This work is a revised edition of the former article “Die Kalkulation irreparabler Mutationen” by the same author. New calculations have been included, and some unclear formulations have been eliminated. New is in the present edition above all the calculation of the very certain temperature - alterations which are necessary for the lengthening of monotonous sequence for one position, provided that these are responsible for a constant viscosity - change of the DNA surroundings (section 6, equations 94 and 95).

These are the proceedings of the 5th International Probabilistic Workshop. Even though the 5th anniversary of a conference might not be of such importance, it is quite interesting to note the development of this probabilistic conference. Originally, the series started as the 1st and 2nd Dresdner Probabilistic Symposium, which were launched to present research and applications mainly dealt with at Dresden University of Technology. Since then, the conference has grown to an internationally recognised conference dealing with research on and applications of probabilistic techniques, mainly in the field of structural engineering. Other topics have also been dealt with such as ship safety and natural hazards. Whereas the first conferences in Dresden included about 12 presentations each, the conference in Ghent has attracted nearly 30 presentations. Moving from Dresden to Vienna (University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences) to Berlin (Federal Institute for Material Research and Testing) and then finally to Ghent, the conference has constantly evolved towards a truly international level. This can be seen by the language used. The first two conferences were entirely in the German language. During the conference in Berlin however, the change from the German to English language was especially apparent as some presentations were conducted in German and others in English. Now in Ghent all papers will be presented in English. Participants now, not only come from Europe, but also from other continents. Although the conference will move back to Germany again next year (2008) in Darmstadt, the international concept will remain, since so much work in the field of probabilistic safety evaluations is carried out internationally. In two years (2009) the conference will move to Delft, The Netherlands and probably in 2010 the conference will be held in Szczecin, Poland. Coming back to the present: the editors wish all participants a successful conference in Ghent.

These are the proceedings of the 6th International Probabilistic Workshop, formerly known as Dresden Probabilistic Symposium or International Probabilistic Symposium. The workshop was held twice in Dresden, then it moved to Vienna, Berlin, Ghent and finally to Darmstadt in 2008. All of the conference cities feature some specialities. However, Darmstadt features a very special property: The element number 110 was named Darmstadtium after Darmstadt: There are only very few cities worldwide after which a chemical element is named. The high element number 110 of Darmstadtium indicates, that much research is still required and carried out. This is also true for the issue of probabilistic safety concepts in engineering. Although the history of probabilistic safety concepts can be traced back nearly 90 years, for the practical applications a long way to go still remains. This is not a disadvantage. Just as research chemists strive to discover new element properties, with the application of new probabilistic techniques we may advance the properties of structures substantially. (Auszug aus Vorwort)

Die heutige Welt der Menschen wird durch große Dynamik geprägt. Eine Vielzahl verschiedener Prozesse entfaltet sich parallel und teilweise auf unsichtbare Weise miteinander verbunden. Nimmt man z.B. den Prozess der Globalisierung: Hier erleben wir ein exponentielles Wachstum der internationalen Verknüpfungen von der Ebene einzelner Menschen und bis zur Ebene der Kulturen. Solche Verknüpfungen führen uns zum Begriff der Komplexität. Diese wird oft als Produkt der Anzahl der Elemente eines Systems mal Umfang der Verknüpfungen im System verstanden. In anderen Worten, die Welt wird zunehmend komplexer, denn die Verknüpfungen nehmen zu. Komplexität wiederum ist ein Begriff für etwas unverstandenes, unkontrollierbares, etwas unbestimmtes. Genau wie bei einem Menschen: Aus einer Zelle wächst ein Mensch, dessen Verhalten wir im Detail nur schwer vorhersagen können. Immerhin besitzt sein Gehirn 1011 Elemente (Zellen). Wenn also diese dynamischen sozialen Prozesse zu höherer Komplexität führen, müssen wir auch mehr Unbestimmtheit erwarten. Es bleibt zu Hoffen, dass die Unbestimmtheit nicht existenzielle Grundlagen betrifft. Was die Komplexität der Technik angeht, so versucht man hier im Gegensatz zu den gesellschaftlichen Unsicherheiten die Unsicherheiten zu erfassen und gezielt mit ihnen umzugehen. Das gilt für alle Bereiche, ob nun Naturgefahrenmanagement, beim Bau und Betrieb von Kernkraftwerken, im Bauwesen oder in der Schifffahrt. Und so verschieden diese Fachgebiete auch scheinen mögen, die an diesem Symposium teilnehmen: Sie haben erkannt, das verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit Technik einer Berücksichtigung der Unbestimmtheit bedarf. Soweit sind wir in gesellschaftlichen Prozessen noch nicht. Wünschenswert wäre, dass in einigen Jahren nicht nur Bauingenieure, Maschinenbauer, Mathematiker oder Schiffsbauer an einem solchen Probabilistik- Symposium teilnehmen, sondern auch Soziologen, Politiker oder Manager... (aus dem Vorwort) --- HINWEIS: Das Volltextdokument besteht aus einzelnen Beiträgen mit separater Seitenzählung. / PREFACE: The world today is shaped by high dynamics. Multitude of processes evolves parallel and partly connected invisible. For example, the globalisation is such a process. Here one can observe the exponential growing of connections form the level of single humans to the level of cultures. Such connections guide as to the term complexity. Complexity is often understood as product of the number of elements and the amount of connections in the system. In other words, the world is going more complex, if the connections increase. Complexity itself is a term for a system, which is not fully understood, which is partly uncontrollable and indeterminated: exactly as humans. Growing from a single cell, the humans will show latter a behaviour, which we can not predict in detail. After all, the human brain consists of 1011 elements (cells). If the social dynamical processes yield to more complexity, we have to accept more indetermination. Well, one has to hope, that such an indetermination does not affect the basic of human existence. If we look at the field of technology, we can detect, that here indetermination or uncertainty is often be dealt with explicitly. This is valid for natural risk management, for nuclear engineering, civil engineering or for the design of ships. And so different the fields are which contribute to this symposium for all is valid: People working in this field have realised, that a responsible usage of technology requires consideration of indetermination and uncertainty. This level is not yet reached in the social sciences. It is the wish of the organisers of this symposium, that not only civil engineers, mechanical engineers, mathematicians, ship builders take part in this symposium, but also sociologists, managers and even politicians. Therefore there is still a great opportunity to grow for this symposium. Indetermination does not have to be negative: it can also be seen as chance.

No description available.

Fat-tailed distributions, characterized by the relation P(x) ∝ x^{−α−1}, are an emergent statistical signature of many complex systems, and in particular of social activities. These fat-tailed distributions are the outcome of dynamical processes that, contrary to the shape of the distributions, is in most cases are unknown. Knowledge of these processes’ properties sheds light on how the events in these fat tails, i.e. extreme events, appear and if it is possible to anticipate them. In this Thesis, we study how to model the dynamics that lead to fat-tailed distributions and the possibility of an accurate prediction in this context. To approach these problems, we focus on the study of attention to items (such as videos, forum posts or papers) in the Internet, since human interactions through the online media leave digital traces that can be analysed quantitatively. We collected four sets of time series of online activity that show fat tails and we characterize them. Of the many features that items in the datasets have, we need to know which ones are the most relevant to describe the dynamics, in order to include them in a model; we select the features that show high predictability, i.e. the capacity of realizing an accurate prediction based on that information. To quantify predictability we propose to measure the quality of the optimal forecasting method for extreme events, and we construct this measure. Applying these methods to data, we find that more extreme events (i.e. higher value of activity) are systematically more predictable, indicating that the possibility of discriminate successful items is enhanced. The simplest model that describes the dynamics of activity is to relate linearly the increment of activity with the last value of activity recorded. This starting point is known as proportional effect, a celebrated and widely used class of growth models in complex systems, which leads to a distribution of activity that is fat-tailed. On the one hand, we show that this process can be described and generalized in the framework of Stochastic Differential Equations (SDE) with Normal noise; moreover, we formalize the methods to estimate the parameters of such SDE. On the other hand, we show that the fluctuations of activity resulting from these models are not compatible with the data. We propose a model with proportional effect and Lévy-distributed noise, that proves to be superior describing the fluctuations around the average of the data and predicting the possibility of an item to become an extreme event. However, it is possible to model the dynamics using more than just the last value of activity; we generalize the growth models used previously, and perform an analysis that indicates that the most relevant variable for a model is the last increment in activity. We propose a new model using only this variable and the fat-tailed noise, and we find that, in our data, this model is superior to the previous models, including the one we proposed. These results indicate that, even if present, the relevance of proportional effect as a generative mechanism for fat-tailed distributions is greatly reduced, since the dynamical equations of our models contain this feature in the noise. The implications of this new interpretation of growth models to the quantification of predictability are discussed along with applications to other complex systems.

No description available.

<p>Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka hur värdegrundsbegreppen mångfald och tolerans implementerats i SO-ämnenas läroböcker. Uppsatsens didaktiska strävan är att skapa gott innehåll i undervisningen att motverka främlingsfientlighet och rasism.</p><p>De metoder som använts för att uppnå syftet och den didaktiska strävan är dels en kvantitativ mätning av värdegrundsbegreppens frekventa förekomst samt karaktäristiska framställning i Natur & Kulturs läromedel</p><p>Undersökningen av läroböckerna har visat att de normativa och värderande formuleringarna fått stå tillbaka till förmån för en deskriptiv framställning av skolans värdegrund samt att värdegrundsbegreppen har marginell omfattning i förhållande till läroböckernas totala text. Undersökningen visar också, att en didaktisk strävan att förbättra undervisningen kring värdegrundsfrågorna faller på lärarens medvetna val av studiematerial i undervisningen om etnicitet, rasism och främlingsfientlighet. Dessutom för att skapa en djupare förståelse krävs tvärvetenskapliga studier.</p><p><em>Sol 3000 samt en kvalitativ bearbetning i form av en kritisk analys över valda karaktäristiska citat hämtade ur läroböckerna. </em></p>

Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka hur värdegrundsbegreppen mångfald och tolerans implementerats i SO-ämnenas läroböcker. Uppsatsens didaktiska strävan är att skapa gott innehåll i undervisningen att motverka främlingsfientlighet och rasism. De metoder som använts för att uppnå syftet och den didaktiska strävan är dels en kvantitativ mätning av värdegrundsbegreppens frekventa förekomst samt karaktäristiska framställning i Natur &amp; Kulturs läromedel Undersökningen av läroböckerna har visat att de normativa och värderande formuleringarna fått stå tillbaka till förmån för en deskriptiv framställning av skolans värdegrund samt att värdegrundsbegreppen har marginell omfattning i förhållande till läroböckernas totala text. Undersökningen visar också, att en didaktisk strävan att förbättra undervisningen kring värdegrundsfrågorna faller på lärarens medvetna val av studiematerial i undervisningen om etnicitet, rasism och främlingsfientlighet. Dessutom för att skapa en djupare förståelse krävs tvärvetenskapliga studier. Sol 3000 samt en kvalitativ bearbetning i form av en kritisk analys över valda karaktäristiska citat hämtade ur läroböckerna.

Epidemiological data on a wide range of mental disorders from community studies conducted in European countries are presented to determine the availability and consistency of prevalence, disability and treatment findings for the EU. Using a stepwise multimethod approach, 27 eligible studies with quite variable designs and methods including over 150,000 subjects from 16 European countries were identified. Prevalence: On the basis of meta-analytic techniques as well as on reanalyses of selected data sets, it is estimated that about 27% (equals 82.7 million; 95% CI: 78.5–87.1) of the adult EU population, 18–65 of age, is or has been affected by at least one mental disorder in the past 12 months. Taking into account the considerable degree of comorbidity (about one third had more than one disorder), the most frequent disorders are anxiety disorders, depressive, somatoform and substance dependence disorders. When taking into account design, sampling and other methodological differences between studies, little evidence seems to exist for considerable cultural or country variation. Disability and treatment: despite very divergent and fairly crude assessment strategies, the available data consistently demonstrate (a) an association of all mental disorders with a considerable disability burden in terms of number of work days lost (WLD) and (b) generally low utilization and treatment rates. Only 26% of all cases had any consultation with professional health care services, a finding suggesting a considerable degree of unmet need. The paper highlights considerable future research needs for coordinated EU studies across all disorders and age groups. As prevalence estimates could not simply be equated with defined treatment needs, such studies should determine the degree of met and unmet needs for services by taking into account severity, disability and comorbidity. These needs are most pronounced for the new EU member states as well as more generally for adolescent and older populations.