Interactions between lexical and syntactic L1-L2 overlap: Effects of gender congruency on L2 sentence processing in L1 Spanish-L2 German speakers

Bringing together lines of research from sentence processing and lexical access, this empirical study investigates the interplay between lexical (grammatical gender) and syntactic (word order) cross-linguistic overlap in L2 German. Eighty-six L1 Spanish-L2 German and thirty-six monolingual German adults completed a German self-paced reading task with noun phrases (NPs) manipulated by L1-L2 gender congruency (congruent, incongruent, neuter) and L1-L2 adjective-noun word order (pre- vs. postnominal adjectives). The study examines the effects of gender congruency, the type of L1-L2 gender mapping (i.e., presence vs. absence of each class in L1 and L2), and L2 proficiency level. Results show that the detection of ungrammatical word order in L2 German interacts with gender congruency, in that L2 speakers are only sensitive to word order violations for sentences with gender-congruent nouns. The detection of ungrammaticality for sentences containing gender-incongruent nouns only emerges at higher L2 proficiency levels. These findings underscore the role of cross-linguistic lexical overlap in syntactic processing

CuPit-2 - a parallel language for neural algorithms: language reference and tutorial

CuPit-2 is a parallel programming language with two main design goals: 1. to allow the simple, problem-adequate formulation of learning algorithms for neural networks with focus on algorithms that change the topology of the underlying neural network during the learning process and 2. to allow the generation of efficient code for massively parallel machines from a completely machine-independent program description, in particular to maximize both data locality and load balancing even for irregular neural networks. The idea to achieve these goals lies in the programming model: CuPit-2 programs are object-centered, with connections and nodes of a graph (which is the neural network) being the objects. Algorithms are based on parallel local computations in the nodes and connections and communication along the connections (plus broadcast and reduction operations). This report describes the design considerations and the resulting language definition and discusses in detail a tutorial example program. This CuPit-2 language manual and tutorial is an updated version of the original CuPit language manual [Technical Report 1994-04]. The new language CuPit-2 differs from the original CuPit in several ways. All language changes from CuPit to CuPit-2 are listed in the appendix

Seminar-Beiträge Cache-Optimierung

Dieser Bericht enthält die Ausarbeitungen von Vorträgen aus einem Seminar gleichen Namens, das am 29. Januar 1998 am Institut für Programmstrukturen und Datenorganisation unter Leitung von Holger Hopp, Daniela Genius und Michael Philippsen stattfand. Die Ausarbeitungen geben einen Überblick über Techniken und Modelle, um die Zwischenspeicher (Caches), die in praktisch allen heutigen Rechnern eingesetzt werden, effektiv einzusetzen. Dabei stehen insbesondere solche Techniken im Vordergrund, die von Übersetzern ausgeführt werden können wie diverse Schleifentransformationen, Speicherabbildungen, Vorzeitiges Laden von Daten. Außerdem werden Konsistenzmodelle für Parallelrechner untersucht

Diagnosis and treatment of peripartum bleeding

Severe peripartum hemorrhage (PPH) contributes to maternal morbidity and mortality and is one of the most frequent emergencies in obstetrics, occurring at a prevalence of 0.5-5.0%. Detection of antepartum risk factors is essential in order to implement preventive measures. Proper training of obstetric staff and publication of recommendations and guidelines can effectively reduce the frequency of PPH and its resulting morbidity and mortality. Therefore, an interdisciplinary expert committee was formed, with members from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, to summarize recent scientific findings. An up-to-date presentation of the importance of embolization and of the diagnosis of coagulopathy in PPH is provided. Furthermore, the committee recommends changes in the management of PPH including new surgical options and the off-label use of recombinant factor VII

Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input and individual factors

This study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The Human Blood Transcriptome in a Large Population Cohort and Its Relation to Aging and Health

Background: The blood transcriptome is expected to provide a detailed picture of an organism’s physiological state with potential outcomes for applications in medical diagnostics and molecular and epidemiological research.We here present the analysis of blood specimens of 3,388 adult individuals, together with phenotype characteristics such as disease history, medication status, lifestyle factors, and body mass index (BMI). The size and heterogeneity of this data challenges analytics in terms of dimension reduction, knowledge mining, feature extraction, and data integration. Methods: Self-organizing maps (SOM)-machine learning was applied to study transcriptional states on a population-wide scale. This method permits a detailed description and visualization of the molecular heterogeneity of transcriptomes and of their association with different phenotypic features. Results: The diversity of transcriptomes is described by personalized SOM-portraits, which specify the samples in terms of modules of co-expressed genes of different functional context. We identified two major blood transcriptome types where type 1 was found more in men, the elderly, and overweight people and it upregulated genes associated with inflammation and increased heme metabolism, while type 2 was predominantly found in women, younger, and normal weight participants and it was associated with activated immune responses, transcriptional, ribosomal, mitochondrial, and telomere-maintenance cell-functions. We find a striking overlap of signatures shared by multiple diseases, aging, and obesity driven by an underlying common pattern, which was associated with the immune response and the increase of inflammatory processes. Conclusions: Machine learning applications for large and heterogeneous omics data provide a holistic view on the diversity of the human blood transcriptome. It provides a tool for comparative analyses of transcriptional signatures and of associated phenotypes in population studies and medical applications