Prevention of vole damage in organic pomiculture

Vole damage is one of the most difficult phytosanitary problems to solve in organic pomiculture. A survey conducted in 2002 among German fruit growers showed that 90 % of the farms suffered from this damage. The water vole (A. terrestris) revealed to be the main pest in 80 % of the orchards. 61 % of the farmers announced a high interest in the development of new preventive and control methods. To stop immigration of voles into orchards a mechanical barrier system was developed and tested at two study sites in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. At each location barrier systems with wire mesh (mesh size 10 mm) and polyolefine-foil were installed arround two 0.7 ha study plots. Two unprotected plots were used as a control. The barriers were anchored 20 cm deep into the soil. 30 cm of the material protruded over the surface. Automatic gates were installed for the entrance of vehicles. 4 persons needed approximately one day to install a barrier around a plot with the size of 1 ha. Not only was the wire mesh cheaper than the foil, it was permeable for wind, water and small beneficial organisms. After installing the barrier systems, voles were removed from all plots. Snap trap boxes were ranged along the outside of the barriers to catch migrating voles. A total of 33 water voles and 1263 common voles (M. arvalis) were captured on both study sites from October 2002 to November 2003. During the study period a total of 5 water voles immigrated into the first control plot and 6 settled into the other plot. Four water voles entered two of the barrier protected plots by using fresh mole galleries. The other protected plots stayed free from water voles. Simultaneous to the field studies, trials in two enclosures were carried out in Muenster. The barriers kept all water voles outside the protected plots. The results showed a high efficacy of the developed barrier system

BankCaR (Bank Capital-at-Risk): a credit risk model for U.S. commercial bank charge-offs

BankCaR is a credit risk model that forecasts the distribution of a commercial bank's charge-offs. The distribution depends only on systematic factors; BankCaR takes each bank and projects its expected charge-off across a distribution of good years and bad years. Since most bank failures occur in bad years, this analysis has promise for both banks and bank supervisors. In BankCaR, charge-offs depend on the bank's loan balances and the charge-off rates of twelve categories of lending. A joint distribution of the twelve charge-off rates is calibrated to a long history of regulatory reporting data. Applied to the US banking system, BankCaR finds that credit risk is rising and is concentrated most significantly in construction lending. Applied to individual banks, BankCaR efficiently identifies those that have an adverse combination of credit risk and capital. BankCaR uses publicly available regulatory reporting data, the most common credit portfolio model, and standard quantitative techniques. These generic qualities can provide a standard of comparison between banks. They also can provide an individual commercial bank with a benchmark for more elaborate vended credit models.Bank capital ; Risk management ; Bank failures

A retrospective on the stock market in 2000

During late 1998 and much of 1999, the price earnings ratio (P/E) of the S&P 500 index reached unprecedented levels. This was especially evident for the largest 18 technology firms, whose market-weighted P/E exceeded 125 in March of last year. These valuations, which dominated the NASDAQ, proved unsustainable. This Commentary reviews factors that affect P/E ratios and concludes that investors' expectations for earnings growth were overly optimistic, especially for large-cap technology stocks, and that investors could have known this before the bubble burst.Stock market ; Economic conditions - United States

Method for a structured identification of suitable safety and securing systems for Level Crossings

Safety and securing systems for level crossing have a long life time. Once a system reaches a life time when it is no longer conform to applicable regulations, it has to be modernized or replaced. The planner of the level crossing system alongside the road and railroad has to adapt the system to various local conditions and rules. He has to choose a suitable system by the use of his individual expert knowledge. The decisions he made are often hard to understand or to trace for the operating company. This paper presents a structured method, which was developed as a basis for the decision making. It helps to trace the decisions of the engineer and even enables the engineer to identify a suitable level crossing system

Do energy-price shocks affect core-price measures?

This paper investigates the relationship between energy-price shocks and three core measures of inflation in a vector autoregression model that incorporates measures of monetary policy and inflation expectations. The sample set includes data at monthly frequencies from 1980 through 2000. The authors find that that positive energy-price shocks have significant, though small, effects on all core-price measures after a lag of 12 to 18 months, but that negative shocks have no discernable impact. The results suggest that relative energy-price changes do not distort the inflation signals that standard core-price measures provide.Inflation (Finance) ; Petroleum industry and trade ; Power resources - Prices

Bound states and extended states around a single vortex in the d-wave superconductors

Making use of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation for the d-wave superconductors, we investigate the quasi-particle spectrum around a single vortex. Taking $p_F\xi=10$, we found that there are bound states which are localized around the vortex core, and extended states which are rather uniform, for $|E|<\Delta$ where $E$ is the quasi-particle energy and $\Delta$ is the asymptotic value of the order parameter for away from the vortex.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Techno-economic comparison of renewable energy systems using multi-pole system analysis (MPSA)

The recently published method of multi-pole system analysis (MPSA) is used to techno-economically compare two wind-energy converters: offshore wind turbines and the energy ship concept. According to the method, both systems are (i) modeled, (ii) energetically and economically analyzed, (iii) technoeconomically optimized and, finally, (iv) expected uncertainties are calculated and assessed. The results of the method are used to derive the necessary cost reduction of the wind-energy converters to be economically competitive to fossil-fuel-based technologies.The authors would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for the financial support in the framework of the Excellence Initiative, Darmstadt Graduate School of Excellence Energy Science and Engineering (GSC 1070)

How expensive is vole damage?

Vole species, especially Arvicola terrestris and Microtus arvalis cause significant economical damage in organic pomiculture by gnawing the root system of trees. The importance of voles as pest organisms is well known. Nevertheless, the estimation of financial loss caused by voles is difficult for German fruit growers. We conducted a survey among organic fruit growers to get data on kind and amount of annual damage. Using the available publications and official statistics we calculated economical values of organic apple trees for different types of orchard processing and tree ages. Furthermore we calculated the number of trees lost due to voles in one year

1700 bis 1774

Die ältesten Berliner Wetteraufzeichnungen, die mit einiger Regelmäßigkeit durchgeführt wurden und auch erhalten geblieben sind, stammen von der Familie., KIRCH, deren verschiedene Mitglieder zunächst in Leipzig und Guben, und von August 1700 bis Anfang 1774 in Berlin das Wetter beobachtet und notiert haben. Mikrofilmkopien dieser Tagebücher liegen hier im Institut seit kurzem vor. Ihr Verständnis setzt die Kenntnis der damaligen Sprechweise, der verwendeten Maßsysteme und dergleichen voraus. ,'Im Folgenden soll eine Zusammenstellung historischer meteorologischer Bezeichnungen, sofern sie aus den Tagebüchern erkennbar ist, zur Darstellung gebracht werden. Dazu eine Übersicht über die damaligen Maßsysteme soweit sie reproduzierbar sind,und eine kurze Schilderung des historischen Hintergrundes. Abschließend folgen, soweit nötig, erläuternde Bemerkungen oder interessante Auszüge aus den Beobachtungen für jedes Jahr