The impact of nature conservation on agricultural greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions – an economic assessment of selected German study regions

Using a significant amount of public funding, large-scale nature-conservation projects in Germany aim to secure and develop ecologically valuable areas and endangered habitats and species. Due to the substantial land-use changes accompanying these projects, their implementation can also have relevant climate effects – one result which has not been explicitly focused upon previously. Our study analyses major cost positions in implementing such projects, particularly the expense of changing or abandoning agricultural land-use for conservation purposes. We link public funding to relevant climate effects and derive CO2 abatement costs. Therefore we conduct plot-specific ex-post analyses of agricultural land-use and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Our study takes place in regions where changes in agricultural land-use for conservation purposes have been fully implemented in the past and where climate effects are expected to be high. Our analysis is based on data provided by regional stakeholders and our project partners. First results show that land-use changes for conservation purposes can lead to positive climate effects. The efficiency as regards “abatement costs” we derive on basis of the data set available lies within the range of costs for alternative measures of climate change mitigation. However it becomes clear that CO2 abatement cannot be seen as the only benefit of such measures; the high cost of agricultural compensation has to be contrasted with further effects such as biodiversity and water conservationEnvironmental Economics and Policy,

Agricultural Costs of Carbon Dioxide Abatement via Land-use Adaptation on organic soils

Increasing carbon dioxide emissions and related climate effects require mitigation strategies, thereby also emissions caused by agriculture are brought into the focus of political debate. In particular organic soil cultivation, inducing significant CO2 emissions is being discussed more and more. This study aims to answer the question of whether changes of organic soil management can serve as cost-efficient mitigation strategies for climate change. To this end we have built an economic model in which farm-individual and plot-specific CO2-abatement costs of selected landuse strategies are calculated by contrasting effects on the agricultural income with the related reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. With respect to microeconomic data we use a dataset collected in six German regions while data on emission-factors originates from co-operations with natural-scientific research groups. Results show that CO2-abatement costs vary due to different levels of land-use reorganisation. Reasonable emission reductions are mainly achieved when agricultural intensity is clearly decreased. Agricultural income forgone varies significantly due to production conditions and mitigation strategies. However, even when economic costs are high they may be balanced by high emission reductions and may not result in high abatement costs. Nevertheless, CO2-reductions benefits appear to be social and costs private. Agro-environmental programmes must be implemented to compensate resulting income losses.CO2 abatement cost, climate change mitigation strategies, microeconomic consequences, organic soil management, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) und Hamburger Zwangsinventar-Kurzform (HZI-K) im Vergleich: Eine Validitätsstudie

Hintergrund: Das Hamburger Zwangsinventar-Kurzform (HZI-K) ist ein im deutschen Sprachraum weit verbreitetes Selbstberichtsinstrument zur Erfassung des Schweregrads und der Symptomatik von Zwangsstörungen. Das Obsessive- Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R), das sich im englischen Sprachraum gut etabliert hat und inzwischen auch in einer deutschsprachigen Version vorliegt, dient ebenfalls der dimensionalen Erfassung von Zwangssymptomen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung hat zum Ziel, einen Vergleich der beiden Instrumente im Hinblick auf Reliabilität und konvergente sowie diskriminante Validität zu liefern. Methode: Basierend auf einer Stichprobe von 41 Patienten mit Zwangsstörungen wurden Korrelationen zwischen OCIR, HZI-K und anderen Instrumenten zu zwangsrelevanten Konstrukten sowie zur Depression berechnet. Ergebnisse: Die Korrelationen des OCI-R mit dem HZI-K lagen in einem moderaten bis hohen Bereich, während die Korrelationen mit der fremdeingeschätzten Symptomschwere unerwartet niedrig ausfielen. Die Korrelationen zu den Depressionsmaßen lagen mit leicht erhöhten Werten in einem akzeptablen Bereich. Schlussfolgerungen: Insgesamt lieferten die Ergebnisse Belege für eine gute bis sehr gute konvergente Validität des OCI-R und HZI-K. Die beiden Instrumente erwiesen sich somit in vielen Aspekten als vergleichbar. Differenzen bestehen in der Anzahl der Items, den Symptombereichen der Subskalen und der diskriminanten Validität zur Depression. Zusammengefasst lässt sich für die Mehrzahl der Fälle eine systematische Anwendung des OCI-R ableiten

Pomelo, a tool for computing Generic Set Voronoi Diagrams of Aspherical Particles of Arbitrary Shape

We describe the development of a new software tool, called "Pomelo", for the calculation of Set Voronoi diagrams. Voronoi diagrams are a spatial partition of the space around the particles into separate Voronoi cells, e.g. applicable to granular materials. A generalization of the conventional Voronoi diagram for points or monodisperse spheres is the Set Voronoi diagram, also known as navigational map or tessellation by zone of influence. In this construction, a Set Voronoi cell contains the volume that is closer to the surface of one particle than to the surface of any other particle. This is required for aspherical or polydisperse systems. Pomelo is designed to be easy to use and as generic as possible. It directly supports common particle shapes and offers a generic mode, which allows to deal with any type of particles that can be described mathematically. Pomelo can create output in different standard formats, which allows direct visualization and further processing. Finally, we describe three applications of the Set Voronoi code in granular and soft matter physics, namely the problem of packings of ellipsoidal particles with varying degrees of particle-particle friction, mechanical stable packings of tetrahedra and a model for liquid crystal systems of particles with shapes reminiscent of pearsComment: 4 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to Powders and Grains 201

Fast and memory-efficient optimization for large-scale data-driven predictive control

Recently, data-enabled predictive control (DeePC) schemes based on Willems' fundamental lemma have attracted considerable attention. At the core are computations using Hankel-like matrices and their connection to the concept of persistency of excitation. We propose an iterative solver for the underlying data-driven optimal control problems resulting from linear discrete-time systems. To this end, we apply factorizations based on the discrete Fourier transform of the Hankel-like matrices, which enable fast and memory-efficient computations. To take advantage of this factorization in an optimal control solver and to reduce the effect of inherent bad conditioning of the Hankel-like matrices, we propose an augmented Lagrangian lBFGS-method. We illustrate the performance of our method by means of a numerical study

Acoustic Stimuli Can Improve and Impair Somatosensory Perception

The integration of stimuli from different sensory modalities forms the basis for human perception. While the relevant impact of visual stimuli on the perception of other sensory modalities is recognized, much less is known about the impact of auditory stimuli on general sensory processing. This study aims to investigate the effect of acoustic stimuli on the processing of somatosensory stimuli using real noise (i.e., unpleasant everyday noise, RN) and neutral white noise ( WN ). To this purpose, we studied 20 healthy human subjects between 20 and 29 years of age (mean: 24, SD: ±1.9 years sex ratio 1:1). Somatosensory perception was evaluated using mechanical detection threshold (MDT) of the skin on the back of the dominant hand. To investigate the underlying mechanisms in the brain, fMRI was performed while applying acoustic stimulation (RN and WN) and tactile stimulation of the dominant hand. Here we show that acoustic stimulation with noise alters the perception of touch on the skin. We found that the effect of RN and WN differed. RN leads to an improved tactile perception, whereas WN impaired tactile perception. These changes go along with significant differences in brain activity and connectivity. WN is associated with a significant increase in brain activity in multiple brain areas such as the auditory and somatosensory cortex, parietal association cortex, and the thalamus compared to RN . With tactile stimulation of the skin, the flow of information in these brain areas is altered. While with RN the information flow from the thalamus to the somatosensory cortex is prominent, the network activity pattern changes under WN revealing an increase in interaction between multiple networks. Unpleasant noise inhibits the multisensory integration and enables a more efficient unimodal perception in the somatosensory system, improving perception. Whether this is to be interpreted as a temporary increase in phasic alertness or by a stronger filter function of the thalamus with a preference for unimodal stimuli is still open for debate