Kunst und innerhalb dieser die Architektur ist Ausdruck der zeitlichen Gegebenheiten. Diese waren 1945 nach der mentalen und physischen Hinterlassenschaft des Naziregimes desaströs, Stuttgart - die Heimatstadt des Architekten Rolf Gutbrod (1910 - 1999) - war völlig untergegangen. Wie sollte der Wiederaufbau geschehen? Als Anknüpfung an die erste Stuttgarter Bauschule vor 1933, als Anpassung an den „internationalen Stil“ als Re-Import des Bauhausstils? Ein kleines Gebäude - die Milchbar auf dem Stuttgarter Höhenpark Killesberg 1950, die einer Bauzeitung als sonderbar bezeichnet wird, um sie in der Folge als Befreiung zu loben - steht am Anfang der individualisierten Baukunst des Architekten Rolf Gutbrod. Yehudi Menuhin - wer könnte besser ein Werk einer verwandten Kunstgattung bewerten als er? - findet für das Konzerthaus Liederhalle 1956 die folgenden Worte: Nachdem ich nun schon zum zweiten Male in Ihrer neuen Liederhalle konzertiert habe, schreibe ich Ihnen, um Ihnen zu diesem Gebäude Glück zu wünschen. Der Raum ist akustisch hervorragend. Dabei hat seine geniale Asymmetrie für den Künstler etwas geradezu Befreiendes. In ihm scheint die mechanistische Perfektion, die unsere Kultur so bedroht, überwunden zu sein. Die freie Bewegtheit des Raumes steht in einem direkten Zusammenhang mit der freien Bewegtheit der Kunst der Musik. In einem solchen Raum ist es leicht, neue und alte Musik schöpferisch nachzuschaffen. Dass gerade in Deutschland, dem der Ruf der Reglementierung auch im Geistigen noch immer anhaftet, ein solches Gebäude an so wichtiger Stelle entstand, freut mich tief. Christoph Hackelsberger schrieb Mitte der 1980er Jahre über dieses Gebäude: Die äußere Erscheinung befremdete in ihrer Neuartigkeit nicht nur die Traditionalisten, sondern auch die Anhänger der klassischen Moderne. So entstand mitten in der Orientierungsphase der deutschen Architektur ein autochthones, organisches Baukunstwerk. In dieser Studie wird am Beispiel exemplarischer Bauwerke das Autochthone des Werks des Architekten, das so erfrischend vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Kubenarchitektur wirkt, dargestellt.

Wissensorganisation is the name of a series of biennial conferences / workshops with a long tradition, organized by the German chapter of the International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO). The 15th conference in this series, held at Freie Universität Berlin, focused on knowledge organization for the digital humanities. Structuring, and interacting with, large data collections has become a major issue in the digital humanities. In these proceedings, various aspects of knowledge organization in the digital humanities are discussed, and the authors of the papers show how projects in the digital humanities deal with knowledge organization.

Die Rede von der “reinen” und “freien” Wissenschaft hatte in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit vielfach die Funktion, die Teilhabe dieser Wissenschaft an den Schuld- und Gewaltzusammenhänge nationalsozialistischer Politik unkenntlich zu machen. Das Wissenschaftsideal war in diesem Sinne ein Teil des Schweigens danach. Daran anknüpfend zeigt Elvira Scheich, dass das gesellschaftliche Wissenschaftsverständnis mit der deutschen Geschichte und deutscher Erinnerungspolitik in mehrfacher Weise verknüpft ist. Ihre Studie geht der Fragestellung nach, mit welchen verschiedenen Bedeutungen die Wissenschaft im Gedächtnis der Nachkriegsgesellschaft der BRD aufgeladen wurde und wie diese miteinander im Verhältnis stehen. Das Schlüsselmoment ist dabei die Rolle deutscher Wissenschaftler in der Anti-Atomwaffenbewegung der 1950er Jahre, in der die Wissenschaft zur moralisch integren Instanz avancierte. Als Material wurden zwei Zeitschriften zum einen die Physikalischen Blätter und zum anderen Frau und Frieden analysiert, die in der Debatte über nukleare Waffen zentrale Beiträge lieferten. Der Ausgangspunkt der Arbeit ist ein Ereignis, das im Zwischenraum von Wissenschaft, Politik und Öffentlichkeit stattfand. Es handelt sich um die sogenannte “Göttinger Erklärung”, in der 18 führende deutsche Wissenschaftler den Bau und die Benutzung von Atomwaffen öffentlichkeitswirksam ablehnten. Der Hintergrund dieses Ereignisses war eine weltweit alarmierte Wahrnehmung der besonderen Bedrohungen, die von Radioaktivität ausgehen, und die Debatte um die Stationierung atomarer Waffen in der BRD. Die darauf bezugnehmende Massenbewegung “Kampf dem Atomtod” in den Jahren 1957 und 1958 bildet den erweiterten Kontext der Untersuchung. Im öffentlichen Diskurs jener Zeit avancierte Wissenschaft zu einem Ersatz für Politik, deren Motive generell moralisch zweifelhaft erschienen. Aber erst mit der Wendung der Auseinandersetzung um Atomwaffen zu einer Gewissensfrage, die eine absolute und vom konkreten politischen Kontext unabhängige Geltung beansprucht, erhielt Wissenschaft ihren besonderen Stellenwert: In der beklemmenden Alternative zwischen Leben oder Tod der gesamten Menschheit wurde die Notwendigkeit eines überpolitischen Handelns betont, die Vernunft der “übernationalen” Wissenschaft angerufen und an das “Forschergewissen” appelliert. Der grundsätzlichen Rahmen und die wesentliche Begriffe der Interpretation folgen den Forschungsansätzen zu Traumatisierung und den Theorien zum kulturellen Gedächtnis, mit denen frühere soziologische und sozialpsychologische Untersuchungen zu Schuld und Abwehr (Adorno 1955) sowie zu der Unfähigkeit zu trauern (Mitscherlich 1967) weiterentwickelt und erweitert wurden. Die wichtigsten dieser Konzepte sind Adornos Überlegungen zum Realmoment der Schuldabwehr und Dan Bar-Ons Analyse (1996) der paradoxen Rede, demnach eines Sprechens, das zugleich benennt und das Benannte verbirgt. Damit ist es möglich, ein sprechendes Schweigen zu identifizieren, das dem Diskurs über die Atomgefahr seine spezifische Gestalt gibt. Die beiden Haupteile der Untersuchung konzentrieren sich auf die Analyse der zwei Zeitschriften Physikalischen Blätter und Frau und Frieden. Damit wurden aus dem großen Spektrum der damaligen Debatte zwei sehr verschiedene soziale Gruppen, die Physiker und die friedenspolitisch engagierten Frauen, ausgewählt. Beide Gruppierungen zeichnen sich durch klare Topoi aus, mit denen sie sich in der Debatte über die Atomgefahr artikulieren und auf deren Grundlage sie jeweils ihr Verhältnis zur Vergangenheit im Nationalsozialismus bestimmen. In beiden Fällen lassen sich Verleugnungen und Denkblockaden entschlüsseln, die aus der Vergangenheit herrühren. Weiterführend lässt sich zeigen, dass es damit zu einer langfristigen Beschädigung sowohl der politischen Begriffe als auch der unter sie gefassten Wirklichkeiten führen. Markant dafür ist der Verlust der zeitlichen Dimension und die Löschung jüdischer Namen. Das Schlusskapitel geht auf das theoretische Denken über Wissenschaft ein und verfolgt die Spuren, die der historische Prozess auch in der gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen und wissenschaftssoziologischen Reflexion hinterlassen hat. Dafür wird an drei verschiedenen Theoriekomplexen herausgearbeitet, welche Rolle den Dimensionen von Zeit, Gedächtnis und Geschichte in den jeweiligen Vorstellungen über soziale Objektivierung zukommt. Am Beispiel der Wissenssoziologie, des Strukturalismus und der Kritischen Theorie wird analysiert, wie auf dieser Grundlage jeweils das Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft gefasst wird.

Climate simulations are the fuel to drive hydrological models that are used to assess the impacts of climate change and variability on hydrological parameters, such as river discharges, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration. Unlike with cars, where we know which fuel the engine requires, we never know in advance what unexpected side effects might be caused by the fuel we feed our models with. Sometimes we increase the fuel's octane number (bias correction) to achieve better performance and find out that the model behaves differently but not always as was expected or desired. This study investigates the impacts of projected climate change on the hydrology of the Upper Blue Nile catchment using two model ensembles consisting of five global CMIP5 Earth system models and 10 regional climate models (CORDEX Africa). WATCH forcing data were used to calibrate an eco-hydrological model and to bias-correct both model ensembles using slightly differing approaches. On the one hand it was found that the bias correction methods considerably improved the performance of average rainfall characteristics in the reference period (1970–1999) in most of the cases. This also holds true for non-extreme discharge conditions between Q20 and Q80. On the other hand, bias-corrected simulations tend to overemphasize magnitudes of projected change signals and extremes. A general weakness of both uncorrected and bias-corrected simulations is the rather poor representation of high and low flows and their extremes, which were often deteriorated by bias correction. This inaccuracy is a crucial deficiency for regional impact studies dealing with water management issues and it is therefore important to analyse model performance and characteristics and the effect of bias correction, and eventually to exclude some climate models from the ensemble. However, the multi-model means of all ensembles project increasing average annual discharges in the Upper Blue Nile catchment and a shift in seasonal patterns, with decreasing discharges in June and July and increasing discharges from August to November.

Extra-tropical cyclones in the subantarctic play a central role in the poleward transport of heat and moisture into Antarctica, with the latter being a key component of the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. As the climate in this region undergoes substantial changes, it is anticipated that the character of these synoptic features will change. There are a number of different methods used to identify and track cyclones, which can potentially lead to different conclusions as to cyclone variability and trends, and mechanisms which drive these features. Given this, it is timely to assess the level of consensus among 14 state-of-the-art cyclone identification and tracking methods. We undertake this comparison with the ERA-Interim data-set for the period 1979–2008 and find large differences in the number of tracks identified by different methods, but the spatial patterns of the system density broadly agree. Links between large-scale modes of variability, such as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), and subantarctic cyclones as suggested in the literature are confirmed by our analysis. Trends in the number of cyclone tracks show a more diverse picture. Robust trends are identified by almost all methods for austral summer over the region south to 60°S, mainly due to the strong relation to SAM, whereas in austral winter the methods disagree in the statistical significance of the trends. The agreement among the methods is greater when the comparison is confined to the stronger cyclones. This is confirmed by a moisture flux analysis associated with these strong synoptic systems. Our results indicate that multiple cyclone identification and tracking methods should be used to obtain robust conclusions for trends in cyclone characteristics as well as their relation to the large-scale circulation in the subantarctic region.

We investigate a reduced point vortex model for statistical and dynamical analyses of atmospheric blocking phenomena. Thereby, we consider High-over-low and Omega blocking as relative equilibria of two and three point vortices. Under certain conditions, such point vortex systems move westward opposing the mean westerly flow and hence can become stationary. Based on the kinematic vorticity number, two novel, independent methods, the contour and the trapezoid method, are introduced in order to identify the vortices that form the blocking pattern, their local positions and circulation magnitudes. While the contour method takes into account the observed stationarity of blocking, the trapezoid method minimizes the total circulation of the vortex system following point vortex theory. Using an instantaneous blocking index, a total number of 347 blocking periods were identified in NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis data for the Euro-Atlantic region during the time period 1990–2012. This procedure provides the basis to corroborate the applicability of the point vortex model to atmospheric blocking in a statistical framework. The calculated translation speed of point vortex systems associated with the atmospheric blocking appears to match the zonal mean velocity reasonably well. This model explains the stationary behaviour of blocking patterns. A comparison between the theoretical and a statistical model further reveals that the circulation of the blocking high follows the principles of the point vortex model to a large extent. However, the low-pressure systems behave more variable. Moreover, the stability of point vortex equilibria is analysed regarding the relative distances by considering linear stability analysis and simulations. This reveals that the point vortex blocking model corresponds to an unstable saddle point. Furthermore, we take viscosity and a Brownian motion into account to simulate the influence of the smaller, subgrid-scale disturbances. As a result, a clustering near the equilibrium state emerges indicating the persistence of the atmospheric blocking pattern.

Wild rodents are important hosts for tick larvae but co-infestations with other mites and insects are largely neglected. Small rodents were trapped at four study sites in Berlin, Germany, to quantify their ectoparasite diversity. Host-specific, spatial and temporal occurrence of ectoparasites was determined to assess their influence on direct and indirect zoonotic risk due to mice and voles in an urban agglomeration. Rodent-associated arthropods were diverse, including 63 species observed on six host species with an overall prevalence of 99%. The tick Ixodes ricinus was the most prevalent species, found on 56% of the rodents. The trapping location clearly affected the presence of different rodent species and, therefore, the occurrence of particular host-specific parasites. In Berlin, fewer temporary and periodic parasite species as well as non-parasitic species (fleas, chiggers and nidicolous Gamasina) were detected than reported from rural areas. In addition, abundance of parasites with low host-specificity (ticks, fleas and chiggers) apparently decreased with increasing landscape fragmentation associated with a gradient of urbanisation. In contrast, stationary ectoparasites, closely adapted to the rodent host, such as the fur mites Myobiidae and Listrophoridae, were most abundant at the two urban sites. A direct zoonotic risk of infection for people may only be posed by Nosopsyllus fasciatus fleas, which were prevalent even in the city centre. More importantly, peridomestic rodents clearly supported the life cycle of ticks in the city as hosts for their subadult stages. In addition to trapping location, season, host species, body condition and host sex, infestation with fleas, gamasid Laelapidae mites and prostigmatic Myobiidae mites were associated with significantly altered abundance of I. ricinus larvae on mice and voles. Whether this is caused by predation, grooming behaviour or interaction with the host immune system is unclear. The present study constitutes a basis to identify interactions and vector function of rodent-associated arthropods and their potential impact on zoonotic diseases.

The worldwide emergence of antibiotic resistance poses a serious threat to human health. A molecular understanding of resistance strategies employed by bacteria is obligatory to generate less-susceptible antibiotics. Albicidin is a highly potent antibacterial compound synthesized by the plant-pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas albilineans. The drug-binding protein AlbA confers albicidin resistance to Klebsiella oxytoca. Here we show that AlbA binds albicidin with low nanomolar affinity resulting in full inhibition of its antibacterial activity. We report on the crystal structure of the drug-binding domain of AlbA (AlbAS) in complex with albicidin. Both α-helical repeat domains of AlbAS are required to cooperatively clamp albicidin, which is unusual for drug-binding proteins of the MerR family. Structure-guided NMR binding studies employing synthetic albicidin derivatives give valuable information about ligand promiscuity of AlbAS. Our findings thus expand the general understanding of antibiotic resistance mechanisms and support current drug-design efforts directed at more effective albicidin analogs.

Channelrhodopsins are light-sensitive ion channels whose reaction cycles involve conformation-coupled transfer of protons. Understanding how channelrhodopsins work is important for applications in optogenetics, where light activation of these proteins triggers changes in the transmembrane potential across excitable membranes. A fundamental open question is how the protein environment ensures that unproductive proton transfer from the retinal Schiff base to the nearby carboxylate counterion is avoided in the resting state of the channel. To address this question, we performed combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical proton transfer calculations with explicit treatment of the surrounding lipid membrane. The free energy profiles computed for proton transfer to the counterion, either via a direct jump or mediated by a water molecule, demonstrate that, when retinal is all-trans, water and protein electrostatic interactions largely favour the protonated retinal Schiff base state. We identified a conserved lysine group as an essential structural element for the proton transfer energetics in channelrhodopsins.

High-resolution climate data O(1km) at the catchment scale can be of great value to both hydrological modellers and end users, in particular for the study of extreme precipitation. While dynamical downscaling with convection-permitting models is a valuable approach for producing quality high-resolution O(1km) data, its added value can often not be realized due to the prohibitive computational expense. Here we present a novel and flexible classification algorithm for discriminating between days with an elevated potential for extreme precipitation over a catchment and days without, so that dynamical downscaling to convection-permitting resolution can be selectively performed on high-risk days only, drastically reducing total computational expense compared to continuous simulations; the classification method can be applied to climate model data or reanalyses. Using observed precipitation and the corresponding synoptic-scale circulation patterns from reanalysis, characteristic extremal circulation patterns are identified for the catchment via a clustering algorithm. These extremal patterns serve as references against which days can be classified as potentially extreme, subject to additional tests of relevant meteorological predictors in the vicinity of the catchment. Applying the classification algorithm to reanalysis, the set of potential extreme days (PEDs) contains well below 10% of all days, though it includes essentially all extreme days; applying the algorithm to reanalysis-driven regional climate simulations over Europe (12km resolution) shows similar performance, and the subsequently dynamically downscaled simulations (2km resolution) well reproduce the observed precipitation statistics of the PEDs from the training period. Additional tests on continuous 12km resolution historical and future (RCP8.5) climate simulations, downscaled in 2km resolution time slices, show the algorithm again reducing the number of days to simulate by over 90% and performing consistently across climate regimes. The downscaling framework we propose represents a computationally inexpensive means of producing high-resolution climate data, focused on extreme precipitation, at the catchment scale, while still retaining the advantages of convection-permitting dynamical downscaling.

We study properties of the Hirzebruch class of quotient singularities ℂ n /G, where G is a finite matrix group. The main result states that the Hirzebruch class coincides with the Molien series of G under suitable substitution of variables. The Hirzebruch class of a crepant resolution can be described specializing the orbifold elliptic genus constructed by Borisov and Libgober. It is equal to the combination of Molien series of centralizers of elements of G. This is an incarnation of the McKay correspondence. The results are illustrated with several examples, in particular of 4-dimensional symplectic quotient singularities.