Drought risk and drought risk management strategies among Austrian crop farmers

So far, droughts have not been a main concern for high-income countries, including Austria. However, the effects of climate change will likely cause droughts to occur more frequently and with greater severity also in Austria particularly (Hochrainer-Stigler et al. 2018). Particularly Austrian farmers have frequently been affected by drought over the past decade, and scientific research predicts a continuation of this trend. Targeted efforts at relevant policymaking have been increasing in parallel in different sectors and domains, however, no concerted drought risk management strategies – neither for the agricultural sector nor at a cross sectoral level – are available. This working paper presents a survey that we designed and conducted to investigate Austrian cropping farmers’ perceptions of and experiences with drought risk and its management. The aim was to inform policy making at different levels to design both targeted and integrated drought risk management strategies. The working paper includes a description of the data collection process and the survey design, as well as a detailed characterization of the sample and the data collected. This document thus highlights the main findings of the survey and serves as a background document for further, more detailed analysis. The work presented is part of the ACRP-funded FARM project. For more information on the project, please consult www.iiasa.ac.at/farm. For more information on the conceptual context as well as Austrian governance landscape for drought see Hanger-Kopp and Palka 202

Hybrid Pixel Detector Development for the Linear Collider Vertex Tracker

In order to fully exploit the physics potential of the future high energy e+e- linear collider, a Vertex Tracker able to provide particle track extrapolation with very high resolution is needed. Hybrid Si pixel sensors are an attractive technology due to their fast read-out capabilities and radiation hardness. A novel pixel detector layout with interleaved cells has been developed to improve the single point resolution. Results of the characterisation of the first processed prototypes by electrostatic measurements and charge collection studies are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 9th Int. Workshop on Vertex Detectors, Lake Michigan MI (USA), September~200

Characterisation of Hybrid Pixel Detectors with capacitive charge division

In order to fully exploit the physics potential of the future high energy e+ e- linear collider, a Vertex Tracker providing high resolution track reconstruction is required. Hybrid pixel sensors are an attractive technology due to their fast read-out capabilities and radiation hardness. A novel pixel detector layout with interleaved cells between the readout nodes has been developed to improve the single point resolution. The results of the characterisation of the first processed prototypes are reported.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, presented at LCWS2000, Linear Collider Workshop, October 24-28 2000, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois, U.S.A. Proceedings to be published by the American Institute of Physic

Performances of multi-gap timing RPCs for relativistic ions in the range Z=1-6

We present the performance of Multi-gap timing RPCs under irradiation by fully stripped relativistic ions (gamma*beta=2.7, Z=1-6). A time resolution of 80 ps at high efficiency has been obtained by just using standard `off the shelf' 4-gap timing RPCs from the new HADES ToF wall. The resolution worsened to 100 ps for ~ 1 kHz/cm2 proton flux and for ~ 100 Hz/cm2 Carbon flux. The chambers were operated at a standard field of E=100 kV/cm and showed a high stability during the experiment, supporting the fact that RPCs are a convenient choice when accommodating a very broad range of ionizing particles is needed. The data provides insight in the region of very highly ionizing particles (up to x 36 mips) and can be used to constrain the existing avalanche and Space-Charge models far from the usual `mip valley'. The implications of these results for the general case of detection based on secondary processes (n, gamma) resulting in highly ionizing particles with characteristic energy distributions will be discussed, together with the nature of the time-charge correlation curve.Comment: 31 pages, 19 figures, submitted to JINS

The Lambek calculus with iteration: two variants

Formulae of the Lambek calculus are constructed using three binary connectives, multiplication and two divisions. We extend it using a unary connective, positive Kleene iteration. For this new operation, following its natural interpretation, we present two lines of calculi. The first one is a fragment of infinitary action logic and includes an omega-rule for introducing iteration to the antecedent. We also consider a version with infinite (but finitely branching) derivations and prove equivalence of these two versions. In Kleene algebras, this line of calculi corresponds to the *-continuous case. For the second line, we restrict our infinite derivations to cyclic (regular) ones. We show that this system is equivalent to a variant of action logic that corresponds to general residuated Kleene algebras, not necessarily *-continuous. Finally, we show that, in contrast with the case without division operations (considered by Kozen), the first system is strictly stronger than the second one. To prove this, we use a complexity argument. Namely, we show, using methods of Buszkowski and Palka, that the first system is $\Pi_1^0$-hard, and therefore is not recursively enumerable and cannot be described by a calculus with finite derivations

Effect of creatine malate supplementation on physical performance, body composition and selected hormone levels in spinters and long-distance runners

Purpose The aim of the study was to determine whether creatine malate (CML) supplementation results in similar ergogenic effect in sprinters and long-distance runners. The other goal was to compare changes in body composition, physical performance and hormone levels after six-week training in athletes, divided into subgroups supplemented with creatine malate or taking placebo. Results Six-week supplementation combined with physical training induced different effects in athletes. Significantly higher increases in relative and absolute peak power and total work (p < 0.05) were found in sprinters compared to other groups. Except for growth hormone, post-exercise venous blood serum hormone levels exhibited no statistically significant differences in athletes. After CML loading period, a significant increase in growth hormone was found in the group of sprinters. Conclusions A significant ergogenic effect was found in sprinters, which was reflected by the increase in anaerobic exercise indices and morphological indices and elevated growth hormone level, after graded exercise testing. The significant increase in the distance covered during graded test was only observed in supplemented long-distance runners, whereas no significant changes in maximal oxygen uptake, relative peak power and relative total work were noticed. This could be caused by later anaerobic threshold appearance in exercise test to exhaustion

Decision spaces in agricultural risk management: a mental model study of Austrian crop farmers

Drought has become a dominant climate risk both around the world and in Europe, adding to the already challenging task of farming and governing the agricultural sector under climate change. Drought risk management is extremely complex. Apart from irrigation, most drought risk management options have more than one goal and may potentially have negative trade-offs with other risk management objectives. Moreover, government regulations and market mechanisms influence farmers’ decision-making. However, previous studies, both in developed and in developing countries, have predominantly focused on attitudinal and structural influencing factors on farmers’ risk management behavior. In this paper, we comprehensively investigate farmers’ decision spaces with respect to drought risk management. We address two applied research questions: (1) What are farmers’ preferred drought risk management measures? (2) From a farmer’s perspective, what are the dominant factors influencing drought risk management decisions? We find that farmers primarily think of production-based rather than financial measures with respect to drought risk management. At the same time, natural and technical constraints and enabling factors dominate their mental decision space, followed by public and private institutional aspects. This research provides a basis for the design of integrated and holistic drought risk management policy and the drought risk governance needed for sustainable use of land and water resources such as needed to address systemic risks and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, we introduce a novel approach using mental models extracted from interviews to explore cognitive representations of farmers' decision spaces. This approach has the potential to complement mainstream research using standardized surveys and behavioral models to analyze drivers of risk management