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The demand for reliable statistics has been growing over the past decades, because more and more political and economic decisions are based on statistics, e.g. regional planning, allocation of funds or business decisions. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to develop and to obtain precise regional indicators as well as disaggregated values in order to compare regions or specific groups. In general, surveys provide the information for these indicators only for larger areas like countries or administrative divisions. However, in practice, it is more interesting to obtain indicators for specific subdivisions like on NUTS 2 or NUTS 3 levels. The Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) is a hierarchical system of the European Union used in statistics to refer to subdivisions of countries. In many cases, the sample information on such detailed levels is not available. Thus, there are projects such as the European Census, which have the goal to provide precise numbers on NUTS 3 or even community level. The European Census is conducted amongst others in Germany and Switzerland in 2011. Most of the participating countries use sample and register information in a combined form for the estimation process. The classical estimation methods of small areas or subgroups, such as the Horvitz-Thompson (HT) estimator or the generalized regression (GREG) estimator, suffer from small area-specific sample sizes which cause high variances of the estimates. The application of small area methods, for instance the empirical best linear unbiased predictor (EBLUP), reduces the variance of the estimates by including auxiliary information to increase the effective sample size. These estimation methods lead to higher accuracy of the variables of interest. Small area estimation is also used in the context of business data. For example during the estimation of the revenues of specific subgroups like on NACE 3 or NACE 4 levels, small sample sizes can occur. The Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne (NACE) is a system of the European Union which defines an industry standard classification. Besides small sample sizes, business data have further special characteristics. The main challenge is that business data have skewed distributions with a few large companies and many small businesses. For instance, in the automotive industry in Germany, there are many small suppliers but only few large original equipment manufacturers (OEM). Altogether, highly influential units and outliers can be observed in business statistics. These extreme values in connection with small sample sizes cause severe problems when standard small area models are applied. These models are generally based on the normality assumption, which does not hold in the case of outliers. One way to solve these peculiarities is to apply outlier robust small area methods. The availability of adequate covariates is important for the accuracy of the above described small area methods. However, in business data, the auxiliary variables are hardly available on population level. One of several reasons for that is the fact that in Germany a lot of enterprises are not reflected in business registers due to truncation limits. Furthermore, only listed enterprises or companies which trespass specific thresholds are obligated to publish their results. This limits the number of potential auxiliary variables for the estimation. Even though there are issues with available covariates, business data often include spatial dependencies which can be used to enhance small area methods. Next to spatial information based on geographic characteristics, group-specific similarities like related industries based on NACE codes can be used. For instance, enterprises from the same NACE 2 level, e.g. sector 47 retail trade, behave more similar than two companies from different NACE 2 levels, e.g. sector 05 mining of coal and sector 64 financial services. This spatial correlation can be incorporated by extending the general linear mixed model trough the integration of spatially correlated random effects. In business data, outliers as well as geographic or content-wise spatial dependencies between areas or domains are closely linked. The coincidence of these two factors and the resulting consequences have not been fully covered in the relevant literature. The only approach that combines robust small area methods with spatial dependencies is the M-quantile geographically weighted regression model. In the context of EBLUP-based small area models, the combination of robust and spatial methods has not been considered yet. Therefore, this thesis provides a theoretical approach to this scientific and practical problem and shows its relevance in an empirical study.
Virtuelle Umgebungen erfreuen sich in den letzten Jahren einer großen Beliebtheit und können kontinuierlich wachsende Nutzerzahlen vorweisen. Deshalb wird erwartet, dass die ohnehin große Nutzergemeinde weiterhin wächst. Dieses Wachstum stellt jedoch die Entwickler und die Betreiber von virtuellen Umgebungen vor eine Herausforderung. Die meisten heutzutage erfolgreichen virtuellen Umgebungen basieren auf einer Client-Server-Infrastruktur, in der der Server für die Verwaltung der gesamten Umgebung zuständig ist. Bei einer gleichzeitigen Inanspruchnahme durch viele Nutzer werden die serverbasierten Umgebungen jedoch massiven Skalierbarkeits- und Lastverteilungsproblemen ausgesetzt. Diese Probleme führen beispielsweise dazu, dass Nutzer Wartezeiten beim Einloggen in Kauf nehmen müssen bzw. selbst im Falle eines erfolgreichen Logins die "überfüllten" virtuellen Regionen nicht betreten dürfen. Deshalb wird in dieser Arbeit untersucht, ob eine Verbesserung der Skalierbarkeit und der Lastverteilung in virtuellen Umgebungen durch die Verwendung alternativer Infrastrukturansätze erreicht werden kann. Außerdem werden Maßnahmen zur weiteren Entlastung der Basis-Infrastruktur entwickelt. Diese Verbesserung soll zum einen dadurch erzielt werden, dass anstelle eines Servers ein Server-Verbund (Peer-to-Peer-System) als eine Art Management-Schicht agieren soll, in der jeder Knoten nur einen bestimmten Teil der virtuellen Umgebung verwaltet. Dabei wird die gewünschte Lastverteilung durch die Aufteilung der Verantwortungsbereiche auf die Knoten der Management-Schicht erreicht. Gleichzeitig entsteht aber ein Mehraufwand für die Konstruktion bzw. Erhaltung einer solchen Management-Schicht. Deshalb werden in dieser Arbeit die Vor- und Nachteile eines Infrastrukturwechsels hin zu dezentralisierten Infrastruktur-Ansätzen untersucht. Zum anderen wird eine spürbare Entlastung der Management-Schicht und somit eine Verbesserung der Skalierbarkeit und der Lastverteilung durch die Übertragung einiger Verwaltungsaufgaben an die Clients angestrebt. Zu diesen Verwaltungsaufgaben zählen die Gruppenkommunikation und das Konsistenz-Handling. Dazu wird in dieser Arbeit erforscht, inwiefern die Clients, die sich innerhalb derselben virtuellen Region befinden, selbst die Gruppenkommunikation über eine Multicast-Infrastruktur regeln können bzw. in die Wahrung der Konsistenz eines gemeinsamen Zustandes und der gemeinsam genutzten Objekte involviert werden können. Bei dem clientbasierten Konsistenz-Handling sollte vor allem auf die besonderen Interaktivitäts- und Konsistenzanforderungen, die Nutzer an die virtuellen Umgebungen stellen, geachtet werden. Dazu wird ein neues Konsistenzmodell definiert, welches die Einhaltung der strengen Interaktivitätsanforderungen erzwingt und die Konsistenz mit einer bestimmten Wahrscheinlichkeit garantieren kann.
Recent non-comparative studies diverge in their assessments of the extent to which German and Japanese post-Cold War foreign policies are characterized by continuity or change. While the majority of analyses on Germany find overall continuity in policies and guiding principles, prominent works on Japan see the country undergoing drastic and fundamental change. Using an explicitly comparative framework for analysis based on a role theoretical approach, this study reevaluates the question of change and continuity in the two countries" regional foreign policies, focusing on the time period from 1990 to 2010. Through a qualitative content analysis of key foreign policy speeches, this dissertation traces and compares German and Japanese national role conceptions (NRCs) by identifying policymakers" perceived duties and responsibilities of their country in international politics. Furthermore, it investigates actual foreign policy behavior in two case studies about German and Japanese policies on missile defense and on textbook disputes. The dissertation examines whether the NRCs identified in the content analysis are useful to understand and explain each country- particular conduct. Both qualitative content analysis and case studies demonstrate the influence of normative and ideational variables in foreign policymaking. Incremental adaptations in foreign policy preferences can be found in Germany as well as Japan, but they are anchored in established normative guidelines and represent attempts to harmonize existing preferences with the conditions of the post-Cold War era. The dissertation argues that scholars have overstated and misconstrued the changes underway by asserting that Japan is undergoing a sweeping transformation in its foreign policy.
There is a lot of evidence for the impact of acute glucocorticoid treatment on hippocampus-dependent explicit learning and memory (memory for facts and events). But there have been few studies, investigating the effect of glucocorticoids on implicit learning and memory. We conducted three studies with different methodology to investigate the effect of glucocorticoids on different forms of implicit learning. In Study 1, we investigated the effect of cortisol depletion on short-term habituation in 49 healthy subjects. 25 participants received oral metyrapone (1500 mg) to suppress endogenous cortisol production, while 24 controls received oral placebo. Eye blink electromyogram (EMG) responses to 105 dB acoustic startle stimuli were assessed. Effective endogenous cortisol suppression had no effect on short-term habituation of the startle reflex, but startle eye blink responses were significantly increased in the metyrapone group. The latter findings are in line with previous human studies, which have shown that excess cortisol, sufficient to fully occupy central nervous system (CNS) corticosteroid receptors, may reduce startle eye blink. This effect may be mediated by CNS mechanisms controlling cortisol feedback. In Study 2, we investigated delay or trace eyeblink conditioning in a patient group with a relative hypocortisolism (30 patients with fibromyaligia syndrome/FMS) compared to 20 healthy control subjects. Conditioned eyeblink response probability was assessed by EMG. Morning cortisol levels, ratings of depression, anxiety and psychosomatic complaints as well as general symptomatology and psychological distress were assessed. As compared to healthy controls FMS patients showed lower morning cortisol levels, and trace eyeblink conditioning was facilitated whereas delay eyeblink conditioning was reduced. Cortisol measures correlate significantly only with trace eyeblink conditioning. Our results are in line with studies of pharmacologically induced hyper- and hypocortisolism, which affected trace eyeblink conditioning. We suggest that endocrine mechanisms affecting hippocampus-mediated forms of associative learning may play a role in the generation of symptoms in these patients.rnIn Study 3, we investigated the effect of excess cortisol on implicit sequence learning in healthy subjects. Oral cortisol (30 mg) was given to 29 participants, whereas 31 control subjects received placebo. All volunteers performed a 5-choice serial reaction time task (SRTT). The reaction speed of every button-press was determined and difference-scores were calculated as a proof of learning. Compared to the control group, we found a delayed learning in the cortisol group at the very beginning of the task. This study is the first human investigation, indicating impaired implicit memory function after exogenous administration of the stress hormone cortisol. Our findings support a previous neuroimaging study, which suggested that the medial temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) is also active in implicit sequence learning, but our results may also depend on the engagement of other brain structures.
The role of cortisol and cortisol dynamics in patients after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage
(2011)
Spontaneous aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a form of stroke which constitutes a severe trauma to the brain and often leads to serious long-term medical and psychosocial sequels which persist for years after the acute event. Recently, adrenocorticotrophic hormone deficiency has been identified as one possible consequence of the bleeding and is assumed to occur in around 20% of all survivors. Additionally, a number of studies report a high prevalence of post-SAH symptoms such as lack of initiative, fatigue, loss of concentration, impaired quality of life and psychiatric symptoms such as depression. The overlap of these symptoms and those of patients with untreated partial or complete hypopituitarism lead to the suggestion that neuroendocrine dysregulations may contribute to the psychosocial sequels of SAH. Therefore, one of the aims of this work is to gain insights into the role of neuroendocrine dysfunction on quality of life and the prevalence of psychiatric sequels in SAH-patients. Additionally, as data on cortisol dynamics after SAH are scarce, diurnal cortisol profiles are investigated in patients in the acute and chronic phase, as well as the cortisol awakening response and feedback sensitivity in the chronic phase after SAH. As a result, it can be shown that some SAH patients exhibit lower serum cortisol levels but at the same time a higher cortisol awakening response in saliva than healthy controls. Also, patients in the chronic phase after SAH do have a stable diurnal cortisol rhythm while there are disturbances in around 50% of all patients in the acute phase, leading to the conclusion that a single baseline measurement of cortisol is of no substantial use for diagnosing cortisol dysregulations in the acute phase after SAH. It is assumed that in SAH patients endocrine changes occur over time and that a combination of adrenal exhaustion and a subsequent downregulation of corticosteroid binding globulin may be the most probable causes for the dissociation of serum cortisol concentrations and salivary cortisol profiles in the investigated SAH patients. These changes may be an emergency response after SAH and, as elevated free cortisol levels are connected to a better psychosocial outcome in patients in the chronic phase after SAH, this reaction may even be adaptive.
Die Vertrauens-Trias erlaubt salutogentische Aussagen über personale Ressourcen. Die kulturvergleichende Anwendung der Vertrauens-Trias wurde bei Jugendlichen in drei Ländern (Deutschland, Luxemburg, Spanien) überprüft. Dabei wurde die Konstruktvalidität der Vertrauens-Trias als auch Zusammenhänge zu symptomatischen Belastungen insgesamt bestätigt. Vergleiche zwischen den Kulturen zeigen keine Unterschiede zwischen deutschen und luxemburgischen Schülern, jedoch zwischen deutschen und spanischen Schülern.
Die Ménage-Polynome (engl.: ménage hit polynomials) ergeben sich in natürlicher Weise aus den in der Kombinatorik auftretenden Ménage-Zahlen. Eine Verbindung zu einer gewissen Klasse hypergeometrischer Polynome führt auf die Untersuchung spezieller Folgen von Polynomen vom Typ 3-F-1. Unter Verwendung einer Modifikation der komplexen Laplace-Methode zur gleichmäßigen asymptotischen Auswertung von Parameterintegralen sowie einiger Hilfsmittel aus der Potentialtheorie der komplexen Ebene werden starke und schwache Asymptotiken für die in Rede stehenden Polynomfolgen hergeleitet.
Der Titel der Dissertation enthält bereits die inhaltlichen Vorgaben, die zu Grund gelegt werden. Wie nämlich gelingt es Eckhart insbesondere in seinen deutschen Predigten, den Erfahrungsbereich Gott zu verbalisieren? Bei der Untersuchung der Frage, wie Gott - dem eine eigene, den Menschen nur bedingt erfahrbare Wirklichkeit zugrunde liegt - wie er also zur Sprache gebracht werden kann, ist es erforderlich, sich über die Wirklichkeit und ihre Beziehungen zu Gott und den Menschen klar zu werden. Mir geht es darum, die Problematik des Verhältnisses von Mensch und Gott in Beziehung zum Glaubensleben in einer tiefen geistig-geistlichen Durchdringung transparent zu machen. Konkreter: Bei der Textuntersuchung geht es um die Interpretation sprachlicher Äußerungen im Hinblick auf die darin zur Sprache gebrachte Erfahrung der Wirklichkeit Gottes. Bereits in dieser groben Skizzierung wird deutlich, dass sich die Untersuchung nicht alleine auf eine wissenschaftliche Disziplin beschränkt, sondern in ihrem interdisziplinären Charakter Fragen der Germanistik, der Philosophie und Theologie gleichermaßen berührt. Die Aufgabenstellung der Dissertation an sich und der Versuch, sich Meister Eckhart und seiner Gedankenwelt in seinen deutschen Predigten zu nähern, implizierte bereits die dann zugrunde gelegte methodische Vorgehensweise. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stand zwangsläufig Eckharts deutsches Predigtkorpus. Als textliche Grundlage habe ich mich für die Largier-Ausgabe entschieden, weil sie m. E. die am besten handhabbare Ausgabe war. Wichtig war für mich, Eckhart so oft als möglich selbst zu Wort kommen zu lassen. Das bedeutete eine dezidiert intensive Auseinandersetzung mit seinen Predigten einerseits und andererseits einer kritischen Würdigung der Sekundärliteratur. Den Gedankengang dieser weiter zu verfolgen und neue Deutungsebenen zu erschließen, gehörten ebenso zum methodischen Procedere. Zuerst war aber das geistig-geistliche Umfeld ME-´s in den Blick zu nehmen. Grundsätzlich ist zum Gesamtverständnis seines Werkes wichtig, ihn als Dominikaner zu begreifen. Zum Selbstverständnis dieses Bettelordens gehört seine intellektuelle Ausrichtung, die für Eckharts Erkenntnislehre fundamental ist: Demnach ist das Erkennen die Grundlage von Gottes Sein und steht sogar höher als das Sein. Wort und Intellekt haben Vorrang vor dem Sein. Gott ist das Sein dadurch, weil er denkt. Alles Sein ist abgeleitet vom Intellekt. Die Auseinandersetzung mit den theologisch-philosophischen Strömungen seiner Zeit war maßgebend für das weitere Verständnis von Eckharts Gedankenwelt. So wurden zunächst Fragen geklärt, wie Eckhart in seiner Zeit, nämlich der Schwelle zum 14. Jahrhundert, zu verorten ist. Ebenso wurden die Denker in ihrer Beziehung und Rezeption Eckharts vorgestellt: Plotin, Dionysius Areopagita, auf theologischer Seite insbesondere Augustinus und Albertus Magnus. Gleiches gilt für die weiblichen Vordenkerinnen Margarete Porete, Mechthild von Magdeburg und Schwester Hadewijch von Antwerpen. Wie sich Eckharts Christologie und theologische Anthropologie in seinen Predigten niederschlägt, welche Bedeutung er des Menschen Durchbruch und Sprung in Gottes Sphäre zubilligt, wie sich Gottesgeburt im Menschen ereignet und damit neue Wirklichkeiten konstituiert, wurden weiterhin dargelegt. ME ist nicht leicht zu fassen und festzulegen. Er, der selbst kein eigenes Lehrsystem und keine Dogmen entwickelt hat, lässt sich in keine Schablone pressen. Am ehesten greifbar ist Eckhart, wenn man erkennt, dass für ihn Sprache mehr ist als ein Vehikel, um göttliche Botschaften in Alltägliche zu transformieren. Bei Eckhart transzendiert Sprache selbst: Sprache beschreibt eine Wirklichkeit, die selbst wiederum Teil der Wirklichkeit ist. Gott kommuniziert nicht nur informierend, sondern sich selbst, Kommunikation ist Beziehungstheologie im trinitarischen Sinne, die gleichzeitig neue Wirklichkeiten schafft.
On the Influence of Ignored Stimuli: Generalization and Application of Distractor-Response Binding.
(2011)
In selection tasks where target stimuli are accompanied by distractors, responses to target stimuli, target stimuli and the distractor stimuli can be encoded together as one episode in memory. Subsequent repetition of any aspect of such an episode can lead to the retrieval of the whole episode including the response. Thus, repeating a distractor can retrieve responses given to previous targets; this mechanism was labeled distractor-response binding and has been evidenced in several visual setups. Three experiments of the present thesis implemented a priming paradigm with an identification task to generalize this mechanism to auditory and tactile stimuli as well as to stimulus concepts. In four more experiments the possible effect of distractor-response binding on drivers' reactions was investigated. The same paradigm was implemented using more complex stimuli, foot responses, go/no-go responses, and a dual task setup with head-up and head-down displays. The results indicate that distractor-response binding effects occur with auditory and tactile stimuli and that the process is mediated by a conceptual representation of the distractor stimuli. Distractor-response binding effects also revealed for stimuli, responses, and framework conditions likely to occur in a driving situation. It can be concluded that the effect of distractor-response binding needs to be taken into account for the design of local danger warnings in driver assistance systems.
By rodent studies it has been shown that the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is a candidate gene for the investigation of cognitive functions comparable to human executive function. The present work addresses the question if polymorphisms in the MR gene can act as a "probe" to explain a part of the interindividual variance of human executive functions. For this purpose, 72 healthy young participants were assigned to four equally sized groups, concerning their particular MR genotype for two common MR polymorphisms. They were investigated in an electroencephalogram (EEG) test session, accomplishing two cognitive tests while delivering saliva samples for subsequent cortisol measures. The two tests chosen for the assessment of executive functions were the Attention Network Task (ANT) and a modified version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST).Chapter 1 of the present work reports of the rational bases for the empirical approach, which were built up on a broad theoretical background presented in Chapter 2. In the third chapter, the investigation and results of the statistical analysis for behavioral data (i.e. reaction times, accuracy/error rates) are presented. No association with MR polymorphisms was found for the reaction times of both tests. For the accuracy rate, differences between genotype groups were found for ANT and WCST, indicating an association of MR polymorphisms and accuracy in the Alertness and Executive Control network of the ANT and during the detection of an intradimensional shift in the WCST. Data acquisition and the results for EEG data analyses are presented in Chapter 4. The results show that groups differing for MR genotype show different activity over prefrontal motor areas during the process of answering to the ANT. Those group differences again were prominent for the Alertness and Executive Control network. A tendency for further significant group differences was found for activity on frontopolar positions in extradimensional rule switching. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings for the analysis of salivary free cortisol, showing a tendency for an association between MR polymorphisms and a mildly stimulated Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during the test situation. The results of the different measures are integrated and discussed in Chapter 6 within the scope of novel findings in investigating the functionality of the chosen MR polymorphisms. Finally, Chapter 7 gives an outlook on the methodology and constraints of future research strategies to further describe the role of the MR in human cognitive function.