The high specific strength and stiffness characteristics of composite materials such as carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) allow a significant weight reduction of the structural machine components such as automobile driveshafts. But high material cost and rather low productivity of the established manufacturing processes (e.g., filament winding) often inhibit the use of CFRP components in a high-volume car series. In this paper, a novel composite driveshaft system based on a profiled CFRP tube is presented. This system is designed to be produced by a continuous pultrusion process to achieve a significant reduction of the manufacturing costs. A cost assessment study was conducted to quantify the benefit of the developed continuous manufacturing process. In comparison with the state-of-the-art filament winding process, a cost reduction of 36% for the composite shaft body can be obtained. Moreover, the proposed fiber layup processes – braiding and continuous winding – offer the potential to manipulate the reinforcement architecture to maximize material utilization without reducing the manufacturing efficiency. This potential is investigated and validated by experimental tests. A difference in the load bearing capacity of more than 100% between different reinforcing architectures is shown.

Objective: In this study, the efficiency of telemedical consulting with regard to fine needle aspirates from space-occupying lesions (SOLs) of the liver is investigated for the first time. Study Design: The study includes fine needle aspirations from 62 patients, 33 with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and 29 with non-hepatic tumors. Using the Internetbased iPath system, the initial pathologist submitted 1–8 images from smears and cell block sections. One consultant assessed the cytological and another one the histological images. Both made their diagnoses independent of each other. A final diagnosis was made by immunochemistry of cell block sections. The cytological images were analyzed retrospectively for the occurrence of the most typical HCC indicators. The number of these indicators was related to the initial diagnoses of the three pathologists, and possible reasons for diagnostic errors were analyzed based on this analysis. Results: The accuracy of the preliminary telemedical diagnoses regarding HCC was 82.0% for the cytological images and 87.7% for the histological images. Most of the false diagnoses occurred in tumors with unusual cytological and histological patterns. Conclusions: Telemedical consulting is a valuable tool to obtain a second opinion. However, for improvement of the diagnosis of HCC, supplementary immunochemical tests are necessary.

Die Nachfrage nach Agrarprodukten hat rapide zugenommen, besonders in schnell wachsenden Volkswirtschaften. Agrarimporte nach China gestiegen, trotz der vielfach gestiegenen Inlandsproduktion seit der Reform und Öffnung 1978. Jedoch ging die Steigerung der Agrarproduktion einher mit hohen Umweltkosten, zum einen durch eine massive Erhöhung der Inputintensität und zum anderen durch die Veränderung der Anbaumuster. In dieser Arbeit habe ich umwelt- und sozioökonomische Daten auf Kreis-Ebene analysiert, um ein grundliegendes quantitatives Verständnis der Muster, Determinanten und Ursachen der landwirtschaftlichen Landnutzungsveränderung in China von 1980 bis 2011 zu entwickeln. In Kapitel II und III habe ich die Veränderung der Anbaumuster der Hauptkultur auf Kreisebene zusammengefasst. Ich habe diese Daten mittels explorativer Geodatenanalyse und räumlich expliziter Panel-Regression untersucht, um raum-zeitliche Determinanten der Änderung in Anbaufläche und Ertrag der Hauptkultur zu identifizieren. In Kapitel IV nutzte ich diese Daten, um die Veränderung der Technischen Effizienz in der Pflanzenproduktion mit Hilfe eines stochastischen Grenzansatzes zu ermitteln, wiederum durch den Einsatz einer räumlich-ökonometrischen Panel-Analyse. Insgesamt hat sich die räumliche Konzentration von Hauptkulturen erhöht. Haupteinflussfaktor für diese Entwicklung war die Bevölkerung. Diese Analyse beleuchtet die Muster und Treiber des agrarwirtschaftlichen Landnutzungswandel für gesamt China und gibt Einblicke in die Brennpunkte des Wandels in Landnutzungsumfang und –intensität. Außerdem zeigten die Elastizitäten der Input-Veränderungen einen Trend in der Pflanzenproduktionsintensität von traditionell zu wissenschaftlich-technologischen Eingriffen. Die Ergebnisse können zur Einwicklung räumlich ausgerichteter Landnutzungspolitiken in China beitragen. Sie stellen außerdem wichtige Fallbeweise für den globalen Landnutzungswandel zur Verfügung. / Abstract Demand for agricultural products has been increasing at an unprecedented pace, particularly in rapidly growing economies such as China. Agricultural imports to China have soared despite domestic production increasing manifold since reforming and opening in 1978. However, the increase in agricultural production in China involved high environmental costs, brought about by massively increasing input intensity and by the transition in cropping patterns. In this thesis, I analysed environmental and socioeconomic data at county level to develop a solid quantitative understanding of patterns, determinants, and causes of agricultural land-use changes across all of China from 1980 to 2011. In Chapter II and Chapter III, I summarized the changes in patterns of the main crops at county level. I then examined these data with exploratory spatial data analysis and spatially explicit panel regressions in order to identify the spatial and temporal determinants of changes in area and yield of major crops. In chapter IV, I used the same dataset, but focussed on changes in technical efficiency in crop production using a stochastic frontier approach, again by employing spatial econometric panel analysis. Overall, the spatial concentration of the major crops increased, with population the main determinant for this trend. Furthermore, modern inputs, including machinery and fertilizer, were increasingly important in crop production, and land use efficiency increased slightly and varied temporally and spatially. This analysis shed light on the patterns and drivers of agricultural land-system change for all of China, including insights on hotspots of changes in land use extent and intensity. Besides, the elasticity of input changes showed the growth of crop production was shift from traditional farming practices to modern. This study is valuable to inform and spatially target land-use policies in China and provide important case evidence for global land-use change.

The rapid pace of scientific advances is enabling a greater understanding of diseases at the molecular level. In turn, the process for researching and developing new medicines is growing in difficulty, costs, and length as a result of the scientific, technical, and regulatory challenges related to the development process. In light of these challenges, drug repositioning, the utilization of known drugs for a new medical indication, has emerged as an increasingly important strategy for the new drug discovery. Availability of prior knowledge regarding safety, efficacy and the appropriate administration route significantly reduces the development costs and cuts down the development time resulting in less effort to successfully bring a repositioned drug to market. In another aspect, a protein’s shape is closely linked with its function; thereby, the ability to predict this structure unlocks a greater understanding of what it does and how it works. Nowadays, more than 10,000 biologically relevant protein structures are yearly released and available to the scientific community. A number suspected to triple over the following years due to the recent breakthroughs in structure prediction techniques. This work introduces a novel structure-based drug repositioning approach, exploiting the similarities of drugs’ binding mode via identification and virtual screening of interaction patterns. Such patterns are uncovered with the use of PLIP, an automated tool for the in silico detection of non-covalent interactions defining the binding mode between drugs and their protein targets. Besides, the approach has been applied to a series of case studies with tangible results: the uncovering of an antimalarial drug as potential chemoresistance treatment, the explained binding mode of ibrutinib to the target VEGR2 as potential B-cells deactivator in autoimmune diseases, and three over the counter drugs with a proved anti-trypanocidal activity as treatments for Chagas disease. Overall the structure-based approach with interaction patterns proved to be a suitable framework for identifying novel repositioning candidates. The uncovered candidates were structurally unrelated to the currently available treatments, and experimental assays successfully demonstrated their inhibitory activity on the protein targets of interest. Furthermore, the approach represents a promising option for the 'in high demand' diseases and all rare and neglected diseases for which no reliable treatment has yet been found and for which the pharmaceutical industry makes only a little investment.

Sverige befinner sig i en situation där omvärldsläget har förändrats. Det började med en pandemi, vilken har följts av militära konflikter i vår närhet. Detta har gjort att både politiker och medborgare har ett nytt omvärldsläge att ta ställning till.  Försvarsmakten har fått i uppgift att öka antalet värnpliktiga som genomgår grundutbildning. Den allmänna värnplikten återinfördes 2017 och gäller nu män som kvinnor. Volymen som behöver genomföra grundutbildning ökar varje år med innebörden att fler ungdomar behöver mönstra. När ungdomarna fyller i mönstringsunderlaget online framgår det att intresset och motivationen för att genomföra värnplikt är låg. Trots förändringarna i omvärldsläget, har ungdomarnas motivation till värnplikt förblivit oförändrad.  Studien fokuserar på att förstå ur ett individperspektiv, vad som motiverar unga människor att själva vilja genomföra mönstring och värnplikt. Genom att förvärva denna kunskap kan författarna utveckla förslag som kan motivera nuvarande och kommande generationer att mönstra och göra värnplikt, och på detta sätt försvara sitt land.  Syftet med denna studie är att söka förståelse och kunskap om vad som motiverar unga till att mönstra och göra värnplikt.  Studien använder en induktiv ansats och kvalitativ metod. Empirin är hämtad genom semistrukturerade intervjuer i huvuddel från ungdomar som står inför kommande värnplikt och anställda inom Plikt- och prövningsverket. Ungdomarna som har intervjuats har delat med sig av sina åsikter om vad mönstring och värnplikt innebär för dem personligen, samt vad som motiverar dem att vilja genomföra dessa skyldigheter. Empirin från intervjuerna kodades med grundad teori och resultatet blev tre kärnkategorier, individens utbildning, individens förebilder och individen i samhället.  Studien resulterade till följande slutsatser:  De viktigaste förebilderna enligt denna studie är respondenternas föräldrar, och de har en betydande inverkan på deras motivation. En högre folklig förankring och en förstärkning av Försvarsmaktens varumärke ökar ungdomars motivation. Individen påverkas av vänners inställning och åsikter, det beror på rädslan att hamna utanför gemenskapen. Detta påverkar motivationen hos unga att mönstra och göra värnplikt. En ökad kunskap och förståelse om hur mönstring och värnplikt bidrar till att skydda landet ger ungdomar en högre motivation. Meriterande utbildning och ekonomiska bidrag ger unga en ökad motivation till mönstring och värnplikt Det som gör ett land värt att försvara är individens eget behov och detta väger tyngre än landets. / Sweden finds itself in a situation where the global context has changed. It began with a pandemic, followed by military conflicts in our vicinity. This has led both politicians and citizens to face a new international situation.  The Swedish Armed Forces have been tasked with increasing the number of conscripts undergoing basic training. General conscription was reintroduced in 2017 and now applies to both men and women. The number of people needing to complete basic training increases each year, meaning that more young people need to be conscripted. When the youth fill in the conscription documents online, it shows that the interest and motivation to carry out conscription is low. Despite the global situation, the motivation among the youth for duty neither increases nor decreases.  This study focuses on understanding, from an individual perspective, what motivates young people to voluntarily undergo conscription and military service. By acquiring this knowledge, the authors can develop proposals that can motivate current and future generations to muster and do basic training, there by defending their country.  The purpose of this study is to seek understanding and knowledge about what motivates young individuals to muster and do basic training.  This study uses an inductive approach with a qualitative method. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured interviews, primarily from young individuals facing upcoming conscription and employees within the Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency. The interviewed youth shared their opinions on what conscription and military service mean to them personally, as well as what motivates them to want to fulfill these obligations. The empirical data from the interviews were analyzed using grounded theory, resulting in three core categories: individual education, individual role models and the individual within society.  The study resulted in the following conclusions:  The most significant role models, according to this study, are the respondents’ parents, and they have a significant impact on their motivation. A stronger connection to the public and enhancing the Swedish Armed Forces’ brand increases motivation among young people. The individual is influenced by friends´ attitudes and opinions, which is due to the fear of being excluded from the community. This affects the motivation of young people to muster and do basic training. Increased knowledge and understanding of how conscription and military service contribute to protecting the country led to higher motivation among young individuals. Recognizing educational achievements and providing financial support enhance motivation for mustering and do basic training. What makes a country worth defending is the individual´s own need, and this weighs more than the country´s.

No description available.

The general aim of my dissertation was to investigate the role of plant interactions in driving population dynamics. Both theoretical and empirical approaches were employed. All my studies were conducted on the basis of metabolic scaling theory (MST), because the complex, spatially and temporally varying structures and dynamics of ecological systems are considered to be largely consequences of biological metabolism. However, MST did not consider the important role of plant interactions and was found to be invalid in some environmental conditions. Integrating the effects of plant interactions and environmental conditions into MST may be essential for reconciling MST with observed variations in nature. Such integration will improve the development of theory, and will help us to understand the relationship between individual level process and system level dynamics. As a first step, I derived a general ontogenetic growth model for plants which is based on energy conservation and physiological processes of individual plant. Taking the mechanistic growth model as basis, I developed three individual-based models (IBMs) to investigate different topics related to plant population dynamics: 1. I investigated the role of different modes of competition in altering the prediction of MST on plant self-thinning trajectories. A spatially-explicit individual-based zone-of-influence (ZOI) model was developed to investigate the hypothesis that MST may be compatible with the observed variation in plant self-thinning trajectories if different modes of competition and different resource availabilities are considered. The simulation results supported my hypothesis that (i) symmetric competition (e.g. belowground competition) will lead to significantly shallower self-thinning trajectories than asymmetric competition as predicted by MST; and (ii) individual-level metabolic processes can predict population-level patterns when surviving plants are barely affected by local competition, which is more likely to be in the case of asymmetric competition. 2. Recent studies implied that not only plant interactions but also the plastic biomass allocation to roots or shoots of plants may affect mass-density relationship. To investigate the relative roles of competition and plastic biomass allocation in altering the mass-density relationship of plant population, a two-layer ZOI model was used which considers allometric biomass allocation to shoots or roots and represents both above- and belowground competition simultaneously via independent ZOIs. In addition, I also performed greenhouse experiment to evaluate the model predictions. Both theoretical model and experiment demonstrated that: plants are able to adjust their biomass allocation in response to environmental factors, and such adaptive behaviours of individual plants, however, can alter the relative importance of above- or belowground competition, thereby affecting plant mass-density relationships at the population level. Invalid predictions of MST are likely to occur where competition occurs belowground (symmetric) rather than aboveground (asymmetric). 3. I introduced the new concept of modes of facilitation, i.e. symmetric versus asymmetric facilitation, and developed an individual-based model to explore how the interplay between different modes of competition and facilitation changes spatial pattern formation in plant populations. The study shows that facilitation by itself can play an important role in promoting plant aggregation independent of other ecological factors (e.g. seed dispersal, recruitment, and environmental heterogeneity). In the last part of my study, I went from population level to community level and explored the possibility of combining MST and unified neutral theory of biodiversity (UNT). The analysis of extensive data confirms that most plant populations examined are nearly neutral in the sense of demographic trade-offs, which can mostly be explained by a simple allometric scaling rule based on MST. This demographic equivalence regarding birth-death trade-offs between different species and functional groups is consistent with the assumptions of neutral theory but allows functional differences between species. My initial study reconciles the debate about whether niche or neutral mechanisms structure natural communities: the real question should be when and why one of these factors dominates. A synthesis of existing theories will strengthen future ecology in theory and application. All the studies presented in my dissertation showed that the approaches of individual-based and pattern-oriented modelling are promising to achieve the synthesis.

The general aim of my dissertation was to investigate the role of plant interactions in driving population dynamics. Both theoretical and empirical approaches were employed. All my studies were conducted on the basis of metabolic scaling theory (MST), because the complex, spatially and temporally varying structures and dynamics of ecological systems are considered to be largely consequences of biological metabolism. However, MST did not consider the important role of plant interactions and was found to be invalid in some environmental conditions. Integrating the effects of plant interactions and environmental conditions into MST may be essential for reconciling MST with observed variations in nature. Such integration will improve the development of theory, and will help us to understand the relationship between individual level process and system level dynamics. As a first step, I derived a general ontogenetic growth model for plants which is based on energy conservation and physiological processes of individual plant. Taking the mechanistic growth model as basis, I developed three individual-based models (IBMs) to investigate different topics related to plant population dynamics: 1. I investigated the role of different modes of competition in altering the prediction of MST on plant self-thinning trajectories. A spatially-explicit individual-based zone-of-influence (ZOI) model was developed to investigate the hypothesis that MST may be compatible with the observed variation in plant self-thinning trajectories if different modes of competition and different resource availabilities are considered. The simulation results supported my hypothesis that (i) symmetric competition (e.g. belowground competition) will lead to significantly shallower self-thinning trajectories than asymmetric competition as predicted by MST; and (ii) individual-level metabolic processes can predict population-level patterns when surviving plants are barely affected by local competition, which is more likely to be in the case of asymmetric competition. 2. Recent studies implied that not only plant interactions but also the plastic biomass allocation to roots or shoots of plants may affect mass-density relationship. To investigate the relative roles of competition and plastic biomass allocation in altering the mass-density relationship of plant population, a two-layer ZOI model was used which considers allometric biomass allocation to shoots or roots and represents both above- and belowground competition simultaneously via independent ZOIs. In addition, I also performed greenhouse experiment to evaluate the model predictions. Both theoretical model and experiment demonstrated that: plants are able to adjust their biomass allocation in response to environmental factors, and such adaptive behaviours of individual plants, however, can alter the relative importance of above- or belowground competition, thereby affecting plant mass-density relationships at the population level. Invalid predictions of MST are likely to occur where competition occurs belowground (symmetric) rather than aboveground (asymmetric). 3. I introduced the new concept of modes of facilitation, i.e. symmetric versus asymmetric facilitation, and developed an individual-based model to explore how the interplay between different modes of competition and facilitation changes spatial pattern formation in plant populations. The study shows that facilitation by itself can play an important role in promoting plant aggregation independent of other ecological factors (e.g. seed dispersal, recruitment, and environmental heterogeneity). In the last part of my study, I went from population level to community level and explored the possibility of combining MST and unified neutral theory of biodiversity (UNT). The analysis of extensive data confirms that most plant populations examined are nearly neutral in the sense of demographic trade-offs, which can mostly be explained by a simple allometric scaling rule based on MST. This demographic equivalence regarding birth-death trade-offs between different species and functional groups is consistent with the assumptions of neutral theory but allows functional differences between species. My initial study reconciles the debate about whether niche or neutral mechanisms structure natural communities: the real question should be when and why one of these factors dominates. A synthesis of existing theories will strengthen future ecology in theory and application. All the studies presented in my dissertation showed that the approaches of individual-based and pattern-oriented modelling are promising to achieve the synthesis.

Eine große Herausforderung für Verkehrsmodelle stellt die korrekte Abbildung der Entscheidungsmuster bei der Zielwahl dar. Diese bestimmt die räumlichen Strukturen der Nachfrage und steht in engem Zusammenhang mit zentralen Ergebnissen der Nachfragemodellierung. Rund ein Drittel der Alltagswege in Deutschland sind Einkaufs- und Erledigungwege. Zahlreiche Arbeiten zeigen die Bedeutung von habitualisierten Verhaltensmustern bei der Wahl eines Einkaufsortes. Die Motive der Geschäftswahl gelten als sehr vielfältig. Besondere Bedeutung wird zudem den Primäraktivitätenorten zugeschrieben. Gleichwohl erfolgt die Abbildung der Zielwahl in der Nachfragemodellierung zumeist sehr vereinfachend. Gewöhnlich wird von einem Versorgungseinkauf mit der Geschäftsgröße und der Anreisezeit ausgegangen. Diese Arbeit zeigt anhand empirischer Auswertungen Möglichkeiten einer verhaltensorientierten Abbildung der Einkaufszielwahl in mikroskopischen Personenverkehrsmodellen auf. Im Fokus stehen die Variabilität der Geschäftswahl, die ausschlaggebenden Motive sowie die räumlichen Bezugspunkte der Suche. Am Beispiel des Erwerbs von Nahrungs- und Genussmitteln, von Textilien sowie von Unterhaltungselektronik werden Unterschiede zwischen Einkaufswaren verschiedener Fristigkeit, aber auch zwischen verschiedenen Personengruppen herausgearbeitet. Simulationsrechnungen mit dem Nachfragemodell TAPAS zeigen, dass eine Differenzierung der Einkaufsart sowie die Nutzung eines motivgestützen Erreichbarkeitsmaßes die Modellierungsergebnisse stark verbessern. Die Arbeit stellt erweiterte Indikatoren für eine Berücksichtigung der räumlichen Bezugspunkte bei der Beurteilung der Modellierungsergebnisse bereit. Auch stehen mit den Analysen der Aktivitätenräume, der Umwegfaktoren, der Lage der Einkaufsorte sowie der kumulierten Reiseweiten Informationen zur Verfügung, die generell für die Definition adäquater Suchräume und Bezugspunkte für die Modellierung städtischer Untersuchungsgebiete genutzt werden können. / A major challenge in travel demand modelling is the correct representation of decision patterns underlying the choice of destinations. This choice determines the spatial structures of demand and is closely related to central modelling results. Around one third of everyday trips in Germany are for shopping and errands. Numerous studies show the importance of habitualised behavioral patterns when choosing a shopping location. The motives for choosing a shop are considered to be very diverse. Particular importance is attributed to primary activity locations. Nevertheless, the representation of the target choice in demand modelling is usually very simplified. Usually, a supply purchase is implicitly assumed, with the size of the shop and travel time from the previous location being the most important choice criteria. Using empirical analyses, this dissertation shows possibilities for a behavior-oriented depiction of shopping location choice in microscopic passenger transport models. These are discussed in terms of their usability for modeling. The analyses focus on the variability of destinations, the decisive motives and the spatial reference points of the location search. Using the example of the purchase of food and beverages, textiles and consumer electronics, differences between shopping goods of different periodicity and also different groups of people are presented. Simulation calculations with the demand model TAPAS show that a differentiation of the type of purchase and the use of a motive-based accessibility measure greatly improves the modelling results. The dissertation provides extended indicators for a consideration of spatial reference points in the evaluation of the modelling results. Furthermore, the analyses of activity areas, diversion factors, the location of shopping locations and cumulative travel distances provide information that can be generally used to define adequate search areas and reference points for the modelling of urban study areas.Einkaufsverhalten

Music is perceived and described very subjectively by every individual. Nowadays, people often get lost in their steadily growing, multi-placed, digital music collection. Existing music player and management applications get in trouble when dealing with poor metadata that is predominant in personal music collections. There are several music information services available that assist users by providing tools for precisely organising their music collection, or for presenting them new insights into their own music library and listening habits. However, it is still not the case that music consumers can seamlessly interact with all these auxiliary services directly from the place where they access their music individually. To profit from the manifold music and music-related knowledge that is or can be available via various information services, this information has to be gathered up, semantically federated, and integrated into a uniform knowledge base that can personalised represent this data in an appropriate visualisation to the users. This personalised semantic aggregation of music metadata from several sources is the gist of this thesis. The outlined solution particularly concentrates on users’ needs regarding music collection management which can strongly alternate between single human beings. The author’s proposal, the personal music knowledge base (PMKB), consists of a client-server architecture with uniform communication endpoints and an ontological knowledge representation model format that is able to represent the versatile information of its use cases. The PMKB concept is appropriate to cover the complete information flow life cycle, including the processes of user account initialisation, information service choice, individual information extraction, and proactive update notification. The PMKB implementation makes use of SemanticWeb technologies. Particularly the knowledge representation part of the PMKB vision is explained in this work. Several new Semantic Web ontologies are defined or existing ones are massively modified to meet the requirements of a personalised semantic federation of music and music-related data for managing personal music collections. The outcome is, amongst others, • a new vocabulary for describing the play back domain, • another one for representing information service categorisations and quality ratings, and • one that unites the beneficial parts of the existing advanced user modelling ontologies. The introduced vocabularies can be perfectly utilised in conjunction with the existing Music Ontology framework. Some RDFizers that also make use of the outlined ontologies in their mapping definitions, illustrate the fitness in practise of these specifications. A social evaluation method is applied to carry out an examination dealing with the reutilisation, application and feedback of the vocabularies that are explained in this work. This analysis shows that it is a good practise to properly publish Semantic Web ontologies with the help of some Linked Data principles and further basic SEO techniques to easily reach the searching audience, to avoid duplicates of such KR specifications, and, last but not least, to directly establish a \"shared understanding\". Due to their project-independence, the proposed vocabularies can be deployed in every knowledge representation model that needs their knowledge representation capacities. This thesis added its value to make the vision of a personal music knowledge base come true.