Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (31483)
- Part of Periodical (11568)
- Book (8325)
- Doctoral Thesis (5736)
- Part of a Book (3969)
- Working Paper (3387)
- Review (2940)
- Contribution to a Periodical (2368)
- Preprint (2235)
- Report (1560)
Language
- German (42872)
- English (29728)
- French (1060)
- Portuguese (840)
- Spanish (309)
- Croatian (302)
- Multiple languages (263)
- Italian (198)
- mis (174)
- Turkish (168)
Has Fulltext
- yes (76238) (remove)
Keywords
- Deutsch (1076)
- Literatur (868)
- taxonomy (768)
- Deutschland (553)
- Rezension (511)
- new species (453)
- Rezeption (354)
- Frankfurt <Main> / Universität (341)
- Übersetzung (329)
- Geschichte (300)
Institute
- Medizin (7777)
- Präsidium (5215)
- Physik (4594)
- Extern (2738)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (2698)
- Gesellschaftswissenschaften (2374)
- Biowissenschaften (2198)
- Biochemie und Chemie (1978)
- Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) (1774)
- Center for Financial Studies (CFS) (1630)
Hitze-Stress-Transkriptionsfaktoren (Hsfs) stellen die zentralen regulatorischen Komponenten einer Signal-Transduktionskette dar, welche die Aktivierung von Hitze-Stress-induzierbaren Genen bewirken. Die Sequenzierung des Genoms von Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) führte zu der Entdeckung von 21 Genen, die für putative Hsfs codieren. Aufgrund struktureller Charakteristika und phylogenetischer Analysen wurden die 21 Hsfs in die Klassen A, B und C aufgeteilt. Der Hauptteil der vorliegenden Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der funktionellen Charakterisierung der Hsf Familie aus Arabidopsis. Um generelle Konzepte zur Funktion von pflanzlichen Hsfs als Aktivatoren zu unterstützen, wurden als Ausgangspunkt ausgewählte Hsfs aus Lycopersicon peruvianum (Tomate) zu detaillierten Analysen herangezogen. Hsfs besitzen, ähnlich anderen Transkriptions -aktivierenden Proteinen, eine modulare Struktur. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden funktionelle Module der 21 Arabidopsis Hsfs untersucht, die für den Oligomerisierungs-Zustand, die intrazelluläre Lokalisation sowie das Transkriptions-aktivierende Potential von Bedeutung sind. Essentiell für die Funktion von Klasse A Hsfs als Transkriptions-Aktivatoren sind kurze Peptidmotive, die durch aromatische und große hydrophobe Aminosäure-Seitenketten geprägt sind, die in einer sauren Umgebung eingebettet sind (AHA Motive: aromatic, large hydrophobic and acid amino acid residues). Es wurde mit GST pull-down Assays gezeigt, dass AHA Motive mit ausgewählten Transkriptions-Komplexen interagieren. Das generelle Konzept für AHA Motive als kohäsive Elemente zur Interaktion mit der Transkriptions- Maschinerie wurde durch Mutationsanalysen verifiziert, besonders detailliert am Beispiel von LpHsfA2 und LpHsfA1 aus Tomate in Reporter-Assays in Tabak-Protoplasten und Hefe als auch GST pull-down Experimenten gezeigt. Im Kontrast zu den Klasse A Hsfs besitzen Klasse B und C Hsfs keine AHA Motive. Diese zeigten auch keine eigene Aktivator-Funktion aber Experimente deuten darauf hin, daß sie Coregulatoren für Klasse A Hsfs darstellen. Es wurde gezeigt, dass diese pflanzliche Besonderheit bei Tomate als auch Arabidopsis existiert. Alle 21 Arabidopsis Hsfs wurden als Transkripte nachgewiesen, ihre Expression verhält sich sehr dynamisch in bezug auf Hitze-Stress als auch Entwicklungssignale. Die präsentierte funktionelle Charakterisierung der Hsf Familie von Arabidopsis gibt erste Einsichten in das komplexe Netzwerk der Hsfs und demonstriert bereits, dass im Vergleich zu anderen Organismen, wie z.B. Drosophila und Hefe mit einem Hsf und Säugern mit drei Hsfs, das komplexe pflanzliche Hsf System eine fein regulierte und effiziente Voraussetzung für Pflanzen darstellt, um schnell und vor allem erfolgreich auf Umwelteinflüsse zu reagieren, denen sie nicht entfliehen können.
How to write (international) legal histories that would be true to their protagonists while simultaneously relevant to present audiences? Most of us would also want to write "critically" – that is to say, at least by aiming to avoid Eurocentrism, hagiography and commitment to an altogether old-fashioned view of international law as an instrument of progress. Hence we write today our histories "in context". But this cannot be all. Framing the relevant "context" is only possible by drawing upon more or less conscious jurisprudential and political preferences. Should attention be focused on academic debates, military power, class structures or assumptions about the longue durée? Such choices determine for us what we think of as relevant "contexts", and engage us as participants in large conversations about law and power that are not only about what once "was" but also what there will be in the future.
In The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, I suggested that international law began in the 1860’s as part of liberal entrenchment in Europe as the clouds of nationalism, racism and socialism were rising in the political horizon. It began as a project of practicalmen, attorneys and lawyers active in politics and parliament, and not out of philosophical contemplation or system-construction. University professors were involved, but these were professors of something that was seen more as a craft than a science. What they aimed at was to "civilize" the behaviour of their nations, but also the colonies, and to do this by coordinating liberal legislative reform in Europe, by supporting formal empire in the colonies, and by doing all this as part of a set of cosmopolitan legal projects they grouped into their "international law" (Droit international, diritto internazionale, Völkerrecht). ...
Political theology’s recent rise to academic prominence has, no doubt, been inspired by the sense of a certain staleness of standard (read: Anglo-American) analytical political and legal theory. Especially postcolonial and postmodern philosophy has resuscitated debates about the reality of secularization in Europe, pointing out that much of our shared political metaphysic is indeed that – a metaphysic – with close historical links to debates in theology. That should be no surprise. For almost half a millennium theology stood as the primus inter pares among the three "higher faculties" at European universities. The best minds at work in Europe explained the social and political changes to European audiences within a fully God-centric intellectual universe. Awareness of that fact, as Wim Decock points out in this massive and brilliant work, not only assists us in understanding the development of our political and legal vocabularies. It also enables us to grasp the contingency of our present debates, the way opposite standpoints on political and legal obligation refer back to assumptions about human nature, the roles of individual and society and the nature of "law" that are hard to detach from religious speculation. ...
The article presents a brief overview of research and publication in the history of international law in Europe today. The upsurge of interest in historical studies is traced back to a sense of present transformation, with historical studies seeking to explore both aspects of continuity and change in the international legal system. The article outlines three tasks for the discipline in the future: to begin work for international law’s Ideengeschichte, to focus on the relationship between the West and its "Other", and to undertake studies in the historical sociology of international law.
We provide evidence on the extent to which survey items in the Preference Survey Module and the resulting Global Preference Survey measuring social preferences − trust, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity − predict behavior in corresponding experimental games outside the original participant sample of Falk et al. (2022). Our results, which are based on a replication study with university students in Tehran, Iran, are mixed. While quantitative items considering hypothetical versions of the experimental games correlate significantly and economically meaningfully with individual behavior, none of the qualitative items show significant correlations. The only exception is altruism where results correspond more closely to the original findings.
This paper explores consequences of consumer education on prices and welfare in retail financial markets when some consumers are naive about shrouded add-on prices and firms try to exploit it. Allowing for different information and pricing strategies we show that education is unlikely to push firms to disclose prices towards all consumers, which would be socially efficient. Instead, price discrimination emerges as a new equilibrium. Further, due to a feedback on prices, education that is good for consumers who become sophisticated may be bad for consumers who stay naive and even for the group of all consumers as a whole
Rezension zu: Social preferences: an introduction to behavioural economics and experimental research, by Michalis Drouvelis, Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2021, 205 pages, £22.99, ISBN 978-1-78821-417-9 (paperback).
The RFQ direct injection project (RFQ-DIP) for the neutrino physics experiment IsoDAR aims at an efficient injection of a high-current H²⁺ beam into the dedicated 60 MeV driver cyclotron. Therefore, it is intended to use a compact 32.8 MHz RFQ structure of the split-coaxial type as a pre-buncher. To determine the thermal elongation of the 1.4 m long electrode rods as well as the thermal frequency detuning of the RF structure at a maximum nominal power load of 3.6 kW, an extensive thermal and structural mechanical analysis using COMSOL Multiphysics was conducted. The water heating along the cooling channels as well as the properties of heat transfer from the copper structure to the cooling water were taken into account, which required CFD simulations of the cooling water flow in the turbulent regime. Here we present the methods and results of the sophisticated thermal and structural mechanical simulations using COMSOL and provide a comparison to more simplistic simulations conducted with CST Studio Suite.
This dissertation presents the development of a new radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) structure of the 4-rod type with an operating frequency of 108 MHz for the acceleration of heavy ions with mass-to-charge ratios of up to 8.5 at high duty cycles up to CW operation ("continuous wave") at the High Charge Injector (HLI) of the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt.
The need to develop a completely new RFQ for the HLI arises from the fact that with the previously designed and built 4-rod RFQ structure, which was commissioned at the HLI in 2010 as part of the planned HLI upgrade program, the desired operating modes in both pulsed and CW operation could not be achieved even after several years of operating experience and considerable efforts to eliminate or at least mitigate the severe operational instabilities. Mechanical vibrations of the electrodes, which result in strong modulated power reflection, as well as the high thermal sensitivity proved to be particularly problematic.
In addition to the RF design of the new RFQ by simulations performed with the CST Microwave Studio software, the focus of the investigations fell on the mechanical analysis of vibrations on the electrode rods caused by RF operation, for which the ANSYS Workbench software was used. Due to the high thermal load of the RFQ structure of more than 30 kW/m in CW operation, an accurate analysis of the thermal effects on electrode deformation as well as resulting frequency detuning of the resonator is also required, which was investigated by simulations within the capabilities of CST Mphysics Studio.
Based on the results of the design studies carried out by simulations and the thereby achieved design optimizations, a 4-rod RFQ prototype with 6 stems was finally manufactured, on which most of the properties expected from the simulations could be validated by measurements of the RF characteristics as well as of the vibration behavior.
Finally, based on the results of the pre-tests and considering a newly developed beam dynamics concept, a completely revised RF design for a new full-length HLI-RFQ was derived from the prototype design.
Daß es neben dem unstrittigen Mittelmaß an lebenspraktischer Ratgeberliteratur auch originelle Traditionsbegründer gab, soll im folgenden am Beispiel von Karl Philipp Moritz gezeigt werden. Zwar wird er mit seinen Beiträgen zur Philosophie des Lebens als einer der frühesten Namensgeber für die Bewegung bis hinauf zum Lexikonartikel erwähnt, eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung fand aber bisher kaum statt. Ein gutes Beispiel dafür ist eine jüngere Darstellung zur Lebensphilosophie (1993) von Ferdinand Fellmann. In wenigen Zeilen wird Moritz´ Werk kurz erwähnt und hervorgehoben, daß er “psychologische Erkenntnisse mit pädagogischen Intentionen” verbinde. Schon im nächsten Absatz versieht ihn Fellmann aber mit dem Etikett “romantische Lebensphilosophie”, trotz der markierten Gegensätze gemeinsam mit Friedrich Schlegel, dem Verfasser von Vorlesungen zur Philosophie des Lebens (1827). Zusammen werden sie einer ersten Epoche zugerechnet, von der sich eine zweite radikal unterscheide, die erstmals mit Nietzsche, Bergson und Simmel zu einer “Theorie der Selbsterfahrung” ansetze. Gegen diese schroffe Entgegenstellung möchte ich aus zwei Gründen deutliche Kontinuitäten zwischen Moritz und der moderneren Lebensphiloso-phie betonen: Erstens sind seine Beiträge ein literarisch ambitioniertes Experiment mit Darstellungsformen, die sich ähnlich konträr zur akademischen Schulphilosophie der jeweiligen Zeit verhalten wie Schopenhauers Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit (1851) oder Nietzsches Menschliches, Allzu-menschliches (1878). Zweitens entfaltet Moritz in diesem Frühwerk Überlegungen zur Selbstbeobachtung, zu Selbstgefühl und Selbstreflexion, die das Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde sowie den Anton Reiser vorbereiten und letztlich durchaus zu einer “Theorie der Selbsterfahrung” in Fellmanns Sinne führen. Kaum zufällig haben die von ihm aufgebotenen Autoren sich gelegentlich auf Moritz berufen.
We document the structure of firm-bank relationships across the eleven largest euro area countries and present new stylised facts using novel data from the recent credit registry of the Eurosystem - AnaCredit. We look at the number of banking relationships, reliance on the main bank, credit instruments, loan maturity and interest rates. The granularity of the data allows us to account for cross country differences in firm characteristics. Firms in Southern European countries borrow from a larger number of banks and obtain a lower share of credit from the main bank compared to those in Northern European countries. They also tend to borrow more on short term, more expensive instruments and to obtain loans with shorter maturity. This is consistent with the hypothesis that Southern European countries rely less on relationship banking and obtain credit less conducive to firm growth, in line with the smaller average size of Southern European firms. Instead, no clear pattern emerges in terms of interest rates, consistent with the idea that banks appropriate part of the surplus generated by relationship lending through higher rates.
ASSR hat sich in der Diagnostik von Hörstörungen und der Hörgeräteanpassung von Kleinkindern etabliert. Wir möchten einen Vergleich in der Auswertung von ASSRs und frequenzspezifischen ABRs im Rahmen der Hörgeräteanpassung von Kleinkindern vorstellen. Wir untersuchten jeweils die ASSRs und die ABRs mit der GSI Audera und der GN Otometrics Chartr. Untersucht wurden insgesamt bisher 130 Kinder. Zunächst wurden die Mittelwerte der einzelnen vier Frequenzen (0,5; 1; 2; 4 kHz) sowie die jeweiligen Korrelationen zum Click-Stimulus der ABR, welche weiterhin als Goldstandard gilt, korreliert. Die Messungen wurden geräteintern durchgeführt. Die Messungen der ASSRs zeigen besonders im Bereich der leichten und mittelschweren Hörstörungen deutliche, nicht abschätzbare, Abweichungen, so dass wir die ASSR als alleinige Basis für die Hörgeräteanpassung bei Kleinkindern nicht empfehlen können.
Background: We have analyzed the outcome of patients with localized extraskeletal Ewing sarcoma (EES) treated in three consecutive Cooperative Weichteilsarkomstudiengruppe (CWS) soft tissue sarcoma (STS) studies: CWS-91, CWS-96, and CWS-2002P.
Methods: Patients were treated in CWS-91 with four- (vincristine, dactinomycin, doxorubicin, and ifosfamide [VAIA] or cyclophosphamide [VACA II]) or five-drug (+etoposide [EVAIA]) cycles, in CWS-96 they were randomly assigned to receive VAIA or CEVAIE (+carboplatin and etoposide), and in CWS-2002P with VAIA III plus optional maintenance therapy (MT) with cyclophosphamide and vinblastine. Local therapy consisted of resection and/or radiotherapy (RT).
Results: Two hundred forty-three patients fulfilled the eligibility criteria. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) were 63% (95% confidence interval [CI] 57–69) and 73% (95% CI 67–79), respectively. The 5-year EFS by study was 64% (95% CI 54–74) in CWS-91, 57% (95% CI 48–66) in CWS-96, and 79% (95% CI 67–91) in CWS-2002P (n.s.). The 5-year OS was 72% (95% CI 62–82) in CWS-91, 70% (95% CI 61–79) in CWS-96, and 86% (95% CI 76–96) in CWS-2002P (n.s.). In CWS-96, 5-year EFS and OS in the VAIA arm versus the CEVAIE were 65% (95% CI 52–81) versus 55% (95% CI 39–76) log-rank p = .13, and 85% (95% CI 75–96) versus 61% (95% CI 45–82), log-rank p = .09.
Conclusion: Our analysis provides interesting information on the treatment and specificities of EES, which can be useful for a better understanding of this rare entity and should be considered in the development of future clinical trials for Ewing sarcoma defined as FET–ETS fusion positive tumors.
Johann Christian Reil (1759-1813) zählt um 1800 zu den einflußreichsten Medizinern im deutschen Raum. Er leistete Pionierarbeit auf dem Gebiet der Neurologie, gründete mit dem Archiv für die Physiologie 1795 die erste deutsche Fachzeitschrift auf diesem Gebiet und war ein geschätzter Arzt und Psychiater. Mit den Autoren der romantischen Periode stand er persönlich und intellektuell in Verbindung – unter anderem als ärztlicher Betreuer von Schleiermacher in dessen Hallenser Zeit. 1795 erschien seine Schrift Von der Lebenskraft, die zu den Klassikern der Medizingeschichte gerechnet wird. Reils epochemachende Arbeiten wirken an dem großen Umbruch der Lehre vom menschlichen Körper mit, der sich im 18. Jahrhundert zuträgt. Dieser Wechsel der medizinischen Episteme geht auf verschiedenen Ebenen vor sich und betrifft weit auseinanderliegende Gebiete der sich damals erst ausdifferenzierenden modernen Wissenslandschaft. Ich will versuchen, ihn in einigen Stichworten überblicksweise zu skizzieren: 1. Abkehr von den Heilmethoden der Humoralpathologie 2. Schließung des Körpers 3. Übergang zu organologischer Differenzierung 4. Zentralstellung des Nervensystems
Der prägnante Moment fand nicht statt : Vaterlosigkeit und Heilige Familie in Lenz´ Hofmeister
(2004)
Wer vom Populismus sprechen will, darf über den Liberalismus nicht schweigen. Es macht die Analyse komplexer, weil diejenigen, die sie betreiben, sich nicht mehr als unbeteiligte Beobachter ausgeben können. Allein schon der Begriff Populismus markiert ja eine Perspektive von außen, denn heutige Populisten nennen sich gewöhnlich nicht so. Wer den Begriff verwendet, ist unter den Vorzeichen eines sich immer weiter polarisierenden politischen Feldes also in der Regel dem Gegenlager der 'Liberalen' zuzurechnen. Dessen Vertreter sind an einer beide Seiten umgreifenden Dynamik beteiligt. Insofern ist auch die Art, wie sie über den Populismus sprechen, Teil des politischen Spieles. Deshalb reicht es nicht, das 'Narrativ des Populismus' mit seinen charakteristischen Merkmalen zu isolieren und, was ein leichtes Spiel ist, als trügerisch zu entlarven. Das Bild muss ergänzt werden um eine Analyse auch des 'liberalen Narrativs': der perspektivischen Verzerrungen, die es enthält, seiner Leerstellen und Ambivalenzen, vor allem aber der Gründe für seine geschwundene Integrationskraft sowohl im nationalen als auch im Weltmaßstab.
[D]ie Analogie zwischen den vertikalen Ordnungen der Körper- und der Gesichtszonen [wird] in mindestens einem wesentlichen Detail gestört. Dieses Detail ist die Nase. In der alteuropäischen Physiognomik bildet sie ein herausragendes Detail in dem umfassenden System der Ähnlichkeiten, das den Menschen nicht nur zu den kosmischen Elementen, sondern auch zu den Tieren und deren Eigenschaften in Beziehung setzte. [...] Spätestens seit dem 18. Jahrhundert wird diese Tierähnlichkeit als ganze prekär, und das macht gerade die Nase zu einem physiognomischen Ärgernis.
Objectives and Methods: Intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients is a major concern due to the increased risk of mortality. Few studies have examined ICH specifically in newly diagnosed AML patients receiving intensive induction chemotherapy (IC) and prophylactic platelet transfusions during thrombocytopenia <10/nL. This retrospective cohort study included 423 newly diagnosed AML patients without acute promyelocytic leukemia who underwent IC between 2007 and 2019. We assessed risk factors, clinical features, and outcomes of ICH.
Results: 17 of 423 patients (4%) suffered ICH during hospital stay, and 4 patients (24%) died directly because of ICH despite routine prophylactic platelet transfusions. Patients with ICH had a negatively impacted overall survival (median OS, 20.1 vs. 104.8 months) and were more likely not to continue with curative treatment. Main risk factors were female gender, severe thrombocytopenia, and decreased fibrinogen. Patients with subsequent ICH also had laboratory signs of liver dysfunction.
Conclusions: Intracranial hemorrhage remains a potentially deadly complication with notable incidence despite prophylactic platelet substitution, suggesting that additional prophylactic interventions may be required to further reduce the frequency of ICH in high-risk patients. Unrecognized genetic factors may simultaneously predispose to AML and platelet dysfunction with ICH.
The optimal follow-up care for relapse detection in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients in first remission after consolidation therapy with intensive chemotherapy is not established. In this retrospective study, we evaluate the diagnostic value of an intensive relapse surveillance strategy by regular bone marrow aspirations (BMA) in these patients. We identified 86 patients with newly diagnosed non-promyelocytic AML who had reached complete remission (CR) after intensive induction and consolidation chemotherapy between 2007 and 2019. Annual relapse rates were 40%, 17%, and 2% in years 1–3, respectively. Patients in CR were surveilled by BMA scheduled every 3 months for 2 years, followed by BMA every 6 months. This surveillance regimen detected 29 of 55 relapses (53%), 11 of which were molecular relapses (20%). The remaining 26 of 55 relapses (47%) were diagnosed by non-surveillance BMA prompted by specific suspicion of relapse. Most patients showed concurrent morphological abnormalities in peripheral blood (PB) at time of relapse. Seven percent of all morphological relapses occurred without simultaneous PB abnormalities and would have been delayed without surveillance BMA. Intensified monthly PB assessment paired with BMA every 3 months during the first 2 years may be a highly sensitive relapse surveillance strategy.
Hintergrund und Fragestellung: Beweggrund dieser Studie war es, die Therapie von rezidivierten indolenten Non-Hodgkin Lymphomen mit neuen Kombinationen zu untersuchen. Die Kombination des monoklonalen Antikörpers Rituximab mit Fludarabin und Bendamustin wird verabreicht und im Hinblick auf Überleben, Ansprechraten und Toxizität verglichen. Patienten und Methoden: 99 Patienten mit rezidiviertem indolenten Non-Hodgkin Lymphom verschiedener Histologien und Mantelzell Lymphomen wurden in dieser multizentrischen Studie in die Arme Bendamustin-Rituximab oder Fludarabin-Rituximab randomisiert und erhielten 6 Zyklen des jeweiligen Regimes alle 4 Wochen. Die Dosierung war wie folgt: Rituximab 375 mg/m² an Tag 0 und entweder 90 mg/m² Bendamustin an Tag 1 und 2 oder 25 mg/m² Fludarabin an Tag 1-3. Ergebnisse: Von den 97 auswertbaren Patienten ergab sich eine ORR von 82% für die BR-Gruppe mit einer CR von 46% und PR von 36%. Die mit F-R behandelten Patienten erreichten eine ORR von 55% mit einer CR-Rate von 23% und PR von 32%. P-Werte für die ORR ist 0,0078. Die PFS ist signifikant unterschiedlich (p=0,0019), günstiger für BR, der Median der BR-Gruppe ist noch nicht erreicht, der der F-R Gruppe ist 12. Der Unterschied der infektiösen Toxizität ist nicht signifikant, unter Bendamustinbehandlung ereigneten sich jedoch schwerwiegendere Infektionen als unter Fludarabin, Hämatotoxizität war etwa gleich verteilt auf beide Gruppen. Schlussfolgerung: Die Kombination Bendamustin-Rituximab ermöglichte signifikant bessere Remissionsraten und PFS als die Kombination Fludarabin-Rituximab. Die vorbeschriebenen schwerwiegenden hämatotoxischen Nebenwirkungen von Fludarabin wurden in unserer Studie nicht bestätigt, unter der Kombination Bendamustin-Rituximab ereigneten sich schwerwiegendere Infektionen als unter F-R. Bendamustin erreicht signifikant bessere Therapieergebnisse als Fludarabin mit akzeptablen Nebenwirkungen in der Therapie der indolenten Non-Hodgkin-Lymphome.
Background: Endothelin-1 signalling plays an important role in pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension. Although different endothelin-A receptor antagonists are developed, a novel therapeutic option to cure the disease is still needed. This study aims to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of the selective endothelin-A receptor antagonist TBC3711 in monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertension in rats.
Methods: Monocrotaline-injected male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomized and treated orally from day 21 to 35 either with TBC3711 (Dose: 30 mg/kg body weight/day) or placebo. Echocardiographic measurements of different hemodynamic and right-heart hypertrophy parameters were performed. After day 35, rats were sacrificed for invasive hemodynamic and right-heart hypertrophy measurements. Additionally, histologic assessment of pulmonary vascular and right-heart remodelling was performed.
Results: The novel endothelin-A receptor antagonist TBC3711 significantly attenuated monocrotaline-induced pulmonary hypertension, as evident from improved hemodynamics and right-heart hypertrophy in comparison with placebo group. In addition, muscularization and medial wall thickness of distal pulmonary vessels were ameliorated. The histologic evaluation of the right ventricle showed a significant reduction in fibrosis and cardiomyocyte size, suggesting an improvement in right-heart remodelling.
Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the selective endothelin-A receptor antagonist TBC3711 demonstrates therapeutic benefit in rats with established pulmonary hypertension, thus representing a useful therapeutic approach for treatment of pulmonary hypertension.
Background: The increasing number of cases and hospital admissions due to COVID-19 created an urgent need for rapid, reliable testing procedures for SARS-CoV-2 in Emergency Departments (ED) in order to effectively manage hospital resources, allocate beds and prevent nosocomial spread of infection. The ID NOW™ COVID-19 assay is a simple, user-friendly, rapid molecular test run on an instrument with a small footprint enabling point-of-care diagnostics.
Methods: In the first wave, outsourced RT-PCR testing regularly required 36-48 hours before results were available. This prospective study was conducted in the second wave (October 2020-April 2021) and evaluated the impact the implementation of the ID NOW™ COVID-19 test in the ED had on clinical care processes and patient pathways. 710 patients were recruited upon arrival at the ED which included those presenting clinical symptoms, asymptomatic individuals or persons fulfilling epidemiological criteria. The first anterior nasal swab was taken by trained nurses in the ambulance or a separate consultation room. The ID NOW™ COVID-19 test was performed in the ED in strict compliance with the manufacturer’s instructions and positive or suspected cases were additionally tested with RT_PCR (cobas SARS-COV-2 RT-PCR, Roche) following collection of a second nasopharyngeal NP specimen.
Results: Swabs directly tested with the ID NOW™ COVID-19 test showed a diagnostic concordance of 98 % (sensitivity 99.59 %, specificity 94.55 %, PPV 97.6 %, NPV 99.05 %) compared to RT-PCR as reference. The 488 patients that tested positive with the ID NOW™ COVID-19 had a Ct range in RT-PCR results between 7.94 to 37.42 (in 23.2 % > 30). Two false negative results (0.28%) were recorded from patients with Ct values > 30. 14 (1.69%) discordant results were reviewed case-by-case and usually associated with either very early or very advanced stages of infection. Furthermore, patients initially negative with the ID NOW™ COVID-19 test and admitted to the hospital were tested again on days 5 and 12: no patient became positive.
Discussion: The ID NOW™ COVID-19 test for detection of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrated excellent diagnostic agreement with RT-PCR under the above-mentioned patients pathways implemented during the second wave. The main advantage of the system was the provision of reliable results within a few minutes. This not only allowed immediate initiative of appropriate therapy and care for COVID-19 (patient benefit) but provided essential information on isolation and thus available beds. This drastically helped the overall finances of the department and additionally allowed more patients to be admitted including those requiring immediate attention; this was not possible during the first wave since beds were blocked waiting for diagnostic confirmation. Our findings also show that when interpreting the results, the clinical condition and epidemiological history of the patient must be taken into account, as with any test procedure. Overall, the ID NOW™ COVID-19 test for SARS-CoV-2 provided a rapid and reliable alternative to laboratory-based RT-PCR in the real clinical setting which became an acceptable part of the daily routine within the ED and demonstrated that early patient management can mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the hospital.
Structured RNA regions are important gene control elements in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Here, we show that the mRNA of a cyanobacterial heat shock gene contains a built-in thermosensor critical for photosynthetic activity under stress conditions. The exceptionally short 5´-untranslated region is comprised of a single hairpin with an internal asymmetric loop. It inhibits translation of the Synechocystis hsp17 transcript at normal growth conditions, permits translation initiation under stress conditions and shuts down Hsp17 production in the recovery phase. Point mutations that stabilized or destabilized the RNA structure deregulated reporter gene expression in vivo and ribosome binding in vitro. Introduction of such point mutations into the Synechocystis genome produced severe phenotypic defects. Reversible formation of the open and closed structure was beneficial for viability, integrity of the photosystem and oxygen evolution. Continuous production of Hsp17 was detrimental when the stress declined indicating that shutting-off heat shock protein production is an important, previously unrecognized function of RNA thermometers. We discovered a simple biosensor that strictly adjusts the cellular level of a molecular chaperone to the physiological need.
Vorwort
(2008)
Die historische Übersetzungsforschung ist eine Disziplin, die sich noch ziemlich in den Anfängen befindet. Es fehlen wichtige Dinge sowohl hinsichtlich der bibliographischen Aufarbeitung (wenngleich die Bibliographie von Hans Fromm aus den 1950er Jahren hier immer noch gute Dienste leistet), besonders aber hinsichtlich der Personen der Übersetzer, über die häufig gar nichts bekannt ist. Zu vielen sehr unbedeutenden und gar nicht gelesenen Schriftstellern der Zeit liegen mehr Informationen vor als zu Übersetzern, die eine ganze Fülle von Werken vor ein deutsches Massenpublikum gebracht haben. Dabei kann man aus der Untersuchung von historischen Übersetzungen eine Menge lernen. Nicht nur, was die praktische Übersetzungsarbeit angeht, sondern vor allem in Blick auf unsere eigene Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte.
Nach seiner Erfindung um die Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert wurde der romantische Rhein in Deutschland bald als Abgrenzungskriterium zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich instrumentalisiert. Eine Ursache ist selbstverständlich die politische Situation: Deutschland ist zersplittert und steht unter französischer Besatzung, als sich
Clemens Brentano und Achim von Arnim 1802 auf ihre berühmte
Rheinfahrt begeben und Friedrich Schlegel 1803 auf der Reise nach Frankreich, über die er in seiner Zeitschrift Europa berichtet, den Rhein als Sinnbild Deutschlands entdeckt.
Tragfähig konnte die politische Instrumentalisierung des Rheins allerdings nur deshalb sein, weil sie auf einer seit der Jahrhundertwende schnell angewachsenen und von breitesten Bevölkerungsschichten in Deutschland mitgetragenen Tradition beruhte. Solche Traditionen zu
stiften und damit überhaupt erst so etwas wie eine nationale deutsche Kultur, in Absetzung und Überbietung von anderen, bereits bestehenden Nationalkulturen wie etwa der französischen zu begründen, war eines der Hauptanliegen der romantischen Bewegung. Insofern ist selbst den
Gründervätern des Rheinmythos zumindest indirekt der deutsch-französische Gegensatz als Antrieb nicht fremd.
Es handelt sich beim kulturellen Transfer um ein höchst komplexes Feld von Interaktionen, die keineswegs in linear-einsinniger Weise beschreibbar sind, sondern eingebunden bleiben in gesellschaftliche Dynamiken und deshalb historisch variabel sind. Eine solche historische Variable, die Einfluss auch auf die Transferprozesse zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich nimmt, ist die zu verschiedenen historischen Zeitpunkten jeweils unterschiedliche Wahrnehmung der französischen Gegenwartsliteratur. Einige Aspekte dieser Wahrnehmung im deutschen Vormärz untersucht Bernd Kortländer im Folgenden.
Seit Jahrhunderten zieht sich die stereotype Klage deutscher Schriftsteller, insbesondere deutscher Bühnenautoren, über zu Unrecht bevorzugte ausländische Konkurrenz durch Korrespondenzen und Publikationen. Ein Blick auf die Produktionszahlen des Buchgewerbes, die sich zwischen 1820 und 1845 explosionsartig von 3 772 Büchern auf 13 008 Bücher entwickeln, bestätigt zumindest die erhebliche Bedeutung der Übersetzungen für den deutschen Buchmarkt: 1845 waren ca. 48% der in Deutschland herausgebrachten Romane Übertragungen aus anderen Sprachen. Der Buchmarkt reagiert damit selbstverständlich nur auf die veränderte gesellschaftliche Situation. Einerseits wird das Bürgertum in immer stärkerem Maße zur Zielgruppe des literarischen Marktes, der so erst seine Dynamik entwickeln kann; andererseits ist diese Zielgruppe verstärkt an unterhaltsamer, spannender Literatur interessiert, die ihr vorrangig in Form der französischen und englischen Romanliteratur geboten wird. Im Bereich des Theaters ist die Entwicklung durchaus mit der auf dem Buchmarkt vergleichbar. Auch hier entwickeln sich die reinen Zahlen mit einer enormen Rasanz: Gab es 1836 kaum 50 Theater in Deutschland, so sind es 1840 bereits ca. 100, am Ende des Jahrhunderts dann weit über 300. Auch diese Entwicklung ist den Veränderungen im Publikum geschuldet.
All's well that ends well
(2009)
A few years ago, Jasanoff adopted the central tenet of my accentological theory, viz. that the Balto-Slavic acute was a stød or glottal stop, not a rising tone (cf. Kortlandt 1975, 1977, 2004, Jasanoff 2004a). Of course, nobody will believe Jasanoff’s claim that he arrived at the same result independently thirty years after I published it and ten years after we discussed it when he came to Leiden to visit us. Though at the time he haughtily dismissed “the tangle of secondary hypotheses and “laws” that clutter the ground in the field of Balto-Slavic accentology” (Jasanoff 2004b: 171), he has now recognized the importance of Pedersen’s law, Hirt’s law, Winter’s law, Meillet’s law, Dolobko’s law, Dybo’s law and Stang’s law and largely accepted my relative chronology of these accent laws, including the loss of the acute shortly before Stang’s law (cf. Jasanoff 2008). He has also accepted my split of Pedersen’s law into a Balto-Slavic and a Slavic phase (to which a Lithuanian phase must be added), my thesis that the tonal contours of Baltic and Slavic languages are post-Balto-Slavic innovations (cf. Jasanoff 2008: 344, fn. 10), and the rise of a tonal distinction on non-acute initial syllables before Dybo’s law which I discussed at some length in my review (1978) of Garde’s monograph (1976). This is great progress.
Indo-Uralic and Altaic
(2006)
Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins because the reconstructed Indo-European endings can be derived from combinations of Indo-Uralic morphemes by a series of well-motivated phonetic and analogic developments (2002). Moreover, I have claimed (2004b) that the Proto-Uralic consonant gradation accounts for the peculiar correlations between Indo-European root structure and accentuation discovered by Lubotsky (1988).
The large majority of the isoglosses which can be established in the South Slavic dialectal area date from the time of the disintegration of Common Slavic and from more recent periods (e.g., Ivi´c 1958: 25ff). The isoglosses have often shifted in the course of the centuries, so that their original position cannot always be determined. In this study I shall concentrate upon the dialectal differences which originated before the 10th century. At that time, Slavic was still a largely uniform language, though it was certainly not completely homogeneous.
In her discussion of the Japanese adversative passive, Anna Wierzbicka writes (1988: 260): “The problem is extremely interesting and important both for intrinsic reasons and because of its wider methodological implications. It can be formulated like this: if one form can be used in a number of different ways, are we entitled to postulate for it a number of different meanings or should we rather search for one semantic common denominator (regarded as the MEANING of the form in question) and attribute the variety of uses to the interaction between this meaning and the linguistic or extralinguistic context?” Though it “may seem obvious” that the second stand is “methodologically preferable” (261), she takes the first position and concludes that “the Japanese passive has to be recognized as multiply ambiguous” (286). In the following I intend to show that this view is both wrong and fruitful.
Gothic gen.pl. -e
(2007)
Eduard Hermann writes (1916: 147): "Darüber, daß Wills Übersetzung des Enchiridions ein ganz schauderhaftes Preußisch ist, herrscht eine Stimme. Nur darüber sind die Meinungen geteilt, ob Will ein Stümper war und nichts vom Preußischen verstand oder ob das Preußische seiner Zeit dermaßen entartet war, daß Kasus und Formen fast beliebig miteinander wechseln konnten." This is a splendid formulation of the problem. Hermann’s article should be compulsory reading for students of historical syntax. In search of a solution to this problem, I have applied the following procedure. First I have put together the minor catechisms with those parts of the Enchiridion which translate the same German text. Words which are missing in any of the three versions have been italicized. The result is shown below.
Docherty et alii have "noted that several sociolinguistic accounts have shown a sharp distinction between the social trajectories for glottal replacement as opposed to glottal reinforcement, which have normally been treated by phonologists as aspects of 'the same thing'. It may therefore not always be appropriate to treat the two phenomena as manifestations of a single process or as points on a single continuum (presumably along which speakers move through time). From the speaker’s point of view (as manifested by different patterns of speaker behaviour) they appear as independent phenomena" (1997: 307).
Elsewhere I have argued that the three Old Prussian catechisms reflect consecutive stages in the development of a moribund language (1998a, 1998b, 2001a). After first eliminating the orthographical differences between the three versions of parallel texts while maintaining the distinction between linguistic variants and then assigning separate phonemic interpretations to the three versions on the basis of the historical evidence I listed the following phonological differences between the three catechisms.
S.R. Ramsey writes (1979: 162): "The patterning of tone marks in Old Kyoto texts divides the vocabulary into virtually the same classes as those arrived at by comparing the accent distinctions found in the modern dialects. This means that the Old Kyoto dialect had a pitch system similar to that of proto-Japanese. The standard language of the Heian period may not actually be the ancestor of all the dialects of Japan, but at least as far as the accent system is concerned, it is close enough to the proto system to be used as a working model. The significance of this fact is important: It means that each of the dialects included in the comparison has as much to tell, at least potentially, as any other dialect about Old Kyoto accent."
Twenty years ago I discussed the oldest isoglosses in the South Slavic linguistic area (1982). Subscribing to Van Wijk’s view that the bundle of isoglosses which separates Bulgarian from Serbo-Croatian was the result of an early split in South Slavic and that the transitional dialects originated from a later mixture of Serbian and Bulgarian dialects when the contact between the two languages had been restored (1927), I argued that the shared innovations of Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian must be dated to a period when the dialects were still spoken in the original Trans-Carpathian homeland of the Slavs. I concluded that there is no evidence for common innovations of South Slavic which were posterior to the end of what I have called the Late Middle Slavic period, which I dated to the 4th through 6th centuries AD. At that time, the major dialect divisions of Slavic were already established.
There is every reason to welcome the revised edition (2009) of Thomas Olander’s dissertation (2006), which I have criticized elsewhere (2006). The book is very well written and the author has a broad command of the scholarly literature. I have not found any mistakes in Olander’s rendering of other people’s views. This makes the book especially useful as an introduction to the subject. It must be hoped that the easy access to a complex set of problems which this book offers will have a stimulating effect on the study of Balto-Slavic accentology.
West Slavic accentuation
(2009)
At the time of the earliest reconstructible dialectal divergences, which belong to the Late Middle Slavic period of my chronology (stages 7.0 - 8.0 of Kortlandt 1989a, 2003, 2008), the West Slavic languages represented the most conservative part of the Slavic dialects (cf. Kortlandt 1982b: 191 and 2003: 231).
It appears that the complexity of Slavic historical accentology is prohibitive for most non-specialists in the field. It may therefore be useful to approach the subject from a number of different angles in order to render it more accessible to a wider audience. In the following I shall discuss the separate accent paradigms and their development from the Late Balto-Slavic system, which is structurally similar to that of modern Lithuanian, up to the end of the Proto-Slavic period, when the system resembled what we find in modern Serbo-Croatian. The numbering of the stages 1.0 through 10.12 is the same as in my earlier publications (1989, 2003, 2005, 2006a, 2008b). For the rise and development of the accentual system up to the end of the Balto-Slavic period I may refer to my discussion (2006b, 2008a) of Olander’s dissertation (2006). It resulted in a system of four major and two minor accent types.
There is good reason to be ambivalent about the usefulness of general considerations in linguistic reconstruction. As a heuristic device, a theoretical framework can certainly be helpful, but the negative potential of aprioristic considerations must not be underestimated. E.g., there is a whole range of phenomena which receive a natural explanation when we assume that glottalization is ancient in Germanic. The methodological question is: why have scholars been reluctant to identify the vestjysk stød with the English glottalization as a historical reality which may have been inherited from the proto-language? The role of general linguistics is to provide an idea of what can be expected in linguistic development, not by theoretical reasoning but by inspection of what actually happens.
The Germanic weak preterit
(2007)
The main difficulty with the Germanic weak preterit is that one cannot endeavor an explanation of its origin without taking into account almost every aspect of the historical phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages. In the following I intend to show how a number of problems receive a natural explanation in a unified treatment on the basis of earlier studies. The theory presented here is not revolutionary, but aims at integrating earlier findings into a coherent whole. There is no reason to give a detailed account of the scholarly literature, which is easily accessible (cf. Tops 1974, Bammesberger 1986).
The publication of Mallory’s book (1989) has rendered much of what I had to say in the present contribution superfluous. The author presents a carefully argued and very well written account of a balanced view on almost every aspect of the problem. Against this background, I shall limit myself to a few points which have not received sufficient attention in the discussion. ...
The Germanic perfect presents (Präteritopräsentien) form a past tense by adding the endings of the weak preterit to the stem of the past participle, e.g. Go. wissa ‘knew’. This is a recent formation (cf. Kortlandt 1989). We may therefore ask ourselves if we can reconstruct the earlier formation which was ousted by the weak preterit. We may also try to recover the motivation for the replacement.
It is no secret that Gerhard Doerfer has argued strongly against a genetic relationship between the Mongolic and Tungusic languages. Ten years ago he presented a detailed analysis of the Mongolo-Tungusic vocabulary (1985). In the following I intend to show that his material allows of a quite different conclusion.
1. The functionalist’s view: linguistic forms are instruments used to convey meaningful elements. This is the basis of European structuralism. 2. The formalist’s view: linguistic forms are abstract structures which can be filled with meaningful elements. This is the basis of generative grammar. 3. The parasitologist’s view: linguistic forms are vehicles for the reproduction of meaningful elements. This is the view which I advocated twenty years ago in the Festschrift for Werner Winter’s 60th birthday (1985). Here I intend to discuss the evolutionary origin and the physiological nature of the linguistic parasite. My theory of language is wholly consistent with Gerald Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection.
Polabian accentuation
(2007)
From a synchronic point of view, the accentuation of Late Polabian has been clarified by Trubetzkoy (1929) and Olesch (1973, 1974). The stress fell on the last full vowel of a word form, which was found either in the final or in the penulti-mate syllable. In the latter instance, the final syllable contained a reduced vowel. This rule was challenged by Kurylowicz (1955), who maintained that the stress was fixed on the initial syllable of the word. The latter theory has the advantage of accounting for the absence of reduced vowels in initial syllables.
1. There are two classes of theories of Universal Grammar: (1) Formalist theories, such as the widespread varieties of generative grammar. These theories start from the assumption that certain strings of linguistic forms are grammatical while other strings are ungrammatical. A grammar of this type produces grammatical strings and does not produce ungrammatical ones. All theories of this class fail in the same respect: they do not account for the meaning of the strings. (2) Semiotactic theories, which describe the meaning of a string in terms of the meanings of its constituent forms and their interrelations. The only elaborate formalized theory of this class presently available is the one advanced by C.L. Ebeling (Syntax and Semantics, Leiden: Brill, 1978). I shall discuss some of its mathematical properties here.
Most scholars nowadays reconstruct a static root present with an alternation between lengthened grade in the active singular and full grade in the active plural and in the middle. I am unhappy about this traditional methodology of loosely postulating long vowels for the proto-language. What we need is a powerful theory which explains why clear instances of original lengthened grade are so very few and restrains our reconstructions accordingly. Such a theory has been available for over a hundred years now: it was put forward by Wackernagel in his Old Indic grammar (1896: 66-68). The crucial element of his theory which is relevant in the present context is that he assumed lengthening in monosyllabic word forms, such as the 2nd and 3rd sg. active forms of the sigmatic aorist injunctive.
The philosophy of language comes in three varieties. 1. The functionalist’s view: linguistic forms are instruments used to convey meaningful elements. This is the basis of European structuralism. 2. The formalist’s view: linguistic forms are abstract structures which can be filled with meaningful elements. This is the basis of generative grammar. 3. The parasitologist’s view: linguistic forms are vehicles for the reproduction of meaningful elements. This is the view which I advocated twelve years ago in a Festschrift (1985).
On Russenorsk
(2002)
The concept of mixed language has recently gained some popularity, to my mind for no good reason. It is unclear how a mixed language can be distinguished from the product of extensive borrowing or relexification. I therefore think that the concept only serves to provoke muddled thinking about linguistic contact and language change. Note e.g. that Munske adduces German as an example "because the author is a professor of German linguistics and because the phenomenon of language mixing can be explained better in relation to a language on which a large amount of research has been done than, for example, in relation to pidgin and creole languages" (1986: 81).
The origin of the Goths
(2004)
Witold Ma´nczak has argued that Gothic is closer to Upper German than to Middle German, closer to High German than to Low German, closer to German than to Scandinavian, closer to Danish than to Swedish, and that the original homeland of the Goths must therefore be located in the southernmost part of the Germanic territories, not in Scandinavia (1982, 1984, 1987a, 1987b, 1992). I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes’ classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia. We must therefore reconsider the grounds for adopting the latter position and the reasons why it always has remained popular.
A correct evaluation of the Slavic evidence for the reconstruction of the Indo- European proto-language requires an extensive knowledge of a considerable body of data. While the segmental features of the Slavic material are generally of corroborative value only, the prosodic evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of PIE. phonology. Due to the complicated nature of Slavic historical accentology, this has come to be realized quite recently.1 As a result, much of the earlier literature has become obsolete to the extent that it is based upon an interpretation which does not take the multifarious accentual developments into account. I shall give one example.
The genetic code, the primary manifestation of life, and, on the other hand, language, the universal endowment of humanity and its momentous leap from genetics to civilization, are the two fundamental stores of information transmissible from the ancestry to the progeny, the molecular succession, which ensures the transfer of hereditary messages from the cells of one generation to the next generation, and the verbal legacy as a necessary prerequisite of cultural tradition. Divergent terminologies direct attention to different pattemings; and finding a logically convincing test, acceptable all around, that can determine whether one such system of terms is superior to its rivals, is often impossible. Yet the slow processes of evolution presumably apply to human societies and their symbolic systems as much as to human bodies, so that when logic cannot decide, survival eventually will.
A correct interpretation of the genitive plural forms in Slavic and related languages requires a detailed chronological analysis of the material. At every stage of development we have to reckon with both phonetically regular and analogical forms. Analogy operates quite often along the same lines in different periods. Explaining an analogic change amounts to indicating a model, a motivation, and a stage of development for its effectuation. If one of these cannot be indicated, we must look for a phonetic explanation.
Indo-European is a branch of Indo-Uralic which was radically transformed under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum when its speakers moved from the area north of the Caspian Sea to the area north of the Black Sea (cf. Kortlandt 2007b). As a result, Indo-European developed a minimal vowel system combined with a very large consonant inventory including glottalized stops, also grammatical gender and adjectival agreement, an ergative construction which was lost again but has left its traces in the grammatical system, especially in the nominal inflection, a construction with a dative subject which was partly preserved in the historical languages and is reflected in the verbal morphology and syntax, where it gave rise to new categories, and a heterogeneous lexicon. The Indo-Uralic elements of Indo-European include pronouns, case endings, verbal endings, participles and derivational suffixes. In the following I shall give an overview of the grammar of Proto-Indo-European as it may have been spoken around 4000 BC in the eastern Ukraine, shortly after the ancestors of the Anatolians left for the Balkans (for more recent developments I refer to Beekes 1995).
In his magnum opus (Syntax and Semantics, Leiden 1978, henceforth: S&S) C.L. Ebeling makes a distinction between temporal gradation (pp 301-308 and 337-339) and temporal limitation (pp 311-315). In the case of temporal gradation “p , q”, the meaning “q” specifies the time during which the referent carries the mean-ing “p”.
The Indo-Uralic verb
(2002)
C.C. Uhlenbeck made a distinction between two components of Proto-Indo-European, which he called A and B (1935a: 133ff.). The first component comprises pronouns, verbal roots, and derivational suffixes, and may be compared with Uralic, whereas the second component contains isolated words, such as numerals and most underived nouns, which have a different source. The wide attestation of the Indo-European numerals must be attributed to the development of trade resulting from the increased mobility which was the primary cause of the Indo-European expansions. Numerals do not belong to the basic vocabulary of a neolithic culture, as is clear from their absence in Proto-Uralic (cf. also Collinder 1965: 112) and from the spread of Chinese numerals throughout East Asia. Though Uhlenbeck objects to the term “substratum” for his B complex, I think that it is a perfectly appropriate denomination.
In his magnificent book on the language relations across Bering Strait (1998), Michael Fortescue does not consider Nivkh (Gilyak) to be a Uralo-Siberian language. Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins (2001). All of these languages belong to Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic macro-family (2000). In the following I intend to reconsider the grammatical evidence for including Nivkh into the Uralo-Siberian language family. The Indo-Uralic evidence is of particular importance because it guarantees a time depth which cannot otherwise be attained.
Twenty years ago (1983), I severely criticized Halle and Kiparsky’s review (1981) of Garde’s history of Slavic accentuation (1976). I concluded that Halle and Ki-parsky’s theoretical framework “rests upon an unwarranted limitation of the available evidence, obscures the chronological perspective, and yields results which are partly not new and partly incorrect. It is harmful because it does not give the facts their proper due and thereby blocks the road to empirical study, giving a free hand to unrestrained speculation” (1983: 40). As Halle has recently returned to the subject (2001), it may be interesting to see if there has been some progress in his thinking over the last two decades. In the following I shall try to avoid repeating what I have said in my earlier discussion.
Koivulehto and Vennemann have recently (1996) revived Posti’s theory (1953) which attributed Finnic consonant gradation to Germanic influence, in particular to the influence of Verner’s law. This theory disregards the major differences between Finnic and Saami gradation (cf. Sammallahti 1998: 3) and ignores the similar gradation in Nganasan and Selkup (cf. Kallio 2000: 92).
The history of Slavic accentuation is complex. As a result, the significance of the Slavic accentual evidence is not immediately obvious to the average Indo-Europeanist. In this contribution I intend to render the material more easily accessible to the non-specialist. I shall focus on the Serbo-Croatian dialectal area, where the Proto-Slavic accentual system is better preserved than elsewhere. The main point of reference will be the neo-Štokavian system which was codified in the 19th century as a basis for the standard languages.
Holger Pedersen’s "Études lituaniennes" reflects the issues under discussion at the time of its publication (1933). Its five unequal chapters deal with the following topics: I. The Lithuanian future and its Indo-European origins: the sigmatic formation, the 3rd person zero ending, the short root vowels e and a, the shortening and metatony in the 3rd person, and the future participle. II. The accentuation of nouns in Lithuanian: accentual mobility in the Indo- European consonant stems and its absence in the o-stems, the origins of accentual mobility in Lithuanian nominal paradigms, the accentuation of separate case forms, and accentual peculiarities of the adjective. III. The acute tone of the root in consonant stems. IV. The past active participle. V. Secondary vocalic alternations: new vowel length and new acute tone.
The highly successful conference on Balto-Slavic accentology organized by Mate Kapovic and Ranko Matasovic has given much food for thought. It has clarified the extent of fundamental disagreements as well as established areas of common interest where the evidence seems to be ambiguous. In the following I shall comment upon some of the papers presented at the conference which are directly relevant to my own research.
Since 1973 I have been advocating the view that the Balto-Slavic acute tone was in fact glottalic and has been preserved unchanged in originally stressed and unstressed syllables in Žemaitian and Latvian, respectively (e.g. 1975, 1977, 1985, 1998). Jay Jasanoff has now (2004) adopted the gist of my view, but with-out mentioning my name. It may therefore be useful to sketch the background of our differences and to point out the remaining discrepancies.
Hittite ammuk 'me'
(2005)
In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has initiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978).
In an earlier study (1983) I argued that unlike aorists and athematic presents, Indo-European perfects and thematic presents originally had a dative subject, as in German mir träumt ‘me dreams’ for ich träume ‘I dream’, e.g. Greek oida ‘I know’ < ‘it is known to me’, édomai ‘I will eat’ < ‘it is eatable to me’. On the basis of Oettinger’s epoch-making book (1979), I proposed that the Hittite hi-flexion originated from a merger of the perfect, where *-i was added to 3rd sg. *-e in order to supply a new present, with the thematic flexion of causatives and iteratives, where the final *-e of 3rd sg. *-eie was dropped before the loss of intervocalic *-i- (1983: 315).
In his early years, C. C. Uhlenbeck was particularly interested in the problem of the Indo-European homeland (1895, 1897). He rejected Herman Hirt’s theory (1892) that the words for ‘birch’, ‘willow’, ‘spruce’, ‘oak’, ‘beech’ and ‘eel’ point to Lithuania and its immediate surroundings and returned to Otto Schrader’s view (1883, 1890) that the original homeland must rather be sought in southern Russia and may have included some of the later Germanic and Iranian territories. It is clear that the Mediterranean region and the area around the North Sea can safely be excluded because the arrival of the Indo-Europeans was comparatively recent here, as it was in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. It is difficult to be more specific within the limits of central and eastern Europe and central Asia. Uhlenbeck was impressed by the lexical correspondences between Indo-European and Semitic which had been adduced in favor of an eastern homeland but pointed out that borrowings from Semitic may have reached the Indo-Europeans through an intermediary. He agrees that the Indo-European words for trees and animals point to a moderate climate but questions the possibility of a more specific localization as well as the concept of homeland itself.
Like its predecessor in Zagreb, the conference on Balto-Slavic accentology in Copenhagen was a great success. The enthusiasm of the organizers Adam Hyllested and Thomas Olander proved highly effective in stimulating discussion among the participants. While in Zagreb most papers dealt with Slavic data, in Copenhagen the emphasis was on Balto-Slavic problems.
Winter's law again
(2007)
Since I discussed the scholarly literature on Winter’s law twenty years ago (1988), several important articles on the subject have appeared (Young 1990, Campanile 1994, Matasovic 1995, Derksen 2002, Dybo 2002, Patri 2005, Derksen 2007). As the law evidently continues to be controversial, it is important to look into the nature of the evidence and counter-evidence which is adduced. It appears that doubts about Winter’s law are largely the result of four types of misunderstanding.
Last year Georg Holzer proposed a relative chronology of accentual developments in Slavic (2005). Here I shall compare his chronology with the one I put forward earlier (1975, 1989a, 2003) and discuss the differences. For the sake of convenience, I first reproduce the relevant parts of my chronology, omitting asterisks before pre-historic Slavic forms. 1. Proto-Indo-European. 2. Dialectal Indo-European. 3. Early Balto-Slavic. During this period the characteristic lateral mobility of Balto-Slavic accent patterns came into existence. 4. Late Balto-Slavic. During this period the Balto-Slavic accent patterns obtained their final shape.
Erdvilas Jakulis’ thorough, detailed and comprehensive study (2004) is an important contribution to our reconstruction of the Balto-Slavic verbal system. The following remarks are intended to complement his findings from a Slavic perspective. Jakulis demonstrates that the type of Lith. tekèti, teka ‘flow’ is largely of East Baltic provenance. He finds it difficult to identify the same type in Old Prussian.
It is gratifying to see that Jay Jasanoff has now (2004) adopted my theory that "the Balto-Slavic acute was a kind of stød or broken tone" (p. 172), which I have been advocating since 1973. Unfortunately, his acceptance of my view is not based on an evaluation of the comparative evidence (for which see Kortlandt 1985a) but on his desire to derive Balto-Slavic “acute” and "circumflex" syllables from the "bimoric" and "trimoric" long vowels which he assumes for Proto-Germanic as the reflexes of the Indo-European "acute" and "circumflex" tones of the neogrammarians. Since the original "circumflex" was limited to Indo-European VHV-sequences, Jasanoff proposes a whole series of additional lengthenings yielding "hyperlong" vowels in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic, which still do not suffice to eliminate the counter-evidence (cf. Kortlandt 2004b: 14). The reason for this failure is his unwillingness to recognize that lengthened grade vowels are circumflex in Balto-Slavic (cf. Kortlandt 1997a).
After the very well-organized Leiden conference for which we must be grateful to Tijmen Pronk, it seems appropriate for me to review some of the papers, as I did after the previous conferences in Zagreb and Copenhagen. The aim of this review is merely to point out some of the differences of opinion which require further debate.
The loss and restoration of the phoneme /j/ plays a major role in the development of Proto-Slavic. After vowel contraction in posttonic syllables, Dybo’s law, and the rise of new /j/ in east, South, and West Slavic, contracted and uncontracted forms may have coexisted during a considerable period of time. After Dybo’s law we have *voļȃ < *vòlja "will" but *rolьjà < *orlь̀ja "plowland", after contraction *roļá in Slovincian rolåu, Old Polish rolå. The loss of distinctive tone yielded merger of the two paradigms, as a result of which most nouns of the former type adopted the accentuation of the latter. Slavic deverbal ja-stems are original proterodynamic ī/jē-stems. The proterodynamic nouns *dūšà (c) "soul" and *zorjà (c) "dawn" have probably preserved the original accentuation. The other proterodynamic jā-stems evidently adopted the accent pattern of the deverbal ā-stems.
Keith Langston disagrees with my account of the Slovene neo-circumflex. He rejects compensatory lengthening as an explanation of the neo-circumflex, primarily on theoretical grounds. His "moraic analysis" is quite unacceptable to me because it starts from an a priori segmentation of the speech flow. In a strict autosegmental approach, the segmentation of the speech flow should be part of the analysis and not be given a priori. Langston's rejection of van Wijk's law, according to which the simplification of certain consonant clusters yielded lengthening of the following vowel, is based on a misguided theoretical interpretation which led him astray.
In a recent article of major importance (2013), Tijmen Pronk has treated the accentuation of l-participles of the type neslъ in western South Slavic. Pronk points out correctly that Dybo’s law did not shift the accent onto final jers, e.g. in *kòņь, *bòbъ, and that the short vowel was preserved in Slovak osem < *òsmь, oheň < *ògņь, mohol < *mòglъ. Contrary to what Pronk claims, Slovene nę́sǝlis the phonetic reflex of *néslъ < *neslъ̀, Slovak niesol. The Slovene doublets (v)ǫ̑gǝl < *ǫ̀glь and (v)ózǝl < *ǫ̀zlъ suggest an earlier paradigm with vǫ̑- < ǫ̑- in the nom.sg. form and ó- < *ǫ̀- in the oblique cases. The vowel of ógǝnj < *ògņь also stems from the oblique cases. The expected neo-circumflex in the nom.sg. form is actually attested in rę̑bǝr < *rèbrь beside rę́bǝr with the reflex of Stang’s law from the oblique cases. There is no reason to assume that the accent was not retracted at an early stage in *neslъ̀, nor is there any reason to assume that Dybo’s law shifted the accent to the final jer in *dòbrъ and *sèdmь, as Pronk claims.
Does it pay to invest in art? A selection-corrected returns perspective : [draft october 15, 2013]
(2013)
This paper shows the importance of correcting for sample selection when investing in illiquid assets with endogenous trading. Using a large sample of 20,538 paintings that were sold repeatedly at auction between 1972 and 2010, we find that paintings with higher price appreciation are more likely to trade. This strongly biases estimates of returns. The selection-corrected average annual index return is 6.5 percent, down from 10 percent for traditional uncorrected repeat sales regressions, and Sharpe Ratios drop from 0.24 to 0.04. From a pure financial perspective, passive index investing in paintings is not a viable investment strategy once selection bias is accounted for. Our results have important implications for other illiquid asset classes that trade endogenously.
Physical exercise has been shown to alter sensory functions, such as sensory detection or perceived pain. However, most contributing studies rely on the assessment of single thresholds, and a systematic testing of the sensory system is missing. This randomised, controlled cross-over study aims to determine the sensory phenotype of healthy young participants and to assess if sub-maximal endurance exercise can impact it. We investigated the effects of a single bout of sub-maximal running exercise (30 min at 80% heart rate reserve) compared to a resting control in 20 healthy participants. The sensory profile was assessed applying quantitative sensory testing (QST) according to the protocol of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain. QST comprises a broad spectrum of thermal and mechanical detection and pain thresholds. It was applied to the forehead of study participants prior and immediately after the intervention. Time between cross-over sessions was one week. Sub-maximal endurance exercise did not significantly alter thermal or mechanical sensory function (time × group analysis) in terms of detection and pain thresholds. The sensory phenotypes did not indicate any clinically meaningful deviation of sensory function. The alteration of sensory thresholds needs to be carefully interpreted, and only systematic testing allows an improved understanding of mechanism. In this context, sub-maximal endurance exercise is not followed by a change of thermal and mechanical sensory function at the forehead in healthy volunteers.
After our taxonomic revision of Ootheca Chevrolat, 1837, and the description of Oothecoides Kortenhaus & Wagner, 2011 and Ootibia Kortenhaus & Wagner, 2012, it became clear that a further four galerucine species, closely related to the above named taxa, form a distinct monophyletic group, that constitutes a new genus, Oosagitta gen. nov. with O. anningae sp. nov., O. geescheae sp. nov., O. melanopicta sp. nov. and O. thomasi sp. nov.. Exosoma angolensis Laboissière, 1939, the type species of the new genus, and Ergana minuta Laboissière, 1937 are newly transferred to Oosagitta gen. nov. All species of Oosagitta gen. nov. are characterized by a broad body and pronotum, a more or less convex dorsum and short legs, and as such are most similar to the other above named genera. The antennae of Oosagitta gen. nov. are distinctly longer than those of Ootheca, Oothecoides and Ootibia. Genital structures of the males allow a reliable identifi cation of the genus. (Re-) descriptions are given for all species, including semi-schematic illustrations depicting the habitus outline, shape of the basal antennomeres and the median lobe. Photographs of the name-bearing types and distribution maps are provided.
Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt den theoretischen Hintergrund und das Design des Projekts GLUE (Gemeinsame Lern-Umgebungen Entwickeln). Die Konzeption der Gemeinsamen Lern-Umgebungen zielt im Sinne der Prinzipien des ‚Universal Design of Learning‘ (Hall, Meyer & Rose, 2012) darauf ab, den inklusiven Mathematikunterricht von einem gemeinsamen Lerngegenstand aus zu denken, der einerseits Zugänglichkeit für alle Lernenden schafft und andererseits Unterstützungsmaßnahmen auf unterschiedlichen Niveaustufen zulässt.
Das Projekt geht der Frage nach, wie sich die Kompetenzentwicklung von berufserfahrenen Lehrkräften der allgemeinen Schule und für sonderpädagogische Förderung durch Fortbildungsangebote zum inklusiven Mathematikunterricht wirksam unterstützen lässt. Hierzu wurde ein Blended-Learning-Angebot zur Entwicklung gemeinsamer Lernumgebungen für alle Kinder einer Lerngruppe erarbeitet, die sich auch von mehreren Lehrkräften gemeinsam entwickeln lassen.
In diesem Beitrag werden der theoretische Hintergrund, die Konzeption und die methodische Anlage des Projekts vorgestellt. Kapitel 1 befasst sich mit Differenzieren und Fördern im Mathematikunterricht der Primarstufe, Kapitel 2 diskutiert zentrale Befunde zur Wirksamkeit von Lehrerfortbildungsmaßnahmen sowie zu Blended-Learning-Angeboten. Im dritten Kapitel werden auf dieser Grundlage die Ziele des Projekts (Kap. 3.1), die Inhalte und die Struktur des Fortbildungsangebots (Kap., 3.2), die Forschungsfragen (Kap. 3.3) und das Design der Interventionsstudie dargestellt (Kap. 3.4). Die Wirksamkeit wird in einem ausbalancierten Prä-Post-Follow-Up-Test-Design im Vergleich zu unbegleiteten Online-Angeboten evaluiert, die Ergebnisse sollen in einer Folgepublikation kommuniziert werden.
Welche Verstehensschwierigkeiten der Text "Nach den Prozessen" bereitet, läßt sich nach dessen erster Lektüre bereits ansatzweise, nach weiteren Leseprozessen noch genauer beschreiben. Das Gedicht „Nach den Prozessen” ist voller Lesewiderstände, schon allein aufgrund der ineinander verschlungenen Metaphernkomplexe und metaphorischen Vieldeutigkeiten. Daher ist ein Gespräch über das Verstehen des Gedichts stets auch ein Gespräch über die Konstituiertheit von Texten und über die Prämissen eigenen Verstehens, also auch über die Bedingungen und die Grenzen der eigenen Bereitschaft, sich auf jene Arendtsche „Geschichtsschreibung” einzulassen, die selbst nicht voraussetzungslos ist, sondern der Ästhetik der Moderne und ihrem emphatischen Anspruch auf poetisch verbürgte ‘Wahrheit’ folgt. Als Alternative zur Geschlossenheit einer Gesamtinterpretation könnten in verstärktem Maße auch offene, durchaus miteinander konkurrierende Zugänge zu Autor und Werkerprobt werden.
Die Brackwasser-Armleuchteralge (Chara canescens) und die Faden-Armleuchteralge (Chara filiformis) wurden im Juni 2009 erstmals in Hessen im Borkener See, einem Restgewässer des Braunkohleabbaus in Nordhessen, nachgewiesen. Chara filiformis wurde erstmals in Deutschland in einem künstlichen Gewässer nachgewiesen. Chara canescens kommt hier in einem elektrolytarmen Gewässer vor.