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Neuronal inhibition is mediated by glycine and/or GABA. Inferior colliculus (IC) neurons receive glycinergic and GABAergic
inputs, whereas inhibition in hippocampus (HC) predominantly relies on GABA. Astrocytes heterogeneously
express neurotransmitter transporters and are expected to adapt to the local requirements regarding neurotransmitter
homeostasis. Here we analyzed the expression of inhibitory neurotransmitter transporters in IC and HC astrocytes using
whole-cell patch-clamp and single-cell reverse transcription-PCR. We show that most astrocytes in both regions expressed
functional glycine transporters (GlyTs). Activation of these transporters resulted in an inward current (IGly) that
was sensitive to the competitive GlyT1 agonist sarcosine. Astrocytes exhibited transcripts for GlyT1 but not for
GlyT2. Glycine did not alter the membrane resistance (RM) arguing for the absence of functional glycine receptors (GlyRs).
Thus, IGly was mainly mediated by GlyT1. Similarly, we found expression of functional GABA transporters (GATs) in all IC
astrocytes and about half of the HC astrocytes. These transporters mediated an inward current (IGABA) that was sensitive to
the competitive GAT-1 and GAT-3 antagonists NO711 and SNAP5114, respectively. Accordingly, transcripts for GAT-1 and
GAT-3 were found but not for GAT-2 and BGT-1. Only in hippocampal astrocytes, GABA transiently reduced
RM demonstrating the presence of GABAA receptors (GABAARs). However, IGABA was mainly not contaminated
by GABAAR-mediated currents as RM changes vanished shortly after GABA application. In both regions, IGABA
was stronger than IGly. Furthermore, in HC the IGABA/IGly ratio was larger compared to IC. Taken together, our
results demonstrate that astrocytes are heterogeneous across and within distinct brain areas. Furthermore, we
could show that the capacity for glycine and GABA uptake varies between both brain regions.
In separation processes not only thermodynamic bulk but also interfacial properties play a crucial role. In
classical theory, a vapour-liquid interface is a two-dimensional object. In reality it is a region in which
properties change over a few nanometres and the density changes continuously from its liquid bulk to its gas
bulk value. Many mixtures show unexpected effects in that transition region. While the total density changes
monotonously from the bulk vapour to the bulk liquid, this does not hold for the molarities of the components.
The molarities of the light boiling component can have a distinct maximum at the interface. That maximum
would be an insurmountable obstacle to mass transfer according to Fickian theory. Even if that argument is
not adopted, it shows that there is good reason to believe that the maximum may affect mass transfer and,
hence, fluid separation processes like absorption or distillation. Unfortunately, there are currently no
experimental methods that can be used for direct studies of density profiles in such interfacial regions. But
such data can be obtained with theoretical methods, namely with molecular dynamics simulations (MD) as
well as with density gradient theory (DGT) or with density functional theory (DFT) combined with an equation
of state (EOS).
Studies from our group on the vapour-liquid interface of several real mixtures and a model fluid using these
methods yield consistent results and reveal an important enrichment in some cases. Strong enrichment is
found at vapour-liquid interfaces in the systems in which one of the components is supercritical. These results
indicate that mixtures, which are typical for absorption processes usually show an important enrichment,
whereas this is not the case for mixtures that are typically separated by distillation.
Während des Forschungsprozesses zur Erstellung einer wissenschaftlichen Arbeit müssen zahlreiche Entscheidungen getroffen und auch gerechtfertigt werden. Dies gilt nicht nur für konzeptionelle Arbeiten, sondern insbesondere auch für empirisch ausgerichtete Arbeiten. In diesem Zusammenhang leistet der vorliegende Leitfaden einen Beitrag zur konzeptionellen sowie anwendungsbezogenen empirischen Grundlagenforschung im Controlling unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vorgehensweise am Lehrstuhl für Unternehmensrechnung und Controlling. Das zentrale
Ziel des Leitfadens liegt dabei in dem Aufzeigen eines Überblicks über die Grundlagen der empirischen Forschung im Controlling. Hierzu wird in einem ersten Schritt die wissenschaftstheoretische Relevanz der fundierten empirischen Forschung im Kontext realwissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen aufgezeigt und diese mit dem Forschungskonzept des Lehrstuhls verknüpft. Hieran anschließend werden einige empirische Forschungsdesigns vorgestellt, wobei insbesondere die Methodik der Vignetten-studie näher erörtert wird. Abschließend befasst sich der folgende Beitrag mit der konzeptionell fundierten Durchführung einer empirischen Studie anhand des 6-Phasen-Modells nach Reiß und Sarris (2012).
Ecophysiological characterizations of photoautotrophic communities are not only necessary to identify the response of carbon fixation related to different climatic factors, but also to evaluate risks connected to changing environments. In biological soil crusts (BSCs), the description of ecophysiological features is difficult, due to the high variability in taxonomic composition and variable methodologies applied. Especially for BSCs in early successional stages, the available datasets are rare or focused on individual constituents, although these crusts may represent the only photoautotrophic component in many heavily disturbed ruderal areas, such as parking lots or building areas with increasing surface area worldwide. We analyzed the response of photosynthesis and respiration to changing BSC water contents (WCs), temperature and light in two early successional BSCs. We investigated whether the response of these parameters was different between intact BSC and the isolated dominating components. BSCs dominated by the cyanobacterium Nostoc commune and dominated by the green alga Zygogonium ericetorum were examined. A major divergence between the two BSCs was their absolute carbon fixation rate on a chlorophyll basis, which was significantly higher for the cyanobacterial crust. Nevertheless, independent of species composition, both crust types and their isolated organisms had convergent features such as high light acclimatization and a minor and very late-occurring depression in carbon uptake at water suprasaturation. This particular setup of ecophysiological features may enable these communities to cope with a high variety of climatic stresses and may therefore be a reason for their success in heavily disturbed areas with ongoing human impact. However, the shape of the response was different for intact BSC compared to separated organisms, especially in absolute net photosynthesis (NP) rates. This emphasizes the importance of measuring intact BSCs under natural conditions for collecting reliable data for meaningful analysis of BSC ecosystem services.
Betrachtet man sowohl die klassische betriebs-wirtschaftliche Literatur als auch die Literatur der Controlling-Forschung, so ist ersichtlich, dass jeweils eine Anspruchskongruenz der Eigenkapitalgeber unterstellt wird, welche zu einem einheitlichen Diskontsatz führt, wie dies insbesondere auch im Shareholder Value-Ansatz deutlich wird. Grundlage dieses Postulates ist die neoklassische Theorie, welche unter restriktiven Prämissen die Einmütigkeit der Shareholder hinsichtlich des Formalziels „Shareholder Value“-Maximierung modelltheoretisch abzuleiten vermag. Hierbei werden jedoch ein vollkommener Kapitalmarkt sowie eine Entscheidungssituation unter Sicherheit vorausgesetzt. Beide Prämissen sind auf realen Märkten nicht gegeben. Trotz dieser fehlenden modelltheoretisch strengen Einmütigkeit können jedoch Unternehmen, wie auch empirisch zu sehen ist, offensichtlich durchaus (in gewissen Grenzen) divergierende Shareholderansprüche inkorporieren, welches mit den traditionellen Modellen nicht plausibel abzubilden ist.
Die Frage, wie dies dennoch konzeptionell begründet werden könnte, konstituiert die Ausgangsgrundlage dieses Forschungsbeitrags. Hierbei werden zuerst die standardökonomischen Ansätze zur Klärung der Einmütigkeitsfrage kritisch reflektiert, bevor mit dem Konzept der bounded rationality nach Simon und Gigerenzer eine verhaltenswissenschaftliche Gegenposition eingenommen wird. Diese kann, wie gezeigt wird, als konzeptionelle Grundlage dienen, um die empirisch evidente, hinreichende Einmütigkeit unter den Eigenkapitalgebern eines Unternehmens zu erklären. Hierbei stellt sich jedoch für das Management die zentrale Frage, wie hoch die erwarteten Renditeansprüche der Shareholder legitimer Weise ausfallen dürfen. Diese Frage gewinnt an zusätzlicher Relevanz, wenn man davon ausgeht, dass die Eigenkapitalrenditen im Bezug zum zusätzlichen Risiko, welches die Eigenkapitalgeber tragen, überproportional hoch ausfallen. Das Controlling kann in diesem Kontext einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Führungsunterstützung des Managements – und damit zu einem dauerhaften Erfolg des Unternehmens – leisten.
Areal optical surface topography measurement is an emerging technology for industrial quality control. However, neither calibration procedures nor the utilization of material measures are standardized. State of the art is the calibration of a set of metrological characteristics with multiple calibration samples (material measures). Here, we propose a new calibration sample (artefact) capable of providing the entire set of relevant metrological characteristics within only one single sample. Our calibration artefact features multiple material measures and is manufactured with two-photon laser lithography (direct laser writing, DLW). This enables a holistic calibration of areal topography measuring instruments with only one series of measurements and without changing the sample.
To investigate whether participants can activate only one spatially oriented number line at a time or
multiple number lines simultaneously, they were asked to solve a unit magnitude comparison task
(unit smaller/larger than 5) and a parity judgment task (even/odd) on two-digit numbers. In both these
primary tasks, decades were irrelevant. After some of the primary task trials (randomly), participants
were asked to additionally solve a secondary task based on the previously presented number. In
Experiment 1, they had to decide whether the two-digit number presented for the primary task was
larger or smaller than 50. Thus, for the secondary task decades were relevant. In contrast, in Experiment
2, the secondary task was a color judgment task, which means decades were irrelevant. In Experiment
1, decades’ and units’ magnitudes influenced the spatial association of numbers separately. In contrast,
in Experiment 2, only the units were spatially associated with magnitude. It was concluded that
multiple number lines (one for units and one for decades) can be activated if attention is focused on
multiple, separate magnitude attributes.
The design of the fifth generation (5G) cellular network should take account of the emerging services with divergent quality of service requirements. For instance, a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is required to facilitate the local data exchange and therefore improve the automation level in automated driving applications. In this work, we inspect the performance of two different air interfaces (i.e., LTE-Uu and PC5) which are proposed by the third generation partnership project (3GPP) to enable the V2X communication. With these two air interfaces, the V2X communication can be realized by transmitting data packets either over the network infrastructure or directly among traffic participants. In addition, the ultra-high reliability requirement in some V2X communication scenarios can not be fulfilled with any single transmission technology (i.e., either LTE-Uu or PC5). Therefore, we discuss how to efficiently apply multi-radio access technologies (multi-RAT) to improve the communication reliability. In order to exploit the multi-RAT in an efficient manner, both the independent and the coordinated transmission schemes are designed and inspected. Subsequently, the conventional uplink is also extended to the case where a base station can receive data packets through both the LTE-Uu and PC5 interfaces. Moreover, different multicast-broadcast single-frequency network (MBSFN) area mapping approaches are also proposed to improve the communication reliability in the LTE downlink. Last but not least, a system level simulator is implemented in this work. The simulation results do not only provide us insights on the performances of different technologies but also validate the effectiveness of the proposed multi-RAT scheme.
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are a common element of the Queensland (Australia) dry savannah ecosystem and are composed of cyanobacteria, algae, lichens, bryophytes, fungi and heterotrophic bacteria. Here we report how the CO2 gas exchange of the cyanobacteria-dominated biocrust type from Boodjamulla National Park in the north Queensland Gulf Savannah responds to the pronounced climatic seasonality and on their quality as a carbon sink using a semi-automatic cuvette system. The dominant cyanobacteria are the filamentous species Symplocastrum purpurascens together with Scytonema sp. Metabolic activity was recorded between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2011, during which CO2 exchange was only evident from November 2010 until mid-April 2011, representative of 23.6 % of the 1-year recording period. In November at the onset of the wet season, the first month (November) and the last month (April) of activity had pronounced respiratory loss of CO2. The metabolic active period accounted for 25 % of the wet season and of that period 48.6 % was net photosynthesis (NP) and 51.4 % dark respiration (DR). During the time of NP, net photosynthetic uptake of CO2 during daylight hours was reduced by 32.6 % due to water supersaturation. In total, the biocrust fixed 229.09 mmol CO2 m−2 yr−1, corresponding to an annual carbon gain of 2.75 g m−2 yr−1. Due to malfunction of the automatic cuvette system, data from September and October 2010 together with some days in November and December 2010 could not be analysed for NP and DR. Based on climatic and gas exchange data from November 2010, an estimated loss of 88 mmol CO2 m−2 was found for the 2 months, resulting in corrected annual rates of 143.1 mmol CO2 m−2 yr−1, equivalent to a carbon gain of 1.7 g m−2 yr−1. The bulk of the net photosynthetic activity occurred above a relative humidity of 42 %, indicating a suitable climatic combination of temperature, water availability and light intensity well above 200 µmol photons m−2 s−1 photosynthetic active radiation. The Boodjamulla biocrust exhibited high seasonal variability in CO2 gas exchange pattern, clearly divided into metabolically inactive winter months and active summer months. The metabolic active period commences with a period (of up to 3 months) of carbon loss, likely due to reestablishment of the crust structure and restoration of NP prior to about a 4-month period of net carbon gain. In the Gulf Savannah biocrust system, seasonality over the year investigated showed that only a minority of the year is actually suitable for biocrust growth and thus has a small window for potential contribution to soil organic matter.
For modeling approaches in systems biology, knowledge of the absolute abundances of cellular proteins is essential. One way to gain this knowledge is the use of quantification concatamers (QconCATs), which are synthetic proteins consisting of proteotypic peptides derived from the target proteins to be quantified. The QconCAT protein is labeled with a heavy isotope upon expression in E. coli and known amounts of the purified protein are spiked into a whole cell protein extract. Upon tryptic digestion, labeled and unlabeled peptides are released from the QconCAT and the native proteins, respectively, and both are quantified by LC-MS/MS. The labeled Q-peptides then serve as standards for determining the absolute quantity of the native peptides/proteins. Here we have applied the QconCAT approach to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii for the absolute quantification of the major proteins and protein complexes driving photosynthetic light reactions in the thylakoid membranes and carbon fixation in the pyrenoid. We found that with 25.2 attomol/cell the Rubisco large subunit makes up 6.6% of all proteins in a Chlamydomonas cell and with this exceeds the amount of the small subunit by a factor of 1.56. EPYC1, which links Rubisco to form the pyrenoid, is eight times less abundant than RBCS, and Rubisco activase is 32-times less abundant than RBCS. With 5.2 attomol/cell, photosystem II is the most abundant complex involved in the photosynthetic light reactions, followed by plastocyanin, photosystem I and the cytochrome b6/f complex, which range between 2.9 and 3.5 attomol/cell. The least abundant complex is the ATP synthase with 2 attomol/cell. While applying the QconCAT approach, we have been able to identify many potential pitfalls associated with this technique. We analyze and discuss these pitfalls in detail and provide an optimized workflow for future applications of this technique.
III/V semiconductor quantum dots (QD) are in the focus of optoelectronics research for about 25 years now. Most of the work
has been done on InAs QD on GaAs substrate. But, e.g., Ga(As)Sb (antimonide) QD on GaAs substrate/buffer have also gained
attention for the last 12 years.There is a scientific dispute on whether there is a wetting layer before antimonide QD formation, as
commonly expected for Stransky-Krastanov growth, or not. Usually ex situ photoluminescence (PL) and atomic force microscope
(AFM) measurements are performed to resolve similar issues. In this contribution, we show that reflectance anisotropy/difference
spectroscopy (RAS/RDS) can be used for the same purpose as an in situ, real-time monitoring technique. It can be employed not
only to identify QD growth via a distinct RAS spectrum, but also to get information on the existence of a wetting layer and its
thickness. The data suggest that for antimonide QD growth the wetting layer has a thickness of 1 ML (one monolayer) only.