65 research outputs found

    Integration and management of PV-battery systems in the grid

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    The paper describes recent developments and implementation of a method and a prototype solving the problem of optimal integration of PV-battery energy storage systems into the power grid. The first practical results achieved in cooperation with ABB Switzerland Ltd. using a real-time prototype of the developed advanced battery controller and the largest Li-Ion battery installed in Switzerland at the electric power utility of the canton of Zurich (EKZ) are presented

    Converbs, Medial Verbs, Clause Chaining and Related Issues

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    This volume grew out of a workshop on "Converbs, medial verbs, clause chaining and related issues" held at Leiden University on 8th December 2006, which was cosponsored by the Swiss National Science Fotmdation (SNF) project "Functional typology of Ethiopian languages" (no. 100012-\09306). That occasion brought together specialists working on a range of languages spoken in a circle that spans from New Caledonia via India to Ethiopia and Mozambique. All while struggling to find a common language to talk about phenomena that are so pervasive in our respective languages of investigation, our discussions greatly benefited from the pooling of experiences in fields between which scientific exchange is often obstructed by the boundaries of various traditions. Far from adhering all to one theory or perspective, we hope that bringing together the following articles in one volume will provide new data and insights for tile already lively discussion around converbs, medial verbs and related issues. We wish to thank the editorial board of the Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blatter for accepting this volume in their journal and for their willingness to publish articles that go beyond African languages. In the same vein, we wish to thank all contributors to this volume, and especially our non-Africanist colleagues that have crossed one or more continental and disciplinary divides by publishing in this journal. Special mention and thanks are due to Sascha Völlmin, who did the layout of the whole volume. Finally, we hereby gratefully acknowledge the financial and logistical support of the workshop by the Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Leiden, and the Swiss National Science Foundation

    Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

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    Non peer reviewe

    The quotative marker in Gilaki

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    Gilaki belongs to the Caspian subgroup of Northwest Iranian and can be divided into two major dialect groups, Western Gilaki with Rasht as its center and Eastern Gilaki with Lahijan as its center (Stilo 2001: 660). There are between two and three million speakers, most of whom are bilingual in Gilaki and Persian. The following is a first presentation of reported speech in Gilaki or, more exactly, the quotative marker in Rashti, i.e., the Western Gilaki dialect of the city of Rasht. The language data used in this chapter derive from a corpus of about thirty minutes of audio recordings of natural speech and dialogues or spontaneously narrated stories of Gilaki speakers raised in (or around) Rasht. Thus, the results presented here hold true only for Rashti for certain. The situation in other Western Gilaki variants or Eastern Gilaki must be left open. However, concluding from a remark of a speaker of Eastern Gilaki saying that “people in Rasht speak like this” (i.e., with the quotative marker), it is possible that no (or no similar) quotative marker exists in Eastern Gilaki. There are not many sources available that describe Gilaki, and no descriptions of reported speech in this language, a topic often neglected in grammars. The most comprehensive grammar (Rastorgeuva et al. 1971) and the most recent (but short) description by Stilo (2001) do not treat reported speech; likewise Sartippur (1990). This chapter intends to be a contribution to fill this gap. On the other hand, however, I also hope to show that Gilaki exhibits typologically interesting features with regard to reported speech in general as well as in Iranian languages in particular

    Psychobiological consequences of stress in sensitive developmental stages and potential protective factors

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    The aim of the present dissertation is to contribute to the knowledge of the negative health consequences due to early stress experiences in humans and to investigate potential protective factors beneficial for health. While a stress response to a threatening situation of limited duration is functional, it can become dysfunctional when stressors are chronic or perceived as uncontrollable. Stress during pregnancy, childhood and adolescence has been associated with the development of physical and mental disorders. However, most studies that investigated the association of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and stress responses in adulthood were conducted on clinical samples and reported contradictive results regarding the alterations of the stress system. Studies on healthy participants are still scarce, however, a few studies observed blunted endocrine and cardiovascular responses to stress in relation to a history of ACEs. Therefore, the first study reported in this dissertation aimed to replicate the attenuated endocrine and cardiovascular stress reactivity in healthy, female subjects reporting a history of ACEs and furthermore investigated the impact of duration and age of onset of ACEs. Results confirmed that a history of ACEs was associated with a dampened endocrine and cardiovascular stress response to a mental stress test and that especially long enduring, chronic ACEs seem to have the strongest impact on the attenuated stress reactivity (Article 1). Article 2 investigated the impact of positive affect on biological outcomes in pregnancy. There is accumulative evidence that positive emotions are related to beneficial physical and psychological health outcomes. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that maternal psychosocial stress is a risk factor for obstetric birth outcomes like shorter length of gestation and preterm delivery. Therefore, in this study conducted on 169 women with singleton pregnancies, the hypothesis if maternal positive affect during pregnancy is associated with beneficial consequences in terms of increased length of gestation and reduced risk of preterm birth was tested. Results showed that higher maternal positive affect and a steeper increase in maternal positive affect over pregnancy were positively associated with length of gestation and reduced risk of preterm delivery. It was argued that positive emotions may exert their beneficial effect by impacting maternal and fetal stress and immune systems. Article 3 investigated the efficacy of the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST) in healthy female subjects. The MIST is a standardized psychosocial stress test and has not been validated outside the MRT in a healthy female sample so far. Results confirmed that the MIST is a valid instrument for inducing a multidimensional stress response and that it can be classified as being a moderate stress test

    The so-called converbs in Gumer (Gurage)

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    Some dialectal differences between Gumer and Chaha (Gurage)

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    Benefactives and malefactives in Gumer (Gurage)

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    Gumer (West-Gurage, South Ethiosemitic) has three suffixes to mark objects on the verb: ‘primary object’, ‘benefactive’, ‘malefactive/locative/instrumental’. BEN and MAL can occur with every verb to express in a rather broad sense that the event is ‘to one’s benefit’ or ‘to one’s detriment’. BEN covers the benefactive senses ‘recipient’, ‘deputative’, and ‘plain’. Generally, BEN and MAL express non-core participants. The three suffixes are mutually exclusive: if there are two concurring objects, the most salient candidate is chosen (which usually is BEN or MAL). Overt nominals BEN are marked with ye-, the same prefix that marks recipients. MAL are marked with ye- or be-. A construction with a subordinate form of barem ‘say’ (“saying for NP”) also expresses benefactives
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