Immobilisierung von Bakterien in Hydrogelen und chemische Weiterverarbeitung zu wasserstabilen lebenden Biohybridsystemen

Im Rahmen dieser Dissertationsschrift und der ihr zugrunde liegenden Untersuchungen wurden erfolgreich neue Methoden der Verarbeitung und Anwendungen von lebenden Kompositen auf Basis von Polymeren und Bakterien erforscht. Die Retention der Freisetzung von immobilisierten M. luteus aus PVA-Partikeln bei Kontakt mit wässrigen Lösungen und auf nährstoffhaltigen Agarplatten wurde durch die oberflächeninitierte kontrollierte radikalische Polymerisation von MMA erreicht. Die Schichtdicke von aufgepfropftem PMMA korrelierte direkt mit der Retention der Freisetzung der Bakterien und konnte durch gezielte Wahl der Reaktionszeit variiert werden. Die Verwendung dieser neuartigen lebenden Kern-Hülle-Partikel ermöglicht die gezielte Verarbeitung von Bakterien aus wässrigem Medium. Denkbare Methoden sind hierbei unter anderem die Einbettung in Faservliese durch Elektrospinnen. Zusätzlich zu der Synthese von PMMA wurde die Vielseitigkeit der oberflächeninitiierte ATRP durch die Polymerisation von NIPAm präsentiert. Im Rahmen dieser Schrift wurden lebende, in PNIPAm-PVA-Partikel immobilisierte Bakterien nachgewiesen. In der vorliegenden Schrift wurde außerdem die hydrophe Ausrüstung bakterienhaltiger Fasern durch die Beschichtung mit PPX unter Verwendung der chemischen Gasphasenabscheidung nach Gorham untersucht. Die Immobilisierung von M. luteus in PEO-Nanofasern durch Elektroverspinnen einer bakterienhaltigen PEO-Lösung resultierte in der Herstellung einer lebenden Membran. Weiterhin wurde das Konzept der Immobilisierung von M. luteus in Hydrogelfasern und nachfolgender hydrophober Ausrüstung durch eine variierbare Schichtdicke von PPX durch die Verwendung von PVA-Mikrofasern untersucht. Das Überleben der verkapselten Bakterien wurde durch die Inokulation und Inkubation geeigneter Nährmedien nachgewiesen. Die biologische Aktivität der immobilisierten Bakterien, eine notwendige Voraussetzung für eine spätere Verwendung, wurde in Abhängigkeit der Schichtdicke des PPX-Mantels mittels des Umsatzes von Resazurin zu Resorufin erfolgreich verfolgt. Eine weitere Vorrausetzung für den möglichen Einsatz immobilisierter Mikroorganismen ist deren Separation vom umgebenden Medium zur Vermeidung einer Kontamination. Die hier vorgestellten lebenden Komposite erfüllen beide Voraussetzungen und verhindern die Migration der Bakterien in die Lösung für mindestens 22 Tage. Die in PPX-PVA-Mikrofasern verkapselten Bakterien wurden für die Sequestrierung von Gold-Ionen aus einer sauren Goldsäure Lösung verwendet. Die Abnahme des Goldgehaltes der Lösung wurde mittels ICP-MS Messungen nachgewiesen. Es zeigte sich, dass die Bakterien im immobilisierten Zustand Gold-Ionen aufnehmen und diese abscheiden

COMPATIBILITY OF AUTOMATIC MILKING SYSTEMS WITH ANIMAL WELFARE IN ORGANIC DAIRY FARMING

The distribution of automatic milking systems (AMS) on dairy farms has increased significantly worldwide since the last millennium. For organic farms in Germay, the use of this technique is increasingly interesting, as organic dairy farms often have herd sizes between 50 and 150 cows which suit best for automatic milking systems. The implementation of AMS does not only bring along changes in terms of the milking process, but also affects the entire housing system, management and feeding. AMS is often connected with a restriction of pasturing and indirectly the risk of lame cows may increase. The aim of this study was to clarify whether the use of AMS is compatible with animal welfare in organic dairy farming, paying particular attention to impacts on pasture use. In an online survey, 42 organic dairy farmers with AMS have been asked for their feeding and pasture system before and after AMS implementation on their farms. The results of the survey showed that the herd size had partially grown significantly since the introduction of the AMS. The herd growth led to a significant decrease in the average grazing area per cow on the farms with pasture use. In addition, total area used as pasture decreased on the majority of the farms. Some farms had even completely ceased pasture use. Summarized, the impact of the AMS on animal welfare depends significantly on the housing conditions and the management of the farmers. In organic dairy farming, impairments of animal health and welfare by AMS have to be avoided. Especially the implementation of AMS should not be connected with ceasing grazing for cattle

Software in the Manufacturing Industry: A Review of Security Challenges and Implications

Software defines digital infrastructures in the manufacturing industry, connecting services and computation resources to machines and devices. These infrastructures aim at increased flexibility, scalability, and a wider application portfolio for automated manufacturing processes. At the same time, the complexity of securing software increases dramatically. Threats to confidentiality, integrity, and availability of software can result in critical losses for automated industrial production and impact manufacturing companies. In order to map existing and emerging security challenges, we present the results of a hermeneutic literature review structured along abstraction levels and vertical integration of software. Based on this structure, we derive implications for academia and practice focused on operators, developers, and security auditors of digital infrastructures. Thereby, we discuss courses of action mapped to software security black boxes, infrastructure heterogeneity, and the adaptation of security for operational usage

Contextualizing System Calls in Containers for Anomaly-Based Intrusion Detection

Container technology has gained ground in the industry for its scalability and lightweight virtualization, especially in cloud environments. Nevertheless, research has shown that containerized applications are an appealing target for cyberattacks, which may lead to interruption of business-critical services and financial damage. State-of-the-art anomaly-based host intrusion detection systems (HIDS) may enhance container runtime security. However, they were not designed to deal with the characteristics of containerized environments. Specifically, they cannot effectively cope with the scalability of containers and the diversity of anomalies. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel anomaly-based HIDS that relies on monitoring heterogeneous properties of system calls. Our key idea is that anomalies can be accurately detected when those properties are examined jointly within their context. To this end, we model system calls leveraging a graph-based structure that emphasizes their dependencies within their relative context, allowing us to precisely discern between normal and malicious activities. We evaluate our approach on two datasets of 20 different attack scenarios containing 11,700 normal and 1,980 attack system call traces. The achieved results show that our solution effectively detects various anomalies with reasonable runtime overhead, outperforming state-of-the-art tools

DISC1-mediated dysregulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in rats

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis, the constitutive generation of new granule cells in the dentate gyrus of the mature brain, is a robust model of neural development and its dysregulation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Previous studies in mice have shown that altered expression of Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 (Disc1), the mouse homolog of a risk gene for major psychiatric disorders, results in several distinct morphological phenotypes during neuronal development. Although there are advantages to using rats over mice for neurophysiological studies, genetic manipulations have not been widely utilized in rat models. Here, we used a retroviral-mediated approach to knockdown DISC1 expression in dividing cells in the rat dentate gyrus and characterized the morphological development of adult-born granule neurons. Consistent with earlier findings in mice, we show that DISC1 knockdown in adult-born dentate granule cells in rats resulted in accelerated dendritic growth, somatic hypertrophy, ectopic dendrites, and mispositioning of new granule cells due to overextended migration. Our study thus demonstrates that the Disc1 genetic manipulation approach used in prior mouse studies is feasible in rats and that there is a conserved biological function of this gene across species. Extending gene-based studies of adult hippocampal neurogenesis from mice to rats will allow for the development of additional models that may be more amenable to behavioral and in vivo electrophysiological investigations. These models, in turn, can generate additional insight into the systems-level mechanisms of how risk genes for complex psychiatric disorders may impact adult neurogenesis and hippocampal function

Silage or hay: does feeding regime affect health related traits of primiparous dairy cows?

In this study, we aimed to assess health related traits of first lactating cows that were kept in farms, mostly organic or low-input, with or without silage feeding of heifers in Austria (AT; 392 farms, 10,736 Fleckvieh), France (FR; 20 farms, 2,360 Holstein and Montbéliarde), Germany (DE; 34 farms, 1,566 Brown Swiss and Fleckvieh) and Slovenia (SI; 18 farms, 1269 Brown Swiss, Fleckvieh, Holstein and crosses). Cows calved between 2010 and 2019. Data originated from routine performance recording and on-site data collection. As data structure differed, analyses were performed within country. Traits analysed using the logistic regression methodology were the percentage of elevated cell counts (>100,000 cells/ml; SCC100P) during the cow’s 305-day standard lactation, fat-protein-ratio (FPR), defined as binary trait whether it was or was not >1.4 or 1.4 during the first 120 days in milk was higher, while no significant differences between feeding regimes were found in FR and SI. However, FPR<1.1 was significantly lower in AT silage feeding farms; no differences were found in the other countries. Disease frequencies were generally low; no significant differences could be found between silage and non-silage feeding farms in any of the countries involved. The rearing and feeding regime of replacement stock is complex and influenced by numerous factors. Differences between countries with regard to geographical location and management could have led to the partly contradicting results