Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS)

Sign language offers a unique perspective on the human faculty of language by illustrating that linguistic abilities are not bound to speech and writing. In studies of spoken and written language processing, lexical variables such as, for example, age of acquisition have been found to play an important role, but such information is not as yet available for German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). Here, we present a set of norms for frequency, age of acquisition, and iconicity for more than 300 lexical DGS signs, derived from subjective ratings by 32 deaf signers. We also provide additional norms for iconicity and transparency for the same set of signs derived from ratings by 30 hearing non-signers. In addition to empirical norming data, the dataset includes machine-readable information about a sign’s correspondence in German and English, as well as annotations of lexico-semantic and phonological properties: one-handed vs. two-handed, place of articulation, most likely lexical class, animacy, verb type, (potential) homonymy, and potential dialectal variation. Finally, we include information about sign onset and offset for all stimulus clips from automated motion-tracking data. All norms, stimulus clips, data, as well as code used for analysis are made available through the Open Science Framework in the hope that they may prove to be useful to other researchers: https://osf.io/mz8j4

Stochastic simulations of the quantum Zeno effect

Published versio

Wire scanners in low energy accelerators

Fast wire scanners are today considered as part of standard instrumentation in high energy synchrotrons. The extension of their use to synchrotrons working at lower energies, where Coulomb scattering can be important and the transverse beam size is large, introduces new complications considering beam heating of the wire, composition of the secondary particle shower and geometrical consideration in the detection set-up. A major problem in treating these effects is that the creation of secondaries in a thin carbon wire by a energetic primary beam is difficult to describe in an analytical way. We are here presenting new results from a full Monte Carlo simulation of this process yielding information on heat deposited in the wire, particle type and energy spectrum of secondaries and angular dependence as a function of primary beam energy. The results are used to derive limits for the use of wire scanners in low energy accelerators.Comment: 20 pages, 8 Postscript figures, uses elsart.cl

Time Budget on Major Activities of Livestock Grazing Heterogeneous Natural Range and Crop Fields in Semi-Arid Nigeria

Semi-arid rangelands of West Africa provide herbs, trees and shrubs, which together with crop residues form the main sources of feed for the livestock population. Feed supply in this region is characterised by a progressive decline in quantity and quality with advancing dry season. It was reported that walking ability as well as watering frequencies affect the productivity of grazing livestock (Dicko and Sangare, 1984). This study tests the hypothesis that advancing season increases both time spent walking as well as feeding, with a switch from grazing to browsing

Crystal structure of a ring-cleaving cyclohexane-1,2-dione hydrolase, a novel member of the thiamine diphosphate enzyme family

The thiamine diphosphate (ThDP) dependent flavoenzyme cyclohexane-1,2-dione hydrolase (CDH) (EC 3.7.1.11) catalyses a key step of a novel anaerobic degradation pathway for alicyclic alcohols by converting cyclohexane-1,2-dione (CDO) to 6-oxohexanoate and further to adipate using NAD(+) as electron acceptor. To gain insights into the molecular basis of these reactions CDH from denitrifying anaerobe Azoarcus sp. strain 22Lin was structurally characterized at 1.26 Å resolution. Notably, the active site funnel is rearranged in an unprecedented manner providing the structural basis for the specific binding and cleavage of an alicyclic compound. Crucial features include a decreased and displaced funnel entrance, a semi-circularly shaped loop segment preceding the C-terminal arm and the attachment of the C-terminal arm to other subunits of the CDH tetramer. Its structural scaffold and the ThDP activation is related to that observed for other members of the ThDP enzyme family. The selective binding of the competitive inhibitor 2-methyl-2,4-pentane-diol (MPD) to the open funnel of CDH reveals an asymmetry of the two active sites found also in the dimer of several other ThDP dependent enzymes. The substrate binding site is characterized by polar and non-polar moieties reflected in the structures of MPD and CDO and by three prominent histidine residues (His28, His31 and His76) that most probably play a crucial role in substrate activation. The NAD(+) dependent oxidation of 6-oxohexanoate remains enigmatic as the redox-active cofactor FAD seems not to participate in catalysis, and no obvious NAD(+) binding site is found. Based on the structural data both reactions are discussed

Vibrational pair cat states

Published versio

Stochastic Cutoff Method for Long-Range Interacting Systems

A new Monte-Carlo method for long-range interacting systems is presented. This method consists of eliminating interactions stochastically with the detailed balance condition satisfied. When a pairwise interaction $V_{ij}$ of a $N$-particle system decreases with the distance as $r_{ij}^{-\alpha}$, computational time per one Monte Carlo step is ${\cal O}(N)$ for $\alpha \ge d$ and ${\cal O}(N^{2-\alpha/d})$ for $\alpha < d$, where $d$ is the spatial dimension. We apply the method to a two-dimensional magnetic dipolar system. The method enables us to treat a huge system of $256^2$ spins with reasonable computational time, and reproduces a circular order originated from long-range dipolar interactions.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 1 figure and 1 reference are adde

Roughness gradient induced spontaneous motion of droplets on hydrophobic surfaces: A lattice Boltzmann study

The effect of a step wise change in the pillar density on the dynamics of droplets is investigated via three-dimensional lattice Boltzmann simulations. For the same pillar density gradient but different pillar arrangements, both motion over the gradient zone as well as complete arrest are observed. In the moving case, the droplet velocity scales approximately linearly with the texture gradient. A simple model is provided reproducing the observed linear behavior. The model also predicts a linear dependence of droplet velocity on surface tension. This prediction is clearly confirmed via our computer simulations for a wide range of surface tensions.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure