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Automata theory has given rise to a variety of automata models that consist
of a finite-state control and an infinite-state storage mechanism. The aim
of this work is to provide insights into how the structure of the storage
mechanism influences the expressiveness and the analyzability of the
resulting model. To this end, it presents generalizations of results about
individual storage mechanisms to larger classes. These generalizations
characterize those storage mechanisms for which the given result remains
true and for which it fails.
In order to speak of classes of storage mechanisms, we need an overarching
framework that accommodates each of the concrete storage mechanisms we wish
to address. Such a framework is provided by the model of valence automata,
in which the storage mechanism is represented by a monoid. Since the monoid
serves as a parameter to specifying the storage mechanism, our aim
translates into the question: For which monoids does the given
(automata-theoretic) result hold?
As a first result, we present an algebraic characterization of those monoids
over which valence automata accept only regular languages. In addition, it
turns out that for each monoid, this is the case if and only if valence
grammars, an analogous grammar model, can generate only context-free
languages.
Furthermore, we are concerned with closure properties: We study which
monoids result in a Boolean closed language class. For every language class
that is closed under rational transductions (in particular, those induced by
valence automata), we show: If the class is Boolean closed and contains any
non-regular language, then it already includes the whole arithmetical
hierarchy.
This work also introduces the class of graph monoids, which are defined by
finite graphs. By choosing appropriate graphs, one can realize a number of
prominent storage mechanisms, but also combinations and variants thereof.
Examples are pushdowns, counters, and Turing tapes. We can therefore relate
the structure of the graphs to computational properties of the resulting
storage mechanisms.
In the case of graph monoids, we study (i) the decidability of the emptiness
problem, (ii) which storage mechanisms guarantee semilinear Parikh images,
(iii) when silent transitions (i.e. those that read no input) can be
avoided, and (iv) which storage mechanisms permit the computation of
downward closures.
A wide range of methods and techniques have been developed over the years to manage the increasing
complexity of automotive Electrical/Electronic systems. Standardization is an example
of such complexity managing techniques that aims to minimize the costs, avoid compatibility
problems and improve the efficiency of development processes.
A well-known and -practiced standard in automotive industry is AUTOSAR (Automotive
Open System Architecture). AUTOSAR is a common standard among OEMs (Original Equipment
Manufacturer), suppliers and other involved companies. It was developed originally with
the goal of simplifying the overall development and integration process of Electrical/Electronic
artifacts from different functional domains, such as hardware, software, and vehicle communication.
However, the AUTOSAR standard, in its current status, is not able to manage the problems
in some areas of the system development. Validation and optimization process of system configuration
handled in this thesis are examples of such areas, in which the AUTOSAR standard
offers so far no mature solutions.
Generally, systems developed on the basis of AUTOSAR must be configured in a way that all
defined requirements are met. In most cases, the number of configuration parameters and their
possible settings in AUTOSAR systems are large, especially if the developed system is complex
with modules from various knowledge domains. The verification process here can consume a
lot of resources to test all possible combinations of configuration settings, and ideally find the
optimal configuration variant, since the number of test cases can be very high. This problem is
referred to in literature as the combinatorial explosion problem.
Combinatorial testing is an active and promising area of functional testing that offers ideas
to solve the combinatorial explosion problem. Thereby, the focus is to cover the interaction
errors by selecting a sample of system input parameters or configuration settings for test case
generation. However, the industrial acceptance of combinatorial testing is still weak because of
the deficiency of real industrial examples.
This thesis is tempted to fill this gap between the industry and the academy in the area
of combinatorial testing to emphasizes the effectiveness of combinatorial testing in verifying
complex configurable systems.
The particular intention of the thesis is to provide a new applicable approach to combinatorial
testing to fight the combinatorial explosion problem emerged during the verification and
performance measurement of transport protocol parallel routing of an AUTOSAR gateway. The
proposed approach has been validated and evaluated by means of two real industrial examples
of AUTOSAR gateways with multiple communication buses and two different degrees of complexity
to illustrate its applicability.
Thermoplastic composite materials are being widely used in the automotive and aerospace industries. Due to the limitations of shape complexity, different components
need to be joined. They can be joined by mechanical fasteners, adhesive bonding or
both. However, these methods have several limitations. Components can be joined
by fusion bonding due to the property of thermoplastics. Thermoplastics can be melted on heating and regain their shape on cooling. This property makes them ideal for
joining through fusion bonding by induction heating. Joining of non-conducting or
non-magnetic thermoplastic composites needs an additional material that can generate heat by induction heating.
Polymers are neither conductive nor electromagnetic so they don’t have inherent potential for inductive heating. A susceptor sheet having conductive materials (e.g. carbon fiber) or magnetic materials (e.g. nickel) can generate heat during induction. The
main issues related with induction heating are non-homogeneous and uncontrolled
heating.
In this work, it was observed that to generate heat with a susceptor sheet depends
on its filler, its concentration, and its dispersion. It also depends on the coil, magnetic
field strength and coupling distance. The combination of different fillers not only increased the heating rate but also changed the heating mechanism. Heating of 40ºC/
sec was achieved with 15wt.-% nickel coated short carbon fibers and 3wt.-% multiwalled carbon nanotubes. However, only nickel coated short carbon fibers (15wt-.%)
attained the heating rate of 24ºC/ sec. In this study, electrical conductivity, thermal
conductivity and magnetic properties testing were also performed. The results also
showed that electrical percolation was achieved around 15wt.-% in fibers and (13-
6)wt.-% with hybrid fillers. Induction heating tests were also performed by making
parallel and perpendicular susceptor sheet as fibers were uni-directionally aligned.
The susceptor sheet was also tested by making perforations.
The susceptor sheet showed homogeneous and fast heating, and can be used for
joining of non-conductive or non-magnetic thermoplastic composites.
Since the early days of representation theory of finite groups in the 19th century, it was known that complex linear representations of finite groups live over number fields, that is, over finite extensions of the field of rational numbers.
While the related question of integrality of representations was answered negatively by the work of Cliff, Ritter and Weiss as well as by Serre and Feit, it was not known how to decide integrality of a given representation.
In this thesis we show that there exists an algorithm that given a representation of a finite group over a number field decides whether this representation can be made integral.
Moreover, we provide theoretical and numerical evidence for a conjecture, which predicts the existence of splitting fields of irreducible characters with integrality properties.
In the first part, we describe two algorithms for the pseudo-Hermite normal form, which is crucial when handling modules over ring of integers.
Using a newly developed computational model for ideal and element arithmetic in number fields, we show that our pseudo-Hermite normal form algorithms have polynomial running time.
Furthermore, we address a range of algorithmic questions related to orders and lattices over Dedekind domains, including computation of genera, testing local isomorphism, computation of various homomorphism rings and computation of Solomon zeta functions.
In the second part we turn to the integrality of representations of finite groups and show that an important ingredient is a thorough understanding of the reduction of lattices at almost all prime ideals.
By employing class field theory and tools from representation theory we solve this problem and eventually describe an algorithm for testing integrality.
After running the algorithm on a large set of examples we are led to a conjecture on the existence of integral and nonintegral splitting fields of characters.
By extending techniques of Serre we prove the conjecture for characters with rational character field and Schur index two.
Die Forschung zum amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus als Teil der kollektiven
Identität der USA lässt eine systematische Einordnung der
exzeptionellen Selbstzuschreibungen der USA im Kontext militärischer
Interventionspolitik bisher weitgehend vermissen. Basierend auf den beiden
grundlegenden Dimensionen einer exemplarischen und einer missionarischen
Selbstzuschreibung werden in dieser Studie vier Idealtypen
des amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus gebildet, die als ideationales Analyseraster
der amerikanischen Interventionspolitik dienen können. Ausgehend
von der Doppelfunktion des amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus
als Movens außenpolitischer Präferenzen und als strategische Legitimationsgrundlage
wird in einem historisch angeleiteten Vergleich gezeigt,
dass Elemente dieser vier Idealtypen die außenpolitischen Traditionen
der USA maßgeblich (mit)geprägt haben. Zur weiteren Einordnung des
amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus in den außenpolitischen Präferenzbildungsprozess
der USA wird in einem zweiten Schritt die ideationale Variante
der liberalen Außenpolitiktheorie nach Andrew Moravcsik um den
Faktor der politischen Kommunikation ergänzt. Der amerikanische
Exzeptionalismus dient dem Präsidenten dabei als narrativer Diskursrahmen
außenpolitischer Interpretations- und Deutungsangebote, mit denen
er die Öffentlichkeit zu mobilisieren und den Kongress von seinen
außenpolitischen Absichten zu überzeugen versucht. In diesem Zusammenhang
gilt: Je kongruenter die außenpolitischen Deutungsangebote
mit dem Narrativ des amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus, desto wirkmächtiger
ihre Bedeutung für den gesellschaftlichen Diskurs der USA
über Außenpolitik. Entgegen den Annahmen der liberalen Außenpolitiktheorie
zeigt sich, dass der Präsident als Strategic Narrator des amerikanischen
Exzeptionalismus die Öffentlichkeit nicht nur repräsentieren,
sondern auch zu seinen Gunsten mobilisieren kann.
Functional data analysis is a branch of statistics that deals with observations \(X_1,..., X_n\) which are curves. We are interested in particular in time series of dependent curves and, specifically, consider the functional autoregressive process of order one (FAR(1)), which is defined as \(X_{n+1}=\Psi(X_{n})+\epsilon_{n+1}\) with independent innovations \(\epsilon_t\). Estimates \(\hat{\Psi}\) for the autoregressive operator \(\Psi\) have been investigated a lot during the last two decades, and their asymptotic properties are well understood. Particularly difficult and different from scalar- or vector-valued autoregressions are the weak convergence properties which also form the basis of the bootstrap theory.
Although the asymptotics for \(\hat{\Psi}{(X_{n})}\) are still tractable, they are only useful for large enough samples. In applications, however, frequently only small samples of data are available such that an alternative method for approximating the distribution of \(\hat{\Psi}{(X_{n})}\) is welcome. As a motivation, we discuss a real-data example where we investigate a changepoint detection problem for a stimulus response dataset obtained from the animal physiology group at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.
To get an alternative for asymptotic approximations, we employ the naive or residual-based bootstrap procedure. In this thesis, we prove theoretically and show via simulations that the bootstrap provides asymptotically valid and practically useful approximations of the distributions of certain functions of the data. Such results may be used to calculate approximate confidence bands or critical bounds for tests.
The Context and Its Importance: In safety and reliability analysis, the information generated by Minimal Cut Set (MCS) analysis is large.
The Top Level event (TLE) that is the root of the fault tree (FT) represents a hazardous state of the system being analyzed.
MCS analysis helps in analyzing the fault tree (FT) qualitatively-and quantitatively when accompanied with quantitative measures.
The information shows the bottlenecks in the fault tree design leading to identifying weaknesses of the system being examined.
Safety analysis (containing the MCS analysis) is especially important for critical systems, where harm can be done to the environment or human causing injuries, or even death during the system usage.
Minimal Cut Set (MCS) analysis is performed using computers and generating a lot of information.
This phase is called MCS analysis I in this thesis.
The information is then analyzed by the analysts to determine possible issues and to improve the design of the system regarding its safety as early as possible.
This phase is called MCS analysis II in this thesis.
The goal of my thesis was developing interactive visualizations to support MCS analysis II of one fault tree (FT).
The Methodology: As safety visualization-in this thesis, Minimal Cut Set analysis II visualization-is an emerging field and no complete checklist regarding Minimal Cut Set analysis II requirements and gaps were available from the perspective of visualization and interaction capabilities,
I have conducted multiple studies using different methods with different data sources (i.e., triangulation of methods and data) for determining these requirements and gaps before developing and evaluating visualizations and interactions supporting Minimal Cut Set analysis II.
Thus, the following approach was taken in my thesis:
1- First, a triangulation of mixed methods and data sources was conducted.
2- Then, four novel interactive visualizations and one novel interaction widget were developed.
3- Finally, these interactive visualizations were evaluated both objectively and subjectively (compared to multiple safety tools)
from the point of view of users and developers of the safety tools that perform MCS analysis I with respect to their degree in supporting MCS analysis II and from the point of non-domain people using empirical strategies.
The Spiral tool supports analysts with different visions, i.e., full vision, color deficiency protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. It supports 100 out of 103 (97%) requirements obtained from the triangulation and it fills 37 out of 39 (95%) gaps. Its usability was rated high (better than their best currently used tools) by the users of the safety and reliability tools (RiskSpectrum, ESSaRel, FaultTree+, and a self-developed tool) and at least similar to the best currently used tools from the point of view of the CAFTA tool developers. Its quality was higher regarding its degree of supporting MCS analysis II compared to the FaultTree+ tool. The time spent for discovering the critical MCSs from a problem size of 540 MCSs (with a worst case of all equal order) was less than a minute while achieving 99.5% accuracy. The scalability of the Spiral visualization was above 4000 MCSs for a comparison task. The Dynamic Slider reduces the interaction movements up to 85.71% of the previous sliders and solves the overlapping thumb issues by the sliders provides the 3D model view of the system being analyzed provides the ability to change the coloring of MCSs according to the color vision of the user provides selecting a BE (i.e., multi-selection of MCSs), thus, can observe the BEs' NoO and provides its quality provides two interaction speeds for panning and zooming in the MCS, BE, and model views provide a MCS, a BE, and a physical tab for supporting the analysis starting by the MCSs, the BEs, or the physical parts. It combines MCS analysis results and the model of an embedded system enabling the analysts to directly relate safety information with the corresponding parts of the system being analyzed and provides an interactive mapping between the textual information of the BEs and MCSs and the parts related to the BEs.
Verifications and Assessments: I have evaluated all visualizations and the interaction widget both objectively and subjectively, and finally evaluated the final Spiral visualization tool also both objectively and subjectively regarding its perceived quality and regarding its degree of supporting MCS analysis II.
Im Rahmen dieser Doktorarbeit wurden neue Konzepte zu nachhaltigen Transformationen entwickelt. Ein Schwerpunkt der bearbeiteten Themen lag dabei auf der Nutzung von Fettsäuren und ihrer Derivate als nachwachsende Rohstoffe. Ein weiterer Fokus lag auf Alkoxylierungen von terminalen Alkinen.
Im ersten Projekt wurde eine nachhaltige Methode zur Alkylverzeigung einer Fettsäurekette an ihrer Doppelbindung entwickelt. Alkylverzweigte Fettsäurederivate sind z.B. in Schmiermitteln, Kosmetika, Kunststoffen und Beschichtungen von hohem Interesse.
Die Reaktion verläuft in hohen Ausbeuten und unter milden Bedingungen. Der entscheidende Vorteil dieses neuen Prozesses ist, dass er auf leicht erhältlichem Linoleat anstatt auf präformiertem Konjuensäureester basiert. Diese Methode ermöglicht eine umweltfreundliche Einführung einer Alkylverzweigung in Fettsäurederivate.
Im zweiten Projekt dieser Doktorarbeit wurde eine selektive Hydrierung von Fettsäuren, Fettsäureestern und Triglyceriden entwickelt. Diese liefert einen Zugang zu langkettigen unsymmetrischen Alkylethern aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen. Langkettige Alkylether haben aufgrund ihres niedrigeren Schmelzpunktes und der geringen Viskosität eine hohe Anwendungsbreite in Schmiermitteln, Tensiden und Kosmetika.
Dieses Protokoll ermöglicht, ausgehend von nachwachsenden Rohstoffen, eine nachhaltige Synthese von wertvollen langkettigen Ethern. Es konnten sowohl Fettsäuren als auch Ester in reiner Form oder auch in Mischungen umgesetzt werden. Auch Triglyceride aus Rapsöl wurden erfolgreich ohne weitere Aufreinigung umgesetzt.
Im letzten Teilprojekt dieser Arbeit wurde ein kostengünstiger Zugang zu biologisch aktiven (E)-β- Alkoxyacrylaten ermöglicht. Es wurde eine basenkatalysierte, metallfreie Alkoxylierung von terminalen Alkinen mittels einfacher Carbonate entwickelt.
Aromatische Alkine konnten schon bei Raumtemperatur umgesetzt werden. Die Bildung von Ketalen als Nebenprodukt konnte dabei nahezu vollständig unterdrückt werden. Aliphatische Alkine wurden bei 90 °C erfolgreich umgesetzt. Die Skalierbarkeit dieses Prozesses wurde durch eine 15 mmol Synthese und einer Ausbeute von 99 % demonstriert. Eine einfache Destillation des Reaktionsgemisches reichte als Aufreinigung aus. Die Anwendungsbreite der Reaktion konnte anhand zahlreicher repräsentativer Verbindungen demonstriert werden.
Reading as a cultural skill is acquired over a long period of training. This thesis supports the idea that reading is based on specific strategies that result from modification and coordination of earlier developed object recognition strategies. The reading-specific processing strategies are considered to be more analytic compared to object recognition strategies, which are described as holistic. To enable proper reading skills these strategies have to become automatized. Study 1 (Chapter 4) examined the temporal and visual constrains of letter recognition strategies. In the first experiment two successively presented stimuli (letters or non-letters) had to be classified as same or different. The second stimulus could either be presented in isolation or surrounded by a shape, which was either similar (congruent) or different (incongruent) in its geometrical properties to the stimulus itself. The non-letter pairs were presented twice as often as the letter pairs. The results demonstrated a preference for the holistic strategy also in letters, even if the non- letter set was presented twice as often as the letter set, showing that the analytic strategy does not replace the holistic one completely, but that the usage of both strategies is task-sensitive. In Experiment 2, we compared the Global Precedence Effect (GPE) for letters and non-letters in central viewing, with the global stimulus size close to the functional visual field in whole word reading (6.5◦ of visual angle) and local stimuli close to the critical size for fluent reading of individual letters (0.5◦ of visual angle). Under these conditions, the GPE remained robust for non-letters. For letters, however, it disappeared: letters showed no overall response time advantage for the global level and symmetric congruence effects (local-to-global as well as global-to-local interference). These results indicate that reading is based on resident analytic visual processing strategies for letters. In Study 2 (Chapter 5) we replicated the latter result with a large group of participants as part of a study in which pairwise associations of non-letters and phonological or non-phonological sounds were systematically trained. We investigated whether training would eliminate the GPE also for non-letters. We observed, however, that the differentiation between letters and non-letter shapes persists after training. This result implies that pairwise association learning is not sufficient to overrule the process differentiation in adults. In addition, subtle effects arising in the letter condition (due to enhanced power) enable us to further specify the differentiation in processing between letters and non-letter shapes. The influence of reading ability on the GPE was examined in Study 3 (Chapter 6). Children with normal reading skills and children with poor reading skills were instructed to detect a target in Latin or Hebrew Navon letters. Children with normal reading skills showed a GPE for Latin letters, but not for Hebrew letters. In contrast, the dyslexia group did not show GPE for either kind of stimuli. These results suggest that dyslexic children are not able to apply the same automatized letter processing strategy as children with normal reading skills do. The difference between the analytic letter processing and the holistic non-letter processing was transferred to the context of whole word reading in Study 4 (Chapter 7). When participants were instructed to detect either a letter or a non-letter in a mixed character string, for letters the reaction times and error rates increased linearly from the left to the right terminal position in the string, whereas for non-letters a symmetrical U-shaped function was observed. These results suggest, that the letter-specific processing strategies are triggered automatically also for more word-like material. Thus, this thesis supports and expands prior results of letter-specific processing and gives new evidences for letter-specific processing strategies.
Die übergeordnete Zielsetzung dieser Arbeit bestand in der Entwicklung katalytischer Verfahren, um damit neue Nutzungsmöglichkeiten für Carbonsäuren und deren Derivate in der chemischen Wertschöpfungskette zu schaffen.
Reiner Biodiesel ist mit modernen Motoren aufgrund seines ungünstigen Siedeverhaltens nur eingeschränkt kompatibel. Im ersten Projekt wurde daher ein Verfahren entwickelt, einen Biokraftstoff mit einem Siedeverhalten von kommerziellem Diesel herzustellen. Dazu wurde eine lösungsmittelfreie isomerisierende Ethenolyse von Pflanzenölestern entwickelt, mit der Produktgemische aus Olefinen, Mono- und Diestern mit genau definierten physikalischen Eigenschaften erzeugt werden können.
Die Reaktion von Pflanzenölestern mit Alkenen verläuft mit minimalem Energiebedarf, maximaler Atomeffizienz, ohne Lösungsmittel und praktisch abfallfrei und folgt somit den Prinzipien grüner Chemie. Es werden unterschiedliche industrielle Pflanzenölmethylester, sowie verschiedene kurzkettige Olefine toleriert. Mit diesem Verfahren wurde aus Rapsölmethylester (RME) und Ethen ein Biokraftstoff hergestellt, der alle spezifizierten Grenzwerte hinsichtlich des Siedeverhaltens von Dieselkraftstoffen erfüllt.
Mit Hilfe einer numerischen Simulationsmethode wurde ein Zusammenhang zwischen den katalytischen Parametern der isomerisierenden Metathese und der chemischen Zusammensetzung des Produktgemischs hergestellt. Damit wurden die Zielvorgaben für die anschließende systematische Reaktionsoptimierung errechnet.
Im zweiten Teilprojekt wurde ein neuer Zugang zu in ortho-Position nitrierten aromatischen Carbonsäurederivaten entwickelt. Die einzigartig effektive dirigierende Gruppe ermöglicht die ortho-selektive Nitrierung von substituierten aromatischen Carbonsäuren bei nur 50 °C. Der präformierte Kupferkomplex Cu(NO3)(PPh3)2 vermittelt zusammen mit dem Oxidationsmittel NMO selektiv die Mononitrierung in guten Ausbeuten. Das System toleriert eine große Breite funktioneller Gruppen, sowie fünf- und sechsgliedrige Heteroaromaten.
Im Gegensatz zu klassischen Verfahren mit stickstoffhaltigen dirigierenden Gruppen, die im Produkt verbleiben, gelang es uns, eine schnelle Methode zur mikrowellenunterstützten Verseifung zu entwickeln. Dadurch ist es möglich, nach der Nitrierung in situ eine Protodecarboxylierung des aktivierten Amids durchzuführen und den Nitroaromaten zu erhalten. Alternativ kann durch Verseifung das Carboxylat dargestellt werden, welches als Anker für anschließende decarboxylierende Kupplungsreaktionen fungieren kann.
This Ph.D. project as a landscape research practice focuses on the less widely studied aspects of urban agriculture landscape and its application in recreation and leisure, as well as landscape beautification. I research on the edible landscape planning and design, its criteria, possibilities, and traditional roots for the particular situation of Iranian cities and landscapes. The primary objective is preparing a conceptual and practical framework for Iranian professions to integrate the food landscaping into the new greenery and open spaces developments. Furthermore, finding the possibilities of synthesis the traditional utilitarian gardening with the contemporary pioneer viewpoints of agricultural landscapes is the other significant proposed achievement.
Finished tasks and list of achieved results:
• Recognition the software and hardware principles of designing the agricultural landscape based on the Persian gardens
• Multidimensional identity of agricultural landscape in Persian gardens
• Principles of architectural integration and the characteristics of the integrative landscape in Persian gardens
• Distinctive characteristics of agricultural landscape in Persian garden
• Introducing the Persian and historical gardens as the starting point for reentering the agricultural phenomena into the Iranian cities and landscape
• Assessment the structure of Persian gardens based on the new achievements and criteria of designing the urban agriculture
• Investigate the role of Persian gardens in envisioning the urban agriculture in
Iranian cities’ landscape.
Synapses play a central role in the information propagation in the nervous system. A better understanding of synaptic structures and processes is vital for advancing nervous disease research. This work is part of an interdisciplinary project that aims at the quantitative examination of components of the neuromuscular junction, a synaptic connection between a neuron and a muscle cell.
The research project is based on image stacks picturing neuromuscular junctions captured by modern electron microscopes, which permit the rapid acquisition of huge amounts of image data at a high level of detail. The large amount and sheer size of such microscopic data makes a direct visual examination infeasible, though.
This thesis presents novel problem-oriented interactive visualization techniques that support the segmentation and examination of neuromuscular junctions.
First, I introduce a structured data model for segmented surfaces of neuromuscular junctions to enable the computational analysis of their properties. However, surface segmentation of neuromuscular junctions is a very challenging task due to the extremely intricate character of the objects of interest. Hence, such problematic segmentations are often performed manually by non-experts and thus requires further inspection.
With NeuroMap, I develop a novel framework to support proofreading and correction of three-dimensional surface segmentations. To provide a clear overview and to ease navigation within the data, I propose the surface map, an abstracted two-dimensional representation using key features of the surface as landmarks. These visualizations are augmented with information about automated segmentation error estimates. The framework provides intuitive and interactive data correction mechanisms, which in turn permit the expeditious creation of high-quality segmentations.
While analyzing such segmented synapse data, the formulation of specific research questions is often impossible due to missing insight into the data. I address this problem by designing a generic parameter space for segmented structures from biological image data. Furthermore, I introduce a graphical interface to aid its exploration, combining both parameter selection as well as data representation.
When designing autonomous mobile robotic systems, there usually is a trade-off between the three opposing goals of safety, low-cost and performance.
If one of these design goals is approached further, it usually leads to a recession of one or even both of the other goals.
If for example the performance of a mobile robot is increased by making use of higher vehicle speeds, then the safety of the system is usually decreased, as, under the same circumstances, faster robots are often also more dangerous robots.
This decrease of safety can be mitigated by installing better sensors on the robot, which ensure the safety of the system, even at high speeds.
However, this solution is accompanied by an increase of system cost.
In parallel to mobile robotics, there is a growing amount of ambient and aware technology installations in today's environments - no matter whether in private homes, offices or factory environments.
Part of this technology are sensors that are suitable to assess the state of an environment.
For example, motion detectors that are used to automate lighting can be used to detect the presence of people.
This work constitutes a meeting point between the two fields of robotics and aware environment research.
It shows how data from aware environments can be used to approach the abovementioned goal of establishing safe, performant and additionally low-cost robotic systems.
Sensor data from aware technology, which is often unreliable due to its low-cost nature, is fed to probabilistic methods for estimating the environment's state.
Together with models, these methods cope with the uncertainty and unreliability associated with the sensor data, gathered from an aware environment.
The estimated state includes positions of people in the environment and is used as an input to the local and global path planners of a mobile robot, enabling safe, cost-efficient and performant mobile robot navigation during local obstacle avoidance as well as on a global scale, when planning paths between different locations.
The probabilistic algorithms enable graceful degradation of the whole system.
Even if, in the extreme case, all aware technology fails, the robots will continue to operate, by sacrificing performance while maintaining safety.
All the presented methods of this work have been validated using simulation experiments as well as using experiments with real hardware.
Requirements-Aware, Template-Based Protocol Graphs for Service-Oriented Network Architectures
(2016)
Rigidness of the Internet causes its architectural design issues such as interdependencies among the layers, no cross-layer information exchange, and applications dependency on the underlying protocols implementation.
G-Lab (i.e., http://www.german-lab.de/) is a research project for Future Internet Architecture (FIA), which focuses on problems of the Internet such as rigidness, mobility, and addressing. Where the focus of ICSY (i.e., www.icsy) was on providing the flexibility in future network architectures. An approach so-called Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONATE) is proposed to compose the protocols dynamically. SONATE is based on principles of the service-oriented architecture (SOA), where protocols are decomposed in software modules and later they are put together on demand to provide the desired service.
This composition of functionalities can be performed at various time-epochs (e.g., run-time, design-time, deployment-time). However, these epochs have trade-off in terms of the time-complexity (i.e., required setup time) and the provided flexibility. The design-time is the least time critical in comparison to other time phases, which makes it possible to utilize human-analytical capability. However, the design-time lacks the real-time knowledge of requirements and network conditions, what results in inflexible protocol graphs, and they cannot be changed at later stages on changing requirements. Contrary to the design-time, the run-time is most time critical where an application is waiting for a connection to be established, but at the same time it has maximum information to generate a protocol graph suitable to the given requirements.
Considering limitations above of different time-phases, in this thesis, a novel intermediate functional composition approach (i.e., Template-Based Composition) has been presented to generate requirements aware protocol graphs. The template-based composition splits the composition process across different time-phases to exploit the less time critical nature and human-analytical availability of the design-time, ability to instantaneously deploy new functionalities of the deployment time and maximum information availability of the run-time. The approach is successfully implemented , demonstrated and evaluated based on its performance to know the implications for the practical use.
This thesis investigates the electromechanic coupling of dielectric elastomers for the static and dynamic case by numerical simulations. To this end, the fundamental equations of the coupled field problem are introduced and the discretisation procedure for the numerical implementation is described. Furthermore, a three field formulation is proposed and implemented to treat the nearly incompressible behaviour of the elastomer. Because of the reduced electric permittivity of the material, very high electric fields are required for actuation purposes. To improve the electromechanic coupling a heterogeneous microstructure consisting of an elastomer matrix with barium titanate inclusions is proposed and studied.
Jugendliche sind häufige Nutzer öffentlicher Stadträume, die ihnen wichtige Möglichkeiten der Interaktion, aber auch Orte des Rückzugs aus dem privaten Raum des Elternhauses oder dem institutionalisierten Raum der Schule bieten. In der aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Diskussion um öffentlichen Raum tritt vielfach dessen Wandel in den Fokus, vor allem im Hinblick auf Tendenzen der Kommerzialisierung, Privatisierung, aber auch einer zunehmenden Unsicherheit und Kriminalität. Über diese Aspekte des Wandels werden, so die grundlegende These der vorliegenden Arbeit, Jugendlichen engere Grenzen gesetzt und Aneignungs- und Zu-gangsmöglichkeiten eingeschränkt. Ein Beispiel für neue privatisierte und kommerzialisierte Räume stellen Shopping Malls dar. In diesen, de jure nicht öffentlichen, sondern als quasi-öffentlich bezeichneten Räumen, in denen Sicherheit, Sauberkeit und Service Priorität haben, wird ein mit Jugendlichen oftmals assoziiertes, vermeintlich unkontrollierbares, abweichendes, ausprobierendes Verhalten als Störfaktor wahrgenommen.
Auf Basis qualitativer Interviews mit Jugendlichen, nicht-teilnehmender Beobachtung und Experteninterviews mit Verantwortlichen von Polizei, Streetwork und dem Management lokaler Shopping Malls, werden in zwei Fallstudien (Saarbrücken und Ludwigshafen) die Aneignung und Wahrnehmung unterschiedlicher innerstädtischer öffentlicher Räume (Fußgängerzone, Zentraler Stadtplatz, Grün- und Freiflächen), etwaige Nutzungskonflikte und die Bedeutung des neuen, quasi-öffentlichen Raumtyps „Shopping Mall“ diskutiert.
Den theoretischen Hintergrund liefern vor allem Arbeiten von Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens und Henri Lefebvre: In Anlehnung an Bourdieu muss Raum, und damit auch öffentlicher Raum, aus verschiedenen Dimensionen, insbesondere der physischen und der sozialen, gedacht werden, die jedoch wechselseitig aufeinander wirken. Er ist, so die Theorie Henri Lefebvres, in einem mehrdimensionalen Prozess sozial produziert. Im Rahmen dieses Produktionsprozesses bilden sich, im Rahmen des dem von Giddens dargestellten Dualismus von Handeln und Struktur, Macht- und Ordnungsstrukturen aus, die Handeln und damit Nutzungsmöglichkeiten beeinflussen.
Die Ergebnisse der Fallstudien zeigen, dass öffentliche Räume von Jugendlichen, nach wie vor, als Interaktions-, Rückzugs- Mobilitäts- und Konsumräume genutzt werden. Dennoch sind Transformationsprozesse sichtbar: Kommerzialisierung und Privatisierung beeinflussen den Zugang zu und die Nutzungsmöglichkeiten von öffentlichen und quasi-öffentlichen Räumen. Auch durch gestiegene Unsicherheit, von aber auch durch Jugendliche, sowie Kontrollen verändern sich Möglichkeitsräume. Diese Kontrollen werden jedoch durchaus auch positiv und als Notwendigkeit bewertet, um zunehmender Unsicherheit zu begegnen.
Von Jugendlichen sind insgesamt Anpassungsleistungen notwendig, vor allem hinsichtlich eines angemessenen Verhaltens in öffentlichen und quasi-öffentlichen Räumen. Sie müssen sich mit bestehenden Macht- und Ordnungsstrukturen auseinandersetzen und sich diesen häufig unterordnen. Sind sie dazu nicht bereit oder nehmen Konflikte Überhand, werden Treffpunkte und Nutzungen aufgegeben. Besonders am Beispiel der „Shopping Malls“ wurde deutlich, dass eingeschränkte Zugangsmöglichkeiten und geltende Verhaltensvorschriften Änderungen der räumlichen Praxis notwendig machen, um Nutzung zu legitimieren. Shopping Malls können aber das Angebot an Freizeiträumen für Jugendliche auch erweitern. Gerade wenn ein Mangel an adäquaten Treffpunkten herrscht und klassische öffentliche Räume von „Verödung“ betroffen sind, so wie es im Fallbeispiel Ludwigshafen der Fall war, bilden sie einen alternativen „Erlebnisort“.
Stochastic Network Calculus (SNC) emerged from two branches in the late 90s:
the theory of effective bandwidths and its predecessor the Deterministic Network
Calculus (DNC). As such SNC’s goal is to analyze queueing networks and support
their design and control.
In contrast to queueing theory, which strives for similar goals, SNC uses in-
equalities to circumvent complex situations, such as stochastic dependencies or
non-Poisson arrivals. Leaving the objective to compute exact distributions behind,
SNC derives stochastic performance bounds. Such a bound would, for example,
guarantee a system’s maximal queue length that is violated by a known small prob-
ability only.
This work includes several contributions towards the theory of SNC. They are
sorted into four main contributions:
(1) The first chapters give a self-contained introduction to deterministic net-
work calculus and its two branches of stochastic extensions. The focus lies on the
notion of network operations. They allow to derive the performance bounds and
simplifying complex scenarios.
(2) The author created the first open-source tool to automate the steps of cal-
culating and optimizing MGF-based performance bounds. The tool automatically
calculates end-to-end performance bounds, via a symbolic approach. In a second
step, this solution is numerically optimized. A modular design allows the user to
implement their own functions, like traffic models or analysis methods.
(3) The problem of the initial modeling step is addressed with the development
of a statistical network calculus. In many applications the properties of included
elements are mostly unknown. To that end, assumptions about the underlying
processes are made and backed by measurement-based statistical methods. This
thesis presents a way to integrate possible modeling errors into the bounds of SNC.
As a byproduct a dynamic view on the system is obtained that allows SNC to adapt
to non-stationarities.
(4) Probabilistic bounds are fundamentally different from deterministic bounds:
While deterministic bounds hold for all times of the analyzed system, this is not
true for probabilistic bounds. Stochastic bounds, although still valid for every time
t, only hold for one time instance at once. Sample path bounds are only achieved by
using Boole’s inequality. This thesis presents an alternative method, by adapting
the theory of extreme values.
(5) A long standing problem of SNC is the construction of stochastic bounds
for a window flow controller. The corresponding problem for DNC had been solved
over a decade ago, but remained an open problem for SNC. This thesis presents
two methods for a successful application of SNC to the window flow controller.
Buses not arriving on time and then arriving all at once - this phenomenon is known from
busy bus routes and is called bus bunching.
This thesis combines the well studied but so far separate areas of bus-bunching prediction
and dynamic holding strategies, which allow to modulate buses’ dwell times at stops to
eliminate bus bunching. We look at real data of the Dublin Bus route 46A and present
a headway-based predictive-control framework considering all components like data
acquisition, prediction and control strategies. We formulate time headways as time series
and compare several prediction methods for those. Furthermore we present an analytical
model of an artificial bus route and discuss stability properties and dynamic holding
strategies using both data available at the time and predicted headway data. In a numerical
simulation we illustrate the advantages of the presented predictive-control framework
compared to the classical approaches which only use directly available data.
Es ist eine Alltagsbeobachtung für welche sich zahlreiche empirische Belege finden, dass ge-sundheitsbewusste Verhaltensweisen wie etwa das regelmäßige Betreiben von Sport oder der Konsum von als gesund geltenden Lebensmitteln in bestimmten Kreisen der Bevölkerung zu-nehmen. Parallel ist ein weiterer Trend zu beobachten: die Zunahme umweltbewusster Verhal-tensweisen. Gerade im Bereich des Konsums gehen solche gesundheits- und umweltbewusste Verhaltensweisen häufig miteinander einher. Wer sich gesundheitsbewusst ernähren möchte, greift in aller Regel auf umweltbewusste Produkte zurück. Die Vermutung liegt nahe, dass ge-sundheits- und umweltbewussten Verhaltensweisen bestimmten gemeinsamen Einstellungen, Überzeugungen und Werten zugrunde liegen. Als ein solches Wertecluster kann auf theoreti-scher Ebene eine postmaterialistische Werteorientierung identifiziert werden. Gesundheits- und Umweltbewusstsein würden demnach in wechselseitiger Beziehung zueinander stehen und durch eine postmaterialistische Werteorientierung determiniert werden. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, eben diesen Zusammenhang mittels Strukturgleichungsmodellierung empirisch zu überprüfen. Dies geschieht anhand von Daten des Sozio-Ökonomischen Panels aus dem Jahr 2006 (n=661). Während sich ein positiver und durchaus starker Zusammenhang zwischen Ge-sundheits- und Umweltbewusstsein findet und auch das Umweltbewusstsein positiv von einer postmaterialistischen Werteorientierung abhängig ist, zeigt sich für das Gesundheitsbewusst-sein kein signifikanter, bzw. in verschiedenen Modellvariationen sogar eine negative Abhän-gigkeit von einer postmaterialistischen Werteorientierung. Aufgrund dieser Ergebnisse wird vorgeschlagen, das Gesundheitsbewusstsein als mehrdimensionales Konstrukt zu betrachten. Differenziert wird in ein lebensstilbedingtes Gesundheitsbewusstsein, über welches z.B. Hobby- und Leistungssportler verfügen, und ein defensives Gesundheitsbewusstsein, wie es z.B. bei chronisch Kranken Personen wie Diabetikern zu finden ist. Jedoch sind weitere Ana-lysen nötig, um diese Theorie zu testen.
This work introduces a promising concept for the preparation of new nano-sized receptors. Mixed monolayer protected gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for low molecular weight compounds were prepared featuring functional groups on their surfaces. It has been shown that these AuNPs can engage in interactions with peptides in aqueous media. Quantitative binding information was obtained from DOSY-NMR titrations indicating that nanoparticles containing a combination of three orthogonal functional groups are more efficient in binding to dipeptides than mono or difunctionalised analogues. The strategy is highly modular and easily allows adapting the receptor selectivity to a
given substrate by varying the type, number, and ratio of binding sites on the nanoparticle
surface.
Die Entwicklung von Revitalisierungskonzepten für Wohnimmobilien ist ein komplexer und zeitintensiver Prozess, bei dem umfassendes Fachwissen und weitreichende Erfahrungen notwendig sind. Heterogene Gebäudetypen mit unterschiedlichen Eigenschaften und Handlungsbedarfen machen den Konzeptentwicklungsprozess noch komplizierter. Diese Arbeit bietet einen Katalog mit priorisierten Handlungsempfehlungen zur Entwicklung von Revitalisierungsvarianten für Mehrfamilienhäuser aus den 1970er Jahren in den alten Bundesländern. Die Immobilien tragen mit ca. 2,4 Mio. Wohnung wesentlich zur Wohnraumversorgung in den alten Bundesländern bei und wurden bisher unzureichend erforscht. Darüber hinaus stehen durch das Alter, den häufig geringen Modernisierungszustand und vorhandene Potenziale der Mehrfamilienhäuser meist kurz- bis mittelfristig grundlegende Revitalisierungen an.
Die erarbeiteten Handlungsempfehlungen basieren auf Auswertungen von Daten professionell-gewerblicher Wohnungsanbieter, über 13.700 Energieverbrauchsausweisen, Mieterbefragungen und der Datenbasis Gebäudebestand des IWU. Außerdem stützen sich die Empfehlungen auf eine Sekundäranalyse einer repräsentativen Wohnnachfrageuntersuchung für Deutschland sowie auf zwanzig Expertenbefragungen und umfangreiche Literaturanalysen. Durch eine Immobilienanalyse werden verallgemeinerungsfähige Aussagen über bauliche und technische Eigenschaften und Handlungsbedarfe für die Mehrfamilienhäuser gewonnen. Daneben erfolgt anhand einer Nachfrageanalyse die Bestimmung potenzieller Nachfragegruppen und deren Wohnanforderungen sowie daraus abgeleitet nachfrageseitige Handlungsbedarfe für die Mehrfamilienhäuser. Für die ermittelten baulichen und technischen sowie nachfrageseitigen Handlungsbedarfe werden durch eine Maßnahmenanalyse geeignete Revitalisierungsmaßnahmen gefunden. Diese Maßnahmen werden im Katalog der Handlungsempfehlungen angelehnt an ein Kundenanforderungsmodell nach technischen Gesichtspunkten und Nachfrageaspekten priorisiert. Anwender des Empfehlungskatalogs können ihre individuelle kaufmännische Perspektive einbringen, um ganzheitliche Revitalisierungskonzepte zu entwickeln. Durch eine entwickelte Berechnungshilfe können Kosten und Wirtschaftlichkeit der Konzepte bewertet werden.
Die Handlungsempfehlungen zielen auf technische, funktionale, energetische, wirtschaftliche, soziale und architektonische Verbesserungen bei den Mehrfamilienhäusern. In zwei Fallstudien werden der Katalog der Handlungsempfehlungen und die Berechnungshilfe angewendet. Die Fallstudien deuten darauf hin, dass mit Hilfe des Katalogs der Handlungsempfehlungen und der Berechnungshilfe Revitalisierungsvarianten für Mehrfamilienhäuser aus den 1970er Jahren effizient entwickelt und deren Kosten und Wirtschaftlichkeit effizient eingeschätzt werden können. Die Forschungsergebnisse der Arbeit sind insbesondere für Wohnungseigentümer, Projektentwickler, Ingenieure, Berater und Investoren nützlich.
This thesis presents a novel, generic framework for information segmentation in document images.
A document image contains different types of information, for instance, text (machine printed/handwritten), graphics, signatures, and stamps.
It is necessary to segment information in documents so that to process such segmented information only when required in automatic document processing workflows.
The main contribution of this thesis is the conceptualization and implementation of an information segmentation framework that is based on part-based features.
The generic nature of the presented framework makes it applicable to a variety of documents (technical drawings, magazines, administrative, scientific, and academic documents) digitized using different methods (scanners, RGB cameras, and hyper-spectral imaging (HSI) devices).
A highlight of the presented framework is that it does not require large training sets, rather a few training samples (for instance, four pages) lead to high performance, i.e., better than previously existing methods.
In addition, the presented framework is simple and can be adapted quickly to new problem domains.
This thesis is divided into three major parts on the basis of document digitization method (scanned, hyper-spectral imaging, and camera captured) used.
In the area of scanned document images, three specific contributions have been realized.
The first of them is in the domain of signature segmentation in administrative documents.
In some workflows, it is very important to check the document authenticity before processing the actual content.
This can be done based on the available seal of authenticity, e.g., signatures.
However, signature verification systems expect pre-segmented signature image, while signatures are usually a part of document.
To use signature verification systems on document images, it is necessary to first segment signatures in documents.
This thesis shows that the presented framework can be used to segment signatures in administrative documents.
The system based on the presented framework is tested on a publicly available dataset where it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods and successfully segmented all signatures, while less than half of the found signatures are false positives.
This shows that it can be applied for practical use.
The second contribution in the area of scanned document images is segmentation of stamps in administrative documents.
A stamp also serves as a seal for documents authenticity.
However, the location of stamp on the document can be more arbitrary than a signature depending on the person sealing the document.
This thesis shows that a system based on our generic framework is able to extract stamps of any arbitrary shape and color.
The evaluation of the presented system on a publicly available dataset shows that it is also able to segment black stamps (that were not addressed in the past) with a recall and precision of 83% and 73%, respectively.
%Furthermore, to segment colored stamps, this thesis presents a novel feature set which is based on intensity gradient, is able to extract unseen, colored, arbitrary shaped, textual as well as graphical stamps, and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
The third contribution in the scanned document images is in the domain of information segmentation in technical drawings (architectural floorplans, maps, circuit diagrams, etc.) containing usually a large amount of graphics and comparatively less textual components. Further, as in technical drawings, text is overlapping with graphics.
Thus, automatic analysis of technical drawings uses text/graphics segmentation as a pre-processing step.
This thesis presents a method based on our generic information segmentation framework that is able to detect the text, which is touching graphical components in architectural floorplans and maps.
Evaluation of the method on a publicly available dataset of architectural floorplans shows that it is able to extract almost all touching text components with precision and recall of 71% and 95%, respectively.
This means that almost all of the touching text components are successfully extracted.
In the area of hyper-spectral document images, two contributions have been realized.
Unlike normal three channels RGB images, hyper-spectral images usually have multiple channels that range from ultraviolet to infrared regions including the visible region.
First, this thesis presents a novel automatic method for signature segmentation from hyper-spectral document images (240 spectral bands between 400 - 900 nm).
The presented method is based on a part-based key point detection technique, which does not use any structural information, but relies only on the spectral response of the document regardless of ink color and intensity.
The presented method is capable of segmenting (overlapping and non-overlapping) signatures from varying backgrounds like, printed text, tables, stamps, logos, etc.
Importantly, the presented method can extract signature pixels and not just the bounding boxes.
This is substantial when signatures are overlapping with text and/or other objects in image. Second, this thesis presents a new dataset comprising of 300 documents scanned using a high-resolution hyper-spectral scanner. Evaluation of the presented signature segmentation method on this hyper-spectral dataset shows that it is able to extract signature pixels with the precision and recall of 100% and 79%, respectively.
Further contributions have been made in the area of camera captured document images. A major problem in the development of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems for camera captured document images is the lack of labeled camera captured document images datasets. In the first place, this thesis presents a novel, generic, method for automatic ground truth generation/labeling of document images. The presented method builds large-scale (i.e., millions of images) datasets of labeled camera captured / scanned documents without any human intervention. The method is generic and can be used for automatic ground truth generation of (scanned and/or camera captured) documents in any language, e.g., English, Russian, Arabic, Urdu. The evaluation of the presented method, on two different datasets in English and Russian, shows that 99.98% of the images are correctly labeled in every case.
Another important contribution in the area of camera captured document images is the compilation of a large dataset comprising 1 million word images (10 million character images), captured in a real camera-based acquisition environment, along with the word and character level ground truth. The dataset can be used for training as well as testing of character recognition systems for camera-captured documents. Various benchmark tests are performed to analyze the behavior of different open source OCR systems on camera captured document images. Evaluation results show that the existing OCRs, which already get very high accuracies on scanned documents, fail on camera captured document images.
Using the presented camera-captured dataset, a novel character recognition system is developed which is based on a variant of recurrent neural networks, i.e., Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) that outperforms all of the existing OCR engines on camera captured document images with an accuracy of more than 95%.
Finally, this thesis provides details on various tasks that have been performed in the area closely related to information segmentation. This includes automatic analysis and sketch based retrieval of architectural floor plan images, a novel scheme for online signature verification, and a part-based approach for signature verification. With these contributions, it has been shown that part-based methods can be successfully applied to document image analysis.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit sollten weiterführende Erkenntnisse über die Regulation des Na+/H+-Antiporters AtSOS1 erbracht werden. Die Analyse von Mutanten, die den zytosolischen AtSOS1 C terminus überexprimieren, bestätigte eine im Vergleich zum Wildtyp erhöhte Salztoleranz. Diese Feststellung lässt sich an verschiedenen Beobachtungen festmachen: Unter Salzstressbedingungen i.) akkumulieren die Überexpressionsmutanten deutlich weniger Natrium im Spross, ii.) sie blühen früher, iii.) sie weisen eine geringere Expression des Salz-induzierten Gens wrky25 auf, iv.) sie häufen geringere Mengen „kompatibler Solute“ an und v.) sie speichern weniger Stärke im Vergleich zum Wildtyp.
Zusammenfassend lässt sich festhalten, dass die Überexpression der C-terminalen Domäne des SOS1 zu einer erhöhten Salztoleranz der entsprechenden Mutanten durch erhöhte Aktivierung des endogenen SOS1-Transporters führt. Es lässt sich spekulieren, dass negative Regulatoren des SOS-Signalwegs vom löslichen C-terminus abgefangen werden, wodurch ihre inhibierende Funktion auf das endogene SOS-Netzwerk verloren geht.
Im Gegensatz dazu führt der Verlust des SOS1-Transporters in den sos1 Knockout-Pflanzen zu einer erhöhten Salzsensitivität. Diese Feststellung lässt sich wiederum an verschiedenen Beobachtungen festmachen: Unter Salzstressbedingungen i.) akkumulieren die Knockout-Mutanten deutlich mehr Natrium im Spross sowie vor allem in der Wurzel, ii.) sie blühen verzögert bis gar nicht, iii.) sie weisen eine höhere Expression des Salzstress-Indikatorgens wrky25 auf, iv.) sie häufen große Mengen kompatibler Solute in Form löslicher Zucker an und v.) sie speichern mehr Stärke im Vergleich zum Wildtyp.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden die Interaktionen zwischen dem SOS1 C terminus und den regulatorischen At14-3-3 Proteinen υ, ω, κ und λ, sowie zwischen AtTST1/AtVIK1 und 14-3-3 κ und λ mittels Bimolekularer Fluoreszenz-Komplementation verifiziert. Sie binden den SOS1 C terminus an der Stelle 1112TRQNTMVESSDEEDEDEG1129, den AtTST1 an der Stelle 361DDGAGDDDDSDNDLR375. Beide Bindemotive weisen einen hohen Anteil negativ geladener Aspartat- und Glutamat-Reste auf. Durch die Analyse von At14 3 3 λκ Knockout-Pflanzen wurden diese Proteine als Signalstoffe im Zuckerhaushalt von A. thaliana identifiziert. Ihr Fehlen führt zu einer Veränderung im „sugar sensing“ bzw. „sugar signaling“. Diese Behauptung lässt sich an verschiedenen Beobachtungen festmachen: Unter Hochzucker-Bedingungen i.) akkumulieren die Knockout-Mutanten mehr Biomasse, ii.) sie akkumulieren weniger Zucker und iii.) sie weisen eine gesteigerte Expression der Glukose-reprimierten Gene cab1 und suc2 auf.
Neuartige supramolekulare Koordinationsverbindungen mit Cyclen- oder Cyclopeptiduntereinheiten
(2016)
Die vorliegende Arbeit greift in den beiden Hauptkapiteln die Rolle von Übergangsmetallionen bei der Entwicklung eines neuartigen Rezeptors, der Anionen unter Bildung von Kaskadenkomplexen binden soll und bei der Synthese von chiralen Koordinationspolymeren, die Cyclopeptidliganden enthalten, auf. In einem Nebenkapitel wird die Synthese und Struktur eines cyclischen Hexapeptids beschrieben, das dazu dient, Informationen über den Einfluss hydrophober Wechselwirkungen auf die Bindung von Sulfat- und Halogenidionen in wässriger Lösung zu erhalten. Ein molekularer Käfig aus zwei über vier Linker verknüpften, zink(II)haltigen Cyclenkomplexen wurde synthetisiert. Nach der Charakterisierung dieser Verbindung mit potentiometrischen und kristallographischen Methoden wurden Untersuchungen zur Evaluierung der Bindung dieses neuartigen Rezeptors an Anionen durchgeführt. Für den Aufbau von chiralen porösen Koordinationsnetzwerken wurde eine Reihe von cyclischen Tetrapeptiden als Liganden dargestellt. Diese Verbindungen wurden anschließend in Kristallisationsversuchen mit unterschiedlichen Übergangsmetallionen umgesetzt und die Struktur der drei erhaltenen cyclopeptidhaltigen Koordinationspolymere mit literaturbekannten Koordinationsverbindungen, welche die gleichen Metallionen enthalten, aber ohne Cyclopeptidliganden aufgebaut sind hinsichtlich ihrer Struktur verglichen. Um den Einfluss hydrophober Wechselwirkungen auf die Anionenbindung in wässriger Lösung zu untersuchen, wurde ein cyclisches Hexapeptid dargestellt, das im Vergleich zu einer bereits bekannten Cyclopeptidstruktur zusätzliche Cyclopropansubstituenten trägt, welche die hydrophoben Flächen im Molekül vergrößern. Rückschlüsse auf den Bindungsmechanismus an Halogenidionen und die Stöchiometrie der entstandenen Wirt-Gast Komplexe lieferten NMR- und ESI-Spektren.
Human forest modification is among the largest global drivers of terrestrial degradation
of biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystem functioning. One of the most
pertinent components, forest fragmentation, has a long history in ecological research
across the globe, particularly in lower latitudes. However, we still know little how
fragmentation shapes temperate ecosystems, irrespective of the ancient status quo of
European deforestation. Furthermore, its interaction with another pivotal component
of European forests, silvicultural management, are practically unexplored. Hence,
answering the question how anthropogenic modification of temperate forests affects
fundamental components of forest ecosystems is essential basic research that has
been neglected thus far. Most basal ecosystem elements are plants and their insect
herbivores, as they form the energetic basis of the tropic pyramid. Furthermore, their
respective biodiversity, functional traits, and the networks of interactions they
establish are key for a multitude of ecosystem functions, not least ecosystem stability.
Hence, the thesis at hand aimed to disentangle this complex system of
interdependencies of human impacts, biodiversity, species traits and inter-species
interactions.
The first step lay in understanding how woody plant assemblages are shaped by
human forest modification. For this purpose, field investigations in 57 plots in the
hyperfragmented cultural landscape of the Northern Palatinate highlands (SW
Germany) were conducted, censusing > 4,000 tree/shrub individuals from 34 species.
Use of novel, integrative indices for different types of land-use allowed an accurate
quantification of biotic responses. Intriguingly, woody tree/shrub communities reacted
strikingly positive to forest fragmentation, with increases in alpha and beta diversity,
as well as proliferation of heat/drought/light adapted pioneer species. Contrarily,
managed interior forests were homogenized/constrained in biodiversity, with
dominance of shade/cold adapted commercial tree species. Comparisons with recently
unmanaged stands (> 40 a) revealed first indications for nascent conversion to oldgrowth
conditions, with larger variability in light conditions and subsequent
community composition. Reactions to microclimatic conditions, the relationship
between associated species traits and the corresponding species pool, as well as
facilitative/constraining effects by foresters were discussed as underlying mechanisms.
Reactions of herbivore assemblages to forest fragmentation and the subsequent
changes in host plant communities were assessed by comprehensive sampling of >
1,000 live herbivores from 134 species in the forest understory. Diversity was –
similarly to plant communities - higher in fragmentation affected habitats, particularly
in edges of continuous control forests. Furthermore, average trophic specialization
showed an identical pattern. Mechanistically, benefits from microclimatic conditions,
host availability, as well as pronounced niche differentiation are deemed responsible.
While communities were heterogeneous, with no segregation across habitats, (smallforest fragments, edges, and interior of control forests), vegetation diversity, herbivore
diversity, as well as trophic specialization were identified to shape community
composition. This probably reflected a gradient from generalistic/species poor vs.
specialist/species rich herbivore assemblages.
Insect studies conducted in forest systems are doomed to incompleteness
without considering ‘the last biological frontier’, the tree canopies. To access their
biodiversity, relationship to edge effects, and their conservational value, the
arboricolous arthropod fauna of 24 beech (Fagus sylvatica) canopies was sampled via
insecticidal knockdown (‘fogging’). This resulted in an exhaustive collection of > 46,000
specimens from 24 major taxonomic/functional groups. Abundance distributions were
markedly negative exponential, indicating high abundance variability in tree crowns.
Individuals of six pertinent orders were identified to species level, returning > 3,100
individuals from 175 species and 52 families. This high diversity did marginally differ
across habitats, with slightly higher species richness in edge canopies. However,
communities in edge crowns were noticeably more heterogeneous than those in the
forest interior, possibly due to higher variability in environmental edge conditions. In
total, 49 species with protective value were identified, of which only one showed
habitat preferences (for near-natural interior forests). Among them, six species (all
beetles, Coleoptera) were classified as ‘priority species’ for conservation efforts. Hence,
beech canopies of the Northern Palatinate highlands can be considered strongholds of
insect biodiversity, incorporating many species of particular protective value.
The intricacy of plant-herbivore interaction networks and their relationship to
forest fragmentation is largely unexplored, particularly in Central Europe. Illumination
of this matter is all the more important, as ecological networks are highly relevant for
ecosystem stability, particularly in the face of additional anthropogenic disturbances,
such as climate change. Hence, plant-herbivore interaction networks (PHNs) were
constructed from woody plants and their associated herbivores, sampled alive in the
understory. Herbivory verification was achieved using no-choice-feeding assays, as well
as literature references. In total, networks across small forest fragments, edges, and
the forest interior consisted of 696 interactions. Network complexity and trophic niche
redundancy were compared across habitats using a rarefaction-like resampling
procedure. PHNs in fragmentation affected forest habitats were significantly more
complex, as well as more redundant in their realized niches, despite being composed of
relatively more specialist species. Furthermore, network robustness to climate change
was quantified utilizing four different scenarios for climate change susceptibility of
involved plants. In this procedure, remaining herbivores in the network were measured
upon successive loss of their host plant species. Consistently, PHNs in edges (and to a
smaller degree in small fragments) withstood primary extinction of plant species
longer, making them more robust. This was attributed to the high prevalence of
heat/drought-adapted species, as well as to beneficial effects of network topography
(complexity and redundancy). Consequently, strong correlative relationships were
found between realized niche redundancy and climate change robustness of PHNs.
This was both the first time that biologically realistic extinctions (instead of e.g.random extinctions) were used to measure network robustness, and that topographical
network parameters were identified as potential indicators for network robustness
against climate change.
In synthesis, in the light of global biotic degradation due to human forest
modification, the necessity to differentiate must be claimed. Ecosystems react
differently to anthropogenic disturbances, and it seems the particular features present
in Central European forests (ancient deforestation, extensive management, and, most
importantly, high richness in open-forest plant species) cause partly opposed patterns
to other biomes. Lenient microclimates and diverse plant communities facilitate
equally diverse herbivore assemblages, and hence complex and robust networks,
opposed to the forest interior. Therefore, in the reality of extensively used cultural
landscapes, fragmentation affected forest ecosystems, particularly forest edges, can be
perceived as reservoir for biodiversity, and ecosystem functionality. Nevertheless, as
practically all forest habitats considered in this thesis are under human cultivation,
recommendations for ecological enhancement of all forest habitats are discussed.
This thesis is concerned with interest rate modeling by means of the potential approach. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, by making use of the potential approach and the theory of affine Markov processes, we develop a general class of rational models to the term structure of interest rates which we refer to as "the affine rational potential model". These models feature positive interest rates and analytical pricing formulae for zero-coupon bonds, caps, swaptions, and European currency options. We present some concrete models to illustrate the scope of the affine rational potential model and calibrate a model specification to real-world market data. Second, we develop a general family of "multi-curve potential models" for post-crisis interest rates. Our models feature positive stochastic basis spreads, positive term structures, and analytic pricing formulae for interest rate derivatives. This modeling framework is also flexible enough to accommodate negative interest rates and positive basis spreads.
Interconnected, autonomously driving cars shall realize the vision of a zero-accident, low energy mobility in spite of a fast increasing traffic volume. Tightly interconnected medical devices and health care systems shall ensure the health of an aging society. And interconnected virtual power plants based on renewable energy sources shall ensure a clean energy supply in a society that consumes more energy than ever before. Such open systems of systems will play an essential role for economy and society.
Open systems of systems dynamically connect to each other in order to collectively provide a superordinate functionality, which could not be provided by a single system alone. The structure as well as the behavior of an open system of system dynamically emerge at runtime leading to very flexible solutions working under various different environmental conditions. This flexibility and adaptivity of systems of systems are a key for realizing the above mentioned scenarios.
On the other hand, however, this leads to uncertainties since the emerging structure and behavior of a system of system can hardly be anticipated at design time. This impedes the indispensable safety assessment of such systems in safety-critical application domains. Existing safety assurance approaches presume that a system is completely specified and configured prior to a safety assessment. Therefore, they cannot be applied to open systems of systems. In consequence, safety assurance of open systems of systems could easily become a bottleneck impeding or even preventing the success of this promising new generation of embedded systems.
For this reason, this thesis introduces an approach for the safety assurance of open systems of systems. To this end, we shift parts of the safety assurance lifecycle into runtime in order to dynamically assess the safety of the emerging system of system. We use so-called safety models at runtime for enabling systems to assess the safety of an emerging system of system themselves. This leads to a very flexible runtime safety assurance framework.
To this end, this thesis describes the fundamental knowledge on safety assurance and model-driven development, which are the indispensable prerequisites for defining safety models at runtime. Based on these fundamentals, we illustrate how we modularized and formalized conventional safety assurance techniques using model-based representations and analyses. Finally, we explain how we advanced these design time safety models to safety models that can be used by the systems themselves at runtime and how we use these safety models at runtime to create an efficient and flexible runtime safety assurance framework for open systems of systems.
In retail, assortment planning refers to selecting a subset of products to offer that maximizes profit. Assortments can be planned for a single store or a retailer with multiple chain stores where demand varies between stores. In this paper, we assume that a retailer with a multitude of stores wants to specify her offered assortment. To suit all local preferences, regionalization and store-level assortment optimization are widely used in practice and lead to competitive advantages. When selecting regionalized assortments, a tradeoff between expensive, customized assortments in every store and inexpensive, identical assortments in all stores that neglect demand variation is preferable.
We formulate a stylized model for the regionalized assortment planning problem (APP) with capacity constraints and given demand. In our approach, a 'common assortment' that is supplemented by regionalized products is selected. While products in the common assortment are offered in all stores, products in the local assortments are customized and vary from store to store.
Concerning the computational complexity, we show that the APP is strongly NP-complete. The core of this hardness result lies in the selection of the common assortment. We formulate the APP as an integer program and provide algorithms and methods for obtaining approximate solutions and solving large-scale instances.
Lastly, we perform computational experiments to analyze the benefits of regionalized assortment planning depending on the variation in customer demands between stores.
Messgeräte zur geometrischen Produktspezifikation werden mit Normalen nach DIN EN ISO 5436-1 und DIN EN ISO 25178-70 kalibriert. Dabei kommen meist künstliche Oberflächenstrukturen zum Einsatz. Aufgrund immer höherer Anforderungen ist für hochgenaue Messaufgaben allerdings eine praxisorientierte Kalibrierung erforderlich. Ein modellbasierter Ansatz zur Auslegung von Normalen, die eine solche praxisnahe Kalibrierung erlauben, wird im Rahmen dieser Arbeit ohne Einschränkung auf ein spezielles Messverfahren vorgestellt und untersucht. Dabei ermöglichen drei Säulen eine Verbesserung gegenüber konventionellen Normalen: die Berücksichtigung physikalischer Effekte bei der Messung, die Definition neuer Oberflächenstrukturen, als deren Ausgangspunkt reale Bauteiloberflächen dienen, sowie die Berücksichtigung fertigungstechnischer Effekte. Die neu generierten Normale werden mit virtuellen und realen Messungen auf ihren praktischen Einsatz hin untersucht. In diesem Rahmen werden auch neue Kalibrierstrategien, eine Unsicherheitsbilanz sowie ein allgemeiner Leitfaden zur Generierung von Normalen abgeleitet.
Gröbner bases are one of the most powerful tools in computer algebra and commutative algebra, with applications in algebraic geometry and singularity theory. From the theoretical point of view, these bases can be computed over any field using Buchberger's algorithm. In practice, however, the computational efficiency depends on the arithmetic of the coefficient field.
In this thesis, we consider Gröbner bases computations over two types of coefficient fields. First, consider a simple extension \(K=\mathbb{Q}(\alpha)\) of \(\mathbb{Q}\), where \(\alpha\) is an algebraic number, and let \(f\in \mathbb{Q}[t]\) be the minimal polynomial of \(\alpha\). Second, let \(K'\) be the algebraic function field over \(\mathbb{Q}\) with transcendental parameters \(t_1,\ldots,t_m\), that is, \(K' = \mathbb{Q}(t_1,\ldots,t_m)\). In particular, we present efficient algorithms for computing Gröbner bases over \(K\) and \(K'\). Moreover, we present an efficient method for computing syzygy modules over \(K\).
To compute Gröbner bases over \(K\), starting from the ideas of Noro [35], we proceed by joining \(f\) to the ideal to be considered, adding \(t\) as an extra variable. But instead of avoiding superfluous S-pair reductions by inverting algebraic numbers, we achieve the same goal by applying modular methods as in [2,4,27], that is, by inferring information in characteristic zero from information in characteristic \(p > 0\). For suitable primes \(p\), the minimal polynomial \(f\) is reducible over \(\mathbb{F}_p\). This allows us to apply modular methods once again, on a second level, with respect to the
modular factors of \(f\). The algorithm thus resembles a divide and conquer strategy and
is in particular easily parallelizable. Moreover, using a similar approach, we present an algorithm for computing syzygy modules over \(K\).
On the other hand, to compute Gröbner bases over \(K'\), our new algorithm first specializes the parameters \(t_1,\ldots,t_m\) to reduce the problem from \(K'[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\) to \(\mathbb{Q}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\). The algorithm then computes a set of Gröbner bases of specialized ideals. From this set of Gröbner bases with coefficients in \(\mathbb{Q}\), it obtains a Gröbner basis of the input ideal using sparse multivariate rational interpolation.
At current state, these algorithms are probabilistic in the sense that, as for other modular Gröbner basis computations, an effective final verification test is only known for homogeneous ideals or for local monomial orderings. The presented timings show that for most examples, our algorithms, which have been implemented in SINGULAR [17], are considerably faster than other known methods.
Wie entwickelte sich der europäische Stadtblock von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart und was bedeutet er heute für den urbanen Raum? Dies sind die zentralen Fragestellungen dieser Arbeit. Aufbauend auf den methodischen Werkzeugen der diachronischen und synchronischen Linien nach Carl E. Schorske, mit deren Hilfe parallele Entwicklungsströme zwischen Architektur und Gesellschaft aufgezeigt werden können, sowie dem Prinzip der Paradigmenwechsel nach Thomas S. Kuhn, welches den Übergang eines Gedankenmodells zum nächsten mittels revolutionären Vorgängen beschreibt, wird die Chronik des europäischen Stadtblocks auf die Korrelation zwischen Gebautem und Gedachtem analysiert. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf der Entwicklung und den Eigenschaften des urbanen Stadtblocks innerhalb der europäischen Stadt. Dieser definiert sich über das Dreigespann »Straße – Haus – Hof« als zusammenhängendes, städtebauliches Konstrukt, welches von öffentlichem Raum umgeben ist und einen gemeinschaftlichen Raum einschließt.
Die Evolution des Stadtblocks entlang der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen führt unweigerlich in die Gegenwart. Auf diesem Weg lädt sich der Block mit epochenspezifischen Inhalten auf, welche er kontinuierlich weiterführt. So erfährt er aus der Antike den sozialen Grundgedanken der Gemeinschaft. Mit dem gesellschaftlichen Paradigmenwechsel der aufkommenden Bürgerlichkeit erhält der Stadtblock im Mittelalter eine wirtschaftliche Komponente auf Grundlage der Multifunktionalität. Aufklärung und Absolutismus überführen die Typologie schließlich in die Renaissance und den Barock, aus denen wiederum ein repräsentativer Charakter sowie ein grundlegendes städtebauliches Prinzip resultiert. Die politischen, sozialen wie technischen Revolutionen der Neuzeit geben dem Stadtblock einen programmatischen Charakter, da er nicht nur zum Programm erhoben, sondern gleichzeitig auch Grundtyp der gegenwärtigen Blockbebauungen wird. Die Weltkriege sowie die Abkehr vom traditionellen Stadtbild lassen die Planer von der Blocktypologie abkommen hin zu einem vom Kontext gelösten, aufgelockerten Städtebau der Moderne. Hieraus entsteht weniger ein städtebaulicher Mehrwert für den Block, durchaus aber ein funktionaler im Hinblick auf Bautechnik und Organisation. Die Auswirkungen der autogerechten und funktionalen Stadt bewirken den Paradigmenwechsel zur Nachmoderne, in welcher Multifunktionalität und Dichte erneut zum Leitbild des Baugeschehens erhoben werden.
Am Ende der Untersuchung erweist sich die These der Korrelation zwischen Gebautem und Gedachtem als belegt. Wenn sich Gesellschaft und Architektur nun von der Antike an parallel entwickelten, so ist es nur folgerichtig anzunehmen, dass der Stadtblock als kontinuierlich gewachsenes Konstrukt auch eine Analogie zur Gesellschaft der Gegenwart darstellen kann. Als regressiver Stadtbaustein, also als Typologie, die dank ihrer fortdauernden Weiterentwicklung die Bedingung vom Bedingten abzuleiten vermag, ist es dem Stadtblock möglich auf die immanenten Inhalte seines Werdeganges zurückzugreifen und diese gleich der Gesellschaft für die Gegenwart und Zukunft zu nutzen.
Distributed systems are omnipresent nowadays and networking them is fundamental for the continuous dissemination and thus availability of data. Provision of data in real-time is one of the most important non-functional aspects that safety-critical networks must guarantee. Formal verification of data communication against worst-case deadline requirements is key to certification of emerging x-by-wire systems. Verification allows aircraft to take off, cars to steer by wire, and safety-critical industrial facilities to operate. Therefore, different methodologies for worst-case modeling and analysis of real-time systems have been established. Among them is deterministic Network Calculus (NC), a versatile technique that is applicable across multiple domains such as packet switching, task scheduling, system on chip, software-defined networking, data center networking and network virtualization. NC is a methodology to derive deterministic bounds on two crucial performance metrics of communication systems:
(a) the end-to-end delay data flows experience and
(b) the buffer space required by a server to queue all incoming data.
NC has already seen application in the industry, for instance, basic results have been used to certify the backbone network of the Airbus A380 aircraft.
The NC methodology for worst-case performance analysis of distributed real-time systems consists of two branches. Both share the NC network model but diverge regarding their respective derivation of performance bounds, i.e., their analysis principle. NC was created as a deterministic system theory for queueing analysis and its operations were later cast in a (min,+)-algebraic framework. This branch is known as algebraic Network Calculus (algNC). While algNC can efficiently compute bounds on delay and backlog, the algebraic manipulations do not allow NC to attain the most accurate bounds achievable for the given network model. These tight performance bounds can only be attained with the other, newly established branch of NC, the optimization-based analysis (optNC). However, the only optNC analysis that can currently derive tight bounds was proven to be computationally infeasible even for the analysis of moderately sized networks other than simple sequences of servers.
This thesis makes various contributions in the area of algNC: accuracy within the existing framework is improved, distributivity of the sensor network calculus analysis is established, and most significantly the algNC is extended with optimization principles. They allow algNC to derive performance bounds that are competitive with optNC. Moreover, the computational efficiency of the new NC approach is improved such that this thesis presents the first NC analysis that is both accurate and computationally feasible at the same time. It allows NC to scale to larger, more complex systems that require formal verification of their real-time capabilities.
In this thesis, mathematical research questions related to recursive utility and stochastic differential utility (SDU) are explored.
First, a class of backward equations under nonlinear expectations is investigated: Existence and uniqueness of solutions are established, and the issues of stability and discrete-time approximation are addressed. It is then shown that backward equations of this class naturally appear as a continuous-time limit in the context of recursive utility with nonlinear expectations.
Then, the Epstein-Zin parametrization of SDU is studied. The focus is on specifications with both relative risk aversion and elasitcity of intertemporal substitution greater that one. A concave utility functional is constructed and a utility gradient inequality is established.
Finally, consumption-portfolio problems with recursive preferences and unspanned risk are investigated. The investor's optimal strategies are characterized by a specific semilinear partial differential equation. The solution of this equation is constructed by a fixed point argument, and a corresponding efficient and accurate method to calculate optimal strategies numerically is given.
Inflation modeling is a very important tool for conducting an efficient monetary policy. This doctoral thesis reviewed inflation models, in particular the Phillips curve models of inflation dynamics. We focused on a well known and widely used model, the so-called three equation new Keynesian model which is a system of equations consisting of a new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC), an investment and saving (IS) curve and an interest rate rule.
We gave a detailed derivation of these equations. The interest rate rule used in this model is normally determined by using a Lagrangian method to solve an optimal control problem constrained by a standard discrete time NKPC which describes the inflation dynamics and an IS curve that represents the output gaps dynamics. In contrast to the real world, this method assumes that the policy makers intervene continuously. This means that the costs resulting from the change in the interest rates are ignored. We showed also that there are approximation errors made, when one log-linearizes non linear equations, by doing the derivation of the standard discrete time NKPC.
We agreed with other researchers as mentioned in this thesis, that errors which result from ignoring such log-linear approximation errors and the costs of altering interest rates by determining interest rate rule, can lead to a suboptimal interest rate rule and hence to non-optimal paths of output gaps and inflation rate.
To overcome such a problem, we proposed a stochastic optimal impulse control method. We formulated the problem as a stochastic optimal impulse control problem by considering the costs of change in interest rates and the approximation error terms. In order to formulate this problem, we first transform the standard discrete time NKPC and the IS curve into their high-frequency versions and hence into their continuous time versions where error terms are described by a zero mean Gaussian white noise with a finite and constant variance. After formulating this problem, we use the quasi-variational inequality approach to solve analytically a special case of the central bank problem, where an inflation rate is supposed to be on target and a central bank has to optimally control output gap dynamics. This method gives an optimal control band in which output gap process has to be maintained and an optimal control strategy, which includes the optimal size of intervention and optimal intervention time, that can be used to keep the process into the optimal control band.
Finally, using a numerical example, we examined the impact of some model parameters on optimal control strategy. The results show that an increase in the output gap volatility as well as in the fixed and proportional costs of the change in interest rate lead to an increase in the width of the optimal control band. In this case, the optimal intervention requires the central bank to wait longer before undertaking another control action.
The present study investigated the effects of two methods of shared book reading on children´s emergent literacy skills, such as language skills (expressive vocabulary and semantic skills) and grapheme awareness, i.e. before the alphabetic phase of reading acquisition (Lachmann & van Leeuwen, 2014) in home and in kindergarten contexts. The two following shared book reading methods were investigated: Method I - literacy enrichment: 200 extra children's books were distributed in kindergartens and children were encouraged every week to borrow a book to take home and read with their parents. Further, a written letter was sent to the parents encouraging them to frequently read the books with their children at home. Method II - teacher training: kindergarten teachers participated in structured training which included formal instruction on how to promote child language development through shared book reading. The training was an adaptation of the Heidelberger Interaktionstraining für pädagogisches Fachpersonal zur Förderung ein- und mehrsprachiger Kinder - HIT (Buschmann & Jooss, 2011). In addition, the effects of the two methods in combination were investigated. Three questions were addressed in the present study: (1) What effect does method I (literacy enrichment), method II (teacher training) and the combination of both methods have on children's expressive vocabulary? (2) What effect does method I (literacy enrichment), method II (teacher training) and the combination of both methods have on children's semantic skills? (3) What effect does method I (literacy enrichment), method II (teacher training) and the combination of both methods have on children's grapheme awareness? Accordingly, 69 children, ranged in age from 3;0 to 4;8 years, were recruited from four kindergartens in the city of Kaiserslautern, Germany. The kindergartens were divided into: kindergarten 1 – Method I (N = 13); kindergarten 2 - Method II (N = 18); kindergarten 3 - Combination of both methods (N = 17); kindergarten 4 - Control group (N = 21). Half of the participants (N = 35) reported having a migration background. All groups were similar in regards to socioeconomic status and literacy activities at home. In a pre- posttest design, children performed three tests: expressive vocabulary (AWSTR, 3-5; Kiese-Himmel, 2005), semantic skills (SETK, 3-5 subtests ESR; Grimm, 2001), and grapheme awareness which is a task developed with the purpose of testing children’s familiarity with grapheme forms. The intervention period had duration of six months. The data analysis was performed using the software IBM SPSS Statistics version 22. Regarding language skills, Method I showed no significant effects on children expressive vocabulary and semantic skills. Method II showed significant effects for children expressive vocabulary. In addition, the children with migration background took more advantage of the method. Regarding semantic skills, no significant effects were found. No significant effects of the combination of both methods in children's language skills were found. For grapheme awareness, however, results showed positive effects for Method I, and Method II, as well as for the combination of both methods. The combination group, as reported by a large effect size, showed to be more effective than Method I and Method II alone. Moreover, the results indicated that in grapheme awareness, all children (in regards to age, gender, with and without migration background) took equal advantage in all three intervention groups. Overall, it can be concluded with the results of the present study, that by providing access to good books, Method I may help parents involve themselves in the active process of their child's literacy skills development. However, in order to improve language skills, access to books alone showed to be not enough. Therefore, it is suggested that access combined with additional support to parents in how to improve their language interactions with their children is highly recommended. In respect to Method II, the present study suggests that shared book reading through professional training is an important tool that supports children´s language development. For grapheme awareness it is concluded that with the combination of the two performed methods, high exposure to shared book reading helps children to informally learn about the surface characteristics of print, acquire some familiarity with the visual characteristics of the letters and learn to differentiate them from other visual patterns. Finally, it is suggested to organizations and institutions as well as to future research, the importance of having more programs that offer different possibilities to children to have more contact with adequate language interaction as well as more experiences with print through shared book reading as showed in the present study.
We propose and study a strongly coupled PDE-ODE-ODE system modeling cancer cell invasion through a tissue network
under the go-or-grow hypothesis asserting that cancer cells can either move or proliferate. Hence our setting features
two interacting cell populations with their mutual transitions and involves tissue-dependent degenerate diffusion and
haptotaxis for the moving subpopulation. The proliferating cells and the tissue evolution are characterized by way of ODEs
for the respective densities. We prove the global existence of weak solutions and illustrate the model behaviour by
numerical simulations in a two-dimensional setting.
The thesis consists of two parts. In the first part we consider the stable Auslander--Reiten quiver of a block \(B\) of a Hecke algebra of the symmetric group at a root of unity in characteristic zero. The main theorem states that if the ground field is algebraically closed and \(B\) is of wild representation type, then the tree class of every connected component of the stable Auslander--Reiten quiver \(\Gamma_{s}(B)\) of \(B\) is \(A_{\infty}\). The main ingredient of the proof is a skew group algebra construction over a quantum complete intersection. Also, for these algebras the stable Auslander--Reiten quiver is computed in the case where the defining parameters are roots of unity. As a result, the tree class of every connected component of the stable Auslander--Reiten quiver is \(A_{\infty}\).\[\]
In the second part of the thesis we are concerned with branching rules for Hecke algebras of the symmetric group at a root of unity. We give a detailed survey of the theory initiated by I. Grojnowski and A. Kleshchev, describing the Lie-theoretic structure that the Grothendieck group of finite-dimensional modules over a cyclotomic Hecke algebra carries. A decisive role in this approach is played by various functors that give branching rules for cyclotomic Hecke algebras that are independent of the underlying field. We give a thorough definition of divided power functors that will enable us to reformulate the Scopes equivalence of a Scopes pair of blocks of Hecke algebras of the symmetric group. As a consequence we prove that two indecomposable modules that correspond under this equivalence have a common vertex. In particular, we verify the Dipper--Du Conjecture in the case where the blocks under consideration have finite representation type.
α-, β- und γ-Asaron gehören zur Gruppe der Phenylpropanoide und kommen überwiegend in Pflanzen der Familien Aristolochiaceae, Acoraceae und Lauraceae vor. Asarone sind im etherischen Öl dieser Pflanzen enthalten, welches hauptsächlich als Aromastoff in
alkoholischen Getränken wie Bitterlikören oder in der traditionellen Pflanzenmedizin
eingesetzt wird. α- und β-Asaron besitzen pharmakologische Eigenschaften und könnten potentiell in der Therapie von verschiedenen Krankheiten eingesetzt werden, jedoch haben Studien gezeigt, dass diese Verbindungen sowie indisches Kalmusöl im Tierversuch im Nager
krebserregend sind (Dünndarm und Leber). Der Mechanismus dieser kanzerogenen Wirkung ist derzeit noch unklar, wobei ein gentoxischer Weg nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann. Studien zur Gentoxizität der propenylischen Verbindungen α- und β-Asaron sind bislang uneinheitlich. Daten zur Kanzerogenität und Gentoxizität des allylischen γ-Asarons fehlen
gänzlich. Basierend auf der aktuellen Datenlage ist eine Risikobewertung für Zubereitungen, die Asarone enthalten, nicht möglich. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Dissertation sollte daher
mithilfe von verschiedenen in vitro Testsystemen ein Beitrag zur Aufklärung des Wirkmechanismus der Kanzerogenität geleistet und die Frage nach der Gentoxizität der Asarone geklärt werden. Dazu wurde zunächst ein bakterieller Mutagenitätstest (Ames-Fluktuationstest) mit und ohne exogene metabolische Aktivierung (S9-Mix) in den Salmonella
typhimurium-Stämmen TA97a, TA98, TA100 und TA102 eingesetzt. Zusätzlich wurden Untersuchungen zur Zytotoxizität und Gentoxizität in Säugerzellen durchgeführt. Zur Überprüfung der Mutagenität diente der Hypoxanthinphosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT)-Test in V79-Zellen und gentechnisch veränderten V79-Zellen (V79-hCYP1A2-hSULT1A1*1 und V79-
rCYP1A2-rSULT1C1) und zur Bestimmung des gentoxischen Potentials wurde der
Mikrokerntest in V79-Zellen und metabolisch kompetenten HepG2-Zellen herangezogen. α- und β-Asaron zeigten im Ames-Fluktuationstest nur nach metabolischer Aktivierung ein mutagenes Potential. Diese Ergebnisse deuten auf die wichtige Rolle des Metabolismus in der
Toxizität der propenylischen Asarone hin. Deshalb wurden neben den drei Asaron-Isomeren auch ausgewählte oxidative Metaboliten ((E/Z)-Asaron-1',2'-epoxid, γ-Asaron-2',3'-epoxid, erythro- und threo-1',2'-Dihydro-1',2'-dihydroxyasaron, (E/Z)-3'-Oxoasaron und 2,4,5-Trimethoxyphenyl-2-propanon) auf Mutagenität getestet. Dabei konnte festgestellt werden, dass die mutagene Wirkung von α- und β-Asaron auf die Epoxidierung der Seitenkette
zurückzuführen ist, da die entsprechenden Epoxide im Ames-Fluktuationstest ebenfalls mutagen waren. Außerdem führte der HPRT-Test in den gentechnisch veränderten V79-hCYP1A2-hSULT1A1*1-Zellen zu einer leichten Erhöhung der Mutationsfrequenz nach Inkubation mit den Asaronen, während der Test in den Standard-V79- und V79-rCYP1A2-rSULT1C1-Zellen für diese Verbindungen keine Veränderung im Vergleich zur Negativkontrolle zeigte. Im Mikrokerntest in HepG2-Zellen konnte ebenfalls ein gentoxisches Potential für die
propenylischen Asarone nachgewiesen werden. Welchen Einfluss dabei der Metabolismus der Substanzen hat, wurde mithilfe einer Vorinkubation mit TCDD überprüft, welches vor allem zur Induktion von CYP1A-Enzymen in HepG2-Zellen führt. Bei allen drei Asaron-Isomeren
wurde dadurch eine Erhöhung der relativen Mikrokernrate erreicht, insbesondere jedoch bei α-Asaron. Die Inkubation mit den oxidativen Metaboliten gab Hinweise darauf, dass die gentoxische Wirkung hier vermutlich auf die Bildung von (E/Z)-3'-Oxoasaron zurückzuführen ist. In der vorliegenden Arbeit konnte somit gezeigt werden, dass nicht nur zwischen allylischen und propenylischen Asaronen Unterschiede in der Gentoxizität vorliegen, sondern auch zwischen dem trans(α)- und cis(β)-Isomer. Dieser Befund geht mit den neuesten Untersuchungen zum Metabolismus dieser Substanzen einher, der sich ebenfalls zwischen den propenylischen Asaronen unterscheidet. Dem allylischen γ-Asaron liegt wiederum ein anderer Wirkmechanismus zugrunde. Der postulierte Metabolismusweg für vergleichbare allylische Alkenylbenzene basiert auf einer CYP-Hydroxylierung der Seitenkette und einer weiteren Sulfonierung durch Sulfotransferasen. Durch eine spontane Abspaltung der Sulfat-Gruppe entsteht ein reaktives Carbokation, das mit nukleophilen Zentren (z.B. Proteinen oder DNA) reagieren und somit letztlich zu Mutationen und der Entstehung von Krebs beitragen
kann. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit geben jedoch keinen Hinweis darauf, dass es bei γ-Asaron analog zu anderen allylischen Propenylbenzenen zu einer Bildung eines ultimaten Kanzerogens kommt, da keine mutagene Wirkung in den hier verwendeten Testsystemen zu
beobachten war, die zum Großteil eine Aktivierung über Sulfotransferasen ermöglichten.
Annual Report 2015
(2016)
Annual Report, Jahrbuch AG Magnetismus
In this thesis we developed a desynchronization design flow in the goal of easing the de- velopment effort of distributed embedded systems. The starting point of this design flow is a network of synchronous components. By transforming this synchronous network into a dataflow process network (DPN), we ensures important properties that are difficult or theoretically impossible to analyze directly on DPNs are preserved by construction. In particular, both deadlock-freeness and buffer boundedness can be preserved after desyn- chronization. For the correctness of desynchronization, we developed a criteria consisting of two properties: a global property that demands the correctness of the synchronous network, as well as a local property that requires the latency-insensitivity of each local synchronous component. As the global property is also a correctness requirement of synchronous systems in general, we take this property as an assumption of our desyn- chronization. However, the local property is in general not satisfied by all synchronous components, and therefore needs to be verified before desynchronization. In this thesis we developed a novel technique for the verification of the local property that can be carried out very efficiently. Finally we developed a model transformation method that translates a set of synchronous guarded actions – an intermediate format for synchronous systems – to an asynchronous actor description language (CAL). Our theorem ensures that one passed the correctness verification, the generated DPN of asynchronous pro- cesses (or actors) preserves the functional behavior of the original synchronous network. Moreover, by the correctness of the synchronous network, our theorem guarantees that the derived DPN is deadlock-free and can be implemented with only finitely bounded buffers.
In this paper, we discuss the problem of approximating ellipsoid uncertainty sets with bounded (gamma) uncertainty sets. Robust linear programs with ellipsoid uncertainty lead to quadratically constrained programs, whereas robust linear programs with bounded uncertainty sets remain linear programs which are generally easier to solve.
We call a bounded uncertainty set an inner approximation of an ellipsoid if it is contained in it. We consider two different inner approximation problems. The first problem is to find a bounded uncertainty set which sticks close to the ellipsoid such that a shrank version of the ellipsoid is contained in it. The approximation is optimal if the required shrinking is minimal. In the second problem, we search for a bounded uncertainty set within the ellipsoid with maximum volume. We present how both problems can be solved analytically by stating explicit formulas for the optimal solutions of these problems.
Further, we present in a computational experiment how the derived approximation techniques can be used to approximate shortest path and network flow problems which are affected by ellipsoidal uncertainty.
Most of today’s wireless communication devices operate on unlicensed bands with uncoordinated spectrum access, with the consequence that RF interference and collisions are impairing the overall performance of wireless networks. In the classical design of network protocols, both packets in a collision are considered lost, such that channel access mechanisms attempt to avoid collisions proactively. However, with the current proliferation of wireless applications, e.g., WLANs, car-to-car networks, or the Internet of Things, this conservative approach is increasingly limiting the achievable network performance in practice. Instead of shunning interference, this thesis questions the notion of „harmful“ interference and argues that interference can, when generated in a controlled manner, be used to increase the performance and security of wireless systems. Using results from information theory and communications engineering, we identify the causes for reception or loss of packets and apply these insights to design system architectures that benefit from interference. Because the effect of signal propagation and channel fading, receiver design and implementation, and higher layer interactions on reception performance is complex and hard to reproduce by simulations, we design and implement an experimental platform for controlled interference generation to strengthen our theoretical findings with experimental results. Following this philosophy, we introduce and evaluate a system architecture that leverage interference.
First, we identify the conditions for successful reception of concurrent transmissions in wireless networks. We focus on the inherent ability of angular modulation receivers to reject interference when the power difference of the colliding signals is sufficiently large, the so-called capture effect. Because signal power fades over distance, the capture effect enables two or more sender–receiver pairs to transmit concurrently if they are positioned appropriately, in turn boosting network performance. Second, we show how to increase the security of wireless networks with a centralized network access control system (called WiFire) that selectively interferes with packets that violate a local security policy, thus effectively protecting legitimate devices from receiving such packets. WiFire’s working principle is as follows: a small number of specialized infrastructure devices, the guardians, are distributed alongside a network and continuously monitor all packet transmissions in the proximity, demodulating them iteratively. This enables the guardians to access the packet’s content before the packet fully arrives at the receiver. Using this knowledge the guardians classify the packet according to a programmable security policy. If a packet is deemed malicious, e.g., because its header fields indicate an unknown client, one or more guardians emit a limited burst of interference targeting the end of the packet, with the objective to introduce bit errors into it. Established communication standards use frame check sequences to ensure that packets are received correctly; WiFire leverages this built-in behavior to prevent a receiver from processing a harmful packet at all. This paradigm of „over-the-air“ protection without requiring any prior modification of client devices enables novel security services such as the protection of devices that cannot defend themselves because their performance limitations prohibit the use of complex cryptographic protocols, or of devices that cannot be altered after deployment.
This thesis makes several contributions. We introduce the first software-defined radio based experimental platform that is able to generate selective interference with the timing precision needed to evaluate the novel architectures developed in this thesis. It implements a real-time receiver for IEEE 802.15.4, giving it the ability to react to packets in a channel-aware way. Extending this system design and implementation, we introduce a security architecture that enables a remote protection of wireless clients, the wireless firewall. We augment our system with a rule checker (similar in design to Netfilter) to enable rule-based selective interference. We analyze the security properties of this architecture using physical layer modeling and validate our analysis with experiments in diverse environmental settings. Finally, we perform an analysis of concurrent transmissions. We introduce a new model that captures the physical properties correctly and show its validity with experiments, improving the state of the art in the design and analysis of cross-layer protocols for wireless networks.
Immobilisierung von Glycosidasen an magnetische Partikel mit dem Ziel einer Weinaromaverbesserung
(2016)
In der Winzertechnik werden Enzympräparate für diverse Anwendungen eingesetzt. Dabei gibt es zahlreiche kommerzielle Enzyme zur Verbesserung bzw. Freisetzung von Aromen. Solche Enzympräparate werden nach einiger Zeit durch eine Bentonitschönung inaktiviert bzw. ausgefällt und gehen damit verloren. Der Einsatz von neuem Enzympräparat bei jedem weiteren Gärungsansatz stellt dabei einen Kostenfaktor für den Winzer dar und es bleibt eine gewisse Rest-Enzymaktivität im Wein erhalten. Letzteres führt dazu, dass solche Weine sensorisch nach einem halben bis einem Jahr abbauen. Um sensorische Beeinträchtigungen und Qualitätsminderungen vorzubeugen ist eine vollständige Entfernung der Enzyme wichtig. Eine Immobilisierung dieser Enzyme an Magnetit-Partikel stellt eine Möglichkeit dar, dieses Problem zu lösen. Besonders die vollständige Entfernung durch eine Magnet-Separation und die anschließende Wiederverwendbarkeit der Enzyme sind dabei wichtige Vorteile für den Winzer.
Bei Enzympräparaten zur Weinaromaverbesserung handelt es sich um pektolytische Enzymmischungen mit einer β-Glucosidase-Nebenaktivität. Gerade in Weißwein kommen viele Aromen glykosidisch gebunden vor und sind dadurch sensorisch nicht wirksam. Diese glykosidischen Verbindungen können durch eine β Glucosidase-Aktivität gespalten und das entsprechende Aroma-Aglykon freigesetzt werden. Allerdings liegt bei der Freisetzung der Aromastoffe ein sequentieller Mechanismus vor, d.h. es werden ebenfalls andere Glycosidasen, wie Arabinosidase, Rhamnosidase oder Xylosidase, benötigt, um Aroma freizusetzen. Daher muss es sich bei den für die Aromafreisetzung eingesetzten Enzymen immer um eine Mischung aus Glycosidasen handeln. Die Immobilisierung verschiedener Enzyme auf einen Träger ist dahingehend eine Herausforderung, indem jedes Enzym andere Voraussetzungen hat, um erfolgreich an einen Träger zu koppeln. Aus diesem Grund ist die simultane Immobilisierung mehrere Enzyme immer nur ein Kompromiss.
Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, die Enzyme erfolgreich an Magnetit-Partikel zu koppeln und mittels analytischer und sensorischer Untersuchungen die Wirksamkeit und die Eigenschaften der Enzyme hinsichtlich eines Einsatzes in der Winzertechnik zu bewerten. Zur Immobilisierung wurden superparamagnetische Magnetit-Partikel, die in einer Matrix aus Polyvinylalkohol eingeschlossen waren, verwendet und die Konjugation der Enzyme wurde mit Carbodiimid durchgeführt.
Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es möglich ist mehrere Glycosidasen verschiedener Spezifität aus einem kommerziellen, önologischen Enzympräparat erfolgreich an Magnetit-Partikel zu koppeln und dadurch die Aroma-Ausprägung von Wein positiv zu beeinflussen. Bei den untersuchten Bedingungen stellten sich pH 3,8 bis 4,0 als beste Voraussetzung heraus, um möglichst viele Glycosidasen aktiv an den Träger zu konjugieren. Generell hatte die β-Glucosidase eine relativ hohe Kopplungsaffinität zum Träger, sodass im immobilisierten Enzymgemisch andere Mengenverhältnisse der einzelnen Glycosidasen vorlagen als im Ausgangsprodukt. Untersuchungen hinsichtlich einer möglichen Änderung im Aktivitätsprofil zeigten keine signifikanten Unterschiede. Durch die Kopplungsreaktion kam es zu keiner negativen Beeinträchtigung. Für alle Enzympräparate wurde allerdings eine deutliche Inhibition der β-Glucosidase-Aktivität durch Glucose festgestellt. Die Enzyme sollten daher erst am Ende bzw. nach der Gärung eingesetzt werden, da dort die Glucose-Konzentration am niedrigsten ist. Stabilitätsuntersuchungen der gekoppelten Glycosidasen im Wein zeigten lediglich leichte Aktivitätsverluste. Somit war die Kopplung stabil und stellte kein Hindernis für einen Einsatz im Wein dar. Die Rückgewinnung der Magnetit-Partikel aus Wein wurde mit Hilfe eines Hochgradient-Magnet-Separators durchgeführt. Die Separation hatte ebenfalls keinen negativen Einfluss auf die Enzymaktivität der gekoppelten Enzyme.
Da die Enzyme an Magnetit-Partikel gekoppelt wurden, ist eine mögliche Eisenmigration aus den Partikeln in den Wein ebenfalls ein wichtiges Kriterium und wurde entsprechend untersucht. Dabei konnten durch den Einsatz der Magnetit-Partikel im Wein teilweise ein stark erhöhter Eisengehalt festgestellt werden. Eine erhöhte Eisen-Konzentration im Wein kann zu drastischen Qualitätseinbußen und zu vermehrter Oxidation führen. In Folge dessen stellt die Eisenmigration aus den Partikeln noch ein erhebliches Problem bei einem späteren Einsatz in der Winzertechnik dar. Untersuchungen zum Phenolgehalt der mit Magnetit-Partikel behandelten Weinproben ließen auf einen solchen oxidativen Abbau durch die erhöhten Eisen-Konzentrationen schließen. Weitere Untersuchungen einiger Einzelphenole bestätigten diese Annahme. Neben verminderten Phenolgehalten konnten dagegen einige Phenole, wie Kaffeesäure, p Coumarsäure und Resveratrol, durch den Enzymeinsatz signifikant gesteigert werden.
Weitere Untersuchungen zeigten, dass die gekoppelten Enzyme fähig waren, Aromastoffe im Wein freizusetzen. Der Terpengehalt konnte signifikant durch Enzymeinsatz, sowohl frei als auch immobilisiert, gesteigert werden. Dies betraf besonders die Monoterpene Nerol und Geraniol. Ein Vergleich zwischen gekoppelten und freien Glycosidasen zeigte, dass durch das nicht-immobilisierte Enzymgemisch etwas mehr der untersuchten Verbindungen freigesetzt wurde. Dieser Effekt kann mit der durch die Kopplung veränderten Enzym-Zusammensetzung erklärt werden, da ein größerer Anteil an β-Glucosidase an die Magnetit-Partikel koppelte, aufgrund des sequentiellen Mechanismus, aber auch andere Glycosidasen von Bedeutung sind, um das entsprechende Aglykon freizusetzen.
An Magnetit-Partikel gekoppelte Glycosidasen können gut in bestehende Batch-Prozesse der Weinherstellung integriert werden. Außerdem sind, abgesehen vom Magnet-Separator, nur geringe Investitionen in neue Anlagen nötig. Weitere Vorteile sind eine gute Abtrennung und Wiederverwendbarkeit der gekoppelten Enzyme, enzymfreies Produkt, nahezu identische Anwendung im Vergleich zu bestehenden Enzympräparaten und es ist kaum neue Prozess-Expertise für die Winzer notwendig. Die Prozessbetrachtung zeigte allerdings auch die Komplexität der Hydrolyse glykosidisch gebundener Stoffe im Wein, da eine Vielzahl von Faktoren die Hydrolyse der Glykoside im Wein beeinflusst. Somit ist eine Vorhersage bzw. Abschätzung der Freisetzung an Aromastoffen im Wein durch einen Enzymeinsatz äußerst kompliziert und es ist zurzeit noch nicht möglich die erworbenen Kenntnisse zur Hydrolyse der Glykoside den Weingütern effizient zur Verfügung zu stellen.
Die Glycosidasen β-Glucosidase, Arabinosidase, Rhamnosidase und Xylosidase konnten erfolgreich auf die verwendeten Magnetit-Partikel immobilisiert, deren mögliche Wiederverwendbarkeit gezeigt und durch den Einsatz dieser Enzyme der Gehalt an Terpenen und einiger Phenole signifikant gesteigert werden. Diese Erkenntnisse zeigen, dass ein Einsatz der an Magnetit-Partikel gekoppelten Glycosidasen in der Winzertechnik möglich ist. Allerdings können die erhöhten Eisengehalte durch die Verwendung der Magnetit-Partikel zu Qualitätseinbußen führen. Daher sind die verwendeten Partikeln noch nicht für einen Einsatz in der Winzertechnik geeignet. Diese bedürfen weiterer Entwicklung, da für einen erfolgreichen Einsatz möglichst inerte Partikel vorliegen sollten, um die beschriebenen negativen Effekte zu minimieren.
Computer Vision (CV) problems, such as image classification and segmentation, have traditionally been solved by manual construction of feature hierarchies or incorporation of other prior knowledge. However, noisy images, varying viewpoints and lighting conditions of images, and clutters in real-world images make the problem challenging. Such tasks cannot be efficiently solved without learning from data. Therefore, many Deep Learning (DL) approaches have recently been successful for various CV tasks, for instance, image classification, object recognition and detection, action recognition, video classification, and scene labeling. The main focus of this thesis is to investigate a purely learning-based approach, particularly, Multi-Dimensional LSTM (MD-LSTM) recurrent neural networks to tackle the challenging CV tasks, classification and segmentation on 2D and 3D image data. Due to the structural nature of MD-LSTM, the network learns directly from raw pixel values and takes the complex spatial dependencies of each pixel into account. This thesis provides several key contributions in the field of CV and DL.
Several MD-LSTM network architectural options are suggested based on the type of input and output, as well as the requiring tasks. Including the main layers, which are an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer, several additional layers can be added such as a collapse layer and a fully connected layer. First, a single Two Dimensional LSTM (2D-LSTM) is directly applied on texture images for segmentation and show improvement over other texture segmentation methods. Besides, a 2D-LSTM layer with a collapse layer is applied for image classification on texture and scene images and have provided an accurate classification results. In addition, a deeper model with a fully connected layer is introduced to deal with more complex images for scene labeling and outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods including the deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). Here, several input and output representation techniques are introduced to achieve the robust classification. Randomly sampled windows as input are transformed in scaling and rotation, which are integrated to get the final classification. To achieve multi-class image classification on scene images, several pruning techniques are introduced. This framework provides a good results in automatic web-image tagging. The next contribution is an investigation of 3D data with MD-LSTM. The traditional cuboid order of computations in Multi-Dimensional LSTM (MD-LSTM) is re-arranged in pyramidal fashion. The resulting Pyramidal Multi-Dimensional LSTM (PyraMiD-LSTM) is easy to parallelize, especially for 3D data such as stacks of brain slice images. PyraMiD-LSTM was tested on 3D biomedical volumetric images and achieved best known pixel-wise brain image segmentation results and competitive results on Electron Microscopy (EM) data for membrane segmentation.
To validate the framework, several challenging databases for classification and segmentation are proposed to overcome the limitations of current databases. First, scene images are randomly collected from the web and used for scene understanding, i.e., the web-scene image dataset for multi-class image classification. To achieve multi-class image classification, the training and testing images are generated in a different setting. For training, images belong to a single pre-defined category which are trained as a regular single-class image classification. However, for testing, images containing multi-classes are randomly collected by web-image search engine by querying the categories. All scene images include noise, background clutter, unrelated contents, and also diverse in quality and resolution. This setting can make the database possible to evaluate for real-world applications. Secondly, an automated blob-mosaics texture dataset generator is introduced for segmentation. Random 2D Gaussian blobs are generated and filled with random material textures. These textures contain diverse changes in illumination, scale, rotation, and viewpoint. The generated images are very challenging since they are even visually hard to separate the related regions.
Overall, the contributions in this thesis are major advancements in the direction of solving image analysis problems with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) without the need of any extra processing or manually designed steps. We aim at improving the presented framework to achieve the ultimate goal of accurate fine-grained image analysis and human-like understanding of images by machines.
Cells and organelles are enclosed by membranes that consist of a lipid bilayer harboring highly
diverse membrane proteins (MPs). These carry out vital functions, and α-helical MPs, in
particular, are of outstanding pharmacological importance, as they comprise more than half of
all drug targets. However, knowledge from MP research is limited, as MPs require membranemimetic
environments to retain their native structures and functions and, thus, are not readily
amenable to in vitro studies. To gain insight into vectorial functions, as in the case of channels
and transporters, and into topology, which describes MP conformation and orientation in the
context of a membrane, purified MPs need to be reconstituted, that is, transferred from detergent
micelles into a lipid-bilayer system.
The ultimate goal of this thesis was to elucidate the membrane topology of Mistic, which is
an essential regulator of biofilm formation in Bacillus subtilis consisting of four α-helices. The
conformational stability of Mistic has been shown to depend on the presence of a hydrophobic
environment. However, Mistic is characterized by an uncommonly hydrophilic surface, and
its helices are significantly shorter than transmembrane helices of canonical integral MPs.
Therefore, the means by which its association with the hydrophobic interior of a lipid bilayer
is accomplished is a subject of much debate. To tackle this issue, Mistic was produced and
purified, reconstituted, and subjected to topological studies.
Reconstitution of Mistic in the presence of lipids was performed by lowering the detergent
concentration to subsolubilizing concentrations via addition of cyclodextrin. To fully exploit
the advantages offered by cyclodextrin-mediated detergent removal, a quantitative model was
established that describes the supramolecular state of the reconstitution mixture and allows
for the prediction of reconstitution trajectories and their cross points with phase boundaries.
Automated titrations enabled spectroscopic monitoring of Mistic reconstitutions in real time.
On the basis of the established reconstitution protocol, the membrane topology of Mistic was
investigated with the aid of fluorescence quenching experiments and oriented circular dichroism
spectroscopy. The results of these experiments reveal that Mistic appears to be an exception
from the commonly observed transmembrane orientation of α-helical MPs, since it exhibits
a highly unusual in-plane topology, which goes in line with recent coarse-grained molecular
dynamics simulations.
The task of printed Optical Character Recognition (OCR), though considered ``solved'' by many, still poses several challenges. The complex grapheme structure of many scripts, such as Devanagari and Urdu Nastaleeq, greatly lowers the performance of state-of-the-art OCR systems.
Moreover, the digitization of historical and multilingual documents still require much probing. Lack of benchmark datasets further complicates the development of reliable OCR systems. This thesis aims to find the answers to some of these challenges using contemporary machine learning technologies. Specifically, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, have been employed to OCR modern as well historical monolingual documents. The excellent OCR results obtained on these have led us to extend their application for multilingual documents.
The first major contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate the usability of LSTM networks for monolingual documents. The LSTM networks yield very good OCR results on various modern and historical scripts, without using sophisticated features and post-processing techniques. The set of modern scripts include modern English, Urdu Nastaleeq and Devanagari. To address the challenge of OCR of historical documents, this thesis focuses on Old German Fraktur script, medieval Latin script of the 15th century, and Polytonic Greek script. LSTM-based systems outperform the contemporary OCR systems on all of these scripts. To cater for the lack of ground-truth data, this thesis proposes a new methodology, combining segmentation-based and segmentation-free OCR approaches, to OCR scripts for which no transcribed training data is available.
Another major contribution of this thesis is the development of a novel multilingual OCR system. A unified framework for dealing with different types of multilingual documents has been proposed. The core motivation behind this generalized framework is the human reading ability to process multilingual documents, where no script identification takes place.
In this design, the LSTM networks recognize multiple scripts simultaneously without the need to identify different scripts. The first step in building this framework is the realization of a language-independent OCR system which recognizes multilingual text in a single step. This language-independent approach is then extended to script-independent OCR that can recognize multiscript documents using a single OCR model. The proposed generalized approach yields low error rate (1.2%) on a test corpus of English-Greek bilingual documents.
In summary, this thesis aims to extend the research in document recognition, from modern Latin scripts to Old Latin, to Greek and to other ``under-privilaged'' scripts such as Devanagari and Urdu Nastaleeq.
It also attempts to add a different perspective in dealing with multilingual documents.