Trauma registry record linkage: methodological approach to benefit from complementary data using the example of the German Pelvic Injury Register and the TraumaRegister DGU(®)

In Germany, hospitals can deliver data from patients with pelvic fractures selectively or twofold to two different trauma registries, i.e. the German Pelvic Injury Register (PIR) and the TraumaRegister DGU(®) (TR). Both registers are anonymous and differ in composition and content. We describe the methodological approach of linking these registries and reidentifying twofold documented patients. The aim of the approach is to create an intersection set that benefit from complementary data of each registry, respectively. Furthermore, the concordance of data entry of some clinical variables entered in both registries was evaluated.

Dynamics of Spatial Game Theory Networks with Novel Modifications

Introduction: Advances in biotechnology have shed light on many biological processes. In biological networks, nodes are used to represent the function of individual entities within a system and have historically been studied in isolation. Network structure adds edges that enable communication between nodes. An emerging fieldis to combine node function and network structure to yield network function. One of the most complex networks known in biology is the neural network within the brain. Modeling neural function will require an understanding of networks, dynamics, andneurophysiology. It is with this work that modeling techniques will be developed to work at this complex intersection. Methods: Spatial game theory was developed by Nowak in the context of modeling evolutionary dynamics, or the way in which species evolve over time. Spatial game theory offers a two dimensional view of analyzingthe state of neighbors and updating based on the surroundings. Our work builds upon this foundation by studying evolutionary game theory networks with respect to neural networks. This novel concept is that neurons may adopt a particular strategy that will allow propagation of information. The strategy may therefore act as the mechanism for gating. Furthermore, the strategy of a neuron, as in a real brain, isimpacted by the strategy of its neighbors. The techniques of spatial game theory already established by Nowak are repeated to explain two basic cases and validate the implementation of code. Two novel modifications are introduced in Chapters 3 and 4 that build on this network and may reflect neural networks. Results: The introduction of two novel modifications, mutation and rewiring, in large parametricstudies resulted in dynamics that had an intermediate amount of nodes firing at any given time. Further, even small mutation rates result in different dynamics more representative of the ideal state hypothesized. Conclusions: In both modificationsto Nowak's model, the results demonstrate the network does not become locked into a particular global state of passing all information or blocking all information. It is hypothesized that normal brain function occurs within this intermediate range and that a number of diseases are the result of moving outside of this range.

Casualty, Causality and Chivalry: the Myth of Chivalry and Racial Violence in Southern Literature

This honors thesis project uses history and literature to analyze the role of the myth of chivalry in mystifying racial violence and oppression in the American South. The central claim is that the myth of chivalry¿ and particularly the exaltation of the white woman¿ is a myth system used to justify racial violence, oppress white womanhood, and allow white patriarchy to maintain political, social and economic dominance. This project traces the role of literature, especially Sir Walter Scott¿s historical romance, in developing the foundational myths of a southern society based in violence, racial hierarchy and gender inequality. It then follows the role of white womanhood in this myth¿ the restrictions on miscegenation, the exaltation of pure white femininity, and the violent actions performed in the name of southern women. With this historical baseline established, this study then explores three works of historical fiction that attempt to subvert this mythology by critiquing and demystifying the myth of chivalry, while also offering counter-narratives to popularized history. These works are Charles Chesnutt¿s 1901 novel The Marrow of Tradition¬, which analyzes the 1898 Wilmington N.C. race riot, Gwendolyn Brooks¿ 1960 poem ¿A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon¿ and Lewis Nordan¿s 1993 novel Wolf Whistle, two works about Emmett Till¿s tragic murder in 1955. This study, then, illuminates the intersection of literature and mythology, revealing how literature is useful for both creating and subverting myth¿and revealing how authors undertake this task.

Marginal Man in Modern Russian Literature

This research was focused around the intersection of two discourses: that of marginality and that of ideology. Ponomarev analysed works by Alexander Zinoviev, Vladimir Maximov and Eduard Limonov - three writers representing different groups of Soviet dissidence - from the viewpoint of the concept, drawn from anthropological theory, of marginal man. Using a methodology he describes as ideological analysis, Ponomarev showed that the ideologies of both the writers and their characters are marginal, lying as they do between official Soviet and western democratic ideologies. He showed that the works and the 'creative behaviour' of the three writers did not change after 1991, when their ideas seemed victorious. Marginality is shown to be a permanent characteristic and is linked with the main ideas of the dissident movement in the USSR. On the basis of this marginality, Ponomarev identified some common traits in dissident ideas and drew up a model of dissident ideology. This general model of dissident ideology seems to be one of the special Russian variants of the marginal ideologies of intelligentsia and could be compared to the ideology of Rodon Raskolnikov, the central character in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The discourse of ideology in the USSR in the 1970s-1980s and in 1990s Russia thus appeared as a process in which the elements of the official Soviet ideology were gradually superseded by those of the dissident ideology linked with the ideology of the underground, the Russian version of the post-modern. Marginal ideologies won and became mainstream but did not lose their basic marginal traits. Ponomarev concludes that the gap between the 'state ideology' and the dissident ideology, taken together with the special Russian version of postmodernity has shaped the current literary process in Russia, making the figure of the marginal man into the main writer type.

Cyclic automorphic graph decompositions

Chapter 1 introduces the tools and mechanics necessary for this report. Basic definitions and topics of graph theory which pertain to the report and discussion of automorphic decompositions will be covered in brief detail. An automorphic decomposition D of a graph H by a graph G is a G-decomposition of H such that the intersection of graph (D) @H. H is called the automorhpic host, and G is the automorphic divisor. We seek to find classes of graphs that are automorphic divisors, specifically ones generated cyclically. Chapter 2 discusses the previous work done mainly by Beeler. It also discusses and gives in more detail examples of automorphic decompositions of graphs. Chapter 2 also discusses labelings and their direct relation to cyclic automorphic decompositions. We show basic classes of graphs, such as cycles, that are known to have certain labelings, and show that they also are automorphic divisors. In Chapter 3, we are concerned with 2-regular graphs, in particular rCm, r copies of the m-cycle. We seek to show that rCm has a ρ-labeling, and thus is an automorphic divisor for all r and m. we discuss methods including Skolem type difference sets to create cycle systems and their correlation to automorphic decompositions. In the Appendix, we give classes of graphs known to be graceful and our java code to generate ρ-labelings on rCm.

Applications of finite geometries to designs and codes

This dissertation concerns the intersection of three areas of discrete mathematics: finite geometries, design theory, and coding theory. The central theme is the power of finite geometry designs, which are constructed from the points and t-dimensional subspaces of a projective or affine geometry. We use these designs to construct and analyze combinatorial objects which inherit their best properties from these geometric structures. A central question in the study of finite geometry designs is Hamada’s conjecture, which proposes that finite geometry designs are the unique designs with minimum p-rank among all designs with the same parameters. In this dissertation, we will examine several questions related to Hamada’s conjecture, including the existence of counterexamples. We will also study the applicability of certain decoding methods to known counterexamples. We begin by constructing an infinite family of counterexamples to Hamada’s conjecture. These designs are the first infinite class of counterexamples for the affine case of Hamada’s conjecture. We further demonstrate how these designs, along with the projective polarity designs of Jungnickel and Tonchev, admit majority-logic decoding schemes. The codes obtained from these polarity designs attain error-correcting performance which is, in certain cases, equal to that of the finite geometry designs from which they are derived. This further demonstrates the highly geometric structure maintained by these designs. Finite geometries also help us construct several types of quantum error-correcting codes. We use relatives of finite geometry designs to construct infinite families of q-ary quantum stabilizer codes. We also construct entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes (EAQECCs) which admit a particularly efficient and effective error-correcting scheme, while also providing the first general method for constructing these quantum codes with known parameters and desirable properties. Finite geometry designs are used to give exceptional examples of these codes.

MODULARITY BASED FUZZY COMMUNITY DETECTION IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Fuzzy community detection is to identify fuzzy communities in a network, which are groups of vertices in the network such that the membership of a vertex in one community is in [0,1] and that the sum of memberships of vertices in all communities equals to 1. Fuzzy communities are pervasive in social networks, but only a few works have been done for fuzzy community detection. Recently, a one-step forward extension of Newman’s Modularity, the most popular quality function for disjoint community detection, results into the Generalized Modularity (GM) that demonstrates good performance in finding well-known fuzzy communities. Thus, GMis chosen as the quality function in our research. We first propose a generalized fuzzy t-norm modularity to investigate the effect of different fuzzy intersection operators on fuzzy community detection, since the introduction of a fuzzy intersection operation is made feasible by GM. The experimental results show that the Yager operator with a proper parameter value performs better than the product operator in revealing community structure. Then, we focus on how to find optimal fuzzy communities in a network by directly maximizing GM, which we call it Fuzzy Modularity Maximization (FMM) problem. The effort on FMM problem results into the major contribution of this thesis, an efficient and effective GM-based fuzzy community detection method that could automatically discover a fuzzy partition of a network when it is appropriate, which is much better than fuzzy partitions found by existing fuzzy community detection methods, and a crisp partition of a network when appropriate, which is competitive with partitions resulted from the best disjoint community detections up to now. We address FMM problem by iteratively solving a sub-problem called One-Step Modularity Maximization (OSMM). We present two approaches for solving this iterative procedure: a tree-based global optimizer called Find Best Leaf Node (FBLN) and a heuristic-based local optimizer. The OSMM problem is based on a simplified quadratic knapsack problem that can be solved in linear time; thus, a solution of OSMM can be found in linear time. Since the OSMM algorithm is called within FBLN recursively and the structure of the search tree is non-deterministic, we can see that the FMM/FBLN algorithm runs in a time complexity of at least O (n2). So, we also propose several highly efficient and very effective heuristic algorithms namely FMM/H algorithms. We compared our proposed FMM/H algorithms with two state-of-the-art community detection methods, modified MULTICUT Spectral Fuzzy c-Means (MSFCM) and Genetic Algorithm with a Local Search strategy (GALS), on 10 real-world data sets. The experimental results suggest that the H2 variant of FMM/H is the best performing version. The H2 algorithm is very competitive with GALS in producing maximum modularity partitions and performs much better than MSFCM. On all the 10 data sets, H2 is also 2-3 orders of magnitude faster than GALS. Furthermore, by adopting a simply modified version of the H2 algorithm as a mutation operator, we designed a genetic algorithm for fuzzy community detection, namely GAFCD, where elite selection and early termination are applied. The crossover operator is designed to make GAFCD converge fast and to enhance GAFCD’s ability of jumping out of local minimums. Experimental results on all the data sets show that GAFCD uncovers better community structure than GALS.

High-resolution paleoclimatology of the last millennium: a review of current status and future prospects

This review of late-Holocene palaeoclimatology represents the results from a PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection Panel meeting that took place in June 2006. The review is in three parts: the principal high-resolution proxy disciplines (trees, corals, ice cores and documentary evidence), emphasizing current issues in their use for climate reconstruction; the various approaches that have been adopted to combine multiple climate proxy records to provide estimates of past annual-to-decadal timescale Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures and other climate variables, such as large-scale circulation indices; and the forcing histories used in climate model simulations of the past millennium. We discuss the need to develop a framework through which current and new approaches to interpreting these proxy data may be rigorously assessed using pseudo-proxies derived from climate model runs, where the `answer' is known. The article concludes with a list of recommendations. First, more raw proxy data are required from the diverse disciplines and from more locations, as well as replication, for all proxy sources, of the basic raw measurements to improve absolute dating, and to better distinguish the proxy climate signal from noise. Second, more effort is required to improve the understanding of what individual proxies respond to, supported by more site measurements and process studies. These activities should also be mindful of the correlation structure of instrumental data, indicating which adjacent proxy records ought to be in agreement and which not. Third, large-scale climate reconstructions should be attempted using a wide variety of techniques, emphasizing those for which quantified errors can be estimated at specified timescales. Fourth, a greater use of climate model simulations is needed to guide the choice of reconstruction techniques (the pseudo-proxy concept) and possibly help determine where, given limited resources, future sampling should be concentrated.

Autorenwerkzeuge für digitale, multimediale und interaktive Lernbausteine im Web 2.0

Die vorliegende Forschungsarbeit siedelt sich im Dreieck der Erziehungswissenschaften, der Informatik und der Schulpraxis an und besitzt somit einen starken interdisziplinären Charakter. Aus Sicht der Erziehungswissenschaften handelt es sich um ein Forschungsprojekt aus den Bereichen E-Learning und Multimedia Learning und der Fragestellung nach geeigneten Informatiksystemen für die Herstellung und den Austausch von digitalen, multimedialen und interaktiven Lernbausteinen. Dazu wurden zunächst methodisch-didaktische Vorteile digitaler Lerninhalte gegenüber klassischen Medien wie Buch und Papier zusammengetragen und mögliche Potentiale im Zusammenhang mit neuen Web 2.0-Technologien aufgezeigt. Darauf aufbauend wurde für existierende Autorenwerkzeuge zur Herstellung digitaler Lernbausteine und bestehende Austauschplattformen analysiert, inwieweit diese bereits Web 2.0-Technologien unterstützen und nutzen. Aus Sicht der Informatik ergab sich aus der Analyse bestehender Systeme ein Anforderungsprofil für ein neues Autorenwerkzeug und eine neue Austauschplattform für digitale Lernbausteine. Das neue System wurde nach dem Ansatz des Design Science Research in einem iterativen Entwicklungsprozess in Form der Webapplikation LearningApps.org realisiert und stetig mit Lehrpersonen aus der Schulpraxis evaluiert. Bei der Entwicklung kamen aktuelle Web-Technologien zur Anwendung. Das Ergebnis der Forschungsarbeit ist ein produktives Informatiksystem, welches bereits von tausenden Nutzern in verschiedenen Ländern sowohl in Schulen als auch in der Wirtschaft eingesetzt wird. In einer empirischen Studie konnte das mit der Systementwicklung angestrebte Ziel, die Herstellung und den Austausch von digitalen Lernbausteinen zu vereinfachen, bestätigt werden. Aus Sicht der Schulpraxis liefert LearningApps.org einen Beitrag zur Methodenvielfalt und zur Nutzung von ICT im Unterricht. Die Ausrichtung des Werkzeugs auf mobile Endgeräte und 1:1-Computing entspricht dem allgemeinen Trend im Bildungswesen. Durch die Verknüpfung des Werkzeugs mit aktuellen Software-Entwicklungen zur Herstellung von digitalen Schulbüchern werden auch Lehrmittelverlage als Zielgruppe angesprochen.

The critical linkage between online and offline media - An approach to researching the conditions of issue spill-over

In this article we argue that it is pressing to study the “hybrid media system” at the intersection of online and offl ine communication and its potential for agenda building. The topic is relevant because it is argued that the internet off ers new opportunities of public infl uence for challengers without access to political decision making. Except for single case studies, little is known about the conditions under which these actors succeed. Informed by the research on agenda building we tackle with the mechanisms of online-offline media agenda building and the conditions under which challengers succeed to produce issue spill-over into conventional mass media. We develop a theoretical framework for investigating the linkage between online communication and traditional mass media and discuss how our model translates into empirical research. We conclude that the nature of online networks is critical for spill-over, but also the issue itself and the structure of the political system.

A new approach to detect structural differences in lung parenchyma using digital image analysis

Morphometric investigations using a point and intersection counting strategy in the lung often are not able to reveal the full set of morphologic changes. This happens particularly when structural modifications are not expressed in terms of volume density changes and when rough and fine surface density alterations cancel each other at different magnifications. Making use of digital image processing, we present a methodological approach that allows to easily and quickly quantify changes of the geometrical properties of the parenchymal lung structure and reflects closely the visual appreciation of the changes. Randomly sampled digital images from light microscopic sections of lung parenchyma are filtered, binarized, and skeletonized. The lung septa are thus represented as a single-pixel wide line network with nodal points and end points and the corresponding internodal and end segments. By automatically counting the number of points and measuring the lengths of the skeletal segments, the lung architecture can be characterized and very subtle structural changes can be detected. This new methodological approach to lung structure analysis is highly sensitive to morphological changes in the parenchyma: it detected highly significant quantitative alterations in the structure of lungs of rats treated with a glucocorticoid hormone, where the classical morphometry had partly failed.

Inégalités de formation lors de l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur selon le sexe et le contexte migratoire: résultats de l’analyse des situations suisse, allemande et française

La présente contribution porte sur le passage dans le degré tertiaire en tenant compte de l’intrication des inégalités liées au sexe et au contexte migratoire. L’étude, qui repose sur des concepts de la théorie décisionnelle, s’articule principalement sur une comparaison entre la Suisse (TREE), l’Allemagne (élèves pouvant prétendre aux études supérieures 2002 HIS) et la France (Panel d'élèves du second degré 1995). Les résultats révèlent qu’en Suisse et en Allemagne, indépendamment de l’origine sociale, les jeunes hommes appartenant à certains groupes de migrants socialement défavorisés (2e génération) affichent un taux de passage dans le supérieur plus élevé que leurs camarades nationaux. Ils mettent par ailleurs en évidence que, ni en Suisse, ni en Allemagne, ni en France, les migrantes de deuxième génération issues de pays fortement marqués par le modèle patriarcal sont désavantagées.

Troublesome Issues: Current Debates on Tensions between Gender Equality and Cultural Diversity in Austria

This paper will first deal with the legal and social situation of Islam and Muslims in Austria and then turn to particular “troublesome issues” at the intersection of gender equality and ethnic/religious diversity. The public debate on Muslims particularly focuses on the notion “not willing to integrate” and in the assumption of “parallel societies”. Hierarchical gender relations and “harmful traditions” such as veiling, female genital cutting, forced marriage and honour based violence recently became the centre of attention. We will show that the Austrian debate on these issues is shaped by the idea of “dangerous cultural difference” as something coming from outside and being concentrated in segregated Muslim enclaves. Despite the public authorities’ rejection of the idea that Islam was responsible for “harmful traditions”, legal as well as political measures in Austria not only combat violence against women but also fuel “cultural anxieties” between different ethnic and religious groups.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF SHOCKS IN IRRADIATED EXOPLANETARY ATMOSPHERES

Supersonic flows are expected to exist in the atmospheres of irradiated exoplanets, but the question of whether shocks develop lingers. Specifically, it reduces to whether continuous flow in a closed loop may become supersonic and if some portions of the supersonic flow steepen into shocks. We first demonstrate that continuous, supersonic flow may exist in two flavors: isentropic and non-isentropic, with shocks being included in the latter class of solutions. Supersonic flow is a necessary but insufficient condition for shocks to develop. The development of a shock requires the characteristics of neighboring points in a flow to intersect. We demonstrate that the intersection of characteristics may be quantified via the knowledge of the Mach number. Finally, we examine three-dimensional simulations of hot Jovian atmospheres and demonstrate that shock formation is expected to occur mostly on the dayside hemisphere, upstream of the substellar point, because the enhanced temperatures near the substellar point provide a natural pressure barrier for the returning flow. Understanding the role of shocks in irradiated exoplanetary atmospheres is relevant to correctly modeling observables such as the peak offsets of infrared phase curves.

Where Empires Meet: Orientalism and Marginality at the Former Russo-British Frontier

This article explores the intersection of orientalism and marginality in two regions at the former Russo-British frontier between Central and South Asia. Focussing on Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan and Gilgit-Baltistan in today’s Pakistan, an analysis of historical and contemporary orientalist projections on and in the two border regions reveals changing modes of domination through the course of the twentieth century (British, Kashmiri, Pakistani and Russian, Soviet, Tajik). In this regard, different local experiences of “ colonial ” rule, both in Gorno-Badakhshan and Gilgit-Baltistan, challenge “ classical ” periodisations of colonial/postcolonial and colonial/socialist/postsocialist. This article furthermore maintains that processes of marginalisation in both regions can be interpreted as effects of imperial and Cold War contexts that have led to the establishment of the frontier. Thus, a central argument is that neither the status of the frontier between Central and South Asia as a stable entity, nor the periodisations that have conventionally been ascribed to the two regions as linear timelines can be taken for granted.