Enforcing Temporal Consistency in Physically Constrained Flow Field Reconstruction with FlowFit by Use of Virtual Tracer Particles

Processing techniques for particle based optical flow measurement data such as 3D Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) or the novel dense Lagrangian Particle Tracking method Shake-The-Box (STB) can provide time-series of velocity and acceleration information scattered in space. The following post-processing is key to the quality of space-filling velocity and pressure field reconstruction from the scattered particle data. In this work we describe a straight-forward extension of the recently developed data assimilation scheme FlowFit, which applies physical constraints from the Navier-Stokes equations in order to simultaneously determine velocity and pressure fields as solutions to an inverse problem. We propose the use of additional artificial Lagrangian tracers (virtual particles), which are advected between the flow fields at single time instants to achieve meaningful temporal coupling. This is the most natural way of a temporal constraint in the Lagrangian data framework. Not FlowFit's core method is altered in the current work, but its input in form of Lagrangian tracks. This work shows that the introduction of such particle memory to the reconstruction process significantly improves the resulting flow fields. The method is validated in virtual experiments with two independent DNS test cases. Several contributions are revised to explain the improvements, including correlations of velocity and acceleration errors in the reconstructions and the flow field regularization within the inverse problem

Blaming the Unblameable? On the Liability of Mediators

The purpose of the present article is to examine the legal basis for establishing claims for pure economic loss against persons acting as mediators in private (out-of-court) disputes.1 Mediation can be defined as a voluntary process in which a neutral third party (the mediator) helps conflicting parties find a satisfactory solution to a given problem. The role of the mediator, who will often be a professional such as a lawyer, an architect, a psychologist, an accountant, a consultant or a medical doctor, is to lead the dispute resolution process by supporting the parties in developing and examining their own proposals for a settlement. During the course of mediation, the mediator usually performs a variety of different services ranging from the overall structuring of the mediation to concrete services pertaining to the substance of the conflict. Inter alia this involves deciding how meetings should be set up, who should be present at meetings, what should be discussed, what advice should be given, and what experts (if any) should be consulted. By interfering with disputes regarding the rights and duties of other parties, the mediator, like any other negotiator or advisor, risks that his conduct in some way causes detriment to one or more of the parties to the mediation. Several damage scenarios can be imagined but most importantly perhaps, the mediator’s conduct may cause the parties to settle on unfavourable terms or not settle at all. Further, the mediator may cause damage to the parties by revealing their commercial secrets and he may also cause harm to their persons (e.g. emotional distress).2 Furthermore, damage to parties not even involved in the mediation may ensue. In Danish law there are no special rules applicable to the liability of mediators acting out of court.3 This means that the well known requirements of contract law and tort law need to be satisfied in order for the parties to recover against the mediator:4 First, the mediator must have acted in contravention of the liability standard applicable to the mediation. This standard is determined pursuant to the basic rule of culpa. Second, there must be a certain nexus between the negligent conduct of the mediator and the loss suffered by the aggrieved party. This requirement is traditionally split in a requirement for factual causation and a requirement for adequacy. The former requires that a factual causal nexus can be established, whereas the latter requires that certain normative criteria and policy considerations make it reasonable to award damages. For many good reasons said requirements have long standing in the law. Perhaps the most apparent one is their inherent flexibility, which enables them to adapt to developments and trends in society. The significant developments in the past 200 years evidence this very well and on that basis there are also goods reasons to believe that they are capable of dealing with mediation in a satisfactory way. However, this does not mean that the conduct of mediators is easily assessed according to above requirements. On the contrary each of them seems to pose serious difficulties to anyone contemplating suing a mediator. This should become apparent from the present examination. The article focuses on the liability of mediators under Danish law. Due to the lack of Danish case law (as well as other authoritative sources of law such as legislation) on the matter, also foreign law will be looked at in order to extrapolate pertinent arguments for and against imposing liability. This will make the article interesting to foreign lawyers also. Part 2 offers a global outlook on court cases concerning the liability of mediators and in part 3 it is discussed on what legal basis liability claims against mediators can be raised. In part 4 it is examined what it takes to establish that the mediator has acted wrongfully. This makes it necessary to do two things: First, it must be determined what standard of care is applicable to mediators and second, it must be examined what it takes for the mediators’ conduct to contravene this standard. In parts 5 and 6 respectively the feasibility of establishing factual causation and adequacy is examined and in part 7 it is discussed to what extent liability can be disclaimed by the mediator

Establishing a Uniform Interpretation of the CISG: A Case Study of Article 74

The debate on whether a satisfactory degree of uniformity in the interpretation of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG or Convention) is being achieved seems more relevant than ever. Thus, more than 30 years after the adoption of the convention it is still doubtful whether the aim of establishing uniform rules for the international sale of goods as set out in Article 7(1) is being achieved and this raises the question if it ever will be. In a recent article published in the Danish Weekly Law Report,1 Joseph Lookofsky, a prominent CISG scholar, shows that Danish courts do not take much note of the sources of law relevant to the CISG when dealing with matters pertaining to it. Such an approach is in direct contravention of Article 7(1) and if it applies to the courts and arbitral tribunals in the other CISG jurisdictions as well, it is clear that we are dealing with a serious problem. The purpose of this article is to address the question of whether said aim of establishing a uniform interpretation of the CISG is being achieved. This is done by doing essentially two things: First, it is examined what potential each of the internationally recognised sources of law pertaining to the convention has for contributing to bringing about a uniform interpretation. This should give a good indication as to the theoretical feasibility of establishing uniformity. Second, in order to show to what extent said sources of law help achieve uniformity in practice, an extensive case study of Article 74 is conducted. In order to embark further on what seems to be a much needed empirical work, one could have wished to conduct case studies of all the articles of the CISG, but this has not been possible within the limits of this article. This is, of course, an important caveat but the study of the unifying potential of the sources of law and the case study of Article 74 do in fact seem to provide a good basis for commenting on the question at hand. Parts two and three are devoted to a general introduction to the CISG and the command for uniformity laid down in Article 7(1). Part four critically analyses the potential of the wording of the convention for establishing uniformity. This part discusses a number of weaknesses related to the CISG as an international convention and certain inherent linguistic flaws and the general lack of convergence of legal terms are also dealt with,. Part five discusses the quality of the travaux préparatoires as an interpretative guide and part six examines the capability of CISG precedents to create uniformity. In part seven the potential of scholarly writings for contributing to uniformity is examined. Part eight is dedicated to said case study of Article 74. As will become apparent the study shows that many of the (general) problems pertaining to the relevant sources of law (examined in parts four to seven) apply to the important issue of measuring damages and it does not seem that uniformity is being achieved to an acceptable extent

Regulation Awareness and Experience of Additional Monitoring Among Healthcare Professionals in Finland

Background: Challenges in post-marketing adverse event reporting are generally recognized. To enhance reporting, the concept of additional monitoring was introduced in 2012. Additional monitoring aims to enhance reporting of adverse events (AE) for medicines for which the clinical evidence base is less well developed. Purpose: The purpose was to get a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons why additional monitoring has not increased AE reporting as much as initially hoped. We examined how healthcare professionals (HCPs) in Finland perceive additional monitoring, why they do or do not report AEs more readily for these medicines and how they interact with patients treated with additionally monitored medicines. Methods: An anonymous, open questionnaire was developed and made available online at the e-form portal of University of Helsinki. Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists were invited to complete the questionnaire via their respective trade or area unions. Content analysis of answers to open-ended questions was performed by two independent coders. Results: Pharmacists have the best understanding about additional monitoring but at the same time do not recognize their role in enhancing monitoring. Only 40% of HCPs working with patients knows always or often if a specific medicine is additionally monitored. Half (53%) of HCPs do not tell or tell only rarely patients about additional monitoring. 18% of HCPs reported having received additional monitoring training whereas 29% had received general AE reporting training. AE reporting was more common among HCPs who had received training. Conclusions: Additional monitoring awareness among HCPs and patients should be increased by organizing regular educational events and making additional monitoring more visible. Educational events should emphasize the significance additional monitoring has on patient safety and promote a reporting culture among HCPs.Peer reviewe

Discovery of herpesviruses in multi-infected primates using locked nucleic acids (LNA) and a bigenic PCR approach

Targeting the highly conserved herpes DNA polymerase (DPOL) gene with PCR using panherpes degenerate primers is a powerful tool to universally detect unknown herpesviruses. However, vertebrate hosts are often infected with more than one herpesvirus in the same tissue, and pan-herpes DPOL PCR often favors the amplification of one viral sequence at the expense of the others. Here we present two different technical approaches that overcome this obstacle: (i) Pan-herpes DPOL PCR is carried out in the presence of an oligonucleotide substituted with locked nucleic acids (LNA).This suppresses the amplification of a specific herpesvirus DPOL sequence by a factor of approximately 1000, thereby enabling the amplification of a second, different DPOL sequence. (ii) The less conserved glycoprotein B (gB) gene is targeted with several sets of degenerate primers that are restricted to gB genes of different herpesvirus subfamilies or genera. These techniques enable the amplification of gB and DPOL sequences of multiple viruses from a single specimen. The partial gB and DPOL sequences can be connected by long-distance PCR, producing final contiguous sequences of approximately 3.5 kbp. Such sequences include parts of two genes and therefore allow for a robust phylogenetic analysis. To illustrate this principle, six novel herpesviruses of the genera Rhadinovirus, Lymphocryptovirus and Cytomegalovirus were discovered in multi-infected samples of non-human primates and phylogenetically characterized

Parallels between Metal-Ligand Cooperativity and Frustrated Lewis Pairs

Peer reviewe

The Alps Paleoelevation and Paleoclimate Experiment (APE): Neogene Paleoelevation and Paleoclimate of the Central Alps

Stable isotope paleoaltimetry takes advantage of the relationship between orogen elevation and the stable isotope ratios in meteoric water, which are ultimately recorded in geological archives like foreland basins or orogen-internal shear zones. The δ-δ approach relies on contrasting time-equivalent δ18O and δD records from high- and low-elevation sites to constrain the height of the orogen at the time these geologic archives were formed. However, at the same time, different boundary conditions such as changing paleogeography, atmospheric CO2 concentrations or sea surface temperatures result in complex paleoclimate model outputs, which predict significant changes in the isotopic composition of meteoric water. These changes may be recorded in geological archives and thus complicate the reconstruction of past elevations. The 4DMB Phase 1 project APE aimed at generating a first quantitative estimate for the paleoclimatic signal in Alpine stable isotope records, so that these records may be corrected for and ultimately yield more accurate paleoelevation estimates. We addressed this challenge by integrating isotope-tracking climate model (ECHAM5-wiso) simulations with stable isotope and clumped isotope data from the foreland basin and high-elevation regions of the central Alps. ECHAM5-wiso simulations have been conducted with 1) boundary conditions based on paleogeographic reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the mid-Pliocene (PLIO), and 2) different topographic scenarios for the Alps. The simulations show that modifying environmental conditions can produce similar magnitudes of δ18O change as changes in alpine topography. For example, the climatically induced δ18O changes in the PLIO and LGM experiments correspond to the magnitude of changes created by setting the entire orogen to 50% and 150% of its modern height, respectively (Botsyun et al., 2020). Our modelling results stress the need for the paleoaltimetry community to correct isotopic signals in geologic archives for climate-induced changes in isotope ratios. Pedogenic carbonate proxy data from alluvial megafans of the Swiss Molasse Basin revealed that 1) low-elevation, distal δ18O values are higher than previously assumed and thus, more adequately reflect low-elevation δ18O values required for paleoelevation estimates; 2) Mid-Miocene megafans had considerable topography and an internal elevation gradient; 3) clumped isotope-derived carbonate formation temperatures yield low-elevation paleoclimate estimates and help to embed δ18O data into global climate models. Under consideration of previous work and our modelling results, we conclude that the Central Alps, more specifically the region surrounding the Simplon Fault Zone, attained surface elevations of >4000 m no later than the mid-Miocene (Krsnik et al., 2021). In summary, our approach represents an important methodological advance that allows the disentangling of climatic and surface uplift signals in the geologic stable isotope record. Furthermore, new insights into the Alps elevation history can help to constrain the timing of slab inversion and/or break-off in the Western/Central Alps

Synthesis, Structures, and Electronic Properties of O- and S-Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes of Iridium, Copper, Silver, and Gold

O- and S-heterocyclic carbenes (OHCs, SHCs) are shown experimentally and computationally to be stronger pi acceptors than NHCs and lack, of course, substituents at the heteroatoms. These different electronic and steric characteristics make OHCs and SHCs interesting ligands for coordination chemistry. Convenient synthetic routes are presented to access their iridium(I), iridium(III), and coinage-metal(I) (Cu, Ag, Au) complexes in good yields by means of dissociation of olefins, deprotonation of precursor salts, and transmetalation from a silver carbene complex Molecular structures and detailed bonding analyses of these complexes are presented.Peer reviewe

Spielend Lernen im Kindergarten. Neue Technologien im Einsatz

Dieses Kapitel behandelt den kindlichen Zugang zu neuen Technologien im Alltag. Da die Kinder von heute in einer Medienwelt aufwachsen und schon früh mit Medien und Medienprodukten in Kontakt kommen und diese auch nutzen, sind die vorschulischen Bildungsinstitutionen gefordert, aktive Medienarbeit zu leisten und dabei einen verantwortungsbewussten Umgang mit Medien zu fördern. In engem Zusammenhang mit dem Einsatz von neuen Technologien im Vorschulbereich steht die Medienbildung. Deren Förderung stellt schon in der frühen Mediennutzung eine Notwendigkeit dar und wird in diesem Kapitel anschaulich mit ihren wichtigsten Zieldimensionen beschrieben. Die Autorinnen und Autoren verweisen auf die spielerische Umsetzung medienpädagogischer Ziele und den damit verbundenen Einsatz von neuen Technologien. Die Förderung der Medienbildung lässt sich in der Kindergartenarbeit nicht losgelöst von anderen Bildungsschwerpunkten vollziehen und ist somit immer verknüpft mit unterschiedlichen Bereichen der kindlichen Entwicklung und Förderung. Beispiele aus der Praxis zeigen die sozialen, kommunikativen, lernmethodischen, spielerischen und bildenden Aspekte des Lernens und Lehrens mit neuen Technologien sowie die damit zusammenhängenden Herausforderungen und Hindernissen. (DIPF/Orig.