SCIENCE, ART, AND AESTHETICS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO ABSTRACT REASONING

Scientists and artists share methodologies that are common to both practices. From a behavioral perspective, both scientists and artists utilize observation, contemplation, reflection, and serious play to interpret abstract environmental signals. Abstractions are interpreted through an aesthetic, an algorithm for problem solving, which is the basis for scientific and artistic modeling. Models vary in their presentation, comprising works of art, formulas, theories, or diagrams but all of them have one thing in common: they communicate abstract ideas. In an interdisciplinary approach to teaching undergraduate science, students mimic the behaviors of scientists and artists to engage in complex biological problems. As students observe, contemplate, reflect, and play they visualize and make sense of abstractions that represent cellular, molecular, and evolutionary biology. By reflecting on their own practice of model-building, students achieve an enhanced understanding of their personal aesthetic, the tool they use for problem solving, which is key to abstract reasoning and critical thinking

Goffman\u27s On Grindr?: Presentation of Self Among Nonbinary Users

In the 2000s, dating applications were created on and for mobile devices, including Grindr in 2008 (Grindr, 2015). Previous research on Grindr has primarily focused on users who are cisgender gay men. Now that Grindr proclaims itself a “queer” networking space, research on other LBTQ+ populations who use the application has increased. Still, nonbinary people’s identities and experiences remain understudied. I expand Goffman’s conceptualization of self-presentation to the virtual landscape of Grindr. Specifically, I consider the implication of impression management and stigma on the self-presentation of nonbinary people. I perform a content analysis on the individual profiles of nonbinary users, including visual (pictures) and textual (autobiographical) data. This thesis illuminates the lived experiences of nonbinary users navigating a dating application rooted in homonormativity, monosexuality, and the gender binary

Deceleration of neutral molecules in macroscopic traveling traps

A new type of decelerator is presented where polar neutral molecules are guided and decelerated using the principle of traveling electric potential wells, such that molecules are confined in stable three-dimensional traps throughout. This new decelerator is superior to the best currently operational decelerator (Scharfenberg et al., Phys.Rev.A 79, 023410(2009)), providing a substantially larger acceptance even at higher accelerations. The mode of operation is described and experimentally demonstrated by guiding and decelerating CO molecules.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

A Data Protection Law Analysis of the New German Electronic Patient Records (ePA) in the Light of the GDPR

Einer langwierigen Diskussion um die Digitalisierung und Modernisierung des deutschen Gesundheitssystems folgt 2021 die Verpflichtung der gesetzlichen Krankenkassen zur Einführung der elektronischen Patientenakte (ePA). Diese Regelung stößt bei Deutschlands oberster Datenschutzbehörde (BfDI) auf Widerstand. Anhand einschlägiger Kommentarliteratur und unter Berücksichtigung der durch die Interessenvertreter vorgebrachten Argumente untersucht diese Arbeit, ob die Kritik der Behörde begründet ist und ob ein Verstoß gegen die DSGVO mit der Einführung der ePA vorliegen könnte. Im Ergebnis lässt sich ein solcher Verstoß nicht feststellen. Insbesondere liegen die grundsätzlichen Anforderungen an die Wirksamkeit einer Einwilligung in die Datenverarbeitung vor. Die Einführung der ePA erfolgt in zwei Ausbaustufen, wobei die zweite Stufe datenschutzrechtlich relevante Verbesserungen beinhaltet. Daher gilt das Ergebnis der Arbeit „a maiore ad minus“ auch für die 2022 geplante zweite Ausbaustufe. Offen bleibt, ob die Datenschutzbehörde (BfDI) weitere rechtliche Maßnahmen ergreifen wird. Die Untersuchung berührt weitere Forschungsthemen, wie beispielsweise das „Recht auf Datenverarbeitung“ oder die Rolle der Datenschutzbehörden in Gesetzgebungsverfahren. Keywords: Elektronische Patientenakte; ePA; DSGVO; Datenschutz; Telematikinfrastruktur.A lengthy discussion about the digitization and modernization of the German healthcare system is followed by the obligation for health insurance companies to introduce electronic patient records (ePA). This regulation faces resistance from Germany's highest data protection authority (BfDI). On the basis of relevant commentary literature and considering the arguments put forward by the stakeholders this study examines, whether the criticism of the authority is justified and whether a violation of the GDPR could lie in the implementation of the ePA. As a result of the study, no such violation can be determined. Especially the conditions for the effectiveness of consent to data processing are given. The introduction of the German ePA will take place in two stages, with the second stage including improvements regarding data protection. Thus, the result of the work can also be applied ‚a maiore ad minus‘ to the second stage which is planned for 2022. It remains unclear whether the data protection authority (BfDI) will take further legal measures. This study affects also other research topics, such as the "right to data processing" or the role of German data protection authorities in legislative processes. Keywords: Electronic patient records; ePA; GDPR; Data protection; Germany

Radiocarbon in global tropospheric carbon dioxide

Since the 1950s, observations of radiocarbon (14C) in tropospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) have been conducted in both hemispheres, documenting the so-called nuclear "bomb spike" and its transfer into the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere, the two compartments permanently exchanging carbon with the atmosphere. Results from the Heidelberg global network of 14C-CO2 observations are revisited here with respect to the insights and quantitative constraints they provided on these carbon exchange fluxes. The recent development of global and hemispheric trends of 14C-CO2 are further discussed in regard to their suitability to continue providing constraints for 14C-free fossil CO2 emission changes on the global and regional scale

Jet Engine Bird Ingestion Simulations: Comparison of Rotating to Non-Rotating Fan Blades

Bird strike events in commercial airliners are a fairly common occurrence. According to data collected by the US Department of Agriculture, over 80,000 bird strikes were reported in the period 1990 to 2007 in the US alone (Ref. 1). As a result, bird ingestion is an important factor in aero engine design and FAA certification. When it comes to bird impacts on engine fan blades, the FAA requires full-scale bird ingestion tests on an engine running at full speed to pass certification requirements. These rotating tests are complex and very expensive. To reduce development costs associated with new materials for fan blades, it is desirable to develop more cost effective testing procedures than full-scale rotating engine tests for material evaluation. An impact test on a nonrotating single blade that captures most of the salient physics of the rotating test would go a long way towards enabling large numbers of evaluative material screening tests. NASA Glenn Research Center has been working to identify a static blade test procedure that would be effective at reproducing similar results as seen in rotating tests. The current effort compares analytical simulations of a bird strike on various non-rotating blades to a bird strike simulation on a rotating blade as a baseline case. Several different concepts for simulating the rotating loads on a non-rotating blade were analyzed with little success in duplicating the deformation results seen in the rotating case. The rotating blade behaves as if it were stiffer than the non-rotating blade resulting in less plastic deformation from a given bird impact. The key factor limiting the success of the non-rotating blade simulations is thought to be the effect of gyroscopics. Prior to this effort, it was anticipated the difficulty would be in matching the prestress in the blade due to centrifugal forces Additional work is needed to verify this assertion, and to determine if a static test procedure can simulate the gyroscopic effects in a suitable manner. This paper describes the various non-rotating concepts analyzed, and demonstrates the effect believed to be gyroscopic in nature on the result

Category learning in a dynamic world

No description supplie

On the accuracy and usefulness of analytic energy models for contemporary multicore processors

This paper presents refinements to the execution-cache-memory performance model and a previously published power model for multicore processors. The combination of both enables a very accurate prediction of performance and energy consumption of contemporary multicore processors as a function of relevant parameters such as number of active cores as well as core and Uncore frequencies. Model validation is performed on the Sandy Bridge-EP and Broadwell-EP microarchitectures. Production-related variations in chip quality are demonstrated through a statistical analysis of the fit parameters obtained on one hundred Broadwell-EP CPUs of the same model. Insights from the models are used to explain the performance- and energy-related behavior of the processors for scalable as well as saturating (i.e., memory-bound) codes. In the process we demonstrate the models' capability to identify optimal operating points with respect to highest performance, lowest energy-to-solution, and lowest energy-delay product and identify a set of best practices for energy-efficient execution

Effects of point source emission heights in WRF–STILT: a step towards exploiting nocturnal observations in models

An appropriate representation of point source emissions in atmospheric transport models is very challenging. In the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport model (STILT), all point source emissions are typically released from the surface, meaning that the actual emission stack height plus subsequent plume rise is not considered. This can lead to erroneous predictions of trace gas concentrations, especially during nighttime when vertical atmospheric mixing is minimal. In this study we use two Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)–STILT model approaches to simulate fossil fuel CO2 (ffCO2) concentrations: (1) the standard “surface source influence (SSI)” approach and (2) an alternative “volume source influence (VSI)” approach where nearby point sources release CO2 according to their effective emission height profiles. The comparison with 14C-based measured ffCO2 data from 2-week integrated afternoon and nighttime samples collected at Heidelberg, 30 m above ground level shows that the root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) between modelled and measured ffCO2 is indeed almost twice as high during the night (RMSD =6.3 ppm) compared to the afternoon (RMSD =3.7 ppm) when using the standard SSI approach. In contrast, the VSI approach leads to a much better performance at nighttime (RMSD =3.4 ppm), which is similar to its performance during afternoon (RMSD =3.7 ppm). Representing nearby point source emissions with the VSI approach could thus be a first step towards exploiting nocturnal observations in STILT. The ability to use nighttime observations in atmospheric inversions would dramatically increase the observational data and allow for the investigation of different source mixtures or diurnal cycles. To further investigate the differences between these two approaches, we conducted a model experiment in which we simulated the ffCO2 contributions from 12 artificial power plants with typical annual emissions of 1 million tonnes of CO2 and with distances between 5 and 200 km from the Heidelberg observation site. We find that such a power plant must be more than 50 km away from the observation site in order for the mean modelled ffCO2 concentration difference between the SSI and VSI approach to fall below 0.1 ppm during situations with low mixing heights smaller than 500 m

Why Do Membranes of Some Unhealthy Cells Adopt a Cubic Architecture?

Nonlamellar lipid arrangements, including cubosomes, appear in unhealthy cells, e.g., when they are subject to stress, starvation, or viral infection. The bioactivity of cubosomes-nanoscale particles exhibiting bicontinuous cubic structures-versus more common vesicles is an unexplored area due to lack of suitable model systems. Here, glycodendrimercubosomes (GDCs)-sugar-presenting cubosomes assembled from Janus glycodendrimers by simple injection into buffer-are proposed as mimics of biological cubic membranes. The bicontinuous cubic GDC architecture has been demonstrated by electron tomography. The stability of these GDCs in buffer enabled studies on lectin-dependent agglutination, revealing significant differences compared with the vesicular glycodendrimersome (GDS) counterpart. In particular, GDCs showed an increased activity toward concanavalin A, as well as an increased sensitivity and selectivity toward two variants of banana lectins, a wild-type and a genetically modified variant, which is not exhibited by GDSs. These results suggest that cells may adapt under unhealthy conditions by undergoing a transformation from lamellar to cubic membranes as a method of defense