Astlingen - a benchmark for real time control (RTC).

This contribution serves two purposes. (1) It presents an updated version of the Astlingen example developed by the working group 'Integral Real Time Control' of the German Water Association (DWA), which serves as a benchmark example for the setup and evaluation of real time control strategies. As this benchmark is also intended for educational use, it demonstrates a simple RTC algorithm, illustrating the main concepts of RTC of drainage system. (2) The paper also encourages the preliminary analysis of the potential feasibility and benefit of a temporal increase of inflow to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) before analysing the WWTP behaviour in detail. For the present example, RTC within the sewer system alone led to almost the same reduction of overflow volume as permitting the inflow to the WWTP to be increased for 6 h within any 24 h, if at all permitted.

Is the Fight against Doping in Sport a Legal Minefield like Any Other?

In the fight against doping, creating a level playing field across all sports is very challenging from a legal perspective. A harmonized approach presupposes first and foremost a supreme regulatory authority on a global level. This task cannot be attributed to the public sector, because there is no supranational authority of public international law capable of dealing with it. Thus, responsibility has to be assumed by a private law entity. This in turn requires complicated contractual agreements by which duties and responsibilities are transferred from the individual to the national level and from there to the top of the pyramid. In practice, this process is not only difficult and cumbersome, it also leads to an accumulation of power at the top of the sports pyramid that must be contained by organizational checks and balances, such as access to justice and the rule of law, accountability, transparency, and possibilities for the respective stakeholders to partake in the decision-making process. The weighting of all these different aspects is demanding and further complicated by the regulatory reach of the various national lawmakers. Since national laws differ considerably and a harmonized legislative approach is nowhere near in sight, a global approach in the fight against doping must push back national laws and legal concepts as much as possible. The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview on all these legal challenges.

Sensitivity differences in fish offer near-infrared vision as an adaptable evolutionary trait.

Near-infrared (NIR) light constitutes an integrated part of solar radiation. The principal ability to sense NIR under laboratory conditions has previously been demonstrated in fish. The availability of NIR in aquatic habitats, and thus its potential use as a cue for distinct behaviors such as orientation and detection of prey, however, depends on physical and environmental parameters. In clear water, blue and green light represents the dominating part of the illumination. In turbid waters, in contrast, the relative content of red and NIR radiation is enhanced, due to increased scattering and absorption of short and middle range wavelengths by suspended particles and dissolved colored materials. We have studied NIR detection thresholds using a phototactic swimming assay in five fish species, which are exposed to different NIR conditions in their natural habitats. Nile and Mozambique tilapia, which inhabit waters with increased turbidity, displayed the highest spectral sensitivity, with thresholds at wavelengths above 930 nm. Zebrafish, guppy and green swordtail, which prefer clearer waters, revealed significantly lower thresholds of spectral sensitivity with 825-845 nm for green swordtail and 845-910 nm for zebrafish and guppy. The present study revealed a clear correlation between NIR sensation thresholds and availability of NIR in the natural habitats, suggesting that NIR vision, as an integral part of the whole spectrum of visual abilities, can serve as an evolutionarily adaptable trait in fish.

Near-infrared orientation of Mozambique tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus.

Light plays a pivotal role in animal orientation. Aquatic animals face the problem that penetration of light in water is restricted through high attenuation which limits the use of visual cues. In pure water, blue and green light penetrates considerably deeper than red and infrared spectral components. Submicroscopic particles and coloured dissolved organic matter, however, may cause increased scattering and absorption of short-wave components of the solar spectrum, resulting in a relative increase of red and infrared illumination. Here we investigated the potential of near-infrared (NIR) light as a cue for swimming orientation of the African cichlid fish (Cichlidae) Oreochromis mossambicus. A high-throughput semi-automated video tracking assay was used to analyse innate behavioural NIR-sensitivity. Fish revealed a strong preference to swim in the direction of NIR light of a spectral range of 850-950nm at an irradiance similar to values typical of natural surface waters. Our study demonstrates the ability of teleost fish to sense NIR and use it for phototactic swimming orientation.

Verifying three types of methane fluxes from soils by testing the performance of a novel mobile photoacoustic method versus a well-established gas chromatographic one.

The performance of a novel portable, tunable diode laser, resonant photoacoustic (TDL-PA) analyzer developed for field measurements of CH4 was compared to a commonly applied offline gas chromatographic (GC) method. This comparative studywas realized under normal field conditions parallel to long-term weekly GC monitoring of four different soil types with very different methane budgets. The method used for gas-exchange measurements was the well-known closed-chamber technique. The TDL-PA analyzer detects methane at 1650.957 nm [R (5) line of the 2v3 band], guaranteeing high precision without the need for correction procedures. The two techniques correlated well (R2 = 0.988) over the entire concentration range (0.15-33 ppmv CH4) tested at highly varying flux rates between -30 and -12 ppbv CH4 min(-1) for uptakes and between 2.5 and 362 ppbv CH4 min(-1) for emissions. The two analyzers proved to be interchangeable, leaving the online advantages to the TDL-PA. A suitable CH4 online GC solution for chamber measurement is not available as a portable system. Additionally, the data sampling rate of 2 Hz enables a direct coupling to other infrared gas analyzers with the high time resolution commonly required to determine plant CO2 assimilation rates or soil respiration rates.