Comprehensible legal texts – utopia or a question of wording? On processing rephrased German court decisions

This paper presents a study on the comprehensibility of rephrased syntactic structures in German court decisions. While there are a number of studies using psycholinguistic methods to investigate the comprehensibility of original legal texts, we are not aware of any study looking into the effect resolving complex structures has on the comprehensibility. Our study combines three methodological steps. First, we analyse an annotated corpus of court decisions, press releases and newspaper reports on these decisions in order to detect those complex structures in the decisions which distinguish them from the other text types. Secondly, these structures are rephrased into two increasingly simple versions. Finally, all versions are subjected to a self paced reading experiment. The findings suggest that rephrasing greatly enhances the comprehensibility for the lay reader

Estimation of flux control coefficients from inhibitor titrations by non-linear regression

AbstractA mathematical model was developed to estimate flux control coefficients (Co) from titration studies with specific non-competitive inhibitors. In contrast to the normally used graphical determination the model pays regard to the dissociation equilibrium (kD) that exists between inhibitor and its binding sites (Eo) as well as to an objective estimation of the initial slope. The model was used for the analysis of titration experiments where the respiration of rat liver mitochondria was inhibited with carboxyatractyloside and antimycin A. It is shown that the graphical estimation of Eo and Co lead to significant overestimation if the ratio Kd/Eo is larger than 10−4 which can be avoided by using our model

Symbolic QED Pre-silicon Verification for Automotive Microcontroller Cores: Industrial Case Study

We present an industrial case study that demonstrates the practicality and effectiveness of Symbolic Quick Error Detection (Symbolic QED) in detecting logic design flaws (logic bugs) during pre-silicon verification. Our study focuses on several microcontroller core designs (~1,800 flip-flops, ~70,000 logic gates) that have been extensively verified using an industrial verification flow and used for various commercial automotive products. The results of our study are as follows: 1. Symbolic QED detected all logic bugs in the designs that were detected by the industrial verification flow (which includes various flavors of simulation-based verification and formal verification). 2. Symbolic QED detected additional logic bugs that were not recorded as detected by the industrial verification flow. (These additional bugs were also perhaps detected by the industrial verification flow.) 3. Symbolic QED enables significant design productivity improvements: (a) 8X improved (i.e., reduced) verification effort for a new design (8 person-weeks for Symbolic QED vs. 17 person-months using the industrial verification flow). (b) 60X improved verification effort for subsequent designs (2 person-days for Symbolic QED vs. 4-7 person-months using the industrial verification flow). (c) Quick bug detection (runtime of 20 seconds or less), together with short counterexamples (10 or fewer instructions) for quick debug, using Symbolic QED

Оценка пригодности сиштофа для получения пеностекольных материалов

In this work gives the analysis of suitability of use of by-product processing aluminum for manufacture of heat-insulating material construction purpose

Comparative evaluation of gene delivery devices in primary cultures of rat hepatic stellate cells and rat myofibroblasts

BACKGROUND: The hepatic stellate cell is the primary cell type responsible for the excessive formation and deposition of connective tissue elements during the development of hepatic fibrosis in chronically injured liver. Culturing quiescent hepatic stellate cells on plastic causes spontaneous activation leading to a myofibroblastic phenotype similar to that seen in vivo. This provides a simple model system for studying activation and transdifferentiation of these cells. The introduction of exogenous DNA into these cells is discussed controversially mainly due to the lack of systematic analysis. Therefore, we examined comparatively five nonviral, lipid-mediated gene transfer methods and adenoviral based infection, as potential tools for efficient delivery of DNA to rat hepatic stellate cells and their transdifferentiated counterpart, i.e. myofibroblasts. Transfection conditions were determined using enhanced green fluorescent protein as a reporter expressed under the transcriptional control of the human cytomegalovirus immediate early gene 1 promoter/enhancer. RESULTS: With the use of chemically enhanced transfection methods, the highest relative efficiency was obtained with FuGENE™6 gene mediated DNA transfer. Quantitative evaluation of representative transfection experiments by flow cytometry revealed that approximately 6% of the rat hepatic stellate cells were transfected. None of the transfection methods tested was able to mediate gene delivery to rat myofibroblasts. To analyze if rat hepatic stellate cells and myofibroblasts are susceptible to adenoviral infection, we have inserted the transgenic expression cassette into a recombinant adenoviral type 5 genome as replacement for the E1 region. Viral particles of this replication-deficient Ad5-based reporter are able to infect 100% of rat hepatic stellate cells and myofibroblasts, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that FuGENE™6-based methods may be optimized sufficiently to offer a feasible approach for gene transfer into rat hepatic stellate cells. The data further demonstrate that adenoviral mediated transfer is a promising approach for gene delivery to these hepatic cells

Simulation of vibrating droplets using a phase field approach

Droplet vibration is an important phenomenon in many technical applications. Correctly predicting the occurring behaviour such as droplet detachment is a challenge for numerical simulations. In this work, a so‐called Navier‐Stokes‐Korteweg model that couples a gas‐liquid phase field to the Navier‐Stokes equations is used to simulate a droplet on a horizontally vibrating surface. Additionally, the equilibrium state of a static droplet on a fixed wall is simulated and the eigenshapes of the static system are investigated. It is found that this static eigenvalue analysis yields possible modes of the dynamic system, and some of the obtained eigenshapes can be recovered in the dynamic simulation

Регулируемый электропривод ротора буровой установки

Цель работы - разработка и исследование двухзонного электропривода ротора буровой установки БУ 2900/200. В работе выбраны элементы силовой цепи, определены оптимальные параметры настройки регуляторов системы, рассчитаны статические и динамические характеристики, определены качественные показатели.The operation purpose - development and a research of the two-zonal electric drive of a rotor of the BU 2900/200 drilling rig. Elements of a force circuit are selected from operation, optimum tuning properties of regulators of system are defined, direct and response characteristics are calculated, quality indicators are defined