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In the Mesoamerican forest Selva Maya, multiple driving forces create an imbalance in the sensitive human-nature relation and demand for innovative management strategies for its re-establishment. Within the Guatemalan Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), core areas are under strict protective legislation and agricultural activity is permitted only within a bordering buffer zone (BZ), which covers great part of the Guatemalan department Petén. Here, the implementation of agroecological practices by multiple stakeholders aims at tackling the principle driving forces of environmental degradation and thus at reducing the pressure on Central America’s largest tropical forest area. Since 2011, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) has assisted local stakeholders by carrying out the project “Conservation and sustainable use of the Selva Maya”. This project has offered technical support, cooperated with national institutions, and assisted multiple target groups to nudge agroecological transitions at the household and community level. As the establishment of agroecological systems face main obstacles stemming from the socio-ecological setting of the respective area, the following work presents a context specific analysis for the adaption of established strategies in the MBR BZ. Therefore, it raises the following research questions: What are the current properties of the socio-ecological system that describes the BZ? How has the GIZ’s project nudged and guided agroecological transitions? Which factors have favored or limited the turn to agroecological farming? And finally: Which recommendations derive for the navigation of agroecological transitions? The overall research approach is orientated on the framework of ecosystem stewardship1 and incorporates elements of system theory and resilience science. The framework has been adapted by combining two approaches on different management levels. The social-ecological system approach2 is used to describe the socio-ecological system of the BZ, while the evaluation of the pilot groups‘ AESs follows the Mexican MESMIS3 approach for sustainability assessments. By the integration of both approaches, it is revealed that the socio-economic context impedes or hinders the implementation of agroecological strategies for the majority of farmers. The application of the MESMIS framework has revealed that the installed monitoring mechanism is dysfunctional. Findings further indicate that there is potential for transitions of individual AESs, but they demand investments and support with the current circumstances of reducing farmers’ vulnerability. The rapidly decreasing social and environmental conditions for family farmers in the BZ are most likely not addressed by solutions that the agroecological approach tackles. Recommendations for the immediate improvement of the strategy include adjustments of the project’s proceedings as well as fundamental changes in conservation paradigm and governance to maintain the necessary functionality of the socio-ecological system.
Die vorliegende Masterarbeit behandelt die Bewertung der eingegangenen Unternehmensrisiken im Rahmen der Lebensversicherung und die hiervon abgeleiteten Auswirkungen zur Unternehmenssteuerung.
Dabei wird einerseits die Angemessenheit der sog. „Standardformel“ nach Solvency II überprüft, die in den europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten einen weitestgehend einheitlichen Ansatz bei der Bewertung der Risiken von Versicherungsunternehmen verwendet. Andererseits werden unter ökonomischen Überlegungen versicherungsmathematische Methoden vorgestellt, wie ein Lebensversicherer seine Risiken unternehmensindividueller ermitteln und damit seinen tatsächlichen Risikokapitalbedarf bestimmen kann.
Zur Quantifizierung der Ergebnisse werden die Berechnungsvorgaben der Standardformel für ausgewählte Risikomodule nachgebildet und mit den in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten unternehmensindividuellen Berechnungen verglichen und analysiert. Es zeigt sich, dass trotz der Komplexität des Solvency II-Modells eine noch differenziertere Herangehensweise notwendig ist, damit ein einzelnes Unternehmen seine Risiken adäquat und möglichst individuell bestimmen kann. Zur Gewährleistung einer nicht bestandsgefährdenden Unternehmensfortführung müssen die Versicherungsunternehmen bei Betrachtung ihrer Risiken mithilfe des EU-weiten Aufsichtssystems Solvency II in der Lage sein, die korrekten Rückschlüsse zur Unternehmenssteuerung zu ziehen. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten versicherungsmathematischen Ansätze können dabei den Prozess zur unternehmenseigenen Risiko- und Solvabilitätsbeurteilung (ORSA) unterstützen.
Grasping and manipulation with anthropomorphic robotic and prosthetic hands presents a scientific challenge regarding mechanical design, sensor system, and control. Apart from the mechanical design of such hands, embedding sensors needed for closed-loop control of grasping tasks remains a hard problem due to limited space and required high level of integration of different components. In this paper we present a scalable design model of artificial fingers, which combines mechanical design and embedded electronics with a sophisticated multi-modal sensor system consisting of sensors for sensing normal and shear force, distance, acceleration, temperature, and joint angles. The design is fully parametric, allowing automated scaling of the fingers to arbitrary dimensions in the human hand spectrum. To this end, the electronic parts are composed of interchangeable modules that facilitate the echanical scaling of the fingers and are fully enclosed by the mechanical parts of the finger. The resulting design model allows deriving freely scalable and multimodally sensorised fingers for robotic and prosthetic hands. Four physical demonstrators are assembled and tested to evaluate the approach.
The ‘Energy Crisis’ has become the talk of the town in pretty much every developing and lower developing countries in today’s world. It is characterized by a state where the country’s locally available energy resources are being depleted and it is dependent on imported fuel. The problem is considered as although not parallel, but a descendant of the food crisis in terms of the seriousness of the problems in developing nations essentially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Ethiopia is one such country which nevertheless going through a rapid scale of development (nearly 11 % annual growth rate as of 2017 according to the World Bank) and also is endowed with an enormous amount of natural resources such as hydro, wind, solar, geothermal energy potential. The Ethiopian power sector is heavily dependent on the country’s hydropower resources. However, it needs to diversify its energy sector and integrate new and other renewable energy sources because, in the longer term, its extreme hydropower dependence may put its power sector vulnerable to natural risks like droughts which are very likely scenarios due to the climate change. Since the lack of access to modern forms of energy services left no choice for the Ethiopians than to continue their traditional biomass use, and it results in unsustainable environmental harm with deforestation, soil erosion, and many others. To address this issue, Ethiopia is taking necessary steps towards climate-friendly industrialization of the economy.
In order to understand this transition, a socio-technical analysis of Ethiopian ambitious transformation from an agrarian society to a climate resilient green society has been presented in this paper. An analytical framework will be formulated as a prerequisite for the study by introducing the theory of Multilevel Perspective (MLP). This theory enables the understanding of three different levels of socio-technical environment namely niches, regime, and landscape in which the respective actors interact with each other to facilitate the process of transition. As a part of laying the groundwork, this thorough analysis constitutes all the country’s energy-related activities and associated energy demands, conversion technologies, current fuel mix, primary energy resources, and energy policies in the Ethiopian energy system. The LEAP analysis results from Mr. Md Alam Mondal and group are summarized to obtain an understanding of the country’s total energy demand scenarios.
Consequently, the actors from each socio-technical level have been identified in the context of Ethiopia and their dynamics of interaction have been explained in order to understand the process of energy system transition of Ethiopia in the direction of diversification of its energy system and hence result in the expansion of new renewable energy sector. Most importantly the assessment suggests that the transition process is majorly driven by top-down forces and intra-level reconfiguration of regime actors. There are no bottom-up forces acting as only a little research and development work takes place in the country to develop new radical changes/technological niches. A developing country like Ethiopia has undoubtedly a bright future ahead with all systems in place and the nature-gifted natural resource potential. The ambitious goals set by the country and the international help from developed allies are definitely working in tandem to ensure their accomplishment. With its guiding vision towards development and the global climate change movement, Ethiopia surely has the potential to lead by example.
The reinsurance market continues to face major challenges – at this point we would like to outline just two of these. While renewal of the reinsurance contracts as at 1st January 2019 was largely ‘riskadjusted flat’, renewal of the retrocession contracts was decidedly late. As at the date when this Annual Report 2018 went to press (2nd January 2019), the final trend is still not yet discernible. However, there are signs of a substantial hardening in prices and conditions in the retrocession area. Reinsurers, which are depend on the resource of retrocession capacity, would then be placed in an even more difficult position of increasing the price of retrocession, yet these additional costs cannot be passed on to the assignors under their active reinsurance contracts. Not least the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority [BaFin] is also certain to set its sights on this aspect in its analysis of the prevailing reinsurance price level, which has been announced for 2019. Of particular interest with regard to a potential determination of insufficient market conditions would also be the resulting reaction by BaFin (and the basis on which this would occur). A decisive factor for a possible strengthening of the retrocession market would be a changed attitude on the part of alternative capital, which in recent years already provided 50-70% of the retrocession capacity – and rising – via ILS funds and other mechanisms. Unlike traditional reinsurers, ‘innocent investors’ such as pension funds were increasingly nervous as a result of the high number of claims again in 2018 – particularly the California wildfires in Q4 2018 – as well as the drop in the fund share price of numerous ILS funds prior to the renewal at 1st January 2019.
A further substantial burden on the business climate lies in the utter ambiguity with regard to the modalities of Brexit on 29th March 2019. A no-deal Brexit would seem to be a real – and perhaps even a probable – alternative. This would create a large vacuum
in legal certainty by eliminating many EU-UK contracts and agreements. The Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance analyses the latest developments in the reinsurance market and, where appropriate, monitors these through research projects. In the process, the Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance links its research activities with practices in the reinsurance sector. Hereby, and facilitated through organisation
of the annual Cologne Reinsurance Symposium and the Annual Meeting of the Sponsoring Group Reinsurance [Förderkreis Rückversicherung], a bi-directional
transfer of knowledge between theory and practice is pursued. The content of these two scientific events, as well as the completed research projects, are incorporated into scholarship and instruction at the Institute of Insurance Studies, rounding out practice-oriented training in the field of reinsurance.
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Currently, there are nine researchers and two employees responsible for science management on the staff of the Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance. Thereby, all
material and personnel costs are fully financed by third-party funds provided by the Sponsoring Group Reinsurance.
We want to thank the Sponsoring Group Reinsurance, the University leadership and administration, ivwKöln [the Institute of Insurance Cologne] and the employees of the
Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance for all their support for the research projects and events of the past year.
Über Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ist alles gesagt, oder? 1886 in Aachen geboren, entwickelte er sich zu einem der renommiertesten und bekanntesten Architekten weltweit – mit ikonischen Bauten wie der Neuen Nationalgalerie in Berlin oder Bauten wie dem Seagram Building in New York. Viele Publikationen sind zu seinem Leben und seinen Arbeiten erschienen. Jedoch finden die nordrhein-westfälischen Projekte, mit Ausnahme der Krefelder Villen Lange und Esters, darin erstaunlich wenig Beachtung.
Erstaunlich deshalb, weil sich besonders an diesen Projekten sehr eindrucksvoll sein Lebensweg aufzeigen lässt – vom rheinischen Handwerkslehrling über den Bauhausdirektor bis hin zum weltweit agierenden Architekten. Innerhalb der Baukunst des 20. Jahrhunderts spiegeln seine Arbeiten im heutigen Nordrhein-Westfalen die Entwicklung vom Jugendstil zum International Style.
Der Erforschung dieser vielfältigen Spuren widmen sich mittlerweile seit vielen Jahren Studentinnen und Studenten sowie Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler unterschiedlicher westdeutscher Architektur-Hochschulen. Unter der Leitung der beiden Herausgeber, Prof. Dr. Daniel Lohmann und Prof. Norbert Hanenberg, dieses Architekturführers wurden die Projekte dokumentiert, Spuren gelesen, Quellen ausgewertet, und die Geschichte von „Mies im Westen“ wurde nachvollzogen.
Die vorliegende Publikation ist in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW im Rahmen der Lehrveranstaltungen der TH Köln und der TH Mittelhessen (Gießen) mit Studierenden entstanden.
STEPsCON 2018 was jointly organized by the Faculty of Applied Natural Sciences of TH Köln (Germany) and the University of Oulu (Finland) on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Leverkusen – Oulu town twinning. The conference focused on sustainability issues and covered the current state of research in four key topics:
1. Sustainable Medicine and Pharmaceuticals
2. Resources and Bioremediation
3. Sustainable Chemistry & Industrial Biotechnology
4. Innovative Materials & Formulations
Sensors can monitor physical attributes and record multimodal data in order to provide feedback. The application calligraphy trainer, exploits these affordances in the context of handwriting learning. It records the expert’s handwriting performance to compute an expert model. The application then uses the expert model to provide guidance and feedback to the learners.
However, new learners can be overwhelmed by the feedback as handwriting learning is a tedious task. This paper presents the pilot study done with the calligraphy trainer to evaluate the mental effort induced by various types of feedback provided by the application. Ten participants, five in the control group and five in the treatment group, who were Ph.D. students in the technology-enhanced learning domain, took part in the study. The participants used the application to learn three characters from the Devanagari script. The results show higher mental effort in the treatment group when all types of feedback are provided simultaneously. The mental efforts for individual feedback were similar to the control group. In conclusion, the feedback provided by the calligraphy trainer does not impose high mental effort and, therefore, the design considerations of the calligraphy trainer can be insightful for multimodal feedback designers.
Comparative analysis of non-natural acceptor glucosylation with sucrase enzymes of family GH 70
(2019)
Mutan- and alternansucrase were analyzed for their non-natural glucosylation potential with catecholic compounds caffeic acid and nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) as well as with non-catecolic p-coumaric acid and umbellic acid. Mutansucrase accepted both catecholic substrates and high glucosylation yields of 92 % with caffeic acid and 81 % with NDGA were obtained. The enzyme showed a clear regio-preference for the catechol 4-OH, which corresponds to findings from our previous work with Leuconostoc and Weissella derived glucansucrases. The substrate spectrum of the alternansucrase was broader and all substrates were successfully glucosylated with a preference for the catechols. Interestingly alternansucrase possessed a different regio-specificity. With caffeic acid the 3-O-α-D-glucoside was the major product. A similar substrate spectrum and regioselectivity pattern was observed in previous glucansucrase screenings only with glucansucrase from strain Weissella beninensis DSM 22752. Therefore it may be concluded that the W. beninensis enzyme is an alternansucrase type enzyme as well.
Das vorliegende Paper fasst die Erkenntnisse zum Einsatz von Kundenbeziehungs-management (engl. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)) und geeignete Tools für junge Unternehmen zusammen.
Es basiert auf der Bachelorarbeit von Herrn Enes Zafer, die von August bis Oktober 2019 von Prof. Dr. Monika Engelen betreut wurde. Neben einer Recherche der grundle-genden Theorie zu Customer Relationship Management wurden zehn CRM Tools an-hand Ihrer Funktionen beurteilt und verglichen.
Der Kerninhalt dieses Papers ist, sowohl ein Verständnis für Kundenbeziehungsma-nagement zu schaffen als auch einen Überblick und Empfehlung von CRM Tools für junge Unternehmen abzuleiten.