Evolutionary history of Hypericum perforatum L.

The genus Hypericum is a highly diverse group of about 500 species. Among the Eurasian taxa, Hypericum perforatum L. and H. maculatum Crantz are representative examples with a largely overlapping distribution area in Central Europe. As a medicinal plant and as a model plant for apomixis H. perforatum is a target of extended research. An important step to understand those complex processes is to illuminate the evolutionary history of H. perforatum. We were able to identify putative ancestral, fully sexual and diploid populations of H. perforatum. The H. perforatum populations were split into two major gene pools. An ancient contribution of H. maculatum or any other species to these gene pools and to the early evolution of H .perforatum could not be confirmed. However, we were able to show ongoing introgression and massive gene flow between H. perforatum and H. maculatum. The geographical patterns observed in our data showed that (i) haplotype and nucleotide diversities are very low in Northern Europe, suggesting that single haplotypes rapidly colonized large areas; (ii) genetic diversity in South Europe is higher than in North Europe, suggesting that there were refugial zones during the Pleistocene

Data-Mining in der Astroteilchenphysik

IceCube is as neutrino telescope deposited in the glacial ice at the geographic south pole with an instrumented volume of one cubic kilometer. This work presents results on the energy unfolding of muon neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in its 86 string configuration. For the unfolding a sample of high quality muon neutrinos with a purity above 99.2% using a random forest was derived. The unfolding was performed using a second derivative Tikhonov regularization within the software TRUEE. The unfolding covers an energy range of more than 4 decades starting at 125 GeV and ending at 3.2 PeV

Fulvia - Leben, Wirken und Diffamierung einer römischen Politikerin

Thema dieser Arbeit ist Fulvia, eine einflussreiche Frau, die im 1. Jh. v. Chr. in Rom lebte. In dritter Ehe mit dem Triumvir M. Antonius verheiratet, erreichte sie nach Caesars Tod eine für eine Frau bemerkenswert mächtige Position. Aus verschiedenen Gründen wurde sie von antiken Autoren höchst negativ dargestellt. Dieses Bild wirkt bis in die moderne Forschung nach und soll durch die Untersuchung aller vorhandenen Quellen in dieser Arbeit relativiert werden.Subject of this thesis is Fulvia, an influential woman who lived in Rome in the 1st century B. C. During her third marriage to the triumvir M. Antonius and after Caesar’s death Fulvia reached a highly powerful position, which was of course extremely uncommon for a woman. Due to various reasons ancient authors described her in a very negative way. This picture of her still controls modern research. An accurate analysis of all existing sources conducted in this thesis should try to put her negative image into perspective

Austrian model approach to assess quality of post-mortem feedback-information systems in pigs

A novel quality assurance approach was tested for its applicability to assess data validity and meat inspection performance by means of modeling and training of official meat inspectors (OMIs). General linear mixed models (GLMM) were used to estimate the variance in 20 selected lesions assessed by 12 official meat inspectors for 247.507 pigs

An improved method for measuring muon energy using the truncated mean of dE/dx

The measurement of muon energy is critical for many analyses in large Cherenkov detectors, particularly those that involve separating extraterrestrial neutrinos from the atmospheric neutrino background. Muon energy has traditionally been determined by measuring the specific energy loss (dE/dx) along the muon's path and relating the dE/dx to the muon energy. Because high-energy muons (E_mu > 1 TeV) lose energy randomly, the spread in dE/dx values is quite large, leading to a typical energy resolution of 0.29 in log10(E_mu) for a muon observed over a 1 km path length in the IceCube detector. In this paper, we present an improved method that uses a truncated mean and other techniques to determine the muon energy. The muon track is divided into separate segments with individual dE/dx values. The elimination of segments with the highest dE/dx results in an overall dE/dx that is more closely correlated to the muon energy. This method results in an energy resolution of 0.22 in log10(E_mu), which gives a 26% improvement. This technique is applicable to any large water or ice detector and potentially to large scintillator or liquid argon detectors.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure

Search for Relativistic Magnetic Monopoles with IceCube

We present the first results in the search for relativistic magnetic monopoles with the IceCube detector, a subsurface neutrino telescope located in the South Polar ice cap containing a volume of 1 km$^{3}$. This analysis searches data taken on the partially completed detector during 2007 when roughly 0.2 km$^{3}$ of ice was instrumented. The lack of candidate events leads to an upper limit on the flux of relativistic magnetic monopoles of \Phi_{\mathrm{90%C.L.}}\sim 3\e{-18}\fluxunits for $\beta\geq0.8$. This is a factor of 4 improvement over the previous best experimental flux limits up to a Lorentz boost $\gamma$ below $10^{7}$. This result is then interpreted for a wide range of mass and kinetic energy values.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. v2 is minor text edits, no changes to resul

Search for non-relativistic Magnetic Monopoles with IceCube

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a large Cherenkov detector instrumenting $1\,\mathrm{km}^3$ of Antarctic ice. The detector can be used to search for signatures of particle physics beyond the Standard Model. Here, we describe the search for non-relativistic, magnetic monopoles as remnants of the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) era shortly after the Big Bang. These monopoles may catalyze the decay of nucleons via the Rubakov-Callan effect with a cross section suggested to be in the range of $10^{-27}\,\mathrm{cm^2}$ to $10^{-21}\,\mathrm{cm^2}$. In IceCube, the Cherenkov light from nucleon decays along the monopole trajectory would produce a characteristic hit pattern. This paper presents the results of an analysis of first data taken from May 2011 until May 2012 with a dedicated slow-particle trigger for DeepCore, a subdetector of IceCube. A second analysis provides better sensitivity for the brightest non-relativistic monopoles using data taken from May 2009 until May 2010. In both analyses no monopole signal was observed. For catalysis cross sections of $10^{-22}\,(10^{-24})\,\mathrm{cm^2}$ the flux of non-relativistic GUT monopoles is constrained up to a level of $\Phi_{90} \le 10^{-18}\,(10^{-17})\,\mathrm{cm^{-2}s^{-1}sr^{-1}}$ at a 90% confidence level, which is three orders of magnitude below the Parker bound. The limits assume a dominant decay of the proton into a positron and a neutral pion. These results improve the current best experimental limits by one to two orders of magnitude, for a wide range of assumed speeds and catalysis cross sections.Comment: 20 pages, 20 figure

The search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission with IceCube-DeepCore

We present the results of a search for astrophysical sources of brief transient neutrino emission using IceCube and DeepCore data acquired between 2012 May 15 and 2013 April 30. While the search methods employed in this analysis are similar to those used in previous IceCube point source searches, the data set being examined consists of a sample of predominantly sub-TeV muon-neutrinos from the Northern Sky (-5 degrees < delta < 90 degrees) obtained through a novel event selection method. This search represents a first attempt by IceCube to identify astrophysical neutrino sources in this relatively unexplored energy range. The reconstructed direction and time of arrival of neutrino events are used to search for any significant self-correlation in the data set. The data revealed no significant source of transient neutrino emission. This result has been used to construct limits at timescales ranging from roughly 1 s to 10 days for generic soft-spectra transients. We also present limits on a specific model of neutrino emission from soft jets in core-collapse supernovae