with periods between 11-100 s and duty cycles ($\delta$) between 10-50%. Our searches, to our knowledge, constitute the first FFA exploration for periodic alien technosignatures. We report a non-detection of channel-wide periodic signals in our data. Thus, we constrain the abundance of 4-8 GHz extraterrestrial transmitters of kHz-wide periodic pulsed signals to fewer than one in about 600,000 stars at the GC above a 7$\sigma$ equivalent isotropic radiated power of $\approx 2 \times 10^{18}$ W at $\delta \simeq 10\%$. From an astrophysics standpoint, blipss, with its utilization of a per-channel FFA, can enable the discovery of signals with exotic radio frequency sweeps departing from the standard cold plasma dispersion law.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, published in AJ, in press (http://seti.berkeley.edu/blipss/

On the Location and Composition of the Dust in the MCG-6-30-15 Warm Absorber

Hubble Space Telescope images of MCG-6-30-15 show a dust lane crossing the galaxy just below the nucleus. In this paper, we argue that this dust lane is responsible for the observed reddening of the nuclear emission and the Fe I edge hinted at in the Chandra spectrum of MCG-6-30-15. We further suggest that the gas within the dust lane can comprise much of the low ionization component (i.e., the one contributing the O VII edge) of the observed warm absorber. Moreover, placing the warm absorbing material at such distances (hundreds of pc) can account for the small outflow velocities of the low ionization absorption lines as well as the constancy of the O VIII edge. Photoionization models of a dusty interstellar gas cloud (with a column appropriate for the reddening toward MCG-6-30-15) using a toy Seyfert 1 spectral energy distribution show that it is possible to obtain a significant O VII edge (\tau~0.2) if the material is ~150 pc from the ionizing source. For MCG-6-30-15, such a distance is consistent with the observed dust lane. The current data on MCG-6-30-15 is unable to constrain the dust composition within the warm absorber. Astronomical silicate is a viable candidate, but there are indications of a very low O abundance in the dust, which is inconsistent with a silicate origin. If true, this may indicate that there were repeated cycles of grain destruction and growth from shocks in the interstellar medium of MCG-6-30-15. Pure iron grains are an unlikely dust constituent due to the limit on their abundance in the Galaxy, yet they cannot be ruled out. The high column densities inferred from the highly ionized zone of the warm absorber implies that this gas is dust-free.Comment: 7 pages, 3 Figures, A&A accepte

Report on the STECF Expert Working Group 17-12 Fisheries Dependent Information: ‘New-FDI’

The STECF expert working group (EWG) on Fisheries Dependant Information (FDI) took place in JRC, Ispra from 23 to 27 October 2017 to review the data transmitted by Member States under a new data call (‘New-FDI’). The new data call specification was designed with three broad aims in mind i) Compatibility between the New-FDI data and the data held in the Fleet Economic database. ii) Ability to encompass all EU registered vessels including those from the Mediterranean, Black Sea and external waters fleets. iii) Ability to assess effects of management measures. The main purpose of the EWG was to judge if the call specification was appropriate to accomplish the above aims and to consider any difficulties encountered by member states in fulfilling the data call. Two terms of reference also allowed trial analyses to be conducted of a type relevant to the third broad aim. The EWG addressed all Terms of Reference during the meeting and drew conclusions on the modifications required for the New-FDI data call going forwards. Prior to the EWG it had been agreed by STECF Bureau that the report of the meeting would not be presented to STECF for approval as an STECF report but published separately (as a JRC technical report). This report therefore presents the data, methods observations and findings of an EWG of the STECF but the findings presented in this report do not necessarily constitute the opinion of the STECF or reflect the views of the European Commission and in no way anticipate the Commission’s future policy in this area.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Mystery of fatal 'staggering disease' unravelled: novel rustrela virus causes severe meningoencephalomyelitis in domestic cats

‘Staggering disease’ is a neurological disease entity considered a threat to European domestic cats (Felis catus) for almost five decades. However, its aetiology has remained obscure. Rustrela virus (RusV), a relative of rubella virus, has recently been shown to be associated with encephalitis in a broad range of mammalian hosts. Here, we report the detection of RusV RNA and antigen by metagenomic sequencing, RT-qPCR, in-situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry in brain tissues of 27 out of 29 cats with non-suppurative meningoencephalomyelitis and clinical signs compatible with’staggering disease’ from Sweden, Austria, and Germany, but not in non-affected control cats. Screening of possible reservoir hosts in Sweden revealed RusV infection in wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus). Our work indicates that RusV is the long-sought cause of feline ‘staggering disease’. Given its reported broad host spectrum and considerable geographic range, RusV may be the aetiological agent of neuropathologies in further mammals, possibly even including humans