Online-Patentrecherchen — schnelle Antworten auf kritische Fragen

Online searching in publically available patent files opens up interesting possibilities to provide a rapid response to critical questions. A computerized analysis of all patents of leading German pharmaceutical companies over the last decade in important indication areas is described. Supported by subsequent manual processing of individual patents it is shown that duplicate experiments on animals practically never occur.     

Opportunities and constraints for Product-oriented Environmental Management Systems (P-EMS)

Product-oriented Environmental Management Systems (P-EMS) are a logical extension of current, often primarily process- of facility-oriented Environmental Management Systems. The Dutch government promotes P-EMS as part of its product-oriented environmental policies. The idea of P-EMS is to enable producers to make environmentally responsible decisions on product development and product strategies, in collaboration with suppliers and customers. This paper summarises example P-EMS projects in The Netherlands for two segments of industry, namely retail and manufacturing industry. Moreover two other initiatives will be covered that deal with the development of tools to facilitate P-EMS in two other industry sectors (food processing and building). Success factors that emerge from these initial experiences are: focus on partners that have a strong incentive to act, application of screening Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) or user-shells for LCA, and focus on improvements that can be implemented on the short term.     

Food caching in orb-web spiders (Araneae: Araneoidea)

Caching or storing surplus prey may reduce the risk of starvation during periods of food deprivation. While this behaviour occurs in a variety of birds and mammals, it is infrequent among invertebrates. However, golden orb-web spiders, Nephila edulis, incorporate a prey cache in their relatively permanent web, which they feed on during periods of food shortage. Heavier spiders significantly reduced weight loss if they were able to access a cache, but lost weight if the cache was removed. The presence or absence of stored prey had no effect on the weight loss of lighter spiders. Furthermore, N. edulis always attacked new prey, irrespective of the number of unprocessed prey in the web. In contrast, females of Argiope keyserlingi, who build a new web every day and do not cache prey, attacked fewer new prey items if some had already been caught. Thus, a necessary preadaptation to the evolution of prey caching in orb-web spiders may be a durable or permanent web, such as that constructed by Nephila.