University Of Potsdam Research Articles

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION BY SUBSTRATA OF ORE MINING DUMPS, THEIR MONITORING AS WELL AS MEASURES OF REDUCTION

The main activity fields of the research group “Applied Geoecology“ at the University of Potsdam are the development and tests of complex monitoring systems for water bodies and soils, together with the development of sustainable additives for vegetation restoration on ore mining dumps with extreme substratum parameters. The dump substrata are translocated by surface waters and by aeolian processes to the surroundings affecting soil processes. A field spectrometer has been engineered, which can detect dam substrata in soils. Moreover, various soil additives were developed, enabling the establishment of vegetation on the extreme dump substrata. For all components there have been realised extensive tests in the framework of greenhouse and field experiments under different climate conditions on three continents, on various substrata and with varying plant species. All experiments were successful, even though no additional irrigation and no mineral fertilizer were allowed to be used, in order to realise the idea of a sustainable greening.

User Interest in Digital Health Technologies to Encourage Physical Activity: Results of a Survey in Students and Staff of a German University.

BackgroundAlthough the benefits for health of physical activity (PA) are well documented, the majority of the population is unable to implement present recommendations into daily routine. Mobile health (mHealth) apps could help increase the level of PA. However, this is contingent on the interest of potential users.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was the explorative, nuanced determination of the interest in mHealth apps with respect to PA among students and staff of a university.MethodsWe conducted a Web-based survey from June to July 2015 in which students and employees from the University of Potsdam were asked about their activity level, interest in mHealth fitness apps, chronic diseases, and sociodemographic parameters.ResultsA total of 1217 students (67.30%, 819/1217; female; 26.0 years [SD 4.9]) and 485 employees (67.5%, 327/485; female; 42.7 years [SD 11.7]) participated in the survey. The recommendation for PA (3 times per week) was not met by 70.1% (340/485) of employees and 52.67% (641/1217) of students. Within these groups, 53.2% (341/641 students) and 44.2% (150/340 employees)—independent of age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and level of education or professional qualification—indicated an interest in mHealth fitness apps.ConclusionsEven in a younger, highly educated population, the majority of respondents reported an insufficient level of PA. About half of them indicated their interest in training support. This suggests that the use of personalized mobile fitness apps may become increasingly significant for a positive change of lifestyle.

User Interest in Digital Health Technologies to Enhance Physical Activity in Students and Staff of a University

Though health-enhancing effects of physical activity are well documented, the majority of the population is unable to implement present recommendations into daily routine. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies might be able to increase the physical activity level. However, the interest of potential users is a mandatory basis for this. We conducted an online-survey from 06-07/2015 by asking students and employees from the University of Potsdam for their activity level, interest in mHealth training support and other relevant parameters. 1 217 students and 485 employees (67.3% and 67.5% female, 26.0±4.9 and 42.7±11.7 years, respectively) participated in the survey. 70.1% of employees and 52.7% of students did not follow the recommendation for physical activity (3 times per week). 53.2% (students) and 44.2% (employees), independent of age, sex, BMI and level of education or professional qualification, indicated their interest in mHealth technology offering training support. Even in a younger population with higher education, most respondents reported an insufficient level of physical activity. About half of them indicated their interest in training support. Therefore, the use of personalized mHealth technology may be of increasing significance for a positive change of lifestyle.

Catalyst: Being a Chemist in the Anthropocene

Photo: © Pascal Bastien. Dr. Jean-Francois Lutz is a research director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and deputy director of the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg, France. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Montpellier II (2000) and his habilitation degree from the University of Potsdam (2009). Before joining the CNRS, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University (2001–2003) and then a leader of the research group Nanotechnology for Life Science at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (2003–2010). He is an author of over 150 publications and 10 patents and serves as an advisory board member for several journals, including Chem .

Holographic Structuring of Elastomer Actuator: First True Monolithic Tunable Elastomer Optics.

Adv. Mater. 2016, 28, 10217 The contact information and acknowledgements in the originally published article are updated as follows: The affiliations are corrected as: Dr. A. Ryabchun, Dr. M. Wegener, Dr. O. Sakhno Sensors and Actuators, Functional Polymer Systems Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP) Geiselbergstraße 69, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany M. Kollosche Applied Condensed-Matter Physics Institute of Physics and Astronomy Faculty of Science University of Potsdam Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany The Acknowledgements are corrected as: A.R. acknowledges the funding form the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The work reported by M.K. was performed within the University of Potsdam's team of the VIP project EDEL (FKZ 03V0882) funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) via the Projektträger Jülich (PtJ). Support and discussions were provided by the team, in particular by Dipl.-Ing. Hülya Ragusch and cand.phys. Stefan Best. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused.

A multi-robot search using LEGO mindstorms

Embedded software is concurrent, real-time dependent, typically networked, must meet strict resource and high quality requirements, and often runs on cheap hardware. Altogether, this makes the education of embedded software designers a difficult challenge. In this paper, we present an embedded software design project, where students have to develop a multi-robot search using Lego mindstorms. The main idea is to confront the students with all the spites that are typically present in embedded systems, while at the same time giving them an algorithmically non-trivial problem to solve. To this end, we let the students use a bio-inspired search algorithm (particle-swarm optimization) to detect survivors (led by cries for help) in an unknown disaster zone using a number of Lego Mindstorm robots. We have executed this project simultaneously at the University of Potsdam and TU Berlin and discuss results and evaluations. We think that this project is very well suited for the education of embedded software engineers.

Passive Sentence Comprehension in Thai Agrammatic Speakers

Passive Sentence Comprehension in Thai Agrammatic Speakers

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Kirsten Fermaglich, Adam Mendelsohn, and Daniel Soyer This issue of American Jewish History marks two anniversaries. The more momentous is the centenary of 1917, the fateful year in which revolutionaries overthrew the Tsar, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration endorsing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, and the United States entered World War I. All of these events contributed, directly and indirectly, to the transformation of the Jewish world in the twentieth century, and to remaking the place of American Jewry in that world. The second anniversary we mark in this issue is that of 1892, the year in which the American Jewish Historical Society was founded. That date, 125 years distant, was admittedly less transformative than the first, but still important for the development of our own field. Two articles in this issue explore the events of 1917. Gil Ribak takes a fresh look at the historic New York City mayoral campaign of Socialist Morris Hillquit. Ribak argues that Hillquit’s appeal, especially to immigrant Jews, came more from his anti-war platform than his Socialism. In coming to that conclusion, he explores the fears that the war aroused among immigrants, and debates among pro- and anti-war Socialists. Caitlin Carenen examines wartime tensions between American Zionists and the non-Zionist Jewish establishment. Analyzing debates over American Jewish war relief efforts, as well as over perceptions of American Jews’ patriotism, Carenen argues that Zionists’ heavy-handedness delayed a rapprochement between the two segments of American Jewry. This issue also includes a report by Rachel Lithgow, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, and Josh Perelman, chief curator of the National Museum of American Jewish History, on “1917: One Year that Changed the World,” a major exhibit mounted by the two institutions this year. Several features mark the American Jewish Historical Society’s anniversary by considering the development of American Jewish Studies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Shari Rabin’s article shows that compiling statistics was a central concern and lasting contribution of nineteenth-century American Jewish leaders. Even as they used the data they gathered to establish a sense of order and unity in an increasingly fractured community, they also saw their work as a contribution to “a future history of American Israelites.” Looking at the American Jewish Historical Society itself, Jeffrey Gurock chronicles the long struggle to professionalize the field. And two pieces—Gur Alroey’s [End Page ix] contribution on American Jewish historiography in Israel (the first of a series of articles examining the state of our field), and a roundtable originating in a 2016 conference at the University of Potsdam—not only detail the difficulties of establishing the field internationally, but also demonstrate the usefulness of taking a transnational approach to the study of American Jewry. Collectively, these articles—and this issue—show how far our field has come in the century since Cyrus Adler laid out his vision of a non-parochial and serious scholarly approach to American Jewish studies. [End Page x] Copyright © 2017 American Jewish Historical Society

Pianist

Admiel Kosman is the author of nine books of poetry and a bilingual Hebrew-English selection, and five academic books on Talmud and Midrash, two of which have appeared in English. He teaches religious studies at Potsdam University and is academic director of the Geiger Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. Lisa Katz, editor of the Israeli pages of the Poetry International Rotterdam Web, was translator in residence at the University of Iowa in fall 2017. I play on the water. It’s not completely necessary or required, but things flow under the trees like a gentle melody. Day unto day uttereth more love. I play on the water on numerous keys, it’s not completely necessary, there are no rules. But I like it and so I set my toes down on this tender world and play hard on the surface of the water, my body a grand piano. Huge. Solid. And I allow the pain to exit through all my fingers. And purify bad intentions far and near. And my crimes approach merrily. Innocents. When I play, I am the pianist, an additional melody on the surface of the water – and another butterfly, and this is also me – may pass over barbed wire in breathtaking flight. In an abundance of colors. Translation from the Hebrew By Lisa Katz photo : ath har saeed / flickr 48 WLT NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 Pianist by Admiel Kosman above Harvey Dunn, I Am the Resurrection and the Life, 1926 / Courtesy South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota cover section belief in an age of intolerance ...

Arctic in the Anthropocene: sustainability in a new polar age

The Arctic provides one of the most striking signatures of climate change impacts. Accelerated loss of sea ice extent and thickness, loss in biodiversity, changing atmospheric circulation patterns, and melting permafrost portray only a few aspects of a rapidly changing Arctic. In recognition of the inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary (Keil 2015) discussions, tools, mechanisms, and implementation strategies necessary to address these challenging and pervasive issues of this century, the first Potsdam Summer School, entitled ‘Arctic in the Anthropocene’, took place in June–July, 2014. The summer school was coordinated by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and the University of Potsdam, in conjunction with the city of Potsdam. The principal vision of the summer school was to eliminate disciplinary language barriers, and to foster communication amongst individuals trained in law and international relations, public health, and science, with the goal of extending an integrated science-policy dialogue for the benefit of humanity, the planet that we inhabit, and for which we share a collective responsibility.

The Information Systems Group at HPI

The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) is a private computer science institute funded by the eponymous SAP co-founder. It is affiliated with the University of Potsdam in Germany and is dedicated to research and teaching, awarding B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees. The Information Systems group was founded in 2006, currently has around ten Ph.D. students and about 15 masters students actively involved in our research activities. Our initial and still ongoing research focus has been the area of data cleansing and duplicate detection. More recently we have become active in the area of text mining to extract structured information from text, and even more recently in data profiling, i.e., the task of discovering various metadata and dependencies from a data instance.

Political science in the Federal Republic of Germany – featured examples

This paper presents the history of German political science and its current status. It contains a comparison of modern Political Science majors offered by the three top rated universities in German rankings – the University of Potsdam, Free University of Berlin and Humboldt University. It outlines the structure of political science studies, the type of courses offered and the literature used during teaching.

Weighing the Pros and Cons of Engaging in Open Innovation

The advantages of open innovation projects are widely discussed in innovation management research and practice (e.g., Man & Duysters, 2005). Particularly, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to gain most from open innovation collaborations due to their inherently limited capabilities (Lee et al., 2010; van de Vrande 2009). However, these enterprises also face manifold challenges in open innovation practice, leading to uncertainty and even renunciation of open innovation project participation. Thus, SMEs often deal with the decision dilemma of having to cooperate with external partners in order to improve their own innovation capacity, regardless of their ability to cope with the correlated risks. Although it is essential for SMEs to find the right balance between positive effects and possible negative consequences (i.e., the “dark sides” of open innovation, cf. Huizingh, 2011) of open innovation project participation, appropriate methods of finding this balance are still lacking. The research project “Open Darkness” was initiated with the goal of enabling SMEs to weigh the risks and benefits of open innovation participation by developing: i) a weighing and decision process framework and ii) a software tool that automatically applies this framework and allows self-assessment for SMEs. Both solutions aim to structure and support the decision process regarding potential engagement in open innovation projects. In order to tackle these targeted outcomes, an interdisciplinary consortium facilitates a multi-perspective and an integrated holistic research approach. Besides several SMEs, which function as requirement authority and implementer, the consortium consists of three German research institutions: the Chair of Economic Law (University of Paderborn), the Chair of Technology and Innovation Management (University of Aachen), and the Chair of Business Informatics (University of Potsdam).

Editorial

Editorial

N-back training in aphasia: a systematic investigation of near and far transfer effects

N-back training in aphasia: a systematic investigation of near and far transfer effects

Using Raman-lidar-based regularized microphysical retrievals and Aerosol Mass Spectrometer measurements for the characterization of biomass burning aerosols

In this work we extract the microphysical properties of aerosols for a collection of measurement cases with low volume depolarization ratio originating from fire sources captured by the Raman lidar located at the National Institute of Optoelectronics (INOE) in Bucharest. Our algorithm was tested not only for pure smoke but also for mixed smoke and urban aerosols of variable age and growth. Applying a sensitivity analysis on initial parameter settings of our retrieval code was proved vital for producing semi-automatized retrievals with a hybrid regularization method developed at the Institute of Mathematics of Potsdam University. A direct quantitative comparison of the retrieved microphysical properties with measurements from a Compact Time of Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (CToF-AMS) is used to validate our algorithm. Microphysical retrievals performed with sun photometer data are also used to explore our results. Focusing on the fine mode we observed remarkable similarities between the retrieved size distribution and the one measured by the AMS. More complicated atmospheric structures and the factor of absorption appear to depend more on particle radius being subject to variation. A good correlation was found between the aerosol effective radius and particle age, using the ratio of lidar ratios (LR: aerosol extinction to backscatter ratios) as an indicator for the latter. Finally, the dependence on relative humidity of aerosol effective radii measured on the ground and within the layers aloft show similar patterns.

Result Report of the Study Business Development and Business Model Innovation - Status Quo and Future Developments

During recent years, business development has become an institution and an important task in many companies, regardless of industry and focus. In the context of constant change, an increasing dynamic pressure to obtain new markets or customer groups and thus achieve additional growth will increase now and in the future. In most cases, new business ideas are not randomly generated but can be created methodically with the help of structured methods and procedures. As part of business development, the focal point of interest is set on the consideration of current and future business models as there is great potential for new growth opportunities. With the help of the business model approach, the customer value (value proposition) is put into the center of focus. It is important to carefully analyze and understand this in order to ultimately align all business activities to it and regularly check back afterwards. In addition, questions are asked as part of business model considerations regarding the generation of this value and the possibility of earning money with it. Innovation of the business model is one of the most important but also one of the most challenging tasks of strategic management in order to secure the company's future. A close link is necessary between the activities of business development and business model innovation in order to recognize the needs of the market and to fully utilize the potential of the current business model. The Chair of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Potsdam has carried out an empirical study on the topic of business development and business model innovation. 126 representatives from the areas of business development, corporate development, and strategy filled out our complete questionnaire regarding these two topics. With the help of the study, the relationship between business development and business model innovation could be identified and challenges and future developments were determined.

Production of subject-verb agreement, tense, mood, and negation in Italian agrammatic aphasia.

Production of subject-verb agreement, tense, mood, and negation in Italian agrammatic aphasia.

What causes the processing advantage in the comprehension of German object relative clauses?

What causes the processing advantage in the comprehension of German object relative clauses?

MÔ HÌNH ĐÀO TẠO GIÁO VIÊN Ở ĐỨC VÀ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH ĐÀO TẠO GIÁO VIÊN KĨ THUẬT PHỔ THÔNG Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC POTSDAM

MÔ HÌNH ĐÀO TẠO GIÁO VIÊN Ở ĐỨC VÀ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH ĐÀO TẠO GIÁO VIÊN KĨ THUẬT PHỔ THÔNG Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC POTSDAM