TY - JOUR A1 - Bornheim, Tobias A1 - Grieger, Niklas A1 - Blaneck, Patrick Gustav A1 - Bialonski, Stephan T1 - Speaker Attribution in German Parliamentary Debates with QLoRA-adapted Large Language Models JF - Journal for language technology and computational linguistics : JLCL N2 - The growing body of political texts opens up new opportunities for rich insights into political dynamics and ideologies but also increases the workload for manual analysis. Automated speaker attribution, which detects who said what to whom in a speech event and is closely related to semantic role labeling, is an important processing step for computational text analysis. We study the potential of the large language model family Llama 2 to automate speaker attribution in German parliamentary debates from 2017-2021. We fine-tune Llama 2 with QLoRA, an efficient training strategy, and observe our approach to achieve competitive performance in the GermEval 2023 Shared Task On Speaker Attribution in German News Articles and Parliamentary Debates. Our results shed light on the capabilities of large language models in automating speaker attribution, revealing a promising avenue for computational analysis of political discourse and the development of semantic role labeling systems. KW - large language models KW - German KW - speaker attribution KW - semantic role labeling Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.21248/jlcl.37.2024.244 SN - 2190-6858 VL - 37 IS - 1 PB - Gesellschaft für Sprachtechnologie und Computerlinguistik CY - Regensburg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schoenrock, Britt A1 - Muckelt, Paul E. A1 - Hastermann, Maria A1 - Albracht, Kirsten A1 - MacGregor, Robert A1 - Martin, David A1 - Gunga, Hans-Christian A1 - Salanova, Michele A1 - Stokes, Maria J. A1 - Warner, Martin B. A1 - Blottner, Dieter T1 - Muscle stiffness indicating mission crew health in space JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Muscle function is compromised by gravitational unloading in space affecting overall musculoskeletal health. Astronauts perform daily exercise programmes to mitigate these effects but knowing which muscles to target would optimise effectiveness. Accurate inflight assessment to inform exercise programmes is critical due to lack of technologies suitable for spaceflight. Changes in mechanical properties indicate muscle health status and can be measured rapidly and non-invasively using novel technology. A hand-held MyotonPRO device enabled monitoring of muscle health for the first time in spaceflight (> 180 days). Greater/maintained stiffness indicated countermeasures were effective. Tissue stiffness was preserved in the majority of muscles (neck, shoulder, back, thigh) but Tibialis Anterior (foot lever muscle) stiffness decreased inflight vs. preflight (p < 0.0001; mean difference 149 N/m) in all 12 crewmembers. The calf muscles showed opposing effects, Gastrocnemius increasing in stiffness Soleus decreasing. Selective stiffness decrements indicate lack of preservation despite daily inflight countermeasures. This calls for more targeted exercises for lower leg muscles with vital roles as ankle joint stabilizers and in gait. Muscle stiffness is a digital biomarker for risk monitoring during future planetary explorations (Moon, Mars), for healthcare management in challenging environments or clinical disorders in people on Earth, to enable effective tailored exercise programmes. KW - Ageing KW - Anatomy KW - Muscle KW - Musculoskeletal system KW - Physiology Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-54759-6 SN - 2045-2322 N1 - Corresponding author: Dieter Blottner VL - 14 IS - Article number: 4196 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffstadt, Kevin A1 - Nikolausz, Marcell A1 - Krafft, Simone A1 - Bonatelli, Maria A1 - Kumar, Vivekanantha A1 - Harms, Hauke A1 - Kuperjans, Isabel T1 - Optimization of the ex situ biomethanation of hydrogen and carbon dioxide in a novel meandering plug flow reactor: start-up phase and flexible operation JF - Bioengineering KW - methanation KW - plug flow reactor KW - bubble column KW - biomethane KW - P2G Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering11020165 SN - 2306-5354 VL - 11 IS - 2 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koch, Christopher A1 - Böhnisch, Nils A1 - Verdonck, Hendrik A1 - Hach, Oliver A1 - Braun, Carsten T1 - Comparison of unsteady low- and mid-fidelity propeller aerodynamic methods for whirl flutter applications JF - Applied Sciences N2 - Aircraft configurations with propellers have been drawing more attention in recent times, partly due to new propulsion concepts based on hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors. These configurations are prone to whirl flutter, which is an aeroelastic instability affecting airframes with elastically supported propellers. It commonly needs to be mitigated already during the design phase of such configurations, requiring, among other things, unsteady aerodynamic transfer functions for the propeller. However, no comprehensive assessment of unsteady propeller aerodynamics for aeroelastic analysis is available in the literature. This paper provides a detailed comparison of nine different low- to mid-fidelity aerodynamic methods, demonstrating their impact on linear, unsteady aerodynamics, as well as whirl flutter stability prediction. Quasi-steady and unsteady methods for blade lift with or without coupling to blade element momentum theory are evaluated and compared to mid-fidelity potential flow solvers (UPM and DUST) and classical, derivative-based methods. Time-domain identification of frequency-domain transfer functions for the unsteady propeller hub loads is used to compare the different methods. Predictions of the minimum required pylon stiffness for stability show good agreement among the mid-fidelity methods. The differences in the stability predictions for the low-fidelity methods are higher. Most methods studied yield a more unstable system than classical, derivative-based whirl flutter analysis, indicating that the use of more sophisticated aerodynamic modeling techniques might be required for accurate whirl flutter prediction. KW - Aeroelasticity KW - Flutter KW - Propeller whirl flutter KW - Unsteady aerodynamics KW - 1P hub loads Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/app14020850 SN - 2076-3417 VL - 14 IS - 2 SP - 1 EP - 28 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haeger, Gerrit A1 - Jolmes, Tristan A1 - Oyen, Sven A1 - Jaeger, Karl-Erich A1 - Bongaerts, Johannes A1 - Schörken, Ulrich A1 - Siegert, Petra T1 - Novel recombinant aminoacylase from Paraburkholderia monticola capable of N-acyl-amino acid synthesis JF - Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology N2 - N-Acyl-amino acids can act as mild biobased surfactants, which are used, e.g., in baby shampoos. However, their chemical synthesis needs acyl chlorides and does not meet sustainability criteria. Thus, the identification of biocatalysts to develop greener synthesis routes is desirable. We describe a novel aminoacylase from Paraburkholderia monticola DSM 100849 (PmAcy) which was identified, cloned, and evaluated for its N-acyl-amino acid synthesis potential. Soluble protein was obtained by expression in lactose autoinduction medium and co-expression of molecular chaperones GroEL/S. Strep-tag affinity purification enriched the enzyme 16-fold and yielded 15 mg pure enzyme from 100 mL of culture. Biochemical characterization revealed that PmAcy possesses beneficial traits for industrial application like high temperature and pH-stability. A heat activation of PmAcy was observed upon incubation at temperatures up to 80 °C. Hydrolytic activity of PmAcy was detected with several N-acyl-amino acids as substrates and exhibited the highest conversion rate of 773 U/mg with N-lauroyl-L-alanine at 75 °C. The enzyme preferred long-chain acyl-amino-acids and displayed hardly any activity with acetyl-amino acids. PmAcy was also capable of N-acyl-amino acid synthesis with good conversion rates. The best synthesis results were obtained with the cationic L-amino acids L-arginine and L-lysine as well as with L-leucine and L-phenylalanine. Exemplarily, L-phenylalanine was acylated with fatty acids of chain lengths from C8 to C18 with conversion rates of up to 75%. N-lauroyl-L-phenylalanine was purified by precipitation, and the structure of the reaction product was verified by LC–MS and NMR. KW - Chaperone KW - Biocatalysis KW - Aminoacylase KW - Acylation KW - Acyl-amino acids KW - Biosurfactants Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-023-12868-8 SN - 1432-0614 N1 - Corresponding author: Petra Siegert IS - 108 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER -