The seroprevalence and salivary shedding of herpesviruses in Behcet's syndrome and recurrent aphthous stomatitis

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The assurance of quality and standards in English higher education from 1992 to the present : an economic interpretation

Abstract\ud The thesis is a study of policy comprising an economic interpretation of the assurance\ud of quality and standards in English higher education between 1992 and 2004. The\ud core of the thesis is an analysis of the consequences of the regulatory agencies'\ud attempt to tum the higher education product into a search good thus facilitating ex\ud ante quality assurance. An economic interpretation is congruent with the\ud 'marketisation' of higher education and of quality assurance, both of which are\ud linked with market based practice. The semantic issues relating to the many possible\ud interpretations of quality and standards led to a rationalization of terms via\ud juxtaposition with the efficiency discourse of economics.\ud The study is based on a three part theoretical framework. The trust good theory of\ud professional knowledge is characterized by ex-post information asymmetry which\ud renders the assurance of academic yardstick standards hazardous. The dyadic theory\ud of the organizational architecture of universities implies tension between the\ud transactional modes of academic peer group and managerial hierarchy with attendant\ud danger of perfunctory rather than consummate co-operation in the implementation of\ud quality assurance processes. The theory of the complex, vertically integrated\ud university firm embodies a number of potentially separable products with different\ud informational characteristics. Search, experience, and trust goods coexist with\ud implications for the way that quality and standards might be conceptualized and\ud assured when different parts of the process are the focus of attention by the regulatory\ud agencies.\ud The application of the theoretical framework to the various phases of the policy\ud process analyses the way that quality and standards were articulated by the agencies ..\ud The success of the attempt to convert higher education into a search good varies with\ud the signal credibility of the 'specifications' which are derived. Excessive\ud documentation production is a natural consequence of 'rational' economic behaviour\ud under the Prisoners' Dilemma pathology

Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance

Metacognition refers to a capacity to reflect on and control other cognitive processes, commonly quantified as the extent to which confidence tracks objective performance. There is conflicting evidence about how “local” metacognition (monitoring of individual judgments) and “global” metacognition (estimates of self-performance) change across the lifespan. Additionally, the degree to which metacognition generalises across cognitive domains may itself change with age due to increased experience with one's own abilities. Using a gamified suite of performance-controlled memory and visual perception tasks, we measured local and global metacognition in an age-stratified sample of 304 healthy volunteers (18–83 years; N = 50 in each of 6 age groups). We calculated both local and global metrics of metacognition and quantified how and whether domain-generality changes with age. First-order task performance was stable across the age range. People's global self-performance estimates and local metacognitive bias decreased with age, indicating overall lower confidence in performance. In contrast, local metacognitive efficiency was spared in older age and remained correlated across the two cognitive domains. A stability of local metacognition indicates distinct mechanisms contributing to local and global metacognition. Our study reveals how local and global metacognition change across the lifespan and provide a benchmark against which disease-related changes in metacognition can be compared

Lauchheim 1986–2016. The Interdisciplinary analysis and GIS-Mapping of a prominent early medieval necropolis in Eastern Swabia

One of the most well-known and largest early medieval necropoles in Western Europe lies near the small town of Lauchheim in Baden-Württemberg, South West Germany. Totaling round 1400 inhumations dating from 5th – 7th Century AD, it was completely excavated between 1986 – 1996. Due to the high frequency of finds and the fragility of some of the bone material, much use was made of block lifting. Some blocks remain unopened till today. The good state of preservation and the juxtaposition of the necropolis with a contemporary settlement, which was also extensively excavated, set the stage for an extensive social-historical analysis of a local early medieval com-munity over two centuries. Analysis of the grave good and anthropological appraisal have been combined and structured in a specially designed Database containing over 30,000 individual en-tries. A GIS Map of the site, arduously piped from the original hand drawings via vectorization software and CAD into Open Source GIS, allows for perspicuous visualization of any combination of anthropological data and/or finds and contributes greatly to the understanding of the development of the necropolis. Since 2008 the Lauchheim Project has been supported by the German Research Council, allowing innovative conservation and documentation methods including complete anthropological examination, 3D computer tomography of the  unopened blocks (with sometimes surprising results) and the extensive examination of organic material and textiles

Archivierung digitaler archäologischer Daten. Auswertung einer Umfrage

Die Langzeitarchivierung digitaler Forschungsdaten auf der Grundlage etablierter Standards und Methoden ist ein wichtiger Teil des Forschungsdatenlebenszyklus. Sie garantiert langfristig die Transparenz und Nachnutzbarkeit von Forschungsergebnissen. Dies ist bei Daten aus der Archäologie von besonderer Bedeutung zur Bewahrung eines einzigartigen und unwiederbringlichen kulturellen Erbes.Um einen aktuellen Sachstand der Langzeitarchivierung in mit Archäologie befassten Einrichtungen in Deutschland zu ermitteln, führten das SEADDA-Projekt (Saving European Archaeology from the Dark Age) und die Kommission Archäologie und Informationssysteme im Verband der Landesarchäologen mit Unterstützung des Forschungsdatenzentrums IANUS des DAI in Deutschland im Frühjahr/Sommer 2021 eine Umfrage durch.Im vorliegenden Artikel werden die Ergebnisse der Umfrage vorgestellt und daraus abgeleitet Empfehlungen für weiterführende und unterstützende Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Langzeitarchivierung digitaler archäologischer Daten in Deutschland formuliert