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The phase III study was designed to compare event-free survival (EFS) after treosulfan-based conditioning with a widely applied reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) busulfan regimen in older or comorbid patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). A previously reported confirmatory interim analysis of the randomized clinical study including 476 patients demonstrated statistically significant noninferiority for treosulfan with clinically meaningful improvement in EFS. Here, the final study results and pre-specified subgroup analyses of all 570 randomized patients with completed longer-term follow-up are presented. Patients presenting HCT-specific comorbidity index >2 or aged >= 50 years were randomly assigned (1:1) to intravenous (IV) fludarabine with either treosulfan (30 g/m(2) IV) or busulfan (6.4 mg/kg IV) after stratification by disease risk group, donor type, and participating institution. The primary endpoint was EFS with disease recurrence, graft failure, or death from any cause as events. EFS of patients (median age 60 years) was superior after treosulfan compared to RIC busulfan: 36-months-EFS rate 59.5% (95% CI, 52.2-66.1) vs. 49.7% (95% CI, 43.3-55.7) with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.64 (95% CI, 0.49-0.84), p = 0.0006. Likewise, overall survival (OS) with treosulfan was superior compared to busulfan: 36-month-OS rate 66.8% vs. 56.3%; HR 0.64 (95% CI, 0.48-0.87), p = 0.0037. Post hoc analyses revealed that these differences were consistent with the confirmatory interim analysis, and thereby the treosulfan regimen appears particularly suitable for older AML and MDS patients.

Wireless backhauling at millimeter-wave frequencies (mmWave) in static scenarios is a well-established practice in cellular networks. However, highly directional and adaptive beamforming in today's mmWave systems have opened new possibilities for self-backhauling. Tapping into this potential, 3GPP has standardized Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) allowing the same base station serve both access and backhaul traffic. Although much more cost-effective and flexible, resource allocation and path selection in IAB mmWave networks is a formidable task. To date, prior works have addressed this challenge through a plethora of classic optimization and learning methods, generally optimizing a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) such as throughput, latency, and fairness, and little attention has been paid to the reliability of the KPI. We propose Safehaul, a risk-averse learning-based solution for IAB mmWave networks. In addition to optimizing average performance, Safehaul ensures reliability by minimizing the losses in the tail of the performance distribution. We develop a novel simulator and show via extensive simulations that Safehaul not only reduces the latency by up to 43.2% compared to the benchmarks but also exhibits significantly more reliable performance (e.g., 71.4% less variance in achieved latency)., Comment: To appear in Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2023

Theologische Revue, Bd. 117 (2021): September

Theologische Revue, Bd. 117 (2021): Juli

Wissen als Praxis zu begreifen, ist in der Europäischen Ethnologie heute selbstverständlich. Erkenntnisse der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung, feministischer Kritiken und praxistheoretischer Entwicklungen haben sich produktiv mit fachlichen Problematisierungen von Rationalität, materieller und epistemischer Kultur verbunden. Im Zuge dieser Entwicklungen ist zunehmend die Performativität von Wissenspraktiken betont worden, d. h. ihre notwendigerweise immer auch gestaltende Weltwirksamkeit. Dies wiederum hat Anthropolog*innen ermutigt, verstärkt mit ethnografischen Methoden zu experimentieren, um eben jene Weltwirksamkeit besser kontrollieren bzw. entfalten zu können. Konzepte von Wissenstransfer und mode 2 Wissensproduktion sind ersetzt worden durch Interventionen, Ko-Produktion/Kreation/Design, Kollaboration, experimental entanglement und Ko-Laboration. Uns interessiert in diesem Beitrag die Frage, was diese Entwicklung praktisch für ethnografische Theorieproduktion bedeutet. Wir entwickeln unsere Argumentation an vier Forschungsfeldern, die derzeit in unserem Labor ethnografisch im Rahmen von fortgeschrittenen Dissertationsprojekten bearbeitet werden: Genesungsbegleitung in psychiatrischen Kliniken (Schmid), Praktiken des Plattformwirtschaftens in digitalen start-up Ökosystemen (Josties), Offener Dialog in der Psychiatrie als prozessuale Therapieform (Cubellis) und Skalierung in Modellen für Mensch-Umwelt Beziehungen (Klein). Wir legen besonderen Wert auf das gemeinschaftliche "Fügen" von Theorie und Reflexivität und beleuchten fallübergreifend drei Fragen genauer: Welche Konsequenzen hat die Verteilung von epistemischer Handlungsträgerschaft für ethnografische Theoriebildung? Wie müssen Differenzierungen in ko-laborativer Forschung kuratiert werden? Wo liegen Herausforderungen, Grenzen und Risiken dieser Herangehensweise? To understand knowledge as practice is taken for granted in European Ethnology today. Insights from science and technology studies, feminist critique and developments in practice theory have productively combined with disciplinary problematizations of rationality, materiality and epistemic culture. In the course of these developments, the performativity of knowledge practices has been increasingly emphasized, i. e. their worlding capacity. This, in turn, has encouraged anthropologists to experiment more with ethnographic methods in order to better understand and develop this worlding capacity. Concepts of knowledge transfer and mode 2 knowledge production have been replaced by approaches of intervention, co-production/creation/design, collaboration, experimental entanglement and co-laboration. In this contribution, we are interested in the question of what this development means in practice for ethnographic theory building. We develop our argument across four research fields that are currently being ethnographically studied in our laboratory in the context of advanced dissertation projects: Peer support in psychiatric clinics (Schmid), economic and management practices in digital start-up ecosystems (Josties), open dialogue in psychiatry (Cubellis) and scaling in models of human-environment relations (Klein). We place special emphasis on the joint "assembling" of theory and reflexivity and take a closer look at three questions across all cases: What consequences does the distribution of epistemic agency have for ethnographic theory building? How do differentiations in co-laborative research have to be curated? What are the challenges, limits and risks of this approach?

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication plays a vital role to efficiently disseminate large volumes of data in beyond-5G networks. Unfortunately, the directionality of mmWave communication significantly complicates efficient data dissemination, particularly in multicasting, which is gaining more and more importance in emerging applications (e.g., V2X, public safety). While multicasting for systems operating at lower frequencies (i.e., sub-6GHz) has been extensively studied, they are sub-optimal for mmWave systems as mmWave has significantly different propagation characteristics, i.e., using the directional transmission to compensate for the high path loss and thus promoting spectrum sharing. In this paper, we propose novel multicast scheduling algorithms by jointly exploiting relaying and spatial sharing gains while aiming to minimize the multicast completion time. We first characterize the min-time mmWave multicasting problem with a comprehensive model and formulate it with an integer linear program (ILP). We further design a practical and scalable distributed algorithm named mmDiMu, based on gradually maximizing the transmission throughput over time. Finally, we carry out validation through extensive simulations in different scales and the results show that mmDiMu significantly outperforms conventional algorithms with around 95% reduction on multicast completion time., 11 pages

The topics of clothing, nudity, and shame are linked closely in the prophetic books and open up a theological pattern of salvation and judgement. It is especially the book of Ezekiel that in the historic reviews Ezek 16 and 23 describes the history of Israel in terms of nudity and clothing. While Israel’s initial need of help is symbolised by the nudity of personified Jerusalem, who is nurtured and clothed by Yhwh, its later infidelity results in the violent loss of her clothing.The paper will investigate the occurrences of these topics in the prophetic book and shows how they are used to interpret biblical history.

Andreas Baranowski,1 Ludwig Schlemmer,1 Katharina Förster,1 Ekaterina Slotina,1 Tim Mickan,1 Sebastian Truffel,1 Anja Klein,1 Stefan G Mattyasovszky,1 Alexander Hofmann,1,2 Ulrike Ritz,1 Pol M Rommens11Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Biomatics Group, University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany; 2Department of Traumatology and Orthopaedics 1, Westpfalz-Medical Centre Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, GermanyBackground: After a trauma, exuberant tissue healing with fibrosis of the joint capsule can lead to posttraumatic joint stiffness (PTJS). Losartan and atorvastatin have both shown their antifibrotic effects in different organ systems.Objective: The purpose of this study was the evaluation of the influence of losartan and atorvastatin on the early development of joint contracture. In addition to joint angles, the change in myofibroblast numbers and the distribution of bone sialoprotein (BSP) were assessed.Study design and methods: In this randomized and blinded experimental study with 24 rats, losartan and atorvastatin were compared to a placebo. After an initial joint injury, rat knees were immobilized with a Kirschner wire. Rats received either losartan, atorvastatin or a placebo orally daily. After 14 days, joint angle measurements and histological assessments were performed.Results: Losartan increased the length of the inferior joint capsule. Joint angle and other capsule length measurements did not reveal significant differences between both drugs and the placebo. At cellular level both losartan and atorvastatin reduced the total number of myofibroblasts (losartan: 191±77, atorvastatin: 98±58, placebo: 319±113 per counting field, p

Diese Arbeit basiert auf einer explorierenden ethnografischen Forschung bei einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe, die mathematische Modelle und Computersimulationen komplexer sozio-ökologischer Transformationen entwickelt. Die detaillierte empirische Beschreibung von Wissenspraxen in der Modellierung trägt zu ihrem grundlegenden Verständnis seitens der Sozialanthropologie und Wissenschaft- und Technikforschung bei. Dabei werden Konzepte wie Bifurkation, Irreversibiltätsgrade und Alignment (Ausrichtung) operationalisiert. Theoretisch Diskussionen betreffen die Kollektivität wissenschaftlicher Praxis, die Epistemologie von Computersimulationen, Materialität in Experimenten, Laborstudien und Ontologie. Modellkonstruktion und –läufe können als Prozess beschrieben werden, in dem Modellformate durch materiell-semiotische Praxen – vereinfachen, experimentieren, und visualisieren – iterativ und kontinuierlich aufeinander ausgerichtet werden. Die verschiedenen Praxen sind dabei mit bestimmten Formaten jeweils besonders verbunden. Das Konzept des Formats verdeutlicht dabei die verschiedenen Arten und Weisen in denen ein Modell in alltäglichen Praxen hervorgebracht wird: als Gleichungen und Computercode, als Visualisierung, Plot, Text, oder mentales Modell. Dabei trägt jedes Format etwas Eigenes zu dem Modell bei, in einer Art des produktiven nicht-ausgerichtet Seins. Schließlich werden den Modellen zugrunde liegende epistemologische und ontologische Annahmen über „das Soziale“, „das Natürliche“ und „das Hybride“ als separaten Sphären problematisiert – ein nötiger Schritt, um die drängenden hybriden, sozio-ökologischen Prozessen des Anthropozäns zu verstehen. Mit Bezug auf eine „Bayessche Anthropologie“ (Kockelman) wird versuchsweise eine alternative Rahmung dieser ontologischen Annahmen und der aus ihnen folgenden Probleme des Schlussfolgerns vorgeschlagen., This thesis builds on exploratory ethnographic research with an interdisciplinary research group that constructed mathematical models and computer simulations of complex socio-ecological transformations. In giving a detailed and empirically grounded account of modelling practices in a specific setting this work develops a basic understanding of modelling practices from the perspective of social anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. It operationalizes several concepts such as bifurcation, degree of irreversibility and alignment. Theoretical discussions concern collectivity in scientific practice, epistemology of computer simulations, materiality in experiments, laboratory studies and ontology. Building and running models can be described as a process of iteratively and continuously aligning model formats through material-semiotic practices of simplification, experimentation and visualization. These practices are each related to some model formats more than to others. The notion of “format” captures the different ways in which “the model” appears in everyday practices: as equations and code, but also as visualizations, plots of model output, descriptive text in a paper and as mental models. In a productive misalignment, each format contributes something particular to the model. Finally, this work problematizes underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions about “the social”, “the natural” and “the hybrid” as separate spheres, which is necessary in order to come to terms with hybrid, socio-ecological processes as they become more and more pressing in the Anthropocene. With reference to “Bayesian Anthropology” (Kockelman) it tentatively suggests an alternative framing of these ontological assumptions and the resulting problems of inference.

The increasing demand for diverse, mobile applications with various degrees of Quality of Service requirements meets the increasing elasticity of on-demand resource provisioning in virtualized cloud computing infrastructures. This paper provides a dynamic optimization approach for enhanced cloud infrastructures, based on the concept of cloudlets, which are located at hotspot areas throughout a metropolitan area. In conjunction, we consider classical remote data centers that are rigid with respect to QoS but provide nearly abundant computation resources. Given fluctuating user demands, we optimize the cloudlet placement over a finite time horizon from a cloud infrastructure provider's perspective. By the means of a custom tailed heuristic approach, we are able to reduce the computational effort compared to the exact approach by at least three orders of magnitude, while maintaining a high solution quality with a moderate cost increase of 5.8% or less.

Fragestellung: It is a difficult road from idea to implementation of a biomaterial that is able to replace conventional bone grafts in the treatment of large-scale bone defects. 3-dimensional (3D) plotting introduced solutions to some contradictory requirements for bone substitutes. 3D-printed scaffolds[zum vollständigen Text gelangen Sie über die oben angegebene URL], Deutscher Kongress für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie (DKOU 2017)

The contributions examines the idea of fathers and sons in the historical psalms 78, 105, 106, and Neh 9. It will be shown that this principle functions to constitute identity by bridging the gap between biblical past and the present community.

The contribution traces the literary historical development of the concept of faith in the Hebrew Bible.

We consider an energy harvesting (EH) transmitter communicating with a receiver through an EH relay. The harvested energy is used for data transmission, including the circuit energy consumption. As in practical scenarios, the system state, comprised by the harvested energy, battery levels, data buffer levels, and channel gains, is only partially observable by the EH nodes. Moreover, the EH nodes have only outdated knowledge regarding the channel gains for their own transmit channels. Our goal is to find distributed transmission policies aiming at maximizing the throughput. A channel predictor based on a Kalman filter is implemented in each EH node to estimate the current channel gain for its own channel. Furthermore, to overcome the partial observability of the system state, the EH nodes cooperate with each other to obtain information about their parameters during a signaling phase. We model the problem as a Markov game and propose a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm to find the transmission policies. We show the trade-off between the achievable throughput and the signaling required, and provide convergence guarantees for the proposed algorithm. Results show that even when the signaling overhead is taken into account, the proposed algorithm outperforms other approaches that do not consider cooperation.

The contribution responds to an article of Eibert Tigchelaar on the Qumran Apocryphon of Jeremiah, arguing that the work continues biblical interpretation in the book of Jeremiah.

Orthopedic implant failure due to aseptic loosening and mechanical instability remains a major problem in total joint replacement. Improving osseointegration at the bone-implant interface may reduce micromotion and loosening. Bone sialoprotein (BSP) has been shown to enhance bone formation when coated onto titanium femoral implants and in rat calvarial defect models. However, the most appropriate method of BSP coating, the necessary level of BSP coating, and the effect of BSP coating on cell behavior remain largely unknown. In this study, BSP was covalently coupled to titanium surfaces via an aminosilane linker (APTES), and its properties were compared to BSP applied to titanium via physisorption and untreated titanium. Cell functions were examined using primary human osteoblasts (hOBs) and L929 mouse fibroblasts. Gene expression of specific bone turnover markers at the RNA level was detected at different intervals. Cell adhesion to titanium surfaces treated with BSP via physisorption was not significantly different from that of untreated titanium at any time point, whereas BSP application via covalent coupling caused reduced cell adhesion during the first few hours in culture. Cell migration was increased on titanium disks that were treated with higher concentrations of BSP solution, independent of the coating method. During the early phases of hOB proliferation, a suppressive effect of BSP was observed independent of its concentration, particularly when BSP was applied to the titanium surface via physisorption. Although alkaline phosphatase activity was reduced in the BSP-coated titanium groups after 4 days in culture, increased calcium deposition was observed after 21 days. In particular, the gene expression level of RUNX2 was upregulated by BSP. The increase in calcium deposition and the stimulation of cell differentiation induced by BSP highlight its potential as a surface modifier that could enhance the osseointegration of orthopedic implants. Both physisorption and covalent coupling of BSP are similarly effective, feasible methods, although a higher BSP concentration is recommended.

In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to maximize the sum rate in interference-limited scenarios where each user decodes its own message with the presence of unknown interferences and noise considering the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio. It is known that the problem of adapting the transmit and receive filters of the users to maximize the sum rate with a sum transmit power constraint is non-convex. Our novel approach is to formulate the sum rate maximization problem as an equivalent multi-convex optimization problem by adding two sets of auxiliary variables. An iterative algorithm which alternatingly adjusts the system variables and the auxiliary variables is proposed to solve the multi-convex optimization problem. The proposed algorithm is applied to a downlink cellular scenario consisting of several cells each of which contains a base station serving several mobile stations. We examine the two cases, with or without several half-duplex amplify-and-forward relays assisting the transmission. A sum power constraint at the base stations and a sum power constraint at the relays are assumed. Finally, we show that the proposed multi-convex formulation of the sum rate maximization problem is applicable to many other wireless systems in which the estimated data symbols are multi-affine functions of the system variables., 24 pages, 5 figures

Interference Alignment (IA) is a promising technique at the physical layer which allows to increase the Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) of a communication by aligning all interfering signals into the same dimension, while the desired signal lies unaffected in an orthogonal dimension. IA has been widely studied in theory, but only limited practical work exists, since it poses significant challenges for real-world deployments. In this report, we study issues which are key to enable IA in practice. pub

Interference Alignment (IA) is a promising technique at the physical layer which allows to increase the Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) of a communication by aligning all interfering signals into the same dimension, while the desired signal lies unaffected in an orthogonal dimension. IA has been widely studied in theory, but only limited practical work exists, since it poses significant challenges for real-world deployments. In this report, we study issues which are key to enable IA in practice. pub

In wired or wireless distribution systems, as well as wireless mesh networks, multiple senders often need to deliver data to multiple receivers in the same interference domain. OFDMA enables interference avoidance by assigning disjoint sets of subcarriers to each sender. However, optimal subcarrier allocation requires CSI feedback to the transmitters, thus in-curring overhead. We evaluate an allocation mechanism inspired in subcarrier switching techniques, which allows nodes to locally decide which subcarriers they prefer. Hence, feedback is minimal, as only preference values need to be shared. We implement this approach on software defined radios and compare it to standard CSI feedback mechanisms. Despite our approach only requires local information, the results show that it performs close to an ideal solution based on full CSI knowledge. TRUE pub

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Bucharest, Romania, 2012

We consider non-regenerative multi-group multi-way (MGMW) relaying. A half-duplex non-regenerative multi-antenna relay station (RS) assists multiple communication groups. In each group, multiple half-duplex nodes exchange messages. In our proposal, the required number of communication phases is equal to the maximum number of nodes among the groups. In the first phase, all nodes transmit simultaneously to the RS. Assuming perfect channel state information is available at the RS, in the following broadcast (BC) phases the RS applies transceive beamforming to its received signal and transmits simultaneously to all nodes. We propose three BC strategies for the BC phases: unicasting, multicasting and hybrid uni/multicasting. For the multicasting strategy, network coding is applied to maintain the same number of communication phases as for the other strategies. We address transceive beamforming maximising the sum rate of non-regenerative MGMW relaying. Due to the high complexity of finding the optimum transceive beamforming maximising the sum rate, we design generalised low complexity transceive beamforming algorithms for all BC strategies: matched filter, zero forcing, minimisation of mean square error and BC-strategy-aware transceive beamforming. It is shown that the sum rate performance of non-regenerative MGMW relaying depends both on the chosen BC strategies and the applied transceive beamforming at the RS.

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Glasgow, Scotland, 2009

Die stetige Entwicklung intelligenter Sensorsysteme erlaubt die Automatisierung und Verbesserung komplexer Prozess- und Geschäftsentscheidungen in vielfältigen Anwendungsszenarien. Sensoren können zum Beispiel zur Bestimmung optimaler Wartungstermine oder zur Steuerung von Produktionslinien genutzt werden. Ein grundlegendes Problem bereitet dabei die Sensordatenqualität, die durch Umwelteinflüsse und Sensorausfälle beschränkt wird. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Entwicklung eines Datenqualitätsmodells, das Anwendungen und Datenkonsumenten Qualitätsinformationen für eine umfassende Bewertung unsicherer Sensordaten zur Verfügung stellt. Neben Datenstrukturen zur effizienten Datenqualitätsverwaltung in Datenströmen und Datenbanken wird eine umfassende Datenqualitätsalgebra zur Berechnung der Qualität von Datenverarbeitungsergebnissen vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus werden Methoden zur Datenqualitätsverbesserung entwickelt, die speziell auf die Anforderungen der Sensordatenverarbeitung angepasst sind. Die Arbeit wird durch Ansätze zur nutzerfreundlichen Datenqualitätsanfrage und -visualisierung vervollständigt.

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Poznan, Poland, 2007

Das vorliegende Heft „Strövtåg i nordisk språkvetenskap“ enthält neun der Beiträge von Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern des sechsten studentischen Kolloquiums in skandinavistischer Sprachwissenschaft. Als ein Ergebnis der Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Institut für Nordische Sprachen der Universität Stockholm und dem Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin findet das Kolloquium seit 1996 jährlich statt. Es hat sich als ein Rahmen für die Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses bewährt. Austragungsort des nunmehr sechsten Treffens war Stockholm. Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer dieses Kolloquiums waren Josefin Bloch, Charlotta Brylla, Sven Lange, Yvonne Lindqvist, Rune Palm (Stockholm) sowie Irina Enders, Piret Frädrich, Anja Klein, Kristina Kotcheva, Jurij Kusmenko und Michael Rießler (Berlin). Wir bedauern, die Beiträge von Piret Frädrich und Yvonne Lindqvist nicht einschließen zu können. Traditionell erscheinen die Beiträge des Colloquiums in den „Kleinen Schriften des Nordeuropa-Instituts“. Und – inzwischen fast ebenso traditionell – lädt auch dieses Heft ein zu einem nordistischen smörgåsbord. Die Artikel spiegeln dabei die große Bandbreite der linguistischen Forschung innerhalb beider Institute wider: Die Beiträge behandeln Themen aus der Lexikologie, Semantik, Morphologie sowie Kontaktlinguistik, wobei sowohl synchrone als auch diachrone Analysen präsentiert werden. Smaklig måltid! Not Reviewed

The well known optimum approach to detect spread spectrum signals transmitted in bursts over frequency selective radio channels is matched filtering, which performs despreading, and subsequent Viterbi equalization (VE) to cope with intersymbol interference (ISI). With respect to complexity, VE is feasible only if data modulation schemes with a few symbol levels as e.g. 2PSK are used and if the delay spread of the channel is not too large. The paper gives a survey of suboptimum data detectors based on linear block estimation. Such data detectors are less expensive than VE especially in the case of multilevel data modulation schemes as 4PSK or 16QAM. Special emphasis is laid on data detectors based on Gauss-Markoff estimation because these detectors combine the advantages of unbiasedness and minimum variance of the estimate. In computer simulations, the Gauss-Markoff estimation algorithm is applied to spread spectrum burst transmission over radio channels specified by COST 207. It is shown that the SNR degradation which is a measure of the suboptimality of the detector does not exceed a few dB, and that even moderate spectrum spreading considerably reduces the detrimental effect of channel frequency selectivity.

This project seeks to analyze Qohelet’s first-person speech as a route to understand his character through the words spoken by himself. In scholarship, although Qohelet is recognized as a character, it is often analyzed with the Solomonic figure in Hebrew biblical history or certain social roles from the presumed historical setting of Ecclesiastes. However, Ecclesiastes’ social setting, dating, and authorship are constantly debated as historical evidence are scarce. Therefore, this thesis proposes to reconstruct the Qohelet character by taking the text as literary evidence. It aims to explore the richness of this character by employing the close reading method proposed by New Criticism in English literary studies which continues to influence the way to read a literary text today. It focuses on providing a narrative reading and analysis of the text particularly on passages (1:12-2:26; 3:9-22; 7:15-8:1; and 8:16-9:12) where Qohelet specifically speaks to himself, to his personified heart (לב ,(or to his intended audience. Close reading suggests stripping away any historically authorial and editorial influences on the meaning of the immediate text, and in turn asks how the text may bring out meaning from its content, structure, rhetorical devices, and literary construct by taking the text as a literary unity. Through dissecting the narrative first-person components, the research should show how Qohelet’s character development functions within the text, how the autobiographical voice influences or participates in the meaning of the text, and how these elements simultaneously shape the character of Qohelet and the sapiential theology of the book

In this study, I examine the linguistic infelicities (i.e., meta-textual semantics) in the Hebrew text of Jeremiah. The introduction to Proverbs, especially Prov 1:5-6, suggests that it utilises mind-advancing strategies and riddles (e.g., the acronym אֵב ֹתּ in Prov 1:10 interpreted as םָ תִּ א ךֶ רֶ דְ בּ ךֵלֵ תּ via verse 15). Ancient Near Eastern scribes, rabbinic exegetes, and the Masoretes also display an awareness of meta-textual semantics in their textual production and exegesis. Meta-textual semantics, however, has not been systematically explored across an entire book in the Hebrew Bible. Several scholars (e.g., A. Hurvitz, S. Noegel, and G. Rendsburg) have signalled the exegetical significance of oddities or coherence in the text of the Hebrew Bible (i.e., a text is confused or well-formed to illustrate its message). Their studies are illuminating but too brief and selective. Additionally, they lack a methodology. I, therefore, enumerate a methodology which follows two paths — textual contortion or textual cohesion. I examine abnormalities or cohesion in Hebrew Jeremiah to determine if an element is a case of authorial or scribal stylistics or if it is a textual corruption as evidenced by the extant ancient witnesses. If neither of these sufficiently clarifies the questionable textual element, then I assess whether it is a case of textual contortion (i.e., a disharmonious textual element creating a contextual effect which exemplifies a major or minor contextual theme) or textual cohesion (i.e., a harmonious textual element orchestrating a contextual effect to demonstrate a contextual theme). For example, Saul’s “lacking” regnal dates in 1 Sam 13:1 illustrate his short, failed kingship (i.e., textual contortion). Elijah responding identically to YHWH in 1 Kgs 19:10 and 14 demonstrates that he is unmoved in his faithfulness to YHWH (i.e., textual cohesion). If a suggestion does not fit a major or minor theme in the context, then this oddity cannot be a case of meta-textual semantics. Meta-textual semantics in Hebrew Jeremiah appears in the orthography (e.g., אר ֹבּ in Jer 2:13), syntax (e.g., anacoluthon in Jer 4:23-26), and morphology (e.g., geminate verbs in Jer 6:9) of the text as well as literary aspects of the text (e.g., palindrome mimicking siege conditions in Jer 52:6). The examples appear in the words of YHWH, Jeremiah, the narrator, and the Judahite people in both the prosaic and poetic portions of the book. There are several implications of this study. Meta-textual semantics is more extensively distributed in the Hebrew Bible than previously recognised. Scribes were competent readers of Hebrew text and contributed to meta-textual semantics in major and minor ways in the text. An odd linguistic element in the text is not necessarily a textual corruption. An author’s use of meta-textual semantics might lead to additional cases of meta-textual semantics created by a scribe in the same text and context. Finally, the versional translators of the Hebrew Bible may be motivated to make meta-textual semantic choices when crafting their translations of their Hebrew Vorlage.

In recent years, video has been inducing an exponential growth in mobile traffic. Today, mobile operators pay several billions of euros for radio frequency bands to cope with enormous traffic demands. At the same time, the enduring demand growth increasingly forces mobile operators and video service providers to look for efficient solutions to make the best possible service quality out of the limited radio spectrum. This thesis focuses on improving the Quality of Experience (QoE) of multiple low-delay video streams in the uplink of mobile networks using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). Several mobile networks like LTE and WiMAX have been using OFDMA. In that context, this thesis provides multiple contributions. The first contribution is a novel dynamic resource allocation approach, which exploits wireless channels��� random variations to improve user throughput while suppressing Multiple Access Interference (MAI). MAI presents when user signals are not perfectly synchronous in the uplink of OFDMA networks. Next, the thesis presents two cross-layer video adaptation approaches, which adopt the introduced dynamic resource allocation approach. Those two approaches target low-delay video streaming services using non-layered and layered video coding. While the video industry has been broadly using non-layered video coding, layered video coding might be more prevalent in the future. Those two technologies have distinct adaptation principles, so they require different solutions tailored particularly for them. In both cases, via efficient mathematical transformations, the large-timescale problem of video adaptation (in a few seconds) is pursued via a series of small-timescale resource allocation problems (each in a few milliseconds). By doing that, video adaptation algorithms can quickly react to wireless channel variations and meet low latency requirements. As for non-layered video coding, another contribution is to consider potential throughput gains via efficient resource allocation algorithms as selecting video quality. Throughout the thesis, we develop several mathematical optimization problems and adaptation algorithms to determine the performance gain of proposed approaches., In den letzten Jahren war Video der Haupttreiber f��r das exponentielle Wachstum des mobilen Verkehrs. Heute zahlen Mobilfunkbetreiber mehrere Milliarden Euro f��r die Funkfrequenz, um die enorme Verkehrsanforderung zu bew��ltigen. Gleichzeitig zwingt das anhaltende Wachstum Mobilfunkbetreiber und Videodienstanbieter zunehmend dazu, nach effizienten L��sungen zu suchen, um aus dem begrenzten Funkspektrum die bestm��gliche Servicequalit��t zu erzielen. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf die Herausforderungen bei der Verbesserung der Nutzerzufriedenheit (Quality of Experience, QoE) des Videostreams mit niedriger Latenz im Uplink von OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) Mobilfunknetz. Mehrere Mobilfunknetze wie LTE und WiMAX verwenden OFDMA. In diesem Zusammenhang liefert diese Arbeit mehrere Beitr��ge. Der erste Beitrag ist ein neuartiger Ansatz zur dynamischen Ressourcenvergabe. Einerseits nutzt der vorgeschlagene Ansatz die zuf��llige Variation des Funkkanals, um den Benutzerdurchsatz zu verbessern. Andererseits werden einige Frequenzressourcen als Schutzb��nder verwendet, um die Mehrfachzugriffsst��rung MAI (Multiple Access Interference) zu unterdr��cken. MAI pr��sentiert, da Benutzersignale im Uplink nicht perfekt synchron sind. Anschlie��end werden mathematische Optimierungsprobleme entwickelt, um die Ressourcenvergabe optimieren, die den Benutzerdurchsatz erheblich verbessern k��nnen. Infolgedessen werden in der Arbeit zwei neue Ans��tze zur schicht��bergreifenden (cross-layer) Videoanpassung vorgestellt, die den vorgeschlagenen Ansatz zur Ressourcenvergabe ��bernehmen und auf Streamingsdienste mit geringer Latenz unter Verwendung von nichtskalierbare und skalierbare Videocodierung abzielen. W��hrend die nichtskalierbare Videokodierung in der Branche weit verbreitet ist, d��rfte die skalierbare Videokodierung in Zukunft st��rker verbreitet sein. Diese beiden Technologien haben unterschiedliche Anpassungsprinzipien und erfordern daher unterschiedliche L��sungen, die speziell auf sie zugeschnitten sind. In beiden F��llen wird das Problem der Videoanpassung mit gro��er Zeitskala (von wenigen Sekunden) ��ber eine Reihe von Problemen der Ressourcenvergabe in kleiner Zeitskala (jeweils in einem Bereich von wenigen Millisekunden) verfolgt. Auf diese Weise k��nnen die Videoanpassungsalgorithmen schnell auf die Variation des Funkkanals reagieren und die strengen Latenzanforderungen erf��llen. Bei der nichtskalierbare Videokodierung liegt ein weiterer Beitrag in der expliziten Ber��cksichtigung des potenziellen Durchsatzgewinns ��ber effiziente Algorithmen der Ressourcenvergabe bei der Auswahl der Videoqualit��t.

Isaiah 24–27, the so-called "Isaiah Apocalypse," is a striking section in the book of Isaiah––from its opening depiction of cosmic upheaval, to the death of Mot, to the summoning blast of the shofar. Its heightened, almost feverish, visions of "that day" are interspersed with lyrical sections ranging from jubilant praise to anguished lament. This distinctive alternation in genre, tone, and content, often without conjunctive discourse markers, contributes to a sense of disorientation that has long plagued interpreters. This synchronic study of Isa 24–27 addresses the related problems of the text's structure and coherence. It asks how Hebrew poetry, in particular Isa 24–27, indicates literary connectedness and what effect attending to these connections has for understanding Isa 24–27. To answer these questions, the study adapts tools from text linguistics and the work of Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan to examine cohesive ties in Isa 24–27. The thesis argues that Isa 24– 27 is best understood as a series of announcements about the rule of YHWH, each followed by a different response(s). Although there is a wide variety of cohesive relations within the text, they all contribute to the dominant theme of the kingship of YHWH. Part I establishes the context for the study, beginning with a survey of existing research (Chapter 1). The survey finds that, despite growing appreciation for the literary (e.g. poetic, metaphorical, and intertextual) features of Isa 24–27, there remains considerable disagreement about the "unity" or coherence of this passage as a text in its own right. Chapter 2 introduces the project's aims, then defines and illustrates literary cohesion in a variety of prose and poetic texts. Chapter 3 proposes a macrostructure for Isa 24–27, which unfolds in three non-chronological movements. Part II analyses Isa 24–27 along literary cohesive lines, taking each of the three movements in turn. Chapter 4 deals with Movement 1 (24:1–25:5) and considers the relationship between the eschatological prophecy and responsive hymn. Chapters 5– 6 discuss Movement 2 (25:6–26:21), which similarly describes the nature of YHWH's rule. However, the response within this movement incorporates lament concerning an apparent disparity between the prophetic word and the community's experience. Chapter 7 traces cohesion across the final movement (27:1–13) and argues that, despite its use of several different metaphors, it unfolds similarly to the previous movements (announcement–response). This final response is neither song nor lament, but a theological argument for the community's difficulties. Part III synthesises the findings of the study and examines more closely the major themes of Isa 24–27 and their relationship with the book of Isaiah. Although each movement contains unique elements and distinct imagery (e.g. dimmed luminaries in Movement 1, birth imagery in Movement 2, and slain Leviathan in Movement 3), the composition is nonetheless united by a number of cohesive ties that span the whole passage. Chapter 8 explores the significance of the major cohesive ties of Isa 24–27: temporal perspective; the unnamed cities; death, life, and new creation; and the rule of YHWH. The thesis concludes with implications of the study (Chapter 9). Although the structure and unifying principles of Isa 24–27 are not consistent with modern literary ideals (e.g. chronology or syllogism), this discourse nonetheless expresses a coherent structure and semantic unity in its claim that YHWH rules the cosmos from Mount Zion and will one day create the world anew.

This work looks at a peculiar blaming of the religious class (especially, the prophets) as it appears in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Micah. In these three books, the prophets (coupled with the priests on two occasions but only in the book of Jeremiah) are said to have promised peace ( שלום ) to the nation. Such promises are exposed as blatant falsehood ( ,(שקר and the prophets who uttered them are dismissed as liars who lead the people astray from YHWH. This accusation appears with minor variations in several excerpts throughout these books (Jer 5:30–31; 6:13–15; 8:10b–12; 14:13–16; 23:13–32; 27–29; 37:19; Ezek 13:1–16; Mic 3:5–8). Moreover, especially in the book of Jeremiah, the reader comes across a connection between “falsehood” and the idea of “promising peace”. In the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Micah, the dynamics of “prophet of the book vs. other prophets” often turn up and seem to be intertwined with the motif of having promised a false peace. Hence, this study aims to explain the reasons behind such peculiar allegations, which are presented as prophetic conflicts. The terms often used to express these conflicts, in the tradition and in scholarship, are “true” prophets vs. “false” prophets. These labels are however ambiguous, since an analysis of all the passages mentioned above does not appear to delineate the so-called “false” prophets as a homogenous group, who is antagonistic towards the “true” prophets of the tradition. It seems that the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Micah originally presented an anti-prophetic attitude, thus accusing all the prophets, and only later new readings (supported by redactional interventions) emphasized the prophetic role bestowed upon their main characters (the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Micah), thereby generating an interpretation that favours the division of the prophetic class into legitimate and illegitimate members. Consequently, as this work argues, prophetic conflicts are literary creations of some later redactors of the books and are always aimed at backing up their ideological stances. In addition, while analysing the false promises of peace, the present thesis also covers the literary growth and transmission of this theme in the books of Jeremiah (where it seems to originate from), Ezekiel and Micah (where it appears to be secondary and modelled on Jeremiah). Although prophetic conflicts are expression of the ideology of the redactors, such ideology is the product of a cultural and historical environment that at some point during the history of Israel produced this strand of thought within the biblical prophetic tradition. Hence, this research acknowledges that the biblical texts, although not providing any reliable historical reconstruction (because the redactors were not historians by any means), still allow the biblical scholar to attempt to recreate the historical moment and context that may have given birth to the ideology which lay behind prophetic conflicts (and the theme of the “false” prophets), and to trace its historical and literary development in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Micah.

This thesis examines the early Jewish reception of the divine prohibitive command (Gen 2:16-17) in relation to its interpretative association with the introduction of physical death to humanity. The long-time rationale has been that the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought sin and death ‘for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’ (Gen 2:17). The thesis begins by examining the meaning of Gen 2:17 in its original context, then tracing its interpretation in subsequent Second Temple Jewish Literature. The study examines the Greek translation of Gen 2:16-17 and its translational elements that expand the possible range of understanding of the prohibition that would not have originated from the Hebrew text of Genesis. The thesis continues with an exegetical analysis of allusions and references to the prohibitive command in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Ben Sira, 1 Corinthians and Romans. It is argued, firstly, that there are no explicit narrative clues in the HB as to the physical status of Adam and Eve either as immortal or mortal before their disobedience to God’s command in Gen 2:17, and that the death warning itself does not provide textual support for the understanding of the death warning in the sense of becoming mortal. It is also argued that Paul’s explicit attribution of death to the disobedience of Adam and Eve (1 Cor 15:21-22; Rom 5:12) finds its earlier traces in the course of interpretation of the aforementioned literature: 1) clarification of the meaning of the death warning, i.e. death in the sense of becoming ‘mortal’ and death due to the violation of the command as applicable not only to Adam, but also to Eve and other human beings; 2) reinforcement of the presumptive association between the death warning and the introduction of death to humanity.

In 1 Kings 1-2 King David’s impending death divides the monarchy over which of his two sons, Adonijah or Solomon, should be the future king. At this pivotal moment one might expect YHWH to reveal who should take over after David, as YHWH had done before (1 Sam 9:1-10:1; 16:1-13); however, YHWH is silent and the human characters take the lead. Nevertheless, YHWH has not disappeared completely from 1 Kings 1-2 because, as the narrative unfolds, YHWH is invoked twenty-four times. Although this language has drawn some attention, with scholars arguing that it either adds theological validation to the characters’ actions or re"ects a theological perspective that assumes that YHWH acts behind the scenes, there is more that might be said regarding its function in the narratives. In this study, I adopt narrative criticism to undertake a close reading of 1 Kings 1-2 that pays particular attention to how characters and the narrator use invocations of YHWH and the events in the plot that prompt or result from this language. I argue that invocations of YHWH have a number of functions in 1 Kings 1-2, with the function of characters’ invocations being particularly dependent on the identities of the characters, their relationships, and the narrative contexts in which they participate.

Mobile communication systems nowadays require ever-increasing data rate and coverage of wide areas. One promising approach to achieve this goal is the application of cooperative communications enabled by introducing intermediate nodes known as relays to support the transmission between terminals. By processing and forwarding the receive message at the relays, the path-loss effect between the source and the destination is mitigated. One major limit factor for relay assisted communications is that a relay cannot transmit and receive using the same physical resources. Therefore, a half-duplex constraint is commonly assumed resulting in halved spectral efficiency. To combat this drawback, two-way relaying is introduced, where two sources exchange information with each. On the other hand, due to the physical limitation of the relays, e.g., wireless sensor nodes, it's not possible to implement multiple antennas at one relay, which prohibits the application of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques. However, when treating multiple relays as a cluster, a virtual antenna array is formed to perform MIMO techniques in a distributed manner. %This thesis aims at designing efficient one-way and two-way relaying schemes. Specifically, existing schemes from the literature are improved and new schemes are developed with the emphasis on coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions. Of special interest is the application of physical-layer network coding (PLNC) for two-phase two-way relaying. In this case, a network coded message is estimated from the superimposed receive signal at the relay using PLNC schemes. The schemes are investigated based on a mutual information analysis and their performance are improved by a newly proposed phase control strategy. Furthermore, performance degradation due to system asynchrony is mitigated depending on different PLNC schemes. When multiple relays are available, novel cooperation schemes allowing information exchange within the relay cluster are proposed that facilitate distributed MIMO reception and transmission. Additionally, smart signaling approaches are presented to enable the cooperation at different levels with the cooperation overhead taken into account adequately in system performance evaluation.

Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2017; 1 Online-Ressource (viii, 162 Seiten)(2017). = Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2017, In opportunistic spectrum access, where unlicensed secondary users may opportunistically communicate on idle spectral resources, reliable spectrum sensing is the essential technology to minimize harmful interference for the licensed users. A spectrum sensing algorithm is responsible for detecting whether a frequency band is currently used by the licensed primary system or not. It is therefore required to exhibit high detection performance even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes. The class of detectors operating on the eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix is subsumed under the term eigenvalue-based spectrum sensing. It aims at exploiting correlations in the received signal over time or among multiple cooperating users in the presence of a licensee. Since the receiver noise is typically assumed to be a white random process which is uncorrelated among different receivers, the received signal samples should be free of correlations when the frequency band in question is vacant. Eigenvalue-based spectrum sensing is a prominent detection method since it requires very little knowledge about the signal characteristics of the primary system, while still exhibiting good detection performance. This thesis makes contributions to this field in three areas. Firstly, it explores the potential of reducing detection delays using results from the theory of quickest detection, which is a paradigm to minimize delays in detecting hypothesis changes. Large detection delays are harmful to both the primary and the secondary system in opportunistic spectrum access. This thesis therefore studies whether concepts from quickest detection may be combined with the strengths of eigenvalue-based spectrum sensing in the context of the well-known maximum-minimum eigenvalue (MME) detector.Secondly, performance limits of eigenvalue-based block detectors in the presence of practical model uncertainties are studied. In general, if knowledge about the system model is imperfect, detectors experience an SNR threshold below which reliable detection is impossible irrespective of the number of samples — the so-called SNR wall. In the context of eigenvalue-based spectrum sensing, two questions arise. Can it be shown that well-known detectors suffer from an SNR wall under practical model imperfections? Furthermore, can the location of the SNR threshold be characterized with respect to fundamental system parameters? This thesis answers these questions by investigating the effect of two practical model uncertainties: imperfect noise power calibration, and colored and correlated noise.Finally, this work advances the theoretical analysis of detectors with the help of random matrix theory. A theoretical analysis of the so-called maximum-minus-minimum eigenvalue (MMME) detector is performed in a dual user scenario. Considering that similar theoretical results were obtained for the MME detector, their performances in the presence of noise power uncertainty are compared on the basis of analytical findings., Published by Aachen

This thesis addresses the question of how to interpret instances in Hebrew prophetic literature in which one speaker quotes another speaker. Speech quotations of this kind occur almost 300 times across the prophetic corpus and exhibit a wide range of quoting and quoted participants with modal and temporal variations. In order to examine this phenomenon and to formulate a method for its interpretation, the thesis conducts an exegetical case study of Jeremiah 2.1-­‐3.5 which is distinguished by its high number and density of quotations (twelve instances in forty-­‐two verses). With a few notable exceptions, the phenomenon of prophetic speech quotation has not received any attention in its own right but was subsumed under other research concerns, such as prophetic conUlict or the form-­‐critical genre of disputation speech. Across these and other studies, the interpretation of quoted speech is marked by two principal procedures: a) on the basis of their assumed authenticity, quotations are frequently employed as a way to gain direct access to expressions of Israelite religion; b) in most studies, the approach to quoted speech is deUined by extracting the quoted words from their literary environment and by assigning them to a Uixed number of categories. Prompted by the exegetical studies by Wolff (1937) and Overholt (1979), the thesis utilizes Sternberg’s publications on quotation theory in order to confront these two central domains of authenticity and categorization. Quoted speech is deUined as a dualistic structure in which the inset (quoted utterance) is subsumed under the frame (quoting context) in order to serve its perspective and rhetorical goals. The dynamics of the frame-­‐inset relationship renders appeals to authenticity and direct access misguided: every quotation is subject to the forces of contextual mediation, inUluence, and shaping. The inseparable bond between frame and inset also challenges the approach of extraction and categorization. As a corrective to previous approaches, the thesis thus constructs the argument that prophetic speech quotations must always be interpreted within their literary context. To demonstrate the accuracy and implications of this methodological discussion and argument, the remainder of the thesis analyzes the twelve quotations in Jeremiah 2.1-­‐3.5. Special attention is devoted to the contextual integration of the quoted words and to the ways in which they are utilized to serve their frames. In close interaction with previous studies on this passage, this exegesis demonstrates the beneUits of a reading that takes into account the contextually conditioned nature of prophetic speech quotations. At the end of the thesis, the results of this analysis are summarized and related to other quotations in the Book of Jeremiah and other prophetic texts. The contribution of the thesis relates to the exegesis and understanding of the speech quotations and text of Jeremiah 2.1

[ANGLÈS] In this thesis, a scenario consisting of two-pairs of multi-antenna mobile stations performing bidirectional communications through a multi-antenna relay station is considered. First, different approaches for the relay station transceive filter design based on zero-forcing and the minimization of the mean square error are described. Second, a protocol to obtain channel state information (CSI) using pilot-assisted channel estimation in a multi-user two-way relaying network is introduced. In addition, an error model describing the influence of the imperfect transceive beamforming at the relay station and the imperfect self-interference cancellation at the mobile stations is presented. Finally, simulations are used to evaluate the impact of imperfect CSI on the achievable data rates. [CASTELLÀ] En esta tesis, se considera un escenario que consta de dos pares de estaciones móviles equipadas con múltiples antenas que realizan una comunicación bidireccional a través de una estación de relevo multi-antena. En primer lugar, se describen diferentes diseños de los filtros en la estación relieve, basados en los criterios del forzador de ceros y la minimización del error cuadrático medio. En segundo lugar, se introduce un protocolo para obtener la información del estado del canal (CSI) con la ayuda de señales piloto o referencia en una red Multi-user Two-Way relaying. Además, se presenta un modelo de error que describe la influencia de un Beamforming imperfecto en la estación relevo, así como de una imperfecta cancelación de la auto-interferencia en las estaciones móviles. Finalmente, se llevan a cabo simulaciones para evaluar el impacto de la CSI imperfecta sobre las tasas de datos alcanzables. [CATALÀ] En aquesta tesi, es considera un escenari que consta de dos parells d'estacions mòbils equipades amb múltiples antenes que realitzen una comunicació bidireccional a través d'una estació de relleu multiantena. En primer lloc, es descriuen diferents dissenys dels filtres a l'estació relleu, basats en els criteris del forçador de zeros i la minimització de l'error quadràtic mitjà. En segon lloc, s'introdueix un protocol per obtenir la informació de l'estat del canal (CSI) amb l'ajuda de senyals pilot o referència en una xarxa Multi-user Two-Way relaying. A més, es presenta un model d'error que descriu la influència d'un Beamforming imperfecte a l'estació relleu, així com d'una imperfecta cancel·lació de l'autointerferència en les estacions mòbils. Finalment, es duen a terme simulacions per avaluar l'impacte de la CSI imperfecta sobre els volums de dades assolibles.