Search

Die ersten 24 Absolventinnen haben im September 2014 die Hochschule fur Gesundheit Bochum mit dem Abschluss Bachelor of Science Hebammenkunde erfolgreich verlassen. Das Studium offnet viele neue Wege. Allerdings zeigt sich, dass die Regularien zur Berufszulassung angepasst werden sollten.

Hydrogen sulphide (H2S) is an endogenous mediator of human health and disease, but precise measurement in living cells and animals remains a considerable challenge. We report the total chemical synthesis and characterization of three 1,2-dioxetane chemiluminescent reaction-based H2S probes, CHS-1, CHS-2, and CHS-3. Upon treatment with H2S at physiological pH, these probes display instantaneous light emission that is sustained for over an hour with high selectivity against other reactive sulphur, oxygen, and nitrogen species. Analysis of the phenol/phenolate equilibrium and atomic charges has provided a generally applicable predictive model to design improved chemiluminescent probes. The utility of these chemiluminescent reagents was demonstrated by applying CHS-3 to detect cellularly generated H2S using a multi-well plate reader and to image H2S in living mice using CCD camera technology.

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva is a rare genetic disorder characterized by congenital skeletal deformities and soft tissue masses that progress to heterotopic ossification. Deformities of the great toes are distinctive, and heterotopic ossification in the soft tissues follows an expected anatomic and temporal pattern. In addition to heterotopic ossification, osteochondromata, middle ear ossification, demyelination, lymphedema, and venous thrombosis are characteristic. Awareness of this constellation of findings is important to early diagnosis and surveillance. Recognition of the imaging manifestations of fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva is imperative to early diagnosis in order to appropriately direct patient care and preclude unnecessary biopsies or surgical procedures.

For over two decades, researchers, space users, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) service providers, and international policy makers have been working diligently to expand the space-borne use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and, most recently, to employ the full complement of GNSS constellations to increase spacecraft navigation performance. Space-borne Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications employing GNSS are now ubiquitous in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). GNSS use in space is quickly expanding into the Space Service Volume (SSV), the signal environment in the volume surrounding the Earth that enables real-time PNT measurements from GNSS systems at altitudes of 3000 km and above. To support the current missions and planned future missions within the SSV, initiatives are being conducted in the United States and internationally to ensure that GNSS signals are available, robust, and yield precise navigation performance. These initiatives include the Interagency Forum for Operational Requirements (IFOR) effort in the United States, to support GPS SSV signal robustness through future design changes, and the United Nations-sponsored International Committee on GNSS (ICG), to coordinate SSV development across all international GNSS constellations and regional augmentations. The results of these efforts have already proven fruitful, enabling new missions through radically improved navigation and timing performance, ensuring quick recovery from trajectory maneuvers, improving space vehicle autonomy and making GNSS signals more resilient from potential disruptions. Missions in the SSV are operational now and have demonstrated outstanding PNT performance characteristics; much better than what was envisioned less than a decade ago. The recent launch of the first in a series of US weather satellites will employ the use of GNSS in the SSV to substantially improve weather prediction and public-safety situational awareness of fast moving events, including hurricanes, flash floods, severe storms, tornados and wildfires. Thus, the benefits of the GNSS expansion and use into the SSV are tremendous, resulting in orders of magnitude return in investment to national governments and extraordinary societal benefits, including lives saved and critical infrastructure and property protected. However, this outstanding success is tempered by dual challenges: that for GPS, the current SSV specifications do not adequately protect SSV future use; and that for GNSS, the capabilities that are currently available are not protected in the future by specifications.

Assessing and managing the expertise of employees in knowledge and service industries is critical because human capital is the key differentiator among companies. Moreover, professional social networks are becoming increasingly popular. Besides the well-known public professional social network site LinkedIn, enterprise social networks are also now being widely used inside corporations and companies. In this chapter, we address the critical workforce analytics problem of automatically assessing employees’ skills by mining multiple cues found in enterprise and social data. In particular, we treat the assessment of employees’ expertise as a matrix completion problem, where the rows represent individual employees and the columns represent individual skills. The multiple cues about employee expertise come from data we integrate on the existing skill assessment process within the company, the social networking and social media activity of the employees, and the semantic similarity of skills. Assessment results are evaluated as a binary classification recommendation. Extensive empirical study using a real-world data set from a large multinational Fortune 500 corporation corroborates the effectiveness of multicue analytics to improve the coverage and accuracy of skill assessment.

Due to its virtually unlimited technical possibilities, the Internet offers tremendous potential for the development and application of new survey methods in online market research. Thus, online questionnaires have become increasingly important. Nowadays in market research practice almost every third survey takes place on the Internet.

authorenWe present a temperature- and intensity-dependent photoluminescence (PL) study of the binary semiconductor on the mm-scale and a laterally resolved PL measurement with a resolution of nm. The films can show a rather rough surface with needles and flakes of with different orientations as well as very flat and smooth surface morphology. Despite a band gap of eV the films show a splitting of quasi-Fermi levels (QFL) of meV at room temperature. By means of temperature-dependent PL we have located several radiative and non-radiative defect states in the band gap. For a better understanding of this thin film semiconductor a full analysis of the laterally resolved PL measurement including the integrated PL yield, energetic position of the PL maximum, optical band gap, splitting of quasi-Fermi levels and defect absorption of both sample morphologies is presented to avoid misinterpretation of experimental data.

The magnification effect of gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the distribution of matter in the universe, yet it is frequently overlooked due to the fact that its signal to noise is smaller than that of lensing shear. Because its systematic errors are quite different from those of shear, magnification is nevertheless an important approach with which to study the distribution of large scale structure. We present lensing mass profiles of spectroscopic luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and galaxy clusters determined through measurements of the weak lensing magnification of photometric LRGs in their background. We measure the change in detected galaxy counts as well as the increased average galaxy flux behind the lenses. In addition, we examine the average change in source color due to extinction by dust in the lenses. By simultaneously fitting these three probes we constrain the mass profiles and dust-to-mass ratios of the lenses in six bins of lens richness. For each richness bin we fit an NFW halo mass, brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) mass, second halo term, and dust-to-mass ratio. The resulting mass-richness relation is consistent with previous analyses of the catalogs, and limits on the dust-to-mass ratio in the lenses are in agreement with expectations. We explore the effects of including the (low signal-to-noise) flux magnification and reddening measurements in the analysis compared to using only the counts magnification data; the additional probes significantly improve the agreement between our measured mass-richness relation and previous results.

The gallium gradient in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) layers, which forms during the two industrially relevant deposition routes, the sequential and co-evaporation processes, plays a key role in the device performance of CIGS thin-film modules. In this contribution, we present a comprehensive study on the formation, nature, and consequences of gallium gradients in CIGS solar cells. The formation of gallium gradients is analyzed in real time during a rapid selenization process by in situ X-ray measurements. In addition, the gallium grading of a CIGS layer grown with an in-line co-evaporation process is analyzed by means of depth profiling with mass spectrometry. This gallium gradient of a real solar cell served as input data for device simulations. Depth-dependent occurrence of lateral inhomogeneities on the µm scale in CIGS deposited by the co-evaporation process was investigated by highly spatially resolved luminescence measurements on etched CIGS samples, which revealed a dependence of the optical bandgap, the quasi-Fermi level splitting, transition levels, and the vertical gallium gradient. Transmission electron microscopy analyses of CIGS cross-sections point to a difference in gallium content in the near surface region of neighboring grains. Migration barriers for a copper-vacancy-mediated indium and gallium diffusion in CuInSe2 and CuGaSe2 were calculated using density functional theory. The migration barrier for the InCu antisite in CuGaSe2 is significantly lower compared with the GaCu antisite in CuInSe2, which is in accordance with the experimentally observed Ga gradients in CIGS layers grown by co-evaporation and selenization processes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spectral photoluminescence emitted from the front compared to the rear side of a semiconductor layer like a photovoltaic absorber is shown to exhibit significant differences in the high-energy regime. This arises from the excess-carrier depth profile and the absorption of photoluminescence photons during their way through the semiconductor layer depending on photon energy, distance to the absorber exit, and absorption coefficient.We get access to surface-recombination velocities, the minority-carrier diffusion length, the excess-carrier depth profile and the optical band gap by fitting photoluminescence spectra via numerical modeling. The numerical modeling is based on an one-dimensional three-layer system that includes multiple reflection. This procedure is exemplarily demonstrated for a thin-film system based on Cu(In,Ga)Se2.

We report a newly discovered oxidative decarbonylation reaction of isatins that is selectively mediated by peroxynitrite (ONOO(-)) to provide anthranilic acid derivatives. We have harnessed this rapid and selective transformation to develop two reaction-based probes, 5-fluoroisatin and 6-fluoroisatin, for the low-background readout of ONOO(-) using (19)F magnetic resonance spectroscopy. 5-fluoroisatin was used to non-invasively detect ONOO(-) formation in living lung epithelial cells stimulated with interferon-γ (IFN-γ).

With an ever-expanding market for diversified health food products, marketers can formulate a unique selling proposition by differentiating their brands using organic labels issued by an independent accredited institution for organic product testing. Using in-depth interviews, we verify four main purchasing motives for organic food in Germany: healthiness, hedonism, environmental friendliness, and food safety. Moreover, in two experiments, we show that the use of an organic label affects consumers' perceptions of global, local, and private brands with regard to their main purchasing motives. The positive effects of organic labeling are also supported for consumers' purchase intentions and their willingness to pay a price premium. Notably, private brands are more adept at profiteering from the use of organic labels than global and local brands.

We report on comparative electroluminescence and photoluminescence measurements on Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 solar cells and demonstrate that the spectral peak value or the integrated luminescence spectrum may not always reflect the photovoltaic “quality” in terms of open-circuit voltage. Spectra from Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 samples may have a comparable quasi-Fermi level splitting but a different spectral width or peak height, determined by the different sub-gap absorption properties. It is suggested that a more reliable evaluation of luminescence spectra should also consider the analysis in the high-energy spectral range which reflects the quasi-Fermi level splitting and which is shown to better correlate with the open-circuit voltage.

Die Lernform Skills-Lab ist eine der Berufsrealitat nachempfundene Lernumgebung, die ein wichtiges Bindeglied zwischen Theorie und Praxis darstellt. Hier konnen die Studierenden klinisch-praktische Fertigkeiten erlernen und uben. Dabei werden im Vorfeld erworbene theoretische Kenntnisse mit einbezogen und weiterfuhrend soziale und kommunikative Fertigkeiten auf hohem Niveau geschult.

We have bridged a pair of gold electrodes through chains and arrays of gold nanoparticles (NPs), which were stabilized by a coating of citrate molecules. We performed a systematic and comparative analysis of current–voltage (I–V) characteristics for chains of NPs having variable lengths and configurations. Besides stochastic current fluctuations at a constant bias voltage and quasi-periodic fluctuations of the differential conductance arising from conformational changes of citrate molecules, we also observed that the arrangement and distribution of NPs can be changed by the applied electric field, contributing to conductance fluctuations and leading to irreversible changes and finally rupture of the conducting bridge. Although in all cases gold is bridged by the same citrate molecules, a significantly higher resistance between gold electrodes and the citrate coated gold NPs was found as compared to the resistance between identical NPs. This difference is attributed to the fact that citrate molecules are chemically attached to the NPs, but are only physically interacting with the electrodes. Thus, the resistance of the bridge is not only a function of the number of molecular contacts but also depends on the strength of the individual interactions between metal conductor and molecules.

We have studied Cu2S absorber layers prepared by physical vapor deposition (PVD) by calibrated spectral photoluminescence (PL) and by confocal PL as function of temperature T and excitation fluxes to obtain the absolute PL-yield at an excitation flux equivalent to the AM1.5 spectrum and to calculate the splitting of the quasi-Fermi levels (QFL) µ = Ef,n-Ef,p and the absorption coefficient α(E), both in the temperature range 20 K ≤ T ≤ 400 K. The PL-spectra reveal two peaks at E1 = 1.17 eV and E2 = 1.3 eV, of which the low energy peak is only detectable at temperatures T < 200 K. The samples show an impressive QFL-splitting of µ > 700 meV at 300 K associated with a pseudo band gap of Eg = 1.25 eV. The high energy peak shows an unexpected temperature behavior, namely an increase of the PL-yield with rising temperature at variance with the behavior of QFL-splitting that decreases with rising T from extrapolated T = 0K value of µ = 1.3 eV. The PL-yield versus temperature will be discussed in terms of different defect states in the band gap. Our observations indicate that, contrary to common believe, it is not the PL-yield, but rather the QFL-splitting that is the comprehensive indicator of the quality of the excited state in an illuminated semiconductor. A further examination of the lateral variation of the opto-electronic properties by confocal PL shows a strong correlation between the QFL-splitting, the Urbach energy EU and the optical band gap Eopt, respectively.

The development of GPS and other GNSSs, such as the Russian GLONASS, the European Galileo, and China’s BeiDou, has resulted in new capabilities available for PNT in space. This paper reviews on-going efforts at NASA to implement U.S. PNT policy and engage international partners in the pursuit of compatibility and interoperability among these systems. The objective is to develop a multi-GNSS SSV to support space users between Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), and eventually into Cislunar space. Key international engagements include bilateral discussions, such as those that led to the 2004 U.S.-European Union Agreement on GPS-Galileo Cooperation, and on-going multilateral discussions at venues such the United Nations (UN) International Committee on GNSS (ICG) and the GNSS Provider’s Forum. Benefits to space users will include improved capabilities for on-board autonomous PNT, and better resilience to potential disruptions to GNSS signals.

This paper introduces a new paradigm that combines in-swarm sampling/processing together with formation forming methods. The introduced concept is capable of generating a regular sampling lattice through emergent behavior of swarm agents and, in a second step, exploits this formation using 2-D filtering and processing algorithms based on the so-called multidimensional Roesser model. The swarm system scales well and the low complexity approach requires minimal hardware. Formation control is achieved through artificial potential fields generated globally by a few higher tier agents and locally by the massive amount of lower tier agents. The paper illustrates the proposed methods by applying line forming to a swarm example that scans an unknown area while performing in-swarm distributed filtering with subsequent marking of potential target areas. For the first time in the literature, a modified distributed 2-D Roesser model is combined with formation forming in order to achieve the desired results.

Spatially-varying depth and characteristics of observing conditions, such as seeing, airmass, or sky background, are major sources of systematic uncertainties in modern galaxy survey analyses, in particular in deep multi-epoch surveys. We present a framework to extract and project these sources of systematics onto the sky, and apply it to the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to map the observing conditions of the Science Verification (SV) data. The resulting distributions and maps of sources of systematics are used in several analyses of DES SV to perform detailed null tests with the data, and also to incorporate systematics in survey simulations. We illustrate the complementarity of these two approaches by comparing the SV data with the BCC-UFig, a synthetic sky catalogue generated by forward-modelling of the DES SV images. We analyse the BCC-UFig simulation to construct galaxy samples mimicking those used in SV galaxy clustering studies. We show that the spatially-varying survey depth imprinted in the observed galaxy densities and the redshift distributions of the SV data are successfully reproduced by the simulation and well-captured by the maps of observing conditions. The combined use of the maps, the SV data and the BCC-UFig simulation allows us to quantify the impact of spatial systematics on $N(z)$, the redshift distributions inferred using photometric redshifts. We conclude that spatial systematics in the SV data are mainly due to seeing fluctuations and are under control in current clustering and weak lensing analyses. The framework presented here is relevant to all multi-epoch surveys, and will be essential for exploiting future surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will require detailed null-tests and realistic end-to-end image simulations to correctly interpret the deep, high-cadence observations of the sky., 13 pages, 12 figures

We introduce redMaGiC, an automated algorithm for selecting Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs). The algorithm was specifically developed to minimize photometric redshift uncertainties in photometric large-scale structure studies. redMaGiC achieves this by self-training the color-cuts necessary to produce a luminosity-thresholded LRG sample of constant comoving density. We demonstrate that redMaGiC photozs are very nearly as accurate as the best machine-learning based methods, yet they require minimal spectroscopic training, do not suffer from extrapolation biases, and are very nearly Gaussian. We apply our algorithm to Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data to produce a redMaGiC catalog sampling the redshift range $z\in[0.2,0.8]$. Our fiducial sample has a comoving space density of $10^{-3}\ (h^{-1} Mpc)^{-3}$, and a median photoz bias ($z_{spec}-z_{photo}$) and scatter $(\sigma_z/(1+z))$ of 0.005 and 0.017 respectively. The corresponding $5\sigma$ outlier fraction is 1.4%. We also test our algorithm with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 8 (DR8) and Stripe 82 data, and discuss how spectroscopic training can be used to control photoz biases at the 0.1% level., Comment: comments welcome

Space bound as well as earthbound spectroscopy of extra-terrestrial objects finds its challenge in light sources with low intensities. High transmission for every optical element along the light path requires optical materials with outstanding performance to enable the measurement of even a one-photon event. Using the Lunar Laser Ranging Project and the LIGO and VIRGO Gravitational Wave Detectors as examples, the influence of the optical properties of fused silica will be described. The Visible and Infrared Surveillance Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) points out the material behavior in the NIR regime, where the chemical composition of optical materials changes the performance. Special fibers are often used in combination with optical elements as light guides to the spectroscopic application. In an extended spectral range between 350 and 2,200 nm Heraeus developed STU fiber preforms dedicated for broad band spectroscopy in astronomy. STU fibers in the broad spectral range as well as SSU fibers for UV transmission (180 – 400 nm) show also high gamma radiation resistance which allows space applications.

We present measurements of weak gravitational lensing cosmic shear two-point statistics using Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data. We demonstrate that our results are robust to the choice of shear measurement pipeline, either ngmix or im3shape, and robust to the choice of two-point statistic, including both real and Fourier-space statistics. Our results pass a suite of null tests including tests for B-mode contamination and direct tests for any dependence of the two-point functions on a set of 16 observing conditions and galaxy properties, such as seeing, airmass, galaxy color, galaxy magnitude, etc. We furthermore use a large suite of simulations to compute the covariance matrix of the cosmic shear measurements and assign statistical significance to our null tests. We find that our covariance matrix is consistent with the halo model prediction, indicating that it has the appropriate level of halo sample variance. We compare the same jackknife procedure applied to the data and the simulations in order to search for additional sources of noise not captured by the simulations. We find no statistically significant extra sources of noise in the data. The overall detection significance with tomography for our highest source density catalog is 9.7 sigma . Cosmological constraints from the measurements in this work are presented in a companion paper [DES et al., Phys. Rev. D 94, 022001 (2016).].

We measure the cross-correlation between the galaxy density in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification data and the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as reconstructed with the Planck satellite and the South Pole Telescope (SPT). When using the DES main galaxy sample over the full redshift range $0.2 < z < 1.2$, a cross-correlation signal is detected at $6 \sigma$ and $4\sigma$ with SPT and Planck respectively. We then divide the DES galaxies into five photometric redshift bins, finding significant ($>$$2 \sigma$) detections in all bins. Comparing to the fiducial Planck cosmology, we find the redshift evolution of the signal matches expectations, although the amplitude is consistently lower than predicted across redshift bins. We test for possible systematics that could affect our result and find no evidence for significant contamination. Finally, we demonstrate how these measurements can be used to constrain the growth of structure across cosmic time. We find the data are fit by a model in which the amplitude of structure in the $z, Comment: 32 pages, 29 figures, minor modifications to match version published by MNRAS

We study the clustering of galaxies detected at $i, Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures, matches the version published in MNRAS. MNRAS 455, 4301-4324 (2015)

Using the science verification data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) for a new sample of 106 X-Ray selected clusters and groups, we study the stellar mass growth of Bright Central Galaxies (BCGs) since redshift 1.2. Compared with the expectation in a semi-analytical model applied to the Millennium Simulation, the observed BCGs become under-massive/under-luminous with decreasing redshift. We incorporate the uncertainties associated with cluster mass, redshift, and BCG stellar mass measurements into analysis of a redshift-dependent BCG-cluster mass relation, $m_{*}\propto(\frac{M_{200}}{1.5\times 10^{14}M_{\odot}})^{0.24\pm 0.08}(1+z)^{-0.19\pm0.34}$, and compare the observed relation to the model prediction. We estimate the average growth rate since $z = 1.0$ for BCGs hosted by clusters of $M_{200, z}=10^{13.8}M_{\odot}$, at $z=1.0$: $m_{*, BCG}$ appears to have grown by $0.13\pm0.11$ dex, in tension at $\sim 2.5 \sigma$ significance level with the $0.40$ dex growth rate expected from the semi-analytic model. We show that the buildup of extended intra-cluster light after $z=1.0$ may alleviate this tension in BCG growth rates., Comment: Accepted to ApJ

Can monetary policy be used to promote financial stability? We answer this question by estimating the impact of a monetary policy shock on private-sector leverage and the likelihood of a financial crisis. Impulse responses obtained from a panel VAR of eighteen advanced countries suggest that the debt-to-GDP ratio rises in the short run following an unexpected tightening in monetary policy. As a consequence, the likelihood of a financial crisis increases, as estimated from a panel logit regression. However, in the long run, output recovers and higher borrowing costs discourage new lending, leading to a deleveraging of the private sector. A lower debt-to-GDP ratio in turn reduces the likelihood of a financial crisis. These results suggest that monetary policy can achieve a less risky financial system in the long run but could fuel financial instability in the short run. We also find that the ultimate effects of a monetary policy tightening on the probability of a financial crisis depend on the leverage of the private sector: the higher the initial value of the debt-to-GDP ratio, the more beneficial the monetary policy intervention in the long run, but the more destabilizing in the short run.

Hidradenitis suppurativa/acne inversa (HS) has a multifactorial pathogenesis, with many patients reporting positive family history. Nine β-defensin genes (among them DEFB4 and DEFB103, encoding for proinflammatory mediators human β-defensin–2 and human β-defensin–3, respectively) exist as a cluster (DEFB) affected by copy number (CN). We hypothesized that CNs are greater in patients with HS and that they are linked to genetic susceptibility. CNs of DEFB were studied in two independent patient cohorts: 163 patients from Greece and 98 from Germany. CNs were greater in patients than control subjects in both studied cohorts. Carriage of more than six CNs was associated with a 7.53 odds ratio for HS in the Greek cohort and a 5.76 odds ratio for HS in the German cohort. The common odds ratio after meta-analysis was 6.72 (P < 0.0001). However, presence of fewer than six copies was linked with disease onset at an earlier age (P = 0.048), less frequent presentation of permanent purulence of the affected skin lesions (P = 0.036), and fewer skin localizations (P = 0.042). A robust genetic trait for susceptibility to HS is provided, and this is confirmed in two independent cohorts. Susceptibility arises from carriage of more than six DEFB copies, which interferes directly with the HS phenotype. © 2016 The Authors

Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are an important fraction of atmospheric aerosols because of their role in cloud formation. Experimental studies focus either on direct field measurements of complex ambient aerosols or laboratory investigations on well defined aerosols produced from single substances or substance mixtures. In this study, we focussed on the ultrafine aerosol because in terms of number concentration, the majority of the CCN are expected to have sizes in this range. A field study was performed from July 2007 to October 2008 to investigate the activation behaviour of the atmospheric aerosol in Vienna ( Burkart et al., 2011 ). Filter samples of the aerosol Giebl et al., 2002; Dusek et al., 2006b ) at a nominal supersaturation (SS) of 0.5%. Activation diameters d act ranged from 54.5 nm to 66 nm, were larger than d act of typical single inorganic salts and showed no seasonal pattern in contrast to the fraction of water soluble organic carbon (WSOC), which ranged from 44% in spring to 15% in winter. The average hygroscopicity parameter κ ( Petters and Kreidenweis, 2007 ) obtained from the activation curves ranged from 0.20 to 0.30 (average 0.24), which was significantly lower than κ chem calculated from the chemical composition (0.43 ± 0.07).

This paper presents sufficient conditions on one-dimensional (1-D) pole-zero patterns that exhibit a non-negative impulse response (NNIR) for several classes of multi-dimensional (M-D) hyper-planar systems in both the continuous-time and the discrete-time domains. The results provide some intuitive ideas about 1-D to M-D variable substitutions that preserve the non-negativity property of impulse response, as well as the relationship between the impulse response of a transformed M-D system and the impulse response of its 1-D prototype. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper in the literature discussing the sufficient conditions on pole-zero patterns that guarantee an NNIR for M-D systems. The sufficient conditions on the pole-zero patterns for the employed 1-D prototype systems represent the most inclusive sufficient conditions that ensure an NNIR. As a result, sufficient conditions on the pole-zero patterns that exhibit an NNIR are revealed for a broad category of M-D systems in this paper. It should be noticed that though there is a significant potential of applications in the area of NNIR M-D systems, NNIR M-D system design has received inadequate attention, which is surprising in view of the abundance of design frameworks developed over decades of research in M-D systems. In response to this inadequacy, this paper provides theoretical background and important guidance in constructing NNIR M-D systems. Specifically, the presented results can be employed to construct NNIR M-D filters using M-D hyper-planar filters as the building blocks. The constructing process is illustrated through a simple design example.

Composite material solar cells have been proposed and even recently processed with dye sensitizers embedded in a microcrystalline silicon thin film matrix to enhance absorption. In this contribution we present calculations to estimate the efficiency improvement of such hybrid dye-microcrystalline silicon solar cells compared to pure single junction pin microcrystalline solar cells. The simulation results for varying thicknesses of the dye-incorporated microcrystalline silicon layer demonstrate a potential efficiency improvement of almost 30% compared with a pure microcrystalline silicon cell. For the same efficiency, the thickness of the hybrid system can potentially be reduced to almost one-third of the pure microcrystalline layer. We discuss how these achievements depend on the photon energies of maximum absorption of the dye.

HINTERGRUND: Kernaufgaben der Ambulanz einer Univ. Augenklinik sind die Behandlung von planmasig bestellten PatientInnen (nach Operationen oder aufgrund von Spezialuntersuchungen, zugewiesen durch den praktizierenden Facharzt/die Facharztin) sowie die Untersuchung und Behandlung von Notfallen. Die Reduktion von ambulanten PatientInnen ohne Termin wird nicht nur von der Univ. Augenklinik angestrebt, sondern ist auch ein strategisches Ziel der Anstaltsleitung. Diese Arbeit beschreibt die EFQM Projektarbeit der Univ. Augenklinik, dieses Ziel in einem Zeitraum von 8 Monaten zu erreichen. MATERIAL UND METHODE: Auslosend fur das Projekt waren neben der Zielvorgabe der Anstaltsleitung die Ergebnisse einer MitarbeiterInnenbefragung, bei der ein Verbesserungspotential der Arbeitsplatzbedingungen und eine mangelnde Transparenz der ambulanten Prozesse auffallend waren. Eine Isterhebung im Oktober 2009 ergab, dass 350 PatientInnen ohne Termin pro Monat in der Augenklinik behandelt wurden (davon 55 % mit Zuweisung , 45 % ohne Zuweisung). Zu Beginn des Projektes wurde das Vorgehen bei der Selektion der PatientInnen ohne Termin in einem Istprozess schriftlich festgehalten. Nach Elimination einiger Problemfelder (v. a. im Bereich der Triage) konnte der Sollprozess im Laufe der Projektarbeit erstellt werden, womit die Basis fur eine Reduktion der ambulanten PatientInnen geschaffen wurde. RESULTATE: Zentrales Element in beiden Prozessen ist das Triagegesprach, bei dem zwischen akuten Patienten, Patienten geeignet fur den Facharzt und Patienten bestimmt fur die Spezialambulanz unterschieden wird. Die Ergebnisse des Triagegespraches werden im Sollprozess dokumentiert und sind jederzeit nachvollziehbar. Die Masnahmen zur Erlangung des Sollprozesses werden mittels verschiedener Medien (lokale Zeitungen, Poster bei Kongressen, Rundschreiben) an die Bevolkerung, die PatientInnen und zuweisende KollegInnen kommuniziert. SCHLUSSFOLGERUNG: Durch eine konsequente Unterscheidung von PatientInnen, die lt. Krankenanstaltengesetz von einer Univ. Augenklinik behandelt werden mussen (Notfalle, PatientInnen einer Spezialambulanz , ausgesuchte postoperative Kontrollen) und solchen, die primar in das Tatigkeitsprofil eines praktizierenden Augenarztes gehoren (Brillenanpassung, Erstuntersuchungen, Kontrolluntersuchungen, etc.) konnte die Anzahl der PatientInnen ohne Termin an der Univ. Augenklinik um 30 % reduziert werden.

Hintergrund: Insuffiziente Ernahrung chirurgischer Patienten erhoht die perioperative Morbiditat, Mortalitat, Krankenhausbehandlungszeit und Therapiekosten. Fachgesellschaften erklaren in ihren Leitlinien daher die Integrierung der Ernahrung in das gesamte chirurgische Behandlungskonzept als einen der Schlusselaspekte. Methode: Die Studie sollte den Stand der klinischen Ernahrung in chirurgischen Einrichtungen in Deutschland erheben. Methoden. Ende 2009 wurden Mitglieder der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Chirurgie (DGCH) in leitender Funktion zu einer Online-Umfrage zur praktischen Anwendung klinischer Ernahrung eingeladen. Ergebnisse: Von den befragten Arzten haben n = 156 (6,24 %) geantwortet. Demnach achten 86,9 % auf den Ernahrungszustand ihrer Patienten. Nur 6 % verwenden standardisierte Ernahrungsscreenings. Kurze praoperative Nahrungskarenzzeiten fur feste und flussige Kost werden von 65 % bzw. 40 % angewandt. Postoperativ erlauben 65 % die Einnahme klarer Flussigkeit bereits am OP-Tag sowie 78 % festen Speisen am OP- oder 1. postoperativen Tag. Supplementierende Trinknahrung setzten 53,9 % nur „manchmal“ oder „selten“ ein. Schlussfolgerung: Die niedrige Rucklaufquote offenbart moglicherweise das Dilemma, dass die evidenz-basierte Relevanz perioperativer Ernahrung auf zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit trifft. Unterstellt man eine „positive Auslese Ernahrungsinteressierter“, so findet selbst unter dieser Pramisse standardisiertes Screening auf Mangelernahrung zu wenig statt. Die perioperative Nahrungskarenz wird bereits fortschrittlicher gehandhabt. Insgesamt jedoch erscheinen nachdrucklicheres Sensibilisieren und umfassende Implementierungsstrategien notig, um die klinische Ernahrung in die chirurgische Versorgung besser zu integrieren.

Fluorescence collectors (FSCs) offer the possibility to collect and concentrate direct and ambient light and are, thereby, an option to decrease the cost of high-efficiency solar modules. So far, scattering, absorption and reabsorption of the incoming and fluorescence light cannot be discriminated completely in experiments. Thus, the contribution to the discrepancy of experimentally achieved efficiencies from the theoretical one has not been identified. To understand the propagation of the fluorescence light by illumination at a certain distance from the edge of the FSC, we have developed a two-dimensional analytical model based on geometrical optics that reproduces the experimental results. Under certain conditions for each distance from the edge regimes of detection angles exist for which no fluorescence light of the edge occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigates Hieroglyphic Luwian nominal number marking in connection with numerals in a detailed corpus analysis, bringing together philology and linguistic analysis. The result is that the numerals ‘two’, ‘three’ and ‘four’ mostly take plural nouns, while numerals from ‘five’ onwards never do so. This leaves the language with a two-tier system of grammatical number marking, which has many typological parallels. With lower numerals, plural marking in the noun is triggered by the inflection of the numerals themselves, and data from other languages in the region show that the (non-) application of plural marking may well be an areal feature.

We have fabricated and analyzed devices where an electrode gap was bridged by a chain of citrate stabilized gold particles. The current–voltage characteristic I ∼ ( V − V t ) ζ with voltage threshold V t ≈ 0 and scaling exponent ζ = 0.91 is attributed to charge transport in a one-dimensional path. We observe current fluctuations in the frequency range 3–100 mHz as function of time as a result of conformational changes in the citrate molecules induced by charge transfer across the molecules.