Smart-phone assisted travel assistance for passengers with reduced mobility

Public transportation is a main factor for a reliable mobility in urban and rural areas. Every user group and their specific requirements have to be considered during planning and realization of public transportation services. Hence public transport operators have to ensure a barrier-free public transportation service. Certainly this barrier-freeness still is not realized for every user group, due to the high complexity of public transportation systems. This article outlines an individual travel assistance application for smart phones which can be easily integrated into existing background systems of public transport operators

A monolithic HEMT-amplifier with feedback in coplanar waveguide technology

A monolithic integrated wide-band amplifier is presented, which consists of two 0.3 μm HEMT-stages in GaAs/GaAlAs-Technology. The main signal path consists of a coplanar waveguide, which interfaces conveniently to the HEMT-cells. A feedback circuit with R, L and C connects gate and drain. To close the feedback loop small scale microstrip lines were combined with CPW /1, 2, 4/. Matching is done with a LC circuit at the gate and a combination of transmission line and capacitor at the drain. In addition there are some other passive elements for biasing, which reduce external components to a minimum. All element models were checked with measured data and placed into a CAD-library for easy use in the design process

Grundlagen, Strategien und Techniken der Anonymisierung von Transkripten in der qualitativen Forschung: eine praxisorientierte Einführung

In der qualitativen Forschungspraxis müssen beim Datenschutz die gesetzlichen Rahmensetzungen beachtet werden; damit einhergehende Fragen der Anonymisierung gehen für qualitativ Forschende jedoch darüber hinaus. Denn will man Beforschte vor negativen Folgen durch eine Teilnahme schützen und dabei zugleich die eigenen Erkenntnismöglichkeiten ausschöpfen, müssen fall- und kontextspezifische Textveränderungen und andere Maßnahmen in den verschiedenen Phasen empirischer Praxis abgewogen werden. Dabei stellt das konkrete Vorgehen des Anonymisierens selbst jedoch häufig eine Blackbox dar, die in wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen eher rudimentär Beachtung findet. Mit diesem Artikel stellen wir daher nicht nur die aktuellen rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen dar, sondern fokussieren insbesondere die praktischen Aspekte des Anonymisierens von Transkripten. Mit dem Ziel, einen grundlegenden, zugänglichen und praktisch orientierten Einstieg in das Thema zu geben, systematisieren wir zunächst Datenarten, Anonymisierungsstrategien, und -techniken. Anschließend diskutieren wir praktische Umsetzungsmöglichkeiten und geben Interessierten die Möglichkeit, ein fiktives Transkript selbstständig zu bearbeiten bzw. in Workshops zum Thema einzubinden. Abschließend präsentieren wir grundlegende Schlussfolgerungen für die Methodenausbildung und plädieren für einen offenen kollegialen Austausch zu Anonymisierungspraktiken.In the practice of qualitative research, legal frameworks must be considered in terms of data protection. These frameworks have implications for qualitative researchers regarding the anonymisation of qualitative data. In order to protect research participants from possible negative ramifications of their involvement, yet maximize the insights, case and context specific alterations to transcripts and other measures must be weighed during different stages of research. However, the precise practices of anonymization often remain a black box, due to few discussions in scientific publications. In this article, we provide recent legal frameworks, and also focus on these practices of anonymization. In order to present a foundational, accessible, and practice-oriented introduction, we differentiate various kinds of data, strategies of anonymization, and concrete techniques. Then, we discuss practical implementations and provide a fictive transcript for independently rehearsing these techniques or utilizing it in workshops. We end by formulating conclusions for educating future researchers, and plead for an open collegial exchange on practices of anonymization

Regulation of MMP-9 by p53 in first trimester cytotrophoblastic cells

BACKGROUND: The matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) family is known to play a key role in tissue remodelling during embryonic development and in pathological conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis and cancer metastasis. It has been shown previously that p53 regulates positively or negatively the expression of different MMPs. Because of p53 overexpression in trophoblastic cells, and its potential role in regulating MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression in different cell lines, we hypothesized that the expression of MMP-9 could also be regulated by p53 in first trimester cytotrophoblasts (CTB). METHODS and RESULTS: Transfection experiments in CTB demonstrated that wild-type p53 down-regulates the -670 (P < 0.001) but not the -531 and -90 human MMP-9 promoter/CAT reporter plasmid activity, whereas p53 mutants partially lost this repressive activity. However, endogenous p53 is not able to regulate MMP-9 expression in CTB. The presence of high molecular weight complexes of p53 in CTB suggests a potential mechanism of inactivation of p53 transcriptional activity towards MMPs in these cells. CONCLUSIONS: Although p53 is mutated in trophoblast, it is functionally incompetent towards MMPs in these cells

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011