First verbs : On the way to mini-paradigms

This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999: a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Impact of Patterning Technique on the Long Term Stability of Ag Thin Films

AbstractWith rising demand for high power electronics, the need for metallization systems with enhanced electromigration resistance increases rapidly. The long term stability of sputter deposited silver thin films is investigated with samples patterned either by wet chemical etching or by a lift-off process. Five conductor lines connected in parallel are stressed simultaneously by high temperatures and current densities. Whereas the activation energy is similar for both structures due to the same material system, the mean time to failure differs substantially because of a porous edge morphology occurring only at wet etched structures. Therefore, the current distribution is inhomogeneous thus, resulting in a significant faster failure of single conductor lines

Ising spins coupled to a four-dimensional discrete Regge skeleton

Regge calculus is a powerful method to approximate a continuous manifold by a simplicial lattice, keeping the connectivities of the underlying lattice fixed and taking the edge lengths as degrees of freedom. The discrete Regge model employed in this work limits the choice of the link lengths to a finite number. To get more precise insight into the behavior of the four-dimensional discrete Regge model, we coupled spins to the fluctuating manifolds. We examined the phase transition of the spin system and the associated critical exponents. The results are obtained from finite-size scaling analyses of Monte Carlo simulations. We find consistency with the mean-field theory of the Ising model on a static four-dimensional lattice.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

First tentative conclusions on the early development of verb morphology

In these conclusions we can deal only with some of the tentative comparative results of the workshop papers on the early development of verb morphology. The main focus is on criteria of how the child detects morphology and how this emerging morphological competence develops in its earliest phases. In view of the purpose and tentative character of these conclusions, all references will be limited to the papers of the workshop and to earlier studies by workshop participants within the "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition". Much more will be given in the projected final publication

Thermal Conductivity Measurements with Galvanic Metallization Lines on Porosified LTCC Applying the 3-Omega Technique

AbstractThe reduction of the thermal conductivity of low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) caused by a porosification process originally developed for the local modification of the permittivity is determined by the 3ω measurement technique. Therefore, metallization lines of small width down to 20μm are applied by galvanic pulse plating onto the roughened LTCC surface. By this deposition technology it is possible, to cover the pores without any depth penetration. Compared to the ‘as fired’ state, a reduction in thermal conductivity of up to 70% is measured independent of the LTCC type

The Iterative Signature Algorithm for the analysis of large scale gene expression data

We present a new approach for the analysis of genome-wide expression data. Our method is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional techniques, when applied to large-scale data. Rather than alloting each gene to a single cluster, we assign both genes and conditions to context-dependent and potentially overlapping transcription modules. We provide a rigorous definition of a transcription module as the object to be retrieved from the expression data. An efficient algorithm, that searches for the modules encoded in the data by iteratively refining sets of genes and conditions until they match this definition, is established. Each iteration involves a linear map, induced by the normalized expression matrix, followed by the application of a threshold function. We argue that our method is in fact a generalization of Singular Value Decomposition, which corresponds to the special case where no threshold is applied. We show analytically that for noisy expression data our approach leads to better classification due to the implementation of the threshold. This result is confirmed by numerical analyses based on in-silico expression data. We discuss briefly results obtained by applying our algorithm to expression data from the yeast S. cerevisiae.Comment: Latex, 36 pages, 8 figure

Experimental Test of a Two-dimensional Approximation for Dielectric Microcavities

Open dielectric resonators of different shapes are widely used for the manufacture of microlasers. A precise determination of their resonance frequencies and widths is crucial for their design. Most microlasers have a flat cylindrical geometry, and a two-dimensional approximation, the so-called method of the effective index of refraction, is commonly employed for numerical calculations. Our aim has been an experimental test of the precision and applicability of a model based on this approximation. We performed very thorough and accurate measurements of the resonance frequencies and widths of two passive circular dielectric microwave resonators and found significant deviations from the model predictions. From this we conclude that the model generally fails in the quantitative description of three-dimensional dielectric resonators.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figure

PT symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking in a microwave billiard

We demonstrate the presence of parity-time (PT) symmetry for the non-Hermitian two-state Hamiltonian of a dissipative microwave billiard in the vicinity of an exceptional point (EP). The shape of the billiard depends on two parameters. The Hamiltonian is determined from the measured resonance spectrum on a fine grid in the parameter plane. After applying a purely imaginary diagonal shift to the Hamiltonian, its eigenvalues are either real or complex conjugate on a curve, which passes through the EP. An appropriate basis choice reveals its PT symmetry. Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs at the EP