Arbeitsplatz Hochschule im Wandel. Trends, Herausforderungen und die Rolle der Weiterbildung bei der Professionalisierung neuer Tätigkeitsbereiche

Erstmals in der Schweiz gibt eine Studie Einblick in den neu entstandenen «Third Space» an Hochschulen – Arbeitsstellen, die zwischen der Wissenschaft und der Verwaltung angesiedelt sind. Die Studie sowie weitere Texte zum Strukturwandel der Hochschulen im Bereich des «Third Space» sind im neuen «zoom» des Zentrums für universitäre Weiterbildung ZUW erschienen. Neue Berufsbilder halten in Universitäten, Fachhochschulen und Pädagogischen Hochschulen Einzug. Die Leitung von Studiengängen, das Management von Forschungsinstitutionen und Departementen oder die Schaffung dienstleistungsorientierter Servicestellen für Studierende und Forschende sind nur einige Beispiele für diesen Prozess.

The Nature of Scientific Proof in the Age of Simulations. Is numerical mimicry a third way of establishing truth?

Is numerical mimicry a third way of establishing truth? Kevin Heng received his M.S. and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 2007 to 2010, first as a Member and later as the Frank & Peggy Taplin Member. From 2010 to 2012 he was a Zwicky Prize Fellow at ETH Z¨urich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). In 2013, he joined the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern, Switzerland, as a tenure-track assistant professor, where he leads the Exoplanets and Exoclimes Group. He has worked on, and maintains, a broad range of interests in astrophysics: shocks, extrasolar asteroid belts, planet formation, fluid dynamics, brown dwarfs and exoplanets. He coordinates the Exoclimes Simulation Platform (ESP), an open-source set of theoretical tools designed for studying the basic physics and chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres and climates (www.exoclime.org). He is involved in the CHEOPS (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite) space telescope, a mission approved by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by Switzerland. He spends a fair amount of time humbly learning the lessons gleaned from studying the Earth and Solar System planets, as related to him by atmospheric, climate and planetary scientists. He received a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research in 2006

Image Space Adaptive Rendering

In this thesis, we develop an adaptive framework for Monte Carlo rendering, and more specifically for Monte Carlo Path Tracing (MCPT) and its derivatives. MCPT is attractive because it can handle a wide variety of light transport effects, such as depth of field, motion blur, indirect illumination, participating media, and others, in an elegant and unified framework. However, MCPT is a sampling-based approach, and is only guaranteed to converge in the limit, as the sampling rate grows to infinity. At finite sampling rates, MCPT renderings are often plagued by noise artifacts that can be visually distracting. The adaptive framework developed in this thesis leverages two core strategies to address noise artifacts in renderings: adaptive sampling and adaptive reconstruction. Adaptive sampling consists in increasing the sampling rate on a per pixel basis, to ensure that each pixel value is below a predefined error threshold. Adaptive reconstruction leverages the available samples on a per pixel basis, in an attempt to have an optimal trade-off between minimizing the residual noise artifacts and preserving the edges in the image. In our framework, we greedily minimize the relative Mean Squared Error (rMSE) of the rendering by iterating over sampling and reconstruction steps. Given an initial set of samples, the reconstruction step aims at producing the rendering with the lowest rMSE on a per pixel basis, and the next sampling step then further reduces the rMSE by distributing additional samples according to the magnitude of the residual rMSE of the reconstruction. This iterative approach tightly couples the adaptive sampling and adaptive reconstruction strategies, by ensuring that we only sample densely regions of the image where adaptive reconstruction cannot properly resolve the noise. In a first implementation of our framework, we demonstrate the usefulness of our greedy error minimization using a simple reconstruction scheme leveraging a filterbank of isotropic Gaussian filters. In a second implementation, we integrate a powerful edge aware filter that can adapt to the anisotropy of the image. Finally, in a third implementation, we leverage auxiliary feature buffers that encode scene information (such as surface normals, position, or texture), to improve the robustness of the reconstruction in the presence of strong noise.

Search for pair-produced third-generation squarks decaying via charm quarks or in compressed supersymmetric scenarios in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for supersymmetry via direct production of third-generation squarks are reported, using 20.3  fb −1 of proton-proton collision data at √s =8  TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2012. Two different analysis strategies based on monojetlike and c -tagged event selections are carried out to optimize the sensitivity for direct top squark-pair production in the decay channel to a charm quark and the lightest neutralino (t 1 →c+χ ˜ 0 1 ) across the top squark–neutralino mass parameter space. No excess above the Standard Model background expectation is observed. The results are interpreted in the context of direct pair production of top squarks and presented in terms of exclusion limits in the m ˜t 1, m ˜ X0 1 ) parameter space. A top squark of mass up to about 240 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for arbitrary neutralino masses, within the kinematic boundaries. Top squark masses up to 270 GeV are excluded for a neutralino mass of 200 GeV. In a scenario where the top squark and the lightest neutralino are nearly degenerate in mass, top squark masses up to 260 GeV are excluded. The results from the monojetlike analysis are also interpreted in terms of compressed scenarios for top squark-pair production in the decay channel t ˜ 1 →b+ff ′ +χ ˜ 0 1 and sbottom pair production with b ˜ 1 →b+χ ˜ 0 1 , leading to a similar exclusion for nearly mass-degenerate third-generation squarks and the lightest neutralino. The results in this paper significantly extend previous results at colliders.

Details of left ventricular radial wall motion supporting the ventricular theory of the third heart sound obtained by cardiac MR.

OBJECTIVE Obtaining new details of radial motion of left ventricular (LV) segments using velocity-encoding cardiac MRI. METHODS Cardiac MR examinations were performed on 14 healthy volunteers aged between 19 and 26 years. Cine images for navigator-gated phase contrast velocity mapping were acquired using a black blood segmented κ-space spoiled gradient echo sequence with a temporal resolution of 13.8 ms. Peak systolic and diastolic radial velocities as well as radial velocity curves were obtained for 16 ventricular segments. RESULTS Significant differences among peak radial velocities of basal and mid-ventricular segments have been recorded. Particular patterns of segmental radial velocity curves were also noted. An additional wave of outward radial movement during the phase of rapid ventricular filling, corresponding to the expected timing of the third heart sound, appeared of particular interest. CONCLUSION The technique has allowed visualization of new details of LV radial wall motion. In particular, higher peak systolic radial velocities of anterior and inferior segments are suggestive of a relatively higher dynamics of anteroposterior vs lateral radial motion in systole. Specific patterns of radial motion of other LV segments may provide additional insights into LV mechanics. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE The outward radial movement of LV segments impacted by the blood flow during rapid ventricular filling provides a potential substrate for the third heart sound. A biphasic radial expansion of the basal anteroseptal segment in early diastole is likely to be related to the simultaneous longitudinal LV displacement by the stretched great vessels following repolarization and their close apposition to this segment.