Spacialist: Eine virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Spatial ‌Humanities

Die Verarbeitung von Text- und Sprachressourcen mit digitalen Werkzeugen steht im deutschsprachigen Raum im Fokus der Digital Humanities. Nicht-textuelle Ausprägungen der Kultur und deren Verortung in Raum und Zeit finden hierbei in der Regel nur wenig Beachtung. Gerade an dieser Stelle liegt das besondere Potenzial der Verwendung von neuen digitalen Methoden. Diese bieten nun erstmals die Möglichkeit, sämtliche Ausprägungen des menschlichen Kulturschaffens im miteinander in semantische und analysierbare Beziehungen zu setzen. Zugleich ist es mit derartigen integrierten digitalen Methoden nun möglich, bedrohte Objekte und Räume, aber auch immaterielle kulturelle Ausprägungen präzise zu dokumentieren sowie dauerhaft nachhaltig zu bewahren und der Forschung bereitzustellen. Gerade vor dem Hintergrund der infrastrukturellen Entwicklung sowie der mutwilligen Zerstörung des Kulturerbes wird diese Bedeutung nochmals deutlicher. Ziel des Projekts ist es, für die raum- und objektorientierten Wissenschaften ein Werkzeug zur Verfügung zu stellen, das die standardisierte Erfassung und Analyse sowie eine langfristige Archivierung und Nachnutzbarkeit der Daten erlaubt. Ein hoher Standardisierungsgrad sowie eine nachhaltige Vorhaltung der Informationen sind gerade im Bereich der Geisteswissenschaften aufgrund der Unwiederbringlichkeit der Daten von besonderer Bedeutung. Spacialist wird eine einheitliche, Disziplinen überspannende Softwarelösung zur Erfassung, Verwaltung, Archivierung und Publikation von Forschungsdaten werden, die in raum- und objektbezogenen geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekten gewonnen werden. Diese Softwarelösung wird an der Universität Tübingen gemeinsam mit den fachwissenschaftlichen Partnern basierend auf existierenden Softwareprototypen und -systemen weiterentwickelt und in deren Workflow und Semantik integriert werden. Das Werkzeug wird ausschließlich Open-Source-Komponenten verwenden und als freie Software entwickelt werden, sodass die Weiterverwendbarkeit an anderen Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen gewährleistet ist. Das Werkzeug soll einen essentiellen Beitrag zur Bewahrung des kulturellen Erbes in seiner materiellen und immateriellen Ausprägung in nationalen und internationalen Forschungsprojekten leisten

Culturally relevant pedagogy: secondary mathematics in an urban classroom

Research and test scores have shown that African-American, Latino, Native American, and other minority students are underachieving in secondary mathematics. This is concerning not only to school personnel – who are under pressure to have students perform well on standardized tests – but also to the future of the country. When teachers adopt a culturally relevant pedagogy, diverse students will have a better opportunity to learn and retain mathematical content. When academic content is taught in a culturally relevant way, students are able to retain the information, improve their performance in school, and become more informed participants in society. Through literary analysis, I have determined how culturally relevant teaching can be applied in an urban, Algebra I classroom. I have also provided examples of how mathematical tasks can better reflect the cultures and environment of urban students

Spacialist – A Virtual Research Environment for the Spatial Humanities

Many archaeological research projects generate data and tools that are unusable or abandoned after the funding period ends. To counter this unsustainable practice, the Spacialist project was tasked to create a virtual research environment that offers an integrated, web-based user interface to record, browse, analyze, and visualize all spatial, graphical, textual and statistical data from archaeological or cultural heritage research projects. Spacialist is developed as an open-source software platform composed of modules providing the required functionality to end-users. It builds on controlled multi-language vocabularies and an abstract, extensible data model to facilitate data recording and analysis, as well as interoperability with other projects and infrastructures. Development of Spacialist is driven by an interdisciplinary team in collaboration with various pilot projects in different areas of archaeology. To support the complete research lifecycle, the platform is being integrated with the University’s research-data archive, guaranteeing long-term availability of project data

A two-year follow-up: Twitter activity regarding misinformation about spinal manipulation, chiropractic care and boosting immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND Spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is offered by many health professions, most often by chiropractors. While SMT can be effective for some musculoskeletal disorders, there is no evidence that SMT improves human immunity in a clinically meaningful way. Despite this, we showed previously that Twitter misinformation about chiropractic/SMT  improving immunity increased sharply at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we perform a two-year follow-up. METHODS We previously employed specialized software (i.e. Talkwalker) to search the entirety of Twitter activity in the  months before and after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared (March 11, 2020). In this paper, we conducted follow-up searches over two successive 12 month periods using terms related to SMT, immunity and chiropractic. The resulting tweets were then coded into those promoting/refuting a relation between SMT and immunity (tone) and messaging about chiropractic/interventions (content). Further analyses were performed to subcategorize tweet content, tally likes, retweets and followers, and evaluate refuting tweets and the country of origin. Finally, we created a chronology of Twitter activity superimposed with dates of promoting or refuting activities undertaken by chiropractic organizations. RESULTS Over the 27 month study period, Twitter activity peaked on March 31, 2020 then declined continuously. As in our first paper, our follow-up data showed that (1) the ratio of refuting/promoting tweets remained constant and (2) tweets that refuted a relationship between SMT and immunity were substantially more liked, retweeted and followed than those promoting. We also observed that promoting tweets suggesting that SMT improves immunity decreased more rapidly. Overwhelmingly, promoting tweets originated in the USA while refuting tweets originated in Canada, Europe and Australia. The timing of the decline in peak Twitter activity, together with a parallel decline in tweets claiming that SMT improves immunity, was coincident with initiatives by chiropractic organizations and regulators targeting misinformation. CONCLUSION Overwhelmingly, Twitter activity during the COVID-19 pandemic focussed on refuting a relation between chiropractic/SMT and immunity. A decline in Twitter activity promoting a relation between SMT and immunity was observed to coincide with initiatives from chiropractic organizations and regulators to refute these claims. The majority of misinformation about this topic is generated in the United States

Autonomous Planning System (APS) for an Onboard TCPED Pipeline

As satellites and spacecraft grow in number and operate farther from Earth, there is an emerging need for increased autonomy via onboard decision making that is independent of ground stations but allows for collaboration between teams of assets. Such autonomy will relieve the burden on human operators, enable faster responses to dynamic events, and reduce communications between orbital assets and ground stations. Orbit Logic’s Autonomous Planning System (APS) is flexible and customizable onboard software that enables teamed autonomy through the use of Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TCPED) pipelines onboard the satellites. Its small computational/memory footprint makes it especially suitable for small satellites: APS has been successfully demonstrated on constrained platforms such as the Raspberry Pi and the Unibap e2100. While APS is employed to create, plan and orchestrate TCPED pipelines, its flexible architecture allows it to interface with other satellite or software components that can provide states or events to inform or trigger planning, and to integrate with satellite resources that can execute those plans. For example, in an Earth-imaging satellite mission, APS tasks the satellite to perform collections, facilitates delivery of the collected data to onboard processing/analysis modules, and uses the results to inform future tasking, e.g., following-up with additional collection or processing. APS on a given asset employs one or more Specialized Autonomous Planning Agents (SAPAs), software modules that plan onboard activities for a specialized need. Through configurable plugins, they can be customized to the capabilities and mission roles of the host asset. Each SAPA is dedicated to a general mission-or system-level need (e.g., separate SAPAs may focus on collection planning, contact scheduling, and fault management) and issue one or more high-level activities to fulfill that need. These activities are fielded by the Master Autonomous Planning Agent (MAPA), which performs intelligent deconfliction of the onboard resources that activity execution requires. The resource execution timeline is composed to maximize the “goodness” of all competing activities using a configurable multi-factor figure of merit (FOM). APS’s modular architecture and well-defined interfaces facilitate rapid development and deployment of novel or enhanced capabilities. The level of autonomy is customizable and can be tuned over the course of the mission to allow the satellite more autonomy as it gains trust. These features allow APS to be easily deployed for complex satellite missions with multiple competing mission objectives. APS’s constellation-level collaborative autonomy seamlessly extends its asset-level autonomy. Multiple APS-enabled satellites equipped with inter-satellite links or access to a space network can coordinate without ground station communications, e.g., a constellation of imaging satellites can perform load balancing among themselves to ensure coverage and limit redundancy. Such autonomous collaboration is especially important in scenarios where evolving conditions change mission parameters, e.g., if one satellite collects imagery from a region, and processing of that imagery identifies signatures warranting follow-up tasking, a different satellite overflying the location in the near future can perform the collection. APS has been developed and extended for multi-domain, multi-asset mission applications through multiple programs sponsored by AFRL, DARPA, NASA, and ONR

Spacialist – Eine virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Spatial Humanities

Research projects in the humanities generate data and tools that are often abandoned after the project funding ends. Moreover, research data handling and the deployed tools are often highly specific for single projects. This insustainable practice leads to solutions that are incompatible with other tools, projects and infrastructures, and they often do not rely on accepted standards. To close this gap the project Spacialist, which was funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg in the “E-Science” program, set out to develop a modular virtual research environment that offers an integrated, web-based user interface to record, browse, analyze, and visualize all spatial, graphical, textual and statistical data from archaeological or cultural heritage research projects. To address the highly heterogeneous requirements of such projects, Spacialist was developed as a software platform that is instantiated, customized and deployed separately for each project. The data model was designed as a meta model that defines entities with their properties and relationships. During the customization of the data model for a particular project, these abstract entities need to be instantiated for the project’s domain. For representing domain-specific concepts Spacialist uses controlled vocabularies (thesauri) based on the XML-based standard SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), thus facilitating data analysis and interoperability. Core functionality such as the thesaurus and the creation and editing of entities is available out of the box for each project. Additional functionality is implemented in plugin modules that can be added on demand. These include file management, data analysis, geographical maps, and others. The development of Spacialist’s open-source software was driven by an interdisplinary team of software developers, geographers, ethnologists, archaeologists and librarians in collaboration with pilot projects in various areas like mediterranean archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. To address the challenge of creating a sustainable business model beyond the initial funding, Spacialist was integrated into the service offered by the eScience-Center Tübingen, which has the necessary infrastructure and staff to provide Spacialist instances initially free to projects. The initial deployment and custom data model are covered by permanent staff. If the client project decides to adopt Spacialist as their research environment, the project is charged with a fee that covers hosting and maintenance of their Spacialist instance, and they have to enter a contractual agreement with eScience-Center defining usage and data privacy issues. To support the full research project lifecycle even after the projects end, the platform is being integrated with our University’s research-data archive, which guarantees the long-term availability and reusability of project data

Misinformation, chiropractic, and the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract: Background: In March 2020, the World Health Organization elevated the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic to a pandemic and called for urgent and aggressive action worldwide. Public health experts have communicated clear and emphatic strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Hygiene rules and social distancing practices have been implemented by entire populations, including ‘stay-at-home’ orders in many countries. The long-term health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are not yet known. Main text: During this time of crisis, some chiropractors made claims on social media that chiropractic treatment can prevent or impact COVID-19. The rationale for these claims is that spinal manipulation can impact the nervous system and thus improve immunity. These beliefs often stem from nineteenth-century chiropractic concepts. We are aware of no clinically relevant scientific evidence to support such statements. We explored the internet and social media to collect examples of misinformation from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand regarding the impact of chiropractic treatment on immune function. We discuss the potential harm resulting from these claims and explore the role of chiropractors, teaching institutions, accrediting agencies, and legislative bodies. Conclusions: Members of the chiropractic profession share a collective responsibility to act in the best interests of patients and public health. We hope that all chiropractic stakeholders will view the COVID-19 pandemic as a call to action to eliminate the unethical and potentially dangerous claims made by chiropractors who practise outside the boundaries of scientific evidence

Characterization of Trapped Lignin-Degrading Microbes in Tropical Forest Soil

Lignin is often the most difficult portion of plant biomass to degrade, with fungi generally thought to dominate during late stage decomposition. Lignin in feedstock plant material represents a barrier to more efficient plant biomass conversion and can also hinder enzymatic access to cellulose, which is critical for biofuels production. Tropical rain forest soils in Puerto Rico are characterized by frequent anoxic conditions and fluctuating redox, suggesting the presence of lignin-degrading organisms and mechanisms that are different from known fungal decomposers and oxygen-dependent enzyme activities. We explored microbial lignin-degraders by burying bio-traps containing lignin-amended and unamended biosep beads in the soil for 1, 4, 13 and 30 weeks. At each time point, phenol oxidase and peroxidase enzyme activity was found to be elevated in the lignin-amended versus the unamended beads, while cellulolytic enzyme activities were significantly depressed in lignin-amended beads. Quantitative PCR of bacterial communities showed more bacterial colonization in the lignin-amended compared to the unamended beads after one and four weeks, suggesting that the lignin supported increased bacterial abundance. The microbial community was analyzed by small subunit 16S ribosomal RNA genes using microarray (PhyloChip) and by high-throughput amplicon pyrosequencing based on universal primers targeting bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic communities. Community trends were significantly affected by time and the presence of lignin on the beads. Lignin-amended beads have higher relative abundances of representatives from the phyla Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria compared to unamended beads. This study suggests that in low and fluctuating redox soils, bacteria could play a role in anaerobic lignin decomposition