Occurrence and Coupling of Heat and Ozone Events and Their Relation to Mortality Rates in Berlin, Germany, between 2000 and 2014

Episodes of hot weather and poor air quality pose significant consequences for public health. In this study, these episodes are addressed by applying the observational data of daily air temperature and ozone concentrations in an event-based risk assessment approach in order to detect individual heat and ozone events, as well as events of their co-occurrence in Berlin, Germany, in the years 2000 to 2014. Various threshold values are explored so as to identify these events and to search for the appropriate regressions between the threshold exceedances and mortality rates. The events are further analyzed in terms of their event-specific mortality rates and their temporal occurrences. The results reveal that at least 40% of all heat events during the study period are accompanied by increased ozone concentrations in Berlin, particularly the most intense and longest heat events. While ozone events alone are only weakly associated with increased mortality rates, elevated ozone concentrations during heat events are found to amplify mortality rates. We conclude that elevated air temperatures during heat events are one major driver for increased mortality rates in Berlin, but simultaneously occurring elevated ozone concentrations act as an additional stressor, leading to an increased risk for the regional population.BMBF, 01LP1602, Verbundprojekt Stadtklima: Dreidimensionale Beobachtung atmosphärischer Prozesse in Städten, Modul B - 3D

Natural product biosynthesis in myxobacteria : studies on enzymatic versatility and secondary metabolite diversity

In this work, the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites in myxobacteria was investigated, with particular focus on the functional and biochemical characterization of enzymes furnishing biosynthetic pathways with unusual building blocks. A novel member of the tyrosine aminomutase (TAM) enzyme family, CmdF, was shown to supply (R)-beta-tyrosine for incorporation into the chondramides by Chondromyces crocatus. Site-directed mutagenesis demonstrated the feasibility of modulating the stereoselectivity exhibited by CmdF through genetic engineering. The cloning and characterization of additional TAMs revealed a high degree of evolutionary diversification within the emerging TAM enzyme family. Furthermore, the structural elucidation and biosynthesis of newly discovered metabolites from Stigmatella aurantiaca, the imidacins, is reported. These compounds consist of a fatty-acid like scaffold, but additionally feature an unique imidazole acryl moiety and a rare cyclopropane ring. Imidacin formation depends on the supply of an unprecedented urocanic acid precursor by a histidine ammonia lyase (HAL), revealing for the first time the involvement of HAL in bacterial secondary metabolism. In addition, a metabolomics-based approach for the mining of myxobacterial metabolite profiles was devised. High-resolution mass spectrometry, combined with statistical interpretation by principal component analysis (PCA), was employed to highlight compounds which constitute significant differences in a set of highly complex samples. This technique uncovered a strikingly high level of intraspecific diversity in the secondary metabolome of Myxococcus xanthus.Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Biosynthese von myxobakteriellen Naturstoffen, mit Schwerpunkt auf der funktionellen und biochemischen Charakterisierung von Enzymen, die ungewöhnliche Vorläufer für biosynthetische Stoffwechselwege zur Verfügung stellen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass (R)-beta-Tyrosin — ein Bestandteil der Chondramide aus Chondromyces crocatus — durch die neuartige Tyrosin-Aminomutase (TAM) CmdF gebildet wird. Mittels gezielter Mutagenese wurden Möglichkeiten zur Beeinflussung der Stereoselektivität von CmdF aufgezeigt. Die Klonierung und Characterisierung weiterer TAM Enzyme offenbarte einen hohen Grad an evolutionärer Diversifizierung innerhalb der erweiterten TAM Familie. Außerdem wird die Strukturaufklärung und die Biosynthese neu entdeckter Metabolite aus Stigmatella aurantiaca beschrieben, welche Imidacine genannt wurden. Diese Verbindungen besitzen eine fettsäureartige Grundstruktur, zeichnen sich jedoch zusätzlich durch eine äußerst seltene Imidazolacrylgruppe und einen Cyclopropanring aus. Die Biosynthese der Imidacine ist abhängig von der Bereitstellung einer Urocansäure-Startereinheit durch eine Histidin-Ammoniumlyase (HAL), und stellt damit das bisher einzige Beispiel für die Beteiligung von HALs am bakteriellen Sekundärstoffwechsel dar. Es wurde darüber hinaus ein "Metabolomics"-basierter Ansatz zur vertieften Analyse der Sekundärmetabolitenprofile von Myxobakterien entwickelt. Hochauflösende massenpektrometrische Messungen wurden mit einem statistischen Auswertungsverfahren (PCA, "Principal Component Analysis") kombiniert, um solche Substanzen zu identifizieren, die signifikante Unterschiede innerhalb einer Probenserie mit hoher Komplexität darstellen. Die Anwendung dieser Methode enthüllte die erstaunlich hohe Diversität des sekundären Metaboloms der Spezies Myxococcus xanthus

Load test set-up for the Airmass Sunburst Ultra-Light Aircraft

The purpose of this project was to set up, instrument, and test a Sunburst Ultra-Light aircraft. The intentions of the project were that the aircraft would need to be suspended from the test stand, leveled in the stand, the strain gauges tested and wired to the test equipment, and finally, the aircraft would be destroyed to obtain the failing loads. All jobs were completed, except for the destruction of the aircraft. This notebook shows the group's progress as these tasks were completed, and the following section attempts to explain the photographs in the notebook

Translation and validation of the PACIC+ questionnaire: the Thai version

Background: The number of patients with chronic illness is increasing worldwide. These patients usually receive care from a primary care facility. The Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC) is a tool that is increasingly used in several countries to measure how the patients perceive the care they receive. The goal of this validation study is to provide and validate an extended version of the tool, the PACIC+ questionnaire, in Thailand. Methods: In this observational validation study, patients with type 2 diabetes from the outpatient clinic at a university hospital in Thailand completed the PACIC+ at the clinic. For follow-up, they received the questionnaire per mail after four weeks. The Thai PACIC+ comprises 26 items, which map onto 5 subscales and a summary score related to the Chronic Care Model (CCM) and 5 subscales and a summary score related to the 5A model, a counseling model for behavioral changes. Data-analysis focused on the use of most extreme answering categories (> 15%), internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha), and test-retest reliability. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed for the CCM and the 5A model separately to examine the factor structure. Results: A total of 151 patients participated. The average age of the sample was 63 ± 9 years (range 29–86 years). Fifty-three percent of the respondents were female. In the Delivery System subscale, 20% of patients reported the highest possible value; in all other subscales, relative frequencies of the most extreme categories did not exceed 15%. Cronbach’s alpha per subscale varied from 0.58 to 0.81, while that of the summary scores were 0.89 and 0.91. The mean difference from the test-retest varied from − 0.06 to 0.17 across subscales. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin criterion for sampling adequacy (KMO) was good for both models as well as the Bartlett’s test for sphericity p. While the factor loadings in rotated factor solution showed good concordance with the CCM, concordance was not as good for the 5A model, especially for the subscales “Assess” and “Advice”. Conclusion: A validated Thai version of the PACIC+ is now available to measure how the patients perceive the care they receive

Culturally induced range infilling of eastern redcedar: a problem in ecology, an ecological problem, or both?

The philosopher John Passmore distinguished between (1) “problems in ecology,” or what we might call problems in scientific understanding of ecological change, and (2) “ecological problems,” or what we might call problems faced by societies due to ecological change. The spread of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) and conversion of the central and southern Great Plains of North America to juniper woodland might be categorized as a problem in ecology, an ecological problem, or both. Here, we integrate and apply two interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving—social-ecological systems thinking and ecocriticism—to understand the role of human culture in recognizing, driving, and responding to cedar’s changing geographic distribution. We interpret the spread of cedar as a process of culturally induced range infilling due to the ongoing social-ecological impacts of colonization, analyze poetic literary texts to clarify the concepts that have so far informed different cultural values related to cedar, and explore the usefulness of diverse interdisciplinary collaborations and knowledge for addressing social-ecological challenges like cedar spread in the midst of rapidly unfolding global change. Our examination suggests that it is not only possible, but preferable, to address cedar spread as both a scientific and a social problem. Great Plains landscapes are teetering between grassland and woodland, and contemporary human societies both influence and choose how to cope with transitions between these ecological states. We echo previous studies in suggesting that human cultural values about stability and disturbance, especially cultural concepts of fire, will be primary driving factors in determining future trajectories of change on the Great Plains. Although invasion-based descriptors of cedar spread may be useful in ecological research and management, language based on the value of restraint could provide a common vocabulary for effective cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication about the relationship between culture and cedar, as well as an ethical framework for cross-cultural communication, decision-making, and management

Diffusion-Limited One-Species Reactions in the Bethe Lattice

We study the kinetics of diffusion-limited coalescence, A+A-->A, and annihilation, A+A-->0, in the Bethe lattice of coordination number z. Correlations build up over time so that the probability to find a particle next to another varies from \rho^2 (\rho is the particle density), initially, when the particles are uncorrelated, to [(z-2)/z]\rho^2, in the long-time asymptotic limit. As a result, the particle density decays inversely proportional to time, \rho ~ 1/kt, but at a rate k that slowly decreases to an asymptotic constant value.Comment: To be published in JPCM, special issue on Kinetics of Chemical Reaction

Artificial Vocal Learning guided by Phoneme Recognition and Visual Information

This paper introduces a paradigm shift regarding vocal learning simulations, in which the communicative function of speech acquisition determines the learning process and intelligibility is considered the primary measure of learning success. Thereby, a novel approach for artificial vocal learning is presented that utilizes deep neural network-based phoneme recognition in order to calculate the speech acquisition objective function. This function guides a learning framework that involves the state-of-the-art articulatory speech synthesizer VocalTractLab as the motor-to-acoustic forward model. In this way, an extensive set of German phonemes, including most of the consonants and all stressed vowels, was produced successfully. The synthetic phonemes were rated as highly intelligible by human listeners. Furthermore, it is shown that visual speech information, such as lip and jaw movements, can be extracted from video recordings and be incorporated into the learning framework as an additional loss component during the optimization process. It was observed that this visual loss did not increase the overall intelligibility of phonemes. Instead, the visual loss acted as a regularization mechanism that facilitated the finding of more biologically plausible solutions in the articulatory domain

Exploration strategies for articulatory synthesis of complex syllable onsets

High-quality articulatory speech synthesis has many potential applications in speech science and technology. However, developing appropriate mappings from linguistic specification to articulatory gestures is difficult and time consuming. In this paper we construct an optimisation-based framework as a first step towards learning these mappings without manual intervention. We demonstrate the production of CCV syllables and discuss the quality of the articulatory gestures with reference to coarticulation