Prophetic Criticism and the Rhetoric of Temporality

The paper discusses Paul Tillich’s changing conception of a “prophetic critique” of contemporary culture and society through the notion of a “kairos”, the moment of fullfilled time. It shows how Tillich refers both to a specific notion of prophecy (developed in Max Weber’s reflections on charisma) and to a concept of eschatological time (developed in Karl Barth’s dialectical theology). In different texts from the 1920ies and the 1950ies, Tillich uses the idea of “kairos” for a critique of the “idols” of bourgeois culture that is both radical and urgent. However, read in their historic sequence, these texts also reveal the difficulty of upholding the urgency of such a critique over time – as a result, Tillich’s notion of “kairos” becomes more and more reflexive and self critical as the possibility of prophetic critique is concerned.Peer Reviewe

Career Pathway Orientation Courses and Their Influences on Student Career Decision Making

High schools must create skill- and decision-making experiences to support student college and career readiness and effective transitions to careers. However, traditional career education models have lacked effectiveness. This study examines a career pathway model that includes career orientation courses focused on developing career awareness and advising, confirming and challenging student’s career decision-making. Surveys and interviews were used to identify impacts these courses had on student career choice and the influence different aspects of the orientation course had on their decision-making. From this, best practices were identified, changes to the model were proposed and modifications to policy were developed to promote more effective career education

Intelligent Query Answering with Contextual Knowledge for Relational Databases

We are proposing a keyword-based query interface for knowledge bases - including relational or deductive databases - based on contextual background knowledge such as suitable join conditions or synonyms. Join conditions could be extracted from existing referential integrity (foreign key) constaints of the database schema. They could also be learned from other, previous database queries, if the database schema does not contain foreign key constraints. Given a textual representation - a word list - of a query to a relational database, one may parse the list into a structured term. The intelligent and cooperative part of our approach is to hypothesize the semantics of the word list and to find suitable links between the concepts mentioned in the query using contextual knowledge, more precisely join conditions between the database tables. We use a knowledge-based parser based on an extension of Definite Clause Grammars (Dcg) that are interweaved with calls to the database schema to suitably annotate the tokens as table names, table attributes, attribute values or relationships linking tables. Our tool DdQl yields the possible queries in a special domain specific rule language that extends Datalog, from which the user can choose one

Metadata Quality Enhancement for Large Digital Collections: Web Browser Automation with Selenium IDE

Poster presented at the 2012 TCDL Annual Conference. This poster discusses metadata quality enhancement for large digital collections

Workflow Tools for Digital Curation

This article discusses workflow tools for digital curation

Digital Curation Tools: Metadata Enhancement with Selenium IDE [Poster]

Poster presented at the 2013 International iConference. This poster discusses metadata enhancement with Selenium IDE

A tailor-made purification strategy for oncolytic measles viruses using membrane-based processes

Cancer patients can benefit from the Measles virus, since in the early 70s a relation between cancer remission and an infection with Measles was first mentioned (Bluming, Ziegler 1971). Further studies confirmed this oncolytic activity and therefore, the Measles virus became highly interesting for the application in cancer treatment. However, for the widespread application as a therapeutic agent several bottlenecks have to be overcome in context of quantity and quality. For one therapeutic dose of oncolytic Measles viruses (OMV) at least 1011 infectious particles are needed (one vaccination contains ~103 TCID50) (Russell et al. 2014). Besides that, the impurities, such as host cell proteins (HCP) and host cell DNA (hcDNA), must be reduced to appropriate limits set by regulatory authorities. The full recovery of OMV infectivity must also addressed. This underlines the need of a tailor-made downstream processing. After we established a high titer production process, achieving OMV titers of 1011 TCID50 mL-1 (Grein et al. 2017), we are now focused on the downstream processing of OMV. For this purpose we characterized the OMV regarding process parameters used in DSP, such as stability towards ionic strength, osmolality, agglomeration and shear stress. Based on this, a clarification step was conducted, followed by the further purification with tangential flow filtration (TFF). By using polyether sulfone flat sheet membranes in concentration mode, we were able to recover the infectious virus and lowered the impurities by ~70% for hcDNA and ~80% for protein content. In the next purification step, we applied a discontinuous diafiltration and could deplete the impurities by ~95% in total. These results showed that TFF is an appropriate tool for the purification and formulation of OMV. References Bluming, Avrum Z.; Ziegler, John L. (1971): Regression of Burkitt\u27s Lymphoma in association with Measles infection. In The Lancet 298 (7715), pp. 105–106. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(71)92086-1. Grein, Tanja A.; Schwebel, Felix; Kress, Marco; Loewe, Daniel; Dieken, Hauke; Salzig, Denise et al. (2017): Screening different host cell lines for the dynamic production of measles virus. In Biotechnology progress. DOI: 10.1002/btpr.2432. Russell, Stephen J.; Federspiel, Mark J.; Peng, Kah-Whye; Tong, Caili; Dingli, David; Morice, William G. et al. (2014): Remission of disseminated cancer after systemic oncolytic virotherapy. In Mayo Clinic proceedings 89 (7), pp. 926–933. DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2014.04.003

Trainer in a pocket - proof-of-concept of mobile, real-time, foot kinematics feedback for gait pattern normalization in individuals after stroke, incomplete spinal cord injury and elderly patients

Background: Walking disabilities negatively affect inclusion in society and quality of life and increase the risk for secondary complications. It has been shown that external feedback applied by therapists and/or robotic training devices enables individuals with gait abnormalities to consciously normalize their gait pattern. However, little is known about the effects of a technically-assisted over ground feedback therapy. The aim of this study was to assess whether automatic real-time feedback provided by a shoe-mounted inertial-sensor-based gait therapy system is feasible in individuals with gait impairments after incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI), stroke and in the elderly. Methods: In a non-controlled proof-of-concept study, feedback by tablet computer-generated verbalized instructions was given to individuals with iSCI, stroke and old age for normalization of an individually selected gait parameter (stride length, stance or swing duration, or foot-to-ground angle). The training phase consisted of 3 consecutive visits. Four weeks post training a follow-up visit was performed. Visits started with an initial gait analysis (iGA) without feedback, followed by 5 feedback training sessions of 2–3 min and a gait analysis at the end. A universal evaluation and FB scheme based on equidistant levels of deviations from the mean normal value (1 level = 1 standard deviation (SD) of the physiological reference for the feedback parameter) was used for assessment of gait quality as well as for automated adaptation of training difficulty. Overall changes in level over iGAs were detected using a Friedman’s Test. Post-hoc testing was achieved with paired Wilcoxon Tests. The users’ satisfaction was assessed by a customized questionnaire. Results: Fifteen individuals with iSCI, 11 after stroke and 15 elderly completed the training. The average level at iGA significantly decreased over the visits in all groups (Friedman’s test, p < 0.0001), with the biggest decrease between the first and second training visit (4.78 ± 2.84 to 3.02 ± 2.43, p < 0.0001, paired Wilcoxon test). Overall, users rated the system’s usability and its therapeutic effect as positive. Conclusions: Mobile, real-time, verbalized feedback is feasible and results in a normalization of the feedback gait parameter. The results form a first basis for using real-time feedback in task-specific motor rehabilitation programs. Trial registration: DRKS00011853 , retrospectively registered on 2017/03/23

Digital Curation Micro-Applications: Digital Lifecycle Management with AutoHotkey

Poster presented at the 2013 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries. This poster discusses open source software tools coded with AutoHotkey that the UNT digital libraries group has developed for digital curation during the pre-ingest stage of the digital resource lifecycle