52 research outputs found

    Who Owns Biological Diversity? A Brief Description of the Debate over the Rights to Biological Diversity in the North-South Context

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    For a long time, the genetic resources and biological diversity of all types of living organisms on the Earth were considered the common heritage of all of humanity. However, there have always been great imbalances in the distribution of this natural wealth. The economically most interesting original regions in terms of agriculturally useful plants are primarily in the countries of the south. The countries of the north, relatively poor in species variety, exhibited great interest in the acquisition of plant genetic resources as early as the 18th and 19th centuries – for strategic and other reasons. However, until the 20th century, the primary topic of interest was in developing new species rather than varieties within a given species. By using them throughout the millennia, coupled with targeted selection and adaptation to existent conditions, farmers worldwide have developed a great deal of variety within species. In India, for example, there were more than 30,000 varieties of rice in the mid-20th century. This multitude, developed throughout many years, is of crucial importance for the ability to adapt to future environmental conditions, continued development of varieties, and breeding to resist against disease and pests. Modern, high-technology breeding builds on that gene pool as well. Simultaneously, however, modern breeding and the accompanying varieties protection laws in the Western industrialized countries have led to a decrease in this multitude of agricultural varieties; in some cases drastic. As early as the 1970s, the U.S. Academy of Sciences stated that “the process represents a paradox of social and economic development, in that the product of technology (breeding of high-yield and uniform varieties) destroys the resources upon which technology builds” (1978, cited by Flitner 1995). Primarily for the colonial powers, botanical gardens played a key role, and served as collection points to transport useful plants between the continents and to build up or break down monopolies on products of plant origin. Until the 1980s in Germany and other countries, large-scale collective imports led to those countries maintenance of large stocks of potato, carrot and barley varieties; some at private breeding companies and some at state-established gene banks. Now more than ever, these collections are of incalculable value. They represent the current storage of raw materials of the genetic technology industry and of private plant breeders. An added advantage is that profit sharing with the indigenous farmers who have cultivated these varieties and species is normally not necessary, since the varieties were taken to the industrialized countries long before the effective date of the Convention on Biological Diversity. In 1992 at the environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Convention on Biological Diversity was finally approved to work against the erosion of genetic diversity within species which accompanies the intensification of breeding and the global success of high-yield varieties, as well as the general loss of species occasioned by industrialization and environmental pollution, all of which have taken on dangerous proportions since the 1950s. This was the first internationally binding agreement obligating all member countries to undertake measures to protect biological diversity. By mid-1999, the Convention had been signed by 175 countries. As such, the Convention has more member countries than the World Trade Organization (134). Partially due to intensive lobbying by the American biotechnology industry, the USA have thus far not become a signatory to the Convention. As early as 1983, an international agreement was reached under the leadership of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), which specifically addresses the conservation of plant genetic resources. However, the “International Undertaking for Plant Genetic Resources” is thus far not yet legally binding. It was decided in 1993 to revise the document. The technology conference, which took place in Leipzig in 1996 and was organized within the scope of the “Undertaking,” represented an important step toward integrating these two international agreements. The revisions are due to be completed by the end of 2000, and will lead to a legally binding agreement which will possibly become a part of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The adoption of the Biosafety Protocol in January 2000, which regulates the international trade in genetically modified organisms, for the first time clarified the relationship between an agreement under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the WTO and GATT agreements. It was agreed that the two agreements would stand alongside one another and be given equal weight. The agreements discussed briefly herein represent the primary international instruments and forums which address and debate the status of biological diversity and appropriate ways to deal with it. The interests of the industrialized and developing countries clash sharply in this respect, and non-governmental organizations worldwide are fighting for effective preservation endeavors, and for a sustainable use of biological diversity which deserves description with that adjective. In the following, these various agreements will be introduced briefly and their most important statements will be summarized. This will make clear which contra-dictions and discordant aspects exist between the various agreements as well as the focus of the current political debate. We conclude with a short introduction of selected actors among the non-govern-mental organizations, some of which have had great success in their yearlong work for the preservation of biological diversity, against patents on life, and for self-determined and sustainable use of these valuable resources

    Hybrid Physics and Deep Learning Model for Interpretable Vehicle State Prediction

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    Physical motion models offer interpretable predictions for the motion of vehicles. However, some model parameters, such as those related to aero- and hydrodynamics, are expensive to measure and are often only roughly approximated reducing prediction accuracy. Recurrent neural networks achieve high prediction accuracy at low cost, as they can use cheap measurements collected during routine operation of the vehicle, but their results are hard to interpret. To precisely predict vehicle states without expensive measurements of physical parameters, we propose a hybrid approach combining deep learning and physical motion models including a novel two-phase training procedure. We achieve interpretability by restricting the output range of the deep neural network as part of the hybrid model, which limits the uncertainty introduced by the neural network to a known quantity. We have evaluated our approach for the use case of ship and quadcopter motion. The results show that our hybrid model can improve model interpretability with no decrease in accuracy compared to existing deep learning approaches

    Success Factors for Recommender Systems From a Customers’ Perspective

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    Recommender systems have become an integral part of today’s ecommerce landscape and are no longer only deployed on websites but also increasingly serve as a basis for the delivery of personalized product recommendations in various communication channels. Within this paper, we present a brief overview of popular and commonly used recommender algorithms as well as current cutting-edge algorithmic advances. We examine consumers’ preferences regarding product recommendations in advertisements across different media channels within the apparel industry by applying choice-based conjoint analysis. The findings of studies for young male (n = 170) and female (n = 162) consumers show that the recommender algorithm is not necessarily of upmost importance. In contrast, the advertising channel is of highest relevance with banner advertising being the least preferred channel. Moreover, differences between male and female respondents are outlined. Finally, implications for retailers and advertisers are discussed and a brief outlook on future developments is presented

    Globalisierung in der Speisekammer - Band 1: Wege zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung im BedĂŒrfnisfeld ErnĂ€hrung [Globalisation in the Pantry - Volume 1: Ways of a Sustainable Development in the Food Sector]

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    In Band 1 der Studie "Globalisierung in der Speisekammer" befassen sich die Autoren mit den vergangenen und kĂŒnftigen Entwicklungen in Landwirtschaft und ErnĂ€hrung. Mit Blick auf die verschiedenen Akteure weisen sie auf Risiken und Handlungsmöglichkeiten hin. Zur Bewertung zukĂŒnftiger Lösungen legen die Autoren das Konzept der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung zugrunde. Es verbindet in einzigartiger Weise die Aspekte Ökologie, Ökonomie und Soziales, die alle drei fĂŒr den ErnĂ€hrungssektor eine bedeutende Rolle spielen. Die Autoren beleuchten die wirtschaftlichen Konstellationen, die fĂŒr mögliche Lösungen von entscheidender Bedeutung sind und zeigen viele positive Beispiele auf

    The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on domestic violence in Germany : a comparison of three representative population surveys

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    VerfĂŒgbar in der Sage Public Health Emergency Collection: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9849116/The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound societal and economic effects. Concerns were raised that domestic violence might increase because of the enacted infection control measures. Previous findings on this issue have been contradictory. Since existing studies mainly rely on official reports, administrative data, helpline calls, or retrospective measures, their findings are likely to prove unreliable. Few population-based surveys include pre-pandemic data, limiting their ability to test for causality regarding increasing violence. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare findings from population-representative surveys on the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children (VAC) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the data of N = 3,639 individuals living with a romantic partner and N = 1,313 parents living with at least one of their children from three German representative population surveys, we estimated average marginal effects for the temporal trends (i.e., pre vs. post infection control measures) of domestic violence separately for males and females. To minimize bias across survey waves, inverse probability weighting was used. Results show no statistically significant increase in either physical or psychological forms of IPV or VAC as a result of the implementation of COVID measures. On the contrary, the 1-year prevalence was decreasing for certain forms of violence. Our findings suggest that the assessment of the consequences of infection control measures needs an empirical basis. Further research should be conducted using high-quality data sources. Therefore, the present study should be considered a stepping stone for ongoing research efforts to examine the consequences of pandemic-related infection control measures on the general population

    Correlating Formal Semantic Models of Reo Connectors: Connector Coloring and Constraint Automata

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    Over the past decades, coordination languages have emerged for the specification and implementation of interaction protocols for communicating software components. This class of languages includes Reo, a platform for compositional construction of connectors. In recent years, various formalisms for describing the behavior of Reo connectors have come to existence, each of them serving its own purpose. Naturally, questions about how these models relate to each other arise. From a theoretical point of view, answers to these questions provide us with better insight into the fundamentals of Reo, while from a more practical perspective, these answers broaden the applicability of Reo's development tools. In this paper, we address one of these questions: we investigate the equivalence between coloring models and constraint automata, the two most dominant and practically relevant semantic models of Reo. More specifically, we define operators that transform one model to the other (and vice versa), prove their correctness, and show that they distribute over composition. To ensure that the transformation operators map one-to-one (instead of many-to-one), we extend coloring models with data constraints. Though primarily a theoretical contribution, we sketch some potential applications of our results: the broadening of the applicability of existing tools for connector verification and animation.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2011, arXiv:1108.014

    Characterization of the Arabidopsis thaliana 2-Cys peroxiredoxin interactome

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    This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Delphine Cerveau, et al, ‘Characterization of the Arabidopsis thaliana 2-Cys peroxiredoxin interactome’, Plant Science, Vol. 252, pp. 30-41, July 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2016.07.003. This manuscript version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Peroxiredoxins are ubiquitous thiol-dependent peroxidases for which chaperone and signaling roles havebeen reported in various types of organisms in recent years. In plants, the peroxidase function of thetwo typical plastidial 2-Cys peroxiredoxins (2-Cys PRX A and B) has been highlighted while the otherfunctions, particularly in ROS-dependent signaling pathways, are still elusive notably due to the lack ofknowledge of interacting partners. Using an ex vivo approach based on co-immunoprecipitation of leafextracts from Arabidopsis thaliana wild-type and mutant plants lacking 2-Cys PRX expression followedby mass spectrometry-based proteomics, 158 proteins were found associated with 2-Cys PRXs. Alreadyknown partners like thioredoxin-related electron donors (Chloroplastic Drought-induced Stress Proteinof 32 kDa, Atypical Cysteine Histidine-rich Thioredoxin 2) and enzymes involved in chlorophyll synthe-sis (Protochlorophyllide OxidoReductase B) or carbon metabolism (Fructose-1,6-BisPhosphatase) wereidentified, validating the relevance of the approach. Bioinformatic and bibliographic analyses allowedthe functional classification of the identified proteins and revealed that more than 40% are localized inplastids. The possible roles of plant 2-Cys PRXs in redox signaling pathways are discussed in relation withthe functions of the potential partners notably those involved in redox homeostasis, carbon and aminoacid metabolisms as well as chlorophyll biosynthesis.Peer reviewe

    Ascorbate-mediated regulation of growth, photoprotection, and photoinhibition in Arabidopsis thaliana.

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    The requirements for ascorbate for growth and photosynthesis were assessed under low (LL; 250 ”mol m-2 s-1) or high (HL; 1600 ”mol m-2 s-1) irradiance in wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana and two ascorbate synthesis mutants (vtc2-1 and vtc2-4) that have 30% wild-type ascorbate levels. The low ascorbate mutants had the same numbers of leaves but lower rosette area and biomass than the wild type under LL. Wild-type plants experiencing HL had higher leaf ascorbate, anthocyanin, and xanthophyll pigments than under LL. In contrast, leaf ascorbate levels were not increased under HL in the mutant lines. While the degree of oxidation measured using an in vivo redox reporter in the nuclei and cytosol of the leaf epidermal and stomatal cells was similar under both irradiances in all lines, anthocyanin levels were significantly lower in the low ascorbate mutants than in the wild type under HL. Differences in the photosynthetic responses of vtc2-1 and vtc2-4 mutants were observed. Unlike vtc2-1, the vtc2-4 mutants had wild-type zeaxanthin contents. While both low ascorbate mutants had lower levels of non-photochemical quenching of chlorophyll a fluorescence (NPQ) than the wild type under HL, qPd values were greater only in vtc2-1 leaves. Ascorbate is therefore essential for growth but not for photoprotection

    A longitudinal twin family study of the life course and individual development (TWINLIFE): Data collection and instruments of wave 1 face-to-face interviews

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    Brix J, Pupeter M, Rysina A, et al. A longitudinal twin family study of the life course and individual development (TWINLIFE): Data collection and instruments of wave 1 face-to-face interviews. TwinLife Technical Report Series. Vol 05. Bielefeld: Project TwinLife "Genetic and social causes of life chances" (UniversitÀt Bielefeld / UniversitÀt des Saarlandes); 2017
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