A unified representation for morphological, syntactic, semantic, and referential annotations

This paper reports on the SYN-RA (SYNtax-based Reference Annotation) project, an on-going project of annotating German newspaper texts with referential relations. The project has developed an inventory of anaphoric and coreference relations for German in the context of a unified, XML-based annotation scheme for combining morphological, syntactic, semantic, and anaphoric information. The paper discusses how this unified annotation scheme relates to other formats currently discussed in the literature, in particular the annotation graph model of Bird and Liberman (2001) and the pie-in-thesky scheme for semantic annotation

Abandono y vagabundaje infantil en Santiago de Chile, 1930-1950

La sociedad chilena de la primera mitad del siglo XX, experimentó diversas y profundas transformaciones agudizándose algunos problemas que aunque existentes con anterioridad no habían alcanzado una trascendencia socio-económica y política tan significativa. Uno de ellos fue el problema del abandono y vagabundaje infantil que cobró mayor intensidad precisamente entre las décadas de 1930 y 1950. La Gran Depresión y la crisis económica producidas por la Segunda Guerra Mundial, generaron un fuerte crecimiento industrial en el país. Sin embargo, este fenómeno asociado a un sostenido proceso de modernización y urbanización arrastró consigo solamente a ciertos sectores y, por ende, gran parte de la sociedad siguió enfrentada a grandes contrastes y desequilibrios, surgiendo importantes cordones marginales especialmente en torno a la ciudad de Santiago

Recent developments in linguistic annotations of the TüBa-D/Z treebank

The purpose of this paper is to describe recent developments in the morphological, syntactic, and semantic annotation of the TüBa-D/Z treebank of German. The TüBa-D/Z annotation scheme is derived from the Verbmobil treebank of spoken German [4, 10], but has been extended along various dimensions to accommodate the characteristics of written texts. TüBa-D/Z uses as its data source the "die tageszeitung" (taz) newspaper corpus. The Verbmobil treebank annotation scheme distinguishes four levels of syntactic constituency: the lexical level, the phrasal level, the level of topological fields, and the clausal level. The primary ordering principle of a clause is the inventory of topological fields, which characterize the word order regularities among different clause types of German, and which are widely accepted among descriptive linguists of German [3, 6]. The TüBa-D/Z annotation relies on a context-free backbone (i.e. proper trees without crossing branches) of phrase structure combined with edge labels that specify the grammatical function of the phrase in question. The syntactic annotation scheme of the TüBa-D/Z is described in more detail in [12, 11]. TüBa-D/Z currently comprises approximately 15 000 sentences, with approximately 7 000 sentences being in the correction phase. The latter will be released along with an updated version of the existing treebank before the end of this year. The treebank is available in an XML format, in the NEGRA export format [1] and in the Penn treebank bracketing format. The XML format contains all types of information as described above, the NEGRA export format contains all sentenceinternal information while the Penn treebank format includes only those layers of information that can be expressed as pure tree structures. Over the course of the last year, more fine grained linguistic annotations have been added along the following dimensions: 1. the basic Stuttgart-Tübingen tagset, STTS, [9] labels have been enriched by relevant features of inflectional morphology, 2. named entity information has been encoded as part of the syntactic annotation, and 3. a set of anaphoric and coreference relations has been added to link referentially dependent noun phrases. In the following sections, we will describe each of these innovations in turn and will demonstrate how the additional annotations can be incorporated into one comprehensive annotation scheme

Towards an\u2028 EU research and innovation policy agenda for nature-based solutions & re-naturing cities. Final report of the Horizon 2020 expert group on nature-based solutions and re-naturing cities.

1. Nature-based solutions harness the power and sophistication of nature to turn environmental, social and economic challenges into innovation opportunities. They can address a variety of societal challenges in sustainable ways, with the potential to contribute to green growth, 'future-proofing' society, fostering citizen well-being, providing business opportunities and positioning Europe as a leader in world markets. \u2028 2. Nature-based solutions are actions which are inspired by, supported by or copied from nature. They have tremendous potential to be energy and resource-efficient and resilient to change, but to be successful they must be adapted to local conditions. \u2028 3. Many nature-based solutions result in multiple co-benefits for health, the economy, society and the environment, and thus they can represent more efficient and cost-effective solutions than more traditional approaches. \u2028 4. An EU Research & Innovation (R&I) agenda on nature-based solutions will enable Europe to become a world leader both in R&I and in the growing market for nature-based solutions. For this, the evidence base for the effectiveness of nature-based solutions needs to be developed and then used to implement solutions. Both need to be done in conjunction with stakeholders. The potential for transferability and upscaling of solutions also requires further investigation. There is also a need to develop a systemic approach that combines technical, business, finance, governance, regulatory and social innovation. \u2028 5. Four principal goals have been identified that can be addressed by nature-based solutions: �� Enhancing sustainable urbanisation through nature-based solutions can stimulate economic growth as well as improving the environment, making cities more attractive, and enhancing human well-being. \u2028 �� Restoring degraded ecosystems using nature-based solutions can improve the resilience of ecosystems, enabling them to deliver vital ecosystem services and also to meet other societal challenges. \u2028 �� Developing climate change adaptation and mitigation using nature-based solutions can provide more resilient responses and enhance the storage of carbon. \u2028 �� Improving risk management and resilience using nature-based solutions can lead to greater benefits than conventional methods and offer synergies in reducing multiple risks. \u2028 6. Based on the four goals, seven nature-based solutions for R&I actions are recommended to be taken forward by the European Commission and Member States: �� Urban regeneration through nature-based solutions \u2028 �� Nature-based solutions for improving well-being in urban areas \u2028 �� Establishing nature-based solutions for coastal resilience \u2028 �� Multi-functional nature-based watershed management and ecosystem restoration \u2028 �� Nature-based solutions for increasing the sustainability of the use of matter and energy \u2028 �� Nature-based solutions for enhancing the insurance value of ecosystems \u2028 �� Increasing carbon sequestration through nature-based solutions \u2028This report was produced by the Horizon 2020 Expert Group on 'Nature-Based Solutions and Re- Naturing Cities', informed by the findings of an e-consultation and a stakeholder workshop. \u202

Zur Plastizität von sozio-emotionalen Kompetenzen auf Verhaltens- und Gehirnebene: Eine EEG-begleitete Trainingsstudie bei Vorschulkindern mittels des computergestützten Trainingsprogramms Zirkus Empathico

Die Förderung funktionaler sozio-emotionaler Kompetenz in der Vorschulzeit (Altersspanne 3 bis 6 Jahre) ist von entscheidender Bedeutung, um der Entstehung psychischer Störungen vorzubeugen. Bislang gibt es nur wenige Studien, die die Auswirkungen digitaler Trainings auf die sozio-emotionale Entwicklung von Vorschulkindern untersuchen. Ebenso liefert die Forschung umfangreiche Informationen über typisches sozio-emotionales Verhalten bei Vorschulkindern, während weniger darüber bekannt ist, wie das Gehirn diese Funktionen umsetzt. Ziel der Dissertation war es daher, grundlegende und komplexe Aspekte der sozio-emotionalen Kompetenz von Vorschulkindern zu untersuchen, indem ihre Reife und Trainierbarkeit mit Verhaltens- und neuronalen Maßen erfasst wurden. In den Studien 1 und 2 wurden ereigniskorrelierte Potenziale und die Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation Methode eingesetzt, um neuronale Mechanismen der Emotionserkennung zu quantifizieren. Beide Studien ergaben das Vorhandensein grundlegender Mechanismen der Emotionserkennung in dieser Altersgruppe. Darüber hinaus zeigten Vorschulkinder einen Verarbeitungsvorteil von fröhlichen gegenüber ärgerlichen oder neutralen Gesichtern. Studie 3 untersuchte die Trainierbarkeit sozio-emotionaler Kompetenz anhand des digitalen Trainings Zirkus Empathico. Die Zirkus-Empathico-Gruppe zeigte im Vergleich zur Kontrollgruppe einen Anstieg sowohl der grundlegenden als auch der komplexen sozio-emotionalen Kompetenzen. Darüber hinaus ergab sich für die Zirkus-Empathico-Gruppe auf der neuronalen Ebene einen Verarbeitungsvorteil für fröhliche Gesichter. Zusammenfassend zeigt sich ein erheblicher Nutzen neuronaler Marker für das Verständnis von Mechanismen, welchen der Emotionserkennung von Vorschulkindern zugrunde liegen. Die vielversprechende Evidenz für die Wirksamkeit eines digitalen sozio-emotionalen Kompetenztrainings ermöglicht darüber hinaus weitere Überlegungen zur Nachhaltigkeit der Effekte sowie der gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung.Promoting functional socio-emotional competence in the preschool years (age range 3 to 6 years) is crucial to prevent the development of psychological disorders. To date, there are few studies examining the effects of digital training on the socio-emotional development of preschool children. Similarly, research provides extensive information on typical socio-emotional behaviors in preschool children, while less is known about how the brain implements these functions. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation was to examine fundamental and complex aspects of preschoolers' socio-emotional competence by assessing their maturity and trainability with behavioral and neuronal measures. Studies 1 and 2 used event-related potentials and the Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation method to quantify neural mechanisms of emotion recognition. Both studies revealed the presence of basic emotion recognition mechanisms in this age group. In addition, preschoolers showed a processing advantage of happy over angry or neutral faces. Study 3 investigated the trainability of socio-emotional competence using the digital training Zirkus Empathico. The Zirkus Empathico group showed an increase in both basic and complex socio-emotional competencies compared to the control group. In addition, the Zirkus Empathico group showed a processing advantage for happy faces at the neuronal level. In summary, neuronal markers show considerable utility for understanding mechanisms underlying emotion recognition in preschool children. The promising evidence for the efficacy of digital socio-emotional skills training also allows further consideration of the sustainability of the effects as well as the societal significance

Preschoolers’ Sensitivity to Negative and Positive Emotional Facial Expressions: An ERP Study

The study examined processing differences for facial expressions (happy, angry, or neutral) and their repetition with early (P1, N170) and late (P3) event-related potentials (ERPs) in young children (N = 33). EEG was recorded while children observed sequentially presented pairs of facial expressions, which were either the same (repeated trials) or differed in their emotion (novel trials). We also correlated ERP amplitude differences with parental and child measures of socio-emotional competence (emotion recognition, empathy). P1 amplitudes were increased for angry and happy as compared to neutral expressions. We also detected larger P3 amplitudes for angry expressions as compared to happy or neutral expressions. Repetition effects were evident at early and late processing stages marked by reduced P1 amplitudes for repeated vs. novel happy expressions, but enhanced P3 amplitudes for repeated vs. novel facial expressions. N170 amplitudes were neither modulated by facial expressions nor their repetition. None of the repetition effects were associated with measures of socio-emotional competence. Taken together, negative facial expressions led to increased neural activations in early and later processing stages, indicative of enhanced saliency to potential threating stimuli in young children. Processing of repeated facial expression seem to be differential for early and late neural stages: Reduced activation was detected at early neural processing stages particularly for happy faces, indicative of effective processing for an emotion, which is most familiar within this age range. Contrary to our hypothesis, enhanced activity for repeated vs. novel expression independent of a particular emotion were detected at later processing stages, which may be linked to the creation of new memory traces. Early and late repetition effects are discussed in light of developmental and perceptual differences as well as task-specific load.Peer Reviewe

Doctoral researchers’ mental health and PhD training satisfaction during the German COVID-19 lockdown

Academia has been facing a mental health crisis particularly affecting early career researchers (ECRs). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented burden on the mental health of many individuals. Therefore, we cross-sectionally investigated how doctoral researchers (N = 222) evaluate their mental health status and satisfaction with their PhD training before and during the pandemic. As compared to self-reported, retrospective evaluations about the pre-pandemic state, we found decreased satisfaction with PhD training and overall well-being. The whole sample exhibited high levels of personal and work-related burnout, a fifth indicated clinically meaningful levels of depressive symptoms and almost 25% experienced severe loneliness. When exploring predictors of depression, anxiety, and burnout, we identified low satisfaction with PhD training as the most prominent predictor for poor mental health, suggesting a link between the doctoral work and their mental health status. Females vs. males and doctoral researchers in individual doctorate vs. structured PhD programs reported higher symptoms of burnout. Our study replicates previous findings of poor mental health in doctoral researchers and indicates further decreases of mental wellbeing under the influence of the pandemic. Systematic adjustments in academia are required to improve the mental health of ECRs.Peer Reviewe

Nature-Based Solutions and Sustainable Urban Planning in the European Environmental Policy Framework: Analysis of the State of the Art and Recommendations for Future Development

Sustainable urban planning (SUP) is crucial in the development of sustainable cities, as also underlined by the New Urban Agenda. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being recognized for their potential to offer multiple benefits that are necessary in order to cope with present and future urban challenges. The European policy framework, including the recently released European Green Deal, could strongly boost the role and recognition of NBS and SUP as drivers of sustainable and inclusive urban transition. Through a content analysis of current environmental European policies, strategies and agreements, this paper provides (i) an overview of the state of the art of the environmental European policy framework and the recognized role of NBS and SUP in reaching defined objectives, and (ii) insights on where NBS and SUP could play a larger role within this framework. On this basis, the paper identifies gaps and develops recommendations for a better integration of such concepts into the current framework