The BBCH system to coding the phenological growth stages of plants – history and publications –

Die Entwicklungsstadien der wichtigsten Kulturpflanzen wurden in den vergangenen 19 Jahren von zahlreichen Wissenschaftlern nach den Prinzipien der erweiterten BBCH-Skala beschrieben. Die BBCH-Skalen sind inzwischen weltweit bekannt und werden von Wissenschaft, Administration und Praxis in Landwirtschaft und Gartenbau ebenso genutzt, wie in der Phänologie als integrative Wissenschaft im Bereich Umwelt, Meteorologie und Klimatologie. Diese Tatsache weist darauf hin, dass Zielsetzung und Hoffnung, die seit dem Beginn der Arbeit damit verbunden waren, sich erfüllt haben. Die BBCH-Skalen haben sich als hilfreich und praktisch erwiesen. Das Ziel, die Harmonisierung in der Anwendung von Dezimalcodes für die Beschreibung der phänologischen Entwicklungsstadien von Kulturpflanzen und Unkräutern herbeizuführen, wurde erreicht. Sie erfüllten auch die Hoffnung der Initiatoren, damit zur Verbesserung der internationalen agrarwissenschaftlichen und interdisziplinären Kommunikation beizutragen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit soll die Geschichte der BBCH-Skalen aufgezeigt werden, weil diese Einblick in die Hintergründe ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung erlaubt. Alle Original-Publikationen werden mit ihren Literaturquellen zusammenfassend dargelegt. Die Arbeit soll die unterschiedliche Nutzung der BBCH-Skalen in den verschiedenen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen dokumentieren. Es soll deutlich werden, dass der weltweite Erfolg der BBCH-Skalen vielen Wissenschaftlern rund um den Globus zu verdanken ist.The growth stages of development of many cultivated plants have been described by numerous scientists according to the principles of the extended BBCH scale within the last 19 years. The BBCH scales are now well- known worldwide and are used by research, administration and practise in agriculture and horticulture, as in the phenology as an integrative science in environment, meteorology and climatology. This fact indicates that the basic objectives and hope have been reached, justifying the practical approach taken by the authors of this scale. The BBCH scale is a contribution to improve the communication between different groups of scientists and to allow the interchange of data and scientific results in a transparent way. The BBCH scales have turned out helpful and practical. The aim to cause the harmonisation in the application of decimal codes for the description of the phenological growth stages of plants and weeds was reached. They also fulfilled the hope of the initiators to contribute with it to the improvement of the international agrarian-scientific and interdisciplinary communication. This paper will describe the history and background of the BBCH scales. The original publications are described and explained with reference of the original literature sources. The paper will describe the different area of use of the scales and list the different scientific disciplines using them. The worldwide success of the BBCH scales is the work of many scientists around the globe

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Semantics of Form-Oriented Analysis Am Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik

In this thesis we present Form-Oriented Analysis, a new analysis technique for an ubiquitous type of business applications. We define a precise semantic class of applications we call submit/response style applications, under which typical enterprise applications and web applications can be subsumed. Applications in this class are characterized by their type of user interface. The user of a submit/response style application fills out an electronic form, submits it to the system and receives a response page with data and new forms. The user then again submits data, partly under usage of the previously received data and so forth. We model such a submit/response style application with a bipartite finite state machine. This bipartite state machine is depicted in the key artifact of Form-Oriented Analysis, the form chart. Our analysis technique is firmly based on existing well-understood analysis notions and techniques, and consequently extends these methods. This thesis introduces Form-Oriented Analysis by defining and explaining the visual artifacts of our technique. Specifically, th

Broadening the focus: The case for lifestyle journalism as a field of scholarly inquiry

This introduction to the special issue outlines the case for an increased focus on studying lifestyle journalism, an area of journalism which, despite its rapid rise over recent decades, has not received much attention from scholars in journalism studies. Criticised for being antithetical to public interest and watchdog notions of journalism, lifestyle journalism is still ridiculed by some as being unworthy of being associated with the term journalism. However, in outlining the field's development and a critique of definitions of journalism, this paper argues that there are a number of good reasons for broadening the focus. In fact, lifestyle journalism?here defined as a distinct journalistic field that primarily addresses its audiences as consumers, providing them with factual information and advice, often in entertaining ways, about goods and services they can use in their daily lives?has much to offer for scholarly inquiry and is of increasing relevance for society