Veränderung sozialer und emotionaler Kompetenzen geistig abnormer Rechtsbrecher im Rahmen einer tiergestützten Intervention (MTI)

Um mit den steigenden Anforderungen der heutigen Gesellschaft zurechtzukommen, sind soziale und emotionale Kompetenzen gefragter und wichtiger als je zuvor. Hauptziel der vorliegenden Untersuchung war die Überprüfung der Effekte der „Multiprofessionellen Tiergestützten Intervention“ (MTI) zur Steigerung sozialer und emotionaler Kompetenzen bei zurechnungsfähigen geistig abnormen Rechtsbrechern. Zur Überprüfung der Wirkung an der genannten Stichprobe fand eine Videoanalyse mittels systematischer Verhaltensbeobachtung statt. Zur Erfassung der interessierenden Konstrukte wurde das eigens zur Analyse tiergestützter Arbeit erstellte Beobachtungssystem von Sinabell (2007), Widmann (2008) und Raffetseder (2008) verwendet. Neben geringfügigen Anpassungen dieses Systems wurde für die vorliegende Untersuchung zusätzlich eine Skala zur Erfassung des Konstrukts „Aufmerksamkeit“ entwickelt. Über die Untersuchungszeitpunkte hinweg konnten in zahlreichen Skalen der sozialen und emotionalen Kompetenzen deutliche Verbesserungen der Fähigkeiten der Teilnehmer festgestellt werden. Im sozialen Bereich zeigten sich die deutlichsten Steigerungen in der „Kommunikationsfähigkeit“, speziell in den positiven Kommunikationsstrategien der Straftäter. Weiters zeigten sich eindrucksvolle Verbesserungen in der „Durchsetzungsfähigkeit“ der Teilnehmer, sowie in der „Mitarbeit“ und der „Mimik“. Bei der Erfassung der emotionalen Kompetenz zeigten sich die gravierendsten Verbesserungen im Bereich der „Emotionsregulation bei Anforderungen“ und bei den negativen Reaktionen auf Feedback. Passend dazu konnte in der Skala „Aufmerksamkeit“ im Laufe der Intervention eine signifikante Zunahme der Aufmerksamkeit gegenüber dem Leiter festgestellt werden. Auf Grund früherer positiver Evaluationsstudien bezüglich multiprofessioneller tiergestützter Interventionen, sowie den beobachteten Verbesserung in der vorliegenden Studie, kann MTI als Maßnahme zur Gesundheitsförderung empfohlen werden.To be able to deal with the increasing requirements of today´s society, social and emotional competences are in great demand and more important than ever. The present study´s goal is to evaluate the positive effects of an animal assisted intervention (Multiprofessionelle Tiergestützte Intervention, MTI) on the social and emotional competences as well as the on the attention of mentally disordered prisoners in a special correctional facility. To analyse the interesting constructs, an observational system to record emotional and social skills was used. This system according to Sinabell (2007), Widmann (2008) and Raffetseder (2008) was slightly modified and a new scale to quantify attention was added. Due to many social and emotional scales the participants showed significant improvements of their abilities beyond the times of assessment. In the field of social skills the delinquents considerably enhanced their “communicational abilities”, especially regarding to positive communication strategies. Furthermore the participants showed a striking advancement in terms of “assertiveness”, “collaboration” and “facial expression”. Concerning the registration of emotional skills, increasing abilities related to “regulation of emotions by demand” and “negative reaction on feedback” was observed. Consistent with these results the scale “attention” points out a significant improvement concerning the attention to the head of the intervention. Based on previous positive evaluation studies related to this animal assisted intervention, as well as the monitored enhancements of the present study, MTI can be recommended as an activity for health promotion

Micro-solid oxide fuel cells: status, challenges, and chances

Abstract: Micro-solid oxide fuel cells (micro-SOFC) are predicted to be of high energy density and are potential power sources for portable electronic devices. A micro-SOFC system consists of a fuel cell comprising a positive electrode-electrolyte-negative electrode (i.e. PEN) element, a gas-processing unit, and a thermal system where processing is based on micro-electro-mechanical-systems fabrication techniques. A possible system approach is presented. The critical properties of the thin film materials used in the PEN membrane are discussed, and the unsolved subtasks related to micro-SOFC membrane development are pointed out. Such a micro-SOFC system approach seems feasible and offers a promising alternative to state-of-the-art batteries in portable electronics. Graphical abstract: Graphical Abstract tex

Heteroepitaxial hematite photoanodes as a model system for solar water splitting

Heteroepitaxial multilayer Pt(111)/Fe2O3(0001) films were deposited on sapphire c-plane (0001) substrates by RF magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser deposition, respectively. The films were highly crystalline, displaying an in-plane mosaic spread of less than 1° and a homogenous surface morphology with roughness of ∼3 Å. Ellipsometry and UV-vis spectroscopy measurements were shown to be in excellent agreement with modelling, demonstrating that the optics of the system including absorption in the hematite layer are well described. For polycrystalline hematite photoanodes deposited on platinum, full characterization of the system is hampered by the inability to make measurements in alkaline electrolyte containing hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) due to spontaneous decomposition of H2O2 by the exposed platinum. The pin-hole free high quality of the heteroepitaxial films is demonstrated by the ability to make stable and reproducible measurements in H2O2 containing electrolyte allowing for accurate extraction of charge separation and injection efficiency. The combination of excellent crystalline quality in addition to the well characterized optics and electrochemical properties of the heteroepitaxial hematite photoanodes demonstrate that Al2O3(0001)/Pt(111)/Fe2O3(0001) is a powerful model system for systematic investigation into solar water splitting photoanodes

Does Manipulating Tokenization Aid Cross-Lingual Transfer? A Study on POS Tagging for Non-Standardized Languages

One of the challenges with finetuning pretrained language models (PLMs) is that their tokenizer is optimized for the language(s) it was pretrained on, but brittle when it comes to previously unseen variations in the data. This can for instance be observed when finetuning PLMs on one language and evaluating them on data in a closely related language variety with no standardized orthography. Despite the high linguistic similarity, tokenization no longer corresponds to meaningful representations of the target data, leading to low performance in, e.g., part-of-speech tagging. In this work, we finetune PLMs on seven languages from three different families and analyze their zero-shot performance on closely related, non-standardized varieties. We consider different measures for the divergence in the tokenization of the source and target data, and the way they can be adjusted by manipulating the tokenization during the finetuning step. Overall, we find that the similarity between the percentage of words that get split into subwords in the source and target data (the split word ratio difference) is the strongest predictor for model performance on target data

Findings of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign 2023

This report presents the results of the shared tasks organized as part of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign 2023. The campaign is part of the tenth workshop on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects (VarDial), co-located with EACL 2023. Three separate shared tasks were included this year: Slot and intent detection for low-resource language varieties (SID4LR), Discriminating Between Similar Languages -- True Labels (DSL-TL), and Discriminating Between Similar Languages -- Speech (DSL-S). All three tasks were organized for the first time this year

Findings of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign 2023

This report presents the results of the shared tasks organized as part of the VarDial Evaluation Campaign 2023. The campaign is part of the tenth workshop on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects (VarDial), co-located with EACL 2023. Three separate shared tasks were included this year: Slot and intent detection for low-resource language varieties (SID4LR), Discriminating Between Similar Languages — True Labels (DSL-TL), and Discriminating Between Similar Languages — Speech (DSL-S). All three tasks were organized for the first time this year

Seizures after Ischemic Stroke: A Matched Multicenter Study

Accidente cerebrovascular isquémico; Tratamiento de reperfusión; Factores de riesgoIschemic Stroke; Reperfusion treatment; Risk factorsAccident cerebrovascular isquèmic; Tractament de reperfusió; Factor de riscObjective The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors for acute symptomatic seizures and post-stroke epilepsy after acute ischemic stroke and evaluate the effects of reperfusion treatment. Methods We assessed the risk factors for post-stroke seizures using logistic or Cox regression in a multicenter study, including adults from 8 European referral centers with neuroimaging-confirmed ischemic stroke. We compared the risk of post-stroke seizures between participants with or without reperfusion treatment following propensity score matching to reduce confounding due to treatment selection. Results In the overall cohort of 4,229 participants (mean age 71 years, 57% men), a higher risk of acute symptomatic seizures was observed in those with more severe strokes, infarcts located in the posterior cerebral artery territory, and strokes caused by large-artery atherosclerosis. Strokes caused by small-vessel occlusion carried a small risk of acute symptomatic seizures. 6% developed post-stroke epilepsy. Risk factors for post-stroke epilepsy were acute symptomatic seizures, more severe strokes, infarcts involving the cerebral cortex, and strokes caused by large-artery atherosclerosis. Electroencephalography findings within 7 days of stroke onset were not independently associated with the risk of post-stroke epilepsy. There was no association between reperfusion treatments in general or only intravenous thrombolysis or mechanical thrombectomy with the time to post-stroke epilepsy or the risk of acute symptomatic seizures. Interpretation Post-stroke seizures are related to stroke severity, etiology, and location, whereas an early electroencephalogram was not predictive of epilepsy. We did not find an association of reperfusion treatment with risks of acute symptomatic seizures or post-stroke epilepsy

Characterization of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) Diversity and Tropism in 145 Patients With Primary HIV-1 Infection

Viral diversity during primary HIV-1 infection (PHI) relating to transmission mode, HIV-1 subtypes, and viral tropism was revisited. Varying mucosal barriers were not associated with differences in diversities of founder populations. CXCR4-using viruses are present during PHI but remain exceptional case

Defect segregation and its effect on the photoelectrochemical properties of Ti-doped hematite photoanodes for solar water splitting

Optimising the photoelectrochemical performance of hematite photoanodes for solar water splitting requires better understanding of the relationships between dopant distribution, structural defects and photoelectrochemical properties. Here, we use complementary characterisation techniques including electron microscopy, conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM), Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), atom probe tomography (APT) and intensity modulated photocurrent spectroscopy (IMPS) to study this correlation in Ti-doped (1 cat.%) hematite films deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on F:SnO2 (FTO) coated glass substrates. The deposition was carried out at 300 {\deg}C, followed by annealing at 500 deg C for 2 h. Upon annealing, Ti was observed by APT to segregate to the hematite/FTO interface and into some hematite grains. Since no other pronounced changes in microstructure and chemical composition were observed by electron microscopy and RBS after annealing, the non-uniform Ti redistribution seems to be the reason for a reduced interfacial recombination in the annealed films, as observed by IMPS. This results in a lower onset potential, higher photocurrent and larger fill factor with respect to the as-deposited state. This work provides atomic-scale insights into the microscopic inhomogeneity in Ti-doped hematite thin films and the role of defect segregation in their electrical and photoelectrochemical properties