Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
German Studies: Language and Linguistics

A major work which appeared towards the end of the review year is Ulrich Ammon, Die Stellung der deutschen Sprache in der Welt, Berlin, de Gruyter, xviii + 1296 pp. Assessing the global position of the German language and its recent history, A. views the position of German in the context of a global constellation of competing languages, examining unique features and congruities in such areas as business, science, diplomacy, linguistics, word art, the media, and foreign language instruction. The perennial debate as to whether the German language is in decline is the subject of Sprachverfall. Dynamik-Wandel-Variation, ed. Albrecht Plewnia and Andreas Witt, Berlin, de Gruyter, viii + 371 pp., which contains contributions from many prominent scholars, both from Germany and elsewhere. The volume has two principal foci, namely providing a comprehensive analysis of the discourse on perceived language decline, and offering a sociolinguistic perspective on the processes underlying the public debate on the topic. Chapters include Wini Davies and Nils Langer, ‘Die Sprachnormfrage im Deutschunterricht: das Dilemma der Lehrenden’ (299–321) and Martin Durrell, ‘Mit der Sprache ging es immer schon bergab Dynamik, Wandel und Variation aus sprachhistorischer Perspektive’ (11–31). A new and insightful contribution to another long-standing debate surrounding the German language, namely the extent to which Martin Luther can be considered to be the Schopfer of the New High German written language, is made by Werner Besch, Luther und die deutsche Sprache. 500 Jahre deutsche Sprachgeschichte im Lichte der neueren Forschung, Berlin, Schmidt, 181 pp. Another excellent work on Luther is Friedhelm Debus, ‘Uber Martin Luthers Bedeutung in sprachlicher und literarischer Perspektive’, Sprachwissenschaft, 39:425–43. Both Besch and Debus conclude that, despite Luther’s linguistic creativity, his decisive literary achievements, and his historical importance, that a conception of him as the Schopfer of the New High German written language would not be justified. Albrecht Greule, Deutsches Gewassernamenbuch: Etymologie der Gewassernamen und der zugehorigen Gebiets-, Siedlungsund Flurnamen, Berlin, de Gruyter, 800 pp., is an important publication in which the German names of lakes, rivers and associated place names are analysed from a linguistic perspective and presented comprehensively and with careful and copious etymological information. A further study of topographical names is Jacqueline Reber, Strukturen und Muster in der Namenwelt: Quantitative und qualitative Untersuchungen zum Toponymenbestand der beiden Solothurner Amteien Dorneck-Thierstein und Oltgen-Gosgen, Tubingen, Francke, 294 pp., which links structures and patterns in names to the corresponding topographical and historical events. An intriguing study of family names is Fernande Krier,
Electronic excitations, spectroscopy and quantum transport from ab initio theory

Spectroscopy and quantum transport constitute powerful ways to study the physics of matter and to access the electronic and atomic structure. Excitations, in turn determined by the electronic and atomic structure, lie at the origin of spectroscopy and quantum transport. Ab initio calculation of excited states requires to go beyond ground-state density-functional theory (DFT). In this work we review three theoretical frameworks beyond DFT: the first is time-dependent density-functional theory to describe neutral excitations and to address energy-loss and optical spectroscopies. We introduce the theory and the fundamental approximations, i.e. the RPA and the adiabatic LDA, together with the results one can get with them at the example of bulk silicon and graphite. We then describe the developments we contributed to the theory beyond TDLDA to better describe optical spectroscopy, in particular the long-range contribution-only and the Nanoquanta exchange-correlation kernel approximations. The second framework is many-body quantum field theory (or Green's function theory) in the GW approximation and beyond, well suited to describe photoemission spectroscopy. After a review of the theory and its main success on the prediction of the band gap, we present two applications on unconventional systems: 2D graphene and strongly correlated vanadium dioxide. We discuss the next frontiers of GW, closing with perspectives beyond GW and MBQFT. The last part presents non-equilibrium Green's function theory suited to address quantum transport. We show how it reduces to the state-of-the-art Landauer principal layers framework when neglecting correlations. We present a calculation of the conductance on a very simple system, a gold monoatomic chain, showing the effect of electron-electron scattering effects. Finally we present theoretical developments toward a new workbench beyond the principal layers, which led us to the introduction of new generalized Meir and Wingreen and Fisher-Lee formulas. This work compares the theoretical and practical aspects of both Green's function and density based approaches, each one benefiting insights from the other, and presents an overview of accomplishments and perspectives.
Snow Tweets: Emergency Information Dissemination in a US County During 2014 Winter Storms

Introduction: This paper describes how American federal, state, and local organizations created, sourced, and disseminated emergency information via social media in preparation for several winter storms in one county in the state of New Jersey (USA). Methods: Postings submitted to Twitter for three winter storm periods were collected from selected organizations, along with a purposeful sample of select private local users. Storm-related posts were analyzed for stylistic features (hashtags, retweet mentions, embedded URLs). Sharing and re-tweeting patterns were also mapped using NodeXL. Results: Results indicate emergency management entities were active in providing preparedness and response information during the selected winter weather events. A large number of posts, however, did not include unique Twitter features that maximize dissemination and discovery by users. Visual representations of interactions illustrate opportunities for developing stronger relationships among agencies. Discussion: Whereas previous research predominantly focuses on large-scale national or international disaster contexts, the current study instead provides needed analysis in a small-scale context. With practice during localized events like extreme weather, effective information dissemination in large events can be enhanced.
LSH At Large - Distributed KNN Search in High Dimensions

We consider K-Nearest Neighbor search for high dimensional data in large-scale structured Peer-to-Peer networks. We present an ecient mapping scheme based on p-stable Locality Sensitive Hashing to assign hash buckets to peers in a Chord-style overlay network. To minimize network trac, we process queries in an incremental top-K fashion leveraging on a locality preserving mapping to the peer space. Furthermore, we consider load balancing by harnessing estimates of the resulting data mapping, which follows a normal distribution. We report on a comprehensive performance evaluation using high dimensional real-world data, demonstrating the suitability of our approach.
Role of Neural Stem Cell Activity in Postweaning Development of the Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus of the Preoptic Area in Rats

The sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA) has received increased attention due to its apparent sensitivity to estrogen-like compounds found in food and food containers. The mechanisms that regulate SDN-POA volume remain unclear as is the extent of postweaning development of the SDN-POA. Here we demonstrate that the female Sprague-Dawley SDN-POA volume increased from weaning to adulthood, although this increase was not statistically significant as it was in males. The number of cells positive for Ki67, a marker of cell proliferation, in both the SDN-POA and the hypothalamus was significantly higher at weaning than at adulthood in male rats. In contrast, the number of Ki67-positive cells was significantly higher in the hypothalamus but not in the SDN-POA (p>0.05) at weaning than at adulthood in female rats. A subset of the Ki67-positive cells in the SDN-POA displayed the morphology of dividing cells. Nestin-immunoreactivity delineated a potential macroscopic neural stem cell niche in the rostral end of the 3rd ventricle. In conclusion, stem cells may partially account for the sexually dimorphic postweaning development of the SDN-POA.
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus as a Threat to Public Health: a Cellular Approach

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a significant issue in both healthcare and community settings, causing increases in morbidity and mortality across the population. Bacterial resistance can be induced through random genetic mutations, the improper use of antibiotics, or the uptake of plasmid DNA from foreign cells. Any bacterium can evolve resistance. Recently, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has become a focus of public health concern due to its increased virulence and resistance to an increasingly broad spectrum of antibiotics. MSRA can be a nosocomial infection, acquired through extended hospital stays or the use of invasive devices. It can also be acquired in the community, with outbreaks generally occurring in schools, gyms and other crowded settings. Community-acquired infections with MRSA (CA-MRSA) typically colonize either the nasal passages or the skin. MRSA usually presents with various cutaneous disorders or soft tissue infection, occasionally leading to acute systemic infections. It can also penetrate bone tissues, causing osteomyelitis. On a cellular level, MRSA secretes a variety of virulence factors, including Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL), a toxin targeting leukocytes for lysis. MRSA has acquired a variety of immune evasion strategies including the production of superantigens, the formation of biofilms, and the invasion of leukocytes. Treatment of MRSA is based on the severity of infection, but generally requires the use of a combination of therapies. Several staphylococcal vaccine models have shown promise as effective tools for the management of MRSA, including a genetic vaccine, and one that uses surface proteins to elicit a cell specific immune response. Overview
Model-independent differences

Computing differences (diffs) and merging different versions is well-known for text files, but for models it is a very young field - especially patches for models are still matter of research. Text-based and model-based diffs have different starting points because the semantics of their structure is fundamentally different. This paper reports on our ongoing work on model-independent diffs, i.e. a diff that does not directly refer to the models it was created from. Based on that, we present an idea of how the diff could be generalized, e.g. many atomic diffs are merged to a new, generalized diff. One use of these concepts could be a patch for models as it already exists for text files. The advantage of such a generalized diff compared to ‘normal’ diffs is that it is applicable to a higher variety of models.
Preparing EFL Students for Communicative Task Performance: The Nature and Role of Language Knowledge

This paper examines how a secondary school English teacher in Hong Kong prepared her students for a communicative task. Of particular concern are the nature and the role of language knowledge (LK) in the pre-task stage. The data came from the initial phase of a wider project that investigated whether and how English teachers in Hong Kong integrate a focus on LK with meaningful communication in a task-based teaching context. A qualitative analysis of the classroom teaching and interview data reveals that the teacher concerned was not always able to address students’ language needs for the subsequent communicative task performanc . Such a phenomenon seems to be the result of the teacher’s predominantly code-based view of LK. With a tendency to equate LK with acquisition of lexical meanings, pronunciation and grammar rules, the teacher failed to equip students with appropriate language resources to deal with tasks that require discourse and genre awareness in the pre-task stage. The results of the analysis point to the need for teachers to revisit their perceptions of what LK should constitute in terms of its scope and nature, relevance to the communicative tasks, as well as transferability from one task to another in different language use contexts. A framework with guiding principles is proposed to assist teachers to identify key components of LK for communicative task performance.
Local reasoning about a copying garbage collector

We present a programming language, model, and logic appropriate for implementing and reasoning about a memory management system. We state semantically what is meant by correctness of a copying garbage collector, and employ a variant of the novel separation logics to formally specify partial correctness of Cheney's copying garbage collector in our program logic. Finally, we prove that our implementation of Cheney's algorithm meets its specification using the logic we have given and auxiliary variables.
Identification of Functional Domains in Herpes Simplex Virus 2 Glycoprotein B

ABSTRACT Glycoprotein B (gB) is one of four membrane proteins that are essential for the entry of herpes simplex viruses (HSV) into cells, and coexpression of the same combination of proteins in transfected cells results in cell fusion. The latter effect is reminiscent of the ability of virus infection to cause cell fusion, particularly since the degree of fusion is greatly increased by syncytial mutations in gB. Despite intensive efforts with the gB homologs of HSV and some other herpesviruses, information about functionally important regions in the 700-amino-acid ectodomain of this protein is very limited at present. This is largely due to the misfolding of the majority of the mutants examined. It was shown previously that the percentage of correctly folded mutants could be increased by targeting only predicted loop regions (i.e., not alpha-helix or beta-strand), and by using this approach new functional domains in HSV-2 gB have now been identified.
Ontology-Based Integration of Streaming and Static Relational Data with Optique

Real-time processing of data coming from multiple heterogeneous data streams and static databases is a typical task in many industrial scenarios such as diagnostics of large machines. A complex diagnostic task may require a collection of up to hundreds of queries over such data. Although many of these queries retrieve data of the same kind, such as temperature measurements, they access structurally different data sources. In this work we show how Semantic Technologies implemented in our system optique can simplify such complex diagnostics by providing an abstraction layer---ontology---that integrates heterogeneous data. In a nutshell, optique allows complex diagnostic tasks to be expressed with just a few high-level semantic queries. The system can then automatically enrich these queries, translate them into a collection with a large number of low-level data queries, and finally optimise and efficiently execute the collection in a heavily distributed environment. We will demo the benefits of optique on a real world scenario from Siemens.
Undersocialized Conduct and Attachment Disorders: A child psychiatric team experience with a developmental and systems approach

The paper deals mainly with work undertaken at Travancore Child and Family Centre and discusses the connection between attachment disorder and Undersocialized Conduct Disorder. Clinical examples illustrate the difficulties such children present to the caregivers and workers in the systems around the child. As these children generally fail to respond readily to therapies based on the child’s ability to form trusting relationships, management and treatment strategies which rely on careful assessment of the child’s attachment behaviour are described.
The right-hemispheric auditory cortex in humans is sensitive to degraded speech sounds

We investigated how degraded speech sounds activate the auditory cortices of the left and right hemisphere. To degrade the stimuli, we introduce uniform scalar quantization, a controlled and replicable manipulation, not used before, in cognitive neuroscience. Three Finnish vowels (/a/, /e/ and /u/) were used as stimuli for 10 participants in magnetoencephalography registrations. Compared with the original vowel sounds, the degraded sounds increased the amplitude of the right-hemispheric N1m without affecting the latency whereas the amplitude and latency of the N1m in the left hemisphere remained unaffected. Although the participants were able to identify the stimuli correctly, the increased degradation led to increased reaction times which correlated positively with the N1m amplitude. Thus, the auditory cortex of right hemisphere might be particularly involved in processing degraded speech and possibly compensates for the poor signal quality by increasing its activity.
Loopy Belief Propagation, Bethe Free Energy and Graph Zeta Function

We propose a new approach to the theoretical analysis of Loopy Belief Propagation (LBP) and the Bethe free energy (BFE) by establishing a formula to connect LBP and BFE with a graph zeta function. The proposed approach is applicable to a wide class of models including multinomial and Gaussian types. The connection derives a number of new theoretical results on LBP and BFE. This paper focuses two of such topics. One is the analysis of the region where the Hessian of the Bethe free energy is positive definite, which derives the non-convexity of BFE for graphs with multiple cycles, and a condition of convexity on a restricted set. This analysis also gives a new condition for the uniqueness of the LBP fixed point. The other result is to clarify the relation between the local stability of a fixed point of LBP and local minima of the BFE, which implies, for example, that a locally stable fixed point of the Gaussian LBP is a local minimum of the Gaussian Bethe free energy.
Stochastic Failure Prognosability of Discrete Event Systems

We study the prognosis of fault, i.e., its prediction prior to its occurrence, in stochastic discrete event systems. We introduce the notion of m-steps Stochastic-Prognosability, called Sm-Prognosability, which allows the prediction of a fault at least m-steps in advance. We formalize the notion of a prognoser and also show that Sm-Prognosability is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a prognoser that can predict a fault at least m-steps prior to occurrence, while achieving any arbitrary false alarm and missed detection rates. We also provide a polynomial algorithm for the verification of Sm-Prognosability. Finally, we compare the notion of stochastic prognosability with that of stochastic diagnosability, and show that the former is a stronger notion, as can be expected.
Loss of trimethylation at lysine 27 of histone H3 is a predictor of poor outcome in breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers

Methylation of lysine 27 on histone H3 (H3K27) by the EZH2 complex is an epigenetic mark that mediates gene silencing. EZH2 is overexpressed in many cancers and correlates with poor prognosis in both breast and prostate cancers. However, the status of H3K27 methylation and its clinical implication in cancer patients have not been reported. We thus examined trimethylation of H3K27 (H3K27me3) by immunohistochemistry and its association with clinical variables and prognosis in breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers. We found that H3K27me3 expression was significantly lower in breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers than in normal tissues (62% in breast cancer vs. 88% in normal breast tissue, P = 0.001; 38.4% in ovarian cancer vs. 83.3% in normal ovarian tissue, P < 0.05; and 26% in pancreatic cancer vs. 89% in normal pancreatic tissue, P < 0.001). H3K27me3 expression showed significant prognostic impact in breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers in univariate survival analyses. In all three cancer types, patients with low expression of H3K27me3 had significantly shorter overall survival time when compared with those with high H3K27me3 expression. In a multivariate model, H3K27me3 expression was an independent prognostic value for overall survival in all three cancer types. These results suggest that H3K27me3 expression is a prognostic indicator for clinical outcome in patients with breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Grid stability battery systems for renewable energy success

A123 Systems (A123) has deployed over 20 MW's of Nanophosphate™ battery-based systems that are currently providing Ancillary Services in wholesale electric markets. Ancillary Services include Frequency Regulation and Spinning Reserves. This paper outlines A123's early ground breaking grid battery systems. It describes their characteristics and the applications that these energy storage systems are used for today. The paper then discusses how these characteristics and capabilities implemented in A123's current multi-MW scale battery systems can be extended and applied to support increased delivery of clean renewable energy while maintaining reliable and secure grid performance.
Integral Tracking Control for a Piezoelectric Actuator System

We propose an integral tracking control method for a piezoelectric actuator system. The proposed method achieves the output tracking without requiring any hysteresis observer or schemes to compensate the hysteresis effect. With the proposed control law, the system is converted into the standard singularly perturbed model. Using Tikhonov’s theorem, we guarantee that the tracking error can be reduced to arbitrarily small bound. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Keywords—Piezoelectric actuator, Tracking control, Hysteresis effect.