Open Access

Sewer asset management gained momentum and importance in recent years due to economic considerations, since infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation directly represent major investments. Because physical urban water infrastructure has life expectancies of up to 100 years or more, contemporary urban drainage systems are strongly influenced by historical decisions and implementations. The current decisions taken in sewer asset management will, therefore, have a long-lasting impact on the functionality and quality of future services provided by these networks. These decisions can be supported by different approaches ranging from various inspection techniques, deterioration models to assess the probability of failure or the technical service life, to sophisticated decision support systems crossing boundaries to other urban infrastructure. This paper presents the state of the art in sewer asset management in its manifold facets spanning a wide field of research and highlights existing research gaps while giving an outlook on future developments and research areas.

Transgenic plants have the potential to produce recombinant proteins on an agricultural scale, with yields of several tons per year. The cost-effectiveness of transgenic plants increases if simple cultivation facilities such as greenhouses can be used for production. In such a setting, we expressed a novel affinity ligand based on the fluorescent protein DsRed, which we used as a carrier for the linear epitope ELDKWA from the HIV-neutralizing antibody 2F5. The DsRed-2F5-epitope (DFE) fusion protein was produced in 12 consecutive batches of transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants over the course of 2 years and was purified using a combination of blanching and immobilized metal-ion affinity chromatography (IMAC). The average purity after IMAC was 57 ± 26% (n = 24) in terms of total soluble protein, but the average yield of pure DFE (12 mg kg−1) showed substantial variation (± 97 mg kg−1, n = 24) which correlated with seasonal changes. Specifically, we found that temperature peaks (>28°C) and intense illuminance (>45 klx h−1) were associated with lower DFE yields after purification, reflecting the loss of the epitope-containing C-terminus in up to 90% of the product. Whereas the weather factors were of limited use to predict product yields of individual harvests conducted for each batch (spaced by 1 week), the average batch yields were well approximated by simple linear regression models using two independent variables for prediction (illuminance and plant age). Interestingly, accumulation levels determined by fluorescence analysis were not affected by weather conditions but positively correlated with plant age, suggesting that the product was still expressed at high levels, but the extreme conditions affected its stability, albeit still preserving the fluorophore function. The efficient production of intact recombinant proteins in plants may therefore require adequate climate control and shading in greenhouses or even cultivation in fully controlled indoor farms.

Deutschland braucht mehr Eisenbahn um CO2-Emissionen aus dem Verkehr zu reduzieren. Sie muss zum Rückgrat aktueller Logistikprozesse, z.B. bei Kaufmannsgütern und E-Commerce, werden. Dies geht nicht ohne neuartige betriebliche Konzepte und eine Transformation des Güterwagens von einem „dummen Stück Stahl“ zu einem modernen Werkzeug der Logistik. Als „Güterwagen 4.0“ wird ein kommunikativer und kooperativer Güterwagen verstanden, der die Voraussetzung zur Automatisierung aller Prozesse der Zugvorbereitung bereitstellt, sich aber ansonsten vollkommen kompatibel mit heutigen Betriebsverfahren im Hauptlauf präsentiert. Durch Kommunikation zwischen Güterwagen und umgebenden intelligenten Systemen im Sinne eines „Internet der Dinge“ gelingt damit unter Anderem die Realisierung hoch effizienter Gleisanschlussverkehre, die der Güterbahn neue Märkte abseits der klassisch bahn-affinen Verkehre erschließen und letztlich den Wandel zu einer nachhaltigen Gütermobilität fördern.