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- Akademienvorhaben Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance (14)
- Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgruppe Globaler Wandel (13)
- Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgruppe Gegenworte - Hefte für den Disput über Wissen (8)
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- Akademienvorhaben Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (6)
- Akademienvorhaben Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der ägyptischen Sprache. Text- und Wissenskultur im alten Ägypten (6)
Untersucht wird die Rolle der Psalmen im christlichen Gottesdienst, wie sie in der spätantiken christlichen Exegese deutlich wird.
Single-cell analyses comprise a multitude of analytical methods that share a common feature, namely the focus on individual cells. This is in contrast to previous methods that provided summarized data for cell clusters, groups of cells, tissues and organs. The new field offers huge potential not only for basic research, but also for medical and biotechnological applications, as it opens up new levels in the context-related and personal interpretation of biological interconnections. This brochure on single-cell analysis provides an overview on the new possibilities from the viewpoint of developmental biology, biomedicine and bioinformatics, but also addresses possible social im-plications and consequences.
The neuronal dynamics of auditory language comprehension : (Akademievorlesung am 12. November 1998)
(1999)
Introduction : how much is enough, but not too much ; (Ernst-Mayr-Lecture am 27. Oktober 1998)
(1999)
Research in Silicon Valley
(1998)
The computer has come to play a transformative role in the ways we model, store, process and study text. Nevertheless, we cannot yet claim to have realised the promises of the digital medium: the organisation and dissemination of scholarly knowledge through the exchange, reuse and enrichment of data sets. Despite the acclaimed interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities, current digital research takes place in a closed environment and rarely surpasses the traditional boundaries of a field. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to continue questioning the models we use and whether they are actually suitable for our scholarly needs. There’s a risk that the affordances and limitations of a prevailing model may blind us to aspects it doesn’t support.
In her talk, Elli Bleeker discusses different technologies to model data with respect to their expressive power and their potential to address the needs of the scholarly community. Within this framework, she introduces a new data model for text, Text-As-Graph (TAG), and it’s reference implementation Alexandria, a text repository system. The TAG model allows researchers to store, query, and analyse text that is encoded from different perspectives. Alexandria thus stimulates new ways of looking at textual objects, facilitates the exchange of information across disciplines, and secures textual knowledge for future endeavours. From a philosophical perspective, the TAG model and the workflow of Alexandria raise compelling questions about our notions of textuality, and prompt us to reconsider how we can best model the variety of textual dimensions.
When managing large quantities of data, it is a common solution to utilize a centralized data management software to forge a connection between metadata and the data objects themselves. In case of text-based objects without any attached metadata, it is easy for humans to contextualize these objects by recognizing patterns such as filenames, titles, authors etc. This task becomes a challenge when dealing with non-text-based objects like images in the cultural heritage domain. Without metadata or expert knowledge, it becomes difficult to estimate the creation date of a painting or tell the name of its painter. Thus, the ability to contextualize data depends on whether there is a working connection between the metadata store and the data object itself. This connection fails as soon as the file is moved on the file system without having these changes also applied in the corresponding
data base, or when the file is shared without a reference to its original location. This paper presents an approach to overcome that type of co-dependency by utilizing XMP to embed cultural heritage metadata directly into image files to ensure their location-independent long-term preservation. The “Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi” Germany (CVMA) project serves as an example use-case.
quoteSalute strives to make data of digital scholarly editions of letters (DSELs) accessible in a playful fashion by enabling users to integrate salutations from DSELs in their own email correspondence. The foundation of quoteSalute is a curated TEI-XML text corpus which has been created by extracting <salute>-tags from TEI-XML-encoded DSELs. For providing users with fitting salutations, we annotated the data regarding language, level of politeness and intended gender of sender and receiver.
The short paper introduces the concept of possible branches of double-stranded DNA (later sometimes called palindromes): Certain sequences of nucleotides may be followed, after a short unpaired stretch, by a complementary sequence in reversed order, such that each DNA strand can fold back on itself, and the DNA assumes a cruciform or tree-like structure. This is postulated to interact with regulatory proteins.
Socioeconomic inequalities are functions not only of intrinsic differences between persons or groups, but also of the dynamics of their interactions. Inequalities can arise and become stabilized if there are advantages (such as generalized wealth including “human capital”) which are self-enhancing, whereas depletion of limiting resources is widely distributed. A recent theory of biological pattern formation has been generalized, adapted and applied to deal with this process. Applications include models for the non-Gaussian distribution of personal income and wealth, for overall economic growth in relation to inequalities and for effects of uncoupling strategies between developing and developed countries. Note added after publication: The equations (14) for the model of the income distribution, with its characteristic non-Gaussian extension towards higher incomes (fig.4), are closely related to the Fokker-Planck equation that is widely applied in many fields of physics.
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.
Current financial and monetary difficulties in Europe are overshadowing the issue of a lack of common European identity. 200 years of nation states seem to have suppressed 1800 years of a history shaped by mutual enrichment in politics, science and the arts – a European cultural heritage. It is for the humanities and social sciences (SSH) to research, document and preserve this heritage, where the European science academies play a major role. However, a pan-European research programme on European cultural heritage and identity is still lacking, and, in comparison to the rest of the European SSH research landscape, the science academies are terra incognita. This book provides an analytical report of the first survey of basic research in the SSH conducted by the European scientific academies and related research organisations. It not only provides greatly needed information about this important area of the European research landscape, but also investigates the potential for a pan-European academies’ research programme in the SSH (including a corresponding digital infrastructure) that could strengthen the integration of European research into cultural heritage and identity. The main topic of this publication is the working practices of the projects surveyed with a focus on: o the science academies of Europe o research fields and topics o running times and funding o staff and early-stage researchers o research sites and access to research material o digital research practices o publication, dissemination and visibility o international collaboration o project evaluation
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.
The African European Mediterranean Academies for Science Education (AEMASE) initiative is committed to promoting science outreach to society and to improving the quality and accessibility of science education in schools throughout the eponymous North-South region. To achieve these aims, one of AEMASE’s key activities is implementing IBSE in more schools and supporting the continued professional development of science educators in IBSE methodology and practice. In the long term, the AEMASE partner institutions, which come from all three geographical areas, seek to contribute to the steady development of quality science and innovation systems by focussing on stimulating and supporting the future generations of researchers and innovators. In this context, key AEMASE partner institutions held an international conference on science education in Rome in May 2014, hosted by the venerable Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Participants from six continents shared their professional experiences with IBSE and discussed best practices, challenges and future collaboration opportunities. The conference brought together representatives from three crucial areas of expertise: science, education, and policy. The outcomes of this conference are condensed in the report which serves as a testament to the relevance and importance of quality science education for modern societies.
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).
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.
Der Fachkräftemangel in Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) erweist sich immer mehr als Hemmnis für den Hochtechnologiestandort Deutschland. Für eine nachhaltige Sicherung des Fachkräftebedarfs ist eine attraktive MINT-Bildung Voraussetzung. Zudem stellt sich in einer Gesellschaft, die von Natur- und Technikwissenschaften geprägt ist, die Notwendigkeit, allen Menschen ein entsprechendes Grundverständnis zu vermitteln. Wissenschaft und Politik sind gefordert, didaktisch wirksame und für junge Menschen attraktive Konzepte für eine MINT-Bildung zu entwickeln und umzusetzen. Einerseits, um begabte junge Menschen gezielt zu fördern, andererseits,um eine basale MINT-Allgemeinbildung im Schulsystem zu verankern. Der Sammelband fasst die Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) zusammen und analysiert die Ursachen für den mangelnden Erfolg von MINT-Initiativen in Deutschland und Europa, dokumentiert erfolgreiche Modellprojekte und zeigt Lösungswege für die Bildungs- und Wissenschaftspolitik auf. Ergänzt werden diese Beiträge mit den Erfahrungen engagierter Initiatoren von namhaften Modellprojekten.
Der Fachkräftemangel in Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) erweist sich immer mehr als Hemmnis für den Hochtechnologiestandort Deutschland. Für eine nachhaltige Sicherung des Fachkräftebedarfs ist eine attraktive MINT-Bildung Voraussetzung. Zudem stellt sich in einer Gesellschaft, die von Natur- und Technikwissenschaften geprägt ist, die Notwendigkeit, allen Menschen ein entsprechendes Grundverständnis zu vermitteln. Wissenschaft und Politik sind gefordert, didaktisch wirksame und für junge Menschen attraktive Konzepte für eine MINT-Bildung zu entwickeln und umzusetzen. Einerseits, um begabte junge Menschen gezielt zu fördern, andererseits,um eine basale MINT-Allgemeinbildung im Schulsystem zu verankern. Der Sammelband fasst die Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW) zusammen und analysiert die Ursachen für den mangelnden Erfolg von MINT-Initiativen in Deutschland und Europa, dokumentiert erfolgreiche Modellprojekte und zeigt Lösungswege für die Bildungs- und Wissenschaftspolitik auf. Ergänzt werden diese Beiträge mit den Erfahrungen engagierter Initiatoren von namhaften Modellprojekten.
Over millennia human well-being has benefited from ecosystems, not only through tangible goods, but also through intangible assets known as cultural ecosystem services. Despite growing research over the last decade, cultural services assessment still remains arbitrary and is largely limited to marketable services such as tourism. Evident difficulties in standardizing definitions and measurements have challenged cultural services accounting in decision making processes. However, the imminent formation of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services offers an opportunity to counterbalance this misrepresentation by establishing a scientific basis for consistently assessing cultural services. In that regard, the current review intends to facilitate discussion investigating the current state of cultural services accounting by offering an appraisal of existing evidence regarding cultural services indicator quality. The current review builds on scientifically recognized frameworks to develop a holistic understanding of how cultural services indicators are conceived within ecosystem services research. Among the measures found, benefit indicators were most frequently used for assessing inspirational, educational and recreational services. A broad variety of methods for accounting cultural services was found, mainly due to the varied aims of the studies. Most of the cultural services indicators were deficient concerning their clarity of definitions, purposes and understanding of the processes to be measured and referring only marginally to tradeoffs and bundles with other services. Only 17% performed multitemporal assessments and 23% used spatially explicit information. It seems that cultural services indicators quality could be greatly enhanced by investing more effort towards involving relevant stakeholders in conceptualization and communication phases, using participatory mapping tools to enhance visibility.
This study explores the potential of historical maps to detect, measure and monitor changes of trees outside forests. The main goal is to assess local-level changes of scattered trees and orchards and their land-use determinants in two areas in Southern Germany between 1901/1905 and 2009. Firstly, overall landscape changes are recorded. Secondly, the spatial-temporal trajectories of scattered trees and their land-use determinants are identified. Thirdly, changes in quantity and fragmentation patterns of traditional orchards are analyzed in their relationship to overall land-cover change. The results confirm major losses in scattered trees, mainly due to urbanization, agricultural intensification, and land abandonment. They further reveal that, while orchards have persisted in total area, they have undergone critical changes towards a simplified landscape structure and loss of the traditional land-use mosaic, which is a characterizing feature of high nature value landscapes. Multi-temporal assessment showed that most trends have been continuous and did not change directions over time, but rather accelerated during periods of rapid change (most dramatically in the 1950-1990 period). The case of orchards and scattered trees illustrates a major problem of cultural landscapes in Europe: Semi-natural landscape features of high nature value are threatened by both intensification and abandonment of land uses. This makes their conservation a potentially costly enterprise, as both opportunity costs for lost alternative land uses and for conservation management costs arise.
Agroecosystems are vital for supplying ecosystem services to human society, but most modern farming practices impact detrimentally on the environment. Public agricultural support policies have been critically important in influencing the transformation of the farm sectors; however, few of them have been dedicated to enhancing ecosystem services beyond agricultural commodities. The largest agricultural support system worldwide, the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has now come to a critical point, as major decisions concerning its design and implementation after 2013 are about to be taken. The debate on this reform process presents a unique opportunity to trigger a transition from commodity-based subsidy policies to policies centered on efficient provision of ecosystem services from agricultural land. To prompt such discussion, we formulate key recommendations informed by a review of ecosystem services literature and address verifiable links to human well-being, non-market valuation for balanced services provision, treatment of ecosystem services bundles, site-specific and regionalized approaches, matching spatial scales for different ecosystem services, funding permanence for payment schemes, strong monitoring and adaptive approaches to tackling uncertainties, and coherent cross-sectoral policy design. If these issues were to be considered in formulating and implementing future CAP, it might become an exemplar for redirecting agricultural policies elsewhere in the world towards sustainability.
Most industrial countries have experienced a transformation of land use: from decreasing to expanding forest areas, the so-called forest transition. Outside closed forests, European rural landscapes exhibit a diversity of tree-based agricultural systems, but the question of whether this forest transition has also affected ‘trees outside forests’ has rarely been studied. The aim of this study is to analyze the spatial-temporal dynamics of farm trees and woodlands in an agricultural landscape in Eastern Germany from 1964 to 2008, based on aerial photographs and digital orthophotos. Taking a landscape ecological perspective, we quantify farm tree dynamics, disentangle processes of gain and loss in the socialist and post-socialist periods of Eastern Germany, and assess differences in ecosystem services provided by farm trees. A substantial increase of overall tree cover by 24.8% was observed for the selected time period, but trajectories have been disparate across different farm tree classes. The increase in tree cover was stronger in steep valleys than on hills and plateaus, indicating a significant interdependence between topography and trajectories of change. Patch numbers of farm trees did not increase, which suggests that the expansion of tree cover is mostly due to a spatial expansion of previously existing tree patches. Overall net gains in tree cover were rather similar during the socialist and post-socialist eras. The general increase in tree cover was accompanied by increases in agriculture-related ecosystem service provision, but the increase in pollination and pest control services was much lower than that in water purification services. These findings present the first empirical evidence from an industrialized country that there is also an ongoing ‘forest transition’ outside closed forests. Potential, partially counteracting drivers of change during the socialist and post-socialist periods have mainly been related to farm policies and the environmental consciousness of land users and society as a whole.
Eastern Mediterranean silvopastoral oak woodlands have been greatly damaged through forest conversion, illegal lumbering, overgrazing, and forest fires. The aim of this study was to assess land-use changes and the legacies that they have imprinted on the forest structure of Quercus macrolepis and accompanying Quercus pubescens and Quercus cerris woodlands on Lesvos Island, Greece. The size-structures of adult oak populations were analyzed as indicators of long-term oak regeneration, while short-term recruitment was determined by counting oak seedlings and saplings. The size-structure of the adult Q. macrolepis population was similar to the inverse J-shaped distribution typical for natural Mediterranean oak forests, indicating continuous recruitment with a constant mortality rate of mature individuals. Seedling and sapling densities were highly variable, but generally low in relation to adult oak densities. Recruitment of oak seedlings and saplings was positively related to determinants such as forest cover, adult oak density and basal area, woody plant richness, and litter cover. Both seedling and sapling occurrence was negatively associated with dung frequency, which suggests that sheep grazing imposes a barrier to oak recruitment. The study outlines a comprehensive land-use transition from the 1950s to the 1970s, during which a complex and multifunctional agrosilvopastoral land-use system was simplified to an intensive grazing system. The discrepancy between the successful long-term regeneration and the less successful short-term recruitment of oaks illustrates that intensified livestock grazing has been a major driver of vegetation change. Grazing impact is likely to interact with increasing drought conditions, which may trigger a negative feedback cycle that undermines the capacity of woodlands to sustain ecosystem services.
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.
Numerous studies underline the importance of immaterial benefits provided by ecosystems and especially by cultural landscapes, which are shaped by intimate human–nature interactions. However, due to methodological challenges, cultural ecosystem services are rarely fully considered in ecosystem services assessments. This study performs a spatially explicit participatory mapping of the complete range of cultural ecosystem services and several disservices perceived by people living in a cultural landscape in Eastern Germany. The results stem from a combination of mapping exercises and structured interviews with 93 persons that were analyzed with statistical and GIS-based techniques. The results show that respondents relate diverse cultural services and multiple local-level sites to their individual well-being. Most importantly, aesthetic values, social relations and educational values were reported. Underlining the holistic nature of cultural ecosystem services, the results reveal bundles of services as well as particular patterns in the perception of these bundles for respondent groups with different socio-demographic backgrounds. Cultural services are not scattered randomly across a landscape, but rather follow specific patterns in terms of the intensity, richness and diversity of their provision. Resulting hotspots and coldspots of ecosystem services provision are related to landscape features and land cover forms. We conclude that, despite remaining methodological challenges, cultural services mapping assessments should be pushed ahead as indispensable elements in the management and protection of cultural landscapes. Spatially explicit information on cultural ecosystem services that incorporates the differentiated perceptions of local populations provides a rich basis for the development of sustainable land management strategies. These could realign the agendas of biodiversity conservation and cultural heritage preservation, thereby fostering multifunctionality.