Survey 2016 of the Residue Situation in Turkish Organic Products

Since December 2011, ETO and FiBL are jointly implementing the German-Turkish Bilateral Cooperation - Organic Agriculture. The overall aim of this project is to effectively and efficiently ensure the quality of Turkish organic food produced for the European market. Information from a representative sample of selected private operators of the organic supply chains together with official data from competent authorities about unwanted residues detected in organic products from Turkey have been determined as a major indicator for the extent of reaching the project aim. For this reason, a survey was conducted in late 2013 among German and Turkish trading companies, control bodies and the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE). The study concluded that 50 % of respondents believed that the residue situation had improved significantly since 2011. Moreover, the EU's Rapid Alert System for 2013 showed no abnormalities for Turkish organic products. Interviews during the GFA project progress audit in Turkey in June 2015 confirmed the significant reduction of residue findings and of other suspected cases in Turkish imported organic products. To hedge these findings, a further opinion poll among Central European and Turkish trading companies and institutions was carried out in the present exit phase of the project (early 2016). The same questions were used in both surveys. However, minor changes were made in 2016, to adjust to the different project phase. The objective of the second survey was to collect up-to-date data which can be used for the performance review of the project and for developments beyond the scope of the project. The second survey covered the years 2014 – 15 (after the improvement measures of the project were implemented). As a reference, the year 2011 (before the project activities were started) was also included in the second survey

Multiplex LA-ICP-MS bio-imaging of brain tissue of a parkinsonian mouse model stained with metal-coded affinity-tagged antibodies and coated with indium-spiked commercial inks as internal standards

SH received financial support by the “Bundesministerium fuer Wirtschaft und Energie, Projektnummer MNPQ 09/10″.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Der Klassizismus und die Moden. Autonomie- versus Warenästhetik in der Goethezeit

Gibhardt BR. Der Klassizismus und die Moden. Autonomie- versus Warenästhetik in der Goethezeit. In: Neumann B, ed. Präsenz und Evidenz fremder Dinge im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Vol 19. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag; 2015: 497-511

Next Generation Sequencing-Based Analysis of Repetitive DNA in the Model Dioceous Plant Silene latifolia

BACKGROUND: Silene latifolia is a dioecious [corrected] plant with well distinguished X and Y chromosomes that is used as a model to study sex determination and sex chromosome evolution in plants. However, efficient utilization of this species has been hampered by the lack of large-scale sequencing resources and detailed analysis of its genome composition, especially with respect to repetitive DNA, which makes up the majority of the genome. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We performed low-pass 454 sequencing followed by similarity-based clustering of 454 reads in order to identify and characterize sequences of all major groups of S. latifolia repeats. Illumina sequencing data from male and female genomes were also generated and employed to quantify the genomic proportions of individual repeat families. The majority of identified repeats belonged to LTR-retrotransposons, constituting about 50% of genomic DNA, with Ty3/gypsy elements being more frequent than Ty1/copia. While there were differences between the male and female genome in the abundance of several repeat families, their overall repeat composition was highly similar. Specific localization patterns on sex chromosomes were found for several satellite repeats using in situ hybridization with probes based on k-mer frequency analysis of Illumina sequencing data. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides comprehensive information about the sequence composition and abundance of repeats representing over 60% of the S. latifolia genome. The results revealed generally low divergence in repeat composition between the sex chromosomes, which is consistent with their relatively recent origin. In addition, the study generated various data resources that are available for future exploration of the S. latifolia genome

Catching heuristics are optimal control policies

Two seemingly contradictory theories attempt to explain how humans move to intercept an airborne ball. One theory posits that humans predict the ball trajectory to optimally plan future actions; the other claims that, instead of performing such complicated computations, humans employ heuristics to reactively choose appro- priate actions based on immediate visual feedback. In this paper, we show that interception strategies appearing to be heuristics can be understood as computa- tional solutions to the optimal control problem faced by a ball-catching agent acting under uncertainty. Modeling catching as a continuous partially observable Markov decision process and employing stochastic optimal control theory, we discover that the four main heuristics described in the literature are optimal solutions if the catcher has sufficient time to continuously visually track the ball. Specifically, by varying model parameters such as noise, time to ground contact, and perceptual latency, we show that different strategies arise under different circumstances. The catcher’s policy switches between generating reactive and predictive behavior based on the ratio of system to observation noise and the ratio between reaction time and task duration. Thus, we provide a rational account of human ball-catching behavior and a unifying explanation for seemingly contradictory theories of target interception on the basis of stochastic optimal control