Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
Dokumenttyp
- Dissertation (333) (entfernen)
Sprache
- Englisch (333) (entfernen)
Volltext vorhanden
- ja (333) (entfernen)
Schlagworte
- Stress (24)
- Optimierung (16)
- Hydrocortison (13)
- Fernerkundung (10)
- Modellierung (10)
- Deutschland (9)
- cortisol (9)
- stress (9)
- Cortisol (8)
- Finanzierung (8)
Institut
- Psychologie (64)
- Fachbereich 4 (50)
- Raum- und Umweltwissenschaften (45)
- Mathematik (44)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (26)
- Fachbereich 1 (19)
- Informatik (16)
- Anglistik (11)
- Fachbereich 2 (7)
- Fachbereich 6 (7)
- Politikwissenschaft (3)
- Computerlinguistik und Digital Humanities (1)
- Fachbereich 3 (1)
- Japanologie (1)
- Sinologie (1)
- Universitätsbibliothek (1)
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in liking that are due to the pairing of stimuli, and is one of the effects studied in order to understand the processes of attitude formation. Initially, EC had been conceived of as driven by processes that are unique to the formation of attitudes, and that occur independent of whether or not individuals engage in conscious and effortful propositional processes. However, propositional processes have gained considerable popularity as an explanatory concept for the boundary conditions observed in EC studies, with some authors going as far as to suggest that the evidence implies that EC is driven primarily by propositional processes. In this monograph I present research which questions the validity of this claim, and I discuss theoretical challenges and avenues for future EC research.
Mankind has dramatically influenced the nitrogen (N) fluxes between soil, vegetation, water and atmosphere " the global N cycle. Increasing intensification of agricultural land use, caused by the growing demand for agricultural products, has had major impacts on ecosystems worldwide. Particularly nitrogenous gases such as ammonia (NH3) have increased mainly due to industrial livestock farming. Countries with high N deposition rates require a variety of deposition measurements and effective N monitoring networks to assess N loads. Due to high costs, current "conventional"-deposition measurement stations are not widespread and therefore provide only a patchy picture of the real extent of the prevailing N deposition status over large areas. One tool that allows quantification of the exposure and the effects of atmospheric N impacts on an ecosystem is the use of bioindicators. Due to their specific physiology and ecology, especially lichens and mosses are suitable to reflect the atmospheric N input at ecosystem level. The present doctoral project began by investigating the general ability of epiphytic lichens to qualify and quantify N deposition by analysing both lichens and total N and δ15N along a gradient of different N emission sources and severity. The results showed that this was a viable monitoring method, and a grid-based monitoring system with nitrophytic lichens was set up in the western part of Germany. Finally, a critical appraisal of three different monitoring techniques (lichens, mosses and tree bark) was carried out to compare them with national relevant N deposition assessment programmes. In total 1057 lichen samples, 348 tree bark samples, 153 moss samples and 24 deposition water samples, were analysed in this dissertation at different investigation scales in Germany.The study identified species-specific ability and tolerance of various epiphytic lichens to accumulate N. Samples of tree bark were also collected and N accumulation ability was detected in connection with the increased intensity of agriculture, and according to the presence of reduced N compounds (NHx) in the atmosphere. Nitrophytic lichens (Xanthoria parietina, Physcia spp.) have the strongest correlations with high agriculture-related N deposition. In addition, the main N sources were revealed with the help of δ15N values along a gradient of altitude and areas affected by different types of land use (NH3 density classes, livestock units and various deposition types). Furthermore, in the first nationwide survey of Germany to compare lichens, mosses and tree bark samples as biomonitors for N deposition, it was revealed that lichens are clearly the most meaningful monitor organisms in highly N affected regions. Additionally, the study shows that dealing with different biomonitors is a difficult task due to their variety of N responses. The specific receptor surfaces of the indicators and therefore their different strategies of N uptake are responsible for the tissue N concentration of each organism group. It was also shown that the δ15N values depend on their N origin and the specific N transformations in each organism system, so that a direct comparison between atmosphere and ecosystems is not possible.In conclusion, biomonitors, and especially epiphytic lichens may serve as possible alternatives to get a spatially representative picture of the N deposition conditions. Furthermore, bioindication with lichens is a cost-efficient alternative to physico-chemical measurements to comprehensively assess different prevailing N doses and sources of N pools on a regional scale. They can at least support on-site deposition instruments by qualification and quantification of N deposition.
In a paper of 1996 the british mathematician Graham R. Allan posed the question, whether the product of two stable elements is again stable. Here stability describes the solvability of a certain infinite system of equations. Using a method from the theory of homological algebra, it is proved that in the case of topological algebras with multiplicative webs, and thus in all common locally convex topological algebras that occur in standard analysis, the answer of Allan's question is affirmative.
High-resolution projections of the future climate are required to assess climate change realistically at a regional scale. This is in particular important for climate change impact studies since global projections are much too coarse to represent local conditions adequately. A major concern is thereby the change of extreme values in a warming climate due to their severe impact on the natural environment, socio-economical systems and the human health. Regional climate models (RCMs) are, however, able to reproduce much of those local features. Current horizontal resolutions are about 18-25km, which is still too coarse to directly resolve small-scale processes such as deep-convection. For this reason, projections of a possible future climate were simulated in this study with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM at horizontal resolutions of 4.5km and 1.3km for the region of Saarland-Lorraine-Luxemburg and Rhineland-Palatinate for the first time. At a horizontal scale of about 1km deep-convection is treated explicitly, which is expected to improve particularly the simulation of convective summer precipitation and a better resolved orography is expected to improve near surface fields such as 2m temperature. These simulations were performed as 10-year long time-slice experiments for the present climate (1991"2000), the near future (2041"2050) and the end of the century (2091"2100). The climate change signals of the annual and seasonal means and the change of extremes are analysed with respect to precipitation and 2m temperature and a possible added value due to the increased resolution is investigated. To assess changes in extremes, extreme indices have been applied and 10- and 20-year return levels were estimated by "peak-over-threshold" models. Since it is generally known that model output of RCMs should not directly be used for climate change impact studies, the precipitation and temperature fields were bias-corrected with several quantile-matching methods. Among them is a new developed parametric method which includes an extension for extreme values and is hence expected to improve the correction. In addition, the impact of the bias-correction on the climate change signals and on the extreme value statistics was investigated. The results reveal a significant warming of the annual mean by about +1.7 -°C until 2041"2050 and +3.7 -°C until 2091"2100, but considerably stronger signals of up to +5 -°C in summer in the Rhine Valley. Furthermore, the daily variability increases by about +0.8 -°C in summer but decreases by about -0.8 -°C in winter. Consequently, hot extremes increase moderately until the mid of the century but strongly thereafter, in particular in the Rhine Valley. Cold extremes warm continuously in the complete domain in the next 100 years but strongest in mountainous areas. The change signals with regard to annual precipitation are of the order -±10% but not significant. Significant, however, are a predicted increase of +32% of the seasonal precipitation in autumn until 2041"2050 and a decrease of -28% in summer until 2091-2100. No significant changes were found for days with intensities > 20 mm/day, but the results indicate that extremes with return periods ≤2 years increase as well as the frequency and duration of dry periods. The bias-corrections amplified positive signals but dampened negative signals and considerably reduced the power of detection. Moreover, absolute values and frequencies of extremes were altered by the correction but change signals remained approximately constant. The new method outperformed other parametric methods, in particular with regard to extreme value correction and related extreme indices and return levels. Although the bias correction removed systematic errors, it should be treated as an additional layer of uncertainty in climate change studies. Finally, the increased resolution of 1.3km improved predominantly the representation of temperature fields and extremes in terms of spatial heterogeneity. The benefits for summer precipitation were not as clear due to a severe dry-bias in summer, but it could be shown that in principle the onset and intensity of convection improves. This work demonstrates that climate change will have severe impacts in this investigation area and that in particular extremes may change considerably. An increased resolution provides thereby an added value to the results. These findings encourage further investigations, for other variables as for example near-surface wind, which will be more feasible with growing computing resources. These analyses should, however, be repeated with longer time series, different RCMs and anthropogenic scenarios to determine the robustness and uncertainty of these results more extensively.
Veterinary antibiotics are released to arable agricultural soil together with manure, including nutrients, organic matter, and microorganisms. Previously, the effects of antibiotic-contaminated manure on soil microbial community activity, function, structure, and resistance have been reported under controlled experimental conditions. This thesis further evaluated the antimicrobial effects as influenced by different manure compositions, soil microhabitats and moisture regimes, plants, and different distances to roots. Microbial community responses were determined by phenotypic phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) and genotypic 16S rRNA gene fragment analyses. (Chapter 3) demonstrates that medication of pigs with difloxacin (DIF) and sulfadiazine (SDZ) alters the molecular-chemical pattern of slurries, confounding the detection of a consistent antibiotic effect in bulk and respective rhizosphere soil. This was evaluated in a 63-day mesocosm experiment considering typical agricultural manure applications to maize planted soil. Fecal bacteria were detected even 14 days after manure amendment. Manure of DIF- and SDZ-medicated pigs clearly affected the microbial community in mesocosm bulk and rhizosphere soil, temporarily matching antibiotic effects reported in previous studies. (Chapter 4) discusses the influences of different soil microhabitats on antibiotic fate and the effects on soil microflora. Total extractable SDZ was more than two-fold larger in earthworm burrows and soil macroaggregate surfaces compared to bulk soil or the interior fraction of aggregates. Furthermore, soil microbial communities were affected by a combination of soil microhabitat and treatment, which was reflected by different structural and functional community responses to SDZ in laboratory and under field conditions. (Chapter 5) evaluates if SDZ effects on microbial communities are more pronounced in soils which undergo periodic changes in soil moisture by drying-rewetting dynamics compared to soils without such moisture fluctuations. This was tested in a 49-day climate chamber soil pot experiment grown with grass. Manure-amended pots without or with SDZ contamination were incubated under a dynamic moisture regime with repeated drying and rewetting changes of more than twenty percent maximum water holding capacity compared to the control moisture regime. The microbial biomass, but less pronouncedly the community structure, showed an increased responsiveness to the combined stress of SDZ and dynamic moisture changes in the laboratory. Similar responses were documented under field conditions. (Chapter 6) indicated adverse effects of SDZ on root geotropism, number of lateral roots, and water uptake by plants in a 40-day greenhouse experiment with willow and maize grown in soil with environmentally relevant and worst-case antibiotic contamination. (Chapter 7) showed that the associated microbial community responded to a combination of plant species, distance to the root, and antibiotic spiking concentration. In highly antibiotic-contaminated soils, the structural and functional responses of the microbial community were dominated by indirect antibiotic effects on plants and roots.
Fast and Slow Effects of Cortisol on Several Functions of the Central Nervous System in Humans
(2014)
Cortisol is one of the key substances released during stress to restore homeostasis. Our knowledge of the impact of this glucocorticoid on cognition and behavior in humans is, however, still limited. Two modes of action of cortisol are known, a rapid, nongenomic and a slow, genomic mode. Both mechanisms appear to be involved in mediating the various effects of stress on cognition. Here, three experiments are presented that investigated fast and slow effects of cortisol on several functions of the human brain. The first experiment investigated the interaction between insulin and slow, genomic cortisol effects on resting regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 48 young men. A bilateral, locally distinct increase in rCBF in the insular cortex was observed 37 to 58 minutes after intranasal insulin admission. Cortisol did not influence rCBF, neither alone nor in interaction with insulin. This finding suggests that cortisol does not influence resting cerebral blood flow within a genomic timeframe. The second experiment examined fast cortisol effects on memory retrieval. 40 participants (20 of them female) learned associations between neutral male faces and social descriptions and were tested for recall one week later. Cortisol administered intravenously 8 minutes before retrieval influenced recall performance in an inverted U-shaped dose-response relationship. This study demonstrates a rapid, presumably nongenomic cortisol effect on memory retrieval in humans. The third experiment studied rapid cortisol effects on early multisensory integration. 24 male participants were tested twice in a focused cross-modal choice reaction time paradigm, once after cortisol and once after placebo infusion. Cortisol acutely enhanced the integration of visual targets and startling auditory distractors, when both stimuli appeared in the same sensory hemi-field. The rapidity of effect onset strongly suggests that cortisol changes multisensory integration by a nongenomic mechanism. The work presented in this thesis highlights the essential role of cortisol as a fast acting agent during the stress response. Both the second and the third experiment provide new evidence of nongenomic cortisol effects on human cognition and behavior. Future studies should continue to investigate the impact of rapid cortisol effects on the functioning of the human brain.
Magnet Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are tools used to investigate the functioning of the working brain in both humans and animal studies. Both methods are increasingly combined in separate or simultaneous measurements under the assumption to benefit from their individual strength while compensating their particular weaknesses. However, little attention has been paid to how statistical analyses strategies can influence the information that can be retrieved from a combined EEG fMRI study. Two independent studies in healthy student volunteers were conducted in the context of emotion research to demonstrate two approaches of combining MRI and EEG data of the same participants. The first study (N = 20) applied a visual search paradigm and found that in both measurements the assumed effects were absent by not statistically combining their results. The second study (N = 12) applied a novelty P300 paradigm and found that only the statistical combination of MRI and EEG measurements was able to disentangle the functional effects of brain areas involved in emotion processing. In conclusion, the observed results demonstrate that there are added benefits of statistically combining EEG-fMRI data acquisitions by assessing both the inferential statistical structure and the intra-individual correlations of the EEG and fMRI signal.
In splitting theory of locally convex spaces we investigate evaluable characterizations of the pairs (E, X) of locally convex spaces such that each exact sequence 0 -> X -> G -> E -> 0 of locally convex spaces splits, i.e. either X -> G has a continuous linear left inverse or G -> E has a continuous linear right inverse. In the thesis at hand we deal with splitting of short exact sequences of so-called PLH spaces, which are defined as projective limits of strongly reduced spectra of strong duals of Fréchet-Hilbert spaces. This class of locally convex spaces contains most of the spaces of interest for application in the theory of partial differential operators as the space of Schwartz distributions , the space of real analytic functions and various spaces of ultradifferentiable functions and ultradistributions. It also contains non-Schwartz spaces as B(2,k,loc)(Ω) and spaces of smooth and square integrable functions that are not covered by the current theory for PLS spaces. We prove a complete characterizations of the above problem in the case of X being a PLH space and E either being a Fréchet-Hilbert space or a strong dual of one by conditions of type (T ). To this end, we establish the full homological toolbox of Yoneda Ext functors in exact categories for the category of PLH spaces including the long exact sequence, which in particular involves a thorough discussion of the proper concept of exactness. Furthermore, we exhibit the connection to the parameter dependence problem via the Hilbert tensor product for hilbertizable locally convex spaces. We show that the Hilbert tensor product of two PLH spaces is again a PLH space which in particular proves the positive answer to Grothendieck- problème des topologies. In addition to that we give a complete characterization of the vanishing of the first derivative of the functor proj for tensorized PLH spectra if one of the PLH spaces E and X meets some nuclearity assumptions. To apply our results to concrete cases we establish sufficient conditions of (DN)-(Ω) type and apply them to the parameter dependence problem for partial differential operators with constant coefficients on B(2,k,loc)(Ω) spaces as well as to the smooth and square integrable parameter dependence problem. Concluding we give a complete solution of all the problems under consideration for PLH spaces of Köthe type.
A big challenge for agriculture in the 21st century is the provision of food safety to fast growing world- population, which not only demands the well utilisation of the available agricultural resources but also to develop new advancements in the mass production of food crops. Wheat is the third largest food crop of the world and Pakistan is the eighth largest wheat producing country globally. Rice is the second most important staple food of Pakistan after wheat, grown in all provinces of the country. Maize is the world- top ranking food crop followed by wheat and rice. The harvested produts have to be stored in different types of storage structures on small or large scale for food as well as seed purpose. In Pakistan, the harvested grains are stored for the whole year till the introduction of fresh produce in order to ensure the regular food supply throughout the year. However, it is this extended storage period making the commodity more vulnerable to insect attacks. Rhyzopertha dominica (Coleoptera: Bostrychidae), Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Coleoptera: Laemophloeidae), Tribolium castaneum (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) and Liposcelis spp. (Psocoptera: Liposcelididae) are the major and most damaging insect pests of stored products all around the world. Various management strategies have been adopted for stored grain insect pests mostly relying upon the use of a broad spectrum of insecticides, but the injudicious use of these chemicals raised various environmental and human health related issues, which necessitate the safe use of the prevailing control measures and evaluation of new and alternative control methods. The application of new chemical insecticides, microbial insecticides (particularly entomopathogenic fungi) and the use of inert dusts (diatomaceous earths) is believed amongst the potential alternatives to generally used insecticides in stored grain insect management system. In the current investigations, laboratory bioassays conducted to evaluate the effects of combining Imidacloprid (new chemistry insecticide) with and without Protect-It (diatomaceous earth formulation) against R. dominica, L. paeta, C. ferrugineus and T. castaneum, on three different grain commodities (i.e. wheat, maize and rice) revealed differences in adult mortality levels among grains and insect species tested. Individually, Imidacloprid was more effective as compared with Protect-It alone and the highest numbers of dead adults were recorded in wheat. The insecticidal efficacy of B. bassiana with Protect-It and DEBBM was also assessed against all test insect species under laboratory conditions. The findings of these studies revealed that the more extended exposure period and the higher combined application rate of B. bassiana and DEs provided the highest mortality of the test insect species. The progeny emergence of each insect species was also greatly suppressed where the highest dose rates of the combined treatments were applied. The residual efficacy of all three control measures Imidacloprid, B. bassiana and DEBBM formulation was also evaluated against all test insect species. The bioassays were carried out after grain treatments and monthly for 6 months. The results indicated that the adult mortality of each test insect species was decreased within the six month storage period, and the integarted application of the test grain protectants enhanced the mortality rates than their alone treatments. The maximum mortality was noted in the combined treatment of DEBBM with Imidacloprid. At the end, the effectiveness of B. bassiana, DEBBM and Imidacloprid applied alone as well as in combinations, against all above mentioned test insect species was also evaluated under field conditions in trials conducted in four districts of Punjab, Pakistan. For each district, a significant difference was observed between treatments, while the combined treatments gave better control of test species as compared with them alone. The least number of surviving adults and minimum percentage of grain damage was observed for the DEBBM and Imidacloprid combination, but DEBBM with B. bassiana provided the best long-term protection as compared with the remaining treatments.
Geographic ranges of species and their determinants are of great interest in the field of biogeography and are often studied in terms of the species" ecological niches. In this context, the range of a species is defined by the accessibility of an area, abiotic factors and biotic interactions, which affect a species" distributions with different intensities across spatial scales. Parapatry describes a distributional pattern in which the ranges of two species meet along sharp range limits with narrow contact zones. Such parapatric range limits are determined by changing abiotic conditions along sharp environmental gradients or can result from interspecific resource competition. However, it has been shown that often the interplay of abiotic conditions and species interactions determine parapatry. The geographic ranges of the land salamanders, Salamandra salamandra and S. atra, narrowly overlap in the European Alps with only few syntopic localities and to date, the cause of parapatry is unknown. The goal of this thesis was thus to identify the importance of abiotic and biotic factors for their parapatric range limits at different spatial scales. On a broad spatial scale, the role of climate for the parapatric range limits of the species was investigated within three contact zones in Switzerland. Climatic conditions at species" records were analysed and species distribution modelling techniques were used to explore the species" climatic niches and to quantify the interspecific niche overlap. Furthermore, it was tested whether the parapatric range limit coincides with a strong climatic gradient. The results revealed distinct niches for the species as well as the presence of strong climatic gradients which could explain the parapatric range limits of the species. Yet, there was a moderate interspecific niche overlap in all contact zones indicating that the species may co-occur and interact with each other in areas where they both find adequate conditions. Comparison among contact zones revealed geographic variation in the species" niches as well as in the climatic conditions at their records suggesting that the species can occur in a much wider range of conditions than they actually do. These findings imply that climate represents a main factor for the species" parapatric range limits. Yet, interspecific niche overlap and the geographic variation provide indirect evidence that interspecific interaction may also affect their spatial distribution. To test whether competition restricts the species" ranges on the habitat scale and to understand local syntopic co-occurrence of the salamanders within their contact zones, site-occupancy modelling was used. This approach allowed to find the habitat predictors that best explain the species" local distribution. While the slope of the site positively affected the occupancy probability of S. salamandra, no tested predictor explained that of S. atra. Also, there was no effect of the occurrence of one species on the occupancy probability of the other providing no evidence for competition. Should competition occur, it does not lead to spatial segregation of the species on this scale. Because biotic interactions most significantly affect the ranges of species on small spatial scales, the microhabitat conditions at locations of the species within syntopic contact zones were compared and a null model analysis was applied to determine their niche overlap. Resource selection probability function models were used to assess those attributes that affect the species" habitat selections. The results revealed species-specific microhabitat preferences related to leaf litter cover, tree number and that the species were active at different temperatures as well as times of the day. The high degree of diurnal activity of S. atra may be due to its preference of forest floor microhabitats that long remain suitable during daytime. Besides, there was a great niche overlap for shelters indicating that the species may compete for this resource. Differential habitat selection and the use of the available shelters at different times of the day may minimize species interactions and allow their local co-occurrence within contact zones. To identify whether the potential infection with the pathogenic chytrid fungus could serve as an alternative biotic explanation for the range margins of S. atra, several populations throughout its range were screened for infection. Since the occurrence of this pathogen was detected mostly at lower altitudes of the Alps, it may confine the range of S. atra to higher elevations. Because chytrid was not detected in any of the samples, the pathogen unlikely plays a role in determining its range limits. Overall, these findings underline the complexity of mechanisms that determine the range margins of parapatric species and provide an important basis for subsequent studies regarding the determinants of the parapatric distribution of the two salamander species.
This work investigates the industrial applicability of graphics and stream processors in the field of fluid simulations. For this purpose, an explicit Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method in arbitrarily high order is implemented completely for the hardware architecture of GPUs. The same functionality is simultaneously realized for CPUs and compared to GPUs. Explicit time steppings as well as established implicit methods are under consideration for the CPU. This work aims at the simulation of inviscid, transsonic flows over the ONERA M6 wing. The discontinuities which typically arise in hyperbolic equations are treated with an artificial viscosity approach. It is further investigated how this approach fits into the explicit time stepping and works together with the special architecture of the GPU. Since the treatment of artificial viscosity is close to the simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations, it is reviewed how GPU-accelerated methods could be applied for computing viscous flows. This work is based on a nodal discontinuous Galerkin approach for linear hyperbolic problems. Here, it is extended to non-linear problems, which makes the application of numerical quadrature obligatory. Moreover, the representation of complex geometries is realized using isoparametric mappings. Higher order methods are typically very sensitive with respect to boundaries which are not properly resolved. For this purpose, an approach is presented which fits straight-sided DG meshes to curved geometries which are described by NURBS surfaces. The mesh is modeled as an elastic body and deformed according to the solution of closest point problems in order to minimize the gap to the original spline surface. The sensitivity with respect to geometry representations is reviewed in the end of this work in the context of shape optimization. Here, the aerodynamic drag of the ONERA M6 wing is minimized according to the shape gradient which is implicitly smoothed within the mesh deformation approach. In this context a comparison to the classical Laplace-Beltrami operator is made in a Stokes flow situation.
Chemical communication in the reproductive behaviour of Neotropical poison frogs (Dendrobatidae)
(2013)
Chemical communication is the evolutionary oldest communication system in the animal kingdom that triggers intra- and interspecific interactions. It is initiated by the emitter releasing either a signal or a cue that causes a reaction of the receiving individual. Compared to other animals there are relatively few studies regarding chemical communication in anurans. In this thesis the impact of chemical communication on the behaviour of the poison frog Ranitomeya variabilis (Dendrobatidae) and its parental care performance was investigated. This species uses phytotelmata (small water bodies in plants) for both clutch and tadpole depositions. Since tadpoles are cannibalistic, adult frogs do not only avoid conspecifics when depositing their eggs but also transport their tadpoles individually into separated phytotelmata. The recognition of already occupied phytotelmata was shown to be due to chemical substances released by the conspecific tadpoles. In order to gain a deeper comprehension about the ability of adult R. variabilis to generally recognize and avoid tadpoles, in-situ pool choice experiments were conducted, offering chemical substances of tadpole of different species to the frogs (Chapter I). It turned out that they were able to recognize all species and avoid their chemical substances for clutch depositions. However, for tadpole depositions only dendrobatid tadpoles occurring in phytotelmata were avoided, while those species living in rivers were not. Additionally, the chemical substances of a treefrog tadpole (Hylidae) were recognized by R. variabilis. Yet, they were not avoided but preferred for tadpole depositions; thus these tadpoles might be recognized as a potential prey for the predatory poison frog larvae. One of the poison frog species which was avoided for both tadpole and clutch depositions, was the phytotelmata breeding Hyloxalus azureiventris. The chemical substances released by its tadpoles were analysed together with those of the R. variabilis tadpoles (Chapter II). After finding a suitable solid-phase extraction sorbent (DSC-18), the active chemical compounds from the water of both tadpole species were extracted and fractionated. In order to determine which fractions triggered the avoidance behaviour of the frogs, in-situ bioassays were conducted. It was found that the biologically active compounds differed between both species. Since the avoidance of the conspecific tadpoles is not advantageous to the releaser tadpoles (losing a potential food resource) the chemicals released by them might be defined as chemical cues. However, as it turned out that the avoidance of the heterospecific tadpoles was not triggered by a mere byproduct based on the close evolutionary relationship between the two species, the chemical compounds released by H. azureiventris tadpoles might be defined as chemical signals (being advantageous to the releasing tadpoles) or, more specifically as synomones, interspecificly acting chemicals that are advantageous for both emitter and receiver (since R. variabilis avoids a competition situation for its offspring, too). Another interspecific communication system investigated in this thesis was the avoidance of predator kairomones (Chapter III). Using chemical substances from damselfly larvae, it could be shown that R. variabilis was unable to recognize and avoid kairomones of these tadpole predators. However, when physically present, damselfly larvae were avoided by the frogs. For the recognition of conspecific tadpoles in contrast, chemical substances were necessary, since purely visible artificial tadpole models were not avoided. If R. variabilis is also capable to chemically communicate with adult conspecifics was investigated by presenting chemical cues/signals of same-sex or opposite-sex conspecifics to the frogs (Chapter IV). It was suggested that males would be attracted to chemical substances of females and repelled by those of conspecific males. But instead all individuals showed avoidance behaviour towards the conspecific chemicals. This was suggested to be an artefact due to confinement stress of the releaser animals, emitting disturbance cues that triggered avoidance behaviour in their conspecifics. The knowledge gained about chemical communication in parental care thus far, was used to further investigate a possible provisioning behaviour in R. variabilis. In-situ pool-choice experiments with chemical cues of conspecific tadpoles were carried out throughout the change from rainy to dry season (Chapter V). With a changepoint analysis, the exact seasonal change was defined and differences between frogs" choices were analysed. It turned out that R. variabilis does not avoid but prefer conspecific cues during the dry season for tadpole depositions, what might be interpreted as a way to provide their tadpoles with food (i.e. younger tadpoles) in order to accelerate their development when facing desiccation risk. That tadpoles were also occasionally fed with fertilized eggs could be shown in a comparative study, where phytotelmata that contained a tadpole deposited by the frogs themselves received more clutch depositions than freshly erected artificial phytotelmata containing unfamiliar tadpoles (i.e. their chemical cues; Chapter VI). Conducting home range calculations with ArcGIS, it turned out that R. variabilis males showed unexpectedly strong site fidelity, leading to the suggestion that they recognize their offspring by phytotelmata location. However, in order to test if R. variabilis is furthermore able to perform chemical offspring recognition, frogs were confronted in in-situ pool-choice experiments with chemical cues of single tadpoles that were found in their home ranges (Chapter VII). Genetic kinship analyses were conducted between those tadpoles emitting the chemical cues and those deposited together with or next to them. The results, however, indicated that frogs did not choose to deposit their offspring with or without another tadpole due to relatedness, i.e. kin recognition by chemical cues could not be confirmed in R. variabilis.
Comparing the results of the phylogeographies of the four species included in this thesis, some accordances have been found, even though certain patterns are only represented in one or two species. In all cases, the findings of the studied species strongly support the existence of forests or forest-like ecosystems beyond the classic forest refugia in the Mediterranean areas (Iberian, Apennine and Balkan peninsulas) during glacial times. However, evidence of glacial refugial areas in Southeastern Europe, especially the Balkans, have been found in this study as well. The analysed populations of Aposeris foetida, Melampyrum sylvaticum and Erebia euryale showed high genetic diversity values and mostly higher private fragments in this area, which is a strong indicator for centres of glacial survival during Würm and, regarding the results of M. sylvaticum, even during the Riss ice age. Three of the analysed species (A. foetida, M. sylvaticum and Colias palaeno) supported a second main glacial refuge area located along the Northern Alps. Again, high genetic diversity values and the uniqueness of the populations living in this region today prove the importance of this area as a glacial centre of survival. Those results confirm several recently published studies on forest species and strongly indicate the persistence of forest-like structures or even forests during the ice ages along the foothills of the Northern Alps. Additionally, the persistence of C. palaeno in this area furthermore supports the existence of peatlands north of the Alps, at least during the last glacial. The results of M. sylvaticum and E. euryale further indicate the vicinity of the Tatra Mountains as core areas for glacial survival. However, the genetic patterns found for E. euryale are ambiguous. Due to an intermediate position of two genetic lineages (originating in the Eastern Alps and Southeastern Europe), the Tatras could also reflect a postglacial mixture zone of those lineages. Moreover, the glacial and postglacial importance of this area for woodland species was accentuated, supporting other phylogeographic studies published. Besides the congruities among the results of the study species, some unique patterns and therefore further potential glacial refugia have also been illuminated in this thesis. For instance, the calcicole species, A. foetida, most probably had further survival area at both sides of the Dinaric Alps, supported by high genetic diversity values and a high number of private fragments found in Croatian populations. Furthermore, the surroundings of the German Uplands and the margin of the Southern Alps provided suitable conditions for glacial survival for M. sylvaticum, while the Eastern and Southeastern Alpine region most probably sheltered the Large Ringlet E. euryale during ice ages. Additionally, this butterfly species survived at least the glaciation along the foothills of the Massif Central, whose present populations showed a unique genetic lineage and their genetic diversity values have been measurably higher than in other populations for this species. Finally, a large and continuous Würm distribution is highly likely south of the Fennoscandian glaciers in Central Europe for C. palaeno, which might indicate extended peatland areas during Würm glacial. With all the patterns found in this study, the understanding of glacial persistence of forest, respectively forest-like structures and peatlands during Würm or even Riss glacial in Europe could be advanced. The congruencies among the analysed woodland and bog species illustrate the importance and location of extra-Mediterranean refugia for European mountain forests and the glacial presence of Central European peatlands. Thus, already postulated theories could be supported and further pieces of the overall puzzle could be added. The varieties of the different survival centres once more clarified that further phylogeographic studies on mountain forest of different habitat requirements and especially peatland species have to be implemented to get a clearer picture of the glacial history of these habitats.
The Hadamard product of two holomorphic functions which is defined via a convolution integral constitutes a generalization of the Hadamard product of two power series which is obtained by pointwise multiplying their coefficients. Based on the integral representation mentioned above, an associative law for this convolution is shown. The main purpose of this thesis is the examination of the linear and continuous Hadamard convolution operators. These operators map between spaces of holomorphic functions and send - with a fixed function phi - a function f to the convolution of phi and f. The transposed operator is computed and turns out to be a Hadamard convolution operator, too, mapping between spaces of germs of holomorphic functions. The kernel of Hadamard convolution operators is investigated and necessary and sufficient conditions for those operators to be injective or to have dense range are given. In case that the domain of holomorphy of the function phi allows a Mellin transform of phi, certain (generalized) monomials are identified as eigenfunctions of the corresponding operator. By means of this result and some extract of the theory of growth of entire functions, further propositions concerning the injectivity, the denseness of the range or the surjectivity of Hadamard convolution operators are shown. The relationship between Hadamard convolution operators, operators which are defined via the convolution with an analytic functional and differential operators of infinite order is investigated and the results which are obtained in the thesis are put into the research context. The thesis ends with an application of the results to the approximation of holomorphic functions by lacunary polynomials. On the one hand, the question under which conditions lacunary polynomials are dense in the space of all holomorphic functions is investigated and on the other hand, the rate of approximation is considered. In this context, a result corresponding to the Bernstein-Walsh theorem is formulated.
Copositive programming is concerned with the problem of optimizing a linear function over the copositive cone, or its dual, the completely positive cone. It is an active field of research and has received a growing amount of attention in recent years. This is because many combinatorial as well as quadratic problems can be formulated as copositive optimization problems. The complexity of these problems is then moved entirely to the cone constraint, showing that general copositive programs are hard to solve. A better understanding of the copositive and the completely positive cone can therefore help in solving (certain classes of) quadratic problems. In this thesis, several aspects of copositive programming are considered. We start by studying the problem of computing the projection of a given matrix onto the copositive and the completely positive cone. These projections can be used to compute factorizations of completely positive matrices. As a second application, we use them to construct cutting planes to separate a matrix from the completely positive cone. Besides the cuts based on copositive projections, we will study another approach to separate a triangle-free doubly nonnegative matrix from the completely positive cone. A special focus is on copositive and completely positive programs that arise as reformulations of quadratic optimization problems. Among those we start by studying the standard quadratic optimization problem. We will show that for several classes of objective functions, the relaxation resulting from replacing the copositive or the completely positive cone in the conic reformulation by a tractable cone is exact. Based on these results, we develop two algorithms for solving standard quadratic optimization problems and discuss numerical results. The methods presented cannot immediately be adapted to general quadratic optimization problems. This is illustrated with examples.
Cortisol exhibits typical ultradian and circadian rhythm and disturbances in its secretory pattern have been described in stress-related pathology. The aim of this thesis was to dissect the underlying structure of cortisol pulsatility and to develop tools to investigate the effects of this pulsatility on immune cell trafficking and the responsiveness of the neuroendocrine system and GR target genes to stress. Deconvolution modeling was set up as a tool for investigation of the pulsatile secretion underlying the ultradian cortisol rhythm. This further allowed us to investigate the role of the single cortisol pulses on the immune cell trafficking and the role of induced cortisol pulses on the kinetics of expression of GR target genes. The development of these three tools, would allow to induce and investigate in future the significance of single cortisol pulses for health and disease.
Design and structural optimization has become a very important field in industrial applications over the last years. Due to economical and ecological reasons, the efficient use of material is of highly industrial interest. Therefore, computational tools based on optimization theory have been developed and studied in the last decades. In this work, different structural optimization methods are considered. Special attention lies on the applicability to three-dimensional, large-scale, multiphysic problems, which arise from different areas of the industry. Based on the theory of PDE-constraint optimization, descent methods in structural optimization require knowledge of the (partial) derivatives with respect to shape or topology variations. Therefore, shape and topology sensitivity analysis is introduced and the connection between both sensitivities is given by the Topological-Shape Sensitivity Method. This method leads to a systematic procedure to compute the topological derivative by terms of the shape sensitivity. Due to the framework of moving boundaries in structural optimization, different interface tracking techniques are presented. If the topology of the domain is preserved during the optimization process, explicit interface tracking techniques, combined with mesh-deformation, are used to capture the interface. This techniques fit very well the requirements in classical shape optimization. Otherwise, an implicit representation of the interface is of advantage if the optimal topology is unknown. In this case, the level set method is combined with the concept of the topological derivative to deal with topological perturbation. The resulting methods are applied to different industrial problems. On the one hand, interface shape optimization for solid bodies subject to a transient heat-up phase governed by both linear elasticity and thermal stresses is considered. Therefore, the shape calculus is applied to coupled heat and elasticity problems and a generalized compliance objective function is studied. The resulting thermo-elastic shape optimization scheme is used for compliance reduction of realistic hotplates. On the other hand, structural optimization based on the topological derivative for three-dimensional elasticity problems is observed. In order to comply typical volume constraints, a one-shot augmented Lagrangian method is proposed. Additionally, a multiphase optimization approach based on mesh-refinement is used to reduce the computational costs and the method is illustrated by classical minimum compliance problems. Finally, the topology optimization algorithm is applied to aero-elastic problems and numerical results are presented.
The startle response in psychophysiological research: modulating effects of contextual parameters
(2013)
Startle reactions are fast, reflexive, and defensive responses which protect the body from injury in the face of imminent danger. The underlying reflex is basic and can be found in many species. Even though it consists of only a few synapses located in the brain stem, the startle reflex offers a valuable research method for human affective, cognitive, and psychological research. This is because of moderating effects of higher mental processes such as attention and emotion on the response magnitude: affective foreground stimulation and directed attention are validated paradigms in startle-related research. This work presents findings from three independent research studies that deal with (1) the application of the established "affective modulation of startle"-paradigm to the novel setting of attractiveness and human mating preferences, (2) the question of how different components of the startle response are affected by a physiological stressor and (3) how startle stimuli affect visual attention towards emotional stimuli. While the first two studies treat the startle response as a dependent variable by measuring its response magnitude, the third study uses startle stimuli as an experimental manipulation and investigates its potential effects on a behavioural measure. The first chapter of this thesis describes the basic mechanisms of the startle response as well as the body of research that sets the foundation of startle research in psychophysiology. It provides the rationale for the presented studies, and offers a short summary of the obtained results. Chapter two to four represent primary research articles that are published or in press. At the beginning of each chapter the contribution of all authors is explained. The references for all chapters are listed at the end of this thesis. The overall scope of this thesis is to show how the human startle response is modulated by a variety of factors, such as the attractiveness of a potential mating partner or the exposure to a stressor. In conclusion, the magnitude of the startle response can serve as a measure for such psychological states and processes. Beyond the involuntary, physiological startle reflex, startle stimuli also affect intentional behavioural responses, which we could demonstrate for eye movements in a visual attention paradigm.
In this thesis, global surrogate models for responses of expensive simulations are investigated. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have become an indispensable tool in the aircraft industry. But simulations of realistic aircraft configurations remain challenging and computationally expensive despite the sustained advances in computing power. With the demand for numerous simulations to describe the behavior of an output quantity over a design space, the need for surrogate models arises. They are easy to evaluate and approximate quantities of interest of a computer code. Only a few number of evaluations of the simulation are stored for determining the behavior of the response over a whole range of the input parameter domain. The Kriging method is capable of interpolating highly nonlinear, deterministic functions based on scattered datasets. Using correlation functions, distinct sensitivities of the response with respect to the input parameters can be considered automatically. Kriging can be extended to incorporate not only evaluations of the simulation, but also gradient information, which is called gradient-enhanced Kriging. Adaptive sampling strategies can generate more efficient surrogate models. Contrary to traditional one-stage approaches, the surrogate model is built step-by-step. In every stage of an adaptive process, the current surrogate is assessed in order to determine new sample locations, where the response is evaluated and the new samples are added to the existing set of samples. In this way, the sampling strategy learns about the behavior of the response and a problem-specific design is generated. Critical regions of the input parameter space are identified automatically and sampled more densely for reproducing the response's behavior correctly. The number of required expensive simulations is decreased considerably. All these approaches treat the response itself more or less as an unknown output of a black-box. A new approach is motivated by the assumption that for a predefined problem class, the behavior of the response is not arbitrary, but rather related to other instances of the mutual problem class. In CFD, for example, responses of aerodynamic coefficients share structural similarities for different airfoil geometries. The goal is to identify the similarities in a database of responses via principal component analysis and to use them for a generic surrogate model. Characteristic structures of the problem class can be used for increasing the approximation quality in new test cases. Traditional approaches still require a large number of response evaluations, in order to achieve a globally high approximation quality. Validating the generic surrogate model for industrial relevant test cases shows that they generate efficient surrogates, which are more accurate than common interpolations. Thus practical, i.e. affordable surrogates are possible already for moderate sample sizes. So far, interpolation problems were regarded as separate problems. The new approach uses the structural similarities of a mutual problem class innovatively for surrogate modeling. Concepts from response surface methods, variable-fidelity modeling, design of experiments, image registration and statistical shape analysis are connected in an interdisciplinary way. Generic surrogate modeling is not restricted to aerodynamic simulation. It can be applied, whenever expensive simulations can be assigned to a larger problem class, in which structural similarities are expected.
One of the main tasks in mathematics is to answer the question whether an equation possesses a solution or not. In the 1940- Thom and Glaeser studied a new type of equations that are given by the composition of functions. They raised the following question: For which functions Ψ does the equation F(Ψ)=f always have a solution. Of course this question only makes sense if the right hand side f satisfies some a priori conditions like being contained in the closure of the space of all compositions with Ψ and is easy to answer if F and f are continuous functions. Considering further restrictions to these functions, especially to F, extremely complicates the search for an adequate solution. For smooth functions one can already find deep results by Bierstone and Milman which answer the question in the case of a real-analytic function Ψ. This work contains further results for a different class of functions, namely those Ψ that are smooth and injective. In the case of a function Ψ of a single real variable, the question can be fully answered and we give three conditions that are both sufficient and necessary in order for the composition equation to always have a solution. Furthermore one can unify these three conditions to show that they are equivalent to the fact that Ψ has a locally Hölder-continuous inverse. For injective functions Ψ of several real variables we give necessary conditions for the composition equation to be solvable. For instance Ψ should satisfy some form of local distance estimate for the partial derivatives. Under the additional assumption of the Whitney-regularity of the image of Ψ, we can give sufficient conditions for flat functions f on the critical set of Ψ to possess a solution F(Ψ)=f.
Optimal control problems are optimization problems governed by ordinary or partial differential equations (PDEs). A general formulation is given byrn \min_{(y,u)} J(y,u) with subject to e(y,u)=0, assuming that e_y^{-1} exists and consists of the three main elements: 1. The cost functional J that models the purpose of the control on the system. 2. The definition of a control function u that represents the influence of the environment of the systems. 3. The set of differential equations e(y,u) modeling the controlled system, represented by the state function y:=y(u) which depends on u. These kind of problems are well investigated and arise in many fields of application, for example robot control, control of biological processes, test drive simulation and shape and topology optimization. In this thesis, an academic model problem of the form \min_{(y,u)} J(y,u):=\min_{(y,u)}\frac{1}{2}\|y-y_d\|^2_{L^2(\Omega)}+\frac{\alpha}{2}\|u\|^2_{L^2(\Omega)} subject to -\div(A\grad y)+cy=f+u in \Omega, y=0 on \partial\Omega and u\in U_{ad} is considered. The objective is tracking type with a given target function y_d and a regularization term with parameter \alpha. The control function u takes effect on the whole domain \Omega. The underlying partial differential equation is assumed to be uniformly elliptic. This problem belongs to the class of linear-quadratic elliptic control problems with distributed control. The existence and uniqueness of an optimal solution for problems of this type is well-known and in a first step, following the paradigm 'first optimize, then discretize', the necessary and sufficient optimality conditions are derived by means of the adjoint equation which ends in a characterization of the optimal solution in form of an optimality system. In a second step, the occurring differential operators are approximated by finite differences and the hence resulting discretized optimality system is solved with a collective smoothing multigrid method (CSMG). In general, there are several optimization methods for solving the optimal control problem: an application of the implicit function theorem leads to so-called black-box approaches where the PDE-constrained optimization problem is transformed into an unconstrained optimization problem and the reduced gradient for these reduced functional is computed via the adjoint approach. Another possibilities are Quasi-Newton methods, which approximate the Hessian by a low-rank update based on gradient evaluations, Krylov-Newton methods or (reduced) SQP methods. The use of multigrid methods for optimization purposes is motivated by its optimal computational complexity, i.e. the number of required computer iterations scales linearly with the number of unknowns and the rate of convergence, which is independent of the grid size. Originally multigrid methods are a class of algorithms for solving linear systems arising from the discretization of partial differential equations. The main part of this thesis is devoted to the investigation of the implementability and the efficiency of the CSMG on commodity graphics cards. GPUs (graphic processing units) are designed for highly parallelizable graphics computations and possess many cores of SIMD-architecture, which are able to outperform the CPU regarding to computational power and memory bandwidth. Here they are considered as prototype for prospective multi-core computers with several hundred of cores. When using GPUs as streamprocessors, two major problems arise: data have to be transferred from the CPU main memory to the GPU main memory, which can be quite slow and the limited size of the GPU main memory. Furthermore, only when the streamprocessors are fully used to capacity, a remarkable speed-up comparing to a CPU is achieved. Therefore, new algorithms for the solution of optimal control problems are designed in this thesis. To this end, a nonoverlapping domain decomposition method is introduced which allows the exploitation of the computational power of many GPUs resp. CPUs in parallel. This algorithm is based on preliminary work for elliptic problems and enhanced for the application to optimal control problems. For the domain decomposition into two subdomains the linear system for the unknowns on the interface is solved with a Schur complement method by using a discrete approximation of the Steklov-Poincare operator. For the academic optimal control problem, the arising capacitance matrix can be inverted analytically. On this basis, two different algorithms for the nonoverlapping domain decomposition for the case of many subdomains are proposed in this thesis: on the one hand, a recursive approach and on the other hand a simultaneous approach. Numerical test compare the performance of the CSMG for the one domain case and the two approaches for the multi-domain case on a GPU and CPU for different variants.
Krylov subspace methods are often used to solve large-scale linear equations arising from optimization problems involving partial differential equations (PDEs). Appropriate preconditioning is vital for designing efficient iterative solvers of this type. This research consists of two parts. In the first part, we compare two different kinds of preconditioners for a conjugate gradient (CG) solver attacking one partial integro-differential equation (PIDE) in finance, both theoretically and numerically. An analysis on mesh independence and rate of convergence of the CG solver is included. The knowledge of preconditioning the PIDE is applied to a relevant optimization problem. The second part aims at developing a new preconditioning technique by embedding reduced order models of nonlinear PDEs, which are generated by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), into deflated Krylov subspace algorithms in solving corresponding optimization problems. Numerical results are reported for a series of test problems.
In this thesis, in order to shed light on the biological function of the membrane-bound Glucocorticoid Receptor (mGR), proteomic changes induced by 15 min in vivo acute stress and by short in vitro activation of the mGR were analyzed in T-lymphocytes. The numerous overlaps between the two datasets suggest that the mGR mediates physiologically relevant actions and participates in the early stress response, triggering rapid early priming events that pave the way for the slower genomic GC activities. In addition, a new commercially available method with suitable sensitivity to detect the human mGR is reported and the transcriptional origin of this protein investigated. Our results indicates that specific GR-transcripts, containing exon 1C and 1D, are associated with the expression of this membrane isoform.
The contribution of three genes (C15orf53, OXTR and MLC1) to the etiology of chromosome 15-bound schizophrenia (SCZD10), bipolar disorder (BD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were studied. At first, the uncharacterized gene C15orf53 was comprehensively analyzed. Previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in bipolar disorder samples have identified an association signal in close vicinity to C15orf53 on chromosome 15q14. This gene is located in exactly the genomic region, which is segregating in our SCZD10 families. An association study with bipolar disorder (BD) and SCZD10 individual samples did not reveal any association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in C15orf53. Mutational analysis of C15orf53 in SCZD10-affected individuals from seven multiplex families did not show any mutations in the 5'-untranslated region, the coding region and the intron-exon boundaries. Gene expression analysis revealed that C15orf53 was expressed in a subpopulation of leukocytes, but not in human post-mortem limbic brain tissue. Summarizing these studies, C15orf53 is unlikely to be a strong candidate gene for the etiology of BD or SCZD10. The second investigated gene was the human oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). Five well described SNPs located in the OXTR gene were taken for a transmission-disequilibrium test (TDT) in parents-child trios with ASD-affected children. Neither in the complete sample nor in a subgroup with children that had an intelligence quotient (IQ) above 70, association was found, independent from the application of Haploview or UNPHASED for analysis. The third gene, MLC1, was investigated with regards to its implication in the etiology of SCZD10. Mutations in the MLC1 gene lead to megalencephalic leukoencephalopathy with subcortical cysts (MLC) and one variant coding for the amino acid methionine (Met) instead of leucine (Leu) at position 309 was identified to segregate in a family affected with SCZD10. For further investigation of MLC1 and its possible implication in the etiology of SCZD10, a constitutive Mlc1 knockout mouse model should be created. Mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) were electroporated with a knockout vector construct and analyzed with respect to homologous recombination of the knockout construct with the genomic DNA (gDNA) of the mES. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the available stem cell clones did not reveal any homologous recombined ES. Additionally, we conducted experiments to knockdown MLC1 and using microRNAs. The 3'-untranslated region of the MLC1 gene was analyzed with the bioinformatics tool TargetScan to screen for potential microRNA target sites. In the 3'-untranslated region of the MLC1 gene, a potential binding site for miR-137 was identified. The gene expression level of genes that had been linked to psychiatric disorders and carried a predicated miR-137 binding site has been proven to be immediately responsive to miR-137. Thus, there is new evidence that MLC1 is a candidate gene for the etiology of SCZD10.
The stress hormone cortisol as the end-product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been found to play a crucial role in the release of aggressive behavior (Kruk et al., 2004; Böhnke et al., 2010). In order to further explore potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between stress and aggression, such as changes in (social) information processing, we conducted two experimental studies that are presented in this thesis. In both studies, acute stress was induced by means of the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test (SECP) designed by Schwabe et al. (2008). Stressed participants were classified as either cortisol responders or nonresponders depending on their rise in cortisol following the stressor. Moreover, basal HPA axis activity was measured prior to the experimental sessions and EEG was recorded throughout the experiments. The first study dealt with the influence of acute stress on cognitive control processes. 41 healthy male participants were assigned to either the stress condition or the non-stressful control procedure of the SECP. Before as well as after the stress induction, all participants performed a cued task-switching paradigm in order to measure cognitive control processes. Results revealed a significant influence of acute and basal cortisol levels, respectively, on the motor preparation of the upcoming behavioral response, that was reflected in changes in the magnitude of the terminal Contingent Negative Variation (CNV). In the second study, the effect of acute stress and subsequent social provocation on approach-avoidance motivation was examined. 72 healthy students (36 males, 36 females) took part in the study. They performed an approach-avoidance task, using emotional facial expressions as stimuli, before as well as after the experimental manipulation of acute stress (again via the SECP) and social provocation realized by means of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (Taylor, 1967). Additionally to salivary cortisol, testosterone samples were collected at several points in time during the experimental session. Results indicated a positive relationship between acute testosterone levels and the motivation to approach social threat stimuli in highly provoked cortisol responders. Similar results were found when the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio at baseline was taken into account instead of acute testosterone levels. Moreover, brain activity during the approach-avoidance task was significantly influenced by acute stress and social provocation, as reflected in reductions of early (P2) as well as of later (P3) ERP components in highly provoked cortisol responders. This may indicate a less accurate, rapid processing of socially relevant stimuli due to an acute increase in cortisol and subsequent social provocation. In conclusion, the two studies presented in this thesis provide evidence for significant changes in information processing due to acute stress, basal cortisol levels and social provocation, suggesting an enhanced preparation for a rapid behavioral response in the sense of a fight-or-flight reaction. These results confirm the model of Kruk et al. (2004) proposing a mediating role of changed information processes in the stress-aggression-link.
Time series archives of remotely sensed data offer many possibilities to observe and analyse dynamic environmental processes at the Earth- surface. Based on these hypertemporal archives, which offer continuous observations of vegetation indices, typically at repetition rates from one to two weeks, sets of phenological parameters or metrics can be derived. Examples of such parameters are the beginning and end of the annual growing period, as well as its length. Even though these parameters do not correspond exactly to conventional observations of phenological events, they nevertheless provide indications of the dynamic processes occurring in the biosphere. The development of robust algorithms for the derivation of phenological metrics can be challenging. Currently, such algorithms are most commonly based on digital filters or the Fourier analysis of time series. Polynomial spline models offer a useful alternative to existing methods. The possibilities of using spline models in the analytical description of time series are numerous, and their specific mathematical properties may help to avoid known problems occurring with the more common methods for deriving phenological metrics. Based on a selection of different polynomial spline models suitable for the analysis of remotely sensed time series of vegetation indices, a method to derive various phenological parameters from such time series was developed and implemented in this work. Using an example data set from an intensively used agricultural area showing highly dynamic variations in vegetation phenology, the newly developed method was verified by a comparison of the results of the spline based approach to the results of two alternative, well established methods.
Arctic and Antarctic polynya systems are of high research interest since extensive new ice formation takes place in these regions. The monitoring of polynyas and the ice production is crucial with respect to the changing sea-ice regime. The thin-ice thickness (TIT) distribution within polynyas controls the amount of heat that is released to the atmosphere and has therefore an impact on the ice-production rates. This thesis presents an improved method to retrieve thermal-infrared thin-ice thickness distributions within polynyas. TIT with a spatial resolution of 1 km × 1 km is calculated using the MODIS ice-surface temperature and atmospheric model variables within the Laptev Sea polynya for the winter periods 2007/08 and 2008/09. The improvement of the algorithm is focused on the surface-energy flux parameterizations. Furthermore, a thorough sensitivity analysis is applied to quantify the uncertainty in the thin-ice thickness results. An absolute mean uncertainty of -±4.7 cm for ice below 20 cm of thickness is calculated. Furthermore, advantages and drawbacks using different atmospheric data sets are investigated. Daily MODIS TIT composites are computed to fill the data gaps arising from clouds and shortwave radiation. The resulting maps cover on average 70 % of the Laptev Sea polynya. An intercomparison of MODIS and AMSR-E polynya data indicates that the spatial resolution issue is essential for accurately deriving polynya characteristics. Monthly fast-ice masks are generated using the daily TIT composites. These fast-ice masks are implemented into the coupled sea-ice/ocean model FESOM. An evaluation of FESOM sea-ice concentrations is performed with the result that a prescribed high-resolution fast-ice mask is necessary regarding the accurate polynya location. However, for a more realistic simulation of other small-scale sea-ice features further model improvements are required. The retrieval of daily high-resolution MODIS TIT composites is an important step towards a more precise monitoring of thin sea ice and sea-ice production. Future work will address a combined remote sensing " model assimilation method to simulate fully-covered thin-ice thickness maps that enable the retrieval of accurate ice production values.
We are living in a connected world, surrounded by interwoven technical systems. Since they pervade more and more aspects of our everyday lives, a thorough understanding of the structure and dynamics of these systems is becoming increasingly important. However - rather than being blueprinted and constructed at the drawing board - many technical infrastructures like for example the Internet's global router network, the World Wide Web, large scale Peer-to-Peer systems or the power grid - evolve in a distributed fashion, beyond the control of a central instance and influenced by various surrounding conditions and interdependencies. Hence, due to this increase in complexity, making statements about the structure and behavior of tomorrow's networked systems is becoming increasingly complicated. A number of failures has shown that complex structures can emerge unintentionally that resemble those which can be observed in biological, physical and social systems. In this dissertation, we investigate how such complex phenomena can be controlled and actively used. For this, we review methodologies stemming from the field of random and complex networks, which are being used for the study of natural, social and technical systems, thus delivering insights into their structure and dynamics. A particularly interesting finding is the fact that the efficiency, dependability and adaptivity of natural systems can be related to rather simple local interactions between a large number of elements. We review a number of interesting findings about the formation of complex structures and collective dynamics and investigate how these are applicable in the design and operation of large scale networked computing systems. A particular focus of this dissertation are applications of principles and methods stemming from the study of complex networks in distributed computing systems that are based on overlay networks. Here we argue how the fact that the (virtual) connectivity in such systems is alterable and widely independent from physical limitations facilitates a design that is based on analogies between complex network structures and phenomena studied in statistical physics. Based on results about the properties of scale-free networks, we present a simple membership protocol by which scale-free overlay networks with adjustable degree distribution exponent can be created in a distributed fashion. With this protocol we further exemplify how phase transition phenomena - as occurring frequently in the domain of statistical physics - can actively be used to quickly adapt macroscopic statistical network parameters which are known to massively influence the stability and performance of networked systems. In the case considered in this dissertation, the adaptation of the degree distribution exponent of a random, scale-free overlay allows - within critical regions - a change of relevant structural and dynamical properties. As such, the proposed scheme allows to make sound statements about the relation between the local behavior of individual nodes and large scale properties of the resulting complex network structures. For systems in which the degree distribution exponent cannot easily be derived for example from local protocol parameters, we further present a distributed, probabilistic mechanism which can be used to monitor a network's degree distribution exponent and thus to reason about important structural qualities. Finally, the dissertation shifts its focus towards the study of complex, non-linear dynamics in networked systems. We consider a message-based protocol which - based on the Kuramoto model for coupled oscillators - achieves a stable, global synchronization of periodic heartbeat events. The protocol's performance and stability is evaluated in different network topologies. We further argue that - based on existing findings about the interrelation between spectral network properties and the dynamics of coupled oscillators - the proposed protocol allows to monitor structural properties of networked computing systems. An important aspect of this dissertation is its interdisciplinary approach towards a sensible and constructive handling of complex structures and collective dynamics in networked systems. The associated investigation of distributed systems from the perspective of non-linear dynamics and statistical physics highlights interesting parallels both to biological and physical systems. This foreshadows systems whose structures and dynamics can be analyzed and understood in the conceptual frameworks of statistical physics and complex systems.
In this thesis, we mainly investigate geometric properties of optimal codebooks for random elements $X$ in a seperable Banach space $E$. Here, for a natural number $ N $ and a random element $X$ , an $N$-optimal codebook is an $ N $-subset in the underlying Banach space $E$ which gives a best approximation to $ X $ in an average sense. We focus on two types of geometric properties: The global growth behaviour (growing in $N$) for a sequence of $N$-optimal codebooks is described by the maximal (quantization) radius and a so-called quantization ball. For many distributions, such as central-symmetric distributions on $R^d$ as well as Gaussian distributions on general Banach spaces, we are able to estimate the asymptotics of the quantization radius as well as the quantization ball. Furthermore, we investigate local properties of optimal codebooks, in particular the local quantization error and the weights of the Voronoi cells induced by an optimal codebook. In the finite-dimensional setting, we are able to proof for many interesting distributions classical conjectures on the asymptotic behaviour of those properties. Finally, we propose a method to construct sequences of asymptotically optimal codebooks for random elements in infinite dimensional Banach spaces and apply this method to construct codebooks for stochastic processes, such as fractional Brownian Motions.
This dissertation focuses on the link between labour market institutions and precautionary savings. It is evaluated whether private households react to changes in social insurance provision such as the income replacement in case of unemployment by increased savings for precautionary reasons. The dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters, each focusing on slightly different aspects of the topic. The first chapter titled "Precautionary saving and the (in)stability of subjective earnings uncertainty" empirically looks at the influence of future income uncertainty on household saving behavior. Numerous cross-section studies on precautionary saving use subjective expectations regarding the income variance one year ahead as a proxy for income uncertainty. Using such proxies observed only at one point in time, however, may give rise to biased estimates for precautionary wealth if expectations are not stable over time. Survey data from the Dutch DNB Household Survey suggest that subjective future income distributions are not stable over the mid-term. Moreover, in this study I contrast estimates of precautionary wealth using the variation coefficient observed at one point in time with those using a simple mid-term average. Estimates of precautionary wealth based on the average are about 40% to 80% higher than the estimates using the variation coefficient observed only once. In addition to that, wealth accumulation for precautionary reasons is estimated for different parts of the income distribution. The share of precautionary wealth is highest for households at the center of the income distribution. By linking saving behaviour with unemployment insurance, the following chapters then shed some light on an issue that has largely been neglected in the literature on labour market institutions so far. Whereas the third chapter models the relevance of unemployment insurance for income uncertainty and intertemporal decision making during institutional reform processes, chapter 4 seeks to establish empirically a relationship between saving behavior and unemployment insurance. Social insurance, especially unemployment insurance, provides agents with income insurance against not marketable income risks. Since the early 1990s, reform measures like more activating policies as suggested by the OECD Jobs Study in 1994 have been observed in Europe. In the third chapter it is argued that such changes in unemployment insurance reduce public insurance and increase income uncertainty. Moreover, a simple three period model is discussed which shows a link between a welfare state reform and agents' saving decisions as one possible reaction of agents to self-insure against income risk. Two sources of uncertainty seem to be important in this context: (1) uncertain results of the reform process concerning the replacement rate, and (2) uncertainty regarding the timing of information about the content of the reform. It can be shown that the precautionary motive for saving explains an increased accumulation of capital in times of reform activities. In addition to that, early information about the expected replacement rate increases agents' utility and reduces under and oversaving. Following the argument of the previous chapters, that an important feature of labour market institutions in modern welfare states is to provide cash transfers as income replacement in case of unemployment, it is hypothesised that unemployment benefits reduce the motive to save for precautionary reasons. Based on consumer sentiment data from the European Commission's Consumer Survey, chapter four finally provides some evidence that aggregate saving intentions are significantly influenced by unemployment benefits. It can be shown that higher benefits lower the intention to save.
The main objective of the present thesis was to investigate whether antibody effects observed in earlier in vitro studies can translate into the protection against chemical carcinogenesis in vivo as the basis of an immunoprophylactic approach against carcinogens. As model for chemical carcinogenesis, we selected B[a]P the prototype polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), an environmental pollutant emanating from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Many in vivo models conveniently use high doses of carcinogens mostly given as single bolus, which provides simple surrogate readouts, but poorly reflects chronic exposure to the low concentrations found in the environment. In addition, these concentrations cannot be matched with equimolar antibody concentrations obtained by immunisation. However, low B[a]P concentrations do not permit to directly measure chemical carcinogenesis. Therefore, in the present thesis, the pharmacokinetic, metabolism and B[a]P mediated immunotoxicity were chosen as experimental read-outs. B[a]P conjugate vaccines based on ovalbumin, tetanus toxoid and diphtheria toxoid (DT) as carrier proteins were developed to actively immunise mice against B[a]P. B[a]P-DT conjugate induced the most robust immune response. The antibodies reacted not only with B[a]P but also with the proximate carcinogen 7,8-diol-B[a]P. Antibodies modulated the bioavailability of B[a]P and its metabolic activation in a dose-dependent manner by sequestration in the blood. In order to further improve the vaccination, we replaced the protein carrier by promiscuous T-helper cell epitopes to induce higher antibody titer with increased specificity for the B[a]P hapten. We hypothesised that a reduction of B cell binding sites on the carrier, compared to whole protein carrier, should favour the activation of B cells recognising the hapten instead of the carrier protein. An internal processing of the carrier and cleavage of the B[a]P-BA and subsequent presentation of the carrier peptide by MHC II molecules to T cell receptor should induce a B cell dependent immune response by activating B cells capable to recognise B[a]P. We demonstrated that a vaccination against B[a]P using promiscuous T-helper cell epitopes as a carrier is feasible and some tested peptide conjugates were more immunogenic as whole protein conjugates with increased specificity. We showed that vaccination against B[a]P reduces immunotoxicity. B[a]P suppressed the proliferative response of both T and B cells after a sub-acute administration, an effect that was completely reversed by vaccination. In immunized mice the immunotoxic effect of B[a]P on IFN-γ, Il-12, TNF-ï¡ production and B cell activation was restored. In addition, specific antibodies inhibited the induction of Cyp1a1 by B[a]P in lymphocytes and Cyp1b1 in the liver, enzymes that are known to convert the procarcinogen B[a]P to the ultimate DNA-adduct forming metabolite, a major risk factor of chemical carcinogenesis. In order to replace Freund adjuvant and to improve the immunisation strategy in terms of antibody quantity and quality, several adjuvants that are potentially compatible with their use in humans were tested. In combination with Freund adjuvant, the conjugate-vaccine induced high levels of B[a]P-specific antibodies. We showed that all adjuvants tested induced specific antibodies against B[a]P and 7,8-diol-B[a]P, its carcinogenic metabolite. The highest antibody levels were obtained with Quil A, MF-59 and Alum. Biological activity in terms of enhanced retention of B[a]P was confirmed in mice immunised with Quil A, Montanide, Alum and MF-59. Our findings demonstrate that a vaccination against B[a]P is feasible in combination with adjuvants licensed in humans. Based on these results and with the current understanding of the mechanisms of chemical carcinogenesis of the ubiquitous carcinogen B[a]P and of the effects of specific antibodies, an immunoprophylactic approach against chemical carcinogenesis is absolutely warranted. Nevertheless, the direct effects of B[a]P-specific antibodies on the different stages of carcinogenesis (e.g. adduct formation) and whether these effects may translate into long-term protective effect against tumourigenesis needs to be proven in further experiments.
This dissertation focuses on e-marketing strategy's effective elements in tourism industry. As case study, research focus is on Airlines, tour operator, chain hotels in Iran and Germany. It aims to show various possibilities to enhance the company- e-marketing strategy and successfully performance e-marketing strategies with recognition effective elements and their important during the strategy designing and implementation process. For the purpose of this research due to the nature of the research, Explanatory -exploratory-applicable; after studying and consulting, Delphi technique has been chosen. In results, we have some effective elements and their important according the Delphi and AHP method. For example between elements "Tourists' Needs, Experience and Expects" with the importance coefficient of %204 is the most remarkable elements and "Customer satisfactions' elements group" with average value 5.54 according the research results have more important than other groups.
On the Influence of Ignored Stimuli: Generalization and Application of Distractor-Response Binding.
(2011)
In selection tasks where target stimuli are accompanied by distractors, responses to target stimuli, target stimuli and the distractor stimuli can be encoded together as one episode in memory. Subsequent repetition of any aspect of such an episode can lead to the retrieval of the whole episode including the response. Thus, repeating a distractor can retrieve responses given to previous targets; this mechanism was labeled distractor-response binding and has been evidenced in several visual setups. Three experiments of the present thesis implemented a priming paradigm with an identification task to generalize this mechanism to auditory and tactile stimuli as well as to stimulus concepts. In four more experiments the possible effect of distractor-response binding on drivers' reactions was investigated. The same paradigm was implemented using more complex stimuli, foot responses, go/no-go responses, and a dual task setup with head-up and head-down displays. The results indicate that distractor-response binding effects occur with auditory and tactile stimuli and that the process is mediated by a conceptual representation of the distractor stimuli. Distractor-response binding effects also revealed for stimuli, responses, and framework conditions likely to occur in a driving situation. It can be concluded that the effect of distractor-response binding needs to be taken into account for the design of local danger warnings in driver assistance systems.
This thesis centers on formal tree languages and on their learnability by algorithmic methods in abstractions of several learning settings. After a general introduction, we present a survey of relevant definitions for the formal tree concept as well as special cases (strings) and refinements (multi-dimensional trees) thereof. In Chapter 3 we discuss the theoretical foundations of algorithmic learning in a specific type of setting of particular interest in the area of Grammatical Inference where the task consists in deriving a correct formal description for an unknown target language from various information sources (queries and/or finite samples) in a polynomial number of steps. We develop a parameterized meta-algorithm that incorporates several prominent learning algorithms from the literature in order to highlight the basic routines which regardless of the nature of the information sources have to be run through by all those algorithms alike. In this framework, the intended target descriptions are deterministic finite-state tree automata. We discuss the limited transferability of this approach to another class of descriptions, residual finite-state tree automata, for which we propose several learning algorithms as well. The learnable class by these techniques corresponds to the class of regular tree languages. In Chapter 4we outline a recent range of attempts in Grammatical Inference to extend the learnable language classes beyond regularity and even beyond context-freeness by techniques based on syntactic observations which can be subsumed under the term 'distributional learning', and we describe learning algorithms in several settings for the tree case taking this approach. We conclude with some general reflections on the notion of learning from structural information.
Psychiatric/Behavioral disorders/traits are usually polygenic in nature, where a particular phenotype is the manifestation of multiple genes. However, the existence of large families with numerous members who are affected by these disorders/traits steers us towards a Mendelian (or monogenic) possibility, where the phenotype is caused by a single gene. In order to better understand the genetic architecture of general psychiatric/behavioral disorders/traits, this thesis investigates large pedigrees that display a Mendelian pattern for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Numerous challenges in the field of psychiatric and behavioral sciences have impeded the genetic investigation of such disorders/traits. Examples include frequent cross-disorders, genetic heterogeneity across subjects as well as the use of diagnostic tools that can be subjective at times. To overcome these challenges, this thesis investigates large multi-generational pedigrees, which comprise a significant number of members who exhibit specific psychiatric/behavioral phenotypes. These pedigrees provide high-resolution experimental setups that can dissect the genetic complexities of psychiatric/behavioral disorders/traits. This thesis adopts a classical two-stage genetic approach to investigate the various psychiatric/behavioral disorders/traits in large pedigrees. The classical two-stage genetic approach is commonly used by many human geneticists to study a wide spectrum of human physiological disorders but is only being applied to the field of psychiatric and behavioral genetics recently. Through the study of large pedigrees, this thesis discovers the genomic regions that may play a causative role in the expression of certain psychiatric/behavioral disorders/traits within the vast genome.
In addition to the well-recognised effects of both, genes and adult environment, it is now broadly accepted that adverse conditions during pregnancy contribute to the development of mental and somatic disorders in the offspring, such as cardiovascular disorders, endocrinological disorders, metabolic disorders, schizophrenia, anxious and depressive behaviour and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Early life events may have long lasting impact on tissue structure and function and these effects appear to underlie the developmental origins of vulnerability to chronic diseases. The assumption that prenatal adversity, such as maternal emotional states during pregnancy, may have adverse effects on the developing infant is not new. Accordant references can be found in an ancient Indian text (ca. 1050 before Christ), in biblical texts and in documents originating during the Middle Ages. Even Hippocrates stated possible effects of maternal emotional states on the developing fetus. Since the mid-1950s, research examining the effects of maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy appeared in the literature. Extensive research in this field has been conducted since the early 1990s. Thus, the relationship between early life events and long-term health outcomes was already postulated over 20 years ago. David Barker and colleagues demonstrated that children of lower birth weight - which represents a crude marker of an adverse intrauterine environment - were at increased risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disorders, and type-2 diabetes later in life. These provocative findings led to a large amount of subsequent research, initially focussing on the role of undernutrition in determining fetal outcomes. The phenomenon of prenatal influences that determine in part the risk of suffering from chronic disease later in life has been named the "fetal origins of health and disease" paradigm. The concept of "prenatal programming" has now been extended to many other domains, such as the effects of prenatal maternal stress, prenatal tobacco exposure, alcohol intake, medication, toxins, as well as maternal infection and diseases. During the process of prenatal programming, environmental agents are transmitted across the placenta and act on specific fetal tissues during sensitive periods of development. Thus, developmental trajectories are changed and the organisation and function of tissue structure and organ system is altered. The biological purpose of those "early life programming" may consist in evolutionary advantages. The offspring adapts its development to the expected extrauterine environment which is forecast by the clues available during fetal life. If the fetus receives signals of a challenging environment, e.g. due to maternal stress hormones or maternal undernutrition, its survival may be promoted due to developmental adaptation processes. However, if the expected environment does not match with the real environment, maladapation and later disease risk may result. For example, a possible indicator of a "response ready" trait, such as hyperactivity/inattention may have been advantageous in an adverse ancient environment. However, it is of disadvantage when the postnatal environment demands oppositional skills, such as attention and concentration " e.g. in the classroom, at school, to achieve academic success. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder, characterized by impulsivity, affective instability, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships and identity disturbance. Although many studies report different risk factors, the exact etiologic mechanisms are not yet understood. In addition to the well-recognised effects of genetic components and adverse childhood experiences, BPD may potentially be co-determined by further environmental influences, acting very early in life: during pre- and perinatal period. There are several hints that may suggest possible prenatal programming processes in BPD. For example, patients with BPD are characterized by elevated stress sensitivity and reactivity and dysfunctions of the neuroendocrine stress system, such as the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. Furthermore, patients with BPD show a broad range of somatic comorbidities " especially those disorders for which prenatal programming processes have been described. During infancy and childhood, BPD patients already show behavioural and emotional abnormalities as well as pronounced temperamental traits, such as impulsivity, emotional dysregulation and inattention that may potentially be co-determined by prenatal programming processes. Such temperamental traits - similar to those, seen in patients with ADHD - have been described to be associated with low birthweight which indicates a suboptimal intrauterine environment. Moreover, the functional and structural alterations in the central nervous system (CNS) in patients with BPD might also be mediated in part by prenatal agents, such as prenatal tobacco exposure. Prenatal adversity may thus constitute a further, additional component in the multifactorial genesis of BPD. The association between BPD and prenatal risk factors has not yet been studied in such detail. We are not aware of any further study that assessed pre- and perinatal risk factors, such as maternal psychoscocial stress, smoking, alcohol intake, obstetric complications and lack of breastfeeding in patients with BPD.
Variational inequality problems constitute a common basis to investigate the theory and algorithms for many problems in mathematical physics, in economy as well as in natural and technical sciences. They appear in a variety of mathematical applications like convex programming, game theory and economic equilibrium problems, but also in fluid mechanics, physics of solid bodies and others. Many variational inequalities arising from applications are ill-posed. This means, for example, that the solution is not unique, or that small deviations in the data can cause large deviations in the solution. In such a situation, standard solution methods converge very slowly or even fail. In this case, so-called regularization methods are the methods of choice. They have the advantage that an ill-posed original problem is replaced by a sequence of well-posed auxiliary problems, which have better properties (like, e.g., a unique solution and a better conditionality). Moreover, a suitable choice of the regularization term can lead to unconstrained auxiliary problems that are even equivalent to optimization problems. The development and improvement of such methods are a focus of current research, in which we take part with this thesis. We suggest and investigate a logarithmic-quadratic proximal auxiliary problem (LQPAP) method that combines the advantages of the well-known proximal-point algorithm and the so-called auxiliary problem principle. Its exploration and convergence analysis is one of the main results in this work. The LQPAP method continues the recent developments of regularization methods. It includes different techniques presented in literature to improve the numerical stability: The logarithmic-quadratic distance function constitutes an interior point effect which allows to treat the auxiliary problems as unconstrained ones. Furthermore, outer operator approximations are considered. This simplifies the numerical solution of variational inequalities with multi-valued operators since, for example, bundle-techniques can be applied. With respect to the numerical practicability, inexact solutions of the auxiliary problems are allowed using a summable-error criterion that is easy to implement. As a further advantage of the logarithmic-quadratic distance we verify that it is self-concordant (in the sense of Nesterov/Nemirovskii). This motivates to apply the Newton method for the solution of the auxiliary problems. In the numerical part of the thesis the LQPAP method is applied to linearly constrained, differentiable and nondifferentiable convex optimization problems, as well as to nonsymmetric variational inequalities with co-coercive operators. It can often be observed that the sequence of iterates reaches the boundary of the feasible set before being close to an optimal solution. Against this background, we present the strategy of under-relaxation, which robustifies the LQPAP method. Furthermore, we compare the results with an appropriate method based on Bregman distances (BrPAP method). For differentiable, convex optimization problems we describe the implementation of the Newton method to solve the auxiliary problems and carry out different numerical experiments. For example, an adaptive choice of the initial regularization parameter and a combination of an Armijo and a self-concordance step size are evaluated. Test examples for nonsymmetric variational inequalities are hardly available in literature. Therefore, we present a geometric and an analytic approach to generate test examples with known solution(s). To solve the auxiliary problems in the case of nondifferentiable, convex optimization problems we apply the well-known bundle technique. The implementation is described in detail and the involved functions and sequences of parameters are discussed. As far as possible, our analysis is substantiated by new theoretical results. Furthermore, it is explained in detail how the bundle auxiliary problems are solved with a primal-dual interior point method. Such investigations have by now only been published for Bregman distances. The LQPAP bundle method is again applied to several test examples from literature. Thus, this thesis builds a bridge between theoretical and numerical investigations of solution methods for variational inequalities.
The role of cortisol and cortisol dynamics in patients after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage
(2011)
Spontaneous aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a form of stroke which constitutes a severe trauma to the brain and often leads to serious long-term medical and psychosocial sequels which persist for years after the acute event. Recently, adrenocorticotrophic hormone deficiency has been identified as one possible consequence of the bleeding and is assumed to occur in around 20% of all survivors. Additionally, a number of studies report a high prevalence of post-SAH symptoms such as lack of initiative, fatigue, loss of concentration, impaired quality of life and psychiatric symptoms such as depression. The overlap of these symptoms and those of patients with untreated partial or complete hypopituitarism lead to the suggestion that neuroendocrine dysregulations may contribute to the psychosocial sequels of SAH. Therefore, one of the aims of this work is to gain insights into the role of neuroendocrine dysfunction on quality of life and the prevalence of psychiatric sequels in SAH-patients. Additionally, as data on cortisol dynamics after SAH are scarce, diurnal cortisol profiles are investigated in patients in the acute and chronic phase, as well as the cortisol awakening response and feedback sensitivity in the chronic phase after SAH. As a result, it can be shown that some SAH patients exhibit lower serum cortisol levels but at the same time a higher cortisol awakening response in saliva than healthy controls. Also, patients in the chronic phase after SAH do have a stable diurnal cortisol rhythm while there are disturbances in around 50% of all patients in the acute phase, leading to the conclusion that a single baseline measurement of cortisol is of no substantial use for diagnosing cortisol dysregulations in the acute phase after SAH. It is assumed that in SAH patients endocrine changes occur over time and that a combination of adrenal exhaustion and a subsequent downregulation of corticosteroid binding globulin may be the most probable causes for the dissociation of serum cortisol concentrations and salivary cortisol profiles in the investigated SAH patients. These changes may be an emergency response after SAH and, as elevated free cortisol levels are connected to a better psychosocial outcome in patients in the chronic phase after SAH, this reaction may even be adaptive.
The demand for reliable statistics has been growing over the past decades, because more and more political and economic decisions are based on statistics, e.g. regional planning, allocation of funds or business decisions. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to develop and to obtain precise regional indicators as well as disaggregated values in order to compare regions or specific groups. In general, surveys provide the information for these indicators only for larger areas like countries or administrative divisions. However, in practice, it is more interesting to obtain indicators for specific subdivisions like on NUTS 2 or NUTS 3 levels. The Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) is a hierarchical system of the European Union used in statistics to refer to subdivisions of countries. In many cases, the sample information on such detailed levels is not available. Thus, there are projects such as the European Census, which have the goal to provide precise numbers on NUTS 3 or even community level. The European Census is conducted amongst others in Germany and Switzerland in 2011. Most of the participating countries use sample and register information in a combined form for the estimation process. The classical estimation methods of small areas or subgroups, such as the Horvitz-Thompson (HT) estimator or the generalized regression (GREG) estimator, suffer from small area-specific sample sizes which cause high variances of the estimates. The application of small area methods, for instance the empirical best linear unbiased predictor (EBLUP), reduces the variance of the estimates by including auxiliary information to increase the effective sample size. These estimation methods lead to higher accuracy of the variables of interest. Small area estimation is also used in the context of business data. For example during the estimation of the revenues of specific subgroups like on NACE 3 or NACE 4 levels, small sample sizes can occur. The Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne (NACE) is a system of the European Union which defines an industry standard classification. Besides small sample sizes, business data have further special characteristics. The main challenge is that business data have skewed distributions with a few large companies and many small businesses. For instance, in the automotive industry in Germany, there are many small suppliers but only few large original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Altogether, highly influential units and outliers can be observed in business statistics. These extreme values in connection with small sample sizes cause severe problems when standard small area models are applied. These models are generally based on the normality assumption, which does not hold in the case of outliers. One way to solve these peculiarities is to apply outlier robust small area methods. The availability of adequate covariates is important for the accuracy of the above described small area methods. However, in business data, the auxiliary variables are hardly available on population level. One of several reasons for that is the fact that in Germany a lot of enterprises are not reflected in business registers due to truncation limits. Furthermore, only listed enterprises or companies which trespass specific thresholds are obligated to publish their results. This limits the number of potential auxiliary variables for the estimation. Even though there are issues with available covariates, business data often include spatial dependencies which can be used to enhance small area methods. Next to spatial information based on geographic characteristics, group-specific similarities like related industries based on NACE codes can be used. For instance, enterprises from the same NACE 2 level, e.g. sector 47 retail trade, behave more similar than two companies from different NACE 2 levels, e.g. sector 05 mining of coal and sector 64 financial services. This spatial correlation can be incorporated by extending the general linear mixed model trough the integration of spatially correlated random effects. In business data, outliers as well as geographic or content-wise spatial dependencies between areas or domains are closely linked. The coincidence of these two factors and the resulting consequences have not been fully covered in the relevant literature. The only approach that combines robust small area methods with spatial dependencies is the M-quantile geographically weighted regression model. In the context of EBLUP-based small area models, the combination of robust and spatial methods has not been considered yet. Therefore, this thesis provides a theoretical approach to this scientific and practical problem and shows its relevance in an empirical study.
The complicated human alternative GR promoter region plays a pivotal role in the regulation of GR levels. In this thesis, both genomic and environmental factors linked with GR expression are covered. This research showed that GR promoters were susceptible to silencing by methylation and the activity of the individual promoters was also modulated by SNPs. E2F1 is a major element to drive the expression of GR 1F transcripts and single CpG dinucleotide methylation cannot mediate the inhibition of transcription in vitro. Also, the distribution of GR first exons and 3" splice variants (GRα and GR-P) is expressed throughout the human brain with no region-specific alternative first exon usage. These data mirrored the consistently low levels of methylation in the brain, and the observed homogeneity throughout the studied regions. Taken together, the research presented in this thesis explored several layers of complexity in GR transcriptional regulation.
There is a lot of evidence for the impact of acute glucocorticoid treatment on hippocampus-dependent explicit learning and memory (memory for facts and events). But there have been few studies, investigating the effect of glucocorticoids on implicit learning and memory. We conducted three studies with different methodology to investigate the effect of glucocorticoids on different forms of implicit learning. In Study 1, we investigated the effect of cortisol depletion on short-term habituation in 49 healthy subjects. 25 participants received oral metyrapone (1500 mg) to suppress endogenous cortisol production, while 24 controls received oral placebo. Eye blink electromyogram (EMG) responses to 105 dB acoustic startle stimuli were assessed. Effective endogenous cortisol suppression had no effect on short-term habituation of the startle reflex, but startle eye blink responses were significantly increased in the metyrapone group. The latter findings are in line with previous human studies, which have shown that excess cortisol, sufficient to fully occupy central nervous system (CNS) corticosteroid receptors, may reduce startle eye blink. This effect may be mediated by CNS mechanisms controlling cortisol feedback. In Study 2, we investigated delay or trace eyeblink conditioning in a patient group with a relative hypocortisolism (30 patients with fibromyaligia syndrome/FMS) compared to 20 healthy control subjects. Conditioned eyeblink response probability was assessed by EMG. Morning cortisol levels, ratings of depression, anxiety and psychosomatic complaints as well as general symptomatology and psychological distress were assessed. As compared to healthy controls FMS patients showed lower morning cortisol levels, and trace eyeblink conditioning was facilitated whereas delay eyeblink conditioning was reduced. Cortisol measures correlate significantly only with trace eyeblink conditioning. Our results are in line with studies of pharmacologically induced hyper- and hypocortisolism, which affected trace eyeblink conditioning. We suggest that endocrine mechanisms affecting hippocampus-mediated forms of associative learning may play a role in the generation of symptoms in these patients.rnIn Study 3, we investigated the effect of excess cortisol on implicit sequence learning in healthy subjects. Oral cortisol (30 mg) was given to 29 participants, whereas 31 control subjects received placebo. All volunteers performed a 5-choice serial reaction time task (SRTT). The reaction speed of every button-press was determined and difference-scores were calculated as a proof of learning. Compared to the control group, we found a delayed learning in the cortisol group at the very beginning of the task. This study is the first human investigation, indicating impaired implicit memory function after exogenous administration of the stress hormone cortisol. Our findings support a previous neuroimaging study, which suggested that the medial temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) is also active in implicit sequence learning, but our results may also depend on the engagement of other brain structures.
This work is concerned with two kinds of objects: regular expressions and finite automata. These formalisms describe regular languages, i.e., sets of strings that share a comparatively simple structure. Such languages - and, in turn, expressions and automata - are used in the description of textual patterns, workflow and dependence modeling, or formal verification. Testing words for membership in any given such language can be implemented using a fixed - i.e., finite - amount of memory, which is conveyed by the phrasing finite-automaton. In this aspect they differ from more general classes, which require potentially unbound memory, but have the potential to model less regular, i.e., more involved, objects. Other than expressions and automata, there are several further formalisms to describe regular languages. These formalisms are all equivalent and conversions among them are well-known.However, expressions and automata are arguably the notions which are used most frequently: regular expressions come natural to humans in order to express patterns, while finite automata translate immediately to efficient data structures. This raises the interest in methods to translate among the two notions efficiently. In particular,the direction from expressions to automata, or from human input to machine representation, is of great practical relevance. Probably the most frequent application that involves regular expressions and finite automata is pattern matching in static text and streaming data. Common tools to locate instances of a pattern in a text are the grep application or its (many) derivatives, as well as awk, sed and lex. Notice that these programs accept slightly more general patterns, namely ''POSIX expressions''. Concerning streaming data, regular expressions are nowadays used to specify filter rules in routing hardware.These applications have in common that an input pattern is specified in form a regular expression while the execution applies a regular automaton. As it turns out, the effort that is necessary to describe a regular language, i.e., the size of the descriptor,varies with the chosen representation. For example, in the case of regular expressions and finite automata, it is rather easy to see that any regular expression can be converted to a finite automaton whose size is linear in that of the expression. For the converse direction, however, it is known that there are regular languages for which the size of the smallest describing expression is exponential in the size of the smallest describing automaton.This brings us to the subject at the core of the present work: we investigate conversions between expressions and automata and take a closer look at the properties that exert an influence on the relative sizes of these objects.We refer to the aspects involved with these consideration under the titular term of Relative Descriptional Complexity.
By rodent studies it has been shown that the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is a candidate gene for the investigation of cognitive functions comparable to human executive function. The present work addresses the question if polymorphisms in the MR gene can act as a "probe" to explain a part of the interindividual variance of human executive functions. For this purpose, 72 healthy young participants were assigned to four equally sized groups, concerning their particular MR genotype for two common MR polymorphisms. They were investigated in an electroencephalogram (EEG) test session, accomplishing two cognitive tests while delivering saliva samples for subsequent cortisol measures. The two tests chosen for the assessment of executive functions were the Attention Network Task (ANT) and a modified version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST).Chapter 1 of the present work reports of the rational bases for the empirical approach, which were built up on a broad theoretical background presented in Chapter 2. In the third chapter, the investigation and results of the statistical analysis for behavioral data (i.e. reaction times, accuracy/error rates) are presented. No association with MR polymorphisms was found for the reaction times of both tests. For the accuracy rate, differences between genotype groups were found for ANT and WCST, indicating an association of MR polymorphisms and accuracy in the Alertness and Executive Control network of the ANT and during the detection of an intradimensional shift in the WCST. Data acquisition and the results for EEG data analyses are presented in Chapter 4. The results show that groups differing for MR genotype show different activity over prefrontal motor areas during the process of answering to the ANT. Those group differences again were prominent for the Alertness and Executive Control network. A tendency for further significant group differences was found for activity on frontopolar positions in extradimensional rule switching. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings for the analysis of salivary free cortisol, showing a tendency for an association between MR polymorphisms and a mildly stimulated Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during the test situation. The results of the different measures are integrated and discussed in Chapter 6 within the scope of novel findings in investigating the functionality of the chosen MR polymorphisms. Finally, Chapter 7 gives an outlook on the methodology and constraints of future research strategies to further describe the role of the MR in human cognitive function.
Stress represents a significant problem for Western societies inducing costs as high as 3-4 % of the European gross national products, a burden that is continually increasing (WHO Briefing, EUR/04/5047810/B6). The classical stress response system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis which acts to restore homeostasis after disturbances. Two major components within the HPA axis system are the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR). Cortisol, released from the adrenal glands at the end of the HPA axis, binds to MRs and with a 10 fold lower affinity to GRs. Both, impairment of the HPA axis and an imbalance in the MR/GR ratio enhances the risk for infection, inflammation and stress related psychiatric disorders. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterised by a variety of symptoms, however, one of the most consistent findings is the hyperactivity of the HPA axis. This may be the result of lower numbers or reduced activity of GRs and MRs. The GR gene consists of multiple alternative first exons resulting in different GR mRNA transcripts whereas for the MR only two first exons are known to date. Both, the human GR promoter 1F and the homologue rat Gr promoter 1.7 seem to be susceptible to methylation during stressful early life events resulting in lower 1F/1.7 transcript levels. It was proposed that this is due to methylation of a NGFI-A binding site in both, the rat promoter 1.7 and the human promoter 1F. The research presented in this thesis was undertaken to determine the differential expression and methylation patterns of GR and MR variants in multiple areas of the limbic brain system in the healthy and depressed human brain. Furthermore, the transcriptional control of the GR transcript 1F was investigated as expression changes of this transcript were associated with MDD, childhood abuse and early life stress. The role of NGFI-A and several other transcription factors on 1F regulation was studied in vitro and the effect of Ngfi-a overexpression on the rat Gr promoter 1.7 in vivo. The susceptibility to epigenetic programming of several GR promoters was investigated in MDD. In addition, changes in methylation levels have been determined in response to a single acute stressor in rodents. Our results showed that GR and MR first exon transcripts are differentially expressed in the human brain, but this is not due to epigenetic programming. We showed that NGFI-A has no effect on endogenous 1F/1.7 expression in vitro and in vivo. We provide evidence that the transcription factor E2F1 is a major element in the transcriptional complex necessary to drive the expression of GR 1F transcripts. In rats, highly individual methylation patterns in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) suggest that this is not related to the stressor but can rather be interpreted as pre-existing differences. In contrast, the hippocampus showed a much more uniform epigenetic status, but still is susceptible to epigenetic modification even after a single acute stress suggesting a differential "state‟ versus "trait‟ regulation of the GR gene in different brain regions. The results of this thesis have given further insight in the complex transcriptional regulation of GR and MR first exons in health and disease. Epigenetic programming of GR promoters seems to be involved in early life stress and acute stress in adult rats; however, the susceptibility to methylation in response to stress seems to vary between brain regions.
Recent non-comparative studies diverge in their assessments of the extent to which German and Japanese post-Cold War foreign policies are characterized by continuity or change. While the majority of analyses on Germany find overall continuity in policies and guiding principles, prominent works on Japan see the country undergoing drastic and fundamental change. Using an explicitly comparative framework for analysis based on a role theoretical approach, this study reevaluates the question of change and continuity in the two countries" regional foreign policies, focusing on the time period from 1990 to 2010. Through a qualitative content analysis of key foreign policy speeches, this dissertation traces and compares German and Japanese national role conceptions (NRCs) by identifying policymakers" perceived duties and responsibilities of their country in international politics. Furthermore, it investigates actual foreign policy behavior in two case studies about German and Japanese policies on missile defense and on textbook disputes. The dissertation examines whether the NRCs identified in the content analysis are useful to understand and explain each country- particular conduct. Both qualitative content analysis and case studies demonstrate the influence of normative and ideational variables in foreign policymaking. Incremental adaptations in foreign policy preferences can be found in Germany as well as Japan, but they are anchored in established normative guidelines and represent attempts to harmonize existing preferences with the conditions of the post-Cold War era. The dissertation argues that scholars have overstated and misconstrued the changes underway by asserting that Japan is undergoing a sweeping transformation in its foreign policy.
Cortisol is a stress hormone that acts on the central nervous system in order to support adaptation and time-adjusted coping processes. Whereas previous research has focused on slow emerging, genomic effects of cortisol likely mediated by protein synthesis, there is only limited knowledge about rapid, non-genomic cortisol effects on in vivo neuronal cell activity in humans. Three independent placebo-controlled studies in healthy men were conducted to test effects of 4 mg cortisol on central nervous system activity, occurring within 15 minutes after intravenous administration. Two of the studies (N = 26; N = 9) used continuous arterial spin labeling as a magnetic resonance imaging sequence, and found rapid bilateral thalamic perfusion decrements. The third study (N = 14) revealed rapid cortisol-induced changes in global signal strength and map complexity of the electroencephalogram. The observed changes in neuronal functioning suggest that cortisol may act on the thalamic relay of non-relevant background as well as on task specific sensory information in order to facilitate the adaptation to stress challenges. In conclusion, these results are the first to coherently suggest that a physiologically plausible amount of cortisol profoundly affects functioning and perfusion of the human CNS in vivo by a rapid, non-genomic mechanism.
The overall objective of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding of the antecedents, processes, and manifestations of uniqueness-driven consumer behavior. To achieve this goal, five studies have been conducted in Germany and Switzerland with a total of 1048 participants across different demographic and socio-economic backgrounds. Two concepts were employed in all studies: Consumer need for uniqueness (CNFU) and general uniqueness perception (GUP). CNFU (Tian, Bearden, & Hunter, 2001), a mainly US"based consumer research concept, measures the individual need, and thus the motivation to acquire, use, and dispose consumer goods in order to develop a unique image. GUP, adapted from the two-component theory of individuality (Kampmeier, 2001), represents a global and direct measure of self-ascribed uniqueness. Study #1 looked at the interrelation of the uniqueness-driven concepts. Therefore, GUP and CNFU were employed in the study as potential psychological factors that influence and predict uniqueness-driven consumer behavior. Different behavioral measures were used: The newly developed possession of individualized products (POIP), the newly developed products for uniqueness display (PFUD), and the already established uniqueness-enhancing behaviors (UEB). Analyses showed that CNFU mediates the relationship between GUP and the behavioral measures in a German speaking setting. Thus, GUP (representing self-perception) was identified as the driver behind CNFU (representing motivation) and the actual consumer behavior. Study #2 examined further manifestations of uniqueness-driven consumer behavior. For this purpose, an extreme form of uniqueness-increasing behavior was researched: Tattooing. The influence of GUP and CNFU on tattooing behavior was investigated using a sample derived from a tattoo exhibition. To do so, a newly developed measure to determine the percentage of the body covered by tattoos was employed. It was revealed that individuals with higher GUP and CNFU levels indeed have a higher tattooing degree. Study #3 further explored the predictive possibilities and limitations of the GUP and CNFU concepts. On the one hand, study #3 specifically looked at the consumption of customized apparel products as mass customization is said to become the standard of the century (Piller & Müller, 2004). It was shown that individuals with higher CNFU levels not only purchased more customized apparel products in the last six months, but also spend more money on them. On the other hand, uniqueness-enhancing activities (UEA), such as travel to exotic places or extreme sports, were investigated by using a newly developed 30-item scale. It was revealed that CNFU partly mediates the GUP and UEA relationship, proving that CNFU indeed predicts a broad range of consumer behaviors and that GUP is the driver behind the need and the behavior. Study #4, entered a new terrain. In contrast to the previous three studies, it explored the so termed "passive" side of uniqueness-seeking in the consumer context. Individuals might feel unique because business companies treat them in a special way. Such a unique customer treatment (UCT) involves activities like customer service or customer relationship management. Study #4 investigated if individuals differ in their need for such a treatment. Hence, with the need for unique customer treatment (NFUCT) a new uniqueness-driven consumer need was introduced and its impact on customer loyalty examined. Analyses, for example, revealed that individuals with high NFUCT levels receiving a high unique customer treatment (UCT) showed the highest customer loyalty, whereas the lowest customer loyalty was found among those individuals with high NFUCT levels receiving a low unique customer treatment (UCT). Study #5 mainly examined the processes behind uniqueness-driven consumer behavior. Here, not only the psychological influences, but also situational influences were examined. This study investigated the impact of a non-personal "indirect" uniqueness manipulation on the consumption of customized apparel products by simultaneously controlling for the influence of GUP and CNFU. Therefore, two equal experimental groups were created. Afterwards, these groups either received an e-mail with a "pro-individualism" campaign or a "pro-collectivism" campaign especially developed for study #5. The conducted experiment revealed that, individuals receiving a "pro-individualism" poster campaign telling the participants that uniqueness is socially appropriate and desired were willing to spend more money on customization options compared to individuals receiving a "pro-collectivism" poster campaign. Hence, not only psychological antecedents such as GUP and CNFU influence uniqueness-driven consumer behavior, but also situational factors.
Recently, optimization has become an integral part of the aerodynamic design process chain. However, because of uncertainties with respect to the flight conditions and geometrical uncertainties, a design optimized by a traditional design optimization method seeking only optimality may not achieve its expected performance. Robust optimization deals with optimal designs, which are robust with respect to small (or even large) perturbations of the optimization setpoint conditions. The resulting optimization tasks become much more complex than the usual single setpoint case, so that efficient and fast algorithms need to be developed in order to identify, quantize and include the uncertainties in the overall optimization procedure. In this thesis, a novel approach towards stochastic distributed aleatory uncertainties for the specific application of optimal aerodynamic design under uncertainties is presented. In order to include the uncertainties in the optimization, robust formulations of the general aerodynamic design optimization problem based on probabilistic models of the uncertainties are discussed. Three classes of formulations, the worst-case, the chance-constrained and the semi-infinite formulation, of the aerodynamic shape optimization problem are identified. Since the worst-case formulation may lead to overly conservative designs, the focus of this thesis is on the chance-constrained and semi-infinite formulation. A key issue is then to propagate the input uncertainties through the systems to obtain statistics of quantities of interest, which are used as a measure of robustness in both robust counterparts of the deterministic optimization problem. Due to the highly nonlinear underlying design problem, uncertainty quantification methods are used in order to approximate and consequently simplify the problem to a solvable optimization task. Computationally demanding evaluations of high dimensional integrals resulting from the direct approximation of statistics as well as from uncertainty quantification approximations arise. To overcome the curse of dimensionality, sparse grid methods in combination with adaptive refinement strategies are applied. The reduction of the number of discretization points is an important issue in the context of robust design, since the computational effort of the numerical quadrature comes up in every iteration of the optimization algorithm. In order to efficiently solve the resulting optimization problems, algorithmic approaches based on multiple-setpoint ideas in combination with one-shot methods are presented. A parallelization approach is provided to overcome the amount of additional computational effort involved by multiple-setpoint optimization problems. Finally, the developed methods are applied to 2D and 3D Euler and Navier-Stokes test cases verifying their industrial usability and reliability. Numerical results of robust aerodynamic shape optimization under uncertain flight conditions as well as geometrical uncertainties are presented. Further, uncertainty quantification methods are used to investigate the influence of geometrical uncertainties on quantities of interest in a 3D test case. The results demonstrate the significant effect of uncertainties in the context of aerodynamic design and thus the need for robust design to ensure a good performance in real life conditions. The thesis proposes a general framework for robust aerodynamic design attacking the additional computational complexity of the treatment of uncertainties, thus making robust design in this sense possible.
The main research question of this thesis was to set up a framework to allow for the identification of land use changes in drylands and reveal their underlying drivers. The concept of describing land cover change processes in a framework of global change syndrome was introduced by Schellnhuber et al. (1997). In a first step the syndrome approach was implemented for semi-natural areas of the Iberian Peninsula based on time series analysis of the MEDOKADS archive. In the subsequent study the approach was expanded and adapted to other land cover strata. Furthermore, results of an analysis of the relationship of annual NDVI and rainfall data were incorporated to designate areas that show a significant relationship indicating that at least a part of the variability found in NDVI time series was caused by precipitation. Additionally, a first step was taken towards the integration of socio-economic data into the analysis; population density changes between 1961 and 2008 were utilized to support the identification of processes related to land abandonment accompanied by cessation of agricultural practices on the one hand and urbanization on the other. The main findings of the studies comprise three major land cover change processes caused by human interaction: (i) shrub and woody vegetation encroachment in the wake of land abandonment of marginal areas, (ii) intensification of non-irrigated and irrigated, intensively used fertile regions and (iii) urbanization trends along the coastline caused by migration and the increase of mass tourism. Land abandonment of cultivated fields and the give-up of grazing areas in marginal mountainous areas often lead to the encroachment of shrubs and woody vegetation in the course of succession or reforestation. Whereas this cover change has positive effects concerning soil stabilization and carbon sequestration the increase of biomass involves also negative consequences for ecosystem goods and services; these include decreased water yield as a result of increased evapotranspiration, increasing fire risk, decreasing biodiversity due to landscape homogenization and loss of aesthetic value. Arable land in intensively used fertile zones of Spain was further intensified including the expansion of irrigated arable land. The intensification of agriculture has also generated land abandonment in these areas because less people are needed in the agricultural labour sector due to mechanization. Urbanization effects due to migration and the growth of the tourism sector were mapped along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Urban sprawl was only partly detectable by means of the MEDOKADS archive as the changes of urbanization are often too subtle to be detected by data with a spatial resolution of 1 km-². This is in line with a comparison of a Landsat TM time series and the NOAA AVHRR archive for a study area in the Greece that showed that small scale changes cannot be detected based on this approach, even though they might be of high relevance for local management of resources. This underlines the fact that land degradation processes are multi-scale problems and that data of several spatial and temporal scales are mandatory to build a comprehensive dryland observation system. Further land cover processes related to a decrease of greenness did not play an important role in the observation period. Thus, only few patches were identified, suggesting that no large-scale land degradation processes are taking place in the sense of decline of primary productivity after disturbances. Nevertheless, the land cover processes detected impact ecosystem functioning and using the example of shrub encroachment, bear risks for the provision of goods and services which can be valued as land degradation in the sense of a decline of important ecosystem goods and services. This risk is not only confined to the affected ecosystem itself but can also impact adjacent ecosystems due to inter-linkages. In drylands water availability is of major importance and the management of water resources is an important political issue. In view of climate change this topic will become even more important because aridity in Spain did increase within the last decades and is likely to further do so. In addition, the land cover changes detected by the syndrome approach could even augment water scarcity problems. Whereas the water yield of marginal areas, which often serve as headwaters of rivers, decreases with increasing biomass, water demand of agriculture and tourism is not expected to decline. In this context it will be of major importance to evaluate the trade-offs between different land uses and to take decisions that maintain the future functioning of the ecosystems for human well-being.
Extension of inexact Kleinman-Newton methods to a general monotonicity preserving convergence theory
(2011)
The thesis at hand considers inexact Newton methods in combination with algebraic Riccati equation. A monotone convergence behaviour is proven, which enables a non-local convergence. Above relation is transferred to a general convergence theory for inexact Newton methods securing the monotonicity of the iterates for convex or concave mappings. Several application prove the pratical benefits of the new developed theory.