Der Koran und seine Rezeption

The focus of this paper lies on the Islamic approach to the Qurʾān, the exegesis of the text, and the significance of Qurʾānic revelation for Muslim societies ("Sitz im Leben”) for centuries up to the present day, paying also some attention to the history of the European perception of the Qurʾān, from which ultimately modern Western Qurʾānic research emerged. As an introduction, the specific formal and thematic features of the Qurʾān, Islam's Holy Scripture, are explained and the history of the Qurʾānic text is summarized. The last topic is the historic, social, and literary contextualisation of the Qurʾān as well as its aesthetic dimension (e.g. the "audible” and the "visible” Qurʾān as artistic manifestations). The discussion includes a review of recent scholarship, which has developed some pioneering new concepts about early Qurʾānic textual history and the (re)location of the Qurʾān in its historical context in Late Antiquit

A simple dynamical model of cumulus convection for data assimilation research

A simplified model for cumulus convection has been developed, with the aim of providing a computationally inexpensive, but physically plausible, environment for developing methods for convective-scale data assimilation. Key processes, including gravity waves, conditional instability and precipitation formation, are represented, and parameter values are chosen to reproduce the most important space and time scales of cumulus clouds. The model is shown to reproduce the classic life cycle of an isolated convective storm. When provided with a low amplitude noise source to trigger convection, the model produces a statistically steady state with cloud size and cloud spacing distributions similar to those found in radiative-convective equilibrium simulations using a cloud resolving model. Results are also shown for convection triggered by flow over an orgraphic obstacle, where depending on the wind speed two regimes are found with convection trapped over the mountain, or propagating downstream. The model features prognostic variables for wind and rain that can be used to compute synthetic observations for data assimilation experiments

Acetylcodeine as a Urinary Marker to Differentiate the Use of Street Heroin and Pharmaceutical Heroin

Acelylcodeine (ACOD) is a synthesis by product present in street heroin but not in pharmaceutical diacetylmorphine (DAM) as used in the Swiss program Heroin-Assisted Treatment for Opiate Dependent Drug Users (HAT). ACOD was evaluated and validated as an urine marker to detect the consumption of street heroin by HAT participants. A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method allowing the quantitation of ACOD concentrations as low as 0.2 ng/mL urine has been developed. In opiate-naïve subjects, intravenous (i.v.) ACOD showed a plasma elimination half-life of 237 ± 18 min, urine peak concentrations 2 h after administration, and a detection window of 8 h. Only 0.4 ± 0.1% was excreted unchanged, with codeine (COD) as the main metabolite. ACOD may be formed by transacetylation when i.v. DAM and oral codeine are co-administered. To avoid false-positive results, the calculation of COD/ACOD ratios is recommended. In a study with 105 HAT participants, 14% of the tested urines were ACOD positive. Only a low correlation was found between the anonymously self-declared consumption of street heroin and the ACOD positive rat

Metabolism of maltitol by conventional rats and mice and germ-free mice, and comparative digestibility between maltitol and sorbitol in germ-free mice

The metabolism of maltitol (4-α-D-glucosylsorbitol) was assessed in fasting conventional (C) rats, C mice and germ-free (GF) mice, using [U-14C]maltitol. The radiorespirometric patterns of 14CO2 collected for 48 h after the administration of labelled maltitol were characterized by a constant rate of 14CO2 production lasting 4 h for both C rats and mice. The pattern for the GF mice showed a peak at the second hour followed immediately by a slow decrease. The percentage recovery of 14CO2 was significantly lower for the GF mice (59%) compared with C animals (72-74%). Urine, faeces and intestinal contents after 48 h totalled 19% of the administered radioactivity in the C rats and mice and 39% in the GF mice. The digestibility of maltitol and the absorption of sorbitol in GF mice was also assessed. The caecum and small intestine of GF mice, 3 h after administration of equimolar quantities of maltitol (140 mg/kg body-weight) or sorbitol (70 mg/kg body-weight), contained 39 and 51 % of the ingested dose respectively, present mostly in the caecum as sorbitol. The α-glucosidase (maltase) (EC 3.2.1.20) activity of the small intestine was appreciably higher (1·5-1·7 times) in the GF mice than in the C mice. These results suggest that the enzymic activities in the small intestine of mice and rats are sufficient to hydrolyse maltitol extensively. Consequently, the slow absorption of sorbitol seems to be an important factor limiting the overall assimilation of maltitol in the small intestin

Wastewaters:occurrence of pharmaceutical substances and genotoxicity

The major pathways of human pharmaceuticals into the environment are from their use by individuals either at home or under medical supervision in hospitals, and to a lesser extent by the disposal of unwanted or out of date drugs. The administered pharmaceuticals will be excreted as the parent compound, metabolite or conjugate and will be transported to sewage treatment works. In sewage treatment, the compound may be degraded or partially degraded, adsorbed to sludge if lipophilic, be deconjugated or pass through sewage treatment unchanged. Once in the environment the substance will be subject to further degradation processes. The first part of this research is dedicated to the occurrence and fate of five substances widely consumed in Switzerland: Clofibric acid (metabolite), Ibuprofen, Ketoprofen, Mefenamic acid and Diclofenac (Chapter 2). These acidic drugs were analyzed in three sewage treatment plants (STPs) over four to seven consecutive days. Ibuprofen, Ketoprofen, Mefenamic acid and Diclofenac are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Clofibric acid is an active metabolite of Clofibrate, Etofibrate, Etofyllinclofibrate which are drugs used as blood lipid regulators. The anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen and Mefenamic acid are the most sold substances of this study with 17 tons per year and per substance in Switzerland. Recoveries after filtration, extraction, derivatisation and clean-up generally exceeded 70%. Limits of detection (5-15 ng/l) and quantification (15-50 ng/l) were in a range which allows the detection and the quantification of these compounds in wastewaters. The results of samples analysis point out that the five substances were persistent in wastewater effluents after municipal wastewater treatment. At the most, half of Mefenamic acid was eliminated. Ibuprofen was well removed (80%) by one sewage treatment plant. The removal of Ibuprofen is depending on the residence time of wastewater in the STPs. A long raining period induce a important decrease of removal of Ibuprofen and Ketoprofen. Removal rates showed a great variability according to sewage treatment plants and types of treatments (e.g. biological, physico-chemical). The concentrations of Ibuprofen, Mefenamic acid and Diclofenac were relatively high in the effluents (150-2000 ng/l), showing a potential contamination of surface water. An environmental risk assessment is presented. Mefenamic acid seems to present the most important risk, followed by Ibuprofen, Clofibric acid, Diclofenac and Ketoprofen. But the risk ratio for surface water calculated with a dilution factor was above one only for Mefenamic acid. Since that toxicity of a single drug might be enhanced by the occurrence of other pharmaceuticals with similar activity, the overall risk of these drugs could be significant. To our knowledge, chronic ecotoxicity data are available only for Diclofenac and Clofibric acid. These kind of data are needed for the other chemicals to confirm our results. The second part of this thesis is dedicated to anticancer drugs (Chapter 3). Since the occurrence of anticancer drugs in the environment are few studied and that these substances are extremely toxic (teratogen, mutagen, etc.), it was interesting to evaluate the contamination of wastewaters by two of the most used anticancer drugs. Two methods were set up to analyse Tamoxifen and 5-Fluorouracil in wastewaters. A Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) followed by a purification on OASIS® MCX cartridge and gas chromatography and mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS) were used for the analysis of Tamoxifen. 5-Fluorouracil was extracted with an ENV+ (Isolute) cartridge (solid-phase extraction), derivatised with pentafluorobenzyl bromide (PFBBr) and detected by GC-MS. Both methods showed good recoveries (>70%), reproducibility (RSD<10%) and limits of detection (LOD≤15 ng/l). Wastewaters from a residential area, an hospital, and two sewage treatment plants (STPs) were analysed with the analytical methods developed in this study. Tamoxifen was detected in wastewaters of the hospital, residential area and influent of STPs, but not in treated wastewaters. All wastewaters showed no contamination with 5-Fluorouracil. The risk evaluation was not possible for these drugs, since no ecotoxicity data (even acute data) is available. The third part of this research is dedicated to toxicity and mutagenicity of wastewaters (Chapter 4). As pharmaceutical compounds, including anticancer drugs that are genotoxic, are discharged in wastewaters, the mutagenic potential of wastewaters from various origins (hospital, two different sewage treatment plants (STPs) and a residential area) was evaluated using the Ames test. The samples were not concentrated prior the analysis to determine the overall effects of these waters. The survival and the reversion frequencies of strains TA98, TA100, TA102 and TA1538 following treatment with the different wastewaters were determined. Survival was obtained by two methods. The first method was by comparing the number of reversions induced by a known mutagen in the presence and absence of wastewater. The second was by determining the colony forming ability of dilutions of treated and non-treated cultures. The samples from the hospital were on the whole more toxic than samples from the STPs and residential area. The different strains showed varying sensitivities to the toxic effects of the wastewater, with TA98 exhibiting the highest sensitivity (<5% survival). The results from the reversion assays indicated that TA102 was the most sensitive, followed by TA1538 and TA100. More hospital wastewater than influents of sewage treatment plants were mutagenic, indicating a higher mutagenic activity in the wastewater of the hospital. These wastewaters have not to be released in the environment without an adequate treatment. Comparison of the mutagenicity of the influents and effluents of the STPs showed that less effluent samples were mutagenic. This result indicates that biological treatments were relatively efficient in decreasing the mutagenicity of wastewaters. Due to their beneficial health effects and economic importance, the actions taken to reduce inputs of drugs into the environment are much debated. The use of pharmaceutical compounds is expected to grow with the increasing age of the population. A solution for pollution control is to add sewage treatments in hospital and to avoid that municipal wastewaters are released without any treatment. Another solution is to focus on reduction at source, by developing a clear labeling on medicinal products, guidelines for the disposal and awareness campaign. These recommendations would have the potential benefit of improved consumer health (by minimizing the intake of active substances), as well as reduced health care spending

Analyzing the co-evolution of comments and source code

Source code comments are a valuable instrument to preserve design decisions and to communicate the intent of the code to programmers and maintainers. Nevertheless, commenting source code and keeping comments up-to-date is often neglected for reasons of time or programmers obliviousness. In this paper, we investigate the question whether developers comment their code and to what extent they add comments or adapt them when they evolve the code. We present an approach to associate comments with source code entities to track their co-evolution over multiple versions. A set of heuristics are used to decide whether a comment is associated with its preceding or its succeeding source code entity. We analyzed the co-evolution of code and comments in eight different open source and closed source software systems. We found with statistical significance that (1) the relative amount of comments and source code grows at about the same rate; (2) the type of a source code entity, such as a method declaration or an if-statement, has a significant influence on whether or not it gets commented; (3) in six out of the eight systems, code and comments co-evolve in 90% of the cases; and (4) surprisingly, API changes and comments do not co-evolve but they are re-documented in a later revision. As a result, our approach enables a quantitative assessment of the commenting process in a software system. We can, therefore, leverage the results to provide feedback during development to increase the awareness of when to add comments or when to adapt comments because of source code change

Maps for an uncertain future : teaching AI and machine learning using the ATLAS concept

Technical Report (Didactic Concept)Every student seems to have an opinion on AI. This is arguably due to the fact that its assumed topic, “intelligence”, is deemed to be one’s very own possession, and hence an area of every individual’s expertise. To turn this initial motivation into a stable foundation for life-long learning and working, the opposite of ready-made solutions must be made available by an educator. Additionally, the current hype needs to be exposed to thoroughly assess the real potential (for better or worse) of the technology. Hence, students need to be given an ATLAS: a collection of analog maps to the field of AI that (a) give an overview in this highly dynamic and complex environment; that (b) highlight the beauty of certain places therein; that however (c) don’t restrict themselves to advocating only a single path. This paper outlines the concept behind the design and teaching of said “cartographical material” and evaluates it in the context of two curricula: an introduction to AI for undergraduate students of computer science, and an introduction to machine learning in an interdisciplinary masters in engineering programme. It further contributes a model assignment for teaching a fundamental lesson on AI: leveraging the right algorithms pays off way more than leveraging human insight. All course materials including slides, assignments and video lectures, are freely available online