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In what has been widely seen as the most significant prosecution against violent left-wing extremism in Germany in over two decades, four individuals were sentenced in May 2023 to prison terms for violent attacks. These attacks targeted real and alleged right-wing extremists. The case has raised fears that Germany is on the brink of a left-wing terrorism resurgence. The trial and in-depth media reporting sheds new light on Lina Engel, the alleged coordinator of the group; its other members; and the attacks they conducted in the years 2018-2020. Elements from the network continue to be active, with several members in hiding and authorities concerned over further radicalization., On May 31, 2023, the State-level Higher Regional Court in Dresden sentenced four individuals, including Lina Engel, (a) a female university student and leader of the violent left-wing extremist group, [...]

The article discusses various ethical considerations for language-capable robots. These concerns include trust, influence, identity, and privacy, and will require consideration by researchers, practitioners, and the general public. Various potential negative outcomes are discussed including robot control over human morals, a default identity perception grounded in white heteropatriarchy, gendered and racialized language-capable robots, and the potential for robots to be used as mobile surveillance tools.

Sulfur trioxide (SO3) is an important oxide of sulfur and a key intermediate in the formation of sulfuric acid (H2SO4, SA) in the Earth’s atmosphere. This conversion to SA occurs rapidly due to the reaction of SO3with a water dimer. However, gas-phase SO3has been measured directly at concentrations that are comparable to that of SA under polluted mega-city conditions, indicating gaps in our current understanding of the sources and fates of SO3. Its reaction with atmospheric acids could be one such fate that can have significant implications for atmospheric chemistry. In the present investigation, laboratory experiments were conducted in a flow reactor to generate a range of previously uncharacterized condensable sulfur-containing reaction products by reacting SO3with a set of atmospherically relevant inorganic and organic acids at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Specifically, key inorganic acids known to be responsible for most ambient new particle formation events, iodic acid (HIO3, IA) and SA, are observed to react promptly with SO3to form iodic sulfuric anhydride (IO3SO3H, ISA) and disulfuric acid (H2S2O7, DSA). Carboxylic sulfuric anhydrides (CSAs) were observed to form by the reaction of SO3with C2and C3monocarboxylic (acetic and propanoic acid) and dicarboxylic (oxalic and malonic acid)–carboxylic acids. The formed products were detected by a nitrate-ion-based chemical ionization atmospheric pressure interface time-of-flight mass spectrometer (NO3–-CI-APi-TOF; NO3–-CIMS). Quantum chemical methods were used to compute the relevant SO3reaction rate coefficients, probe the reaction mechanisms, and model the ionization chemistry inherent in the detection of the products by NO3–-CIMS. Additionally, we use NO3–-CIMS ambient data to report that significant concentrations of SO3and its acid anhydride reaction products are present under polluted, marine and polar, and volcanic plume conditions. Considering that these regions are rich in the acid precursors studied here, the reported reactions need to be accounted for in the modeling of atmospheric new particle formation.

When a droplet interacts with a water-repellent surface, its triple-phase contact line typically exhibits varying contact angles, which can vary from point-to-point across the surface. Consequently, measuring the contact angles along the contact line would provide a better representation of the wetting properties of the surface than a single average contact angle. However, an effective method for estimating the local contact angle along the contact line on opaque hydrophobic surfaces is currently lacking. Here we present a method that combines through-drop imaging of the wetting interface during a sliding experiment with Finite Element Modeling of the droplet to estimate contact angle values along the contact line. Using this method, the mean advancing and receding contact angles were measured on four types of hydrophobic samples with contact angles between 99 and 178.9°. The method was further used to produce detailed advancing and receding contact angle maps of surfaces with wetting patterns with an unprecedented resolution of 3 µm.

Friction determines whether liquid droplets slide off a solid surface or stick to it. Surface heterogeneity is generally acknowledged as the major cause of increased contact angle hysteresis and contact line friction of droplets. Here we challenge this long-standing premise for chemical heterogeneity at the molecular length scale. By tuning the coverage of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), water contact angles change gradually from about 10° to 110° yet contact angle hysteresis and contact line friction are low for the low-coverage hydrophilic SAMs as well as high-coverage hydrophobic SAMs. Their slipperiness is not expected based on the substantial chemical heterogeneity of the SAMs featuring uncoated areas of the substrate well beyond the size of a water molecule as probed by metal reactants. According to molecular dynamics simulations, the low friction of both low- and high-coverage SAMs originates from the mobility of interfacial water molecules. These findings reveal a yet unknown and counterintuitive mechanism for slipperiness, opening new avenues for enhancing the mobility of droplets.

A quarter of ischaemic strokes are lacunar subtype, typically neurologically mild, usually resulting from intrinsic cerebral small vessel pathology, with risk factor profiles and outcome rates differing from other stroke subtypes. This European Stroke Organisation (ESO) guideline provides evidence-based recommendations to assist with clinical decisions about management of lacunar ischaemic stroke to prevent adverse clinical outcomes. The guideline was developed according to ESO standard operating procedures and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology. We addressed acute treatment (including progressive lacunar stroke) and secondary prevention in lacunar ischaemic stroke, and prioritised the interventions of thrombolysis, antiplatelet drugs, blood pressure lowering, lipid lowering, lifestyle, and other interventions and their potential effects on the clinical outcomes recurrent stroke, dependency, major adverse cardiovascular events, death, cognitive decline, mobility, gait, or mood disorders. We systematically reviewed the literature, assessed the evidence and where feasible formulated evidence-based recommendations, and expert concensus statements. We found little direct evidence, mostly of low quality. We recommend that patients with suspected acute lacunar ischaemic stroke receive intravenous alteplase, antiplatelet drugs and avoid blood pressure lowering according to current acute ischaemic stroke guidelines. For secondary prevention, we recommend single antiplatelet treatment long-term, blood pressure control, and lipid lowering according to current guidelines. We recommend smoking cessation, regular exercise, other healthy lifestyle modifications, and avoid obesity for general health benefits. We cannot make any recommendation concerning progressive stroke or other drugs. Large randomised controlled trials with clinically important endpoints, including cognitive endpoints, are a priority for lacunar ischaemic stroke.

Studies in laboratory-based experimental evolution have demonstrated that phytoplankton species can rapidly adapt to higher temperatures. However, adaptation processes and their pace remain largely unknown under natural conditions. Here, by comparing resurrected Skeletonema marinoistrains from the Baltic Sea during the past 60 years, we show that modern S. marinoihave increased their temperature optima by 1 °C. With the increasing ability to grow in higher temperatures, growth rates in cold water decreased. Modern S. marinoimodified their valve:girdle ratio under warmer temperatures, which probably increases nutrient uptake ability. This was supported by the upregulation of several genes related to nitrate metabolism in modern strains grown under high temperatures. Our approach using resurrected strains demonstrates the adaptation potential of naturally occurring marine diatoms to increasing temperatures as global warming proceeds and exemplifies a realistic pace of evolution, which is an order of magnitude slower than estimated by experimental evolution.

Computational rationality explains human behavior as arising due to the maximization of expected utility under the constraints imposed by the environment and limited cognitive resources. This simple assumption, when instantiated via partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), gives rise to a powerful approach for modeling human adaptive behavior, within which a variety of internal models of cognition can be embedded. In particular, such an instantiation enables the use of methods from reinforcement learning (RL) to approximate the optimal policy solution to the sequential decision-making problems posed to the cognitive system in any given setting; this stands in contrast to requiring ad hoc hand-crafted rules for capturing adaptive behavior in more traditional cognitive architectures. However, despite their successes and promise for modeling human adaptive behavior across everyday tasks, computationally rational models that use RL are not easy to build. Being a hybrid of theoretical cognitive models and machine learning (ML) necessitates that model building take into account appropriate practices from both cognitive science and ML. The design of psychological assumptions and machine learning decisions concerning reward specification, policy optimization, parameter inference, and model selection are all tangled processes rife with pitfalls that can hinder the development of valid and effective models. Drawing from a decade of work on this approach, a workflow is outlined for tackling this challenge and is accompanied by a detailed discussion of the pros and cons at key decision points.

Somalia became one of the main jihadi destinations for German foreign terrorist fighters in the years 2010-2012. A significant portion of these Somali and non-Somali foreign fighters belonged to a group of al-Shabaab sympathizers that had formed in Bonn before their departure to Somalia. Several of these foreign fighters had kinship ties. For the non-Somali Germans who joined al-Shabaab, Somalia was a secondary option after failed attempts to reach other jihadi arenas. For the majority of those who j oined the group from Germany, al-Shabaab turned out to be an unwelcoming host organization, with the majority of German recruits opting to escape Somalia. Recent trials in Germany of these returnees shed new light on their initial mobilization and their experiences in Somalia., In 2016-2017, Germany prosecuted two separate cases of German foreign terrorist fighter (FTF) returnees from Somalia, shedding new light on the Somali and non-Somali foreign fighters from Germany who traveled [...]

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is highly prevalent in individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) and is a predictor of greater clinical severity. However, there is a limited amount of evidence supporting the use of psychotropic medications for its management. A systematic scoping review was conducted to assess the current literature on brain stimulation treatments for AN with comorbid MDD, with a specific focus on MDD treatment response and weight restoration. This review was conducted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, and the PubMed, PsycInfo, and MEDLINE databases were searched until July 2022 using specific key words related to AN and brain stimulation treatments. A total of 373 citations were identified, and 49 treatment studies that met the inclusion criteria were included in the review. The initial evidence suggests that electroconvulsive therapy, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, and deep-brain stimulation may be effective in managing comorbid MDD in AN. Emerging evidence suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation may have a positive effect on body mass index in individuals with severe to extreme AN. However, there is a need for the development of better measurement techniques for assessing the severity of depression in the context of AN. Controlled trials that are adequately designed to account for these limitations are highly warranted for deep-brain stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy, and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and hold promise for providing clinically meaningful results.

The global coffee production is facing serious challenges including land use, climate change, and sustainability while demand is rising. Cellular agriculture is a promising alternative to produce plant-based commodities such as coffee, which are conventionally produced by farming. In this study, the complex process of drying and roasting was adapted for bioreactor-grown coffee cells to generate a coffee-like aroma and flavor. The brews resulting from different roasting regimes were characterized with chemical and sensory evaluation-based approaches and compared to conventional coffee. Roasting clearly influenced the aroma profile. In contrast to conventional coffee, the dominant odor and flavor attributes were burned sugar-like and smoky but less roasted. The intensities of bitterness and sourness were similar to those of conventional coffee. The present results demonstrate a proof of concept for a cellular agriculture approach as an alternative coffee production platform and guide future optimization work.

The ability to estimate the state of a human partner is an insufficient basis on which to build cooperative agents. Also needed is an ability to predict how people adapt their behavior in response to an agent's actions. We propose a new approach based on computational rationality, which models humans based on the idea that predictions can be derived by calculating policies that are approximately optimal given human‐like bounds. Computational rationality brings together reinforcement learning and cognitive modeling in pursuit of this goal, facilitating machine understanding of humans.

While the role of projects in sustainability change is widely recognized, the understanding of project managers’ behaviour in sustainability projects is limited. We examine project champions who act without hierarchical and authoritative power as environmental leaders and drive sustainability-related changes in the mindsets of actors and in city administration. Based on longitudinal action research, we elaborate on the practices and characteristics of project champions in initiating and advancing the circular economy in a city organization. Our study contributes to the intersection of research on project champions and environmental leaders by increasing the understanding of the ways through which champions develop their potency to promote sustainability in the course of the project.

A water droplet can bounce off superhydrophobic surfaces multiple times before coming to a stop. The energy loss for such droplet rebounds can be quantified by the ratio of the rebound speed URand the initial impact speed UI; i.e., its restitution coefficient e= UR/UI. Despite much work in this area, a mechanistic explanation for the energy loss for rebounding droplets is still lacking. Here, we measured efor submillimeter- and millimeter-sized droplets impacting two different superhydrophobic surfaces over a wide range of UI(4–700 cm s–1). We proposed simple scaling laws to explain the observed nonmonotonic dependence of eon UI. In the limit of low UI, energy loss is dominated by contact-line pinning and eis sensitive to the surface wetting properties, in particular to contact angle hysteresis Δ cos θ of the surface. In contrast, eis dominated by inertial-capillary effects and does not depend on Δ cos θ in the limit of high UI.

This article presents a chip-to-chip (C2C) interface for constructing reconfigurable phased arrays to be used in fifth-generation (5G)/sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems. The C2C interface further facilitates building phased array panels by allowing the use of grid-based PCB routing, thus providing flexibility in the system design. An eight-element RFIC capable of handling two independent data-streams is fabricated using 45-nm CMOS technology. The RFIC incorporates four C2C interfaces operating at 27 GHz, two C2C interfaces operating at 9 GHz, and a complex baseband (BB) with single-sided bandwidth in excess of 400 MHz. The architecture is tested by flip-chip bonding two fabricated RFICs on an eight-layer Megtron 7 PCB. In this article, only the receiver path of the RFIC and the phased array is described. Performance of both the single RFIC and the combination using the 27-GHz C2C interface is demonstrated using conductive and over-the-air (OTA) measurements. OTA measurements are conducted using 5GNR FR2 OFDM waveforms with a signal bandwidth of up to 800 MHz. The measured RF to BB conversion gain for a single element is larger than 23 dB and the minimum measured noise figure (NF) is 6.2 dB. The nominal dc power consumed by the receiver per element per stream is 116.5 mW. The RFIC occupies a normalized area per element per data stream of 2.7 mm2. The RFIC is capable of supporting dual-polarized antennas or in a large-scale panel utilizing the same antenna elements to two independently weighted data streams as part of the hybrid beamforming architecture.

An analytical plate bending model is used in a novel measurement method that is being developed for feedback control of material properties in paper manufacturing. The model involves an efficient material model for paper yet allowing a selected level of material complexity. In this study, the effects of the simplifications are studied by comparing the results with a discretized model applied in finite element methods. The boundary conditions required for specifying the censoring location in the real system proves to be challenging and a specific combined load distribution might be necessary to apply the developed model.

Responding to the urgent needs for marine emissions reduction, the recently completed Horizon 2020 European Research project HOLISHIP (2016-2020) developed suitable tools and software platforms, as necessary for the creation of innovative design solutions meeting the low emission strategic objectives. The present paper is presenting the multi-objective optimisation approach to green shipping of HOLISHIP and demonstrates a subset of its functionality by presentations of two design case studies, namely a green RoPAX and a full electric Double-Ended Ferry. The conducted optimisation studies show the attractiveness of the developed designs in terms of life-cycle economy and environmental impact.

AbstractBackground:Improvements in mortality after congenital heart surgery have necessitated a shift in focus to postoperative morbidity as an outcome measure. We examined late morbidity after congenital heart surgery based on prescription medication use.Methods:Between 1953 and 2009, 10,635 patients underwent congenital heart surgery at <15 years of age in Finland. We obtained 4 age-, sex-, birth-time, and hospital district-matched controls per patient. The Social Insurance Institution of Finland provided data on all prescription medications obtained between 1999 and 2012 by patients and controls. Patients were assigned one diagnosis based on a hierarchical list of cardiac defects and dichotomised into simple and severe groups. Medications were divided into short- and long-term based on indication. Follow-up started at the first operation and ended at death, emigration, or 31 December, 2012.Results:Totally, 8623 patients met inclusion criteria. Follow-up was 99.9%. In total, 8126 (94%) patients required prescription medications. Systemic anti-bacterials were the most common short-term prescriptions among patients (93%) and controls (88%). Patients required betablockers (simple hazard ratio 1.9, 95% confidence interval 1.7–2.1; severe hazard ratio 6.5, 95% confidence interval 5.3–8.1) and diuretics (simple hazard ratio 3.2, 95% CI 2.8–3.7; severe hazard ratio 38.8, 95% CI 27.5–54.7) more often than the general population. Both simple and severe defects required medication for cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, psychiatric, neurologic, metabolic, autoimmune, and infectious diseases more often than the general population.Conclusions:The significant risk for postoperative cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular disease warrants close long-term follow-up after congenital heart surgery for all defects.

OBJECTIVE--Our aim was to study the associations of childhood lifestyle factors (the frequency of consumption of vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, butter use on bread, and physical activity) with the [...]

Uterine leiomyoma (UL) is a common benign neoplasm which can sometimes be difficult to differentiate from the uterine inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) based on morphology alone. IMT is a myofibroblastic/fibroblastic neoplasm which has typically been considered to be rare in the uterus. Its clinical behavior is usually indolent although aggressive variants exist. The majority of IMTs harbor genomic rearrangement of anaplastic lymphoma kinase(ALK), while ALKfusion has not been thus far detected in ULs. We analyzed 2263 ULs of which 9 (0.4%) had tyrosine-kinase activation. Seven of the samples were ALK immunopositive: 6 had an ALKfusion gene and 1 overexpressed an ALKtranscript skipping exons 2 to 3, Moreover, 1 sample had a RET, and 1 a PDGFRBfusion gene. While no recurrent somatic mutations were found, 1 patient had an ALKgermline mutation. Seven tumors showed leiomyoma-like morphology, 1 tumor had slightly loose, and 1 fibrous growth pattern. Six tumors had mild to moderate lymphocyte infiltration, while no immune cell infiltration was detected in 3 cases. None of the tumors showed aggressive behavior. Except for strong ALK positivity (7/9 tumors) the protein expression profile of the tumors was identical to ULs and distinct from other mesenchymal uterine tumors. In gene expression level, these tumors and the known UL subclasses did not separate perfectly. However, vitamin C metabolism and epithelial-mesenchymal transition pathways were uniquely enriched in these lesions. The overall similarity of the analyzed tumors to UL raises the question whether an UL diagnosis would be more proper for a subset of uterine IMTs.

A survey of over 200 Finnish expatriates is used to differentiate between the career capital of self-initiated expatriates and company assigned expatriates. The results indicate that international work is an important learning experience for both types of expatriates and that this offers equal developmental possibilities.

We present a method to rapidly and accurately measure the eye box of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) eyewear. We demonstrate that this rapid method measures the eye box with a fidelity comparable to slower, traditional methods. The presented rapid method uses a lens that mimics the human eye in core aspects like pupil position, pupil size and field of view to get an impression of the eyewear performance as it appears to a human user with single image capture. By combining as few as three such image captures with such a lens, one can rapidly and accurately measure the entire eye box geometry of any given AR or VR eyewear. We further demonstrate the advantages of adopting this new method by referencing the display metrology industry, where this method has already been adopted as the new metrology standard.

The Dialogue on Dialogues workshop was organized as a satellite event at the Interspeech 2006 conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it was held on September 17, 2006, immediately before the main conference. It was planned and coordinated by Michael McTear (University of Ulster, UK), Kristiina Jokinen (University of Helsinki, Finland), and James A. Larson (Portland State University, USA). The one-day workshop involved more than 40 participants from Europe, the United States, Australia, and Japan., In recent years there has been a growth of research focusing on speech-based interactive systems that aim to increase their communicative competence by including aspects of interaction beyond simple speech [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcvs.2006.12.022 Byline: Anne Sarajuuri (a), Eero Jokinen (b), Riina Puosi (a), Marianne Eronen (b), Leena Mildh (c), Ilkka Mattila (d), Leena Valanne (e), Tuula Lonnqvist (a) Abbreviations: BDG, bidirectional Glenn; CPB, cardiopulmonary bypass; CT, computed tomography; DHCA, deep hypothermic cardiac arrest; FIQ, full-scale IQ; HLHS, hypoplastic left heart syndrome; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; PIQ, performance IQ; TCPC, total cavopulmonary connection; UVH, univentricular heart; VIQ, verbal IQ Abstract: Despite improved survival and neurodevelopmental outcome, children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and other forms of univentricular heart remain at increased risk for cognitive, motor, and other neurologic deficits. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland (b) Department of Cardiology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland (c) Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland (d) Department of Surgery, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland (e) Hospital for Children and Adolescents, and the Helsinki Medical Imaging Center, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland. Article History: Received 18 September 2006; Revised 24 November 2006; Accepted 13 December 2006 Article Note: (footnote) Supported by grants from Arvo and Lea Ylppo foundation, Lastenlinna Foundation, and the Foundation for Pediatric Research, Finland.

The impact of business strategies, on manufacturing flexibility in nonferrous metal companies, is examined.

OBJECTIVE--Insulin resistance is promoted already in childhood by obesity and possibly by high-saturated fat intake. We examined the effect of infancy onset biannually given dietary counseling on markers of insulin [...]

Mouse lung branching morphogenesis creates epithelial tree structures required for respiration. Here, we present a protocol for studying mouse lung developmental branching using lung explant cultures. We describe steps for isolating lungs with a video at embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5) and culturing as an explant for 2 days. We also detail procedures for microscopic imaging on days 0–2 and analysis of peripheral lung buds. This technique has the potential to investigate lung development in various conditions.

Objective: To establish normal values of left atrial and left ventricular volumes and function in children and young adults using three dimensional echocardiagraphy (3DE). Methods: 169 healthy subjects aged 2 [...]

Abstract:A biopsychosocial model for anxiety disorders includes an individual's genetics, brain structure, environment, and general thinking patterns to explain etiology, effects on thinking, behaviors, and development of an anxiety disorder. With more individuals seeking mental health treatment and the high prevalence of anxiety disorders among all age groups in the United States, clinicians benefit from being able to recognize the many forms of anxiety and approaches to treatment. There are several evidencebased treatment options; particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, and various "nontraditional" options. An Adlerian approach is unique in that it attempts to give meaning to anxiety and explore its usefulness. For many Adlerian clinicians, anxiety is a result of fearing not belonging, protecting one's feelings of superiority, or feeling defeated in some way, which poses a direction for treatment that differs from mainstream treatment options. This article uses a biopsychosocial model to understand the development of anxiety from birth to adulthood, with a specific emphasis on Adlerian conceptualization and treatment options.