Das Thema „Grüne Stadt“ erlebt derzeit eine Renaissance und erfuhr zuletzt im 2015 veröffentlichten Grünbuch des Bundesministeriums für Umwelt, Naturschutz, Bau und Reaktorsicherheit (BMUB) eine umfassende Würdigung. Gegenstand dieser weitreichenden Befassungen sind auch Überlegungen zur quantitativen und qualitativen Angebotsentwicklung im Bereich der Erholungsvorsorge. Diesbezüglich vorhandene Rahmensetzungen sind über 40 Jahre alt und bedürfen nicht zuletzt vor dem Hintergrund veränderter Rahmenbedingungen der Aktualisierung und empirischen Überprüfung, v. a. im Hinblick auf die vermutlich recht unterschiedlichen quantitativen und qualitativen Anforderungen unterschiedlicher Bevölkerungsgruppen an die Gestaltung erholungsrelevanter Flächen sowie ihre Erreichbarkeit. Ziel der vorliegenden Dissertation, deren digitaler Anhang über Opara zugänglich ist, war es, auf Basis umfassender empirischer Erhebungen belastbare Daten zu alters- und nutzergruppenspezifischen Einzugsgebieten von Parkanlagen sowie zu alters- und nutzergruppenabhängigen Erholungsmustern zu erlangen und im Hinblick auf identifizierte Einflussfaktoren zu interpretieren. Im Fokus stand also, ergänzt durch eine Erweiterung vorhandener Flächendaten um v. a. qualitative Aspekte, die systematische Erfassung und Interpretation von Nutzungsmustern ausgewählter öffentlicher Parkanlagen im Stadtgebiet von Dresden, mithin keine wissenschafts-theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit den soziologischen Aspekten der Freiraumnutzung, sondern eine hypothesengeleitete empirische Studie.

DFG project number: 254872581 (follow-up of project HE2933/8-1) The majority of constitutive models, that are used nowadays to describe the behaviour of granular materials such as sands, are continuum models based on phenomenological approaches. In order to describe some of the phenomena occurring on the macroscopic scale, e.g. an abrupt change of stiffness due to a load reversal, these constitutive models use phenomenological state variables (e.g. back stress in elasto-plasticity or the intergranular strain concept for hypoplasticity) which often lack a clear physical meaning. The mechanisms that control the macroscopic behaviour and, as such, different phenomena, that can be observed on the continuum scale, must be sought at the grain-scale with the interactions of individual particles playing the key-role. X-Ray μ-computed tomography (CT) allows for a 3D imaging of natural soil samples in various loading conditions and is used in this project. In order to extract information on the structure of the granular material, different image analysis approaches can be used and their accuracy is evaluated with respect to the limited resolution. Mechanical experiments in the x-ray CT scanner have been carried out on natural sands in the running project. During a macroscopic loading the sand specimens were scanned using a laboratory x-ray scanner in order to assess the grain-scale behaviour in-situ and link it with the macroscopic observations. The evolution of the microstructure can be linked to the evolution of the phenomenological variables, e.g. the intergranular strain for hypoplasticity for changes in loading direction, leading to a possible micromechanical enhancement of these concepts. Establishing a link between micromechanical variables, such as the fabric tensors describing the stucture, and the macromechanical observations cannot only enhance our understanding of different phenomena occurring on the continuum scale, but also enable an incorporation of these effects into phenomenological approaches in a more straight-forward and reliable way.

Das DFG-Projekt "Sicherheitsvorstellungen in der Antike" untersuchte die Werthaftigkeit des Begriffs Sicherheit in der archischen und klassischen griechischen Geschichte sowie in der Umbruchszeit von der Römischen Republik zum Prinzipat. Leiter des Gesamtprojekts war Prof. Dr. Martin Jehne. Projekthomepage: https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/ige/ag/forschung/ehemalige-projekte/dfg-projekt-sicherheit.

Medienbeilage des Magazins ARRAY2019

Two-photon NAD(P)H/FAD fluorescence lifetime imaging data of intact Drosophila melanogaster tissues including salivary gland and fat body cells of third instar larvae, enterocytes, as well as sperm stored the male seminal vesicle and the female seminal receptacle.

We show two characters that can be used to separate bedbug nymphs. Given the bedbugs increasing status as a global pest and as a research model, we discuss the economic and biological consequences of these findings.

Conflicts between long-term goals (e.g., maintaining health, achieving good grades) and immediate de-sires or strong habits (e.g., to smoke; eat a tasty dessert; to watch TV) are frequent in everyday life. Failures of self-control in such conflict situations are sources of a wide range of harmful behaviors including substance-related and addictive disorders (SAD), which incur immense personal and societal costs. The long-term aim of project C1 is to investigate whether impaired cognitive control, performance-monitoring, value-based decision-making and dysfunctional interactions between the underlying brain systems constitute vulnerability factors and/or mediating mechanisms underlying non-pathological daily self-control fail-ures (SCFs) as well as addictive behaviors. In the first funding period (07/2012-06/2016) project C1 launched a prospective cohort study using a multi-level approach that combines (i) a comprehensive clinical assessment, (ii) be-havioral task batteries assessing cognitive control and decision-making functions, (iii) task-related and resting state fMRI, and (iv) smartphone-based experience sampling of daily SCFs. In the first funding phase, from a representative community sample we recruited three groups of participants (each n = 100; age 20 - 26) with (a) symptoms of non-substance related and (b) substance-related addictive disorders and (c) syndrome-free controls. Hypothesis-driven cross-sectional analyses revealed that reduced error-related activity in brain areas involved in performance-monitoring and salience processing (anterior insu-la; aINS) and inhibitory control (right inferior frontal gyrus; IFG) as well as insufficient modulation of neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) by long-term goals predicted higher prone-ness to daily SCFs. Moreover, reduced conflict-related brain activity in performance-monitoring areas was associated with repeated unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking. These findings are consistent with a working model according to which deficient performance-monitoring, insufficient recruitment of cognitive control networks in response to conflicts or errors, and insufficient top-down modulation of value signals by long-term goals increase proneness to commit daily SCFs and show symptoms of SAD. Based on these encouraging results, in the second funding period project C1 will be expanded into a prospective-longitudinal cohort study with yearly clinical follow-up assessments and continued multi-level as-sessments 3 and 5 years after initial recruitment. This will provide the unique opportunity to examine with a cross-lagged panel design whether daily SCFs and SAD can be predicted by (a) cognitive control com-petencies as derived from latent variable analyses of our task battery and by (b) activity in brain areas involved in performance-monitoring, cognitive control, and value-based decision-making. This will not only allow us to investigate with sufficient statistical power (1) commonalities and differences in cognitive control functions between subgroups of SAD, but also (2) to address the central unresolved question whether cognitive control and performance-monitoring impairments are causally involved in the development of real-life SCFs and SAD.

Project B5 addresses the modulation of cognitive control by stress. During the second funding period the project intended to investigate the longitudinal relationship of chronic stress and executive functioning, also known as cognitive control. For this purpose a population-based sample of 516 participants (Mage = 38.4 years, SD = 8.9 vears, 25 to 55 years; 67.2% female) was recruited out of 8400 randomly selected individuals within the population registry of the City of Dresden. This sample was followed up every six months till summer 2019 (i.e., six assessment waves) collecting data of three EF tasks, a set of questionnaires, as well as hair and saliva samples. EF tasks that were applied are a Number-Letter task (Rogers & Monsell, 1995), a Go/Nogo task (Wolff et al., 2016), and a spatial 2-Back task (Friedman et al., 2008). Questionnaires assessed are the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Sheldon Cohen & Williamson, 1988), the Screening Scale of the Trier Inventory for the Assessment of Chronic Stress (SSCS; Schulz & Schlotz, 1999), the depression scale of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9; Löwe et al., 2002), the short version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-K; Rammstedt & John, 2005), the short form of the Need for Cognition Scale (NFC; Bless et al., 1994), and the Multidimensional Mood State Questionnaire (MDBF; Steyer et al., 1997). Furthermore, several socioeconomic data are acquired, including education, employment status, household income, and health situation. To facilitate data collection, this was carried out self-administrated in the domestic setting.

The CRC 940/2 subproject B6 on "Individual differences in effort discounting and adjustments in volitional control" aims at providing an account for the role of individual differences in effort discounting or demand avoidance in order to better predict individual control adjustments across a variety of tasks. Across several studies, the nature of self-reported dispositional effort investment will be systematized (Study 1), it will be determined whether demand avoidance in behavioural tasks can be considered as a stable disposition that is related to self-reported effort investment (Study 2), and it will be examined whether individuals high in effort investment and demand avoidance actually invest more effort in task processing and how this effort investment is adjusted depending on task difficulty and payoff in typical cognitive control tasks (Study 3). Furthermore, project B6 aims at modeling these control adjustments based on individual differences in cost and benefit representations in further studies.

Model-based analysis of neural representations of decision evidence during perceptual decision making

Selecting goals and successfully pursuing them in an uncertain and dynamic environment is an important aspect of human behaviour. In order to decide which goal to pursue at what point in time, one has to evaluate the consequences of one’s actions over future time steps by forward planning. However, when the goal is still temporally distant, detailed forward planning can be prohibitively costly. One way to select actions at minimal computational costs is to use heuristics. It is an open question how humans mix heuristics with forward planning to balance computational costs with goal reaching performance. To test a hypothesis about dynamic mixing of heuristics with forward planning, we used a novel stochastic sequential two-goal task. Comparing participants’ decisions with an optimal full planning agent, we found that at the early stages of goal-reaching sequences, in which both goals are temporally distant, on average 42% (SD = 19%) of participants’ choices deviated from the agent’s optimal choices. Only towards the end of the sequence, participant’s behaviour converged to near optimal performance. Subsequent model-based analyses showed that participants used heuristic preferences when the goal was temporally distant and switched to forward planning, when the goal was close.

This is for the paper titled "Context-dependent risk aversion adaptation for single subjects: a model-based approach". Contains both the experimental data obtained by Sven Breitmeyer, Florian Ott and Elena Ruge in 2018.