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Upon separation of the protein from the nucleic acid component of tobacco mosaic virus by phenol, using a fast and gentle procedure, the nucleic acid is infective in assays on tobacco leaves. A series of qualitative and quantitative control experiments demonstrates that the biological activity cannot depend on residual proteins in the preparation, but is a property of isolated nucleic acid which is thus the genetic material of the virus.
Understanding cooperative human behaviour depends on insights into the biological basis of human altruism, as well as into socio-cultural development. In terms of evolutionary theory, kinship and reciprocity are well established as underlying cooperativeness. Reasons will be given suggesting an additional source, the capability of a cognition-based empathy that may have evolved as a by-product of strategic thought. An assessment of the range, the intrinsic limitations, and the conditions for activation of human cooperativeness would profit from a systems approach combining biological and socio-cultural aspects. However, this is not yet the prevailing attitude among contemporary social and biological scientists who often hold prejudiced views of each other's notions. It is therefore worth noticing that the desirable integration of aspects has already been attempted, in remarkable and encouraging ways, in the history of thought on human nature. I will exemplify this with the ideas of the fourteenth century Arab-Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He set out to explicate human cooperativeness - "asabiyah" - as having a biological basis in common descent, but being extendable far beyond within social systems, though in a relatively unstable and attenuated fashion. He combined psychological and material factors in a dynamical theory of the rise and decline of political rulership, and related general social phenomena to basic features of human behaviour influenced by kinship, expectation of reciprocity, and empathic emotions.
This is the invited evening lecture of the biannual workshop on hydroid development of 1999. Its topic is the role of hydra as a rather puristic model for the de-novo generation of spatial patterns in development, and our work in this field. Emphasis is placed not only on experimental studies, but also on theoretical analysis, because the understanding of spatial order requires a systems approach involving the combination of knowledge on molecules, cells and tissues with mathematical analysis, laws and facts.
New, precise genetic engineering methods for genome alteration in living cells, which can be classed together under the generic heading “genome surgery”,are currently sparking a revolution in biomedical research. The Interdisciplinary Research Group Gene Technology Report is, in principle, in favour of research on these promising new methods for the medical sector. However, for the time being, it has clearly spoken out against gene surgery experiments on the human germ line, which could also enter the realm of possibility thanks to these methods.The research group, therefore, supports the call, which has already been discussed at length in scientific and public circles, for a moratorium for germ line experiments. The period of the moratorium should be used to debate the experimental,
ethical and legal aspects of germ line therapy in an open, transparent
and critical manner with a view to more clearly defining the opportunities and
risks of these technologies for man and nature, and to elaborating recommendations for future regulations. The goal of this analysis is to promote a discourse of this kind.
Biological evolution and technological innovation, while differing in many respects, also share common features. In particular, the implementation of a new technology in the market is analogous to the spreading of a new genetic trait in a population. Technological innovation may occur either through the accumulation of quantitative changes, as in the development of the ocean clipper, or it may be initiated by a new combination of features or subsystems, as in the case of steamships. Other examples of the latter type are electric networks that combine the generation, distribution, and use of electricity, and containerized transportation that combines standardized containers, logistics, and ships. Biological evolution proceeds, phenotypically, in many small steps, but at the genetic level novel features may arise not only through the accumulation of many small, common mutational changes, but also when distinct, relatively rare genetic changes are followed by many further mutations. New evolutionary directions may be initiated by, in particular, some rare combinations of regulatory sections within the genome. The combinatorial type of mechanism may not be a logical prerequisite for biological innovation, but it can be efficient, especially when novel features arise out of already highly developed systems. Such is the case with the evolution of general, widely applicable capabilities of the human brain. Hypothetical examples include the evolution of strategic thought, which encompasses multiple self-representations, cognition-based empathy, meta-levels of abstraction, and symbolic language. These capabilities of biologically modern man may have been initiated, perhaps some 150 000 years ago, by one or few accidental but distinct combinations of modules and subroutines of gene regulation which are involved in the generation of the neural network in the cerebral cortex. This hypothesis concurs with current insights into the molecular biology of the combinatorial and hierarchical facets of gene regulation that underlie brain development. A theory of innovation encompassing technological as well as biological development cannot per se dictate alternative explanations of biological evolution, but it may help in adding weight and directing attention to notions outside the mainstream, such as the hypothesis that few distinct genetic changes were crucial for the evolution of modern man.
The FEW is a huge dictionary when we consider the sheer mass of data (25 volumes, 16000 pages) and its exhaustive aims. It has indeed the purpose of registering and etymologizing the whole lexicon, not only of French, but also of earlier stages of the language and of Occitan; of every Gallo-romance dialect; of every technical or professional genre; of every language register, including slang. Summing up, the FEW aims to include and describe every single lexical unit which exists or has existed in the territory of ancient Gaul. The sheer size of this undertaking means two things, which directly influence the digitalisation of the dictionary: Firstly, there is a a huge amount of data; secondly, the presentation and organization of the data is exceedingly complex. The reasons for digitalising the FEW are the easy searches for units, and the carrying out of searches using criteria that are not possible to use with the printed version. However, the fulfillment of these purposes includes some risks, and potentially the cutting of some corners, especially the temptation of renouncing reading.
Since humans are preferentially settling in flood plains they often influence freshwater systems intensely. The first signs of anthropogenic impacts on surface waters in the Berlin-Brandenburg region are approximately 3000 years old. Considering the multiple and intense human uses of surface waters in this region, we analysed when, how and to which extent regional rivers and streams became impacted by dams, water mills and fish weirs resulting in changes in morphology, hydrology and ecological functioning. We hypothesise that the development and growth of cities in this region necessitated (1) efficient navigability of rivers linking them, (2) efficient use of hydropower resources for mills, and (3) significant pollution of surface waters especially with the beginning of industrial development. We analyse these hypotheses by means of three regional examples and delineate the effects of human uses on selected surface water bodies. Understanding the effects of these historic modifications of surface water supports the identification of options for a sustainable use of surface waters that are currently still subjected to multiple uses but face a significant decrease in discharge due to climate change.
Modern science, based on the laws of physics, claims validity for all events in space and time. However, it also reveals its own limitations, such as the indeterminacy of quantum physics, the limits of decidability, and, presumably, limits of decodability of the mind-brain relationship. At the philosophical level, these intrinsic limitations allow for different interpretations of the relation between human cognition and the natural order. In particular, modern science may be logically consistent with religious as well as agnostic views of humans and the universe. These points are exemplified through the transcript of a discussion between Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap that took place in 1940. Gödel, discoverer of mathematical undecidability, took a proreligious view; Carnap, one of the founders of analytical philosophy, an antireligious view. By the time of the discussion, Carnap had liberalized his ideas on theoretical concepts of science: he believed that observational terms do not suffice for an exhaustive definition of theoretical concepts. Then, responded Gödel, one should formulate a theory or metatheory that is consistent with scientific rationality, yet also encompasses theology. Carnap considered such theories unproductive. The controversy remained unresolved, but its emphasis shifted from rationality to wisdom, not only in the Gödel-Carnap discussion but also in our time.
An der Sprache des Rechts wird Kritik geübt, seit die Aufklärung die Verständlichkeit der Gesetze zu ihrem Anliegen gemacht hat. Mit den großen Kodifikationen des Rechts im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert hat die Kritik am angeblich schlechten, unverständlichen Juristendeutsch eine besondere demokratietheoretische Legitimation bekommen. Diese Sprachkritik sucht seit den siebziger Jahren vermehrt bei der Linguistik Rat, wie denn eine bessere Allgemeinverständlichkeit von Rechtstexten verwirklicht werden könnte. Der Band versammelt systematisch aufeinander bezogene Beiträge ausgewiesener Linguisten, Juristen und Schriftsteller zur Problematik des Verständnisses juristischer Sprache, zur Methodik empirischer Verständlichkeitsmessung und zu den Möglichkeiten transdisziplinärer Kooperation zwischen Rechts- und Sprachwissenschaftlern.
Global climate change and aspects of regional climate change in the Berlin-Brandenburg region
(2011)
To obtain an estimate of the average temperature of the northern hemisphere during the last 1200 years, proxy data have been merged with instrumental recordings. These instrumental measurements are, with a few exceptions, only available for the recent 150 years. In the city of Berlin the temperature has been recorded since as early as 1701. However, during the first 150 years the measurements were problematic as location, measurement procedure and instruments changed frequently and without proper documentation. From 1847 onwards observations became more reliable once the Royal Prussian Meteorological Institute had been established. For the last 100 years temperature and precipitation measurements have been performed in parallel at Berlin-Dahlem and Potsdam. The datasets recorded in the city of Berlin and in Berlin-Dahlem have been merged to obtain a record of more than 300 years. It indicates that the temperature of Berlin has risen by 1.04°C during the last 100 years after correcting for the urbanisation effect. In the same period, the total number of frost days has significantly decreased by almost 17 days, and the number of summer days has significantly increased by about 12 days. Annual mean precipitation has hardly changed (decrease less than 0.2 %) during the last century. However, rainfall has decreased by about 4 % in summer and increased by 3 % in winter. All precipitation changes are below the 95 % ignificance level. Model projections indicate that warming will continue which means that Berlin-Brandenburg will experience a temperature rise of about 3-3.5°C by the end of this century for the IPCC scenario A1B. For the same scenario precipitation is expected to increase by 10-20 % in winter and to decrease by 10-30 % in summer: The seasonal precipitation changes compensate each other resulting in an almost unchanged annual mean.
Applying mild methods of preparation, part of the ribosomes of rabbit reticulocytes are found in aggregates (later called polyribosomes) of up to six ribosomal units. Upon treatment with RNA-ase, they desintegrate into single ribosomes. The fast-sedimenting aggregates are found to be more active in protein synthesis in terms of incorporation of radioactive amino acids, whereas the single ribosomes are more receptive to stimulation by the artificial messenger RNA poly-U. The findings indicate that the linkage of ribosomes into aggregates is due to the messenger RNA. They support a tape-reading mechanism of protein synthesis whereby growth of the peptide chain is accompanied by shifting the active site of the ribosome from one coding group of nucleotides of the messenger RNA to the next.
From exclusion to inclusion : improving clinical research in vulnerable populations ; memorandum
(2014)
Therapeutic care for vulnerable populations – meaning patient groups such as underage children and the mentally ill that have limited or no capacity for giving informed consent – is severely lacking. Thus, for example, a great portion of pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of children and youth have not been specifically designed for these groups, which often results in side effects that are disproportionate to those associated with such medicines when used by adults. Moreover, vulnerable populations are at times faced with having no therapies at all for some of their ailments, such that children and dementia sufferers, for example, are often considered to be “therapeutic orphans”. It is therefore urgent that clinical research be carried out among vulnerable populations in order to improve their therapeutic possibilities. The Clinical Research on Vulnerable Populations Research Group – a cooperative effort between the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Berlin, Germany) and the European Academy of Technology Assessment (Bad Neuenahr, Germany) – has set itself the task of analyzing the state of clinical research on vulnerable populations so as to be able to develop suggestions for improving future research of this kind. The results of this work are presented in the following memorandum, which seeks to portray the state-of-the-art in this domain while also assessing the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary ethical and medical perspectives related to it. The memorandum is primarily oriented towards those in the relevant scientific disciplines who can benefit from obtaining an informed consensus regarding the current state of the discussions taking place around this topic.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote recently that “when Church began to paint his great canvases, Alexander von Humboldt may well have been the world’s most famous and influential intellectual.” Humboldt’s influence in the case of the landscape artist Church is especially interesting. If we examine the precise relationship between the German explorer and his American admirer, we gain an insight into how Humboldt transformed Church’s life and signaled a new phase in the career of the artist. Church retraced Humboldt’s travels in Ecuador and in Mexico. If we compare the texts available to Church and the comparison of Church’s paintings and the texts and images of Humboldt’s works we can arrive at new perspectives on Humboldt’s extraordinary influence on American landscape painting in the nineteenth century.
For a fistful of blogs: Discovery and comparative benchmarking of republishable German content
(2014)
We introduce two corpora gathered on the web and related to computer-mediated communication: blog posts and blog comments. In order to build such corpora, we addressed following issues: website discovery and crawling, content extraction constraints, and text quality assessment. The blogs were manually classified as to their license and content type. Our results show that it is possible to find blogs in German under Creative Commons license, and that it is possible to perform text extraction and linguistic annotation efficiently enough to allow for a comparison with more traditional text types such as newspaper corpora and subtitles. The comparison gives insights on distributional properties of the processed web texts on token and type level. For example, quantitative analysis reveals that blog posts are close to written language, while comments are slightly closer to spoken language.
We expose analogies between turbulence in a fluid heated from below (Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) flow) and shear flows: The unifying theory for RB flow (S.Grossmann and D.Lohse, J.Fluid Mech. 407, 27-56 (2000) and subsequent refinements) can be extended to the flow between rotating cylinders (Taylor-Couette flow) and pipe flow. We identify wind dissipation rates and momentum fluxes that are analogous to the dissipation rate and heat flux in RB flow. The proposed unifying description for the three cases is consistent with the experimental data.
In 20 articles experts from research, politics and research management discuss current challenges and future advancements of European research infrastructures for the humanities and social sciences, particularly in view of the funding scheme Horizon 2020 and the ESRFI Roadmap update. Starting with an overview of SSH infrastructures it elaborates on four specific areas that increasingly demand a pan-European approach. Drawing from the SSH infrastructure projects´ experience, it then (re-) defines the requirements and potential for next generation infrastructure projects. They highlight the developments and problems they anticipate, focussing in particular on advancing digitalisation in the SSH. The book draws together the insights gained at a conference of the same name, “Facing the Future”, held in Berlin in November 2013. The conference was attended by 70 experts from 19 European countries who met to discuss the new challenges posed by the increasing necessity of integrating digital research tools into everyday working life. It was organised by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the federation of All European Academies (ALLEA), the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and the German Data Forum. It took place as part of a project financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) entitled Survey and Analysis of Basic Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Europe (SASSH).
Even a reductionist attempt to define scholarship is clearly fraught with difficulty, but an idealised historical lexicographer-cum-scholar must obviously have – inter alia and at the very least – a profound linguistic and textual knowledge of the language being documented, an ability to understand texts in their historical context and to analyse the meaning or function of lexical items as used in context, an ability to synthesise the results through generalisation and abstraction and to formulate them in a way that is both accurate, i.e. reflects actual usage, and user- or reader-friendly, i.e. is comprehensible to the user/reader. S/he must have encyclopedic or world knowledge and literary skills in order to understand general content words and explain their meaning and their semantic shifts perhaps over many centuries, and technical expertise to understand specialist terms and define their use in specific contexts, again perhaps over time. In respect of etymology s/he must not only have knowledge of older stages of the language and an ability to reconstruct unattested forms, but also knowledge of the other languages that have impacted on the language being documented, or at least familiarity with the scholarly historical dictionaries of those languages. That is a tall order indeed, impossibly tall for any one person today given today‘s demands on and expectations of lexicographers. Teams which include specialists in different areas or at least have access to consultants in such areas alongside generalists are needed if scholarly standards are to be met. The standard of scholarship is primarily a factor of the number and range as well as the knowledge and experience of the lexicographers, as is in large measure the pace of production. In this regard, it cannot be emphasised enough that scholarly historical lexicography of high quality is and will remain very time consuming.
Even a reductionist attempt to define scholarship is clearly fraught with difficulty, but an idealised historical lexicographer-cum-scholar must obviously have – inter alia and at the very least – a profound linguistic and textual knowledge of the language being documented, an ability to understand texts in their historical context and to analyse the meaning or function of lexical items as used in context, an ability to synthesise the results through generalisation and abstraction and to formulate them in a way that is both accurate, i.e. reflects actual usage, and user- or reader-friendly, i.e. is comprehensible to the user/reader. S/he must have encyclopedic or world knowledge and literary skills in order to understand general content words and explain their meaning and their semantic shifts perhaps over many centuries, and technical expertise to understand specialist terms and define their use in specific contexts, again perhaps over time. In respect of etymology s/he must not only have knowledge of older stages of the language and an ability to reconstruct unattested forms, but also knowledge of the other languages that have impacted on the language being documented, or at least familiarity with the scholarly historical dictionaries of those languages. That is a tall order indeed, impossibly tall for any one person today given today‘s demands on and expectations of lexicographers. Teams which include specialists in different areas or at least have access to consultants in such areas alongside generalists are needed if scholarly standards are to be met. The standard of scholarship is primarily a factor of the number and range as well as the knowledge and experience of the lexicographers, as is in large measure the pace of production. In this regard, it cannot be emphasised enough that scholarly historical lexicography of high quality is and will remain very time consuming.
Ancient Greek philosophers were the first to postulate the possibility of explaining nature in theoretical terms and to initiate attempts at this. With the rise of monotheistic religions of revelation claiming supremacy over human reason and envisaging a new world to come, studies of the natural order of the transient world were widely considered undesirable. Later, in the Middle Ages, the desire for human understanding of nature in terms of reason was revived. This article is concerned with the fundamental reversal of attitudes, from “undesirable” to “desirable”, that eventually led into the foundations of modern science. One of the earliest, most ingenious and most interesting personalities involved was Eriugena, a theologian at the Court of Charles the Bald in the 9th century. Though understanding what we call nature is only one of the several aspects of his theological work, his line of thought implies a turn into a pro-scientific direction: the natural order is to be understood in abstract terms of ‘primordial causes’; understanding nature is considered to be the will of God; man encompasses the whole of creation in a physical as well as a mental sense. Basically similar ideas on the reconciliation of scientific rationality and monotheistic religions of revelation were conceived, independently and nearly simultaneously, by the Arab philosopher al-Kindi in Bagdad. Eriugena was more outspoken in his claim that reason is superior to authority. This claim is implicit in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa with his emphasis on human mental creativity as the image of God’s creativity; and it is the keynote of Galileo’s ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina’ some 800 years later, the manifesto expressing basic attitudes of modern science. This article in English is based on the monography (in German): A. Gierer “Eriugena, al-Kindi, Nikolaus von Kues - Protagonisten einer wissenschaftsfreundlichen Wende im philosophischen und theologischen Denken”, Acta Historica Leopoldina 29 (1999), Barth Verlag in MVH Verlage Heidelberg, ISBN: 3-335-00652-6
The study of structures is a common concern of all scientific disciplines. The motivation as well as the methods of analysis, however, differ considerably. In engineering, the generation of artifacts, of infrastructures or technological processes are of primary interest. Frequently, the analysis aims at an optimization of the structures and the structure generating processes. Quite different is the study and explanation of existing structures in biology and the social sciences. Here the question of optimality does not present itself in an unambiguous manner. Generally, it must be questioned whether biological and social structures, although developing in an evolutionary way, can be considered as leading towards an a-priori defineable goal of optimality. The complex scenario of qualitative and quantitative modeling, and the goal-oriented and statistical approaches to understanding the meliorisation efforts in the various fields of the sciences and humanities define the scope of this book. Its intention is to create trans-disciplinary insights into methods to fecundate the custom disciplinary approaches.
Emergence, analysis and optimization of structures - Concepts and strategies across disciplines
(2007)
Ediarum is an editing environment designed and implemented by TELOTA at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW, Germany). It is based on two main components: an open-source XML native database (eXistDB) and a widely used commercial XML editor (Oxygen XML editor).
The aim of ediarum is to facilitate the task of encoding texts in TEI format, to store the resulting XML files in eXistDB and to enable collaboration and sharing amongst the members of a team. The central framework of this environment --known as ediarum.BASE.edit-- allows the editor to hide the XML tags and use a number of functions through a toolbar and a menu. In other words, the ediarum.BASE.edit's interface increases the usability of the XML editor and speeds up the encoding process and can be adapted to each project's needs. However, this framework is only available in German language. In other words, the code and the language interface are only accessible for and usable by German-speaking users.
While the original goal of TELOTA was to “bridge the gap” between the markup and the editor (Dumont and Fechner, 2015), the interface language creates a barrier for encoders who do not work in German and impedes potential collaborations with other institutions. In order to break this usability and accessibility barrier, in 2020 Proyecto Humboldt Digital (ProHD), a cooperation project between the BBAW and the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de la Habana (Cuba), engaged with an adaptation process involving the internationalization of the software (developing features and code that are independent of language or locale) and the localization in the Spanish locale (creating resource files containing translations). As a result of this process, the project has developed a localization of ediarum.BASE.edit called ediarum.PROHD.edit that can be downloaded on Github.
This paper aims to present ediarum.PROHD.edit and to reflect on the most important challenges encountered during the software localization. After reviewing what “localization” means in Translation Studies (Pym, 2016; Jiménez Crespo, 2016), I will discuss the process of internationalization of the software (mostly variables written in ediarum's default functions), the localization itself (the translation of terms and descriptions displayed in the interface) and some testing undertaken with the Cuban team of Proyecto Humboldt Digital.
Early-career funding in German-African academic cooperation: achievements, challenges, perspectives
(2024)
This paper analyses experiences, challenges and potentials in German-African academic cooperation in the field of early-career funding considering the humanities and social sciences as well as natural sciences and medicine. It is based on a comprehensive overview of existing German funding formats and an exemplary survey of the experiences of African cooperation partners with these programmes. The authors propose the establishment of an interface between academic research, the practice of science funding, and African researchers. According to the authors, such a contact and information point would contribute to the improvement of German-African science cooperation and be an important element of Germany’s scientific diplomacy in the long term. This paper is the English translation of Denkanstoß 13 (2023): Early-Career-Förderung in der deutsch-afrikanischen Wissenschaftskooperation. Leistungen, Herausforderungen, Perspektiven. Berlin.
Aside from the increasing, impressive evidence on chemical identification of graded molecules involved, it is the capability of axons for approaching the target position from different aspects in a two-dimensional field which is per se a strong indication for the involvement of gradients. Targeting requires, in the target field, counter-graded effects, either by antagonistic gradients, or by a single gradient in each dimension exerting attractive effects at low, reverting to inhibitory (repulsive) effects at high concentrations. A further requirement for mapping is the modulation of the counter-graded effects by components of the growth cone itself which depends on the origin of the corresponding axon.Transduction and processing of graded signals in the navigating growth cones are proposed to be strongly enhanced by intra-growth-cone pattern formation. The concept also encompasses regulatory and branching processes including the formation of the terminal arbors.
Dealing with the Consequences of Climate Change in Historic Parks and Gardens in the United Kingdom
(2019)
Given that long term climate change is recognised as having an ›impact upon all aspects of daily life, not least the survival of heritage assets‹ there is a need to consider all aspects of heritage in the United Kingdom (UK). In order to provide an international context for the German situation this paper looks specifically at adaptation measures that have developed within the main British conservation and horticultural organisations, Historic England, the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society. It does this by providing some cultural context for the present policies. It then looks at how the climate is expected to change by the end of this century. It identifies the main challenges, and then reviews the responses by way of adaptation and mitigation.
The potential of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses to sequester carbon offers a powerful tool for controlling the global climate regime, but practices capable of creating “collateral” benefits for landscape conservation have thus far been disregarded. This paper calls for greater integration of scattered trees into agricultural landscapes, hypothesizing that agroforestry practices effectively store carbon and deliver other important ecosystem services as well. Several agroforests from the Upper Lusatia area in Eastern Germany have been selected for analysis. They cover relatively large areas of land (8.2%), even within this intensively used agricultural landscape, and their extent increased from 1964-2008 by 19.4%. Practices of conserving or promoting the six agroforest classes are compared with a catalogue of essential properties for becoming effective “carbon offset projects”. Criteria from mandatory and voluntary carbon markets for carbon sequestration are then applied (additionality, baselines, permanence, and carbon leakage). The study concludes that steps towards realization of “carbon sequestration projects” should include collecting empirical evidence regarding the carbon sequestration potential of temperate agroforestry systems, developing localised demonstration projects, and upscaling these projects to participate in established carbon markets.
Virtually all conventional text-based natural language processing techniques - from traditional information retrieval systems to full-fledged parsers - require reference to a fixed lexicon accessed by surface form, typically trained from or constructed for synchronic input text adhering strictly to contemporary orthographic conventions. Unconventional input such as historical text which violates these conventions therefore presents difficulties for any such system due to lexical variants present in the input but missing from the application lexicon. To facilitate the extension of synchronically-oriented natural language processing techniques to historical text while minimizing the need for specialized lexical resources, one may first attempt an automatic canonicalization of the input text. This paper provides an informal overview of the various canonicalization techniques currently employed by the Deutsches Textarchiv project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities to prepare a corpus of historical German text for part-of-speech tagging, lemmatization, and integration into a robust online information retrieval system.
Modern brain research related to consciousness has resulted in many interesting in- sights, for example into the neurobiological basis of attention and of language. In biological terms, human consciousness appears as a system’s feature of our brain, with neural processes strictly following the laws of physics. This does not necessarily imply, however, that there can be a general and comprehensive scientific theory of consciousness. Predictions of the extent to which such a theory may become possi- ble vary widely in the scientific community. There are reasons - not only practical but also epistemological - why the brain-mind relation may not be fully decodable by finite procedures. In particular, analogies with mathematical theorems of un- decidability suggest that self-referential features of consciousness, such as multiple self-representations like those involved in strategic thought, may not be fully resolv- able by brain analysis. Assuming such limitations exist, this implies that ob jective analysis cannot exhaust sub jective experience in principle. A person’s consciousness and will are accessible to external observation only within limits. In some respects, we do not even learn to know ourselves except by our actions. It thus appears that a scientific look at consciousness and the human mind, combining universal physi- calism with epistemological scepticism, is not inconsistent with certain concepts of sub jectivity that are current in the humanities, despite all the differences in the style and terminology of discourse.
Physical principles underlying biological pattern formation are discussed. In particular, the combination of local self-enhancement and long-range (“lateral”) inhibition (Gierer and Meinhardt, 1972) accounts for de-novo pattern formation, and for striking features of developmental regulation such as induction, spacing and proportion regulation of centers of activation in tissues and cells. Part I explains physical principles of spatial organisation in biological development. Part II demonstrates in mathematical terms that and how short-range activation and long-range inhibition are conditions for the generation of spatial concentration patterns. The conditions can be expressed in terms of ranges, rates and orders of reactions. These conditions, in turn, can also be derived by analysis of dynamic instabilities by means of Fourier waves, showing the neither obvious nor trivial relation between the latter approach and the theory based primarily on autocatalysis and lateral inhibition.