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1. Introduction 2. The architecture of the financial market regulation in Europe prior to the crisis 3. The new architecture of the financial market regulation in Europe 4. Actual issues of the political discussion on further needs to adapt the regulation and the structure of the financial markets in Europe 5. A brief summary
1. Porter strategic competitive analysis 2. A Porter analysis of the competitive advantage of banks in business lending and proprietary trading 3. Summary, competitive advantage of banks in business lending and proprietary trading 4. JPMorgan’s “London Whale” speculation 5. A common misapprehension about hedged positions in corporate debt 6. Conclusion
Banking System in Russia
(2013)
1. Introduction 2. The growth of China’s SMBs and the changes of the banking market structure – a land of small- and medium-sized companies 2.1 The characteristics of China’s banking market structure 2.2 The growth of China’s SMBs 2.3 The changes of China’s banking market structure 3. The opportunities and challenges facing SMBs in China 3.1 Opportunities 3.2 Challenges 4. Conclusion
1. Introduction 2. Analysis of implementation of the Basel III in China 2.1 Implementation of capital adequacy rules 2.2 Implementation of leverage ratio rules 2.3 Implementation of liquidity management rules 3. Suggestions for further development of China’s banking industry 3.1 Promoting capital structure adjustment and broadening capital supplement channels 3.2 Transforming business models and developing intermediary and off-balance business 3.3 Increasing the intensity of risk management and refining its standards
1. Abstract 2. Introduction to the main monetary policy tools in China 2.1 Reserve requirements 2.2 Open market operations 2.3 Interest rate policy 2.4 Credit policy and window guidance 2.5 Real estate credit control 3. Loosening monetary policy and its effect on the banking 3.1 Loosening monetary policy measures 3.2 The effect of the expansionary monetary policy on the banking 4. Sound monetary policy with tight trend and its effect on banking 4.1 Main measures of the sound monetary policy with tight trend 4.2 The effect of sound monetary policy with tight trend on banking 5. Conclusion
The German Banking System
(2013)
Kotzo shel yod by Y. L. Gordon (1832–1892) – one of the prominent intellectuals of the Jewish Enlightenment period – is a well-known Hebrew poem. This poem is characterized by a daring, sharp criticism of the traditional Jewish institutions, which the author felt required a critical shake-up. Gordon’s literary works were inspired by the Jewish Ashkenazi world. This unique and pioneering literary work was translated into Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). The aim of this article is to present the Sephardic version of Gordon’s poem. The article will attempt to examine the motives behind the translation of this work into Ladino, the reception of the translated work by its readership and the challenges faced by the anonymous translator who sought to make this work accessibleto the Ladino-reading public, in the clear knowledge that this version was quite far removed from the Ashkenazi original from which it sprang.
In this article we analyze several examples of the syntactic structure ansí un...(Eng. such a...) apparently calqued from the German expression so ein... that can be found in different Judeo-Spanish texts since the second half of 19th Century. Although the eldest examples appeared in Judeo-Spanish translations of German novels, published in Vienna – what suggests that they could be mere cases derived from a kind of translation too attached to the original –, we can also find more examples in Sephardic texts produced outside the German speaking area (Bosnia, Bulgaria, etc.), not being necessarily translations of a German original. Dealing with all these cases, we will try to trace (and explain) the spread of the ansí un syntactic structure in modern Judeo-Spanish prose.
The political and social changes with which the 19th century began in the Balkans after a great part of their territories were taken over by the Austrian Empire, also resulted in social and intellectual activity and created a new framework in the relationship with the Ottoman Empire. Vienna turned into the shelter of many citizens from the Balkans who then became the transmitters of innovation to their co-citizens through their contact with central European culture. In this sense, the members of Jewish communities participated as much as members of other ethnical and social groups. The most prominent of these Jews was Israel Hayim de Belogrado (‘of Belgrade’), who developed an important intellectual work in the Austrian capital between 1813 and 1837. He even reformed Judeo-Spanish spelling and introduced new methodologies for learning Hebrew as a second language, based on the use of a trilingual nomenclature (Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, German) when presenting the lexical repertoire.
Academic entrepreneurship
(2013)
Research on entrepreneurial motivation of university scientists is often determined by quantitative methods without taking into account context-related influences. According to different studies, entrepreneurial scientists found a spin-off company due to motives like independency, market opportunity, money or risk of unemployment (short-term contracts). To give a comprehensive explanation, it is important to use a qualitative research view that considers academic rank, norms and values of university scientists. The author spoke with 35 natural scientists and asked professors and research fellows for their entrepreneurial motivation. The results of this study are used to develop a typology of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial scientists within German universities. This paper presents the key findings of the study (Sass 2011).
Slovak schools
(2012)
The EVE curriculum framework
(2012)
1. Developing lesson plans and choosing strategies 2. The aims of the lesson plans in general 3. Strategies as a means to achieve theaims of the lesson plans 4. Evaluating the quality of lesson plans 5. Difficulties during lessons and adaptations afterwards 6. Student teachers’ overall feeling about their work 7. Using the strategies in future classes 8. Conclusion
Developing lessons
(2013)
Developing critical thinking
(2013)
Deepening understanding
(2013)
1. Key concepts 2. What students should have done 3. What students did 4. Deepening understanding 5. General description of deepening understanding 6. Why is deepening understanding an important stage? 7. How does deepening understanding occur in the lessons and some examples 8. Possible difficulties 9. Conclusion
Relating to the students
(2013)
Developing critical thinking
(2013)
Deepening understanding
(2013)
Relating to students
(2013)
The EVE curriculum framework
(2013)
Family
(2013)
Assignments, curriculum framework and background information as the base of developing lessons
(2012)
1. What are the general strengths of the assignments? 2. Structure of the assignment 3. Resources of the assignment 4. Fostering self-expression 5. How could you improve the assignment? 6. Lack of specific examples 7. Not relating the issue to the students 8. Language Problems 9. Infeasibility to adaptation 10. In what ways was the additional information useful ? How could this be improved? 11. Was the framework useful for you and in what way? 12. In what ways did the assignments reflect the steps identified in the framework?
Developing Critical Thinking
(2012)
Deepening Understanding
(2012)
Teaching patterns and trends
(2012)
1. Outline 2. Definition 3. Why is it important (or not) to teach about patterns and trends? What are the strengths and weaknesses of teaching patterns and trends? 4. How were patterns and trends offered in the original assignments? 5. What did the student teacher change in practice? How did it go? 6. Suggestions for improving patterns and trends
The Dutch school system
(2012)
Developing critical thinking
(2012)
Relating to students
(2012)
1. The Assignment 'Devotion to Religion and acitive Citizenship' 2. The Assignment 'How are religious spread across Europe' 3. The Assignment 'Is football as important as religion?' 4. The Assignment 'Why be religious?' 5. The Assignment 'Lucky charms' 6. The Assignment 'No Creo en el Jamas' (Life after death) 7. The Assignment 'Religion and its influence on politics ans policies' 8. The Assignment 'Secularisation in Europe' 9. The Assignment 'The meaning of religious places' 10. The Assignment 'Unity in diversity' 11. Which conceptions did you find?
Religion
(2012)
Videos related to the maps
(2012)
This talk will describe My Digital Life (TU100), a distance learning module that introduces computer science through immediate engagement with ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). This talk will describe some of the principles and concepts we have adopted for this modern computing introduction: the idea of the ‘informed digital citizen’; engagement through narrative; playful pedagogy; making the power of ubicomp available to novices; setting technical skills in real contexts. It will also trace how the pedagogy is informed by experiences and research in Computer Science education.
A survey has been carried out in the Computer Science (CS) department at the University of Baghdad to investigate the attitudes of CS students in a female dominant environment, showing the differences between male and female students in different academic years. We also compare the attitudes of the freshman students of two different cultures (University of Baghdad, Iraq, and the University of Potsdam).
Scientific writing is an important skill for computer science and computer engineering professionals. In this paper we present a writing concept across the curriculum program directed towards scientific writing. The program is built around a hierarchy of learning outcomes. The hierarchy is constructed through analyzing the learning outcomes in relation to competencies that are needed to fulfill them.
The challenge is providing teachers with the resources they need to strengthen their instructions and better prepare students for the jobs of the 21st Century. Technology can help meet the challenge. Teachers’ Tryscience is a noncommercial offer, developed by the New York Hall of Science, TeachEngineering, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and IBM Citizenship to provide teachers with such resources. The workshop provides deeper insight into this tool and discussion of how to support teaching of informatics in schools.
.NET Gadgeteer Workshop
(2013)
Problem solving is one of the central activities performed by computer scientists as well as by computer science learners. Whereas the teaching of algorithms and programming languages is usually well structured within a curriculum, the development of learners’ problem-solving skills is largely implicit and less structured. Students at all levels often face difficulties in problem analysis and solution construction. The basic assumption of the workshop is that without some formal instruction on effective strategies, even the most inventive learner may resort to unproductive trial-and-error problemsolving processes. Hence, it is important to teach problem-solving strategies and to guide teachers on how to teach their pupils this cognitive tool. Computer science educators should be aware of the difficulties and acquire appropriate pedagogical tools to help their learners gain and experience problem-solving skills.
A method is presented of acquiring the principles of three sorting algorithms through developing interactive applications in Excel.
We present a concept of better integration of practical teaching in student teacher education in Computer Science. As an introduction to the workshop different possible scenarios are discussed on the basis of examples. Afterwards workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the application of the aconcepts in other settings.
In this paper we report on our experiments in teaching computer science concepts with a mix of tangible and abstract object manipulations. The goal we set ourselves was to let pupils discover the challenges one has to meet to automatically manipulate formatted text. We worked with a group of 25 secondary school pupils (9-10th grade), and they were actually able to “invent” the concept of mark-up language. From this experiment we distilled a set of activities which will be replicated in other classes (6th grade) under the guidance of maths teachers.
Informatics as a school subject has been virtually absent from bilingual education programs in German secondary schools. Most bilingual programs in German secondary education started out by focusing on subjects from the field of social sciences. Teachers and bilingual curriculum experts alike have been regarding those as the most suitable subjects for bilingual instruction – largely due to the intercultural perspective that a bilingual approach provides. And though one cannot deny the gain that ensues from an intercultural perspective on subjects such as history or geography, this benefit is certainly not limited to social science subjects. In consequence, bilingual curriculum designers have already begun to include other subjects such as physics or chemistry in bilingual school programs. It only seems a small step to extend this to informatics. This paper will start out by addressing potential benefits of adding informatics to the range of subjects taught as part of English-language bilingual programs in German secondary education. In a second step it will sketch out a methodological (= didactical) model for teaching informatics to German learners through English. It will then provide two items of hands-on and tested teaching material in accordance with this model. The discussion will conclude with a brief outlook on the chances and prerequisites of firmly establishing informatics as part of bilingual school curricula in Germany.
We shall examine the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of Computer Science (CS) teachers concerning students’ Computational Thinking (CT) problem solving skills within the context of a CS course in Dutch secondary education and thus obtain an operational definition of CT and ascertain appropriate teaching methodology. Next we shall develop an instrument to assess students’ CT and design a curriculum intervention geared toward teaching and improving students’ CT problem solving skills and competences. As a result, this research will yield an operational definition of CT, knowledge about CT PCK, a CT assessment instrument and teaching materials and accompanying teacher instructions. It shall contribute to CS teacher education, development of CT education and to education in other (STEM) subjects where CT plays a supporting role, both nationally and internationally.
We launched an original large-scale experiment concerning informatics learning in French high schools. We are using the France-IOI platform to federate resources and share observation for research. The first step is the implementation of an adaptive hypermedia based on very fine grain epistemic modules for Python programming learning. We define the necessary traces to be built in order to study the trajectories of navigation the pupils will draw across this hypermedia. It may be browsed by pupils either as a course support, or an extra help to solve the list of exercises (mainly for algorithmics discovery). By leaving the locus of control to the learner, we want to observe the different trajectories they finally draw through our system. These trajectories may be abstracted and interpreted as strategies and then compared for their relative efficiency. Our hypothesis is that learners have different profiles and may use the appropriate strategy accordingly. This paper presents the research questions, the method and the expected results.
The traditional purpose of algorithm in education is to prepare students for programming. In our effort to introduce the practically missing computing science into Czech general secondary education, we have revisited this purpose.We propose an approach, which is in better accordance with the goals of general secondary education in Czechia. The importance of programming is diminishing, while recognition of algorithmic procedures and precise (yet concise) communication of algorithms is gaining importance. This includes expressing algorithms in natural language, which is more useful for most of the students than programming. We propose criteria to evaluate such descriptions. Finally, an idea about the limitations is required (inefficient algorithms, unsolvable problems, Turing’s test). We describe these adjusted educational goals and an outline of the resulting course. Our experience with carrying out the proposed intentions is satisfactory, although we did not accomplish all the defined goals.
Japan launched the new Course of Study in April 2012, which has been carried out in elementary schools and junior high schools. It will also be implemented in senior high schools from April 2013. This article presents an overview of the information studies education in the new Course of Study for K-12. Besides, the authors point out what role experts of informatics and information studies education should play in the general education centered around information studies that is meant to help people of the nation to lead an active, powerful, and flexible life until the satisfying end.
This article is a summary of the work carried out by the Ministry of Education in Turkey, in terms of the development of a new ICT Curriculum, together with the e-Training of teachers who will play an important role in the forthcoming pilot study. Based on recent literature on the topic, the article starts by introducing the “F@tih Project”, a national project that aims to effectively integrate technology into schools. After assessing teachers’ and students’ ICT competencies, as defined internationally, the review continues with the proposed model for the e-training of teachers. Summarizing the process of development of the new ICT curriculum, researchers underline key points of the curriculum such as dimensions, levels and competencies. Then teachers’ e-training approaches, together with selected tools, are explained in line with the importance and stages of action research that will be used throughout the pilot implementation of the curriculum and e-training process.
A comparison of current trends within computer science teaching in school in Germany and the UK
(2013)
In the last two years, CS as a school subject has gained a lot of attention worldwide, although different countries have differing approaches to and experiences of introducing CS in schools. This paper reports on a study comparing current trends in CS at school, with a major focus on two countries, Germany and UK. A survey was carried out of a number of teaching professionals and experts from the UK and Germany with regard to the content and delivery of CS in school. An analysis of the quantitative data reveals a difference in foci in the two countries; putting this into the context of curricular developments we are able to offer interpretations of these trends and suggest ways in which curricula in CS at school should be moving forward.
The aim of our article is to collect and present information about contemporary programming environments that are suitable for primary education. We studied the ways they implement (or do not implement) some programming concepts, the ways programs are represented and built in order to support young and novice programmers, as well as their suitability to allow different forms of sharing the results of pupils’ work. We present not only a short description of each considered environment and the taxonomy in the form of a table, but also our understanding and opinions on how and why the environments implement the same concepts and ideas in different ways and which concepts and ideas seem to be important to the creators of such environments.
The process of introducing compulsory ICT education at primary school level in the Czech Republic should be completed next year. Programming and Information, two topics from the basics of computer science have been included in a new textbook. The question is whether the new chapters of the textbook are comprehensible for primary school teachers, who have undergone no training in computer science. The paper reports on a pilot verification project in which pre-service primary school teachers were trained to teach these informatics topics.
In this paper, we show how the theory of NP completeness can be introduced to students in secondary schools. The motivation of this research is that although there are difficult issues that require technical backgrounds, students are already familiar with demanding computational problems through games such as Sudoku or Tetris. Our intention is to bring together important concepts in the theory of NP completeness in such a way that students in secondary schools can easily understand them. This is part of our ongoing research about how to teach fundamental issues in Computer Science in secondary schools. We discuss what needs to be taught in which sequence in order to introduce ideas behind NP completeness to students without technical backgrounds.
Development of competence-oriented curricula is still an important theme in informatics education. Unfortunately informatics curricula, which include the domain of logic programming, are still input-orientated or lack detailed competence descriptions. Therefore, the development of competence model and of learning outcomes' descriptions is essential for the learning process in this domain. A prior research developed both. The next research step is to formulate test items to measure the described learning outcomes. This article describes this procedure and exemplifies test items. It also relates a test in school to the items and shows which misconceptions and typical errors are important to discuss in class. The test result can also confirm or disprove the competence model. Therefore, this school test is important for theoretical research as well as for the concrete planning of lessons. Quantitative analysis in school is important for evaluation and improvement of informatics education.
Since 2011 the Comorian Island of Mayotte has been France’s 101st département, thereby becoming part of the European Union. As a result, France has consolidated and strengthened its strategic position in the Indian Ocean. With the change of political status in 2011, new developments have occurred in Mayotte. It is still unclear whether the expected economic boom, extensive social benefits or injection of EU regional funds can help to alleviate poverty and raise living standards. There is concern, however, that massive immigration to Mayotte from the surrounding territories is diminishing any progress and will continue to do so. Not only France but also the EU will have to adapt to new immigration problems due to this new external border. In this situation one thing is clear: the language contact between French and the local languages, which is the result of political developments, is leading to new dynamics. The diglossic situation east of Africa, between French as the dominant language and local languages like Shimaoré or Shibushi spoken in Mayotte will become more marked in the next few years.
Turning Aliens into Citizens
(2011)
Inhalt: Empirical results of the survey ; A cumulative index of citizenship ; Jammu and Kashmir: Contesting “Indian” citizenship ; Conclusion
Inhalt: Introduction: The problem at hand Approaches to EU’s external identity making Mechanisms of external identity making Theoretical approaches to the EU’s external identity making The EU’s external identity promotion The ENP policy instruments Conclusions References
Connecting the new world
(2012)
This article explores the link between the profound technological transformations of the nineteenth century and the life and work of the Prussian scholar Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). It analyses how Humboldt sought to appropriate the revolutionary new communication and transportation technologies of the time in order to integrate the American continent into global networks of commercial, intellectual and material exchange. Recent scholarship on Humboldt’s expedition to the New World (1799-1804) has claimed that his descriptions of tropical landscapes opened up South America to a range of ‘transformative interventions’ (Pratt) by European capitalists and investors. These studies, however, have not analysed the motivations underlying Humboldt’s support for such intrusions into nature. Furthermore, they have not explored the role that such projects played in shaping Humboldt’s understanding of the forces behind the progress of societies. To comprehend Humboldt’s approval for human interventions in America’s natural world, this study first explores the role that eighteenth-century theories of progress and the notion of geographical determinism played in shaping his conception of civilisational development. It will look at concrete examples of transformative interventions in the American hemisphere that were actively proposed by Humboldt and intended to overcome natural obstacles to human interaction. These were the use of steamships, electric telegraphy, railroads and large-scale canals that together enabled global trade and communication to occur at an unprecedented pace. All these contemporary innovations will be linked to the four motifs of nets, mobility, progress and acceleration, which were driving forces behind the ‘transformation of the world’ that took place in the course of the nineteenth century.
Inhalt: Introduction Developments in creating corpora dlexDB, subtitles, and tabloid newspapers Rating corpus emotionality Current study Method Materials Corpora Results Type-token ratio Validity: Effects of task difficulty Emotionality of a corpus Validity: Effects of emotionality Discussion Outlook References
This paper explores questions surrounding corporeality and heavenly ascent, in texts ranging from 1 Enoch to the Hekhalot literature, including Philo’s works. It examines both descriptions of the heavenly realms and accounts of the ascent process. Despite his Platonic apophaticism, Philo superimposes cosmological and spiritual heavens, and draws upon the biblical imagery of dazzling glory. Although they do not express themselves in philosophical language, the heavenly ascent texts make it clear that human beings cannot ascend to heaven in their earthly bodies, and that God cannot be seen with terrestrial eyes. In terms of ideas they are not so far from the philosopher Philo as might at first appear.
This article examines Pierre Nora’s concept of memory using the examples of York and Winchester to demonstrate the individuality of local approaches to the memory of medieval Anglo-Jewries. Overall, this paper will highlight how memory can be rescued from a period of prolonged silence and reintegrated back into a wider historical narrative. Conversely it will also examine how in stark contrast to this new attitude of remembering the silence surrounding Jewish memory continues to exist elsewhere. Finally this paper will ask why this silence remains, and question whether Nora’s theory that memory is constantly evolving is applicable to the experiences of Jewish memory in York and Winchester.
This article considers one of the major weaknesses in the existing historiography of Irish Jewry, the failure to consider the true extent and impact of antisemitism on Ireland’s Jewish community. This is illustrated through a brief survey of one small area of the Irish-Jewish narrative, the Jewish relationship with Irish nationalist politics. Throughout, the focus remains on the need for a fresh approach to the sources and the issues at hand, in order to create a more holistic, objective and inclusive history of the Jewish experience in Ireland.
This study is based on an editorial report, which was presented at the 2009 working conference »Alexander von Humboldt and the Hemisphere« at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN). It demonstrates the textual genesis of Humboldt’s writings on Cuba through examples, which were obtained from a detailed text comparison of the three existing »original« versions of Humboldt’s Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba. The collation was part of a larger strategy to regain philological ground for the »Humboldt in English« (HiE) project. Since 2007 and funded with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the US-German research team behind HiE has been working on new and unabridged translations and critical editions of three of Humboldt’s most significant texts from his American oeuvre.1 The following observations will outline the most important results of this collation effort as a complementary contribution to the recent release of the HiE project’s first volume, The Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (Chicago University Press 2011), edited by Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette.
Inhalt: - Kurzzusammenfassung - I. Introduction - II. Current challenges to the United Nations Human Rights Programme - III. The Secretary General’s Reform report “In larger Freedom” and its impact for the human rights programme - IV. The High Commissioner’s Plan of Action of May 2005 - V. Negotiations on the establishment of the Human Rights Council and first Council activities - VI. Reform of the treaty body system and debates over the creation of a unified standing treaty body
The commuting island
(2011)
"Unavoidably side by side"
(2011)
The essay compares the dichotomous concepts of corporeality and spirituality in Judaism and Christianity. Through the ages, deviations from normative principles of beliefs could be discerned in both religions. These can be attributed either to the somewhat confrontational interaction between Jews and Christians in the Medieval urban environment or to the impact of Hellenic civilization on both monotheistic religions. Out of this dynamic impact emerged Christian art with a predilection to expressed corporeality, whereas Jewish religiosity found its artistic expression in a spiritual noniconographical mode. A genuine Jewish art and iconography could develop only after a certain degree of assimilation and secularization. Marc Chagall was the first protagonist of a mature expression of Jewish iconography.
Yoel Hoffmann is an Israeli writer born in 1937 in Brasov (Kronstadt), Romania. Brought up in a German-speaking family, already in his first book, Sefer Yosef (1989), he conveys the voice of German-speaking immigrants in Israel (the “Katschen” story, 1986) and that of the East European Jewish community in Berlin in the late 1930s, on the verge of the Second World War. His works are crammed with characters of Jews from Germany gripped by the memory of the language they abandoned following their emigration to Palestine in the 1930s. The classic one is the character of Bernhard, in the eponymous work. The current article focuses on the representation and elaboration of Hoffmann’s unique creation, in a language influenced by his deep identification with Zen Buddhism on the one hand, and his attraction to the modernist, Western style of stream of consciousness on the other. In central sections of his works, Hoffman presents his entire literary corpus as a type of explicit, allusive, or secret Holocaust literature, and invites his readers and his critics to decode the allusions and expose the secret in this theme, a surprising statement in relation to Hoffmann’s work and its analysis so far. Hoffmann represents the Holocaust as a collective Israeli trauma for which his literary fiction creates a special catalogue of representative characters. In the creation of a catalogue, and particularly one that simultaneously classifies and individualizes, Hoffmann’s project resembles the monumental 1920s cataloguing project by the celebrated German photographer August Sander (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts). Hoffmann included photographs from this project in his works, and even chose some of them for the covers of his books. The article examines the implicit relationships between these two creative artists as conferring a meaning so far not considered in the research of the Holocaust theme in Yoel Hoffmann’s writings.
Immobile Tremor
(2011)
The threshold between the XVth and the XVIth Century represents a historical period during which, both for Christians and for Jews, the geopolitical sceneries and the interior horizons radically change. The modified reality provokes new forms of expectation and the need of new historical interpretations. Ferrara, within this scenery, can be considered, as other Italian cases, as a paradigmatic example, a narrow space where phenomena of spiritual and cultural Jewish rebirth can take shape. The permeability between Christian artistic and cultural world and Jewish intellectual production determines a prosperous context, further strengthened by the introduction of Jewish typography and by a growing claim and restoration of social elective dignity among the Jews of the Este Duchy. After the transfer of the capital city from Ferrara to Modena, the indirect effects of this intellectual resurgence are deeply transformed on a social level, and allows us to catch the persistence of important forms of communication between Christians and Jews in everyday life. The introduction of the Inquisition provides us, through the production of the judicial archive, with the most important instrument to understand social dynamics, which allows us to comprehend a new potential interpretation key for the reality of the ghetto and the choice of its erection. The urban division is nothing else but a new attempt to separate the invisible spaces of the thought. The effective efficacy of the physical separation shows several weak points, which persist during the entire life of the ghetto, since 1638 until 1789.
What is visualization?
(2011)
Over the last 20 years, information visualization became a common tool in science and also a growing presence in the arts and culture at large. However, the use of visualization in cultural research is still in its infancy. Based on the work in the analysis of video games, cinema, TV, animation, Manga and other media carried out in Software Studies Initiative at University of California, San Diego over last two years, a number of visualization techniques and methods particularly useful for cultural and media research are presented.
This co-authored paper is based on research that originated in 2003 when our team started a series of extensive field studies into the character of gameplay experiences. Originally within the Children as the Actors of Game Cultures research project, our aim was to better understand why particularly young people enjoy playing games, while also asking their parents how they perceive gaming as playing partners or as close observers. Gradually our in-depth interviews started to reveal a complex picture of more general relevance, where personal experiences, social contexts and cultural practices all came together to frame gameplay within something we called game cultures. Culture was the keyword, since we were not interested in studying games and play experiences in isolation, but rather as part of the rich meaning- making practices of lived reality.
This paper addresses a theoretical reconfiguration of experience, a repositioning of the techno-social within the domains of mobility, games, and play, and embodiment. The ideas aim to counter the notion that our experience with videogames (and digital media more generally), is largely “virtual” and disembodied – or at most exclusively audiovisual. Notions of the virtual and disembodied support an often-tacit belief that technologically mediated experiences count for nothing if not perceived and valued as human. It is here where play in particular can be put to work, be made to highlight and clarify, for it is in play that we find this value of humanity most wholly embodied. Further, it is in considering the design of the metagame that questions regarding the play experience can be most powerfully engaged. While most of any given game’s metagame emerges from play communities and their larger social worlds (putting it out of reach of game design proper), mobile platforms have the potential to enable a stitching together of these experiences: experiences held across time, space, communities, and bodies. This coming together thus represents a convergence not only of media, participants, contexts, and technologies, but of human experience itself. This coming together is hardly neat, nor fully realized. It is, if nothing else, multifaceted and worthy of further study. It is a convergence in which the dynamics of screen play are reengaged.
Define real, Moron!
(2011)
Academic language should not be a ghetto dialect at odds with ordinary language, but rather an extension that is compatible with lay-language. To define ‘game’ with the unrealistic ambition of satisfying both lay-people and experts should not be a major concern for a game ontology, since the field it addresses is subject to cultural evolution and diachronic change. Instead of the impossible mission of turning the common word into an analytic concept, a useful task for an ontology of games is to model game differences, to show how the things we call games can be different from each other in a number of different ways.
Space is understood best through movement, and complex spaces require not only movement but navigation. The theorization of navigable space requires a conceptual representation of space which is adaptable to the great malleability of video game spaces, a malleability which allows for designs which combine spaces with differing dimensionality and even involve non-Euclidean configurations with contingent connectivity. This essay attempts to describe the structural elements of video game space and to define them in such a way so as to make them applicable to all video game spaces, including potential ones still undiscovered, and to provide analytical tools for their comparison and examination. Along with the consideration of space, there will be a brief discussion of navigational logic, which arises from detectable regularities in a spatial structure that allow players to understand and form expectations regarding a game’s spaces.
Die besondere Beziehung zwischen Humboldt und Darwin, zwei der bedeutendsten Persönlichkeiten in der Welt der Naturwissenschaften und der Biologie des 19. Jahrhunderts, wird detailliert auf den verschiedenen Ebenen ihres Kontaktes analysiert, sowohl was das real stattgefundene persönliche Treffen betrifft, als auch hinsichtlich ihrer Korrespondenz und der Koinzidenz von Ideen. Dieser wechselseitige Blick zeigt uns wie sich die beiden Gelehrten gegenseitig wahrnahmen, ob sie wirklich versuchten, mit dem Paradigma ihrer bedeutenden Vorgänger zu brechen, oder ob sie lediglich schrittweise das bereits erlangte Wissen erweiterten, bis es durch die Erstellung einer genialen Idee zu einem Bruch des bisherigen Wissens kommt. Bekannt ist die wiederholte Referenz von Darwin auf die Werke Humboldts, insbesondere auf die Tagebücher des deutschen Naturwissenschaftler und seine Art der Beschreibung der amerikanischen Natur in ihrer ganzen Reichhaltigkeit. Weniger bekannt hingegen sind andere Verweise in seiner Autobiografie, sowie die wissenschaftliche Verwendung des Humboldtschen Werkes oder die Zitate in seiner Korrespondenz, die in diesem Beitrag aufgezeigt werden. Darüber hinaus wird die Verwendung der frühen Schriften von Darwin durch Humboldt in einigen seiner Publikationen, vor allem im Kosmos, erwähnt.
This is the second part of the presentation of data elicited by means of QUIS within the project on information structure in Gur and Kwa languages. Whereas the first part (Anne Schwarz) introduces the project and the rationals behind the development of the focus translation task, this part provides some comparative remarks gained from the data presented in both parts.
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Selection of QUIS Data for Comparative Goals 2.1 Fairy Tale (Topic and Focus in Coherent Discourse) 2.2 Focus Translation Extract 3. On the Presentation and Comparison of the Data 4. Buli 4.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Buli 4.2 Focus Translation Extract in Buli 5. Kɔnni 5.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Kɔnni 5.2 Focus Translation Extract 6. Baatɔnum 6.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Baatɔnum 6.2 Focus Translation Extract in Baatɔnum
This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one.
Ngizim fieldnotes
(2011)
This chapter presents field notes of the West Chadic language Ngizim, spoken in North-East Nigeria. In Ngizim, subject focus is indicated by subject inversion, whereas the word order of sentences with focused non-subjects can remain unchanged. The goal of the field work was to find out more about focus marking in Ngizim.