University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

About: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg is a education organization based out in Erlangen, Bayern, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Immune system. The organization has 42405 authors who have published 85600 publications receiving 2663922 citations.

Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHCs): Toward a Hydrogen-free Hydrogen Economy

Abstract: ConspectusThe need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions will lead to the transformation of our current, carbon-based energy system to a more sustainable, renewable-based one. In this process, hydrogen will gain increasing importance as secondary energy vector. Energy storage requirements on the TWh scale (to bridge extended times of low wind and sun harvest) and global logistics of renewable energy equivalents will create additional driving forces toward a future hydrogen economy. However, the nature of hydrogen requires dedicated infrastructures, and this has prevented so far the introduction of elemental hydrogen into the energy sector to a large extent. Recent scientific and technological progress in handling hydrogen in chemically bound form as liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) supports the technological vision that a future hydrogen economy may work without handling large amounts of elemental hydrogen. LOHC systems are composed of pairs of hydrogen-lean and hydrogen-rich organic compounds that st...

The role of defective clearance of apoptotic cells in systemic autoimmunity

Abstract: The accumulation of postapoptotic cell remnants resulting from inefficient phagocytic clearance might lead to the initiation and maintenance of systemic autoimmune reactions and chronic inflammation—hallmarks of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The consequences of apoptotic cell accumulation for the etiology, pathogenesis and pathophysiology of SLE are summarized in this Review. The inefficient clearance of dying cells can result in the accumulation of apoptotic cell remnants. This occurrence is considered an intrinsic defect that can cause the permanent presence of cellular debris responsible for the initiation of systemic autoimmunity in diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). If postapoptotic debris accumulates in germinal centers, activates complement and functions as a survival signal for B cells that have become autoreactive by somatic hypermutation, autoimmunity could arise (etiology). The accumulation of postapoptotic remnants and fragments derived from secondary necrotic cells in the presence of autoantibodies against apoptotic cells or adaptor molecules obliges their pathological elimination and maintains autoinflammation. The autoimmunity that occurs in patients with SLE involves complex antigens that contain nucleic acids, which can function as virus mimetics. Complexes of autoantibodies, proteins and nucleic acids are likely to be mistaken by the immune system for opsonized viruses, resulting in the production of type I interferons, a hallmark of SLE (pathogenesis). The pathogenicity of autoantibodies is thought to strongly increase if autoantigens are accessible for immune-complex formation. The immune complex could be considered a binary pyrogen formed from less proinflammatory components. The accessibility of cognate autoantigens, in turn, is likely to be related to impaired or delayed clearance of apoptotic cells.

Fundamentals of Wireless Information and Power Transfer: From RF Energy Harvester Models to Signal and System Designs

Abstract: Radio waves carry both energy and information simultaneously. Nevertheless, radio-frequency (RF) transmissions of these quantities have traditionally been treated separately. Currently, the community is experiencing a paradigm shift in wireless network design, namely, unifying wireless transmission of information and power so as to make the best use of the RF spectrum and radiation as well as the network infrastructure for the dual purpose of communicating and energizing. In this paper, we review and discuss recent progress in laying the foundations of the envisioned dual purpose networks by establishing a signal theory and design for wireless information and power transmission (WIPT) and identifying the fundamental tradeoff between conveying information and power wirelessly. We start with an overview of WIPT challenges and technologies, namely, simultaneous WIPT (SWIPT), wirelessly powered communication networks (WPCNs), and wirelessly powered backscatter communication (WPBC). We then characterize energy harvesters and show how WIPT signal and system designs crucially revolve around the underlying energy harvester model. To that end, we highlight three different energy harvester models, namely, one linear model and two nonlinear models, and show how WIPT designs differ for each of them in single-user and multi-user deployments. Topics discussed include rate-energy region characterization, transmitter and receiver architectures, waveform design, modulation, beamforming and input distribution optimizations, resource allocation, and RF spectrum use. We discuss and check the validity of the different energy harvester models and the resulting signal theory and design based on circuit simulations, prototyping, and experimentation. We also point out numerous directions that are promising for future research.

The INTERSPEECH 2010 Paralinguistic Challenge

Abstract: Most paralinguistic analysis tasks are lacking agreed-uponevaluation procedures and comparability, in contrast to more‘traditional’ disciplines in speech analysis. The INTERSPEECH2010 Paralinguistic Challenge shall help overcome the usuallylow compatibility of results, by addressing three selected sub-challenges. In the Age Sub-Challenge, the age of speakers hasto be determined in four groups. In the Gender Sub-Challenge,a three-class classification task has to be solved and finally, theAffect Sub-Challenge asks for speakers’ interest in ordinal rep-resentation. This paper introduces the conditions, the Challengecorpora “aGender” and “TUM AVIC” and standard feature setsthat may be used. Further, baseline results are given.Index Terms: Paralinguistic Challenge, Age, Gender, Affect 1. Introduction Most paralinguistic analysis tasks resemble each other not onlyby means of processing and ever-present data sparseness, but bylacking agreed-upon evaluation procedures and comparability,in contrast to more traditional disciplines in speech analysis. Atthe same time, this is a rapidly emerging field of research, dueto the constantly growing interest on applications in the fieldsof Human-Machine Communication, Human-Robot Communi-cation, and Multimedia Retrieval. In these respects, the INTER-SPEECH 2010 Paralinguistic Challenge shall help bridging thegap between excellent research on paralinguistic information inspoken language and low compatibility of results, by address-ing three selected tasks. The “aGender” and the “TUM AVIC”corpora are provided by the organizers. The first consists of 46hours of telephone speech, stemming from 954 speakers, andserves to evaluate features and algorithms for the detection ofspeaker age and gender. The second features 2 hours of humanconversational speech recording (21 subjects), annotated in 5differentlevelsofinterest. Thecorpusfurtherfeaturesauniquelydetailed transcription of spoken content with word boundaries byforced alignment, non-linguistic vocalizations, single annotatortracks, and the sequence of (sub-)speaker-turns. Both are given