Entwicklung und Darstellung von Strategieoptionen zur Behandlung von Saatgut im ökologischen Landbau

Zur Erzeugung gesunden Saatgutes steht im Öko-Landbau neben präventiven Maßnahmen eine Reihe verschiedener Saatgutbehandlungsverfahren zur Verfügung (physikalische Methoden, Pflanzenextrakte, Naturstoffe und Mikroorganismenpräparate), die jedoch für die zahlreichen, wichtigen Wirt/Pathogen-Kombinationen nicht hinreichend untersucht waren. Inhalt und Ziel dieses Verbundvorhabens war es, Erfolg versprechende, aber hinsichtlich Handhabbarkeit und Wirksamkeit bislang nicht ausreichend untersuchte Varianten zu überprüfen sowie Schwellenwerte zu ermitteln, die eine Saatgutbehandlung indizieren. Um eine schnelle Übertragbarkeit wirksamer Verfahren in die Praxis zu ermöglichen, wurden neben den physikalischen Verfahren überwiegend gelistete Pflanzenstärkungsmittel untersucht. Im ersten Untersuchungsschritt wurden Klimakammer- und Gewächshausversuche angelegt. Ansätze, die sich unter diesen Modellbedingungen für die Praxistestung als geeignet erwiesen, wurden in Feldversuchen (Projekt 03OE127/2) überprüft. Für wichtige Wirt/Pathogen-Kombinationen konnten unter Modellbedingungen Behandlungsvarianten mit guten Wirkungen ausgewählt werden, die keine bis geringe negative Auswirkungen auf die Keimfähigkeit hatten. Bei Sommergerste mit Netzflecken oder Streifenkrankheit sowie bei Haferflugbrand konnten nach Behandlung mit Heißwasser, LEBERMOOSER, Ethanol, Milsana flüssig, Serenade und/oder Cedomon gute bis sehr gute Wirkungen erreicht werden. An Winterweizen mit Fusarium spp., Stagonospora nodorum bzw. Schneeschimmel sowie Winterroggen mit Schneeschimmel wurde eine Wirkung vor allem durch FZB 53, Warm- oder Heißwasserbehandlung und LEBERMOOSER erreicht. Von den besonders schwer zu bekämpfenden Krankheiten wurden Anthraknose an Lupine und Ascochyta pisi an Erbse mit Feuchtheißluft reduziert, jedoch war die Wirkung nicht ausreichend

Wind Energy and the Turbulent Nature of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Wind turbines operate in the atmospheric boundary layer, where they are exposed to the turbulent atmospheric flows. As the response time of wind turbine is typically in the range of seconds, they are affected by the small scale intermittent properties of the turbulent wind. Consequently, basic features which are known for small-scale homogeneous isotropic turbulence, and in particular the well-known intermittency problem, have an important impact on the wind energy conversion process. We report on basic research results concerning the small-scale intermittent properties of atmospheric flows and their impact on the wind energy conversion process. The analysis of wind data shows strongly intermittent statistics of wind fluctuations. To achieve numerical modeling a data-driven superposition model is proposed. For the experimental reproduction and adjustment of intermittent flows a so-called active grid setup is presented. Its ability is shown to generate reproducible properties of atmospheric flows on the smaller scales of the laboratory conditions of a wind tunnel. As an application example the response dynamics of different anemometer types are tested. To achieve a proper understanding of the impact of intermittent turbulent inflow properties on wind turbines we present methods of numerical and stochastic modeling, and compare the results to measurement data. As a summarizing result we find that atmospheric turbulence imposes its intermittent features on the complete wind energy conversion process. Intermittent turbulence features are not only present in atmospheric wind, but are also dominant in the loads on the turbine, i.e. rotor torque and thrust, and in the electrical power output signal. We conclude that profound knowledge of turbulent statistics and the application of suitable numerical as well as experimental methods are necessary to grasp these unique features (...)Comment: Accepted by the Journal of Turbulence on May 17, 201

CEDIM Risk Explorer ? a map server solution in the project "Risk Map Germany"

International audienceThe project "Risk Map Germany" at the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) aims at visualizing hazards, vulnerabilities and risks associated with natural and man made hazards. CEDIM as an interdisciplinary project unified various expertise like earthquake, storm and flood disaster research. Our aim was to visualize the manifold data exploration in thematic maps. The implemented Web-GIS solution "CEDIM Risk Explorer" represents the map visualizations of the different risk research. This Web-GIS integrates results from interdisciplinary work as maps of hazard, vulnerability and risk in one application and offers therefore new cognitions to the user by enabling visual comparisons. The present paper starts with a project introduction and a literature review of distributed GIS environments. Further the methods of map realization and visualization in the selected technical solution is worked out. Finally, the conclusions give the perspectives for future developments to the "CEDIM Risk Explorer"

Incompressible image registration using divergence-conforming B-splines

Anatomically plausible image registration often requires volumetric preservation. Previous approaches to incompressible image registration have exploited relaxed constraints, ad hoc optimisation methods or practically intractable computational schemes. Divergence-free velocity fields have been used to achieve incompressibility in the continuous domain, although, after discretisation, no guarantees have been provided. In this paper, we introduce stationary velocity fields (SVFs) parameterised by divergence-conforming B-splines in the context of image registration. We demonstrate that sparse linear constraints on the parameters of such divergence-conforming B-Splines SVFs lead to being exactly divergence-free at any point of the continuous spatial domain. In contrast to previous approaches, our framework can easily take advantage of modern solvers for constrained optimisation, symmetric registration approaches, arbitrary image similarity and additional regularisation terms. We study the numerical incompressibility error for the transformation in the case of an Euler integration, which gives theoretical insights on the improved accuracy error over previous methods. We evaluate the proposed framework using synthetically deformed multimodal brain images, and the STACOM11 myocardial tracking challenge. Accuracy measurements demonstrate that our method compares favourably with state-of-the-art methods whilst achieving volume preservation.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 201

Accommodating to English-medium instruction in teacher education in Finland

This study analyses teacher educators’ and student teachers’ perceptions of teaching and learning situations in an international English as a lingua franca (ELF) context in an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher education programme in Finland. The analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that the participants perceived a partial reversal of traditional teacher and student roles; students assisted voluntarily and teaching became reciprocal. Some teachers reflected on having used typical strategies in ELF context such as code-switching to further communication and engage students. However, teachers’ lack of fluency was sometimes considered causing frustration among students and affected negatively their feeling of being professional teacher educators. Nevertheless, by increasing more learner-led activities, ELF can positively affect teacher education pedagogy.Peer reviewe

Geochemical Soil Atlas of Switzerland - Distribution of Toxic Elements

Chemical elements such as copper and molybdenum are essential for animal and human health but may become toxic at elevated concentrations depending on the exposure and intake rate. Other elements such as mercury pose a threat to human health at already low concentrations. The soil acts as the main source of these elements for plant uptake and is thus driving accumulation along the food chain. However, in Switzerland, no nationwide information on elemental distributions in soils has existed up to now. The geochemical soil atlas of Switzerland will fill this gap by presenting the concentration ranges and the spatial distribution of 20 elements in the topsoil. In this summary, we present the methodological approaches and some main findings of the atlas with a focus on toxic elements as well as elements that can be or are toxic at higher concentrations