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The Swedish Academy Dictionary (SAOB) is one of the big national dictionary projects started in the 19th century. SAOB is still in production – there are another two volumes out of 38 to printed before 2018. The structure inside the volumes is (of course) varied/varying. There are ten chief editors and five generations of editors involved in the project. In the 1980s the SAOB was OCR-scanned. The result was used for a webversion in the internet from 1997. The webversion is very frequently used but has a lot of shortcomings due to, among other things, a great typographic complexity and a scanning technology of the time. Now the editorial board is discussing the future: redigitalization (in China), updating of the webversion with new search tools, updating of the dictionary itself and some form of editing tool.
A reaction to the article „The Lost Archive“, The Wall Street Journal 12.1.2008, page 1 (US edition) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120008793352784631.html The belief in the myth that old manuscripts should be mysterious and powerful is part and parcel of the age of Modernity. That such expectations were operative in the discussion on the Qumran fragments is still remembered, and more recently the Da Vinci Code, in itself a quite shallow story, sold extremely well. The fact that the Wall Street Journal placed an article on the “lost Bergsträsser-film archive” of Qur’anic manuscripts on its front page on 12th of January seems to be due to the myth of “textual wars” taking place in the world.
Emergence, analysis and optimization of structures - Concepts and strategies across disciplines
(2007)
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.
Climate change is expected to increase water scarcity in northeast Germany. Land-use change is one of the options of mitigation that is intensely discussed in this region. This review aims at giving a compilation of existing data and modelling studies in order to investigate the potential and the limits of the land-use change approach.
My essay attends to a number of passages in Alexander von Humboldt’s "Personal Narrative" in which the Prussian explorer expresses anxiety about the apparent dangers posed by the overwhelmingly productive tropical landscapes he observes. In these passages, the excesses of an “exotic nature” threaten European identity and modes of civilization—and they trouble the accuracy of Humboldt’s own observational project. I also explore Humboldt’s related worry that South American vegetable (and visual) overload will exert a destabilizing effect on his aesthetic sensibility, disrupting his ability to represent the “New Continent” accurately in writing. Finally, I sketch the influence of Humboldt’s representations of tropical excess on nineteenth-century British cultural thought and literary practice. Studying the instabilities experienced by "Personal Narrative’s" expatriates and colonists promises to draw out important tensions latent in Humboldt’s treatment of tropical landscape and to illuminate broader epistemological and aesthetic shifts being worked out during the period.
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
Berlin Text System 3.1 User Manual : Editorial Software of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae Project
(2018)
The Berlin Text System (BTS) Version 3.1 manual introduces a Java-based software designed for editing and annotating Ancient Egyptian texts. BTS integrates a CouchDB database and an Elastic search engine to support its main components: Text Editor, Lemma List, Thesaurus, and Abstract Text.
The Text Editor facilitates transliteration, translation, lemmatization, and annotations, allowing for detailed lexical and grammatical analysis. Hieroglyphic transcriptions can be entered via a specialized Hieroglyph Type Writer based on JSesh.
The Lemma List ist ready to contain pre-Coptic lemmata, divided into Hieroglyphic/Hieratic and Demotic scripts, providing comprehensive entries with passport data, transliterations, and translations.
The Thesaurus allows for metadata enrichment of texts with controlled vocabulary for consistent data management, supporting contextual analysis through structured metadata.
The manual covers BTS's user interface, including menu bar, toolbar, status bar, and workspace, divided into views for each main component. Features like Revision History for tracking and restoring versions, indexing, and search capabilities enhance user efficiency. BTS is a powerful tool for the study and preservation of Ancient Egyptian texts, integrating advanced database and search technologies with specialized textual analysis tools.
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.
Die Erscheinungsform einer bestimmten Einzelsprache resultiert aus dem Nebeneinander und Zusammenwirken vertikaler und horizontaler Transmission von sprachlichen Merkmalen und umfasst demzufolge normalerweise neben Phänomenen, die über eine Kette früherer Sprechergenerationen ererbt wurden, auch solche, die aus anderen Sprachen entlehnt wurden. Deutliche Spuren einer komplexen Entstehungsgeschichte und der Interaktion verschiedener Sprachgemeinschaften lassen sich nicht erst im Altägyptischen oder gar erst in der Sprache des Neuen Reiches ausmachen, sondern bereits die frühesten schriftlichen Quellen aus der Zeit um 3000 v. Chr. erlauben – trotz ihrer Knappheit – überraschende Einblicke in die zeitgenössischen sprachlichen Verhältnisse. Bislang nur durch Sprachvergleich rekonstruierbare Entwicklungen sind nunmehr historisch nachweisbar, und das phonologische System einer dem Altägyptischen vorausgehenden und erheblich von ihm abweichenden Sprachstufe wird greifbar. Da das Voraltägyptische ein für eine afroasiatische Sprache eher untypisches Konsonanteninventar besitzt und sich zudem lexikalische Übereinstimmungen (nicht-genetischer Natur) mit indoeuropäischen Sprachen abzeichnen, erscheinen fundierte Hypothesen über die Herausbildung des Ägyptischen nicht länger unmöglich. Damit wäre das Ägyptische nicht nur die am längsten bezeugte Einzelsprache der Menschheitsgeschichte, sondern wohl auch die einzige, die von ihrer Entstehung bis zu ihrem Aussterben schriftlich dokumentiert ist.
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.
Introduction
(2019)
Global change is posing a major challenge to existing forms of natural resource use, socio-economic development and institutional regulation. Although trends such as climate change, socio-economic transformation and institutional change are global in their scope, they have very specific regional outcomes. Regionally distinct coping strategies are required which take into account both the diversity of regional impacts of global change and the local contexts of appropriate responses. This paper explores the impacts of global change on the management of water infrastructure systems in the Berlin-Brandenburg region in terms of three concurrent and overlapping challenges: climate change, socio-economic change and institutional change. It subsequently examines how regional actors in the water sector are addressing these three dimensions of global change.
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.
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.
Among mass digitization methods, double-keying is considered to be the one with the lowest error rate. This method requires two independent transcriptions of a text by two different operators. It is particularly well suited to historical texts, which often exhibit deficiencies like poor master copies or other difficulties such as spelling variation or complex text structures. Providers of data entry services using the double-keying method generally advertise very high accuracy rates (around 99.95% to 99.98%). These advertised percentages are generally estimated on the basis of small samples, and little if anything is said about either the actual amount of text or the text genres which have been proofread, about error types, proofreaders, etc. In order to obtain significant data on this problem it is necessary to analyze a large amount of text representing a balanced sample of different text types, to distinguish the structural XML/TEI level from the typographical level, and to differentiate between various types of errors which may originate from different sources and may not be equally severe. This paper presents an extensive and complex approach to the analysis and correction of double-keying errors which has been applied by the DFG-funded project “Deutsches Textarchiv” (German Text Archive, hereafter DTA) in order to evaluate and preferably to increase the transcription and annotation accuracy of double-keyed DTA texts. Statistical analyses of the results gained from proofreading a large quantity of text are presented, which verify the common accuracy rates for the double-keying method.
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.
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.
The article summarizes the contents and the structurtal premises of the “Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien” (TITUS), focussing on search functions and facilities and questions of the encoding of ancient languages written in various scripts. Examples are taken from Tocharian, Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, and other ancient Indo-European languages covered by TITUS.
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.
The generation of viral mutants in vitro was demonstrated by treatment of the isolated RNA of Tobacco Mosaic Virus by nitrous acid. This agent causes deaminations converting cytosine into uracil, and adenine into hypoxanthine. Our assay for mutagenesis was the production of local lesions on a tobacco variety on which the untreated strain produces systemic infections only. A variety of different mutants are generated in this way. Quantitative analysis of the kinetics of mutagenesis leads to the conclusion that alteration of a single out of the 6000 nucleotides of the viral RNA is sufficient for causing a mutation.
The paper addresses the formation of striking patterns within originally near-homogenous tissue, the process prototypical for embryology, and represented in particularly puristic form by cut sections of hydra regenerating a complete animal with head and foot. Essential requirements are autocatalytic, self-enhancing activation, combined with inhibitory or depletion effects of wider range - “lateral inhibition”. Not only de-novo-pattern formation, but also well known, striking features of developmental regulation such as induction, inhibition, and proportion regulation can be explained on this basis. The theory provides a mathematical recipe for the construction of molecular models with criteria for the necessary non-linear interactions. It has since been widely applied to different developmental processes.
Aggregates of previously isolated cells of Hydra are capable, under suitable solvant conditions, of regeneration forming complete animals. In a first stage, ecto- and endodermal cells sort out, producing the bilayered hollow structure characteristic of Hydra tissue; thereafter, heads are formed (even if the original cell preparation contained no head cells), eventually leading to the separation of normal animals with head, body column and foot. Hydra appears to be the highest type of organism that allows for regeneration of the entire structure from random cell aggregates. The system is particularly useful for studying cell interactions, tissue polarity, pattern formation, and cell differentiation.
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.
Validity of physical laws for any aspect of brain activity and strict correlation of mental to physical states of the brain do not imply, with logical necessity, that a complete algorithmic theory of the mind-body relation is possible. A limit of decodability may be imposed by the finite number of possible analytical operations which is rooted in the finiteness of the world. It is considered as a fundamental intrinsic limitation of the scientific approach comparable to quantum indeterminacy and the theorems of logical undecidability. An analysis of these limits, applied to dispositions of future behaviour, suggests that limits of decodability of the psycho-physic relation may actually exist with respect to brain states with self-referential aspects, as they are involved in mental processes. Limits for an algorithmic theory of the mind-body problem suggested by this study are formally similar to other intrinsic limits of the scientific method such as quantum indeterminacy and mathematical undecidability which are also related to self-referential operations. At the metatheoretical level, hard sciences, despite their reliability, universality and objectivity, depend on metatheoretical presuppositions which allow for multiple philosophical interpretations.
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.
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.
The development of modern science has depended strongly on specific features of the cultures involved; however, its results are widely and transculturally accepted and applied. The science and technology of electricity, for example, emerged as a specific product of post-Renaissance Europe, rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition that encourages explanations of nature in theoretical terms. It did not evolve in China presumably because such encouragement was missing. The transcultural acceptance of modern science and technology is postulated to be due, in part, to the common biological dispositions underlying human cognition, with generalizable capabilities of abstract, symbolic and strategic thought. These faculties of the human mind are main prerequisites for dynamic cultural development and differentiation. They appear to have evolved up to a stage of hunters and gatherers perhaps some 100 000 years ago. However, the extent of the correspondence between some constructions of the human mind and the order of nature, as revealed by science, is a late insight of the last two centuries. Unless we subscribe to extreme forms of constructivism or historical relativism, we may take the success and the formal structure of science as indications of a close, intrinsic relation between the physical and the mental, between the order of nature and the structure of human cognition. At the metatheoretical level, however, modern science is consistent with philosophical and cultural diversity.
The topic of this article is the relation between bottom-up and top-down, reductionist and “holistic” approaches to the solution of basic biological problems. While there is no doubt that the laws of physics apply to all events in space and time, including the domains of life, understanding biology depends not only on elucidating the role of the molecules involved, but, to an increasing extent, on systems theoretical approaches in diverse fields of the life sciences. Examples discussed in this article are the generation of spatial patterns in development by the interplay of autocatalysis and lateral inhibition; the evolution of integrating capabilities of the human brain, such as cognition-based empathy; and both neurobiological and epistemological aspects of scientific theories of consciousness and the mind.