The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany

Reviewed Book: Baum, Gregory. The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996

Canada Country Study

human development, climate change

From Planning to Implementation? The Role of Climate Change Adaptation Plans to Tackle Heat Stress: A Case Study of Berlin, Germany

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Global climate change increases the necessity for mid-latitude cities to tackle urban heat. Climate change adaptation plans are common policy mechanisms to approach the issue. This paper studies the city climate development plan (StEP Klima) of Berlin, Germany, by using Constellation Analysis. We analyzed to what extent StEP Klima might trigger planning and governance processes for the implementation of heat stress measures. Berlin’s plan brought attention to the local risks of urban heat and possible strategies. To translate its aims into decision makers’ everyday governance and planning practice, institutionalized guidance and an activation of policy instruments is needed.DFG, 197674476, FOR 1736: Stadtklima und Hitzestress in Städten der Mittelbreiten in Anbetracht des Klimawandels (UCaHS

Cumulus convection and the terrestrial water-vapor distribution

Cumulus convection plays a significant role in determining the structure of the terrestrial water vapor field. Cumulus convection acts directly on the moisture field by condensing and precipitating water vapor and by redistributing water vapor through cumulus induced eddy circulations. The mechanisms by which cumulus convection influences the terrestrial water vapor distribution is outlined. Calculations using a theory due to Kuo is used to illustrate the mechanisms by which cumulus convection works. Understanding of these processes greatly aids the ability of researchers to interpret the seasonal and spatial distribution of atmospheric water vapor by providing information on the nature of sources and sinks and the global circulation

Measurement of surface roughness slope

Instrument, consisting of isolator, differentiator, absolute value circuit, and integrator, uses output signal from surface texture analyzer profile-amplifier to calculate surface roughness slope. Calculations provide accurate, instantaneous value of the slope. Instrument is inexpensive and applicable to any commerical surface texture analyzer

Analyzing long-term correlated stochastic processes by means of recurrence networks: Potentials and pitfalls

Long-range correlated processes are ubiquitous, ranging from climate variables to financial time series. One paradigmatic example for such processes is fractional Brownian motion (fBm). In this work, we highlight the potentials and conceptual as well as practical limitations when applying the recently proposed recurrence network (RN) approach to fBm and related stochastic processes. In particular, we demonstrate that the results of a previous application of RN analysis to fBm (Liu \textit{et al.,} Phys. Rev. E \textbf{89}, 032814 (2014)) are mainly due to an inappropriate treatment disregarding the intrinsic non-stationarity of such processes. Complementarily, we analyze some RN properties of the closely related stationary fractional Gaussian noise (fGn) processes and find that the resulting network properties are well-defined and behave as one would expect from basic conceptual considerations. Our results demonstrate that RN analysis can indeed provide meaningful results for stationary stochastic processes, given a proper selection of its intrinsic methodological parameters, whereas it is prone to fail to uniquely retrieve RN properties for non-stationary stochastic processes like fBm.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

An integrative quantifier of multistability in complex systems based on ecological resilience

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) via the Young Investigators Group CoSy-CC2 (grant no. 01LN1306A). C.M. acknowledges the support of Bedartha Goswami, Jobst Heitzig and Tim Kittel.Peer reviewedPublisher PD