The ChildPoeDE Corpus: 1082 German Children’s Poems for Computational and Experimental Studies on Poetry Reception

We introduce childPoeDE: the first corpus of German poetry for children comprising poems which are still read today and cover a wide range of topics and authors. ChildPoeDE contains poem texts and both poem-level and token-level metadata. Poem-level metadata includes information about the anthologies and authors, quantitative text features, rhyme and lexical richness. Token-level metadata covers word length, position and frequency, parts-of-speech, onomatopoeia and sonority. This corpus can be used for computational text analysis, but also as a source for stimulus material in experimental studies. The corpus metadata is freely accessible via Zenodo. The poem texts are protected by copyright

Electromagnetic stirring of glass melts using Lorentz forces - Experimental results

The question as to whether it is possible to stir glass melts using electromagnetic (Lorentz) forces has been controversially discussed in the past. Α series of accurate experiments is reported in which the buoyancy driven motion of a directly electrically heated glass melt in a cylindrical crucible has been modified by applying an external alternating magnetic field. Using temperature measurements directly in the melt it is demonstrated for the first time that the Lorentz force created in the melt leads to a homogenization of the temperature and density distributions because of an enhancement of the flow. Moreover, evidence is provided for an improvement of the glass homogeneity. The feasibility analysis provides rational possibilities for the application of magnetic fields for electromagnetic flow control in glassmaking processes

The ChildPoeDE Corpus: 1082 German Children’s Poems for Computational and Experimental Studies on Poetry Reception

We introduce childPoeDE: the first corpus of German poetry for children comprising poems which are still read today and cover a wide range of topics and authors. ChildPoeDE contains poem texts and both poem-level and token-level metadata. Poem-level metadata includes information about the anthologies and authors, quantitative text features, rhyme and lexical richness. Token-level metadata covers word length, position and frequency, parts-of-speech, onomatopoeia and sonority. This corpus can be used for computational text analysis, but also as a source for stimulus material in experimental studies. The corpus metadata is freely accessible via Zenodo. The poem texts are protected by copyright

Classical homeopathy in the treatment of cancer patients - a prospective observational study of two independent cohorts

BACKGROUND: Many cancer patients seek homeopathy as a complementary therapy. It has rarely been studied systematically, whether homeopathic care is of benefit for cancer patients. METHODS: We conducted a prospective observational study with cancer patients in two differently treated cohorts: one cohort with patients under complementary homeopathic treatment (HG; n = 259), and one cohort with conventionally treated cancer patients (CG; n = 380). For a direct comparison, matched pairs with patients of the same tumour entity and comparable prognosis were to be formed. Main outcome parameter: change of quality of life (FACT-G, FACIT-Sp) after 3 months. Secondary outcome parameters: change of quality of life (FACT-G, FACIT-Sp) after a year, as well as impairment by fatigue (MFI) and by anxiety and depression (HADS). RESULTS: HG: FACT-G, or FACIT-Sp, respectively improved statistically significantly in the first three months, from 75.6 (SD 14.6) to 81.1 (SD 16.9), or from 32.1 (SD 8.2) to 34.9 (SD 8.32), respectively. After 12 months, a further increase to 84.1 (SD 15.5) or 35.2 (SD 8.6) was found. Fatigue (MFI) decreased; anxiety and depression (HADS) did not change. CG: FACT-G remained constant in the first three months: 75.3 (SD 17.3) at t0, and 76.6 (SD 16.6) at t1. After 12 months, there was a slight increase to 78.9 (SD 18.1). FACIT-Sp scores improved significantly from t0 (31.0 - SD 8.9) to t1 (32.1 - SD 8.9) and declined again after a year (31.6 - SD 9.4). For fatigue, anxiety, and depression, no relevant changes were found. 120 patients of HG and 206 patients of CG met our criteria for matched-pairs selection. Due to large differences between the two patient populations, however, only 11 matched pairs could be formed. This is not sufficient for a comparative study. CONCLUSION: In our prospective study, we observed an improvement of quality of life as well as a tendency of fatigue symptoms to decrease in cancer patients under complementary homeopathic treatment. It would take considerably larger samples to find matched pairs suitable for comparison in order to establish a definite causal relation between these effects and homeopathic treatment

Sentiment Analysis of Children and Youth Literature: Is There a Pollyanna Effect?

Jacobs AM, Herrmann JB, Lauer G, Lüdtke J, Schroeder S. Sentiment Analysis of Children and Youth Literature: Is There a Pollyanna Effect? Frontiers in Psychology. 2020;11.If the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, as assumed by Boucher and Osgood’s (1969) famous Pollyanna hypothesis and computationally confirmed for large text corpora in several languages (Dodds et al., 2015), then children and youth literature (CYL) should also show a Pollyanna effect. Here we tested this prediction applying an unsupervised vector space model-based sentiment analysis tool called SentiArt (Jacobs, 2019) to two CYL corpora, one in English (372 books) and one in German (500 books). Pitching our analysis at the sentence level, and assessing semantic as well as lexico-grammatical information, both corpora show the Pollyanna effect and thus add further evidence to the universality hypothesis. The results of our multivariate sentiment analyses provide interesting testable predictions for future scientific studies of literature. “The 7-year-old child is perfectly familiar with both PRETTY and UGLY but he uses the former much more frequently than the latter.” Boucher and Osgood(1969, p. 7)

Wissenschaft und Technik in theoretischer Reflexion - Wissenschaftsforschung Jahrbuch 2006

Theoretische Reflexionen über Wissenschaft und Technik erfolgten historisch in unterschiedlichen Dimensionen: Wissenschaftliche Arbeit wird seit ihrer Geburt in der Antike theoretisch reflektiert, hingegen Ingenieurarbeit erst im ersten Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts. Sehr vereinfacht ließe sich Technologie als Technikkunde deuten. Eine Allgemeine Technologie hätte die methodischen Grundlagen und das theoretische Netzwerk für die Technikwissenschaften zu liefern. Sie basiert auf Erkenntnissen der Naturwissenschaften und ist in die Entwicklung der Gesellschaftswissenschaften eingebunden. Technikwissenschaftliche Forschung wird einerseits zunehmend durch differenzierende Spezialisierung, andererseits aber auch durch steigenden Bedarf an natur-, wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Integration sowie durch kooperative Organisationsformen charakterisiert. Sie ist ihrem Wesen nach interdisziplinär ausgerichtet. In diesem Sinne gilt die von Max Planck bereits in den dreißiger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts geäußerte Auffassung über die Wissenschaft: „Ihre Trennung nach verschiedenen Fächern ist ja nicht in der Natur der Sache begründet, sondern entspringt nur der Begrenztheit des menschlichen Fassungsvermögens, welches zwangsläufig zu einer Arbeitsteilung führt.“ Mit dem Aufkommen wissen-schaftsbasierter Industriezweige im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde das Zusammenwirken von Wissenschaft und Technik in neuer Weise gestaltet. Theoretische Probleme des wissenschaftlich-technischen Forschritts zu formulieren und zu bearbeiten sind ein wichtiges Anliegen der Wissenschaftsforschung, dem sich die Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsforschung im Rahmen ihrer Jahrestagung am 24. und 25. März 2006 im Produktionstechnischen Zentrum der Technischen Universität Berlin erneut zugewandt hat. Die Beiträge dieses Jahrbuchs sollen dazu beitragen, einen weiteren Einblick in die theoretische Reflexion über Wissenschaft und Technik zu geben.Peer Reviewe