1,279 research outputs found
From Teamchef Arminius to Hermann Junior: glocalised discourse about a national foundation myth
If for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ‘Battle of the Teutoburg Forest’, fought in 9 CE between Roman armies and Germanic tribes, was predominantly a reference point for nationalist and chauvinist discourses in Germany, the first decade of the twenty-first century has seen attempts to link public remembrance with local/regional identities on the one hand and international/intercultural contact on the other. In the run up to and during the ‘anniversary year’ of 2009, German media, sports institutions and various other official institutions articulating tourist, economic and political interests attempted to create a new ‘glocalised’ version of the public memory of the Teutoburg battle. Combining methods of Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper analyses the narrative and argumentative topoi employed in this re-orientation of public memory, with a special emphasis on hybrid, post-national identity-construction. Das zweitausendjährige Gedenkjahr der „Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald“ im Jahr 2009 bot eine günstige Gelegenheit, die bis in die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts dominante Tradition nationalistisch–chauvinistischer Deutungen des Sieges von germanischen Stämmen über drei römische Legionen zu korrigieren und zu überwinden. Der Aufsatz analysiert mit Hilfe diskurslinguistischer Methoden die Anstrengungen regionaler Institutionen und Medien, die nationale Vereinnahmung des historischen Gedenkens kritisch zu thematisieren sowie neue, zum eine lokal situierte, zum andern international orientierte Identifikationsangebote anzubieten. Die Analyse zeigt, dass solche „de-nationalisierten“ Identifikationsangebote zwar teilweise auch früher verwendet wurden, aber heutzutage rekontextualisiert und auf innovative Weise in den Vordergrund gestellt werden
Identification of a surrogate to validate irradiation processing of selected spices
Onion powder and talc were inoculated with one of three groups of Salmonella enterica or a putative surrogate, Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354, and the radiation sensitivity of S. enterica was compared to E. faecium. For both inoculated onion powder and inoculated talc, D10-values were greater for E. faecium than any of the three groups of S. enterica. The survival of E. faecium in irradiated talc was used to estimate the potential survival of S. enterica in irradiated spices. Onion powder, dried oregano, whole cumin seeds or peppercorns were mixed with talc inoculated with either S. enterica (previously associated with a foodborne disease outbreak) or E. faecium and irradiated. The D10-values were calculated for each bacterial group and compared between E. faecium and S. enterica within each spice. For each spice, the D10-value for E. faecium was either not statistically different from (P \u3c 0.05) S. entericaor greater than that of S. enterica (onion powder). Quadratic and linear models were developed to allow the estimation of potential surviving populations, and potential decimal reductions of S. enterica, based on surviving populations and decimal reductions determined with E. faecium. The use of E. faecium and these mathematical models would allow a processor to validate an irradiation process by estimating the reduction in S. enterica, based on the population reductions of E. faecium
Towards balance and boundaries in public discourse : expressing and perceiving online hate speech (XPEROHS)
This study presents an overview and preliminary findings from the XPEROHS-project on hate speech in online contexts. The data is extracted from large-scale Facebook and Twitter corpora, while comparing linguistic instantiations of hate speech in the Danish and German languages. Findings are based on four sub-projects involving the semantics and pragmatics of denigration, the covert dynamics of hate speech, perceptions of spoken and written hate speech, and rhetorical hate speech strategies employed in online interaction. The results demonstrate both overt and covert hate speech towards minority groups, especially Muslims, that are symptomatic of larger societal othering processes and stigmatization
LEDAkem: a post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism based on QC-LDPC codes
This work presents a new code-based key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) called
LEDAkem. It is built on the Niederreiter cryptosystem and relies on
quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check codes as secret codes, providing high
decoding speeds and compact keypairs. LEDAkem uses ephemeral keys to foil known
statistical attacks, and takes advantage of a new decoding algorithm that
provides faster decoding than the classical bit-flipping decoder commonly
adopted in this kind of systems. The main attacks against LEDAkem are
investigated, taking into account quantum speedups. Some instances of LEDAkem
are designed to achieve different security levels against classical and quantum
computers. Some performance figures obtained through an efficient C99
implementation of LEDAkem are provided.Comment: 21 pages, 3 table
A covalent linker allows for membrane targeting of an oxylipin biosynthetic complex
A naturally occurring bifunctional protein from Plexaura homomalla links sequential catalytic activities in an oxylipin biosynthetic pathway. The C-terminal lipoxygenase (LOX) portion of the molecule catalyzes the transformation of arachidonic acid (AA) to the corresponding 8R-hydroperoxide, and the N-terminal allene oxide synthase (AOS) domain promotes the conversion of the hydroperoxide intermediate to the product allene oxide (AO). Small-angle X-ray scattering data indicate that in the absence of a covalent linkage the two catalytic domains that transform AA to AO associate to form a complex that recapitulates the structure of the bifunctional protein. The SAXS data also support a model for LOX and AOS domain orientation in the fusion protein inferred from a low-resolution crystal structure. However, results of membrane binding experiments indicate that covalent linkage of the domains is required for Ca2+-dependent membrane targeting of the sequential activities, despite the noncovalent domain association. Furthermore, membrane targeting is accompanied by a conformational change as monitored by specific proteolysis of the linker that joins the AOS and LOX domains. Our data are consistent with a model in which Ca2+-dependent membrane binding relieves the noncovalent interactions between the AOS and LOX domains and suggests that the C2-like domain of LOX mediates both protein-protein and protein-membrane interactions. © 2008 American Chemical Society
Measurement of the branching ratio of pi^0 -> e^+e^- using K_L -> 3 pi^0 decays in flight
The branching ratio of the rare decay pi^0 -> e^+e^- has been measured in
E799-II, a rare kaon decay experiment using the KTeV detector at Fermilab. The
pi^0's were produced in fully-reconstructed K_L -> 3 pi^0 decays in flight. We
observed 275 candidate pi^0 -> e^+e^- events, with an expected background of
21.4 +- 6.2 events which includes the contribution from Dalitz decays. We
measured BR(pi^0 -> e^+e^-, x>0.95) = (6.09 +- 0.40 +- 0.24) times 10^{-8},
where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. This result is
the first significant observation of the excess rate for this decay above the
unitarity lower bound.Comment: New version shortened to PRL length limit. 5 pages, 4 figures.
Published in Phys. Rev. Let
Improving the Performance of the SYND Stream Cipher
International audience. In 2007, Gaborit et al. proposed the stream cipher SYND as an improvement of the pseudo random number generator due to Fischer and Stern. This work shows how to improve considerably the e ciency the SYND cipher without using the so-called regular encoding and without compromising the security of the modi ed SYND stream cipher. Our proposal, called XSYND, uses a generic state transformation which is reducible to the Regular Syndrome Decoding problem (RSD), but has better computational characteristics than the regular encoding. A rst implementation shows that XSYND runs much faster than SYND for a comparative security level (being more than three times faster for a security level of 128 bits, and more than 6 times faster for 400-bit security), though it is still only half as fast as AES in counter mode. Parallel computation may yet improve the speed of our proposal, and we leave it as future research to improve the e ciency of our implementation
Disclosure of Maternal HIV Status to Children: To Tell or Not To Tell . . . That Is the Question
HIV-infected mothers face the challenging decision of whether to disclose their serostatus to their children. From the perspective of both mother and child, we explored the process of disclosure, providing descriptive information and examining the relationships among disclosure, demographic variables, and child adjustment. Participants were 23 mothers and one of their noninfected children (9 to 16 years of age). Sixty-one percent of mothers disclosed. Consistent with previous research, disclosure was not related to child functioning. However, children sworn to secrecy demonstrated lower social competence and more externalizing problems. Differential disclosure, which occurred in one-third of the families, was associated with higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Finally, knowing more than mothers had themselves disclosed was related to child maladjustment across multiple domains. Clinical implications and the need for future research are considered
Recent Innovations & Daily Problems. A new prosthesis in inguinal hernia repair:preliminary results of a pilot study.
Introduction: Elective surgery for inguinal hernia is affected by very
low mortality « 1 per 10000 operation); in contrast, when surgery
is carried out for complicated inguinal hernia, risks of postoperative
complication are higher. TAPP is a world-wide accepted surgical practice
in the treatment of elective bilateral or recurrent inguinal hernia,
above all in young patients. Few exploratory studies were published on
laparoscopic approach in the treatment of urgent complicated inguinal
hernia. Aim of this study was to analyze feasibility (operative time,
conversion rate), safety (postoperative morbidity, length of hospital
stay) and quality of life (acute and chronic pain, return to work) of
trans-abdominal pre-peritoneal laparoscopic hernia repair in acute
incarcerated inguinal hernia. Rationale of laparoscopic trans-abdominal
approach is the easier hernia reduction under vision and a better
exploration of the abdominal cavity.
Methods: from September 2012 to September 2013, 15 consecutive
patients admitted in emergency at the Division of General Surgery of
University "Sapienza", Polo Pontino, for acute incarcerated inguinal
hernia were submitted to TAPP using 3 trocars (1 of 10 mm and 2 of
5mm) and polyester prosthesis fixed by fibrin glue. Exclusion criteria
for laparoscopic approach were age III, previous
abdominal surgery, signs of strangulated hernia. All of them were
evaluated for operative time, conversion rate, postoperative morbidity,
organ resection or other surgery required. All patients were scored for
pain by Visual Analogic Scale (VAS) during postoperative in hospital
stay at 7 days, 1,6 and 12 months after surgery.
Results: median follow-up was 16 months and 12 as minimum. In all
cases reduction of hernia was always possible and none conversion
to open surgery was recorded, median operative time was 89 minutes
(55-137 as range), omental resection was carried out in one patient
(6,6%), no other organ resections needed, whereas contralateral hernia
was diagnosed and repaired at the same time in 4 patients (26,6%). No
major complications were observed, median blood loss was 100 ml,
minor morbidity was contained to 18% represented by fever and
wound infection of surgical umbilical scar. Median in hospital stay
was 1,5 days with 1-5 days as range. Postoperative median acute pain,
measured by visual analogic scale (VAS), was 2 (range:0-4), none
patient referred any pain during follow-up. Median time of return to
work was 6,5 days, ranged between 3 to 15 days. Patients' compliance
to treatment and to follow-up was complete as well their satisfaction. Conclusions: In centres skilled for laparoscopy in emergency, TAPP
could be considered a feasible and safe technique. In well-selected
patients (especially if emolled in controlled clinical trial) TAPP could
represent an alternative surgical approach for complicated incarcerated inguinal hernia to conventional open surgery even in urgency. The
main advantages of laparoscopic approach are the ability to perform
surgical hernia reduction under vision, a better exploration and evaluation
of abdominal cavity and diagnosis and treatment of eventual
contralateral defect of wall, otherwise often missed. Finally, the good
control of acute and chronic pain, faster return to normal activity and
work, better aesthetic results contributed to total satisfaction and compliance
of the patients
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