Annotation of Fine-Grained Geographical Entities in German Texts

We work on the creation of a corpus, crawled from the internet, on the Berlin district of Moabit, primarily meant for training NER systems in German and English. Typical NER corpora and corresponding systems distinguish persons, organisations and locations, but do not distinguish different types of location entities. For our tourism-inspired use case, we need fine-grained annotations for toponyms. In this paper, we outline the fine-grained classification of geographical entities, the resulting annotations and we present preliminary results on automatically tagging toponyms in a small, bootstrapped gold corpus

Efficient Language Model Training through Cross-Lingual and Progressive Transfer Learning

Most Transformer language models are primarily pretrained on English text, limiting their use for other languages. As the model sizes grow, the performance gap between English and other languages with fewer compute and data resources increases even further. Consequently, more resource-efficient training methods are needed to bridge the gap for languages with fewer resources available. To address this problem, we introduce a cross-lingual and progressive transfer learning approach, called CLP-Transfer, that transfers models from a source language, for which pretrained models are publicly available, like English, to a new target language. As opposed to prior work, which focused on the cross-lingual transfer between two languages, we extend the transfer to the model size. Given a pretrained model in a source language, we aim for a same-sized model in a target language. Instead of training a model from scratch, we exploit a smaller model that is in the target language but requires much fewer resources. Both small and source models are then used to initialize the token embeddings of the larger model based on the overlapping vocabulary of the source and target language. All remaining weights are reused from the model in the source language. This approach outperforms the sole cross-lingual transfer and can save up to 80% of the training steps compared to the random initialization

Prüfung verschiedener Mischungspartner zum Erzielen hoher Erträge von Sommererbsen unter bayerischen Standortbedingungen

Ein Erreichen hoher Erbsenerträge ist im Gemengeanbau mit semi-leafless Sommererbsen schwierig. Mit diesem Ziel wurden verschiedene Mischungspartner (Gerste, Hafer (zwei Saatstärken) und Leindotter) in additiven Gemengen unter Beibehaltung der Reinsaatstärke der Erbse im Vergleich zu einer Erbsenreinsaat geprüft. Es wurden drei Feldversuche auf einem Standort in Oberbayern durchgeführt. Die Höhe des Erbsenertrages als auch der Verkaufsleistung des Gesamtertrages wurde in folgender Reihenfolge bestimmt: Erbsenreinsaat > Leindotter ≥ Hafer (geringe Saatstärke) > Hafer (hohe Saatstärke) ≥ Gerste. Die Vorteile des Gemengeanbaus bzgl. einer besseren Beikrautunterdrückung, einer geringeren Lagerneigung und einer größeren Ertragsstabilität konnten weitestgehend bestätigt werden. Für Flächen mit einem geringen Beikrautdruck ist daher die Erbsenreinsaat, für andere ein additives Gemenge mit Leindotter oder Hafer in der geringen Saatstärke zu empfehlen

Einfluss des Saatzeitpunktes ausgewählter Sommerweizen¬sorten auf Ertrag, Qualität und Krankheits- und Schädlingsbefall

Achieving high baking quality and sufficient yield is often a challenge in organic wheat production. The impact of sowing date (either autumn or spring) was compared regarding grain yield, baking quality and infestation with chloropid gout fly of seven varieties of spring wheat. The field trial was conducted in 2010, 2012 and 2013 on a sandy loam nearby Freising, Bavaria. Two varieties showed higher grain yield after autumn sowing compared to spring sowing in two of the three years. But the opposite occurred consequently for two other varieties. The other three varieties showed no consistent reaction. This different reaction may refer in the majority to a different infestation with chloropid gout fly. Additionally, a higher baking quality (protein content, wet gluten content, loaf volume) was analyzed for spring sowing compared to autumn sowing

The strategic impact of META-NET on the regional, national and international level

This article provides an overview of the dissemination work carried out in META-NET from 2010 until early 2014; we describe its impact on the regional, national and international level, mainly with regard to politics and the situation of funding for LT topics. This paper documents the initiative’s work throughout Europe in order to boost progress and innovation in our field.Postprint (published version

Sortenwahl bei Ackerbohnen bei Anzeichen von Leguminosenmüdigkeit

Die Sortenversuche zu Ackerbohnen wurden in Bayern auf zwei Standorten in 2010, 2012 und 2013 durchgeführt, wobei auf einem der beiden Standorte Anzeichen von Legumino-senmüdigkeit auftraten. Die Ergebnisse zeigten deutliche Unterschiede der Sorten in der Anfälligkeit für Fußkrankheiten auf, wie man an dem verschiedenen Sortenranking bezüglich des Kornertrages an den beiden Orten feststellen konnte. Die Sorten Julia und Herz Freya erreichten an beiden Standorten ein ähnliches Ertragsniveau, während für alle anderen Sorten der Ertrag auf dem Standort mit Leguminosenmüdigkeit deutlich abfiel. Hier erreichte Julia mit relativ 133 mit Abstand die Spitzenposition, während die Sorte auf dem anderen Standort einen durchschnittlichen Ertrag erzielte. Ursache war vor allem die hohe Toleranz gegen Fußkrankheiten, welche in Viehhausen eindeutig bonitiert werden konnte. Daher ist für Standorte, auf denen Anzeichen von Leguminosenmüdigkeit auftreten, die Sorte Julia anderen Sorten vorzuziehen

Vergleich einer Herbstsaat von ausgewählten Winter- und Sommerweizensorten bzgl. Ertrag und Qualität

Achieving high baking quality and sufficient yield is often a challenge in organic wheat production. Two varieties of winter wheat and seven varieties of spring wheat in autumn sowing (End of October) were compared regarding winter hardiness, grain yield and baking quality. The field trial was conducted between 2010 and 2013 on a sandy loam nearby Freising, Bavaria. In 2011, the results for winter hardiness were only available due to a damage of hail. With one exception spring wheat showed comparable winter hardiness to the two varieties of winter wheat. Additionally, one variety of spring wheat showed comparable grain yield and baking quality to the two varieties of winter wheat. The other six spring wheat showed either lower grain yield or lower baking quality. Hence, the one variety of spring wheat may be an alternative to winter wheat

Einfluss einer Schwefeldüngung bei Getreide

Sulphur may be a limited nutrient in organic farming due to reduced atmospheric sulphur deposition. The impact of sulphate fertilization to winter wheat and spring barley was investigated in two different field trials in South Bavaria over three years. The yield and the crude protein content of winter wheat and the yield of spring barley were not affected by sulphate fertilization. No differences were determined regarding agronomical characteristics and tolerance to diseases between the fertilized and unfertilized plots. The wet gluten content and the loaf volume of wheat were significant higher after sulphate fertilization than without fertilization. Hence, the baking quality, but not the yield may be improved through sulphate fertilization

Einfluss der Futterleguminosenart, deren Saatzeit und Nutzung auf die Nachfrucht Winterweizen

The preceding crop effect of fodder legumes concerning sowing date, type of legume and utilization were conducted in field trials at two sites in Upper Bavaria in 2012- 2013. All in all, seven types of clover in pure stands or clover/grass leys were grown one main production year. Sowing dates were undersowings in triticale in spring, stubble seeds after harvest of preceding crop triticale and spring seed in the main production year. Utilization variants were mulching or cutting without organic fertilization in the subsequent crop winter wheat. Mulching of fodder legumes resulted in higher yields and mostly higher baking quality (crude protein content, wet gluten content and baking volume) of the succeeding wheat. Earlier sowings leaded mostly to higher yields and higher baking quality. At species level, a mixture of white clover and black medic showed highest yield as well as highest crude protein and wet gluten contents. It is concluded, that fodder legume management strongly affected the preceding crop effect