Sentence Processing in a Second Language: Ambiguity Resolution in German Learners of English

The dissertation argues against fundamental differences between first and second language processing with regard to access to deep syntactic structures and phrase structure heuristics. This claim is supported by empirical data from off-line and on-line syntactic ambiguity resolution in non-immersed German learners of English. Although non-proficient learners’ processing deviates from native speakers because of L1 interference as well as less automatic processing and difficulties to recover from misanalyses resulting from processing capacity limitations, these effects were found to attenuate gradually with increasing second language proficiency. Moreover, it depends on the demands of the specific tasks and materials whether the learners’ limited processing resources actually lead to non-native like performance. In structures involving complex syntactic movement via an intermediate gap, the learners showed native-like intermediate gap and filler integration effects. Hence they have access to deep syntactic structures during on-line sentence processing. Moreover, participants did not show a general preference for ambiguous over disambiguated structures, which indicates that they have access to native-like syntactic processing principles. Taken together, the findings show that it is possible even for non-immersed learners to develop native-like syntactic processing in their second language

Credit Rationing with Symmetric Information

Without denying the importance of asymmetric information, this article purports the view that credit rationing may also originate from a lender's inability to classify loan applicants in proper risk categories. This effect is particularly strong when novel technologies are involved. Furthermore, its relevance may increase with the importance assigned to internal rating systems by the Basel accord. This article presents a measure of the inadequacy of a lender's classification criteria to the qualitative features of prospective borrowers. Even without information asymmetries, credit rationing may occur if this quantity reaches too high a value. Furthermore, some general principles are outlined, that may be used by lenders in order to change their classification criteria

Evaluation of different advanced finite element concepts for detailed stress analysis of laminated composite structures

Despite their high specific stiffness and strength, laminated composite materials, e.g. fibre-reinforced plastic plies stacked at different fibre orientations, are susceptible to damage. Damage can be divided into interalaminar damage and interlaminar damage. Delamination is a typical kind of interlaminar damage which occurs in laminated composite materials, often accompanied with intralaminar damage, and may lead to a catastrophic structural collapse. The first and most crucial step in the prediction of failure of Laminated Composite Structures (LCS) is to accurately determine the stresses, particularly the three transverse stress components, also called the interlaminar stresses. It is proposed in the present paper that the integration of a displacement based solid-shell formulation and partial-hybrid stress formulation will lead to an accurate and robust solid-shell element, suitable for the efficient and detailed interlaminar stress calculation

Optimal low-order fully integrated solid-shell elements

This paper presents three optimal low-order fully integrated geometrically nonlinear solid-shell elements based on the enhanced assumed strain (EAS) method and the assumed natural strain method for different types of structural analyses, e.g. analysis of thin homogeneous isotropic and multilayer anisotropic composite shell-like structures and the analysis of (near) incompressible materials. The proposed solid-shell elements possess eight nodes with only displacement degrees of freedom and a few internal EAS parameters. Due to the 3D geometric description of the proposed elements, 3D constitutive laws can directly be employed in these formulations. The present formulations are based on the well-known Fraeijs de Veubeke–Hu–Washizu multifield variational principle. In terms of accuracy as well as efficiency point of view, the choice of the optimal EAS parameters plays a very critical role in the EAS method, therefore a systematic numerical study has been carried out to find out the optimal EAS parameters to alleviate different locking phenomena for the proposed solid-shell formulations. To assess the accuracy of the proposed solid-shell elements, a variety of popular numerical benchmark examples related to element convergence, mesh distortions, element aspect ratios and different locking phenomena are investigated and the results are compared with the well-known solid-shell formulations available in the literature. The results of our numerical assessment show that the proposed solid-shell formulations provide very accurate results,without showing any numerical problems, for a variety of geometrically linear and nonlinear structural problems

Electric field measurements in atmospheric-pressure plasma jets

Atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasmas are researched for many applications. They became popular with plasma medicine, where restrictions on the plasmas are rigorous - they have to be at room temperature and not transfer significant amount of charge to the target, while still providing a mixture of reactive species, charge, field, to be efficient in medical applications. The intended applications soon extended to the treatment of different types of targets, where it is either important to treat them at atmospheric pressure (e.g. water) or with a plasma at room temperature. Atomic layer deposition is a good example of a traditionally low pressure technology being extended into the atmospheric pressure, and so is plasma catalysis. Another family of applications is in food and agriculture, where plasmas present a promising technology applied to a wide range of surfaces, dielectrics of different permittivities, in atmospheric air but also in humid conditions.\u3cbr/\u3eThe discharges used in these developments very often belong to the family of non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasmas - these are transient discharges, highly non-uniform in both space and time, small-scale (sub-mm), low ionization level, low light output, and most importantly sensitive to their environment. For example, a He plasma jet working in a kHz bullet mode changes its properties when impinging on a target with respect to the case when it expands freely into the ambient atmosphere. This is an important aspect to be kept in mind when bringing non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasmas into\u3cbr/\u3eapplications. It is also the motivation for the research presented in this talk. \u3cbr/\u3eThis work focuses on the fundamental properties of non-thermal plasmas such as the electric field, charge density and electron temperature. The work was performed on a non-thermal atmospheric pressure He plasma jet working in a kHz-driven mode with one ionization wave produced per voltage period or pulse. These fundamental properties of the discharge were measured in a freely expanding jet as well as when impinging on targets of different types, from low-permittivity dielectrics such as glass, to water, to metal. The measurements were performed in the plasma plume, but also in a target when a high-permittivity dielectric (er = 56) was used.\u3cbr/\u3eThe results bring one of the first sets of data concerning the E field, electron density and electron temperature, which are relatable to each other through the fact that they were all obtained on the same discharge. The effect of the gas flow speed is significant in the freely expanding jet, showing that the increased flow extends not only the visible length of the plasma plume, but also its electric field profile. In addition, the electron density and temperature were shown to respectively fall and rise within the plasma plume with increasing the distance from the end of the glass capillary.\u3cbr/\u3eThe presence of the target influences the plasma plume in several different ways. For low-permittivity targets, such as plastic or glass, the presence of the target does not significantly influence the plasma properties in the plume, but it does initiate surface discharges belonging to the family of ionization waves. The electric field induced in the target material by those surface ionization waves were measured, both axially, in the direction through the material, and radially. When the permittivity of the target is increased, the surface ionization waves are replaced by one or several return strokes and a significantly altered electric field profile, along with increased electron density and temperature. In the extreme case of the metallic target, combined with much higher electron densities, the duration of the discharge on the metal surface is extended to a microsecond. The work shows not only that the presence of the target influences the plasma, but that the properties of the target determine the plasma parameters, also in the gas phase