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The report summarizes the current knowledge on antibiotic contaminations in soils. The study raises concerns regarding the contamination of manure, anaerobic digestate and sewage sludge with antibiotic mixtures and discusses their ecotoxicological effects and spread of antimicrobial resistance in soils. Overall aims were mainly to identify antibiotic mixtures typically applied in veterinary and human medicine, to evaluate reports on mixtures and contamination levels occurring in soils and in organic waste materials applied to soil as fertilizer, to summarize mixture effects for soil(micro)organisms, and to identify major knowledge gaps to propose further steps for research and regulation.

AbstractBased on the assumption that disclosing explicit populist radical-right (PRR) attitudes and voting intentions for PRR parties may be inhibited by a social desirability bias, this paper aims at developing a measure for implicit populist attitudes (IAT) and at assessing its explanatory power for the prediction of PRR party support. Using data from a German online survey (N = 898), the populism-IAT is tested against corresponding direct measures of populist attitudes and anti-immigrant attitudes to predict voting propensity for the German PRR party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Results reveal that social desirability concerns indeed restrict the likelihood of reporting a high propensity of PRR vote; however, direct measures turn out as best predictors for self-reported voting intentions. Inconsistencies between implicit and explicit attitudes may indicate sensitivity to social (un-)desirability perceptions, when attitudes are displayed on the implicit but not on the explicit level. We find such incongruencies for 9% of our respondents regarding populist attitudes, and for 21% regarding anti-immigrant attitudes, indicating that the latter are considered even more undesirable. In light of our findings, we discuss the potential explanatory power of implicit attitudes for less deliberate forms of political behavior and the assumption of populist and anti-immigrant attitudes still being regarded as socially undesirable in Germany.

It is a relatively new concept to use biochar as soil amendment and for climate change mitigation. For this reason, the national and supranational legislation in the EU is not yet adequately prepared to regulate both the production and the application of biochar. Driven by this "regulatory gap", voluntary biochar quality standards have been formed in Europe with the European Biochar Certificate, in the UK with the Biochar Quality Mandate and in the USA with the IBI Standard which is intended to be used internationally. In parallel to this, biochar producers and biochar users in a number of EU countries were partly successful in fitting the new biochar product into the existing national legislation for fertilisers, soil improvers and composts. The intended revision of the EC Regulation 2003/2003 on fertilisers offers the opportunity to regulate the use of biochar at the EU level. This publication summarizes the efforts on biochar standardization which have been carried out by voluntary products standards and illustrates existing legislation in EU member states, which apply to the production and use of biochar. It describes existing and planned EU regulations, which impact biochar applications and it develops recommendations on the harmonization of biochar legislation in the EU. First published online: 24 Jan 2017

It is a relatively new concept to use biochar as soil amendment and for climate change mitigation. For this reason, the national and supranational legislation in the EU is not yet adequately prepared to regulate both the production and the application of biochar. Driven by this "regulatory gap", voluntary biochar quality standards have been formed in Europe with the European Biochar Certificate, in the UK with the Biochar Quality Mandate and in the USA with the IBI Standard which is intended to be used internationally. In parallel to this, biochar producers and biochar users in a number of EU countries were partly successful in fitting the new biochar product into the existing national legislation for fertilisers, soil improvers and composts. The intended revision of the EC Regulation 2003/2003 on fertilisers offers the opportunity to regulate the use of biochar at the EU level. This publication summarizes the efforts on biochar standardization which have been carried out by voluntary products standards and illustrates existing legislation in EU member states, which apply to the production and use of biochar. It describes existing and planned EU regulations, which impact biochar applications and it develops recommendations on the harmonization of biochar legislation in the EU. First published online: 24 Jan 2017

We conceptualize and measure right‐wing populism (RWP) as a three‐dimensional concept, explicitly and implicitly, based on online surveys and implicit association tests (IATs) in Germany and Switzerland. Confirmatory factor analyses show that explicit populism, nativism, and authoritarianism establish the latent RWP‐construct and that they are each related to their respective implicit counterpart. However, RWP ideology does not exist as an equally robust construct in the implicit realm as it does in the explicit realm. Resulting implicit‐explicit incongruence is psychologically meaningful in that it is moderated by willingness to comply with perceived social norms: For participants who perceive that their own political views differ from their social environment and who conceal their diverging opinions, implicit attitudes differ more strongly from explicit attitudes. This supports our rationale that explicit expression of RWP‐ideology is subject to social‐compatibility concerns. Hence, corresponding implicit attitudes are useful to fully assess the RWP potential within society.

Fast die Hälfte der Fläche in Deutschland wird landwirtschaftlich genutzt. Auf diesen Flächen stellen Landwirte Nahrung, Futter und nachwachsende Rohstoffe her. Was wir auf unserem Teller haben, kommt zu großen Teilen aus Deutschland. Doch die konventionelle Intensivlandwirtschaft führt zu dramatischen Umweltschäden in Wasser, Boden und Luft, beeinträchtigt die Biodiversität und das Klima. Wie es anders gehen könnte, zeigt die neue Fachbroschüre (Quelle: UBA). Behandelte Themen u.a.: Klimawandel, Moore, Stickstoff, Ammoniak, Tierarzneimittel, Klärschlamm, Gärreste, Pflanzenschutz