Saxony's capital Dresden: On the way to become Eastern Germany's first Innovative Milieu?

In this paper, the chances of Saxonys capital city Dresden to become Eastern Germanys first high-tech-region is discussed. A presentation of the theoretical background of innovative milieux is followed by an overview of the regions universities, R&D institutes and other facilities relevant for milieu formation. Afterwards, the establishment of high-tech enterprises in the Dresden area is analyzed. The paper concludes giving a view of the regions further development potential. --

LIKWID Monitoring Stack: A flexible framework enabling job specific performance monitoring for the masses

System monitoring is an established tool to measure the utilization and health of HPC systems. Usually system monitoring infrastructures make no connection to job information and do not utilize hardware performance monitoring (HPM) data. To increase the efficient use of HPC systems automatic and continuous performance monitoring of jobs is an essential component. It can help to identify pathological cases, provides instant performance feedback to the users, offers initial data to judge on the optimization potential of applications and helps to build a statistical foundation about application specific system usage. The LIKWID monitoring stack is a modular framework build on top of the LIKWID tools library. It aims on enabling job specific performance monitoring using HPM data, system metrics and application-level data for small to medium sized commodity clusters. Moreover, it is designed to integrate in existing monitoring infrastructures to speed up the change from pure system monitoring to job-aware monitoring.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for HPCMASPA 2017, the Workshop on Monitoring and Analysis for High Performance Computing Systems Plus Applications, held in conjunction with IEEE Cluster 2017, Honolulu, HI, September 5, 201

Validation of hardware events for successful performance pattern identification in High Performance Computing

Hardware performance monitoring (HPM) is a crucial ingredient of performance analysis tools. While there are interfaces like LIKWID, PAPI or the kernel interface perf\_event which provide HPM access with some additional features, many higher level tools combine event counts with results retrieved from other sources like function call traces to derive (semi-)automatic performance advice. However, although HPM is available for x86 systems since the early 90s, only a small subset of the HPM features is used in practice. Performance patterns provide a more comprehensive approach, enabling the identification of various performance-limiting effects. Patterns address issues like bandwidth saturation, load imbalance, non-local data access in ccNUMA systems, or false sharing of cache lines. This work defines HPM event sets that are best suited to identify a selection of performance patterns on the Intel Haswell processor. We validate the chosen event sets for accuracy in order to arrive at a reliable pattern detection mechanism and point out shortcomings that cannot be easily circumvented due to bugs or limitations in the hardware

Heiner Müller e Brecht

Based on Heiner Müller's play 'Fatzer +- Keuner', the present article shows Müller's opinion on Bertolt Brecht's work. The adaptations of Brecht's didactic plays (Lehrstücke) by Müller are commented on and compared to the originals.Gestützt auf Heiner Müllers 'Fatzer +- Keuner', zeigt dieser Artikel Müllers Meinung über Brechts Werk. Müllers Bearbeitungen von Brechts Lehrstücken werden mit dem Original verglichen und kommentiert

Experimental analysis of the interaction of liquids and gases with hard disk surfaces

In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden die Adsorptionseigenschaften der Oberflächen von Magnetspeicherplatten mit der Quarzmikrowaage (QCM) simuliert und Variationen der Produktionsparameter sowie die Auswirkungen der Alterung und der Lubrizierung mit perfluorierten Polyethern quantitativ untersucht. Die Ergebnisse dieser Experimente zeigen, dass der Oxidationsgrad der Oberflächen und die Diffusion von Metallionen aus der Magnetspeicher- auf die schützende Kohlenstoffschicht (COC) entscheidenden Einfluss auf die Adsorption unpolarer Verunreinigungen aus der Umgebungsluft haben. Adsorptionsversuche mit Schwefeldioxid führten zu einem Patent für das Recycling von Festplattensubstraten aus Glas und zu weiteren Experimenten mit flüssigen korrosiven Medien wie Natriumhypochlorit. Die in den Flugzeit-Sekundärionenmassenspektren (ToF-SIMS) von perfluorierten Polyethern („Lubrikants“) enthaltenen Daten und Informationen werden mit Hilfe multivariater Verfahren analysiert. Die „Principle Component Analysis“ (PCA) ermöglicht die Einordnung der Proben in Gruppen („Clustern“) gleicher Oberflächeneigenschaften und die Identifikation der Peaks, die für den Unterschied zwischen den Gruppen verantwortlich sind. Die „Partial Least Square“-Methode (PLS) liefert darüber hinaus quantitative Aussagen über die Dicke der Lubrikant-Schichten. Inhomogene Verteilungen des Lubrikants auf Magnetspeicherplatten im Subnanometerbereich lassen sich somit sicher und reproduzierbar detektieren.In this thesis the adsorption behaviour of surfaces of hard disks for magnetic storage devices was simulated with the use of a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM). Investigations of the influence of sputter parameters, aging and the effect of lubrication with perfluorinated polyethers (“lubricants”) showed that oxidation and the diffusion of metal ions of the magnetic storage layers onto the surface of the protecting carbon overcoat (COC) are the key players for the different amounts of nonpolar contaminations adsorbed on the surfaces of such hard disks. Experiments with sulphur dioxide led to a patent for the recycling of hard disks substrates made of glass and to further investigations of corrosive liquids like sodium hypochlorite. The data out of spectra of lubricants on hard disk surfaces generated by Time of Flight-Secondary Ion mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) were analyzed with statistical approaches. The “Principal Component Analysis” (PCA) defines clusters of samples with the same surface properties and identifies the relevant peaks responsible for the differences between the clusters. The “Partial Least Squares” method (PLS) additionally gives quantitative data about the thickness of lubricant films. This enables the researcher to measure inhomogeneities in the lubricant distribution on a hard disk in the range below 1 nm in a safe and reproducible way

HIV susceptibility factors in the human genital mucosa

Heterosexual HIV transmission is the most common viral transmission route worldwide. To establish a persistent infection the virus needs to cross the mucosal surface of the genital tract. The genital mucosa is thus considered to be the portal of HIV entry and initial site of viral replication. A better understanding of the immunological milieu at the portal of viral entry is crucial for the development of preventive interventions. In Paper I we investigated how herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) affects the genital epithelial barrier and mucosal immune response in an HSV-2 seropositive, asymptomatic vs. HSV-2 seronegative male population in Kenya. The two study groups had comparable levels of all selected markers of inflammation and epithelial integrity, except for lower mRNA levels of the epithelial junction protein claudin-1 in the HSV-2 seropositive group, which may indicate a less robust genital epithelial barrier. In Paper II, we investigated how the use of progesterone-based hormonal contraceptives affects the genital epithelial barrier and mucosal HIV receptor expression in healthy Swedish women. The progesterone-based intrauterine device (pIUD) group was compared to a non-hormonal contraceptive (noHC) group and a combined oral hormonal contraceptives (COC) group. Similar protein expression levels of HIV receptors and co-receptors were observed in the three study groups. However, women using pIUD displayed a thinner apical layer of the ectocervical epithelium and lower mRNA levels of the epithelial junction protein ZO-1 as compared to the control groups. These results suggest that pIUD use may weaken the ectocervical epithelial barrier against invading pathogens, such as HIV. In Paper III, we further investigated how the use of hormonal contraceptives affects the production of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in different compartments of the female genital mucosa, including secretions and tissue. Women using COC had significantly lower mRNA levels of the AMPs BD-2 and trappin-2 in ectocervical tissue as compared to pIUD users. The two groups showed no differences in AMP protein expression in neither cervicovaginal secretion (CVS) nor in ectocervical tissue. These results suggest that the impact of sex hormones on local immune defences varies in tissue vs. secretions in the female genital tract. In Paper IV we examined if epithelial thickness and /or the quantity and localization of HIV target cells in ectocervical epithelium is associated to the relative resistance of HIV exposed seronegative (HESN) women. Thus, female sex workers defined as HESN were compared to control women who were relatively new to sex-work. Our results show that the HESN phenotype is not associated with an altered epithelial thickness or with altered levels or distributions of HIV target cells in the ectocervical epithelium. In summary, the studies characterized epithelial integrity in both the male and female genital tract, as well as the localization, distribution and quantity of immune cells and proteins in both tissue and secretions. These factors may be of importance for HIV susceptibility and was compared between study groups, characterized by various risk factors for HIV infection including HSV-2 infection, different types of hormonal contraceptive use and a phenotype of relative HIV resistance. Our results imply that the genital mucosa is a complex site and it is therefore of major importance to study the local immunological milieu in the tissues and not solely in secretions, which opens up for a much more comprehensive picture. Further, our data indicates that strengthening the genital epithelial barrier of the local genital mucosa may be a beneficial way to reduce sexual transmission of HIV, and should thus be incorporated in potential future prevention strategies against HIV infection

Influence of different silica nanoparticles on drop size distributions in agitated liquid‐liquid systems

The impact of different silica nanoparticles on rheology, interfacial tension and drop size distributions in liquid‐liquid systems is determined experimentally. The particles vary in wettability and specific surface area. In contrast to commonly used high‐energy devices for Pickering emulsion preparation, low energy input by stirring allows to quantify drop breakage and coalescence in steady state and dynamic conditions. The experiments can provide essential information for drop size model development in nanoparticle‐stabilized emulsions.DFG, 56091768, TRR 63: Integrierte chemische Prozesse in flüssigen MehrphasensystemenTU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel - 201

A mixed-integer linear programming approach to the reduction of genome-scale metabolic networks

Constraint-based analysis has become a widely used method to study metabolic networks. While some of the associated algorithms can be applied to genome- scale network reconstructions with several thousands of reactions, others are limited to small or medium-sized models. In 2015, Erdrich et al. introduced a method called NetworkReducer, which reduces large metabolic networks to smaller subnetworks, while preserving a set of biological requirements that can be specified by the user. Already in 2001, Burgard et al. developed a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approach for computing minimal reaction sets under a given growth requirement

Representing dispositions

Dispositions and tendencies feature significantly in the biomedical domain and therefore in representations of knowledge of that domain. They are not only important for specific applications like an infectious disease ontology, but also as part of a general strategy for modelling knowledge about molecular interactions. But the task of representing dispositions in some formal ontological systems is fraught with several problems, which are partly due to the fact that Description Logics can only deal well with binary relations. The paper will discuss some of the results of the philosophical debate about dispositions, in order to see whether the formal relations needed to represent dispositions can be broken down to binary relations. Finally, we will discuss problems arising from the possibility of the absence of realizations, of multi-track or multi-trigger dispositions and offer suggestions on how to deal with them

Der Aufbau der ostdeutschen Infrastruktur und sein Beitrag zur wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung in Sachsen

This discussion paper deals with the reconstruction of transportation and telecommunication infrastructures in Eastern Germany and especially Saxony after the 1990 unification. Following a representation of investment measures and their influence on capital stocks in transportation infrastructure the author discusses the infrastructural situation of Saxonys three main agglomerations Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz and their location in European economic space. Concluding the paper Saxonys integration into the system of Transeuropean Networks and their planned extensions into Central and Eastern Europe is briefly examined. --