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The available skid resistance, or friction, in a pavement surface is a vital parameter for functional evaluations of roads due to its relation with crashes. Therefore, highway administrations must collect friction data on their road network to provide safe roads to users. Additionally, a prediction model that can forecast the available skid resistance in each road segment is necessary for an efficient pavement management system (PMS). The aim of this paper is to develop a skid resistance prediction model for the bituminous pavements of the motorway network of federal state of Bavaria, in Germany, with information that is typically available in a PMS: the Annual Average Daily Traffic , the Annual Average Daily Heavy Traffic , and the number of lanes in each segment. Despite its simplicity, with 6410 road segments of 2 and 3 lanes of the Bavarian motorway network, the model achieves a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.405. If information about the surface layer material is added, R2 increases to 0.480. Consequently, apart from predicting the minimum available friction in each lane in a motorway, the study underlines the necessity that a PMS should contain the recommended elements and additional surface layer material, because the quality of the prediction improves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the swabian and franconian karsts of southern Germany have yielded rich and important neogene vertebrate faunas, the middle to late Miocene transition is still extremely underrepresented. This period is however key for the understanding of the European mammal evolution. A microtoid rodent Microtocricetus M2 is described and commented in this paper. The fossil discovered in the karst filling Petersbuch 69 is regarded herein such as derived and might be thus the youngest fossil of the genus in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in the distribution and availability of images for personal use in the late Middle Ages raises the question of their potential historical value for understanding the societies that produced and made use of them. This paper exposes the effects and the historical meanings of some woodcut illustrations of disputations between Jews and Christians: the woodcuts were widespread during the 1470s and 1480s in Swabia and Bavaria and surrounding areas, and they are still familiar and continue to play a role in shaping perceptions of Jewish-Christian relations of that period. These images do not reflect actual events: rather they are misrepresentations of polemical anti-Jewish sermons, designed as fictitious scholarly discourses. Their historical value is not limited to their ability to expose hidden angles. They can guide us to a better understanding of the written sources and to find new meanings there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary urban research, classical notions of differences in mentality between the urban and rural population as known since the writings of Cicero have once again become en vogue. The concept of ‘metropolitan habitus’, elaborated by British Sociologist Tim Butler, is the most influential revival of mental differentiation in this context. With the help of the concept of metropolitan habitus, Butler is able to differentiate between distinct gentrified neighbourhoods in London. The paper takes up this discussion of urban attitudes and lifestyles and presents a slightly different concept of habitual urbanity and residential capital, derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The main aim of these theoretical ideas is the investigation of urban-rural differences and differences within rural areas in relation to urbanity, which is not possible with Butler's urban-focused concept. Therefore, the paper defines urbanity as the contingency of a city, which means its broad range of possible coincidences due to social density. Urbanity manifests itself in the greater scope of action of its inhabitants. Habitual urbanity and residential capital are instrumental in helping people to deal with the broad range of possibilities that urban life offers. After introducing this theoretical conceptualisation, the paper presents empirical results of a visual study concerning urban-rural differences carried out in South Bavaria using the reflexive photography method. The study reveals indications that habitual differences between urbanites and the rural population in terms of urbanity and contingency still exist. These seem to be just a matter of how to respond to the challenges of strangeness and otherness. The study thus demonstrates the empirical potential of the concept of habitual urbanity and residential capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper gives a critical overview of school reform measures in the German state of Bavaria in the aftermath of the OECD's PISA 2000 and 2003 studies. While the highly selective Bavarian school system has provided the best test results among the German federal states, its overall performance in an international context has been less impressive. In order to improve the Bavarian education system a range of initiatives has been introduced in recent years. While following pedagogically sound ideas in most cases, however, the projects have been hampered by fiscal restraints, ideological reservations against breaking up the traditional three-tier system of secondary education, prevailing bureaucratic restrictions, and a lack of improvements in incentives for teachers' involvement in reform. As a consequence, genuine, fundamental changes in the traditional system have not so far been initiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Bavaria is far inland, at least 20 logboats are known, but only recently have some been properly recorded. This paper deals with two vessels discovered in the early 1990s. The remains at Laufen-Pfaffing represent a semi-manufactured logboat, which was purposely sunk as was the custom in Austria until the mid-20th century. The vessel from Wessobrunn-Blaik is also unfinished and shows several tool-marks. It is too narrow to float on its own: therefore it is part of a paired logboat. There is plenty of archaeological evidence for this kind of craft, but no ethnographic evidence. Apart from use as ferries, other uses are discussed. © 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth, remains a topic of debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event. This paper uses district-level data from Bavaria to study the correlates of the decline of fertility in that German kingdom in the nineteenth century, Bavaria's fertility transition was later and less dramatic than in other parts of Germany. Our results for Bavaria indicate that the European Fertility Project was right about the role of religion and secularization, but missed an important role for the economic and structural effects stressed by economic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]