Digital multitext editions from scratch to electronic performance. Transcription and collation routines transformed in a flexible database system

The poster demonstrates the preparatory steps of a digital multi-text edition that are abstracted from the experiences made in the Parzival Project, based at the University of Bern, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the University of Erlangen. This edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s German Grail novel, written shortly after 1200 and transmitted during several centuries in ca. hundred witnesses, has now been completed by more than a half of the textual corpus. As the text is transmitted in medieval manuscripts the witnesses have to be transcribed according to specific encoding rules. The transcriptions then are collated following certain ideas and concepts of how the transmission process could have developed. The transcriptions and collations finally have to be transferred to a digital edition that allows the users to explore the characteristics of single witnesses as well as the history of a text, which is delivered in variants and in different versions. A dynamically organized database offering various components and adapted to the needs of diverse user-profiles is nowadays the right tool for this purpose.

Digital multi-text editions from scratch to electronic performance. Transcription and collation routines transformed in a flexible database system

The poster demonstrates the preparatory steps of a digital multi-text edition that are abstracted from the experiences made in the Parzival Project, based at the University of Bern, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the University of Erlangen. This edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s German Grail novel, written shortly after 1200 and transmitted during several centuries in ca. hundred witnesses, has now been completed by more than a half of the textual corpus.

TARWIS - A Testbed Management Architecture for Wireless Sensor Network Testbeds

With research on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) becoming more and more mature in the past five years, researchers from universities all over the world have set up testbeds of wireless sensor networks, in most cases to test and evaluate the real-world behavior of developed WSN protocol mechanisms. Although these testbeds differ heavily in the employed sensor node types and the general architectural set up, they all have similar requirements with respect to management and scheduling functionalities: as every shared resource, a testbed requires a notion of users, resource reservation features, support for reprogramming and reconfiguration of the nodes, provisions to debug and remotely reset sensor nodes in case of node failures, as well as a solution for collecting and storing experimental data. The TARWIS management architecture presented in this paper targets at providing these functionalities independent from node type and node operating system. TARWIS has been designed as a re-usable management solution for research and/or educational oriented research testbeds of wireless sensor networks, relieving researchers intending to deploy a testbed from the burden to implement their own scheduling and testbed management solutions from scratch.

Change-Enabled Software Systems

Few real software systems are built completely from scratch nowadays. Instead, systems are built iteratively and incrementally, while integrating and interacting with components from many other systems. Adaptation, reconfiguration and evolution are normal, ongoing processes throughout the lifecycle of a software system. Nevertheless the platforms, tools and environments we use to develop software are still largely based on an outmoded model that presupposes that software systems are closed and will not significantly evolve after deployment. We claim that in order to enable effective and graceful evolution of modern software systems, we must make these systems more amenable to change by (i) providing explicit, first-class models of software artifacts, change, and history at the level of the platform, (ii) continuously analysing static and dynamic evolution to track emergent properties, and (iii) closing the gap between the domain model and the developers' view of the evolving system. We outline our vision of dynamic, evolving software systems and identify the research challenges to realizing this vision.

Back to the future in one week - implementing a Smalltalk VM in PyPy

We report on our experiences with the Spy project, including implementation details and benchmark results. Spy is a re-implementation of the Squeak (i.e., Smalltalk-80) VM using the PyPy toolchain. The PyPy project allows code written in RPython, a subset of Python, to be translated to a multitude of different backends and architectures. During the translation, many aspects of the implementation can be independently tuned, such as the garbage collection algorithm or threading implementation. In this way, a whole host of interpreters can be derived from one abstract interpreter definition. Spy aims to bring these benefits to Squeak, allowing for greater portability and, eventually, improved performance. The current Spy codebase is able to run a small set of benchmarks that demonstrate performance superior to many similar Smalltalk VMs, but which still run slower than in Squeak itself. Spy was built from scratch over the course of a week during a joint Squeak-PyPy Sprint in Bern last autumn.

A homeopathic remedy from arnica, marigold, St. John's wort and comfrey accelerates in vitro wound scratch closure of NIH 3T3 fibroblasts

Background Drugs of plant origin such as Arnica montana, Calendula officinalis or Hypericum perforatum have been frequently used to promote wound healing. While their effect on wound healing using preparations at pharmacological concentrations was supported by several in vitro and clinical studies, investigations of herbal homeopathic remedies on wound healing process are rare. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of a commercial low potency homeopathic remedy Similasan® Arnica plus Spray on wound closure in a controlled, blind trial in vitro. Methods We investigated the effect of an ethanolic preparation composed of equal parts of Arnica montana 4x, Calendula officinalis 4x, Hypericum perforatum 4x and Symphytum officinale 6x (0712–2), its succussed hydroalcoholic solvent (0712–1) and unsuccussed solvent (0712–3) on NIH 3T3 fibroblasts. Cell viability was determined by WST-1 assay, cell growth using BrdU uptake, cell migration by chemotaxis assay and wound closure by CytoSelect ™Wound Healing Assay Kit which generated a defined “wound field”. All assays were performed in three independent controlled experiments. Results None of the three substances affected cell viability and none showed a stimulating effect on cell proliferation. Preparation (0712–2) exerted a stimulating effect on fibroblast migration (31.9%) vs 14.7% with succussed solvent (0712–1) at 1:100 dilutions (p < 0.001). Unsuccussed solvent (0712–3) had no influence on cell migration (6.3%; p > 0.05). Preparation (0712–2) at a dilution of 1:100 promoted in vitro wound closure by 59.5% and differed significantly (p < 0.001) from succussed solvent (0712–1), which caused 22.1% wound closure. Conclusion Results of this study showed that the low potency homeopathic remedy (0712–2) exerted in vitro wound closure potential in NIH 3T3 fibroblasts. This effect resulted from stimulation of fibroblasts motility rather than of their mitosis.

Accelerated wound closure in vitro by fibroblasts from a subgroup of cleft lip/palate patients: role of transforming growth factor-α.

In a fraction of patients surgically treated for cleft lip/palate, excessive scarring disturbs maxillary growth and dento-alveolar development. Since certain genes are involved in craniofacial morphogenesis as well as tissue repair, a primary defect causing cleft lip/palate could lead to altered wound healing. We performed in vitro wound healing assays with primary lip fibroblasts from 16 cleft lip/palate patients. Nine foreskin fibroblast strains were included for comparison. Cells were grown to confluency and scratch wounds were applied; wound closure was monitored morphometrically over time. Wound closure rate showed highly significant differences between fibroblast strains. Statistically, fibroblast strains from the 25 individuals could be divided into three migratory groups, namely "fast", "intermediate", and "slow". Most cleft lip/palate fibroblasts were distributed between the "fast" (5 strains) and the "intermediate" group (10 strains). These phenotypes were stable over different cell passages from the same individual. Expression of genes involved in cleft lip/palate and wound repair was determined by quantitative PCR. Transforming growth factor-α mRNA was significantly up-regulated in the "fast" group. 5 ng/ml transforming growth factor-α added to the culture medium increased the wound closure rate of cleft lip/palate strains from the "intermediate" migratory group to the level of the "fast", but had no effect on the latter group. Conversely, antibody to transforming growth factor-α or a specific inhibitor of its receptor most effectively reduced the wound closure rate of "fast" cleft lip/palate strains. Thus, fibroblasts from a distinct subgroup of cleft lip/palate patients exhibit an increased migration rate into wounds in vitro, which is linked to higher transforming growth factor-α expression and attenuated by interfering with its signaling.