Über die funktionale Klassifikation von Arbeit (On a functional classification of work)

"The author develops a new variant of the classification of work. The starting point for this is the organisation for which a function is performed. Here a function is understood in the sense of a position that someone holds, this position being determined in the dimensions of the specialist task field and the hierarchical level. In particular for job placement processes a concept is presented in which the information on the organisation is supplemented with details about the industry and information on personal know-how is supplemented with details about education and training. The systematic approach to classifying the diverse areas of tasks in an establishment proceeds in a top-down manner. The functional classification differs from previous occupational conceptions on the one hand by its starting point of the 'organisation', on the other hand by the reduction to the relationship structure within the organisation: associations of psychological and ethical-moral factors that are always conjured up by the term occupation are left out of account. Instead of this a model of formalised descriptions of the particular framework of responsibility and task area are provided. In this way the activity in various organisations can be made comparable and the preselection of applicants can be organised more rationally." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Klassifikation, Arbeit, Tätigkeitsmerkmale, Berufskonzept, Anforderungsprofil, Qualifikationsprofil

THE INFLUENCE OF SOLE LONGITUDINAL BENDING STIFFNESS ON PUSHOFF BIOMECHANICS IN FULL EFFORT LINEAR ACCELERATION

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of longitudinal bending stiffness (LBS) alterations of running shoes in the initial push-off of the front leg in a linear acceleration task. 14 male sport students were analysed using a full body 3D motion analysis in combination with ground reaction force measurements during the initial step of a full effort 5 m sprint. lncreasing LBS did not lead to a significant increase of normalized average acceleration power, but affected MTP and ankle biomechanics. Push-off time was systematically increased with increased LBS. Average ankle joint moments were reduced, even though average GRF lever arms were increased with higher LBS. Increasing the power generation capacities of ankle plantar flexors combined with LBS increase might be a promising combination to improve acceleration performance

Deriving Historical Temperature and Precipitation Time Series For Alaska Climate Divisions Via Climatologically Aided Interpolation

This paper describes the construction of temperature and precipitation time series for climate divisions in Alaska for 1925-2015. Designed for NOAA climate monitoring applications, these new series build upon the divisional data of Bieniek et al. (2014) through the inclusion of additional observing stations, temperature bias adjustments, supplemental temperature elements, and enhanced computational techniques (i.e., climatologically aided interpolation). The new NOAA series are in general agreement with Bieniek et al. (2014), differences being attributable to the underlying methods used to compute divisional averages in each dataset. Trends in minimum temperature are significant in most divisions whereas trends in maximum temperature are generally not significant in the eastern third of the state. Likewise, the statewide rate of warming in minimum temperature (0.158°C dec-1) is roughly 50% larger than that of maximum temperature (0.101 °C dec-1). Trends in precipitation are not significant for most divisions or for the state as a whole

Impacts of Europe's Changing Climate - 2008 Indicator Based Assessment

Background and objective This report is an update and extension of the 2004 EEA report 'Impacts of Europe's changing climate'. Since 2004, there has been much progress in monitoring and assessing the impacts of climate change in Europe. The objectives of this report are to present this new information on past and projected climate change and its impacts through indicators, to identify the sectors and regions most vulnerable to climate change with a need for adaptation, and to highlight the need to enhance monitoring and reduce uncertainties in climate and impact modelling. To reflect the broadening of coverage of indicators and make use of the best available expertise, the report has been developed jointly by EEA, JRC and WHO Regional Office for Europe. Global developments in science and policy The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 4th Assessment report reconfirmed and strengthened earlier scientific findings about key aspects of climate change. Increased monitoring and research efforts have enhanced understanding of climate change impacts and vulnerability. At the 2007 Bali climate change conference, the urgency of responding effectively to climate change through both adaptation and mitigation activities was recognised by a larger number of countries than ever before. The EU has proposed a target of a maximum global temperature increase of 2 °C above the pre-industrial level. A post-Kyoto regime that would include both adaptation and mitigation is expected to be agreed by end of 2009. There has been progress in implementing the Nairobi work programme on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, developed to help countries improve their understanding of climate change impacts. European developments in science and policy European research on impacts and vulnerability in the context of national programmes and the 5th and 6th Framework Programmes has advanced considerably, making a major contribution to international assessments such as those of the IPCC, the Arctic Impact Assessment, the UNEP Global Outlook for Ice and Snow and WHO reports. New research programmes focusing on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation are currently being developed in many member countries and in the context of the 7th Framework Programme. On the policy side, the European Commission published its Green Paper on adaptation in 2007, to be followed by a White Paper by the end of 2008 with concrete proposals for action. This report The main part of this report summarises the relevance, past trends and future projections for about 40 indicators (from 22 in the 2004 report). The indicators address atmosphere and climate, the cryosphere, marine systems, terrestrial systems and biodiversity, agriculture and forestry, soil, water quantity (including floods and droughts), water quality and fresh water ecology, and human health. After a brief introduction, several chapters deal in a general way with the changes in the climate system and the observed and projected impacts. The report ends with chapters on adaptation and the economics of climate change impacts and adaptation strategies and policies, and data availability and uncertainty.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Challenges in quantifying changes in the global water cycle

Human influences have likely already impacted the large-scale water cycle but natural variability and observational uncertainty are substantial. It is essential to maintain and improve observational capabilities to better characterize changes. Understanding observed changes to the global water cycle is key to predicting future climate changes and their impacts. While many datasets document crucial variables such as precipitation, ocean salinity, runoff, and humidity, most are uncertain for determining long-term changes. In situ networks provide long time-series over land but are sparse in many regions, particularly the tropics. Satellite and reanalysis datasets provide global coverage, but their long-term stability is lacking. However, comparisons of changes among related variables can give insights into the robustness of observed changes. For example, ocean salinity, interpreted with an understanding of ocean processes, can help cross-validate precipitation. Observational evidence for human influences on the water cycle is emerging, but uncertainties resulting from internal variability and observational errors are too large to determine whether the observed and simulated changes are consistent. Improvements to the in situ and satellite observing networks that monitor the changing water cycle are required, yet continued data coverage is threatened by funding reductions. Uncertainty both in the role of anthropogenic aerosols, and due to large climate variability presently limits confidence in attribution of observed changes

Benchmarking homogenization algorithms for monthly data

The COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action ES0601: Advances in homogenization methods of climate series: an integrated approach (HOME) has executed a blind intercomparison and validation study for monthly homogenization algorithms. Time series of monthly temperature and precipitation were evaluated because of their importance for climate studies. The algorithms were validated against a realistic benchmark dataset. Participants provided 25 separate homogenized contributions as part of the blind study as well as 22 additional solutions submitted after the details of the imposed inhomogeneities were revealed. These homogenized datasets were assessed by a number of performance metrics including i) the centered root mean square error relative to the true homogeneous values at various averaging scales, ii) the error in linear trend estimates and iii) traditional contingency skill scores. The metrics were computed both using the individual station series as well as the network average regional series. The performance of the contributions depends significantly on the error metric considered. Although relative homogenization algorithms typically improve the homogeneity of temperature data, only the best ones improve precipitation data. Moreover, state-of-the-art relative homogenization algorithms developed to work with an inhomogeneous reference are shown to perform best. The study showed that currently automatic algorithms can perform as well as manual ones

All-sky search for time-integrated neutrino emission from astrophysical sources with 7 years of IceCube data

Since the recent detection of an astrophysical flux of high energy neutrinos, the question of its origin has not yet fully been answered. Much of what is known about this flux comes from a small event sample of high neutrino purity, good energy resolution, but large angular uncertainties. In searches for point-like sources, on the other hand, the best performance is given by using large statistics and good angular reconstructions. Track-like muon events produced in neutrino interactions satisfy these requirements. We present here the results of searches for point-like sources with neutrinos using data acquired by the IceCube detector over seven years from 2008--2015. The discovery potential of the analysis in the northern sky is now significantly below $E_\nu^2d\phi/dE_\nu=10^{-12}\:\mathrm{TeV\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}}$, on average $38\%$ lower than the sensitivity of the previously published analysis of four years exposure. No significant clustering of neutrinos above background expectation was observed, and implications for prominent neutrino source candidates are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables; ; submitted to The Astrophysical Journa

The contribution of Fermi-2LAC blazars to the diffuse TeV-PeV neutrino flux

The recent discovery of a diffuse cosmic neutrino flux extending up to PeV energies raises the question of which astrophysical sources generate this signal. One class of extragalactic sources which may produce such high-energy neutrinos are blazars. We present a likelihood analysis searching for cumulative neutrino emission from blazars in the 2nd Fermi-LAT AGN catalogue (2LAC) using an IceCube neutrino dataset 2009-12 which was optimised for the detection of individual sources. In contrast to previous searches with IceCube, the populations investigated contain up to hundreds of sources, the largest one being the entire blazar sample in the 2LAC catalogue. No significant excess is observed and upper limits for the cumulative flux from these populations are obtained. These constrain the maximum contribution of the 2LAC blazars to the observed astrophysical neutrino flux to be $27 \%$ or less between around 10 TeV and 2 PeV, assuming equipartition of flavours at Earth and a single power-law spectrum with a spectral index of $-2.5$. We can still exclude that the 2LAC blazars (and sub-populations) emit more than $50 \%$ of the observed neutrinos up to a spectral index as hard as $-2.2$ in the same energy range. Our result takes into account that the neutrino source count distribution is unknown, and it does not assume strict proportionality of the neutrino flux to the measured 2LAC $\gamma$-ray signal for each source. Additionally, we constrain recent models for neutrino emission by blazars.Comment: 18 pages, 22 figure

The BDNFVal66Met SNP modulates the association between beta-amyloid and hippocampal disconnection in Alzheimer’s disease

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the gene encoding brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNFVal66Met) is associated with worse impact of primary AD pathology (beta-amyloid, Aβ) on neurodegeneration and cognitive decline, rendering BDNFVal66Met an important modulating factor of cognitive impairment in AD. However, the effect of BDNFVal66Met on functional networks that may underlie cognitive impairment in AD is poorly understood. Using a cross-validation approach, we first explored in subjects with autosomal dominant AD (ADAD) from the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) the effect of BDNFVal66Met on resting-state fMRI assessed functional networks. In seed-based connectivity analysis of six major large-scale networks, we found a stronger decrease of hippocampus (seed) to medial-frontal connectivity in the BDNFVal66Met carriers compared to BDNFVal homozogytes. BDNFVal66Met was not associated with connectivity in any other networks. Next, we tested whether the finding of more pronounced decrease in hippocampal-medial-frontal connectivity in BDNFVal66Met could be also found in elderly subjects with sporadically occurring Aβ, including a group with subjective cognitive decline (N = 149, FACEHBI study) and a group ranging from preclinical to AD dementia (N = 114, DELCODE study). In both of these independently recruited groups, BDNFVal66Met was associated with a stronger effect of more abnormal Aβ-levels (assessed by biofluid-assay or amyloid-PET) on hippocampal-medial-frontal connectivity decreases, controlled for hippocampus volume and other confounds. Lower hippocampal-medial-frontal connectivity was associated with lower global cognitive performance in the DIAN and DELCODE studies. Together these results suggest that BDNFVal66Met is selectively associated with a higher vulnerability of hippocampus-frontal connectivity to primary AD pathology, resulting in greater AD-related cognitive impairment

Dysregulated Nephrin in Diabetic Nephropathy of Type 2 Diabetes: A Cross Sectional Study

Podocyte specific proteins are dysregulated in diabetic nephropathy, though the extent of their expression loss is not identical and may be subject to different regulatory factors. Quantifying the degree of loss may help identify the most useful protein to use as an early biomarker of diabetic nephropathy.Protein expression of synaptopodin, podocin and nephrin were quantified in 15 Type 2 diabetic renal biopsies and 12 control patients. We found statistically significant downregulation of synaptopodin (P<0.0001), podocin (P = 0.0002), and nephrin (P<0.0001) in kidney biopsies of diabetic nephropathy as compared with controls. Urinary nephrin levels (nephrinuria) were then measured in 66 patients with Type 2 diabetes and 10 healthy controls by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Exocell, Philadelphia, PA). When divided into groups according to normo-, micro-, and macroalbuminuria, nephrinuria was found to be present in 100% of diabetic patients with micro- and macroalbuminuria, as well as 54% of patients with normoalbuminuria. Nephrinuria also correlated significantly with albuminuria (rho = 0.89, p<0.001), systolic blood pressure (rho = 0.32, p = 0.007), and correlated negatively with serum albumin (rho = -0.48, p<0.0001) and eGFR (rho = -0.33, p = 0.005).These data suggest that key podocyte-specific protein expressions are significantly and differentially downregulated in diabetic nephropathy. The finding that nephrinuria is observed in a majority of these normoalbuminuric patients demonstrates that it may precede microalbuminuria. If further research confirms nephrinuria to be a biomarker of pre-clinical diabetic nephropathy, it would shed light on podocyte metabolism in disease, and raise the possibility of new and earlier therapeutic targets