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Clumsy Floodplains
Extreme floods cause enormous damage in floodplains, which levees cannot prevent. Therefore, it is vital for spatial planning to provide space for water retention in these areas. Land use planners, water management agencies, landowners, and policymakers all agree on this challenge, but attempts to make the space for rivers to provide retention are generally not very successful. Adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how society can manage the use of the floodplains along rivers in the face of extreme floods, focusing in particular on the relation between social arrangements and the elemental forces of floods. The book firstly analyses why contemporary floodplain management is so often clumsy and ineffective by looking at various real-life situations in Germany, using Cultural Theory to provide a much-needed, but previously neglected social perspective. These analyses show a pattern of activity resulting from different rationalities which dominate the floodplains in different phases. During extreme floods, it is rational to manage floodplains as dangerous areas; sandbags and disaster management dominate the scene. After some time, the rationality of control takes over the floodplain management; policymakers discuss flood risk and water managers build levees. When public attention diminishes, floodplains become inconspicuous until more and more stakeholders regard floodplains as profitable land. The current system of planning, law, and property rights even encourages stakeholders to act out their plural rationalities. A permanent dynamic imbalance of different rationalities leads to a robust social construction of the floodplains which results in viable but clumsy floodplains. In the course of time, however, the patterns of activity in the floodplains lead to an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme floods, and to more vulnerable potential damages in the floodplains. Risk increases. Coping with this situation needs another ki
eBook
Damit der Bauturbo nicht zum Korruptionsturbo wird - Wieso es jetzt mehr Transparenz zum Eigentum braucht
The German law for „Accelerating Housing Construction and Securing Housing“ – the so-called Bauturbo – fundamentally changes key mechanisms of democratic control in the German planning system. The new provisions, especially the new possibility of extensive deviations from the Federal Building Code (§246e BauGB) combined with the regulation on „presumption of municipal consent“ (§36a BauGB) shift decision-making processes from democratically legitimized planning procedures toward simplified administrative acts. This change creates broader discretionary powers, information and power asymmetries between public authorities and private actors and increasing intransparency in land policy. These structural changes may foster corruption by enabling hidden influences on land value increases. The risk arises less from individual misconduct than from the systemic incentives generated by the Bauturbo itself. This paper highlights these risks and serves as a basis for discussion on how to mitigate them. Strengthening transparency of land ownership is proposed as a key approach to reinforce the legitimacy of planning law and restore trust in fair and accountable development processes. The German law for „Accelerating Housing Construction and Securing Housing“ – the so-called Bauturbo – fundamentally changes key mechanisms of democratic control in the German planning system. The new provisions, especially the new possibility of extensive deviations from the Federal Building Code (§246e BauGB) combined with the regulation on „presumption of municipal consent“ (§36a BauGB) shift decision-making processes from democratically legitimized planning procedures toward simplified administrative acts. This change creates broader discretionary powers, information and power asymmetries between public authorities and private actors and increasing intransparency in land policy. These structural changes may foster corruption by enabling hidden influences on land value increases. The risk arises less from individual misconduct than from the systemic incentives generated by the Bauturbo itself. This paper highlights these risks and serves as a basis for discussion on how to mitigate them. Strengthening transparency of land ownership is proposed as a key approach to reinforce the legitimacy of planning law and restore trust in fair and accountable development processes.
Journal Article
lost origin of chemical ecology in the late 19th century
The origin of plant chemical ecology generally dates to the late 1950s, when evolutionary entomologists recognized the essential role of plant secondary metabolites in plant-insect interactions and suggested that plant chemical diversity evolved under the selection pressure of herbivory. However, similar ideas had already flourished for a short period during the second half of the 19th century but were largely forgotten by the turn of the century. This article presents the observations and studies of three protagonists of chemical ecology: Anton Kerner von Marilaun (1831-1898, Innsbruck, Austria, and Vienna, Austria), who mainly studied the impact of geological, climatic, and biotic factors on plant distribution and survival; Léo Errera (1858-1906, Brussels, Belgium), a plant physiologist who analyzed the localization of alkaloids in plant cells and tissues histochemically; and Ernst Stahl (1848-1919, Jena, Germany), likely the first experimental ecologist and who performed feeding studies with snails and slugs that demonstrated the essential role of secondary metabolites in plant protection against herbivores. All three, particularly Stahl, suggested that these \"chemical defensive means\" evolved in response to the relentless selection pressure of the heterotrophic community that surrounds plants. Although convincingly supported by observations and experiments, these ideas were forgotten until recently. Now, more than 100 years later, molecular analysis of the genes that control secondary metabolite production underscores just how correct Kerner von Marilaun, Errera, and, particularly, Stahl were in their view. Why their ideas were lost is likely a result of the adamant rejection of all things \"teleological\" by the physiologists who dominated biological research at the time.
Journal Article
The FLOODLABEL as a social innovation in flood risk management to increase homeowners' resilience
In flood risk management awareness has been growing that the responsibility for coping with a flood cannot be assumed by the government alone. Homeowners need to be actively involved in flood risk management by taking responsibility; for this, they need empowerment and support to take adequate precautions. If homeowners implement precautionary measures, they can mitigate damage caused by floods and thus increase their resilience. This requires an appropriate risk communication strategy with the population. The FLOODLABEL in Germany informs and prompts homeowners to take precautionary measures. The Flood Competence Center developed the FLOODLABEL. This study employs the analytical framework of social innovation as the FLOODLABEL has some characteristics of social innovation. This study first explores the FLOODLABEL, which constitutes social innovation in flood risk management, and therefore characterizes the five development phases and their successes and challenges as social innovation. Second, it tries to understand and reflect upon the current stage of the FLOODLABEL as a social innovation in Germany and seeks to learn from this tool about the potential drivers associated with the process of implementation. Third, there is potential to gather a better understanding of other social innovations in flood risk management.
Journal Article
Abnormal resting-state cortical coupling in chronic tinnitus
Background
Subjective tinnitus is characterized by an auditory phantom perception in the absence of any physical sound source. Consequently, in a quiet environment, tinnitus patients differ from control participants because they constantly perceive a sound whereas controls do not. We hypothesized that this difference is expressed by differential activation of distributed cortical networks.
Results
The analysis was based on a sample of 41 participants: 21 patients with chronic tinnitus and 20 healthy control participants. To investigate the architecture of these networks, we used phase locking analysis in the 1–90 Hz frequency range of a minute of resting-state MEG recording. We found: 1) For tinnitus patients: A significant decrease of inter-areal coupling in the alpha (9–12 Hz) band and an increase of inter-areal coupling in the 48–54 Hz gamma frequency range relative to the control group. 2) For both groups: an inverse relationship (r = -.71) of the alpha and gamma network coupling. 3) A discrimination of 83% between the patient and the control group based on the alpha and gamma networks. 4) An effect of manifestation on the distribution of the gamma network: In patients with a tinnitus history of less than 4 years, the left temporal cortex was predominant in the gamma network whereas in patients with tinnitus duration of more than 4 years, the gamma network was more widely distributed including more frontal and parietal regions.
Conclusion
In the here presented data set we found strong support for an alteration of long-range coupling in tinnitus. Long-range coupling in the alpha frequency band was decreased for tinnitus patients while long-range gamma coupling was increased. These changes discriminate well between tinnitus and control participants. We propose a tinnitus model that integrates this finding in the current knowledge about tinnitus. Furthermore we discuss the impact of this finding to tinnitus therapies using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).
Journal Article
Effects of synthetic gestagens on fish reproduction
Although it is well known that estrogenic steroidal hormones are able to affect the sexual development and reproduction of fish at low concentrations, no data on environmental effects of the class of progestogenic hormones are available yet. Synthetic gestagens (progestins) are a component in oral contraceptives. Upon their use, a fraction of the progestins will be excreted via urine into the aquatic environment. On the basis of their pharmacological action in mammals, it is supposed that fish reproduction is the most sensitive endpoint for the progestin treatment. In order to test this assumption, the effects of two progestins currently marketed in contraceptive formulations, levonorgestrel (LNG) and drospirenone (DRSP), were investigated in adult fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) following an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 21-d fish reproduction screening assay draft protocol with additional end points. Levonorgestrel was tested at measured concentrations of 0.8, 3.3, and 29.6 ng/L, and DRSP at concentrations of 0.66, 6.5, and 70 microliter. Both tested progestins caused an inhibition of reproduction. For LNG, this occurred at concentrations of 2:0.8 ng/L, no no-observed-effect concentration (NOEC) could be defined. Higher concentrations resulted in masculinization of females with de novo synthesis of nuptial tubercles. Drospirenone treatment, however, affected the reproductive success of fathead minnow at concentrations of 6.5 microliter and higher with a clear dose-response relationship and a NOEC of 0.66 microliter, which is above environmentally relevant concentrations.
Journal Article