Towards Insect-Friendly Road Lighting-A Transdisciplinary Multi-Stakeholder Approach Involving Citizen Scientists.

(1) The project "Tatort Streetlight" implements an insect-friendly road light design in a four year before-after, control-impact (BACI) approach involving citizen scientists. It will broaden the stakeholder interests from solely anthropogenic perspectives to include the welfare of insects and ecosystems. Motivated by the detrimental impacts of road lighting systems on insects, the project aims to find solutions to reduce the insect attraction and habitat fragmentation resulting from roadway illumination.

Microplastic inclusion in birch tree roots.

In this pilot study, microplastic beads (5-50 μm) were tagged with fluorescent dye and introduced to the soil of potted Betula pendula Roth. (silver birch) saplings during the growing season. After five months, root samples were examined using fluorescence- and confocal laser scanning microscopy.

Density functional theory study of the binding of glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline to the hydroxyapatite (0001) and (0110) surfaces.

In view of the importance of the hydroxyapatite/collagen composite of both natural bone tissue and in synthetic biomaterials, we have investigated the interaction of three constituent amino acids of the collagen matrix with two major hydroxyapatite surfaces. We have employed electronic structure techniques based on the density functional theory to study a range of different binding modes of the amino acids glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline at the hydroxyapatite (0001) and (0110) surfaces. We have performed full geometry optimizations of the hydroxyapatite surfaces with adsorbed amino acid molecules to obtain the optimum substrate/adsorbate structures and interaction energies.

The interaction of dolomite surfaces with metal impurities: a computer simulation study.

This study investigates the behaviour of selected, morphologically important surfaces of dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2), using computational modelling techniques. Interatomic potential methods have been used to examine impurity substitution at cationic sites in these surfaces. Environmentally prevalent cations were studied to this end, namely Ni2+, Co2+, Zn2+, Fe2+, Mn2+ and Cd2+, all of which are also found as end-member carbonate minerals.