Spacialist: Eine virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Spatial ‌Humanities

Die Verarbeitung von Text- und Sprachressourcen mit digitalen Werkzeugen steht im deutschsprachigen Raum im Fokus der Digital Humanities. Nicht-textuelle Ausprägungen der Kultur und deren Verortung in Raum und Zeit finden hierbei in der Regel nur wenig Beachtung. Gerade an dieser Stelle liegt das besondere Potenzial der Verwendung von neuen digitalen Methoden. Diese bieten nun erstmals die Möglichkeit, sämtliche Ausprägungen des menschlichen Kulturschaffens im miteinander in semantische und analysierbare Beziehungen zu setzen. Zugleich ist es mit derartigen integrierten digitalen Methoden nun möglich, bedrohte Objekte und Räume, aber auch immaterielle kulturelle Ausprägungen präzise zu dokumentieren sowie dauerhaft nachhaltig zu bewahren und der Forschung bereitzustellen. Gerade vor dem Hintergrund der infrastrukturellen Entwicklung sowie der mutwilligen Zerstörung des Kulturerbes wird diese Bedeutung nochmals deutlicher. Ziel des Projekts ist es, für die raum- und objektorientierten Wissenschaften ein Werkzeug zur Verfügung zu stellen, das die standardisierte Erfassung und Analyse sowie eine langfristige Archivierung und Nachnutzbarkeit der Daten erlaubt. Ein hoher Standardisierungsgrad sowie eine nachhaltige Vorhaltung der Informationen sind gerade im Bereich der Geisteswissenschaften aufgrund der Unwiederbringlichkeit der Daten von besonderer Bedeutung. Spacialist wird eine einheitliche, Disziplinen überspannende Softwarelösung zur Erfassung, Verwaltung, Archivierung und Publikation von Forschungsdaten werden, die in raum- und objektbezogenen geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekten gewonnen werden. Diese Softwarelösung wird an der Universität Tübingen gemeinsam mit den fachwissenschaftlichen Partnern basierend auf existierenden Softwareprototypen und -systemen weiterentwickelt und in deren Workflow und Semantik integriert werden. Das Werkzeug wird ausschließlich Open-Source-Komponenten verwenden und als freie Software entwickelt werden, sodass die Weiterverwendbarkeit an anderen Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen gewährleistet ist. Das Werkzeug soll einen essentiellen Beitrag zur Bewahrung des kulturellen Erbes in seiner materiellen und immateriellen Ausprägung in nationalen und internationalen Forschungsprojekten leisten

Spacialist – A Virtual Research Environment for the Spatial Humanities

Many archaeological research projects generate data and tools that are unusable or abandoned after the funding period ends. To counter this unsustainable practice, the Spacialist project was tasked to create a virtual research environment that offers an integrated, web-based user interface to record, browse, analyze, and visualize all spatial, graphical, textual and statistical data from archaeological or cultural heritage research projects. Spacialist is developed as an open-source software platform composed of modules providing the required functionality to end-users. It builds on controlled multi-language vocabularies and an abstract, extensible data model to facilitate data recording and analysis, as well as interoperability with other projects and infrastructures. Development of Spacialist is driven by an interdisciplinary team in collaboration with various pilot projects in different areas of archaeology. To support the complete research lifecycle, the platform is being integrated with the University’s research-data archive, guaranteeing long-term availability of project data

Spacialist – Eine virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Spatial Humanities

Research projects in the humanities generate data and tools that are often abandoned after the project funding ends. Moreover, research data handling and the deployed tools are often highly specific for single projects. This insustainable practice leads to solutions that are incompatible with other tools, projects and infrastructures, and they often do not rely on accepted standards. To close this gap the project Spacialist, which was funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg in the “E-Science” program, set out to develop a modular virtual research environment that offers an integrated, web-based user interface to record, browse, analyze, and visualize all spatial, graphical, textual and statistical data from archaeological or cultural heritage research projects. To address the highly heterogeneous requirements of such projects, Spacialist was developed as a software platform that is instantiated, customized and deployed separately for each project. The data model was designed as a meta model that defines entities with their properties and relationships. During the customization of the data model for a particular project, these abstract entities need to be instantiated for the project’s domain. For representing domain-specific concepts Spacialist uses controlled vocabularies (thesauri) based on the XML-based standard SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), thus facilitating data analysis and interoperability. Core functionality such as the thesaurus and the creation and editing of entities is available out of the box for each project. Additional functionality is implemented in plugin modules that can be added on demand. These include file management, data analysis, geographical maps, and others. The development of Spacialist’s open-source software was driven by an interdisplinary team of software developers, geographers, ethnologists, archaeologists and librarians in collaboration with pilot projects in various areas like mediterranean archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. To address the challenge of creating a sustainable business model beyond the initial funding, Spacialist was integrated into the service offered by the eScience-Center Tübingen, which has the necessary infrastructure and staff to provide Spacialist instances initially free to projects. The initial deployment and custom data model are covered by permanent staff. If the client project decides to adopt Spacialist as their research environment, the project is charged with a fee that covers hosting and maintenance of their Spacialist instance, and they have to enter a contractual agreement with eScience-Center defining usage and data privacy issues. To support the full research project lifecycle even after the projects end, the platform is being integrated with our University’s research-data archive, which guarantees the long-term availability and reusability of project data

Light quark mass effects in the on-shell renormalization constants

We compute the three-loop relation between the pole and the minimally subtracted quark mass allowing for virtual effects from a second massive quark. We also consider the analogue effects for the on-shell wave function renormalization constant.Comment: 24 page

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Local Treatment in Oligometastatic Disease

Background: In certain malignancies, patients with oligometastatic disease benefit from radical ablative or surgical treatment. The SABR-COMET trial demonstrated a survival benefit for oligometastatic patients randomized to local stereotactic ablative radiation (SABR) compared to patients receiving standard care (SC) alone. Our aim was to determine the cost-effectiveness of SABR. Materials and Methods: A decision model based on partitioned survival simulations estimated costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALY) associated with both strategies in a United States setting from a health care perspective. Analyses were performed over the trial duration of six years as well as a long-term horizon of 16 years. Model input parameters were based on the SABR-COMET trial data as well as best available and most recent data provided in the published literature. An annual discount of 3% for costs was implemented in the analysis. All costs were adjusted to 2019 US Dollars according to the United States Consumer Price Index. SABR costs were reported with an average of $11,700 per treatment. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed. Incremental costs, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) were calculated. The willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold was set to$100,000/QALY. Results: Based on increased overall and progression-free survival, the SABR group showed 0.78 incremental QALYs over the trial duration and 1.34 incremental QALYs over the long-term analysis. Treatment with SABR led to a marginal increase in costs compared to SC alone (SABR: $304,656; SC:$303,523 for 6 years; ICER $1,446/QALY and SABR:$402,888; SC: $350,708 for long-term analysis; ICER$38,874/QALY). Therapy with SABR remained cost-effective until treatment costs of $88,969 over the trial duration (i.e. 7.6 times the average cost). Sensitivity analysis identified a strong model impact for ongoing annual costs of oligo- and polymetastatic disease states. Conclusion: Our analysis suggests that local treatment with SABR adds QALYs for patients with certain oligometastatic cancers and represents an intermediate- and long-term cost-effective treatment strategy

O(ααs){\cal O}(\alpha\alpha_s) corrections to the γttˉ\gamma t\bar{t} vertex at the top quark threshold

We compute the last missing piece of the two-loop ${\cal O}(\alpha \alpha_s)$ corrections to $\gamma t \bar{t}$ vertex at the $t \bar{t}$ threshold due to the exchange of a $W$ boson and a gluon. This contribution constitutes a building block of the top quark threshold production cross section at electron positron colliders.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure