A Nature Deity? The Ṛgvedic Savitṛ Revisited

The problematic identity of the deity Savitṛ in early Vedic religion has sparked more than a century of discussion. Harry Falk, for instance, argued that this god, whose name literally means “Impeller”, can be identified with the Milky Way and associated with the rainy season. Others have suggested that he becomes visible in the zodiacal light or crepuscular rays. The aims of this paper are to review the most important theories about Savitṛ’s manifestations in nature in Ṛgvedic times and to reassess whether and in what ways different natural phenomena and celestial luminaries may have been associated with this deity. In discussing the theories proposed so far, I not only consider the Vedic sources but re-evaluate the archaeoastronomical arguments with modern software. As it turns out, there is no conclusive evidence that Savitṛ was associated with any single phenomenon or luminary at all. Rather, he was an anthropomorphic deification of what was perceived as a certain “cosmic” or “natural” force

Ritual, Self and Yoga: On the Ways and Goals of Salvation in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad

Throughout its history, the renowned Kaṭha Upaniṣad has often been described as being both incoherent and contradictory. The aim of this paper is to show to what purpose the text was created. To this end, it discusses the connection of the three paths to salvation depicted in the text, viz. the Agnicayana (a powerful Vedic fire-ritual), the Upaniṣadic method of self-knowledge, and yoga. The first part retraces how in the Upaniṣads, the Agnicayana was transformed into a non-material or mental ritual and linked with self-knowledge. The second part analyses how the various salvation goals (heaven, the World of Brahman, liberation from rebirth) could be related to each other. First, the authors redefined the Agnicayana's salvation goal, heaven, to make it identical with liberation. Secondly, they introduced self-knowledge and yoga as alternative and equally powerful means to the same end. In practice, however, the new and world-negating methods were implied to be superior to the costly ritual from which they had drawn their authority. Thus, the authors of the Upaniṣad were more concerned with showing continuity between different religious approaches than upholding consistency of content

Towards hybrid trapping of cold molecules and cold molecular ions

A pinhole discharge unit as well as a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) head were developed for the Nijmegen pulsed valve (NPV) and the molecular beam properties accessible from each source were characterised and compared. The discharge conditions were optimised for maximum hydroxyl radical density. It was found that the DBD source yields colder OH radicals, whereas the pinhole discharge source provides a threefold larger radical density compared to the DBD discharge head. Translationally cold packages of hydroxyl radicals (Ttrans > 1mK) were produced by means of Stark deceleration and a 124-stage Stark decelerator was set up in the laboratory. The decelerator was conditioned, characterised and optimised for operation at low final velocities (v < 40 m/s). The performance of the decelerator was assessed by determining the density of OH radicals available after the deceleration process. In a final step, a translationally cold OH package was loaded into a cryogenic magnetic trap. The trap design, the coupling of the magnetic trap to the Stark decelerator and the loading efficiency were numerically optimised employing a direct search algorithm on Monte-Carlo trajectory simulations. The cryogenic environment efficiently prevents black-body radiation from pumping OH radicals out of trappable states and the background pressure improved significantly. Under cryogenic conditions the 1/e trap lifetime improved by a factor of 30 compared to room temperature. The magnetic trap forms part of a hybrid trapping scheme for neutral molecules and ionic species. This novel type of trap represents a versatile environment for investigating ion-neutral molecule reactions in the cold regime, while offering full control over the contributing quantum states

Immunhistochemische und molekulargenetische Charakterisierung von Pankreaskarzinomen

In der vorgelegten Arbeit wurde untersucht, ob ein Zusammenhang zwischen immunhistochemischen und molekularen Markern und dem Überleben von Patienten mit einem histologisch gesicherten Pankreaskarzinom besteht. Das Patientenkollektiv bestand aus Patienten, bei denen zwischen 2006 und 2011 ein Pankreaskarzinom diagnostiziert wurde und die in der chirurgischen Universitätsklinik Mannheim operiert wurden. Es wurden die Daten zu Alter, Geschlecht, Tumorgröße, Lymphknotenstatus, Perineuralscheideninfiltration, Veneninfiltration, Lymphgefäßinfiltration, Resektionsstatus, Tumorstadium, Überlebenszeit, Grading, KRAS Mutation, c-Myc Amplifikation, c-Myc Expression, uPAR Amplifikation sowie die p16 und p53 Expression erfasst und analysiert. Es erfolgten dabei immunologische Färbungen auf p16, p53 sowie c-Myc. Bei p16 und p53 erfolgte zudem ein Vergleich der Expression von der Tumorvorstufe zum invasiven Karzinom. Das KRAS-Gen wurde mittels einer Genanalyse auf bestehende Mutationen im Karzinom untersucht. Eine Fluoreszenz-in-Situ-Hybidisierung (FISH) erfolgte bei den Genloci von uPAR und c-Myc zur Quantifizierung von Genamplifikationen. Die Auswertung der Daten ergab Hinweise auf molekulare Subgruppen mit prognostischer Relevanz. Bei Patienten mit resektablem Pankreaskarzinom spielte das Alter bei Operation keine entscheidende Rolle für das tumorspezifische Überleben. Bei Lymphknotenmetastasen zeigte sich eine Tendenz bezüglich eines schlechteren Überlebens. Die Lymphgefäß- und Venengefäßinfiltration, der Resektionsstatus und das Grading zeigten eine signifikante Korrelation mit der Überlebenszeit. Lymphgefäßinfiltration und Lymphknotenstatus zeigten einen signifikanten Zusammenhang. Vor allem high-level-Amplifikationen von uPAR gingen mit einer signifikant kürzeren Überlebenszeit einher. Der c-Myc-Genamplifikationsstatus zeigte dagegen keine signifikante Korrelation mit dem Überleben. Es zeigte sich jedoch sowohl für c-Myc als auch für uPAR ein statistischer Trend zu einem höheren Tumorgrading bei Vorliegen einer Amplifikation. Die immunhistochemische c-Myc-Färbung zeigte mit dem hier verwendeten Antikörper keine Korrelation mit der c-Myc-Amplifikation in der FISH-Untersuchung. Sämtliche immunhistochemischen Marker (c-Myc, p16, p53) und die DNA-Analyse von KRAS zeigten keine Korrelation mit der Überlebenszeit, der Lymphknotenmetastasierung, sowie dem Grading. Beim Übergang von Pankreatischen Intraepithelialen Neoplasien (PanIN-Läsionen) in Karzinome war aber in knapp 90% der Fälle ein Verlust von p16 als Hinweis auf den Zusammenbruch einer Seneszenz-Barriere, sowie eine deutliche Zunahme der p53 Expression nachweisbar. Diese Befunde bestätigen das Konzept, dass der Verlust von p16 und die Akkumulation von vermutlich mutiertem p53 eine wichtige Rolle bei der Entstehung des Pankreaskarzinoms spielen. Die high-level-Amplifikation von uPAR erwies sich als relevanter prognostischer Marker und sollte bezüglich ihrer zellulären Konsequenzen weiter untersucht werden

Translating the Gāyatrī-Mantra

No single standard translation of the mantra known as Sāvitrī, Gāyatrī, or Gāyatrī-Mantra (Ṛgveda III 62.10) has ever become widely accepted. Many authors seem to have felt that a famous mantra such as this one must have, or allow for, several interpretations and translations – a position that is not without justification, especially when it comes to mantras. Yet, translators of the Gāyatrī-Mantra have rarely taken into consideration that language changes over time, and that this has an impact on how the mantra is to be translated. The aim of this paper is to remedy this situation. It provides grammatical, morphological, etymological, lexical, and semantic analyses of the textual content of the mantra against the background of the linguistic changes that took place during the transition from early to late Old Indo-Aryan. In other words, this paper explores how the mantra would be understood by users of Vedic and Sanskrit. To this end, each textual component of the Gāyatrī-Mantra is analyzed in dedicated sections. An appendix also provides a collection of more than sixty scholarly translations into European languages

Long-term trapping of Stark-decelerated molecules

Trapped cold molecules represent attractive systems for precision-spectroscopic studies and for investigations of cold collisions and chemical reactions. However, achieving their confinement for sufficiently long timescales remains a challenge. Here, we report the long-term trapping of Stark-decelerated OH radicals in their X (2)Pi(3/2) (nu = 0, J = 3/2, M-J = 3/2, f) state in a permanent magnetic trap. The trap environment is cryogenically cooled to a temperature of 17 K to suppress black-body-radiation-induced pumping of the molecules out of trappable quantum states and collisions with residual background gas molecules which usually limit the trap lifetime. The cold molecules are thus confined on timescales approaching minutes, an improvement of up to two orders of magnitude compared with room temperature experiments, at translational temperatures of similar to 25 mK. The present results pave the way for new experiments using trapped cold molecules in precision spectroscopy, in studies of slow chemical processes at low energies and in the quantum technologies

Evidence for a soft-phonon-mode-driven Peierls-type distortion in Sc3_3CoC4_4

We provide experimental and theoretical evidence for the realization of the Peierls-type structurally distorted state in the quasi-one-dimensional superconductor Sc$_3$CoC$_4$ by a phonon-softening mechanism. The transition from the high- to the final low-temperature phase below 80K proceeds via an extended intermediate temperature regime between 80K and 150K characterized by phonon-driven atom displacements. In support of the low-dimensional character of the title compound we find a highly anisotropic correlation-length of these dynamic distortions.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures and supporting informatio

Rule Mining in Action: The RuM Toolkit

Procedural process modeling languages can be difficult to use for process mining in cases where the process recorded in the event log is unpredictable and has a high number of different branches and exceptions. In these cases, declarative process modeling languages such as DECLARE are more suitable. Declarative languages do not aim at modeling the end-to-end process step by step, but constrain the behavior of the process using rules thus allowing for more variability in the process model yet keeping it compact. Although there are several commercial and academic process mining tools available based on procedural models, there are currently no comparable tools for working with declarative models. In this paper, we present RuM, an accessible and easy-to-use rule mining toolkit integrating multiple DECLARE-based process mining methods into a single unified application. RuM implements process mining techniques based on Multi-Perspective DECLARE, namely the extension of DECLARE supporting data constraints together with controlflow constraints. In particular, RuM includes support for process discovery, conformance checking, log generation and monitoring as well as a model editor. The application has been evaluated by conducting a qualitative user evaluation with eight process analysts