Research on Architectures for Integrated Speech/Language Systems in Verbmobil

The German joint research project Verbmobil (VM) aims at the development of a speech to speech translation system. This paper reports on research done in our group which belongs to Verbmobil's subproject on system architectures (TP15). Our specific research areas are the construction of parsers for spontaneous speech, investigations in the parallelization of parsing and to contribute to the development of a flexible communication architecture with distributed control.Comment: 6 pages, 2 Postscript figure

A long and complex enhancer activates transcription of the gene coding for the highly abundant immediate early mRNA in murine cytomegalovirus

Using the simian virus 40 "enhancer trap" approach, we have identified a transcription enhancer located just upstream of the major immediate early gene of murine cytomegalovirus. This enhancer has several striking properties. (.) Together with the enhancer ofhuman cytomegalovirus, it is the strongest transcription enhancer found to date. (ö) It is an extremely long enhancer, spanning >700 base pairs. (ÜI) It consists of a rather complex pattern of sequence repeats, the longest of which is 181 base pairs. Also, several types of short sequence motifs are scattered throughout the enhancer in monomeric, heterodimeric, or homodimeric (palindromic) form. These motifs have been identified to be components of other enhancers and promoters, and they are presumably binding sites for specific nuclear factors. Our analysis suggests that enhancers are composed of a modular arrangement of short conserved sequence motifs and that enhancer strength is correlated with the redundancy of these motifs

VISUALIZING SOCIAL ROLES - DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A BIRD\u27S-EYE VIEW OF SOCIAL NETWORK PRIVACY SETTINGS

The rising usage of Social Network Sites for interacting with contacts from multiple social spheres poses new privacy challenges and increasingly prompts users to manage their online identities. To convey a consistent image of the self when interacting with a group of contacts, at first awareness of previously used social roles is needed. However, existing tools on Social Network Sites to increase such awareness are often spread over different interfaces and the user is left to figure out which contacts have access to which shared items. To address these problems, we introduce the Access Policy Grid, a new visualization offering a bird\u27s-eye view on defined privacy settings that allows identifying social roles and inconsistencies therein. To evaluate our visualization, we present the results of a laboratory experiment involving 32 participants in which we compare the Access Policy Grid to the native Facebook interface. For five out of six research qustions, our results show that the APG outperforms the Facebook interface significantly in terms of at least one of the three investigated aspects (accuracy, confidence, and time-to-task completion)

Wirkung sichern : Qualitätsstandards für die stationäre Behandlung von Straftätern und Straftäterinnen mit psychischen Störungen

Die Bewährungs- und Vollzugsdienste vollziehen Strafen und Massnahmen. Sie sind zuständig für die stationäre Behandlung von Straftätern und Straftäterinnen mit einer psychischen Störung. Die Behandlung wird von Institutionen mit unterschiedlichen Infrastrukturen und therapeutischen Konzepten durchgeführt. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht der Frage nach, welche Rahmenbedingungen und Behandlungsansätze Rückfälle vermeiden helfen. Sie klärt, welche Grundsätze zu beachten sind um deliktpräventive Wirkung und damit den Schutz der Allgemeinheit zu gewährleisten; sie hält Wirksamkeits-Prinzipien fest, die erfolgreiche, forensisch-psychiatrische Arbeit in stationärem Rahmen kennzeichnen. Die Wirksamkeits-Prinzipien werden mit einem geeigneten Konzept systematisch analysiert; mit den Kategorien des EFQM-Modells (European Foundation for Quality Management) wird für jedes einzelne Wirksamkeits-Prinzip festgehalten, welche fachliche Qualität anzustreben ist, welche Merkmale Qualität charakterisieren und wie Qualität gewährleistet werden kann. Damit werden Standards für die stationäre Behandlung von Straftätern und Straftäterinnen mit einer psychischen Störung definiert. Die Standards beschreiben Kriterien für einen wirksamen Behandlungsprozess: Sie dienen den Bewährungs- und Vollzugsdiensten als Grundlage um die Qualität stationärer Einrichtungen zu beurteilen, therapeutische Inhalte verbindlich festzulegen und Leistungsvereinbarungen mit qualitativen Vorgaben abzuschliessen

Schlüssel zur Einteilung von Neophyten in der Schweiz in die Schwarze Liste oder die Watch-Liste

No Abstrac

Radiation-induced second malignancies after involved-node radiotherapy with deep-inspiration breath-hold technique for early stage Hodgkin Lymphoma: a dosimetric study

BACKGROUND: To estimate the risk of radiation induced second cancers after radiotherapy using deep-inspiration breath-hold (DI) technique with three-dimensional conformal (3DCRT) and volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) for patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL). METHODS: Early-stage HL with mediastinal and supraclavicular involvement was studied using an Alderson phantom. A whole body CT was performed and all tissues were delineated. The clinical target volumes and planning target volumes (PTV) were determined according to the German Hodgkin study group guidelines. Free-breathing (FB) technique and DI technique were simulated by different safety margins for the PTV definition. In both cases, 30 Gy in 15 fractions was prescribed. Second cancer risk was estimated for various tissues with a second cancer model including fractionation. RESULTS: When compared with FB-3DCRT, estimated relative life time attributable risk (LAR) of cancer induction after DI-3DCRT was 0.86, 0.76, 0.94 and 0.92 for breast, lung, esophagus and stomach, respectively. With DI-VMAT, the corresponding values were 2.05, 1.29, 1.01, 0.93, respectively. For breast cancer, the LAR observed with DI-VMAT was not substantially distinguishable from the LAR computed for mantle RT with an administered dose of 40 Gy. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that DI may reduce the LAR of secondary cancers of all OARs and may be a valuable technique when using 3DCRT. Conversely, VMAT may increase substantially the LAR and should be cautiously implemented in clinical practice

Utilization of dental services and health literacy by older seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: This study aimed to investigate the utilization of dental services by older seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate their ability of finding, understanding, and using information on COVID-19. Methods: At the end of February 2021, a survey addressing demographic characteristics of the participants, (pain-associated) utilization of dental services, worries regarding a potential COVID-19 infection, the individual use of protective masks, and difficulties regarding the access to information on COVID-19 (by using the modified European Health Literacy Questionnaire [HLS-EU-Q16]) was developed. It was sent to all patients of the Dental Clinic of University of Leipzig who were either 75, 80, or 85 years old (n = 1228). Participation was voluntarily and anonymously; questionnaires had to be returned within six weeks, no reminders were sent. Results: Of the 439 replies (response rate 35.7%), twelve were excluded from data extraction due to disinterest, dementia, or lack of age information. Of the older seniors, 81.5% (n = 348) had utilized at least one dental examination and 54.2% of the dentulous patients (n = 199) had attended at least one dental hygiene appointment within the past year. Up to 55.8% of all participants said it was "difficult" or "very difficult" to find, understand, and use information on COVID-19, especially when judging reliability of information presented in the media, which was especially true for seniors with assigned care levels presenting odds ratios up to 5.30. Conclusions: The investigation revealed a frequent utilization of dental services by older seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the older seniors encountered difficulties finding, using, and understanding information about COVID-19. Keywords: COVID-19; geriatric dentistry; gerodontology; health literacy; older seniors; utilization