Suchergebnisse

How to intervene? Interventions are in vogue in digital cultures as forms of critique or political actions into public spheres. By engaging in social, political, and economic contexts, interventions attempt to interrupt and change situations - often with artistic means. This volume maps methods of interventions under the specific conditions of the digital. How are interventions shaped by these conditions? And how can they contribute to altering them? In essays and interviews, this book interrogates modes of intervening in and through art, infrastructures, techno-ecological environments, bio-technology, and political protests to highlight their potentials as well as their ambivalences.

"Here, we highlight aspects of Helmut Kohl's political leadership and self-presentation. First, we present a taxonomy of self-presentational styles, summarize some biographical aspects, and determine features of his assertive self-presentation in federal election campaigns. Then, we analyze defensive self-presentation with respect to the politics-and-money scandal that ended his political career. Finally, we discuss Kohl's leadership style. We concluded that Kohl's self-presentation never appeared tailored to be pleasant and appealing. With journalists, his interaction style was characterized by dominance and aggression. His demeanor lacked elements of self-doubt. He usually handled problems by 'sitting them out'." (author's abstract)

AbstractBackgroundChemical pollution forms a severe threat for human and environmental health. While the risks for European lowland water bodies are well known, there is little knowledge on remote aquatic ecosystems and particularly mountain lakes, despite their importance for the provision of freshwater. Here, we critically review the current knowledge on the exposure and risk by chemical pollution for mountain lakes and present a tiered approach on how to advance effectively our understanding in the future.ResultsGenerally, pollutant monitoring data are currently incomplete, with many regions and substances having been only poorly investigated. More reliable data exist only for persistent organic pollutants (POPs). However, there is increasing evidence that even remote mountain lakes are exposed to a wide range of organic pollutants. Among them potent pesticides currently used in agricultural and biocidal applications, such as diazinon and permethrin. The exposure of mountain lakes to pollutants follows a complex pattern. Pollutants are introduced into mountain lakes via the atmospheric deposition and run-off from the watershed, but also local sources, like tourism and pastoralism. Our risk assessment and recent biomonitoring studies suggest that there are widespread chronic toxic risks on crustacean in mountain ranges. If mountain ranges are exposed to tourism and pastoralism, even acute toxic effects on crustacean are possible. Thereby, the vulnerability of mountain lakes to toxic effects has to be expected to be particularly high due to the harsh environmental conditions at high altitudes, the organism's traits, the insular position of mountain lakes and a lower species richness with increasing altitudes. Furthermore, there is little knowledge on the biological processes leading to the degradation of chemical pollutants under the environmental and ecological conditions of mountain ecosystems.ConclusionWhile the exposure and sensitivity of mountain aquatic ecosystems is currently poorly investigated, the existing data suggest that it is very likely that also water bodies as remote as mountain lakes do suffer from pollution-induced toxicity. To verify this suggestion and expand the existing knowledge, it is necessary that future studies combine a more holistic pollution monitoring with exposure modelling and links to biological effects. Only then will it be possible to obtain a more reliable understanding of the impact of chemical pollution on aquatic mountain ecosystems and to protect these fragile ecosystems.

Abstract
Robust techniques based on liquid (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) enable sensitive screening, identification, and (semi)quantification of thousands of substances in a single sample. Recent progress in computational sciences has enabled archiving and processing of HR-MS 'big data' at the routine level. As a result, community-based databases containing thousands of environmental pollutants are rapidly growing and large databases of substances with unique identifiers allowing for inter-comparison at the global scale have become available. A data-archiving infrastructure is proposed, allowing for retrospective screening of HR-MS data, which will help define the 'chemical universe' of organic substances and enable prioritisation of toxicants causing adverse environmental effects at the local, river basin, and national and European scale in support of the European water and chemicals management policy.