Identification and quantification of cannabinol as a biomarker for local hemp retting in an ancient sedimentary record by HPTLC-ESI-MS

Cannabis products have been used in various fields of everyday life for many centuries, and applications in folk medicine and textile production have been well-known for many centuries. For traditional textile production, hemp fibers were extracted from the stems by water retting in stagnant or slow-moving waters. During this procedure, parts of the plant material‚ among them phytocannabinoids‚ are released into the water. Cannabinol (CBN) is an important degradation product of the predominant phytocannabinoids found in Cannabis species. Thus, it is an excellent indicator for present as well as ancient hemp water retting. In this study, we developed and validated a simple and fast method for the determination of CBN in sediment samples using high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) combined with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), thereby testing different extraction and cleanup procedures‚ as well as various sorbents and solvents for planar chromatography. This method shows a satisfactory overall analytical performance with an average recovery rate of 73%. Our protocol enabled qualitative and quantitative analyses of CBN in samples of a bottom sediment core‚ having been obtained from a small lake in Northern India, where intense local retting of hemp was suggested in the past. The analyses showed a maximum CBN content in pollen zone 4 covering a depth range of 262–209 cm, dating from approximately 480 BCE to 1050 CE. These findings correlate with existing records of Cannabis-type pollen. Thus, the method we propose is a helpful tool to track ancient hemp retting activities

On convex lower-level black-box constraints in bilevel optimization with an application to gas market models with chance constraints

Bilevel optimization is an increasingly important tool to model hierarchical decision making. However, the ability of modeling such settings makes bilevel problems hard to solve in theory and practice. In this paper, we add on the general difficulty of this class of problems by further incorporating convex black-box constraints in the lower level. For this setup, we develop a cutting-plane algorithm that computes approximate bilevel-feasible points. We apply this method to a bilevel model of the European gas market in which we use a joint chance constraint to model uncertain loads. Since the chance constraint is not available in closed form, this fits into the black-box setting studied before. For the applied model, we use further problem-specific insights to derive bounds on the objective value of the bilevel problem. By doing so, we are able to show that we solve the application problem to approximate global optimality. In our numerical case study we are thus able to evaluate the welfare sensitivity in dependence of the achieved safety level of uncertain load coverage

Hardware Software Co-Design for Impact Localization using Hybrid Laminates

Impact detection using piezoelectric sensors is an actual and widespread research field. The current work provides an approach for a real-time realization of an impact detection system using deep learning methods. For realization a hardware software co-design approach is used utilizing hardware acceleration by a continuous pipelining FPGA structure. The concept describes the hardware software partitioning of the underlying functions and the methodology for ensuring continuous data processing and the associated real-time capability. The behavior of the hardware is realized with the help of a finite state machine and thus the correctness of the data is ensured and the impact identification is realized. The results show the real-time capability as well as a reasonable resource utilization of the FPGA design

Development of an interface for digital neuromorphic hardware based on an FPGA

Exploring and understanding the functioning of the human brain is one of the greatest challenges for current research. Neuromorphic engineering tries to address this challenge by abstracting biological mechanisms and translating them into technology. Via the abstraction process and experiments with the resulting technical system, an attempt is made to obtain information about the biological counterpart. One subsection of Neuromorphic Engineering (NE) are Spiking Neural Networks (SNN), which describe the structures of the human brain more and more closely than Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Together with their dedicated hardware, SNNs provide a good platform for developing new algorithms for information processing. In the context of these neuromorphic hardware platforms, this paper aims to develop an interface for a digital hardware platform (SPINN-3 Development Board) to enable the use of industrial or conventional sensors and thus create new approaches for experimental research. The basis for this endeavor is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which is placed as a gateway between the sensors and the neuromorphic hardware. Overall, the developed system provides a robust solution for a wide variety of investigations related to neuromorphic hardware and SNNs. Furthermore, the solution also offers suitable possibilities to monitor all processes within the system in order to obtain suitable measurements, which can be examined in search of meaningful results.Comment: Accepted for publication with Proceedings of the Unified Conference of DAMAS, InCoME and TEPEN Conferences (UNIfied 2023), Springer Natur

Controllability of star-shaped networks of strings

In this note we consider a star-shaped network of vibrating strings. The problem of controllability when one control acts on the junction point is considered. A simple proof is given that, in particular, does not use Ingham inequalities, of the fact that the set of reachable data is dense, whenever the lengths of the strings are mutually irrational. The proof is based on an observability inequality with suitable weights on the Fourier coefficients that is easily obtained as a consequence of the time-periodicity of the solutions. Those weights can be estimated under certain algebraicity conditions imposed on the lengths of the strings. This allows to proof exact controllability results in Sobolev spaces of appropriate order. Further results are also presented concerning the control from a free end and diffusion processes

Revealing knowledge workers’ tacit knowledge usage in the product development department of an automotive manufacturer

This study seeks to explore the application of tacit knowledge by knowledge workers in the development department of a multinational auto manufacturer. While the existing literature on tacit knowledge outlines the importance of tacit knowledge to organisational performance (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Sternberg et al., 1995; Spender, 1996; Baumard, 1999; Gore and Gore, 1999; Jafari, Akhavan and Nourizadeh, 2013), research on tacit knowledge is still underrepresented (Brown and Duguid, 1998; Holtshouse, 1998; Leonard and Sensiper, 1998; Zack, Rand and Wilsh, 1999; Garcia-Perez and Mitra, 2007; McAdam, Mason and McCrory, 2007). Authors in the field of tacit knowledge including Kabir (2013), McAdam, Mason and McCrory (2007), Sumbal et al. (2017), Holtshouse (2010) call for further research in the field of tacit knowledge related to the identification of tacit knowledge and the potential of using specific methods in research on and management of tacit knowledge. Furthermore only a few studies on tacit knowledge in the automotive sector exist. Hence relatively little is known about tacit knowledge usage in the automotive sector. The aims of this study are 1) to identify specific tacit knowledge frequently used by knowledge workers in the product development department of a multinational car manufacturer and 2) to further explore the tacit knowledge usage by eliciting how and why it is used in achieving organisational goals. This embedded researcher single case study in the product development department of a multinational automotive company employed a mixed methods approach conducted in two sequential steps. The quantitative first step analysed internal job advertisements for evidence of epitomes of tacit knowledge (Haldin-Herrgard, 2003) and discovered the areas of the highest concentration of application of such. The second step used semi-structured interviews to discover the “hows” and “whys” of tacit knowledge application in the frequently used forms – skills, experience, and abilities – in achieving organisational objectives of automotive development. This research contributes new knowledge in research on tacit knowledge in the automotive sector as called for by Jafari, Akhavan and Nourizadeh (2013) as well as the call by Kabir (2013) for the development of an approach to identify tacit knowledge in organisational data. The concept of epitomes of tacit knowledge (ETK) developed by Haldin-Herrgard (2003) is employed in this research and makes use of quantitative content analysis and elicits tacit knowledge from organisational data. Although it contributes new knowledge on how epitomes of tacit knowledge can be conceptualized to act as a construct for managing tacit knowledge as demanded by McAdam, Mason and McCrory (2007). ETK were used in the context of content analysis to quantify the amount of tacit knowledge and to identify frequently applied forms of tacit knowledge in different knowledge worker positions. With the approach of quantifying the amount of applied tacit knowledge by knowledge workers in different positions employed in this research, this research contributes new knowledge on assessing the risk of possible knowledge loss in case of employee leavings, thus answering a request from Sumbal et al. (2017) and Holtshouse, (2010). The upshot is that tacit knowledge intensive positions can be identified and classified according to the amount of potential tacit knowledge loss. Finally, the results provide new insights into individual applications of 1) tacit knowledge in the form of social skills to facilitate development work in this department 2) tacit knowledge in the form of experience in knowing what has or has not worked in the past so as to avoid problem-related inefficiencies, and 3) tacit knowledge in the form of abilities to approach and solve problems – all three of which are combined and applied as means of reaching the product development goals of this multinational automotive manufacturer

Mündliche Literatur in Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s Roman "Das seltsame Schicksal des Wangrin"?

Amadou Hampaté Bâ legte mit „Das seltsame Schicksal des Wangrin“ einen vielstimmigen Roman vor, dessen Ästhetik entscheidend von der Einarbeitung und Inszenierung von Mündlicher Literatur bestimmt ist. In meinem Aufsatz gehe ich zum einen der Frage nach, inwieweit es Bâ unternimmt, den sinnlichen Reichtum Mündlicher Literatur, also entsprechende Sounds, Gestik, Mimik, Proxemik, musikalische Begleitung, in den einen graphischen Kommunikationskanal, in Schrift zu überführen, und zum anderen, inwiefern er die sprachlichen Anteile Mündlicher Literatur in das Romanganze hineinwebt, inwiefern er Verbindungen zwischen den Oraturen und den im Roman aufgerufenen sozialen Situationen herstellt. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung steht ein bestimmter Vortrag. Der Romanheld Wangrin lässt sich vor dem Haus der Mutter der von ihm umworbenen Rammaye Bira durch seinen Griot preisen, wirbt solcherart um die junge Frau. Herman Meyers Konzept der epischen Integration aufgreifend, lege ich dar, inwiefern diese eine Performanzsituation mit anderen Stellen, an denen im Roman Mündliche Literatur inszeniert wird, korrespondiert, um dadurch zu generelleren Aussagen über die Verfahrensweise Bâ’s hinsichtlich der Aufnahme von Mündlicher Literatur zu gelangen. Am Anfang des Aufsatzes fasse ich Charakteristika Mündlicher Literatur zusammen und problematisiere deren Überführung in den schriftlichen Modus