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This thesis deals with the energy system transformation of coal-dependent developing countries in the context of climate change mitigation. It departs from the hypothesis that phasing-out the unabated use of coal for power generation, while scaling up carbon-free alternatives, represents a major challenge for coal-endowed developing countries and emerging economies. This challenge is constituted in multiple economic, political and societal determinants for sustained and expanded coal-use. This thesis adopts a political economy perspective and examines those determinants in detail. It focuses on how different societal and political actors are affected the use of coal, and interprets the distributional implications of reforms away from coal as key restrictions for their political feasibility. Given the heterogeneity in the historical, socio-economic, political, and institutional characteristics that different countries exhibit, which are hypothesized to impact on the drivers behind coal-use, this thesis adopts a case-study based approach. It focuses on two large Asian economies, Indonesia and India, as coal-endowed emerging economics with a pivotal relevance in global climate protection efforts. Three main chapters represent the core of this thesis. The first main chapter of this thesis examines the political economy of the power sector and coal mining in Indonesia, focusing on the drivers for the continued use of coal for electricity generation. It presents an expert-interview case study, based on the perspective of 90 expert stakeholder in Indonesia´s energy and climate policy, at national and subnational level. The study identifies key societal and political actors behind Indonesia´s energy- and climate policies driving coal-use, spells out their objectives, and examines how these actor-specific interests’ effect on energy and climate policies. The second main chapter of this thesis studies the implications of an Indian energy transition away from coal-use along three dimensions: the distributional impacts towards households, the implications for employment, and the impact on competitiveness of industries. The input-output based, distributional- incidence case study analyses the concentration of impacts for key societal groups affected by a coal phase-out and renewable energy phase-in, and its spatial distribution across Indian states and regions. The third main chapter of this thesis studies the cost-competitiveness of renewable energy alternatives to coal in Indonesia. The energy modelling based analysis shows how the cost-optimal composition of Indonesia´s power sector in coming decades would comprise high shares of coal-fired electricity. The three main chapters of this thesis identify political economy challenges to a transition away from coal, outlining how a successful coal phase-out will require focusing on its context-dependent distributional and political implications.
Reliability assessment of pipeline failure factors has become a major concern for industrial firms involved in the transmission of oil and gas, where the requirement to limit these failure factors and their consequences, such as maintenance costs, is particularly significant. Pipelines were constructed throughout time to include safety precautions in order to offer a theoretical minimal failure rate for the pipeline's whole life. This strategy also includes the management of various failure causes as well as routine-based maintenance to assure the dependability of pipelines during their service life. However, the requirement to reduce the impact of these failure factors on pipelines has bolstered the use of reliability evaluation of failure factors on petroleum pipelines. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the reliability of oil pipelines in Nigeria, with emphasis on proposing operational and technical changes to enhance their resilience against unexpected failures. The thesis uses the regular Poisson, empirical, and compound Poisson processes to describe the number of common failure causes owing to corrosion, third-party damage, mechanically induced failure, operational mistakes, and natural hazards in repairable systems. The statistical analysis results serve as the foundation for time to failure modeling of petroleum pipelines utilizing Bayesian inference of the three-parameter Exponentiated Weibull distribution. The thesis also includes reliability probabilistic methods for assessing the influence of uncertainties in pipelines by comparing the First order reliability method (FORM) with the Second order reliability method (SORM) with demonstration on five distinct petroleum pipelines. The probability of failure and the reliability index for the five pipelines were calculated, along with the target reliability. Additionally, the influence of specific pipeline design parameters on the probability of failure was analyzed through sensitivity analysis. This analysis helps identify which design factors have the most significant impact on the likelihood of pipeline failure, allowing for more informed decisions in pipeline design and maintenance practices. By understanding these influences, it is possible to enhance the overall reliability and safety of the pipeline infrastructure. The framework developed in this thesis can be applied to enhance the performance of existing pipelines and serve as a good foundation for the design and implementation of new pipelines and similar infrastructures.
Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is considered an age-related disease of men with unknown etiopathophysiology. Chronic inflammation represents one of the most important pathophysiological mechanisms in this context, and there is also evidence for the involvement of autoimmune responses in an inflammatory environment in the prostate. Conventional therapeutic approaches for BPH are limited; however, immunosuppression by TNF (tumor necrosis factor)-𝛼 blockers seems to reduce symptoms in BPH patients due to the reduction of epithelial hyperplasia and macrophage-triggered inflammation. Therefore, this cumulative dissertation addresses biomarker-based BPH diagnosis by lens epithelium-derived growth factor splice variant 75 kDa (LEDGF/p75). LEDGF/p75 is an autoantigen that is overexpressed in solid tumors and functions as a stress-related transcriptional co-activator. It also plays an important role in cancer and DNA damage repair (DDR). The generation of CRISPR/Cas9-modified HEp-2 LEDGF deficient (KO) and HEp-2 LEDGF/p75 overexpressing (OE) cell lines provided new insights for the diagnosis and therapy of cancer and genetic disorders. Herein, IgG autoantibody reactivity to LEDGF/p75 was detected in patients with prostate cancer (PCa, n=89), bladder cancer (BCa, n=116), benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH, n=103) and blood donors (BD, n=60) by indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) linear immunoassay (LIA) and Chritidia luciliae immunofluorescence test (CLIFT). In addition, proliferation and migration capacity as well as chemosensitivity of genome-edited cells were determined by optimized all-in-one approach, followed by investigation of DDR signaling pathways by Western blot and immunofluorescence. Surprisingly, no increased binding of autoantibodies (autoAbs) to LEDGF/p75 was detected in cancer patients, but autoAb reactivity to LEDGF/p75 O/E cells was unexpectedly increased in approximately 50% of patients with BPH. At the molecular level, LEDGF-deficient cells exhibit decreased proliferation and migration and increased sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic agent etoposide. A significantly Decreased DNA damage response could also be visualized. New diagnostic capabilities using HEp-2 cells overexpressing LEDGF/p75 or mitochondrial DNA as autoimmune targets could be used to identify BPH patients with autoimmune responses. Furthermore, this Thesis shows that LEDGF is not only involved in the recruitment of DNA damage response proteins, but also affects the proteosomal regulation of DDR signaling molecules.
The hetero-integration of group IV and III-V epitaxial layers on silicon (Si) substrates enables novel devices for optoelectronic and high-power applications. However, lattice and thermal mismachtes lead to an unavoidable formation of defects in hetero-epitaxy. The consideration of these defects is important in semiconductor devices as they affect material properties and impair the device performances. Besides the structural characterization of the unintentional introduced defects and the question of it’s origin, it is essential to evaluate their electrical activity in order to describe their impact on the device performance.
This work explores the electrical activity of threading dislocations (TDs) in Ge-rich SiGe heterostructures integrated on Si substrates as well as the electrical active defects introduced by the growth of aluminium-nitride (AlN) seed layers for the integration of gallium-nitride (GaN) on Si substrates.
I demonstrated a defect-related p-type conductivity of intrinsically grown Si ₀ ̣₀₆Ge ₀ ̣₉₄/Ge that reaffirms previous work of similar intrinsic Ge-based material. Moreover, I detailed the threading dislocation related leakage currents in rectifying devices, revealing a power law dependence on the threading dislocation density (TDD). By a variation of temperature I determined the dominant mechanism of transport of this leakage currents in different temperature regimes, for which I suggested possible interactions with TD related defect states. Through the reduction of leakage currents in the fabricated MOS capacitors I was able to examine an effective carrier concentration of 5-6x10¹⁵cm⁻³ in the nominally intrinsic Si ₀ ̣₀₆Ge ₀ ̣₉₄ epitaxial layer, which decreases down to 1x10¹⁵cm⁻³in the Ge buffer underneath. By applying deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) I found one dominant hole trap at mid-gap position confirming the presence of an TD-related effective generation-recombination center. In addition, I investigated the hole trapping kinetics of this defect level and associated it with point defects that are trapped in the strain field around threading dislocations.
I obtained insights into defect formation in the Si substrate and at the AlN/Si interface in dependence of the AlN growth temperature. A low temperature growth step prevented a deep in-diffusion of Al atoms into the Si substrate with simultaneous increase of the maximal p-type doping in the vicinity of the AlN/Si interface. Furthermore, I found a bulk hole trap inside the Si substrate at mid-gap position that showed an increase in density by applying a low temperature growth step. In contrast, the defect states at the AlN/Si interface decreased when a low temperature growth step was applied, in comparison to AlN layers grown at continuous high temperatures.
By the year 2539 almost 75% of all freshwater mollusc species within Europe will be lost. The transformation of natural ecosystems, the extension of infrastructure, as well as agriculture are the main threats. The Roman snail (Helix pomatia L. 1758) has been part of human culture for centuries and is protected by law as an endangered species in several regions, and at the same time regarded and treated as a pest, making the conservation of this species difficult.
The aim of this thesis was to create a better understanding of H. pomatia and its functional role within the ecosystem. Eight subpopulations were studied regarding its role within the food web, the use of empty shells as a mircohabitat and its influence on vegetation by showing food preferences. The latter, due to the fact, that a strong predation pressure can minimize habitats, which leads to higher pressure on the local vegetation and a limited possibility of shells being used as a microhabitat.
First, the relationships between H. pomatia individuals, subpopulations and their predators were analysed. The total number and percentage of shells that showed external attack marks by predators (32%) and internal utilization marks by Diptera pupae (45%) were analysed and correlated to morphometric traits of shells. Signs of external attack and internal utilization marks were positively correlated (R = 0.79; P = 0.020). External attacks were more regular in larger shells and internal utilization was more frequent in shells with higher body density.
The second chapter focuses on the shells of H. pomatia and their value as microhabitat for shell adopters in different vegetation forms and during two sample periods. Out of 618 collected shells, 91.4 % were inhabited and the average was 1.5 time higher in summer, than in autumn. The number of shell adopters per shell was 1.5 times higher in herbaceous vegetation, than in areas dominated by trees. Shell width (P = 0.008), but not shell height (P = 0.078) had a significant higher influence.
Finally, food preferences of H. pomatia were analysed, showing a pronounced preference for Urtica dioica (35% of all 697 feeding interactions) and plant litter (44%). Only 27 out of 143 available plant species were eaten and a literature review confirmed U. dioica as a food plant for 19 other terrestrial snail species. The width and height of the snail shells were related to the feeding height as smaller, juvenile snails fed higher in vegetation (384mm ± 327mm) compared to adult individuals (68mm ± 194mm) (P<0.001).
These results highlight the importance of H. pomatia in the studied ecosystem. H. pomatia is an important food source for predators and host for parasitoids, the shells offer habitat and refuge for soil organisms and as a relatively specialized herbivore and decomposer H. pomatia contributes to herbivory and nutrient cycling in ecosystems.
Hopefully this study may help to motivate future conservation efforts.
Salvaging Buildings : reclaiming a livelihood from the excesses of Istanbul's mass urbanization
(2023)
Turkey’s demolition waste management is, to a great extent, dependent on çıkmacıs (reclaimers) who salvage condemned buildings for raw materials and architectural elements. Its urbanization history is full of key moments marked by building demolitions, which became a necessary material resource for informal urbanization. As early as the 1970s, the çıkmacıs helped the gecekondus [squatter houses] by supplying second-hand building materials and construction loans. They managed to turn a lack of infrastructure into an advantage and remain very adaptable to the ever-changing conditions of neo-liberalized urbanization. They depend on solidarity networks and other informal resources. Assemblage thinking helps to redefine the concept of informality, understand the relational dynamics between various actors, and focus on the agency of materials. The empirical data gained from ‘follow the thing’ ethnographic research in Turkey and Georgia reveals the double lives of çıkmacıs who move between village and city. Additionally, by following the example of a reclaimed window frame’s journey from Istanbul to Tbilisi, we can more clearly see the second-hand trade network in the context of urbanization and incremental architecture. In the context of waste’s materiality, the empirical part of the research shows the symbiotic relationship between çıkmacıs and the discarded demolition materials.
Comparing hybrid urbanisms in the global south : water delivery configurations in Peru and Ghana
(2023)
Urban development processes in the Global South (and North) are often described as characterized by formal and informal practices of different actors and their respective material realities. In critical urban studies, the disposition for this binary conception of formal and informal urbanisms has been discussed for many years. To a certain extent, these sometimes align rather problematically with contrasting notions of the “structural” versus the “everyday.” In this article, we explore an understanding of formal and informal urban practices (and respectively “structure” and “everyday”) as always interrelated, and we develop a methodology for a comparative examination of such hybrid urbanisms. In doing so, we address a missing link in the surging theoretical debate on comparative/southern urbanisms, which has rarely been substantiated by methodological explorations. The adapted concept of “delivery configurations” combines analyses of actor networks, material realities, rules and regulations, discourses, and heterogenous arrays of urban practices of negotiating these. However, bringing together local particularities and structural commonalities and exploring their interrelation only provides a basis for understanding case‐specific complexities. We argue that embedding the analysis in a multi‐scalar comparative framework can further its analytical rather than descriptive attributes and provide deeper insights into issues such as social inequality. To illustrate our methodological contribution, we provide first insights from a comparative research
project of water delivery in different neighbourhoods in the secondary cities of Sunyani (Ghana) and Arequipa (Peru). We highlight the practical challenges of comparing diverse urban contexts and examining the rather complex relationships between infrastructure delivery, urban development, and social inequality.
Biomass and bioenergy perspectives of a coal region : status quo, potential and scenarios in Lusatia
(2023)
Coal has been one of the main fuels used in Europe. Its decreasing role due to the ongoing transformation of the energy system will create significant socio-economic challenges. The switch into renewable energy systems could be an alternative to maintain jobs and economic activities within the affected regions. Biomass use and bioenergy can play an important role in the energy transition. Instead of energy crops, forest and agricultural residues should be used as biogenic energy sources in the future to avoid impacts on land use and food security. The main objective of this article is to investigate the biomass potential of a coal region and to provide scenarios for the future development of bioenergy production. Due to the changing framework conditions and, as a result, the different biomass focuses, previous bioenergy potential estimates must be reviewed. The methods for determining the potential of biomass for energy production was used for Lusatia (in German: Lausitz), the second largest coal region in Germany. These methods can also be applied in other regions. As a first step, the regional status quo assessment of cultivated areas and yields had decisive relevance for calculating biomass potential ranges. In a second step, the current bioenergy facilities in the region were identified, with a focus on power and heat production. The third step was the estimation of future regional bioenergy use. Therefore, the regional potential was gathered with the generally supra-regional framework conditions. For this purpose, national scenario studies were used, which contain the relevant target values and framework conditions. Two scenarios were developed for future bioenergy estimations: a conservative path based on the current policies and a progressive path, derived from the goal of climate neutrality by 2045. The results show a qualitative comparison among both scenarios and the previously determined potential ranges. Bioenergy can probably contribute to achieving climate neutrality with an increase in wood-fired systems, while agricultural bioenergy potential is likely to decline. In the discussion section, however, the uncertainty of these results is pointed out, as future use of bioenergy will be heavily influenced by the regulatory framework, competition with material use and the influences of climate change.
The Iberian Peninsula comprises one of the largest boundaries between Mediterranean and Eurosiberian vegetation, known as sub-Mediterranean zone. This ecotone hosts many unique plant species and communities and constitutes the low-latitude (warm) margin of numerous central European species which co-occur with Mediterranean vegetation. Two of the main species found in this region are the Eurosiberian European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and the Mediterranean Pyrenean oak (Quercus pyrenaica Willd.). It remains unclear how the different physiological and adaptive strategies of these two species reflect their niche partitioning within a sub-Mediterranean community and to what extent phenotypic variation (intraspecific variability) is driving niche partitioning across Eurosiberian and Mediterranean species. We quantified functional niche partitioning, based on the n-dimensional hypervolume to nine traits related to resource acquisition strategies (leaf, stem and root) plus relative growth rate as an additional whole-plant trait, and the environmental niche similarity between Pyrenean oak and European beech. Further, we analyzed the degree of phenotypic variation of both target species and its relationship with relative growth rates (RGR) and environmental conditions. Plant recruitment was measured for both target species as a proxy for the average fitness. Species’ functional space was highly segregated (13.09% overlap), mainly due to differences in niche breadth (59.7%) rather than niche replacement (25.6%), and beech showed higher trait variability, i.e., had larger functional space. However, both species shared the environmental space, i.e., environmental niches were overlapped. Most plant traits were not related to abiotic variables or RGR, neither did RGR to plant traits. Both target species share similar environmental space, however, show notably different functional resource-use strategies, promoting a high complementarity that contributes to maintaining a high functionality in sub-Mediterranean ecosystems. Therefore, we propose that conservation efforts be oriented to preserve both species in these habitats to maximize ecosystem functionality and resilience.
Linking functional composition moments of the sub-mediterranean ecotone with environmental drivers
(2023)
Functional trait-based approaches are extensively applied to the study of mechanisms governing community assembly along environmental gradients. These approaches have been classically based on studying differences in mean values among species, but there is increasing recognition that alternative metrics of trait distributions should be considered to decipher the mechanisms determining community assembly and species coexistence. Under this framework, the main aim of this study is to unravel the effects of environmental conditions as drivers of plant community assembly in sub-Mediterranean ecotones.
We set 60 plots in six plant communities of a sub-Mediterranean forest in Central Spain, and measured key above- and belowground functional traits in 411 individuals belonging to 19 species, along with abiotic variables. We calculated community-weighted mean (CWM), skewness (CWS) and kurtosis (CWK) of three plant dimensions, and used maximum likelihood techniques to analyze how variation in these functional community traits was driven by abiotic factors. Additionally, we estimated the relative contribution of intraspecific trait variability and species turnover to variation in CWM. The first three axes of variation of the principal component analyses were related to three main plant ecological dimensions: Leaf Economics Spectrum, Root Economics Spectrum and plant hydraulic architecture, respectively. Type of community was the most important factor determining differences in the functional structure among communities, as compared to the role of abiotic variables. We found strong differences among communities in their CWMs in line with their biogeographic origin (Eurosiberian vs Mediterranean), while differences in CWS and CWK indicate different trends in the functional structure among communities and the coexistence of different functional strategies, respectively. Moreover, changes in functional composition were primarily due to intraspecific variability. We observed a high number of strategies in the forest with the different communities spreading along the acquisitive-conservative axis of resource-use, partly matching their Eurosiberian-Mediterranean nature, respectively. Intraspecific trait variability, rather than species turnover, stood as the most relevant factor when analyzing functional changes and assembly patterns among communities. Altogether, our data support the notion that ecotones are ecosystems where relatively minor environmental shifts may result in changes in plant and functional composition.