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In der Kläranlage Irschenberg wird gegenwärtig der Bau eines Bodenfilters mit Aktivkohleanteil geplant. Dieser kann sich für derartige Anlagen als eine sinnvolle Alternative zu den bisher bekannten Technologien einer vierten Reinigungsstufe erweisen.

Statistics is not the subject most psychology students are feverishly looking forward to. Fears and doubts about its relevance are quite common. This is especially pronounced at our institution, a large distance-teaching university with highly heterogeneous students. We recognized three clusters of students that might need special support: (1) students with fear of statistics, (2) students whose school time was a long time ago, (3) students who already failed the statistics exam. We gave those students the opportunity to participate in small, supervised groups to discuss learning strategies, problems, or fears. Students who did not participate served as a control group. We exploratively evaluated which kind of students were interested, and if the groups affected attitudes towards statistics, general self-efficacy, and exam-related variables. Interest and activity in the groups were low. No unique effect of participation in the groups on attitudes and grades were observable. Students stated that the groups did not help them to deal with the course. If these results prove stable in further studies with an improved design, one might conclude that setting up such small groups is not worth the effort.

In our current globalised, multicultural world, understanding antecedents of reciprocal interactions between native people and people of immigrant background is a major issue, because intergroup contact plays a crucial role in building inclusive societies. In this vein, using daily diary data, we examined the relation between the number of daily positive and negative interactions of White British majority (N = 744) and Asian British minority people (N = 582) with members of the respective outgroup, with RWA, SDO, perceived ingroup norms, neighbourhood diversity and contextual deprivation. Results showed that for the majority group, ingroup norms in favour of intergroup contact were positively associated with positive intergroup encounters, whereas Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) was positively associated with negative intergroup contact. Neighbourhood diversity was positively associated with positive and negative intergroup encounters. Moreover, RWA moderated the relationship between neighbourhood diversity and both positive and negative contact of White British people. For the minority group, ingroup norms were positively associated with positive intergroup contact, and the relationship between ingroup norms and negative contact was moderated by SDO. Overall, different factors affect positive and negative intergroup contact of majority and minority groups. We discuss the implications of the findings for future research and interventions.

The formation and shock history of ureilite meteorites, a relatively abundant type of primitive achondrites, has been debated for decades. For this purpose, the characterization of carbon phases can provide further information on diamond and graphite formation in ureilites, shedding light on the origin and history of this meteorite group. In this work, we present X-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy analyses performed on diamond and graphite occurring in the ureilite Yamato 74123 (Y-74123). The results show that nano- and microdiamonds coexist with nanographite aggregates. This, together with the shock-deformation features observed in olivine, such as mosaicism and planar fractures, suggest that diamond grains formed by a shock event (≥15 GPa) on the ureilitic parent body (UPB). Our results on Y-74123 are consistent with those obtained on the NWA 7983 ureilite and further support the hypothesis that the simultaneous formation of nano- and microdiamonds with the assistance of a Fe-Ni melt catalysis may be related to the heterogeneous propagation and local scattering of the shock wave. Graphite geothermometry revealed an average recorded temperature (Tmax) of 1314 °C (±120 °C) in agreement with previously estimated crystallization temperatures reported for graphite in Almahata Sitta ureilite.

This research was partly supported by a senior postdoctoral research grant from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) awarded to Jasper VanAssche (FWO.3E0.2021.0085.01) under the supervision of Arne Roets. Data collection for the South African studies was supported by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, for which the authors thank Steve Vertovec. This research was also funded by grants from the NORFACE ERA NET Plus Migration in Europe program, TheLeverhulme Trust, and the Central Community Relations Unit. Intergroup contact provides a reliable means of reducing prejudice. Yet, critics suggested that its efficacy is undermined, even eliminated, under certain conditions. Specifically, contact may be ineffective in the face of threat, especially to (historically) advantaged groups, and discrimination, experienced especially by (historically) disadvantaged groups. We considered perceived intergroup threat and perceived discrimination as potential moderators of the effect of contact on prejudice. Two meta-analyses of correlational data from 34 studies (totaling 63,945 respondents-drawn from 67 subsamples across 19 countries) showed that contact was associated with decreased prejudice and increased out-group positivity, in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, among advantaged and disadvantaged group members, and in both Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and non-WEIRD contexts. Both perceived threat and perceived discrimination moderated the contact-attitude association, but in an unanticipated direction. Indeed, contact's beneficial effects were at least as strong among individuals high (r = .19) as among individuals low (r = .18) in perceived threat. Similarly, the effects of contact were at least as strong among those high (r = .23) as among those low (r = .20) in perceived discrimination. We conclude that contact is effective for promoting tolerant societies because it is effective even among subpopulations where achieving that goal might be most challenging. Postprint

Immigration has been a prominent political issue for decades, but particularly so with rising national populism. To understand current anti-immigration opinion, we turn to the concept of relative deprivation, which, we argue, is fundamentally about entitlement and is at the heart of popular backlash against immigration. Examining the United Kingdom context, we predicted that immigration attitudes would be contingent on immigrant group status, with immigrants from low-status or poorer countries (Poland, India) more likely to be perceived as encroaching on the majority group’s entitlements than those from high-status or richer countries (Germany, Australia). We further proposed moral devaluation (dehumanization and distrust) as a novel mechanism (over and above prejudice) underlying the conditional effects of relative deprivation on support for formal (anti-immigration policies) and informal (hate crime) means of immigrant exclusion. A pilot study (n = 245) and cross-sectional survey (n = 490) results supported our main prediction that status matters: participants felt more deprived relative to low- than high-status immigrants, and this predicted stronger support for anti-immigration policies both directly and through higher distrust (but not dehumanization). This research highlights the need to unpack the generic ‘immigrant’ category and study anti-immigration sentiment in terms of group status and moral devaluation. Postprint

IntroductionOver the last decade, the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become increasingly wide-spread to manage the growing complexity of construction projects. As a result, project managers are facing new challenges in managing stakeholders in BIM projects, as the BIM concept is still relatively new to many of the stakeholders (Leśniak, Górka & Skrzypczak, 2021). The introduction of BIM has brought new and complex activities into the already complex process of project management, resulting in a radical change in the working practices of project managers and in the working practices of the project stakeholders (Li et al., 2021). Besides the purely technical advantages of better(?) planning and manipulating data, plans, etc. used to get the best possible visualization of the future, human factors are at least as, if not more, important when looking into the future. Immersive virtual reality (VR) can transform virtual plans into a walkable world, so that different stakeholders (architect, builder, tenant, etc.) can walk through the same flat without the need for specialist expertise in understanding building plans (Schiavi et al. 2022). This same mental picture of the e. g. apartment can now have an impact on decision-making processes and shorten the time to final judgement. At the same time, different aspects of interior design can be explored (size effect, furnishing, etc.). In our mixed methods study, we wanted to know which interaction mechanisms play an important role in the immersive virtual world and whether the sense of presence (illusion of place) is changed by the virtual design of rooms. MethodsIn three workshops, planned BIM data of two different types of apartments were put into a virtual environment (UNITY3D). We optimized the virtual apartments for an immersive virtual reality walkthrough and developed interactive tools for exploring the virtual apartments. In the first workshop (W1) we aimed to assess and demonstrate the sense of space of the planned apartment. In the second workshop (W2) we focussed on the texturing and in the third workshop we demonstrate the kitchen & wet room variants. Form W1 to W3 the visual details and naturalistic implementation of the virtual apartment were gradually enhanced. The participants were tenants, building owners, architects, and employees from the local building office. Their experience in virtual reality varied from none to a lot of experience. There were different tasks and goals for each workshop. Beside discussions, there was at least one VR-experience session per workshop, where participants would experience the virtual room in groups of two, with tasks specific to the session. This was done with three HTC VIVE pro headsets (one per group) with one per-son experiencing in the virtual world and the other spectating the first-person view from on a 75” screen. After some time, they swapped medium and the person who was in the virtual world now watched from outside. We recorded the following data during the workshop: technical affinity with TA-EG (Karrer, Glaser, Clemens & Bruder, 2009), usability with UEQ-S (Schrepp, Hinderks, Thomaschewski, 2017) and sense of presence with PLBMR (Frank & Kluge, 2014). Additionally, the participants were interviewed several weeks after the workshops with half structured interviews: Over all workshops a dataset of N=13 participants could be archived and evaluated. Descriptive and non-parametric statistics were calculated with SPSS 21. The coding of the interviews was done with MAXQDA.ResultsWe found a heterogeneous group in the scales for technical affinity. Regarding the importance of the tools we found that not all tools were remembered in the interviews. The overall usability rating was good and the most important finding was a significant less sense of presence (PLBMR) in workshop 2 (p > .05, cohens d`=.21).DiscussionThe introduction of BIM resulted in a radical change in the working practices of project managers and in the working practices of the project stakeholders (Li et al., 2021). This change should be carried out in a way that most stakeholders should feel comfortable with. As we saw in the data, the usability ratings were good, but some interviews showed that a reduction in complexity may be a further improvement, since not every feature was remembered or needed in the virtual room (Schiavi et al. 2022). The decrease in sense of presence in the second workshop show a possible connection with the uncanny valley phenomenon. Also, the limitation of the study is discussed and an outlook of possible further research is suggested.

Physics and chemistry of minerals 49(5), 10 (2022). doi:10.1007/s00269-022-01185-7, We performed an experiment under long-term microgravity conditions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to obtain information on the energetics and experimental constraints required for the formation of chondrules in the solar nebula by ’nebular lightning’. As a simplified model system, we exposed porous forsterite (Mg$_2$SiO$_4$) dust particles to high-energetic arc discharges. The characterization of the samples after their return by synchrotron microtomography and scanning electron microscopy revealed that aggregates had formed, consisting of several fused Mg$_2$SiO$_4$ particles. The partial melting and fusing of Mg$_2$SiO$_4$ dust particles under microgravity conditions leads to a strong reduction of their porosity. The experimental outcomes vary strongly in their appearance from small spherical melt-droplets (∅≈ 90 µm) to bigger and irregularly shaped aggregates (∅≈ 350 µm). Our results provided new constraints with respect to energetic aspects of chondrule formation and a roadmap for future and more complex experiments on Earth and in microgravity conditions., Published by Springer, Heidelberg