Research Projects at Department III: Philology, Philosophy, Sports

General Journal of Philosophy (AZP)
Edited by Eva Schürmann, Andreas Hetzel, Michael Hampe and Harald Schwaetzer

https://www.frommann-holzboog.de/azp

Since 1975, the 'Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie' has promoted the professional exchange of ideas between all those interested in philosophical thought with three issues per year. In terms of content, the journal is open to all directions and opinions of philosophy in all its historical, geographical and systematic breadth. This openness corresponds to the mission to which the journal is committed by its name. Respect for the philosophical tradition opens our eyes to the new, the strange, the foreign, the hitherto neglected. In order to give space to topics of this kind, one or two issues of each year are dedicated to a special topic. The scientific advisory board promotes the examination of current topics in the global philosophical discourse. A peer review is used to select submitted articles. The language of publication is German.
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General Journal of Philosophy (AZP) Supplements

Edited by Michael Hampe, Andreas Hetzel, Eva Schürmann and Harald Schwaetzer.

https://www.frommann-holzboog.de/periodika/911

The newly launched publication series 'Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie. Beihefte' supplements the journal with monographs and anthologies that enable scholars to present topics in broader contexts. The series corresponds to the content profile of the journal and, like the journal, is open to the entire spectrum of philosophy.
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Establishment of the "Arbeitsstelle für linguistische Gesellschaftsforschung" (AlGf) at the OvGU.
The unit offers linguistic expertise to analyze social issues. In the form of studies, consulting tools and training programs, it examines language in order to understand society.

It works both independently and together with cooperation partners. The AlGf has its own research focus, but sees itself primarily as an open-topic transfer office for all those who want to understand and need to solve social problems
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In the recent past, the mechanisms that enable cognitive performance and learning to be maintained
despite age-related changes of the brain have increasingly attracted the attention of neuroscience
research. Surprisingly, however, comparatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying age-related changes in mobility and balance, despite the fact that cognitive processes depend on brain-body interactions and that a functioning motor system is an important component of successful ageing. A growing body of work demonstrated the significant impact of sensorimotor signals for precise spatial orientation - an embodied cognitive mechanism that could, for example, be exploited by sensorimotor (balance) training to maintain cognitive performance in old age. The aim of the present project is to identify the brain processes that enable some people to cope better than others with the progressive degradation of the supraspinal and musculoskeletal components of the sensorimotor system with ageing, ultimately contributing to interindividual differences in both motor performance (e.g., balance performance and learning, susceptibility to falls) and visuo-spatial cognition. To explain this behavioural heterogeneity, we propose an extension of the supply-demand mismatch theory of neural plasticity to include a “neurobiological capital” component (brain reserve) - i.e., stable (non-modifiable) structural traits that are not responsive to environmental stimuli (such as training) but still predict current performance as well as future improvements in a task (learning). We are particularly interested in the relative importance of brain reserve versus experience-induced plasticity in moderating the effects of frailty and brain ageing on postural control and associated visuospatial cognition, as well as possible interactions between these two factors. To address these questions, we will conduct a randomised, controlled balance training intervention study in older people and analyse the data in four work packages from different angles. Based on previous findings, we hypothesise that structural features of secondary motor network nodes (PMC, SMA) and their associated fibre connections play an important role in the implementation of an individual's ability to cope with sensorimotor decline. More specifically, we assume that cortical surface geometry acts as neurobiological capital (brain reserve), while training-induced changes e.g. in synaptic and myelin-related processes may represent promising, behaviourally relevant plasticity. To test these neurobiologically inspired hypotheses, we will use a combination of powerful 3T and ultra-high resolution 7T structural MRI together with state-of-the-art biophysical modelling, tractography and cutting-edge multivariate statistics. In terms of balance performance, we will use video-based human movement analysis in combination with deep learning techniques to identify behavioural patterns in balance adaptation and improvement and eventually relate these patterns to visuo-spatial performance in a concurrent cognitive task. The project promises to extend our understanding of neural plasticity by integrating insights from longitudinal training studies, multivariate (reserve) analyses, and advanced neuroimaging techniques. It stands to significantly impact the field of cognitive neuroscience related to ageing, informing precision medicine/prevention strategies to optimise the cognitive capacities of the elderly.

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The material object of the project is the unique collection of book series of the Ute-und-Wolfram-Neumann-Stiftung Magdeburg, which are housed in the University Library Magdeburg. A 'Book Series Research Unit' has been set up at the Chair of German Cultural Studies: Modern German Literature at the OVGU Magdeburg. It pursues two main goals:
1. intensification of book series research in Magdeburg, in particular by working on a special topic of Germanic book series research as part of a dissertation project, which the research assistant employed from project funds is carrying out. Employed from project funds. In connection with this, a series of publications on book series research will be established. Further research is carried out in the form of book series exhibitions, which are curated by the department, as well as conferences and workshops on book series research. A first exhibition on the topic of "Immanuel Kant's essay 'On Perpetual Peace' in the context of book series" is already running at the turn of the year 2024/25.
2. securing the curation of the book series collection, in particular by developing a scientific collection concept for the basic collection, designing special exhibitions, continuously optimizing the presentation from a scientific and museum point of view. In cooperation with the founder and the Magdeburg University Library, research is carried out to systematically supplement the collection.
Both objectives also support the foundation's purpose of "preserving and cultivating book culture in relation to other media" and researching the cultural-historical significance of series of literary value; they therefore promote the academic and museum visibility of the book series collection.
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Projekt: KI, Kunst und Geist

Forschungsprojekt in Kooperation mit der HfPH München und der AfBK Stuttgart 2025-2027

Geplante Publikationen:
Sammelband Geist, Welt und KI, (basierend auf Münchener Tagung März 25)
Sammelband: KI, Kunst und Urteilskraft (basierend auf Stuttgarter Tagung Mai 25)

Die Veröffentlichung von Chatbot-Apps wie ChatGPT und Bilderzeugungsprogrammen wie Dall.E wurde von Debatten begleitet, in denen diese Technologien entweder als das Ende der Herrschaft der Menschheit oder als Beginn einer neuen Evolutionsstufe gesehen werden – mit künstlicher Intelligenz, die Bewusstsein und andere humanoide Fähigkeiten im weitesten Sinne aufweist. Doch gibt es nicht eine unüberbrückbare Lücke oder einen Unterschied zwischen dem Geist (verstanden als unsere Überzeugungen, die auf Gründe reagieren, und als Handlungen, die Gründe umsetzen) und der künstlichen Intelligenz (verstanden als Mustererkennung in großen Datenmengen)? Diese Frage steht im Mittelpunkt des Sammelbandes Geist, Welt und KI, dessen Inhalte auf der gleichnamigen Konferenz im März 2025 an der Hochschule für Philosophie München vorgestellt und diskutiert wurden.
Die Beantwortung dieser Frage ist dringend notwendig, da das Aufkommen der künstlichen Intelligenz das Konzept des menschlichen Geistes erheblich herausfordert oder verändert. Die im Band versammelten Artikel gehen daher der Frage nach, ob und welche Auswirkungen die Umgestaltung unserer theoretischen und praktischen Rationalität im Rahmen der künstlichen Intelligenz auf unser Verständnis des Begriffs „Geist“ haben wird. Was die theoretische Rationalität betrifft, haben Cantwell Smith und andere gezeigt, warum wir den textlichen und bildlichen Ergebnissen der künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) nicht vorschnell eine entscheidende repräsentative Rolle zuschreiben sollten – eine Rolle, die Sätze und Bilder in menschlichen Angelegenheiten spielen, nämlich sich auf Zustände in der Welt zu beziehen und von etwas zu handeln. Warum also nicht das Offensichtliche fragen: Kann KI von etwas handeln? Diese Frage erinnert an die Gefahr, die McDowell in der Beziehung zwischen Geist und Welt zu beseitigen sucht: das reibungslose „Spinnen im Nichts“. Ein ähnliches Problem gilt für unser praktisches Verständnis von Wissen. Seit Anscombe dominiert in der praktischen Vernunft die Auffassung, dass die Ausübung der Vernunft dazu dient, etwas zu verwirklichen, das der Handelnde als gut ansieht. Dies scheint sich jedoch grundlegend vom Vergleich von Ist-Zuständen zu unterscheiden, wie er beispielsweise in der Robotik stattfindet. Kann ein Verständnis dessen, was gut ist, als leitendes Prinzip algorithmischer mentaler Zustände programmiert werden? Gemäß der hier aufgestellten Problematik verhandeln die im Sammelband präsentierten Texte drei Perspektiven:
(1) Theoretische Vernunft: Anknüpfend u. a. an Cantwell Smith und McDowell wird gefragt, ob KI-Outputs überhaupt von etwas handeln (Intentionalität) und wie sich dies zu der kantischen Doppelstruktur von Sinnlichkeit und Verstand sowie zu hegelschen Natur-/Geist-Konzeptionen verhält—zumal KI ohne Überzeugungen zu operieren scheint.
(2) Praktische Vernunft: In der Linie von Anscombe steht zur Debatte, ob und wie Handeln aus Gründen von algorithmischen Verfahren erfasst werden kann. Was geschieht mit Einsicht ins Gute, wenn Entscheidungen zunehmend vor-modelliert und durch „Big Data“ beeinflusst werden?
(3) Ästhetische Vernunft: Vor dem Hintergrund kantischer Urteilskraft: Was geht verloren oder wird gewonnen, wenn generative Systeme künstlerische Produktion mitprägen und die Figur des Genies neu verhandeln?

Tagungswebsites:
https://hfph.de/hochschule/veranstaltung/geist-welt-und-ki/
https://geistweltai.wordpress.com/galerie/
https://www.abk-stuttgart.de/kalender/tagung-aesthetisches-urteil-und-kuenstliche-intelligenz/

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On a meta-level, the doctoral project examines the functions of Low German in Gladigau. Since the functions, use and attitudes of Low German can correlate with each other, the project will also take a closer look at its domains of use as well as the evaluations and knowledge schemata of Low German that can be derived from Gladigau's self-image and from the perspective of outsiders. At the core of the study is the Low German "village theater Gladigau", which is ethnographically accompanied for one season. In two further sub-studies, sociolinguistic interviews are conducted with the "Low German protagonists" of Gladigau as well as with outsiders in relevant social groups (including politics and culture) and the media coverage of Gladigau is analyzed in terms of discourse linguistics.
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Collection-based scientific research is introduced in the Recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities on scientific collections as research infrastructure (2011) as a fourth element of research and development alongside basic research, applied research and experimental projects. We are delighted that since July 1, 2023, the OVGU's Custody has been coordinating and leading the way in the BMBF-funded joint project Sleep - Pain - Stress in and around the OVGU's Historical Medical Technology Collection. Some of the profile-forming areas of the OVGU (medical technology, neurosciences, medical prevention) are thus also represented in German-language collection research with a substantial contribution from Magdeburg - under Material Culture questions from the fields of epistemology, history of technology, body practices.

The project is divided into a preliminary year of cataloging and recording the OVGU's Historical Medical Technology Collection in cooperation with the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Museum of Technology in Magdeburg. This will be followed by a three-year research phase in which the OVGU's Department of English Cultural and Literary Studies (Prof. Dr. Susanne Peters, PD Dr. phil. habil. Nora Pleßke) and the History of Science and Technology at the TU Braunschweig (Prof. Dr. Christian Kehrt) will work on issues relating to biomonitoring, biofeedback and the technological history of the devices in the humanities, cultural studies and history.
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The joint project Sleep - Pain - Stress - Cultures and Techniques of Biofeedback Systems 1960-1990: Material Culture Research in the Medical Technology Collection of the OVGU (3ioS) is researching the historical medical technology collection of the OVGU Magdeburg. The collection, which dates from the 19th century to the present day, includes equipment such as ECG, EEG, stimulation current and ultrasound devices, defibrillators, measuring and surgical devices. The majority of these are products from the companies Messgerätewerk Zwönitz (MWZ), Transformatoren und Röntgenwerk Dresden (TuR), Carl Zeiss Jena, Elema-Schönander, Philips and Siemens. The objects document the historical development of modern medical technology and provide an insight into past medical technologies.
In addition to opening up the collection for research, teaching and knowledge transfer (for example by organizing temporary object laboratories, exhibitions, scientific salons), the focus is on historical studies of human-machine constellations in biofeedback procedures that relate to the dimensions of sleep, pain and stress. Biofeedback describes a cultural, psycho-physiological and medical technique that has been used for around 50 years in various social areas to make physiological body processes accessible to conscious training and/or targeted behavioral therapy.
The partners in this project are: Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Museum of Technology Magdeburg. The Coordination Office for Scientific University Collections in Germany is supporting the project, which is funded as part of the Networking - Exploring - Researching. Alliance for University Collections II of the BMBF.
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The joint project Sleep - Pain - Stress - Cultures and Techniques of Biofeedback Systems 1960-1990: Material Culture Research in the Medical Technology Collection of the OVGU (3ioS) is researching the historical medical technology collection of the OVGU Magdeburg. The collection, which dates from the 19th century to the present day, includes equipment such as ECG, EEG, stimulation current and ultrasound devices, defibrillators, measuring and surgical devices. The majority of these are products from the companies Messgerätewerk Zwönitz (MWZ), Transformatoren und Röntgenwerk Dresden (TuR), Carl Zeiss Jena, Elema-Schönander, Philips and Siemens. The objects document the historical development of modern medical technology and provide an insight into past medical technologies.
In addition to opening up the collection for research, teaching and knowledge transfer (for example by organizing temporary object laboratories, exhibitions, scientific salons), the focus is on historical studies of human-machine constellations in biofeedback procedures that relate to the dimensions of sleep, pain and stress. Biofeedback describes a cultural, psycho-physiological and medical technique that has been used for around 50 years in various social areas to make physiological body processes accessible to conscious training and/or targeted behavioral therapy.
The partners in this project are: Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Museum of Technology Magdeburg. The Coordination Office for Scientific University Collections in Germany is supporting the project, which is funded as part of the Networking - Exploring - Researching. Alliance for University Collections II of the BMBF.

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University collections represent an important resource for research and education, whereby the scientific study of collections requires interdisciplinary questions and methods that provide information about different knowledge practices in the past and present. The reappraisal of OVGU's academic heritage is an innovative interdisciplinary research project and includes the processing of OVGU's collections. Collaboration with the city's museums, the city archives and the Museum of Technology is of central importance for this. The proposed project focuses on the scientific investigation of our material culture and includes questions about social, cultural, historical and epistemological contexts. The project is not only a collection-based research project, but also aims to communicate the results to a broader public. It thus sees itself as a new center of gravity or catalyst for Third Mission.
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* Development of uniform and effective sports psychology support for all German Swimming Federation (DSV) squad athletes throughout Germany,
* Objective: Creation of the most uniform level of training possible with regard to the mental abilities and skills of all squad athletes, taking into account the different requirements of juniors and seniors
* Theoretical approaches: multidimensional approach: needs-based orientation of sports psychological support and integration of support into the training periodization, consideration of the special features of learning and applying mental abilities and skills in sport, systemic (involvement of coaches, performance diagnosticians, etc.) and resource-oriented approach
* Empirical data: Annual sports psychology screening and follow-up checks on the use of mental abilities and skills in training and competition
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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In the first funding phase, the project will be carried out primarily at the University of Trier, while the second funding phase is being prepared at the OvGU Magdeburg.

In the first funding phase, the sub-project will expand the narrative linguistic history of controversial discourses on external security up to around 1990 to include an examination of discussions since then, in particular on Bundeswehr deployments and participation and non-participation in global military actions. This is linked to the question of how "freedom" and "security" were used to legitimize or reject pending decisions in such public discussions. The difficult relationship between freedom and security will also be the focus of the planned second funding phase, in which a further thematic field, that of internal security, will be examined. This is because during the period under investigation, discussions about military operations and external security, which are intended to safeguard the freedoms of a democratic society, are often linked and legitimized with the fight against international "terrorism". This links them very closely with internal security-oriented considerations on protection against "terror". An overarching question of both funding periods is therefore: What tensions does the Federal Republic's new security policy self-image, which revolves around the concept of security, create with the highly ambiguous concept of freedom? Exploring and describing this relationship as a basic discursive figure of democratic discourse over time in the discussions on so-called external and internal security also promises insights into other social issues. In the current coronavirus debates, for example, the relationship between security - in this case health - and freedom is up for discussion, as are debates on data protection and environmental protection. In the first funding period, however, the focus of the investigation is on security against external threats and the assertion of the worldwide preservation and/or restoration of freedom and human rights, because - according to the initial hypothesis - these high-value words were used above all to argue about the (de)legitimization of military operations, arms spending and other German participation and non-participation in international multilateral activities.
In addition, the sub-project contributes to the project group's methodological goal of developing a collaborative, digitally supported discourse analysis. To this end, the sub-project will primarily further develop qualitative interpretations of the changing meaning of key words (e.g. with frame-semantically inspired analyses), of constructions of reality through the use of metaphors, of meta-linguistic utterances and of serially used argumentation patterns in such a way that diachronic quantitative comparisons are also made possible via annotations in the corpus databases.
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The project involves the preparation and organization of an international conference on the topic of "Intermediality of drama adaptations" and the subsequent publication of an anthology. The project is related to a dissertation project at the Chair of "German Cultural Studies: Modern German Literature" at OVGU Magdeburg. The conference, which will take place in Magdeburg from November 6 to 8, 2025, is funded by the German Research Foundation.
The film adaptation of dramas, written in accordance with the genre as play scripts for the theater stage, can be found in film history from its beginnings in the early 20th century to the present day. However, when literary adaptations are mentioned, the focus is usually on adaptations of novels or short stories. There is special research on drama adaptations, especially on some outstanding film examples; however, there are only a few systematic considerations on drama adaptations.
This desideratum can be well addressed from the perspective of intermediality research. One of the conventions of a drama text is an intermedial reference to the theatrical performance, which is found especially (but not only) in the so-called secondary text. One of the interesting questions when analysing the filming of a drama is, for example, whether and how such intermediality oriented towards the theater still plays a role when the drama is not realized through a theater production but through a film adaptation.
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Is pacifism the way out in a world full of wars? Can it be defended on good grounds? If it cannot be defended on good grounds: Can it be adequately reformed? If this is not the case either, what should a just war theory worthy of recognition look like? These and other questions about pacifism and the theory of just war will be addressed by PD Dr. habil. Alexander Staudacher (Chair of Theoretical Philosophy, OvGU Magdeburg) and Dr. Christoph Sebastian Widdau (Chair of Practical Philosophy, OvGU Magdeburg) in a monograph to be published by Metzler in spring 2026.
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Discourse Spaces is an ongoing project of the Department of Linguistic Social Research at the University of Magdeburg in cooperation with Theater Magdeburg. Science and art work together in this innovative concept to give Magdeburg residents a space and a voice - especially those who have less and less "voice", i.e. communicative power in discourse. For example, people who do not feel heard by current political and social institutions, but who also do not (yet?) want to turn to anti-democratic forces.
As part of a master's seminar led by Prof. Kersten Sven Roth and Kathrin Hamann from the AlGf, students will plan and conduct qualitative interviews for this purpose. The students will develop the exact discourse-analytical method for selecting the interviewees and conducting the interviews themselves. In a second step, the students will then work closely with the dramaturgy department of Theater Magdeburg to create a theater text through montage, which will form the basis of an interactive theater format. This will be performed at Theater Magdeburg in the second half of the 2024/25 season and is intended to have a strongly discursive character, i.e. also be a conversation starter itself - and can thus in turn become the subject of linguistic analysis.
Ideally, the synthesis of research, teaching and art will create a space for the city's civil society to critically and constructively "exchange ideas with itself" and provide social and political actors in the city with a relevant picture of what moves Magdeburg.
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The plan is to hold an exhibition on the topic of "Fiction book series of the Weimar Republic" and publish an exhibition catalog. The project was delayed during the Corona period, but will be continued. More details will follow in due course.
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Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (PhiMiSci) focuses on the intersection between philosophy and the empirical mind sciences. PhiMiSci is a peer-reviewed, not-for-profit open-access journal that is free for authors and readers.

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The Russian-German Dictionary (RDW) covers the vocabulary of the Russian standard language, including neologisms from the last two decades, and also contains obsolete and outdated lexemes, words and meanings from the substandard. A strict selection of proper names and abbreviations has been included. Specialized vocabulary from many areas that are also relevant for common language communication is represented to a large extent. In addition to single-word terms, the RDW contains non-idiomatic multi-word terms, idiomatic expressions, proverbs and idioms.
A large proportion of the Russian lexemes are listed in a Russian-German dictionary for the first time. In total, the RDW contains around 230,000 lemmas.

The RDW is designed to meet the needs of advanced and professional users, primarily native German speakers, but may also be of interest to Russian-speaking readers.

The dictionary is published in individual volumes by Harrassowitz-Verlag. Volumes 1-12 (word sections A-R) have been published by 2020. In addition, the word sections A to G were published in the 2nd, revised and expanded edition.

The project was funded until 31.12.2016 by the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz, as part of the academy program of the federal and state governments. Work on the RDW will continue after the end of the project funding.
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Research has shown that physical exercise is an effective therapeutic tool to deal with
cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the success of these preventive programs depends
on the ability to identify the population at risk and to apply tailored physical exercise
interventions. The purpose of this project will be to integrate omic, clinical and lifestyle data to
define the cardiovascular risk level of an adult population to propose tailored physical exercise
programs that focuses on those physical condition factors most necessary for each person
according with their health status. A randomized representative sample of the population (men
and women) with ages between 18 and 65 years old will be selected. At a methodological level,
participants will be classified into several risk levels of suffering from CVDs and an initial
evaluation of inflammatory, protein, lipid, clinical and lifestyle markers will be made. Based on
this stratification, a tailored physical exercise intervention will be performed. Lastly, a final
evaluation will be made to analyze the effectiveness of the intervention in each of the defined
categories. We will try to carry out a "proof of concept" to evaluate the feasibility of our plan and
methodology to refine the proposal to improve it to subsequently participate in future European
calls (HORIZON, ERAPerMed, or MSCA schemes).

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Taboos seem to be universal components of human societies and are accordingly deeply rooted in cultural practices. They serve to make something undesirable, offensive or embarrassing invisible or to mark it as unacceptable. As shunning rules, they also affect communicative practices in particular. In political and moral discourses, tabooing is either associated with irrational, morally justified prohibitions and a lack of enlightenment (e.g. on topics such as sexism or gender images) or with the aim of wanting to conceal something (e.g. the reality of anti-Semitism). Tabooing therefore has negative connotations.
However, there are also tabooing practices that are not normally described as such. In this sense, (de)tabooing is a confirmation or extension of what is considered (un)acceptable in a communication community. Such practices are at the heart of the project, in which various communicative practices in different places are examined for the role of taboo tendencies.
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The project looks for contributions to the discourse on technological disasters from the field of literature and thus follows on from the chair's research on the discourse on natural disasters (the Lisbon earthquake) and political and social disasters (the First World War as the original catastrophe of the 20th century). Paul J. Crutzen's proposal to call the current geological era the "Anthropocene", which has been discussed far beyond the field of geology, is taken up as an interpretation to signal that the environmental influences caused by humans have become relevant to the planet's ecosystem and, to a certain extent, to geological history since around 1800. The Magdeburg Chair of German Cultural Studies is researching this using the example of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its treatment in literature from Christa Wolf and Gudrun Pausewang to Hans Platzgumer and Alina Bronsky. It is planned to publish essays and, in the future, a monograph.
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The aim of the project is to develop cross-sport exercise programs in sports clubs in Magdeburg and the surrounding area in order to give pre-school children from socially disadvantaged families access to club-based children's sports. In order to implement an appropriate exercise program, senior citizens are trained or educated as volunteer leaders of children's sports in the sports clubs based on the KiB mobil exercise education concept.
A further aim of the project is to develop the organization in the sports clubs by developing the club structures for the use of resources for children's sports and thus also for the future of the sports club. As part of the first sub-project, the sports clubs are supported in using premises that are available on the club premises or municipally for children's sports and in acquiring appropriate (used) sports and play equipment at low cost. In the course of this, members are given responsibility for the long-term cross-sport exercise program as voluntary children's sports coordinators in the clubs.
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Assuming that learning grammar is not limited to mastering morpho-syntactic rules, but that grammatical competence also includes semantic and functional aspects, cognitive didactic teaching approaches emphasize the visualization of conceptualization processes as a driving force in grammar teaching. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of teaching methods that use grammar metaphors in the form of animations, with the caveat that the mere reception of grammar animations is not sufficient for the integration of mental models. Only active engagement with the grammar metaphors leads to successful learning (Bielak & Pawlak 2011; Kanaplianik 2016).

To the extent that the active participation of the learner represents a neuralgic point for the didactic potential of grammar animations, the research project investigates whether a concept-based teaching approach that uses interactive animations supports advanced learners of German in developing their grammatical competence. Based on the grammatical metaphor for the German passive voice developed by Suñer Muñoz (2013), animations are extended by an input interface that enables learners to intervene in the visualized conceptualization process in a creative way, in particular to grasp semantic-functional aspects of the passive voice such as salience and topicalization. Within a quasi-experimental research design, the effectiveness of this learning medium is to be tested quantitatively on the one hand, and the development/change of mental models is to be traced qualitatively by means of retrospection on the other. The further development of grammar animations represents a relevant contribution to research, as their interactivity promotes explorative learning and provides an opportunity to grasp conceptual structures (Roche & Suñer 2016; Zeyer 2017).
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Due to the development of new biotechnological and surgical procedures, new pharmacological substances and electromagnetic stimulation methods, it is now possible to change the physical abilities and mental states of humans to some extent. The practice of altering the human body, which is seen as an improvement, is discussed in ethical debates under the term human enhancements. With regard to the different forms of human enhancement, the term neuroenhancement has become established as a generic term for the designation of different procedures or means of altering cognitive abilities and psychological states. Based on the analysis of technology-based different possibilities of this form of self-optimization, a contribution to ethical questions along the Aristotelian conceptions of the category of virtue and virtue theory is to be made. The aim of the doctoral project is to investigate the compatibility of different means and procedures of neuroenhancement with the Aristotelian conception of virtue and virtues and, based on this, to draw conclusions about the use of the means to increase cognitive performance and change mental states.
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Saxony-Anhalt is one of the federal states in which there are speakers of the regional language Low German and which, within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, have committed themselves to maintaining and protecting this language, which is not only historically significant. In addition to supporting language maintenance measures, the integration of Low German in schools and lessons (including the development of corresponding materials and teaching concepts) and policy advice with regard to regional language protection, this also represents a research mandate.
Based on the first comprehensive research project funded by the state of Saxony-Anhalt, "Sprachsoziologische Untersuchungen zum Niederdeutschen in Sachsen-Anhalt" (1993-2000) by the Low German Office, the focus is now once again being placed on linguistic pragmatics and socio-cultural aspects without completely neglecting linguistic structures.
This is a long-term framework project that is structured into different module clusters. Specific sub-projects are based on the module structure, but are variable in terms of their forms, methods and funding ("puzzle principle"). Thus, sub-projects are planned in the form of third-party funded projects (foundations, DFG, state of Saxony-Anhalt, etc.), qualification work, research seminars and collaborations. The aim is not to collect data across the board, but to conduct a hotspot analysis of at least three reference locations as a basis for the investigations.
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Although women have also dealt with philosophical questions at all times from antiquity to the present day, their widespread absence from the philosophical canon is striking, as is the marginalization of research into the classics of philosophy. There are gradual signs of change in this respect in academic discourse and university teaching, but there is still some catching up to do in schools: a glance at the relevant approved textbooks and textbooks in the German federal states for the subjects of philosophy and ethics at upper secondary school level reveals that female philosophers are significantly underrepresented in comparison to male philosophers. If teachers want to change this with regard to modern, complete and gender-diverse philosophy and ethics lessons, they are largely left to their own devices. Even beyond the textbooks, there is only a small amount of teaching material in which texts by important female philosophers are categorized, reduced and edited for school lessons. When such texts are printed in textbooks, there is usually a lack of comprehensive classification and introduction of the authors and the texts. Based on this finding, we will publish a volume that is intended to provide practical teaching material and, in the selection of texts, will be oriented both to the significance of the respective philosopher for philosophy (history) and, above all, to their references to the students' lifeworld against the background of the central teaching topics of the upper secondary school level.
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"Media in German lessons" and "Intercultural learning in German lessons" are two central topics of current German didactics that need to be considered in all three phases of teacher training: in teacher training, in the preparatory service and in further training courses for teachers.
For this reason, ideas and concepts on these topics will be presented and discussed in joint workshops with representatives of the State Institute for School Development, mentors and head teachers of general and vocational schools.
Corresponding study projects (e.g. adaptive learning with interactive learning pens in self-learning phases) are tested and evaluated with students at schools, thus ensuring a link between theory and practice.
Further training events at universities support the cross-phase training of teachers and mentors.
With the "studis@school" project, students can gain experience at schools outside of the mandatory internships through remedial teaching, homework supervision and club supervision and find out whether the profession is right for them. At the same time, schools are relieved by experienced students in times of teacher shortages.
Conferences on overarching topics of teacher training are to be organized together with the Centre for Teacher Training.
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The project focuses on research into the history of sport in the two large cities of Magdeburg and Halle a. d. Saale from the end of the 18th century to 1956, reconstructing and comparing longer developmental processes and specific themes of urban sport history and interpreting them in the context of general sport historiography.
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The dissertation project examines the language used by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on the social medium Facebook and the resulting resonance behavior on the part of subscribers. The high level of interaction and number of comments on the AfD's Facebook profile page are not solely due to the party's communication strategies, but are also due to the behavior and exchange of recipients. Communication with each other is characterized by the constant affirmation of content and group affiliation. As this is a communication space that consists predominantly of communications that correspond to the group ideology, the concept of the echo chamber is to be operationalized as a resonance space for the linguistic analysis in order to identify linguistic and associated ideological adaptation structures of the commentators to the interpretation patterns and expectations of the group.
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Technical action and responsibility
from the Second Industrial Revolution to the present day
Lecture series and publication of an anthology

Technical buildings, apparatus and systems are supposed to work. Only when they do not function as desired do they usually receive attention - and only then is the question of responsibility posed to the engineers involved. This question is discussed particularly intensively in the case of sensitive high technologies such as nuclear and genetic engineering, sensitive infrastructures such as bridge, canal and tunnel construction and complex mobility technologies such as those currently associated with autonomous driving. In the event of a catastrophe, legal, socio-psychological, economic, ethical, religious and engineering aspects are often intertwined, which can also be observed in the representation of this problem in culture - literature, film, series, theater, etc. - since the end of the 19th century. - since the end of the 19th century.
Moreover, the one person responsible often no longer exists. While engineers in the era of technological optimism around 1900 were still invoked as heroes, as 'men of action' or generally as symbolic figures for the technical age, the reality of their work today presents itself primarily as teamwork in which each individual makes a contribution to a complex whole (collective responsibility).
The lecture series, designed as a lecture series for students from all faculties at the University of Magdeburg in the summer semester of 2023, brought together experts from the humanities and social sciences, education, engineering, theology, moral philosophy and law. They presented theoretical and practical aspects of responsibility in engineering. The lecture series was a joint project between Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and Martin Luther University Halle and was generously funded by the OVGU's Faculty of Human Sciences and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, for which the organizers would like to express their sincere thanks.
After the lecture series, most of the lectures given were revised for publication in an anthology. The manuscript has now been completed (October 2024) and is in print. The volume will be published under the title "Technisches Handeln und Verantwortung" by Springer VS and is edited by Sebastian Böhmer and Thorsten Unger.
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As part of the project by the Centre for Linguistic Social Research, interview data was first collected on attitudes and prior knowledge of racist and discriminatory language in the police force. Based on this, workshops were designed to raise awareness of the topic on a linguistic basis and with a strong practical focus on the police service. The workshops will be held for the entire state police force over the course of the project and systematically evaluated.
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With the support of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, the Society of Friends and Sponsors of the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and the German Society for Philosophy, the conference The Right to Property - Its Justification and Its Limits was organized in March 2023 by Prof. Dr. Héctor Wittwer and Dr. Christoph Sebastian Widdau (Chair of Practical Philosophy at the OvGU Magdeburg). Subsequently, an anthology with contributions by the speakers and other authors will be published by mentis in March 2025. It will include classic contributions on the theory of property and the critique of the right to property (e.g. by Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Marx) and contextually relevant cases of investigation (e.g. on the relationship between property and taxes and between property and responsibility for the future). The volume thus combines historical and systematic perspectives and closes a gap in the contemporary philosophical literature.
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* Development of uniform and effective sports psychology support for all German Swimming Federation (DSV) squad athletes throughout Germany,
* Objective: Creation of the most uniform level of training possible with regard to the mental abilities and skills of all squad athletes, taking into account the different requirements of juniors and seniors
* Theoretical approaches: multidimensional approach: needs-based orientation of sports psychological support and integration of support into the training periodization, consideration of the special features of learning and applying mental abilities and skills in sport, systemic (involvement of coaches, performance diagnosticians, etc.) and resource-oriented approach
* Empirical data: Annual sports psychology screening and follow-up checks on the use of mental abilities and skills in training and competition
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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Title: Theories of Vision (monograph), cooperation partner: Dr. Joerg Fingerhut, HU Berlin

Abstract
Different theorizing traditions explore visual perception in different ways. While the investigation of the nature and neurobiology of vision does not clarify anything about the first-personal experience of perception, the culture and practice of vision cannot clarify the connection with optical or physiological principles. However, it is precisely in its Janus-faced hybrid position between consciousness and the world that the sense of sight operates in the middle of the difference between mind and brain or mind and world. For it is, as it were, open in two directions, towards the visible world as well as towards the person of the person seeing, who perceives according to their imprints through memory and expectation, habit and cultural patterns. The subpersonal, personal and conscious levels of seeing represent very different objects of investigation, which are brought together in this volume.
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This projects tests if neural resource mobilisation can be optimized by adapting the task demands relative to the subject’s current ability in healthy older participants. We refer to the gap between task demand and ability as the Ability Prediction Error (APE). Using computational modelling and longitudinal quantitative MRI (qMRI), we aim to explore how APEs control sensorimotor performance improvements, behavioural transfer and the time course of neural resource mobilization at macro- and mesoscopic brain levels in a defined (pre-) frontal brain circuit.

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The aim of the dissertation project is to raise awareness by reflecting on beliefs and attitudes. Student teachers have their own biographical experiences with very detailed ideas about teaching and learning. These are primarily subjective and unreflected. However, they have an action-guiding function, as they significantly influence the professional actions of future teachers. For this reason, it is important that these subjective ideas and convictions are made explicit and reflected upon in the first phase of teacher training.
As essential components of teachers' professional competence, beliefs are key factors in dealing with heterogeneity in teacher training and further education situations (Kopp, 2009). The aim of research when collecting beliefs is to reconstruct and analyze the subjective reality of different groups of people in different subject areas (cf. Reusser 2011). It is about subject-related perceptions that have an impact on the teaching-learning process and can have a fatal effect, particularly in the context of diversity. The subject of German in particular, which is based on language, creates the prerequisites for communication and social participation. Language and literature are means of communication, representation, thought, reflection and knowledge. Language, whether in oral or written form, is what makes us human. It is the key to perceiving oneself as part of a community, to locating oneself and to expressing oneself. Today more than ever, German lessons must recognize diversity and difference and teachers have a responsibility to be aware of this. In order to do this, it is absolutely essential that they confront their own ideas and convictions. Only then can the noble goal of diversity-sensitive German lessons be brought to life and implemented.

Literature:
Kopp, Bärbel(2009): Inclusive conviction and self-efficacy in dealing with heterogeneity. How do elementary school teacher trainees think? Empirische Sonderpädagogik 1, Verlag Papst Science Publishers, Lengerich.

Reusser, K., Pauli, C., & Elmer, A. (2011): Career-related beliefs of teachers. In E. Terhart, H. Bennewitz & M. Rothland (Eds.), Handbook of research on the teaching profession . Münster: Waxmann.
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Political correctness is intended to regulate how one may and may not speak and present oneself in public. Proponents of political correctness consider it necessary in order to protect marginalized groups and individuals from insults and politically and morally unacceptable unequal treatment. Opponents of political correctness consider it to be both an unacceptable and useless means of patronizing and restricting freedom of speech and expression. Together with PD Dr. Jörn Knobloch (University of Leipzig), I am writing a monograph entitled "What is and what should political correctness be?" (working title), which is due to appear on the book market in spring 2024. Knobloch and I are investigating (formulating for an academic and non-academic readership) what political correctness is, what exactly it is supposed to serve, why supporters and opponents are ideologically far closer apart than it seems at first glance, and how political correctness debates that could lead to cultural clashes can be "pacified".
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The international, DFG-funded conference "Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Toller" (initially planned for March 2022, postponed to July 2022 due to Covid-19) was dedicated to a comparison of the two most important playwrights of the Weimar Republic from various aesthetic, (cultural) political and, in some cases, biographical aspects. There were numerous points of contact between the two during their lifetimes, both politically and in terms of their aesthetically advanced aspirations with experimental impulses, and by no means only in the field of theater and drama; however, there is hardly any evidence of a more intensive exchange between the authors. Also, only very few written statements about each other have survived, although both were active in similar fields and there are also overlaps in other contacts; for example, both worked closely at times with Erwin Piscator, one of the most important theater directors of the Weimar Republic.
A glance at the research gives the impression that this silence continues: Very few studies take a comparative look at Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Toller under special issues, and then usually as two protagonists in a series of several authors. There is no monograph or collection of essays dedicated to a comparison of Brecht and Toller.
The aim of the international conference "Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Toller" (July 20-22, 2022 in Magdeburg) was to address this desideratum and to open up new perspectives on the two authors, their working methods and themes as well as on contemporary political, dramaturgical, theatrical, cultural and social aspects of the Weimar Republic and the exile period in lectures and intensive discussions. The lectures developed new insights into the different canonization status of Brecht and Toller, the mediality of their theater concepts and their relationship to audiovisual media, which was critical and ambivalent in different ways, the comparison of aesthetic and dramaturgical working methods and procedures, the cultural-political work and theater work of the two authors, important political, historical and cultural themes of the Weimar Republic such as mass, world war and revolution, Judaism and anti-Semitism, gender issues as well as physicality and sport; With regard to the spectrum of literary genres, the focus was on drama and theater, but important collections of poetry by Brecht and Toller were also considered.
The conference contributions were published in revised form and supplemented by several other contributions in an anthology, which was edited by the conference organizers and published in August 2024.
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The purpose of this project is to provide scientific support for German squad athletes in the javelin and shot put. Using a real-time feedback system, which consists of several inertial sensors and a synchronous video recording, performance-relevant biomechanical parameters of the athletes' throwing and shooting movements are to be recorded and visualized. The results of this technique training serve as feedback for coaches and athletes. The DLV assumes that the use of state-of-the-art technologies in this project and the constant exchange between the scientists and the coaches will result in a real-time feedback system that can be used independently in daily training and thus optimize training control.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a transformative force in our society entering industries like robotic, financial service, agriculture, medicine, transportation, defense. In the context of human well-being, AI also entered the field of healthcare, lifestyle, and elite sport with the target of prevention, diagnosis, monitoring, and prescription. The jointed action of computer science and medicine science produced the application of AI in the field of healthcare with the goal to improve patients’ diagnosis and care, to explore new solutions for diseases, and to lead better discoveries in research. AI is revolutionizing the management of health, acting on the promotion of healthy lifestyle, for physical activity and healthy diet. Through AI, internet platforms, smartphone apps, and wearable technology can be used to monitor and track individual levels of physical activity, vital parameters, sleep patterns, daily food intake. AI acts to collect and elaborate real-time data and to provide personalized suggestions and recommendations for exercise and nutritional plans. AI has already had a hug impact on the sport industry. Sport organizations and sport clubs consistently use AI for games, teams, and athletes’ statistics, performance analysis, youth scouting, and monitoring of training load. Moreover, new line of research has been developed to explore the application of AI for data analytics and evidence-based practice.
The proposed BIP will disseminate current knowledge and future directions regarding the application of AI for the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle in general population, and for performance optimization and injury prevention in athletes.
The competences acquired in the BIP will be divided in 4 modules:
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges
- Artificial Intelligence in Health: Research and Applications
- Artificial Intelligence in Sport: Research and Applications

The proposed BIP pursues the EU GREEN educational strategies concerning the current challenges of the society and new frontiers of science and technology. In fact, AI rapidly became a new frontier of science capable to face the global changes and to tackle social challenges. The application of AI in health and sport can jointly interconnect the domains of life and society, as well-being, economy, behavior, psychology, public health, marketing, at both local and global level. The BIP will consist of lectures and workshops, in both virtual and in-presence modalities, with the participation of experts from educational institutions and industry to explore theoretical bases of AI and practical applications in sport and health sectors. The BIP will be built to guarantee a proficient exchange among students and scholars from different cultural contexts and expertise.

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According to the classical understanding, phenomenal properties are intrinsic and qualitative, while science captures relational or structural properties only. In the scientific study of consciousness, however, methods are used that aim to model and discriminate individual experiences, including their phenomenal character, by structural features (typical examples comprise quality spaces and the methods and measures of psychophysics). The project shall investigate the methodological and ontological implications of structural models of phenomenality from the perspective of philosophy of science. It will explore how objective third-person models of subjective first-person experience and consciousness should be set up and what their promises and possible limitations are.

Questions of interest include:
(1) What is the connection between the intrinsic/structural distinction and the introspective/extrospective distinction?
(2) What general modeling types, techniques, formalisms, tools and (representational) formats are used in consciousness studies? (This includes a close look to some of the empirical projects of the RTG.)
(3) What are the limits of structural modeling approaches and how does this relate to "qualia inversion” scenarios?
(4) What are the metaphysical implications of structural models of phenomenality (e.g. in view of a structural realism about qualia or Russellian monism)?

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The DFG-funded Research Training Group (RTG) 2386 "Extrospection.External access to higher cognitive processes” offers a structured and interdisciplinary doctoral program including a fast-track option for Master’s students. During the first funding period 2018-2023, a sophisticated admission process will select three cohorts of doctoral researchers (with application calls in 2018, 2019, and 2020) and two cohorts of fast-track students (to start in 2018 and 2019). Students are asked to apply for one (or more) of the advertised research topics. They will have to hand in a detailed 5-page proposa for an interdisciplinary doctoral project devoted to the problem of extrospection. When applying, applicants should also explain why they wish to conduct their doctoral research in a structured and interdisciplinary doctoral program. Upon admission, students will be offered a salaried doctoral position for three years. Each doctoral candidate will be assigned two experts from different disciplines as their primary and secondary supervisors.

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"He still hasn't contacted me…"; "She's online, but she's not writing to me" - with the advent of the smartphone in our everyday communication, statements like these are no longer a rarity. This is because the (at least theoretical) permanent availability also seems to go hand in hand with the assumption of permanent communicative availability. If the other person does not respond within a certain period of time, this is understood as a communicatively significant silence, which is usually interpreted negatively as rejection and disinterest, sometimes even as an expression of cowardice.
Silence, it can be postulated in general terms, has a difficult standing in Western culture: not only is it defined as deficient compared to speaking - for example, it is described as a "lack of speech" (Jaworski 1993: 44) or as "not speaking" or "not speaking more" (duden.de) - but it is also interpreted as a relationship disorder, or at least as a communication disorder that needs to be eliminated. In contrast to this, however, it can also be stated that (well-dosed) silence is used as a means of attracting attention, especially in flirting and dating contexts, and the motto If you want to be noticed, make yourself rare is booming (cf. Lautenschläger 2021; 2022).
This culturally oriented linguistic habilitation project not only examines what characterizes silence from a linguistic, specifically: pragmasemantic point of view and which types of silence need to be differentiated, but also considers social norms, expectations and the prevailing communicative ethos, taking into account mediatization and the importance of messenger or online communication. In addition to publicly accessible communications such as advice literature, a corpus of authentic data created in-house forms the basis of the analysis.
Literature

• duden.de: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Schweigen
• Jaworski, Adam (1993): The Power of Silence. Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Newbury Park: Sage Publications Inc.
• Lautenschläger, Sina (2022): Silence in a digital world. In: Speech & Communication. Zeitschrift für Sprechwissenschaft,19-36. open access: https://www.sprechwissenschaft.org/wissenschaft/schweigen-digitale-welt
• Lautenschläger, Sina (2021): If you want to count, make yourself rare: Taboo and silence in interpersonal relationships. In: Kuck, Kristin (ed.): Taboo discourses. Aptum. Journal for Language Criticism and Language Culture, 02/2021, pp. 212-229
.

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In recent years, the inclusion of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity in vocational education and training has expanded significantly, particularly as a result of work-related DaZ research and integration concepts for refugee trainees. Projects such as "Berufssprache Deutsch" (Terrasi-Haufe / Baumann 2017) and "Umbrüche gestalten" (Neumann / Bogner 2017) have shown how curricula and training can be adapted accordingly.
It has also become clear that the training of communicative skills in particular should play a central role (Efing 2012). However, too little attention has so far been paid to cultural and linguistic heterogeneity in this context. The research project therefore aims to explore the question of how the training of situation-appropriate and addressee-oriented professional communication should be organized in a largely multilingual and culturally hybrid living environment. In many job-specific situations, communicative skills cannot be separated from intercultural and multilingual skills. It is not only the business language English that plays a decisive role here. The languages of migration also represent a valuable and indispensable resource here, but have so far been largely ignored in vocational training.
The project also addresses the question of what role literature lessons should play in vocational German lessons in the future. In general, literature teaching lacks a concept that is adapted to the special features and needs of vocational schools. Particularly with regard to a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous student body and society, there have only been very isolated proposals for 'different' literature and media lessons to date. At a conference to be held in November 2021, new concepts for intercultural literature lessons will be discussed that take into account the special conditions of vocational German lessons. Since vocational school-specific German didactics must always take into account the didactics and subjects specific to vocational schools, representatives from the fields of education, social sciences and economics will also focus on the topic of education and migration at the conference.
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Within the scope of this project, the following sub-questions will be clarified:
1. validation of a combination of several evaluated practical Blood Flow Restriction methods to improve the precision of the individual training pressure in practical application.
2. practical blood flow restriction training in combination with balance training in rehabilitation after reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament.
3. acute physiological responses to static balance training in combination with blood flow restriction and elucidation of the effects on motor and perceptual fatigue.
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The aim of the project is to generate cross-sector recommendations for the rehabilitation and prevention of degenerative spinal diseases: I) needs-based indication for surgery II) risk stratification III) early counseling. Compared to the guideline-based approach in rehabilitation, the intervention concept contributes to 1) reduction of symptoms (pain) 2) stabilization of the muscles close to the trunk, postural balance, gait control and everyday mobility, 3) improvement of executive functions and cognitive performance, 4) motivation to "stick with it" and 5) increase in quality of life. In order to sustainably consolidate the conceptual approach, "movement counseling software" is being developed for doctors and therapists, enabling reliable movement communication and education.
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Although women have always dealt with philosophical questions, their absence from the philosophical canon in universities and schools is conspicuous. Moreover, what we read about women in many classical works of philosophy is sometimes problematic. A critical examination of these problems is important, not least with regard to modern, complete and gender-diverse teaching.
In the winter semester 2022/23, we are therefore organizing a series of lectures that will provide an opportunity to raise awareness of both exclusions and stereotypes in the philosophical canon, to critically question their effects up to the present day of academic philosophy and to discuss ways of dealing with them in a new way.
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The interdisciplinary conference at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg highlighted the ongoing division of Germany into East and West in the context of current global political developments (Ukraine crisis) with great professional and media interest
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On closer inspection, what has been referred to as the "corona crisis" in Germany and Europe since March 2020 consists of several closely interwoven crises (epidemiological-medical, social, political, economic). In addition to all these problematic dimensions, the pandemic also presents societies with completely new communicative challenges: The groups of actors in politics, (natural) science and the mass media are forced to act in a highly collaborative manner in order to overcome the acute challenges. Despite all the scientific uncertainties, they share the task of communicating core messages to the democratic and pluralistic citizenry with as much unanimity as possible - and possibly changing or exceeding their usual communicative tasks towards society in the process. This requires a degree of cooperation that has not previously been part of the everyday life of these groups of actors, and citizens are not used to such cooperation either.
Against this background, the aim of the project is to investigate processes of appropriation, instrumentalization and demarcation between politics and science in the Corona crisis against the background of their mediatization and with regard to their consequences for the legitimacy and credibility of science/scientific knowledge and politics/political action.
On the one hand, the project promises practical insights into current corona science communication and the precarious situation of those who leave the ivory tower consciously, but perhaps also too unprepared in view of the rough seas with the possible political and media instrumentalizations there. On the other hand, it offers long-term relevant results on science communication in the context of social crises, in which special epistemic, legitimizing and communicative challenges arise for all those involved.
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To better understand and treat gait deficits after stroke, reliable measurements of brain activity during walking are needed. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) can be used to quantify brain activity during walking with low sensitivity to motion artifacts. However, the reliability of fNIRS-derived parameters recorded during walking is poorly studied, especially in neurological diseases. Therefore, the aim of the project was to investigate the inter-session reliability of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations recorded with fNIRS during motor-cognitive dual-task walking protocols of different lengths in stroke patients and healthy controls.

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In the official course discussion for the BA course in German Studies with an interdisciplinary profile in 2020, the German Studies Student Council explicitly expressed the wish for German Linguistics to become more aware of linguistic sexism. Triggered by the formulation of this need, the Centre for Linguistic Social Research developed a two-stage project as part of its workshop program and in coordination with the German Studies Student Council to address and educate students about linguistic and communicative gender-based discrimination. The aim is to make it easier to talk about and address sexist experiences. To this end, students are trained and established as "sexism sensitization" actors who are active in the various student councils and educate their fellow students on the topic of sexism in the form of workshops at "eye level". The focus of the first project phase is the development and supervision of a well-founded student workshop concept. The second phase will focus on evaluating and advising on the implementation of this student workshop format in order to ensure the sustainability of the "Sexism Awareness" project beyond the current generation of student representatives. At the end, a practice-oriented guideline will have been developed for dissemination among the student councils, on the basis of which the programme can be organized and implemented by the students themselves with a high degree of independence. After one year, the program can be completely handed over to the students.
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Are there actually purely natural disasters? Or are all disastrous events, when they affect mankind, already caused by cultural factors? Disaster literature since antiquity suggests this.
This section at the IVG Congress in Palermo (originally planned for 26.07. to 02.08.2020, postponed by one year to 25.07. to 01.08.2021 due to the corona pandemic) is dedicated to the literary design and reflection of, for example, storm surges, earthquakes, fires, spills, train accidents, shipwrecks and technical failures from the early modern period to the present day. In humanism and the Baroque period, catastrophic elements, including scenic depictions of the Flood, even appear in drama and theater. For the Enlightenment period, earthquakes form the paradigm that is reflected in a variety of ways in all available contemporary media (including music and the visual arts). In the 19th century and in the wake of industrialization, the focus shifts to catastrophes that address the question of the controllability of new technologies. In the second half of the 20th century and up to the present day, this question comes to a head with the military and civilian use of nuclear fission and the effects of corresponding catastrophic events, which can hardly be limited in terms of time and space. Climate change, global warming and the greenhouse effect are now treated as a global political task, which once again underlines the global dimension of the catastrophic. We are interested in the historical change as well as any supra-historical constants of the discourse on disaster types and their management with regard to the interplay of forces of nature and culture that unfolds within them. Which narratives can be identified on the basis of literary and cinematic case studies? How are factual and fictional plot elements combined? The aim is to compile the building blocks of a history of disaster literature.
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The "Kinder in Bewegung mobil - KiB mobil" project aims to develop an early childhood exercise program for socially disadvantaged children in kindergartens in the city of Magdeburg and to implement it with qualified sports scientists on site in the kindergartens. The measures are therefore primarily aimed at Magdeburg kindergartens in socially disadvantaged catchment areas. The nursery school teachers involved will be trained in the course of implementing the measures and trained as multipliers to ensure the sustainability of the project work in the participating nursery schools. In the course of the project, cooperation between kindergartens and sports clubs will be established in order to implement cross-sport exercise programs for the exercise groups of 5-6 year old children in the sports clubs. The aim is to promote a longer-term commitment to physical activity in sports clubs.
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The incubator is an institution that creates both the technological and organizational infrastructure for academics interested in founding a company. Students and employees of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and other universities in Saxony-Anhalt can test and ultimately realize their innovative business ideas in the incubator. The incubator is called the "Performance Lab" and focuses on the topic of "diagnostics and intervention of psycho-physiological performance".
A wide range of products such as analysis and training devices as well as services in the field of recording or increasing physical and mental performance can be tested and developed in the incubator. Various diagnostic and training devices from the following areas are available to participants: Neurophysiology (e.g. bio- and neurofeedback, eye-tracking, EEG, NIRS); psychological and educational diagnostics (e.g. concentration and attention tests, intelligence tests, perception tests); sports science diagnostics (e.g. EMG, heart rate variability & ECG, spiroegometry, lactate measurement, motion capturing, coordination tests, movement activity measurement, videometry, spinal column measurement).
The target groups include health, rehabilitation, recreational, amateur and high-performance athletes as well as professional groups with special requirements such as doctors and neuroscientists, artists, educators and psychologists.
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Thinking the in-between, poetics of the medial.
Cooperation partners: Prof. Dr. Anke Haarmann HAW Hamburg and PD Dr. Jörg Sternagel, University of Passau

Abstract

As the middle and the middle ground, media find themselves in an intermediate area that is systematically suitable for escaping false opposites: Instead of dichotomies such as man and machine, subject and object or fiction and truth, a tense both/and can appear, which, however, can sometimes only be described as neither/nor. Whether and, if so, to what extent a poetics of the media can be developed as a result will be the subject of the next workshop of the Media Philosophy working group. How can the manifestations and the means of shaping the in-between, from which and through which every event emanates, be explored and developed? Could the mediating capacity of the imagination be the decisive potential that creates productive perspectives in poetry?
In contrast to a way of thinking that is oblivious to mediation and form, it is important to emphasize the significance of the in-between, through which the objects of intellectual reference first become what they are. The aim of this workshop, which will take place on April 11 and 12 at HAW Hamburg, is neither to de-differentiate the differences nor to hypostatize them, but instead to measure the transitions and spaces in between.
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The use of autonomous opaque artificial intelligence systems gives rise to new ethical problems. Such systems are autonomous, they "act" and they cannot be "seen through" by moral subjects (e.g. developers and evaluators) due to their opacity: the subjects do not know what these systems will do and why they will do what they will do. As artifacts, these systems are man-made. They themselves are not moral subjects. However, their actions are morally relevant. The research and publication project initiated with Carlos Zednik (Eindhoven University of Technology) will investigate, among other things, whether responsibility gaps (responsibility gaps) arise in cases where such systems "act" in a morally relevant way, and whether responsibility problems that arise can be countered with explainable AI.
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To diagnose, a psychiatrist has to come to conclusions about the mental state of patients in a reasoned and evidence-based way. First-person introspective reports by patients are still used, but "privileged access” is not necessarily granted. Instead, third- and second-person methods (EEG, fMRI, behavior, etc.) and higher-order evidence (likelihood or coherence of reports) are consulted as well.

How are these different intro- and extrospective sources weighed and compared in psychiatric reasoning? The project intends to analyse its underlying structure with current philosophical tools and investigates under which circumstances correcting or overwriting introspective reports of a patient by a psychiatrist is justifiable - and when it is not. The goal is to produce steps towards general models of psychiatric reasoning or the machinery underlying introspection, in part by focusing on concrete examples like the distinction between Charles-Bonnet- or Anton’s Syndrome as well as the distinction between hallucination and cognitive delusion. Cooperation with the psychiatrists of the Charité is planned.

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Although the right to property, in particular the right to private property, has a decisive influence on coexistence in all modern states and although it is undoubtedly of philosophical interest how this right can be justified and how far it may extend, contemporary philosophy has largely ignored this topic in recent decades. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that not a single noteworthy systematic monograph on this topic has appeared in German-speaking countries since 1970. The few relevant publications are almost all publications on the history of philosophy.
The aim of this research project is to put the question of the right to property back on the agenda of contemporary philosophy. To this end, I will first prepare a conference together with Dr. Christoph Widdau on the topic of "The right to property: its justification and its limits". The conference will take place in March 2022 at the OVGU. In the long term, there are also plans to publish an anthology entitled Property Theories. This will bring together classic contributions on the theory of property and criticism of the right to property.
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[Physical literacy is a new concept described in the Bulletin of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE) of UNESCO as the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to perform and evaluate a physically active lifestyle throughout life. This complex holistic approach is the background of the newly developed curriculum for university physical education teacher training. So far, there is hardly any (sports) pedagogical research on this approach in Poland and Germany, and there are no measurement instruments for the study of physical literacy in Polish or German.
The new concept of physical literacy meets the requirements of modern physical education, which not only focuses on the teaching of sports in the corresponding movement fields, as was previously the case, but also places knowledge and understanding of the body and its functions as well as movement in a social context at the center. These reflection processes help to promote motivation for movement in order to implement movement-competent actions in different movement situations. This new understanding of physical education cannot be found in the teacher training curricula at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg or at the Poznan University of Physical Education.
The aim of the project is therefore to develop German-Polish physical literacy modules and to implement them in the curricula of the Master's programs at both universities. The cultural and social similarities and differences as well as the country-specific requirements for teacher training will be taken into account. The result is a newly developed curriculum for teacher training in the subject of sport, which can also be transferred to other universities in Poland and Germany.
In addition, the project will develop tools for monitoring in PE lessons and integrate the skills acquired by students in the form of application knowledge into the new curricula in Poznan and Magdeburg. The application of the tools enables future PE teachers to check the development of physical literacy and thus the outcome of the pupils. There is a considerable lack of research in the field of educational science, particularly with regard to examining the output of physical education.
The establishment of the new curriculum and its dissemination through student and lecturer mobility, summer schools and further training for teachers as well as possible future research work will continue the successful Polish-German cooperation in the longer term.
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The core of the project is the step-by-step development of a practice-oriented workshop concept on "Racist and discriminatory language" for members of the Saxony-Anhalt state police force based on a needs assessment. In the first phase of the project, qualitative expert interviews are conducted, the content of which is systematized and analysed in order to align the theories and methodologies relevant to the workshops with the reality of the profession and the communication situations that take place there. The aim of the workshops is to raise participants' awareness of the impact of language and, on this basis, to sensitize them to the violent use of language. Raising awareness of anti-Semitic language as a particular form of racist speech also plays a central role.
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How and how is law created? How is it shown, perceived and represented? Performative legitimization processes and forms of mediation are an integral part of law in theory and practice. While legal rhetoric was dedicated to linguistic mediation conditions early on, today other mediation media are also involved in the perception of law, the perception of law and the development of law. Such mediation processes give the law normative force or make it 'attractive'. The aesthetics of law explores the emergence, representation and perception of law beyond its rational foundations.

Initial research results, which served as a prelude to further deepening and cooperation, were presented at the congress of the German Society for Aesthetics in February 2018 in a workshop entitled 'Law as an Object of Aesthetics'.

Further results and connections formed the basis for the interdisciplinary conference 'Rechtsästhetik als Ästhetik in rechtsphilosophischer Absicht', which was held in Magdeburg in March 2019.

The resulting findings are now being compiled in an anthology and linked to projects in the field. You can find the publication here:
Eva Schürmann and Levno von Plato (eds.), Rechtsästhetik in rechtsphilosophischer Absicht. Investigations into forms and perceptions of law, Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden, 2020.
https://www.nomos-shop.de/nomos/titel/rechtsaesthetik-in-rechtsphilosophischer-absicht-id-87772/

This will provide the basis for a clear formulation of the different core theses and directions of the field in order to enable systematic research cooperation across neighboring disciplines. For it is becoming increasingly apparent that the interdisciplinary approach to this topic very productively questions self-evident facts within disciplines. Philosophy, law, legal practice, political science, media studies, linguistics, art studies and other social sciences and humanities come together in this topic. In order to be able to make statements about law that are more than just theory, the obviously strongly divergent understandings of law, legal feeling, narrativity, genesis and validity or their media representations must be placed in relation to one another instead of merely formulating them in individual academic contexts. This insight will shape further research and interdisciplinary cooperation on legal aesthetics and give the field clear contours.
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The aim of the project of the Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Freiwilligenagenturen in Sachsen-Anhalt (LAGFA) e.V. is to support those active in the local authority setting in the field of action "Strengthening and activating civil society" with a focus on promoting health and physical activity. This means: (1) The exemplary development of a joint action concept for the development, motivation and recruitment of previously unreached target groups in municipalities and urban districts; (2) The development and testing phase in municipalities and urban districts to promote civic engagement with a focus on the promotion of physical activity and health in social spaces. As part of this project, the project work relates to the development of a curriculum for volunteers, participation in the advisory board and the implementation of the scientific evaluation.
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Fatigue is one of the most limiting symptoms in people with Multiple Sclerosis (pwMS) and can be subdivided into trait and state fatigue. Activity-induced state fatigue describes the temporary decline in motor and/or cognitive performance (motor and cognitive performance fatigability, respectively) and/or the increase in the perception of fatigue (perceived fatigability) in response to motor or cognitive tasks. So far, no gold standard exist to quantify performance fatigability in pwMS. Therefore, the aim of this project was to investigate performance together with perceived fatigability during walking under single- and dual-task conditions during 6-min walking tests performed overground and on a treadmill in pwMS and healthy controls. The primary outcomes included the change in spatio-temporal gait parameters, the hemodynamic response in the prefrontal cortex and perceived exhaustion.

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The core of the project is the step-by-step development of a practice-oriented workshop concept on "Racist and discriminatory language" for members of the Saxony-Anhalt state police force based on a needs assessment. In the first phase of the project, qualitative expert interviews are conducted, the content of which is systematized and analysed in order to align the theories and methodologies relevant to the workshops with the reality of the profession and the communication situations that take place there. The aim of the workshops is to raise participants' awareness of the impact of language and, on this basis, to sensitize them to the violent use of language. Raising awareness of anti-Semitic language as a particular form of racist speech also plays a central role.
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In the wake of digitalization and globalization, the world of work currently appears to be undergoing profound change, with talk of a 'fourth industrial revolution'. The changes affect all sectors: production, trade, services and even the cultural industry. Not only the nature, structure and organization of work itself are changing, but also lifestyles, the relationship between work and private life, spatial and temporal arrangements of working life, communication habits, social structures, health burdens caused by work, values regarding gainful employment and non-work and their cultural reflection. But is this fundamentally new? Or was it basically the same in the three previous 'industrial revolutions'? With homo laborans, it should come as no surprise if changes in the field of work are accompanied by changes in other areas of life. Can we prepare ourselves for such processes through education? Or can we at best reflect on and try to understand them?
In the summer semester of 2019, the interdisciplinary lecture series of the Faculty of Human Sciences brought together perspectives from the social sciences, education, history and cultural studies and supplemented them with expertise from economics, law and engineering. A selection of the contributions will be edited for publication in an anthology.
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The "Kinder in Bewegung mobil - KiB mobil" project aims to develop an early childhood exercise program for socially disadvantaged children in kindergartens in the city of Magdeburg and to implement it with qualified sports scientists on site in the kindergartens. The measures are therefore primarily aimed at Magdeburg kindergartens in socially disadvantaged catchment areas. The nursery school teachers involved will be trained in the course of implementing the measures and trained as multipliers to ensure the sustainability of the project work in the participating nursery schools. In the course of the project, cooperation between kindergartens and sports clubs will be established in order to implement cross-sport exercise programs for the exercise groups of 5-6 year old children in the sports clubs. The aim is to promote a longer-term commitment to physical activity in sports clubs.
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The "Family in Motion (FiB)" project is aimed at children aged 4-9 and their parents.
Calisthenics as a form of training is performed using only the child's own body weight and promotes mobility, flexibility and endurance in a playful way. The exercise courses for children and parents take place at the calisthenics facility at OVGU.
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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Most German universities have collections that bear witness to the history of knowledge and science and form the basis for innovative research findings in numerous disciplines. They are also used as illustrative objects for teaching content. The spectrum ranges from data, archives and libraries to technical and physical devices, mathematical and anatomical models, mechanical prototypes and psychological experimental apparatus, materials and natural objects, electrical machines and computer technology, as well as educational boards and maps, photographs and pictures, sculptures and buildings.
The 25th anniversary of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in 2018 offers the opportunity to reappraise the cultural history of these material relics from Magdeburg University of Technology, the University of Education and the Medical Academy and to make them available for research and teaching in the long term. Following an initiative by Magdeburg glass artist Reginald Richter, the head of the new Cultural Engineering course, Prof. Susanne Peters and Dr. Nora Pleßke, are planning a student "Custody Project OVGU" in cooperation with the Vice-Rectorate for Studies and Teaching. The aim of the Custody Project is to open up and process the university's cultural assets and make the results accessible to a non-scientific public.
Starting in the 2018/19 winter semester, students will work on interdisciplinary projects to open up the academic heritage of OVGU and their own subject. In the first year, students will be given an insight into the various tasks and topics involved in the development, processing and presentation of academic heritage and will focus on an overview of the university's material culture. In the second year of the project, the aim is to process the university's sub-collections, which are located in different subject areas, in order to tackle a specific inventory and digitization of the collections in the third year. This should lead to a gradual scientific, responsible and publicly effective processing of the university's heritage by the students. The collections can continue to create incentives to reflect on science and studies in university history and in turn be transferred into new teaching concepts or research questions. Ultimately, this student-run, informal curatorship can develop into a publicly visible unique selling point of the OVGU.
To this end, innovative teaching and learning concepts are being developed. In mini-workshops, external experts and OVGU lecturers will teach practical handling of material culture from various specialist and professional perspectives and can also be tested directly. The collection-related areas of work aligned with the two sub-projects mentioned above (including the work of a curatorial department, history of science and technology, collections and culture, provenance research, object biography, creative writing, exhibition technology, object photography, technology and aesthetics, architectural theory, museum practice, inventory, 3D digitization, etc.) are supplemented by research perspectives from the perspective of the OVGU.These are supplemented by the research perspectives of the disciplines represented at OVGU (e.g. librarianship and archives, things as media, historical auxiliary sciences, gender and things, philosophy of things, sociology of consumption, etc.). This methodological-practical insight is deepened by the object laboratory that takes place at the same time during the semester, in which students work scientifically and practically with selected objects from the university's academic collection. The object lab offers an exploration space in which students work independently in an interdisciplinary project team on the basis of the basic knowledge provided, accompanied by tutors in the role of project leaders, to work on a section of the university collection in a targeted manner. Here, students can go in search of clues themselves, work on specific objects from the OVGU collection in interdisciplinary teams in the object laboratory and present them to a larger academic and non-university public at the end.
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The Master's degree in sports teaching at the OVGU includes the course "Practical school exercises" with the corresponding sports didactics seminar and the course "In-depth aspects of physical education". In this part of the course, (alternative) teaching content, teaching methods and forms of teaching are prepared, applied and evaluated with the students. The topic of digital physical education is integrated into this part of the course by developing, testing and evaluating tools in the course "In-depth aspects of physical education", which are used in the practical school exercises.
Under the premise of a modern Master's education in physical education, particularly in connection with the subjects of technology and economics, students thus acquire the competence of reflection in addition to media application competence in relation to physical education, in order to be able to use them in particular for independent lesson planning and evaluation. Future teachers should be able to use these acquired skills for their teaching profession in order to educate pupils in the sense of educationally guided and contemporary physical education. The topic of digital physical education offers students the opportunity to acquire new and contemporary study content and didactic-methodical approaches and, within the framework of the self-directed learning model, students the opportunity to independently deepen and apply lesson content according to their interest in movement, knowledge and ability.
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From 21 to 24 September this year, a conference on Old Saxon history, language, literature and culture was held at the University of Magdeburg, organized by the Department of Early German Literature and Culture and funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. This interdisciplinary colloquium was not only the first conference ever on this topic, but also the first conference to be held in full attendance at the Faculty of Humanities after the long period of abstinence caused by coronavirus. An international group of more than 30 academics gathered in Magdeburg, with guests traveling from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and Japan.

The spectrum of lectures ranged from linguistic history, literary history and tradition-related aspects to overarching historical questions. Of course, special attention was also paid to the two core texts of Old Saxon, the 'Heliand' and the 'Genesis'. The complete conference program can be viewed here. It became clear during the lively and extremely stimulating discussions that there are a number of research desiderata in this field. The Older German Literature team would like to devote more attention to these in the near future. The publication of the conference proceedings is in preparation. They are expected to appear in 2023 as a supplementary volume to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (in print and open access).
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Environmental ethics is a relatively young field of applied ethics. In German-speaking countries, only a few philosophers are working in this field. In view of the undeniable relevance of the topic (environmental crisis, natural disasters, man-made climate change), the aim of the project was to write a readable, affordable and appropriate introduction to this field for several target groups (e.g. students, pupils). In July 2021, the Introduction to Environmental Ethics was published in Reclam's Universal Library.
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The aim of the project is the development and test-theoretical evaluation of a video-based, cognitive-motor test battery for the diagnosis of perception and anticipation skills in junior handball.
junior handball. The perception and anticipation of opponents' actions under complex pressure conditions (information acquisition and processing) is naturally of central importance in sports games - especially in handball - which is why these cognitive processes represent a worthwhile object of investigation. In contrast to previous studies, the focus of the research interest here is on recording the performance of field players under near-match test conditions (attack and defense). First, the quality (correctness) of anticipation as well as the temporal-dynamic course of the motor response (acyclic speed of movement) in relation to the visual stimulus is qualitatively and quantitatively recorded and tested for reliability in a laboratory experiment. For the practical transfer (ecological validity), an expert-novice comparison of the cognitive test data in connection with game performance indicators in real game situations (small-sided games) is planned (field experiment).
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The aim of this study is to examine the relationship of gait stability, motion control and specific cognitive functions in patients with neurological disorders (e. g. Multiple Sclerosis or Stroke) compared to unimpaired and age and gender-matched people. These interdependencies are particularly clear during walking with cognitive secondary task. A restricted so-called "dual-task capability" reduces the gait stability and increases logically the risk of falling. Therefore, we aim to identify some important and relevant gait and cognitive parameter in order to describe the transient response of various neurological pathologies on gait stability. The expected findings and derived insights will be used to design improved therapeutic approaches and to prevent falls.

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This project examines the use and development of the figure of the cyborg in science fiction films, with particular emphasis on the reflection of the relationship between man and technology.
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The aim of the project is the development and test-theoretical evaluation of a video-based, cognitive-motor test battery for the diagnosis of perception and anticipation skills in junior handball. The perception and anticipation of opponents' actions under complex pressure conditions (information reception and processing) is naturally of central importance in sports games - especially in handball - which is why these cognitive processes represent a worthwhile object of investigation. In contrast to previous studies, the focus of the research interest here is on recording the performance of field players under near-match test conditions (attack and defense). First, the quality (correctness) of anticipation as well as the temporal-dynamic course of the motor response (acyclic speed of movement) in relation to the visual stimulus is qualitatively and quantitatively recorded and tested for reliability in a laboratory experiment. For the practical transfer (ecological validity), an expert-novice comparison of the cognitive test data in connection with game performance indicators in real game situations (small-sided games) is planned (field experiment).
The benefits of the project are primarily seen in the area of training and cognitive science performance diagnostics in competitive sport. Existing diagnostic instruments - mainly sports motor fitness, technique and tactics tests - can in future be linked with the developed test procedures and thus expanded to include a further central dimension of the sports performance structure. This will enable an even more differentiated assessment of performance, e.g. of talented young athletes in assessment measures or process-related performance diagnostics in clubs. From a practical training perspective, the ultimate aim is to contribute to the targeted training and performance management of field players. In the future, the project experience and results will be used to extend the project to other sports.
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The project focuses on the representation of human-animal encounters in animal documentaries with particular attention to repercussions of classical (i.e. Aristotelian) drama. In animal documentaries, the man-animal divide is aesthetically reframed in the sense that constructed animal biographies, animal stories and encounters between humans and animals often follow a decidedly anthropological perspective, contrary to their alleged amibition and form the basis of commercial success.

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The project was funded until 31.12.2016 at the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz, as part of the academy program of the federal and state governments. Work on the RDW will continue after the end of the project funding. The editor and co-author of the dictionary is Professor of Slavic Linguistics at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg.

The RDW is designed for a total of 225,000 lemmas and will present the general vocabulary of the Russian contemporary language of the 20th century in a uniquely comprehensive way. A large proportion of Russian words and meanings are listed for the first time in a Russian-German general dictionary.
As a predominantly receptive dictionary for the German-speaking user, the RDW covers today's standard language lexis as well as non-standard vocabulary areas, knowledge of which is necessary for the original-language reception of Russian literature and journalism from the 19th century to the present day. It contains obsolete and outdated lexis as well as new terms and meanings from the last two decades. A selection of lexemes related to the region as well as words and meanings from the substandard are included, including jargon words and vulgarisms. A large number of technical terms that are also relevant for common language communication are included.

The dictionary will be published in individual volumes by Harrassowitz-Verlag. An online publication of the RDW is also planned, including the word sections A-O in the 2nd, completely revised and supplemented version.
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AG Emergency Psychology (Dr. Gaby Bußmann, Tanja Damaske, Klaus Egert, Dr. Kai Engbert, Markus Flemming, Sphie Petzold, Dr. Kathrin Staufenbiel and Dr. Christine Stucke) is a non-profit project in cooperation with the DOSB (Dr. Julia Franke) dealing with the professional action of sports psychologists and sports psychology experts in emergency situations in the context of sport.
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There is a wealth of literature on the relationship between physical activity and child development. Based on a developmental and learning theory approach, the present study illustrates that the relationship between physical activity and personality development is much more complicated than is often assumed. The study is a combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies with an explorative character. It began in 2006 and is now being continued in Part II of the project. All 3-6 year old gymnasts of the SC Magdeburg are examined once a year. The status of gross and fine motor, emotional and cognitive development is recorded.
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The Magdeburg writer Oskar Schönberg (1892-1971) published numerous poems and short stories (including for children) in regional magazines and anthologies during the Weimar Republic and in the GDR. However, several novels remained unpublished, which can be found in his estate in the archive of the Literaturhaus Magdeburg. Of these, the novel "Das unsterbliche Luderleben" (The Immortal Slut's Life), which Schönberg had probably already begun in the early 1930s and completed a first version of, but was unable to publish during the Nazi era, is worth reading for a wide audience. Rehabilitated after the war as a persecutee of the Nazi regime and a member of the writers' association of the GDR, Schönberg revised and expanded the novel in the socialist spirit under the title "Ich bin einer von Vielen" (I am one of many) and organized public readings from it in Magdeburg; a publication, which he tried to obtain from the publishing house Volk und Welt in the 1950s, could not be realized, however.
In the few publications on Schönberg, "Das unsterbliche Luderleben" is sometimes referred to as an "unemployment novel"; however, the text differs significantly from the many unemployment stories of the late 1920s and early 1930s (e.g. Leonhard Frank's "Von drei Millionen drei"). The most important difference is that Schönberg's protagonist is unemployed most of the time not because he cannot find work, but because he finds a life as a tippler on the country road more appealing than regular employment in a company. In this respect, Schönberg's novel touches on the vagabond literature of the early 20th century and, with its theme of refusing to work, is also relevant to the 21st century.
A reading edition of the early version with the title "Das unsterbliche Luderleben" is planned. An afterword is planned in which the novel will be contextualized more precisely in terms of literary history and, on the basis of relevant archive material, some still unknown biographical information on Oskar Schönberg and his literary ambitions under the changing political conditions of German history will be compiled, which may be symptomatic in some respects.
This projected reader's edition was published in November 2020 (with the year of publication 2021 already printed) by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle. Exact bibliographical reference: Oskar Schönberg: Das unsterbliche Luderleben. Novel. Edited from the estate with an afterword by Thorsten Unger. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2021.
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The aim of the project is to characterize introspection in such a way that it can be captured with the means of Signal Detection Theory. Since the instruments of SDT have been successful in both psychology and psychophysics, the project promises to revive the disfavored method of introspection fruitfully and within well-defined limits.
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Humanitarian interventions are justified with reference to the safeguarding of human rights. Even with this reference in mind, some authors consider humanitarian interventions to be categorically morally wrong, while other authors determine humanitarian interventions to be morally right under certain conditions. The research project will examine whether or not the justification of humanitarian interventions with reference to the safeguarding of human rights is well-founded.
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The way the world appears to us in our perception raises the question: How precise is this appearance? Is there indeterminacy in experience? Or is there indeterminacy only in our beliefs about experience? The project attempts to clarify these questions and identify possible answers
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The mass expansion of gymnastics and sport corresponded with the heyday of German urban history between 1870 and 1920, when the burgher community had finally expanded into a resident community. It was during this period that local self-government reached its highest political power and today's urban infrastructure began to develop. The town developed into a multifunctional service center with a public administration that increasingly served the needs of its inhabitants. For health, regulatory and state policy reasons, gymnastics and sport also increasingly became the focus of urban administrative activity.
Modern sport "as an urban form of behavior" (Nielsen 2002) became an integral part of municipal service administration in Magdeburg after 1918, when a mixed commission called the "Municipal Committee for Physical Exercise" was constituted in the fall of 1919 to promote municipal sport. With the expansion of this commission into a separate administrative office with its own budget, the "City Office for Physical Exercise", a modern sports administration was created in the Prussian metropolis on the Elbe by 1923/25.
Why was a comprehensive sports administration established in Magdeburg after the First World War? What were the consequences of the four years of war and the political upheavals of 1918/19? Did local political influences play a role in this and in the emergence of sport as a new form of activity in general? Or was this process linked to the overwhelming influence of local and supra-local associations and interest groups in physical education? What cultural attributions of meaning to gymnastics and sport were associated with this organizational-historical process?
In the research results presented, the prehistory and the causes of the emergence of a municipal service administration in the areas of gymnastics and sport are addressed and placed and evaluated in the context of previously gained knowledge about the history of the city and sport in Germany, whereby practical sporting and cultural changes are also addressed.

Literature
Nielsen, S. (2002). Sport and the big city 1870 to 1930. Comparative studies on the emergence of bourgeois leisure culture Frankfurt am Main [et al:] Lang.
Thomas, M. (2017). German gymnastics and sports clubs on the "home front" of the First World War (1914-1918). In A. Burkhardt & T. Unger (Eds.), The First World War. Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 103-124). Hanover: Wehrhahn.
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The aim of this research project is to summarize and update the results of my many years of work on the ethical problems of suicide, direct active euthanasia and assisted suicide. This involves reviewing and evaluating the more recent literature, in particular the publications that appeared in the run-up to the adoption of the new § 217 StGB and afterwards. In addition, the relatively recent debate on the ethical assessment of fasting to death, which I have not yet addressed in earlier publications, should be taken into account.
The results of the project will be reflected in two publications. mentis-Verlag will publish a monograph with the working title Das Leben beenden. Is it morally permissible to kill oneself? will be published. An anthology on the subject of euthanasia and assisted suicide is also planned, which will bring together the most important contributions to the discussion since 1970.
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In the handbook chapter (approx. 80 ms.), the state of research, sources and the lines of development of competitions, physical exercises and movement games from the end of late antiquity to the end of the 18th century are discussed and summarized.
The chapter is currently being edited.
Abstract
Until the 6th/7th century, the ancient competition system (spectacula) continued in a secularized form. After its disappearance, a new "sport culture" developed in the High Middle Ages, which was characterized by the separation of estates, a regional character, a high level of violence and male dominance. From the 14th century and in the transition to the Renaissance, the first post-antique sports facilities emerged. From the 15th century onwards, sporting exercise behaviour began to be civilized among the aristocratic and urban elites. Between 1550 and 1700, popular games and competitions with an affinity for strength and violence were pushed back under the pressure of confessionalization and modern state formation. The so-called knightly retreats were unable to have a broad impact due to their exclusivity to the estates. In the course of the 18th century, a cross-class sport for educated and wealthy citizens and aristocrats emerged, first in England, which was popular as entertainment for all classes of the population and possessed traits of modernity.
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The "Magdeburg Holiday Camp (MA-C)" project involves the development, implementation and evaluation of an exercise program for primary school children in Magdeburg during the winter vacations, summer vacations and autumn vacations in 2019. The MA-C project promotes equal health opportunities for children of primary school age and builds up health resources. The exercise program is based on the premise of health education and, in addition to exercise intervention, also includes measures to develop health and social skills. The physical activity program takes place in the after-school clubs of the participating elementary school, primarily in socially disadvantaged catchment areas in the city of Magdeburg. The educators working in the after-school care centers are trained in the areas of exercise and health in advance in order to consolidate the exercise program. The project will run for 13 months. The project will start on 01.12.2018. The two-week vacation camp in the 2019 summer vacations will take place between 04.07.2019 and 14.08.2019 after consultation with the after-school care centers that have expressed an interest. The one-week vacation camps in the winter vacations will be held from 11.02.2019 to 15.02.2019 (winter vacations) and from 07.10 to 11.10.2019 (autumn vacations) in the after-school clubs.
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Developing online educational courses for athletes and coaches;

In order to acquaint athletes and coaches with the new technologies the project foresees developing of online courses. All the coaches and athletes should be able to attend the courses independently from space and time. A team of professors and scientists will develop the courses content. Then participating institutions will organize target groups in each participating country to attend the online courses.

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The "Magdeburg Holiday Camp (MA-C)" project involves the development, implementation and evaluation of an exercise program for primary school children in Magdeburg during the 2019 Easter, summer and autumn vacations. The MA-C project promotes equal health opportunities for children of primary school age and builds up health resources. The exercise program is based on the premise of health education and, in addition to exercise intervention, also includes measures to develop health and social skills. The physical activity program takes place in the after-school clubs of the participating elementary school, primarily in socially disadvantaged catchment areas in the city of Magdeburg. The educators working in the after-school care centers are trained in the areas of exercise and health in advance in order to consolidate the exercise program. The project will run for 13 months. The project will start on 01.12.2018. The two-week vacation camp in the 2019 summer vacations will take place between 04.07.2019 and 14.08.2019 after consultation with the after-school care centers that have expressed an interest. The one-week vacation camps during the Easter vacations will be held from 24.04.2019 to 30.04.2019 and from 07.10 to 11.10.2019 (autumn vacations) in the after-school clubs.
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Magdeburg University Library now houses around 1,800 different book series from the Ute and Wolfram Neumann Foundation; around 300 of these series were published during the Nazi era and especially during the Second World War. A selection of around 40 of these series was examined in more detail and shown in an exhibition at Magdeburg University Library from September 16 to November 15, 2019. An accompanying catalog was published. The catalog and exhibition were developed together with a student project group from the German studies courses at the University of Magdeburg.
A large proportion of the series included are so-called "Feldpostreihen", a special type of series that was already occasionally encountered during the First World War, but was politically promoted during the Second World War and published by many publishers. Many such series have not yet been the focus of research. The catalog and exhibition describe the profiles of the series. It examines which fictional compilations can be found in the series under the ideological conditions of the Nazi dictatorship. What was sent to the fronts alongside the expected blood-and-soil literature? Are there still translations of literature from the "enemy countries"? Are Jewish authors represented? Are there any series that can be characterized as "moderate" or even in tension with fascist ideology?
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A technical system is to be developed that enables objective observation of teachers in the classroom and makes the corresponding evaluations fully automated by means of markings, annotations and notes available together with a video recording immediately after the end of the lesson.

For this purpose, a scouting suit with integrated inertial sensors and an integrated microphone is to be developed, which the teacher wears. A video recording of the teacher and the teaching situation will also be made. Based on the data recorded by the inertial sensors and the microphone, typical action characteristics are to be recognized, categorized and evaluated fully automatically by means of pattern recognition. Furthermore, a server platform for secure playback, storage and encryption of the data is being developed.
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Between 2017 and 2019, Dr. Daniela RIngkamp and Dr. Christoph Sebastian Widdau (Chair of Practical Philosophy at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg) continued the tradition of the Magdeburg Centre for Human Rights. Several lecture series and individual lectures were organized and held. Two anthologies were published in the series of publications of the Human Rights Center published by Logos: Menschenrechte im Konflikt. Kulturkampf, Meinungsfreiheit, Terrorismus (2018) and Philosophie der Menschenrechte. Foundations, validity, criticism (2019).
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Explainable AI is dedicated to solving the so-called Black Box Problem in AI: the problem that arises because the computing systems developed for artificial intelligence are increasingly opaque. Although such systems may be capable of solving many complex problems in AI, it is often unclear why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable AI is dedicated to solving the Black Box Problem by rendering such opaque systems transparent. But how should Explainable AI explain? What are the explanatory norms that should be satisfied by current XAI methods?

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During their Master's degree course, student teachers complete practical training in schools, during which they gain teaching experience for their future careers. The practical school training is prepared, accompanied and evaluated by staff in subject didactics and general didactics. In this context, video recordings and observation protocols are created, which are discussed following the respective teaching unit. It is hardly possible for the students to continue their own examination of the lessons on the basis of the video recordings and observation protocols, as these are no longer available. This deficit is to be remedied with the creation of a digital observation platform in order to increase the quality of practical school training in the teacher training courses.
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In collaboration with the "Pain and Suffering Interdisciplinary Project" (Université du Luxembourg). The PSIP is an ongoing project led by Dr. Smadar Bustan at the Université du Luxembourg. It brings together researchers from different disciplines to better understand the relationship between pain and suffering. My contribution is (a) to critically examine and improve the medical definition of pain against the IASP standard and (b) to improve standards of pain attributions, i.e. pain measurements based on objective and subjective criteria, pain attributions in animals and preterm infants based on non-linguistic data, and to propose conditions for when we are justified in disagreeing with a person's self-attribution.
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fast care is developing a real-time sensor data analysis framework for intelligent assistance systems in the areas of ambient assisted living, eHealth, mHealth, tele-rehab and tele-care. The aim is to provide a medically valid, integrated real-time situation picture based on a distributed, ad-hoc networked, energy-efficient sensor infrastructure suitable for everyday use with a latency time of less than 10 ms. The integrated situational picture, which includes physiological, cognitive and kinematic information of the patient, is generated by the intelligent fusion of sensor data. It can serve as a basis for the rapid detection of risks and dangerous situations as well as for medical assistance systems suitable for everyday use, which intervene autonomously in real time and enable active telemedical feedback for the first time.
To ensure adequate medical and therapeutic care, particularly in structurally weak and rural regions, an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to home care is being implemented as part of the fast care sub-project Reha. The aim is to develop and implement a concept that enables patient-related care in the areas of diagnosis, monitoring, therapy and exercise in the rehabilitation sector.
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Current machine learning methods have contributed to the development of revolutionary technologies in the recent past. But what are its philosophical consequences? To what extent should we assume that machine learning will lead to machine intelligence? This project addresses the fundamental question of artificial intelligence–can machines think–in the light of current technologies such as deep learning in artificial neural networks.
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Postural control differs between young and elderly and elderly face a higher risk of falls. Thus, balance training is recommended as a countermeasure. However, in addition to deficits in postural control, evidence suggests slower and/or different learning processes in old age. In young subjects, neural plasticity in cortical structures (e.g. M1, SMA) was observed after learning balance tasks for 4 to 6 weeks. Subjects displayed also improved performance not only in the explicitly trained exercises but also in transfer balance tasks. In contrast, neural and behavioral adaptations seem to occur slower and may even involve different brain areas in the elderly. The current study therefore compares long-term learning of balance tasks with respect to behavioural, structural and functional brain adaptations between young and old subjects. Electrophysiological and imaging methods are used to determine adaptations after 2 and 6 months a) at rest (white and grey matter microstructure with quantitative MRI; qMRI), b) during mental simulation of balance tasks (fMRI, TMS) and c) during actual execution of balance tasks (TMS, NIRS). Positive transfer effects on learning and performance of novel postural tasks are tested after the 6 months training.

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As part of an experiential educational intervention, the change in need satisfaction and need frustration is recorded. The intervention takes the form of a ski camp. The ski instructors use different concepts to teach the ski lessons. It is examined whether different teaching concepts influence the satisfaction of needs.
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As part of an experiential educational intervention, the change in group cohesion of school classes is assessed. The intervention is linked to the implementation of a school ski camp. The intervention is checked by means of a pre-post test.
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Classically, Darwinian theses are associated with political ideologies that tend to be categorized as right-wing. A number of philosophical authors have attempted to undermine this clear attribution of Darwinism as the naturalistic underpinning of a right-wing political social utopia by modeling the conditions for the evolutionary stability of behavior that is more likely to be associated with a left-wing ideology. This makes it possible to formulate a Darwinian left (Singer 1999) that can detach itself from the historical-materialist conception of man in order to be compatible with a naturalistic conception of man - but which differs in its utopia from classical left positions.
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We assume that some organisms are capable of suffering and others are not. The project examines the ability to suffer from the perspective of the philosophy of mind, phenomenology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory. A particular focus is on the connection between pain and suffering.
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This concept describes the development of an assistance system which preserves/improves the user s walking ability using companion technology. Relevant individual indicators of movement and emotion and disposition patterns will be collected and identified. Subsequently, the fusion of classified data creates the user profile which incorporates sensorimotor and affective demands during closed loop interactions between user and assistance system. The user profile represents the basis for individual system interventions. It allows for planning systematic, individual and adaptive instructions for regular and controlled gait exercises. The objective is to originate a system which adjusts its support upon individual needs of the user.

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Biomechanical real-time performance diagnostics in recreational and elite sports for the movement-controlled self-training process and for broadcasting with special attention to fast actuator and sensor technology.Trend and individual sports develop individual movement skills in both a playful, fun-oriented and performance-oriented way. Sensor-based communication systems in the home (games consoles) involve the athlete directly in the action via the sensory recording of their movements. In the near future, smartphones coupled with head-mounted displays will offer excellent opportunities to carry out a movement-controlled self-training process for many outdoor sports. The BYOD(Bring Your Own Device) trend will be transferred to elite sport. Qualitative differences will lie in the rapid interpretation of data and integrated feedback from the trainer. As a result, potential for improvement and training deficits as well as possible stress limits or health risks of an athlete can be identified online. In order to evaluate the quality of the technical execution of a sporting movement, biomechanical performance diagnostics must record body and movement data using sensors, interpret it and report it back to the athlete in a simple, real-time and synchronized form. The increasing interest in movement and vital parameters also has an impact on the presentation of sports competitions. The spectator's expectations, based on their personal experience in the interpretation of vital and movement data, require a near-real-time presentation of the sporting competition in the broadcast on a wide variety of media, e.g. on the scoreboard in the stadium, the smartphone on the sports track or the screen at home.
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The aim of the project is to provide a moral-philosophical analysis of selected concepts of dementia ethics, taking into account central philosophical and psychological positions in dementia research, and to develop the foundations of an ethics of dementia that can do equal justice to the complexity of the concepts and the situation of those affected. In particular, the aspects of personality and the autonomy of dementia patients provide a basis for an investigation that clarifies the connections between conceptual and applied problems of dementia ethics. For example, studies on the personal status of dementia patients have a direct impact on the basic principles of patient autonomy, while at the same time the diminishing but still existing abilities to articulate preferences and options for action allow conclusions to be drawn about the personal characteristics of dementia patients. By analyzing this area of tension between fundamental and applied problems, the conceptual and practical content of a position is to be outlined that places the abilities of dementia patients in the foreground and, beyond aspects of care, identifies central elements of an ethics of dementia.
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The use of biofeedback methods is being designed and evaluated as part of the care of squad athletes at the Saxony-Anhalt Olympic Training Center (Magdeburg site). The focus is on the use of so-called HEG neurofeedback (hemoencephalography). The aim is to analyze correlations between HEG measurement data and concentration performance before and during athletic movements in order to develop appropriate training programs for athletes.
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A philosophical investigation of the norms of model-development, model-integration and model-selection in cognitive and computational neuroscience. International collaboration between researchers in Magdeburg, Witten, and Warsaw.

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Introspection has been rejected as a method in psychology and related sciences since the beginning of the 20th century in favor of physiological and behavioral data. This seems to be changing due to the emerging consciousness sciences. However, there are some methodological problems (calibration, reliability, etc.) and some fundamental doubts (objectivity of science) that speak against introspection as a scientific method.
The desideratum of the project is to defend the use of introspective reports as a scientific and diagnostic fact, and to provide suggestions for improving their use, as well as to provide a scientifically tractable picture of the introspection mechanism that allows its exploration and use.
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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Scouting is a widely used tool in competitive sport to provide athletes with timely feedback on their actions via video feedback. In the Scouting in Physical Education project, a tool is being developed that can be used in teacher training and further education. The aim is to create a system that offers video recording, free configuration of the observation focus, live tagging and an evaluation module. The end product is a compact system in tablet form that enables direct video-based evaluation of teaching units.
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Alxatib & Pelletier (2011) presented an empirical study to clarify which philosophical theory of vagueness underlies our processing of vague predicates such as "big", "red", "flat", etc.. However, this study did not adequately address one theory of vagueness, the epistemic theory of vagueness (Williamson 1992, 1996), because it did not adequately distinguish between conscious and unconscious ignorance. We attempt to eliminate this flaw by modifying the original study.
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In classical studies on factors influencing the effect of optical illusions, it is mainly external factors (properties of the stimulus) or neuronal factors (e.g. size of the processing areas) that are considered. We would like to investigate the extent to which factors that are under the control of the subject have an effect on the size of optical illusions. One possible point here is gaze strategies. The focus of the study is the Müller-Lyer illusion.
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The development of students' teaching skills is the focus of practical training in schools. The aim of the project is to design qualitative and quantitative methods to record the development of skills in physical education. Particular emphasis is placed on the interactions between teachers and students. Audiovisual recordings will be used as a measurement tool within the framework of empirical school sports research. The following questions will be addressed:
What evaluation criteria are there for successful pupil-teacher interaction in PE lessons?
What methods can be used in PE lessons to assess student-teacher interaction?
What are the consequences of the results for physical education and the training of physical education teachers?
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Individual cognitive speed performance is playing an increasingly important role in modern top-level team sports (including soccer, handball and volleyball), as it gives fast players a decisive advantage in solving complex game situations under sometimes considerable physical and psychological pressure (time, complexity, precision, situation pressure). The player with the ball must orientate himself in space and control the playing equipment, constantly analyzing the situation - concerning teammates and opponents - on the basis of differentiated perception processes in order to adapt his own motor action in a timely and appropriate manner. The player's own behavior and that of the opponent must be constantly anticipated at ever shorter intervals.
The players must meet these high mental and physical demands over the entire duration of the game and with as consistently high a quality as possible.
Performance reserves in team sports are therefore seen in particular in an improvement in individual speed of action. However, training methodological measures are currently limited to game-related training exercises, which are of value for the targeted promotion of complex performance, but are unsuitable for exploiting individual performance reserves through specific diagnostics and training measures derived from them. Apparative applications (e.g. SpeedCourt®) could close this gap and play a key role in performance development and optimization. However, this requires a scientific foundation and expansion of existing apparative systems through interdisciplinary research cooperation at the intersection of sports and cognitive neuroscience. Linking (a)cyclical speed performance with cognitive-psychological findings from decision research would appear to be suitable here. The basis of the expected cognitive performance improvement is the plasticity of the brain due to training stimuli (Taubert, Villringer, & Ragert, 2012).
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Sustainable physical activity also depends on whether inner resources are activated, which in turn is partly determined by the extent to which autonomy is experienced. Teachers promote their pupils' experience of autonomy, for example, by offering choices in PE lessons. Based on the self-determination theory, the project will develop a sports pedagogical concept and its didactic and methodological implementation, and investigate its effects on the pupils. In the first phase of the project, a pilot study will be conducted in which the implementation of the concept and the use of the corresponding measuring instruments will be tested. In a second phase of the project, the autonomy-promoting lessons will be implemented by trained teachers and their effectiveness will be tested with regard to changes in the pupils' experience of autonomy and their motivation for sport.
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The project is based on the "KinderInBewegung" children's sports program offered by Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and USC Magdeburg. It is based on a psychomotor exercise concept that has been further developed through a freely available sports program in other cities. Major sporting events are used to act as multipliers.
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A sports concept has been developed under the motto "from top sporting event to multi-perspective sporting activity", which combines high-performance sporting events (Smart Beach Volleyball Tour) with grassroots and children's sporting events. Around 1,500 active participants took part in the sporting events.
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The institution of boarding schools has become established in Germany as part of the development of top young athletes. State and federal bases use the boarding schools to introduce young people to competitive sport. The aim is to develop sports personalities with squad status. The satisfaction of athletes and coaches at sports boarding schools is to be recorded in the project across all federal states. Initial results are already available from the pilot study with the Magdeburg boarding school.
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As part of the project, sports psychology support and advice is provided to athletes at the Magdeburg Olympic Training Center during training and competitions. Appropriate sports psychology diagnostics are regularly carried out with the athletes.
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Patients with knee or hip arthrosis show suffer from increased fall risk. We show the association between cortical activity and diminished gait stability in daily life walking conditions, which correlates with increased risk of falling, measuring 1) brain activity with the aid of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and 2) gait kinematics in patients prior to and after knee and hip replacement. From the expected results, we aim to deduce intervention strategies to enhance the effectiveness of fall prevention programs.

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The lecture series in the summer semester 2014 will take a multi-perspective, interdisciplinary look at the First World War in thirteen lectures. Relevant aspects of military history, medical history, legal history, the history of philosophy, political science, media education, Slavic studies, American studies, English studies and German linguistics and literary studies will be presented. Some of the contributions will subsequently be published in an anthology, which will appear in the course of 2016.
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In numerous contexts such as competitive, health, leisure, school and rehabilitation sports, skills are constantly being relearned, stabilized and perfected. In addition, most of these fields of application require a high degree of time economy and efficiency in the learning process. Consequently, considerable research efforts are devoted to the investigation of motor learning processes and the possibilities of influencing them. Although endurance interventions are regarded as a promising intervention strategy to create favorable conditions in the brain for future motor learning processes, there are currently hardly any studies on this topic.
The project addresses this lack of knowledge and aims to contribute to the questions of whether and via which mechanisms endurance interventions influence motor learning processes. To achieve the objective, a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study will be used in a complementary manner. In both studies, an established task for recording motor learning processes (stabilometer) and non-invasive methods of structural magnetic resonance imaging of the brain (T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted MRI) are used as the main methods.
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Variations in human brain anatomy are typically seen in morphometric features of the cortex and sub-cortical brain structures (cortical volume/surface, thickness and shape, gyrification and asymmetry) estimated from in-vivo magnetic resonance images (MRI). These morphometric indices correlate with behavioral traits (e.g. impulsivity, handedness) as well as neuropathological/-physiological processes (e.g. neurodegeneration). Measures of local morphometry derived from classical T1-weighted MR images (cortical thickness and regional grey matter volume) strongly depend on image contrast. The image contrast in T1-weighted MRI scans reflects macroscopic morphology of cortical and subcortical brain structures but also the local concentration of contrast-dominating tissue properties such as macromolecular (myelin) and iron content. More specifically, multiple tissue properties may interact on local image contrast complicating grey-white matter boundary estimation (Lorio et al., 2014). This is in particular the case for subcortical brain regions with large amounts of iron (Langkammer et al., 2010), potentiated by further iron accumulation during aging (Draganski et al., 2011). Consequently, the sensitivity of brain morphometric indices derived from classical T1-weighted images is a function of the differential microstructural tissue composition of brain regions of interest as well as the hypothesized effects of the phenomenon of interest (e.g. aging) on these particular tissue properties. One possibility to improve the sensitivity of image contrast and hence morphometric estimations is to use MR image sequences with a skewd weighting towards particular tissue properties, thereby reducing the number of potential biological composites interacting on local image contrast. Magnetization transfer (MT) imaging has been shown previously to provide improved image contrast in subcortical brain regions with measurable impact on the estimation of morphometric measures of grey matter volume (GMV) (Lorio et al., 2014). Indeed, MT-based estimations of local GMV, especially in basal ganglia, are more sensitive to age-related changes (Lorio et al., 2016).
Changes in local brain tissue properties across the lifespan were documented in the literature (Callaghan et al., 2014, Acosta-Carboneiro et al., 2015, Draganski et al., 2011, Lorio et al., 2016) but the heterogeneous age distributions across and within these studies (skewed or bimodal age distributions) along with the well-known non-linear trajectories of structural and functional changes across development/aging (Fjell et al., 2014) prohibit a comprehensive view on age-related morphometric and microstructural changes. Our project thereby investigates linear and non-linear age-related associations in MT-based GMV maps as well as in multi-parameter maps of local tissue properties in healthy elderly subjects.

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Popularization of analytic topics in German through publicly accessible short films; interviews with German-speaking analytic philosophers. The aim is to anchor analytic philosophy, its topics, basic problems and methodology in the public sphere. The Society for Analytic Philosophy is sponsoring this pilot project at OVGU. The project culminates in a publicly accessible YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_aLL4PpetWJ-osKo3KUhqg
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The aim of the project is to design and implement a model for school health management. A needs analysis system is first used to determine the need for health-promoting measures among pupils and teachers in order to develop, implement and evaluate measures for the individual schools. The packages of measures developed relate to the areas of exercise, nutrition, communication, conflict management and stress in everyday school life.
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David Marr's explanatory model, which distinguishes between the computational, algorithmic and implementation levels, is and remains the most cited explanatory model in cognitive science. However, it is unclear how this explanatory model differs from those discussed in philosophy of science. The aim of this research project is to compare Marr's explanatory model with the principles of mechanistic explanation as applied primarily in biology and neuroscience.
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The research project deals with the question of the (appropriate) forms of representation of philosophy in the field of the oral. The focus is also on public forms of philosophizing and on border crossings of philosophy at the interface to the arts and to multimedia formats.
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The public event series at Forum Gestaltung Magdeburg, where philosophy and art meet in an experimental way: in live philosophical performances and in various discussion formats, such as the Club of Dead Philosophers, where living philosophers slip into the role of famous dead philosophers to discuss philosophical questions with each other and with the audience. The series is a cooperation between Forum Gestaltung, the Institute of Philosophy / Chair of Cultural Philosophy at Otto von Guericke University and the Expedition Philosophie e.V. association.
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This research project deals with the question of what a measurement theory of propositional attitudes is and whether such a theory is within reach. Ultimately, the aim is to answer the question of what conclusions can be drawn from attributions of propositional attitudes to the structure of mental phenomena. The central idea, which already appears in authors such as Field, Churchland and Davidson, refers to the semantic structure of attributions of propositional attitudes. Instead of understanding sentences of the form S believes that p in such a way that a subject S stands as in the believes that relation to the proposition p, the possibility is considered that believes that p functions like a predicate. This idea is made plausible by the fact that there are ways of speaking in which a superficially relational structure is used to ascribe a non-relational property, namely measurement statements such as The bag weighs 5 kg . Measurement statements do not say that an object is in a weight-kg relation to 5, for example. Numbers can be used to identify measured properties of objects because their relative position to other numbers on the scale used corresponds to the position of the object with respect to the measured property relative to other objects. Measurement representations of properties are holistic. In the case of ordinary measurements, the measured values derive their significance from the existing structural relationship between the measured property and the scale used. This structural similarity can be made explicit within the framework of a measurement theory. The measurement theory describes the homomorphism that exists between the object domain and the scale, so that it is clear which conclusions can be drawn from measurement statements on the object domain. If one really understands attributions of propositional ascriptions as measurements and wants to use them to draw conclusions about the object domain, i.e. the mental itself, one seems to have to formulate such a measurement theory. Otherwise, the thesis remains that attributions of propositional attitudes are merely an analogy, and it remains unclear whether and what conclusions can be drawn about the structure of the mental. More recently, Robert Matthews has presented an outline of such a measurement theory of propositional attitudes, which has, however, been heavily criticized. The first step is to assess whether the criticism is valid. Then it is necessary to formulate the conditions that must be fulfilled for the formulation of a genuine measurement theory of propositional attitudes. If it turns out that such a theory is not within reach, it would have to be clarified what function (semantic, explanatory, heuristic or normative) attributions of propositional attitudes have in order to be able to clarify whether they can be used to determine the structure of mental phenomena.
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Findings from a study carried out as part of the "Volley-kids gesund und clever" project by the Saxony-Anhalt Volleyball Association and Magdeburg elementary school show that although the cooperation between schools and sports clubs is successful in promoting targeted physical activity at school, the transition to the sports club is difficult. Based on these findings, the project aims to develop the structure of a Magdeburg ball school. The Magdeburg Ball School gives children of primary school age the opportunity to acquire both cross-sport and sport-specific skills in order to facilitate the transition from school sport to club sport and thus also enable the targeted promotion of young talent in sports clubs.
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Numerous studies indicate that physical activity decreases as children and young people get older. The KiB (Children in Motion) project aims to develop, implement and evaluate a new sports education approach to promote physical activity in children aged 2-6 years in order to create favorable conditions for long-term physical activity at this age.
The content of the project work relates to two aspects that are of particular importance for promoting physical activity in early childhood. (1) By engaging with modern and newly developed sports and play equipment and materials such as Imagination Playground, the participating children will initiate creative movement landscapes and acquire a variety of movement experiences as well as movement-specific and social skills. (2) In relation to these modern sports and play equipment and materials, a new didactic and methodological concept will be developed as part of the project that focuses on the promotion of self-determination and autonomy in addition to the psychomotor approach, as these factors are of great importance for movement activity at school age and beyond. The concept will be scientifically evaluated within the project with regard to the movement development of the participating children. During the project, the age groups of 2-3 year olds, 4 year olds and 5-6 year old girls and boys are considered in a differentiated manner.
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Network neuroscience deals with network structures at several levels of the brain and attempts to explain cognitive phenomena by representing and modeling these structures. What explanatory models are used here? Do these differ from the explanatory patterns used in molecular and cognitive neuroscience, for example?
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Between 2013 and 2017 (volumes 22 to 26), Dr. Christoph Sebastian Widdau served alongside Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Geier, Dr. Thomas Bitterlich and PD Dr. Jörn Knobloch on behalf of the Gesellschaft für Kultursoziologie Leipzig as co-editor of the journal Kultursoziologie, which was last published by the Potsdam-based academic publisher WeltTrends.
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International conference at the University of Torun, Poland, from 1-5.10.2014, conceived and organized in cooperation with Dr. habil. Malgorzata Klentak-Zablocka (Torun) and Dr. habil. Maria Gierlak (Torun).
A conference volume will be published in 2016, edited by Maria Gierlak, Malgorzata Klentak-Zablocka and Thorsten Unger.

The outbreak of the First World War at the beginning of August 1914 is regarded in historiography as the end of the so-called long 19th century and the beginning of a new era of global armed conflicts and totalitarianism, but paradoxically also a heyday of democratic development in the West. Overshadowed by the horrors that Europe became the scene of in the years 1939-1945, the experience of the First World War receded into the background of public memory in Poland and Germany in the second half of the 20th century - for contemporaries, however, it was a shocking experience.
It should not be forgotten that it was precisely in Central and Eastern Europe that the war caused the greatest upheaval. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the German Empire, the Tsarist Empire and the Ottoman Empire led to a complete change in the political map. In addition to the war of position in the west, a large part of the military operations took place on the territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian First Republic. Part of the specific local experience of the nations living here was that they were often caught between the fronts or forced to maneuver and, not least, were drafted as soldiers into the enemy forces.

The conference will pay particular attention to the regional aspects of the First World War and the confrontation with it. It will focus on the role of different regions of Europe as theaters of the war as well as the specific regional aspects in public and private memory. To what extent is the First World War part of the history and culture of memory of Torun/Thorn, East Prussia, Pomerelia, Galicia, Lithuania, Greater Poland, but also of certain regions of France (Alsace, Lorraine), the Balkans, Russia or other countries? Which textualizations and medializations of the war are available (documents, memoirs, fiction, poetry, photographs (e.g. field postcards), historiography) and to what extent do they express the regional perspective? What was/is specific to a particular region in the perception of the war or as part of the culture of remembrance? What differences are expressed between different regions or between Eastern and Western Europe?
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Carrying out a sports psychology assessment as commissioned by the LVSA as part of the aptitude test for admission to an elite sports school in Saxony-Anhalt (Halle or Magdeburg) from grade 5 onwards. The project work includes the following tasks: Development / provision of the questionnaires, conducting the survey, evaluation and interpretation of the results and advising the LVSA.
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The main objective of the project is to create a network of contacts between faculties /departments/institutes of the universities in the five countries that border Poland and three Polish universities whose mission is to promote physical activity for Participants, including citizens of Warsaw, in the context of personal, social and professional development.

This will result in an original program of the European Week of Sport 2016. The main objective of the cooperation between the universities, on status as participants, involved in the project will be to plan and organize the Mini Recreation Olympic (RecreaOlympic) which will promote traditional games and recreational activities associated with the cultural heritage of the countries participating in the project. The RecreaOlympic will be a new method and a form of encouraging students and local people to take on physical activity in a fun way. The project will be summarized during a scientific conference. Materials from the conference will be published as the author's monograph.

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An academic conference is being planned for June 20-22, 2013 in Magdeburg on the subject of Work and Idleness in Romanticism as well as the subsequent publication of an anthology on this topic.
The period from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century is of extraordinary relevance for the development of the modern concept of work in Europe and America. Romanticism proves to be a particularly interesting stage within this development, insofar as it cannot be reduced to the juxtaposition of (positively valued) "work" and (negatively valued) "leisure" or "idleness" established by the Enlightenment. Rather, the texts of Romanticism valorize leisure and idleness on the one hand and repeatedly operate with overlays between work and leisure on the other.
The international and interdisciplinary conference Work and Idleness in Romanticism explores the various facets of this topic. Inspired by recent approaches in literary and cultural studies research, which have, among other things, highlighted the exchange relationships between literature and economics (Vogl, Hörisch, New Economic Criticism), the aim of the conference is to explore the cultural, social and aesthetic-historical dimensions of work and idleness in Romanticism in their interactions between literature, the visual arts and contemporary philosophical and economic writings.
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- Development and testing of questionnaires to record (performance) motivation as part of the entrance test for the elite school of sport (using the example of athletics)
- Questionnaires relate to grades 4-9
- Analysis of the relationship between (performance) motivation and physical and athletic abilities and skills
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To mark the anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, a long-term book project in two volumes on the history of the Reformation in the city of Magdeburg was prepared. Volume 1 was published in 2016. This project will be completed with the publication of the second volume in March 2017. In the context of this history project, the status and development of the "sporting activities" of the city's population in the late 15th century up to the city catastrophe of 1631 was researched for the first time. In particular, the aim was to reconstruct and interpret the influence of the Reformation and confessionalization on this cultural sector.
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Top-down and bottom-up strategies in cognitive neuroscience: How do they work, and how do they differ? How are methods from AI, mathematics, and computer science used to formulate and test neuroscientific theories?
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The "Russian-German Dictionary" (RDW) is supported by the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz and is being compiled in two workplaces in Magdeburg and Berlin with 3.5 full-time employees. The head of the project is Professor of Slavic Linguistics at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. Since October 2003, there have been cooperative relations with the Institute for Linguistic Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg on the basis of a contract for work.

The RDW is designed for a total of 225,000 lemmas and will present the general vocabulary of the Russian contemporary language of the 20th century in a uniquely comprehensive way. A large proportion of Russian words and meanings are listed for the first time in a Russian-German general dictionary.
As a predominantly receptive dictionary for the German-speaking user, the RDW covers today's standard language lexis as well as non-standard vocabulary areas, knowledge of which is necessary for the original-language reception of Russian literature and journalism from the 19th century to the present day. It contains obsolete and outdated lexis as well as new terms and meanings from the last two decades. A selection of lexemes related to the region as well as words and meanings from the substandard are included, including jargon words and vulgarisms. A large number of technical terms that are also relevant for common language communication are included.

The dictionary is published in individual volumes by Harrassowitz-Verlag.
In addition to the print publication, the word sections are gradually being published online (rdw.lingvo.com/). The word sections A-N are published online in the 2nd, completely revised and supplemented version.

It is planned to publish the complete work in print.
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The planned book is dedicated to the activity of representation as an anthropological existential. It shows a ubiquitous foundation of human self and world relations in processes of narration, presentation and image-making. The aim is to develop a media-critical competence in dealing with the question of who, what, when and for what purpose represents whom.
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The media anthropology project - initiated by Prof. Dr. Christiane Voss (Bauhaus University Weimar) - has been set up as a research network of philosophers, theologians, historians, media and film scholars from Germany. An application for a geographically distributed research group is currently being processed by the DFG. In terms of media anthropology, people are beings who articulate, perceive and make themselves perceptible in media practices and techniques because they represent something and something represents itself to them. Media anthropology is the discursive space within which it is possible to think beyond the human being in order to arrive at the techniques and dispositifs that are constitutive for the media logic of practically and politically effective interpretations, such as those that underlie the theoretical charge of scientific explanations of the world or the decisions in the field of application of medical techniques. Humans are conceived as animal-medial, media-using and media-moving beings, whereby media are to be understood as both technical means and symbolic forms such as language and images as well as processes of consciousness such as perception, expectation and memory. Mediality forms the basis of all articulations and transformations of our world and self-relationships
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Bayesian models are used in cognitive science to describe cognition and behavior at the Marrian "computational level". However, the extent to which these models can also be used to infer the structure and function of neuronal mechanisms is unclear. The aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to uncover and illustrate the method of "Bayesian reverse engineering" using current scientific examples.
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soundcheck philosophie ] is a philosophy festival that explores and explores the connection between philosophy and the various arts with a view to the public and the public communication of philosophy. Edition #4 of the festival - on the theme of MACHT_DENKEN - will take place from 21.4.-24.4.2016 in Leipzig at the LOFFT theater. A philosophical symposium (sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation) on the topic of MACHT_DENKEN will also be held in conjunction with the festival from 22-23 April 2016.
Website: https://soundcheckphilosophie.wordpress.com/
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The changing relationship between humans and animals is examined from a historical perspective and across genres, primarily in fictional texts. The questions concern the interfaces between literary and cultural studies and ethics.
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In cooperation with the Halle/Magdeburg Olympic Training Center, young junior athletes (D squad) receive sports psychology support. A sports psychology diagnosis is used to create a profile for each athlete and analyze it in connection with their performance development.
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The project aims to develop a training device for people with limb amputations (primarily transfemoral amputees). With the help of this training device

- counteract atrophy of the muscles remaining on the residual limb after an amputation,
- maintain or increase the mobility of the corresponding joint in a targeted manner and
- improve the inter- and intramuscular coordination of the remaining residual limb muscles

Avoiding atrophy or achieving hypertrophy of the residual limb musculature is particularly important as it is intended to ensure that sufficient muscle covers the bone end in the residual limb area and forms a corresponding residual limb cushion so that the force exerted on the residual limb by a prosthesis is distributed evenly over a large area. This is intended to ensure that loads from everyday movements and sporting activities do not lead to the occurrence of pressure points, thereby provoking relieving or relieving postures and altered gait patterns, which can then lead to damage to other structures (e.g. back, hip, contralateral limb) due to incorrect or excessive loading.
Mobility and coordination are particularly important for an unobtrusive gait pattern and are a prerequisite for physiological reintegration into social life.
The user should be enabled and motivated to perform the prescribed exercises completely and correctly. To this end, the device should provide motivation for training, e.g. through the integration of games, and feedback on the training process and training success.
The training device should be evaluated by determining the muscle volume on the residual limb using MRI scans, measuring joint mobility and gait analyses that record the actual target variable "unobtrusive gait".
An application should be made to the health insurance association (GKV) for an aid number for the training device, which means that the costs of such a device are not borne by the patient but in Germany are fully covered by the statutory health insurance.
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Globally marketed texts and their sometimes overwhelming success beyond political, geographical and cultural borders are a phenomenon of mainstreaming. If globalization also has to do with standardization, it is possible, according to the hypothesis, to identify the blurring of the local, the specificity of a culture that is always inscribed in texts. The aim is to subject these "erosions" to a cultural studies analysis using imaging techniques (ekphrasis, fictional image descriptions, photographs and drawings). English, Canadian and Anglo-Indian materials will be considered. There are possible links to stereotype research and research on intercultural competence.
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The assessment of gait variability might entail the potential for diverse kinds of early diagnoses in clinical settings and the usage of inertial sensors has the potential to feasibly measure gait variability. In order to investigate which sample rate would be required to precisely measure gait variability of different gait parameters, this study analyses the outcome of gait variability measures as a function of sample rates. Gait variability parameters are calculated on the basis of the original time series (sample rate: 512Hz) as well as of each down sampled time series (256Hz, 128Hz, 75Hz).

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The destruction of the city of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years' War was so profound that it seems as if its cultural infrastructure has never recovered. In the later Prussian fortress or the stronghold of heavy engineering in the 19th and 20th centuries, art and literature do not seem to have played the same role as before. At second glance, however, the Prussian fortress proved to be a good breeding ground for cultural life, for example when the Prussian court set up its quarters there in times of war, and the wealth of the industrial city strongly promoted the cultural and artistic scene. As a result, Magdeburg not only had a multifaceted literary life in the second half of the 18th century with literary societies and journals, but also a lively theater scene since then, culminating in the German Theater Exhibition in Magdeburg in 1927. The home of the Forum Gestaltung in Brandenburger Straße is part of the former School of Arts and Crafts, one of the city's centers of art and artists since the end of the 18th century (and until the 1960s). Another was the famous association of artists and writers Die Kugel between 1919 and 1923. Magdeburg repeatedly attracted creative artists from other regions, as it was also the birthplace or (with its traditional grammar schools) educational center of important writers. Friedrich von Koepken, Johann Heinrich Zschokke, Carl Immermann, Friedrich Spielhagen, Georg Kaiser, Erich Weinert, Robert Stemmle and Nomi Rubel came from Magdeburg, for example, and Johann Samuel Patzke, Johann Gottlieb Schummel, Kurt Pinthus, Johannes Schlaf, Otto Bernhard Wendler, Heinz Kruschel, Christa Johannsen as well as Günter and Johanna Braun worked in the city. The lecture series in the 2013 summer semester presents a selection of these writers in their respective historical Magdeburg contexts and also recalls important literary and cultural phenomena and institutions in the city and region. The contributions to the lecture series will be published in edited form in an anthology.
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The project explores the extent to which literature can play a mediating role in one of today's major conflicts, distinguishing between authors publishing in English from either Muslim or non-Muslim backgrounds in terms of their appreciation of the motivations that can lead to fundamentalism.
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Philosophy is a genuinely script-based enterprise, at least in the Western cultural context. If one attempts to reflect on the role that writing plays within philosophy, however, the focus narrows almost involuntarily to very specific types of philosophical writing practices of philosophical writing games: to textual writing games. Philosophy itself is then viewed primarily as a mode of production and reception of written texts: monographs, essays or possibly dictionary articles. In contrast, with the project Associagrammatics of Thought, I would like to draw attention to the fact that there are also uses of writing in philosophy that are hardly or not at all textual in the sense of a linear sequence of sentences, using written visual artifacts in philosophical manuscripts. A look at a number of philosophical manuscripts shows that the emergence, appropriation and communication of philosophical ideas are often also due to the operation with terms, fragments of quotations, title words, headings etc. on the writing surface. They owe themselves to a graphic operation with words and word groups that are arranged non-linearly on the surface, in which phenomena such as over-, under- and juxtapositions occur, as well as underlining and crossing out, framing or circling and the drawing of connecting lines between the individual words/word groups. Non-textual writing games on manuscript sheets often function as important philosophical thought laboratories, in which, for example, certain conceptual constellations, theses and argumentative contexts are sketched out and pre-tested in terms of written images and cartography. On the basis of other non-textual writing games in philosophical manuscripts, which are more excerptive in approach, we can see how philosophically new things are created by philosophers appropriating foreign texts or discussions with interlocutors diagrammatically and visually, while at the same time varying and reworking them. The corresponding written-image artifacts have an epistemic added value, first of all for the creators of these written images themselves, but then, according to the further thesis, also for those who try to appropriate the respective thinking of a philosopher.
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The academic study of money in times of financial hardship (not only) at OVGU may seem obvious in many respects. What does money mean to us? How did societies in antiquity deal with the means of payment and what does money have to do with retribution? What about the economy of give and take? Is money a fetish, a substitute for love, does wealth mean happiness? Why is money our enemy? How does money become a theme in literature? How does money become language? What moral sense do we discover when dealing with money? The lecture series on money in the summer semester will explore all these questions and more. Academics from OVGU and other institutions will offer exciting interdisciplinary perspectives involving history, German studies, philosophy, sociology, financial economics and finance and psychology.
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The aim of the project is to develop a concept for active breaks for employees as part of workplace health promotion.
The PausenExpress is an active break for employees of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. A trained team of trainers carries out the PausenExpress directly at the workplace for 15 minutes in small groups using various small devices. A trainer manual and an exercise catalog were created during the design phase. The subsequent evaluation of the pilot phase led to a revision of the concept. This was followed by the implementation of the PausenExpress as a regular employee sports program. The PausenExpress was certified by the ADH.
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Cultural practice lives in a tension between factuality and interpretation. Controversial claims to validity clash in competing interpretations and their representations. The fact that questions of law and injustice are also dependent on interpretation processes and representations has been researched as the interpretativity and narrativity of law. The project of a representation-theoretical investigation of jurisprudence and legal practice aims to analyze the interpretative schemes that are tangible in representations and examines the fabrication of representations.
The project is being carried out as part of a Fellowship at the Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg Law as Culture at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
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Angesichts eines ideengeschichtlichen Hinweises von Ernst Cassirer wurde im Rahmen des von der Universität Potsdam mit einem Promotionsstipendium geförderten Dissertationsprojektes untersucht, ob sich im Anschluss an Ideen von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz eine Begründung der Menschenrechte formulieren lässt. Cassirer hat diese Option in diversen Studien, Reden und in nachgelassenen Fragmenten angedeutet. In seiner Weimarer Verfassungsrede von 1928 ("Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung", u.a. abgedruckt in ECW 17) bemerkt Cassirer ausdrücklich, dass der in der Ideengeschichte der Menschenrechte eher wenig beachtete Leibniz der "erste unter den großen europäischen Denkern" gewesen sei, der "mit aller Entschiedenheit das Prinzip der unveräußerlichen Grundrechte des Individuums vertreten" habe. Neben Texten des Polyhistors Leibniz und solchen der Leibniz-Forschung standen insbesondere zwischen 1902 und 1934 erschienene Studien des Philosophen Ernst Cassirer im Fokus.

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To mark the 200th anniversary of the German gymnastics movement in 2011, the biography of Friedrich Friesen, who was born in Magdeburg and was one of the co-founders of gymnastics in Berlin, will be researched and evaluated from the perspective of new sport-historical questions about the beginnings of gymnastics in Germany. The beginnings of the culture of remembrance in the city on the Elbe and the history of the erection of the frieze monument in 1893 will also be reconstructed and their political significance deciphered. In addition to the historiographical assessment of Friedrich Friesen as a person, the initial reception of his historical significance in his native city of Magdeburg will also be examined.
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The aim is to develop a residual limb training device with a feedback system that helps to optimally train the remaining thigh muscles of amputation patients (lower limb). This device will then be evaluated and the training success monitored using gait analysis and MRI images.
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The study examines in detail the influence of the First World War on the largest gymnastics club in the city of Magdeburg. In what way did the major war event shape the club life of this large voluntary association, which, as a typical gymnastics club, had combined national political and patriotic objectives with physical exercise and sport? How did the duration of the war affect the behavior of the members of the gymnastics club, especially with regard to practice, training and competition? What adverse effects did the long-lasting war have? What contribution did the club make to the "home front"? How many of the club's male gymnasts took part in the war? How many were killed at the front? How did the war experiences of the drafted club members affect their commitment to the club after their return?
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The historical core of the topicality (e.g. media, film, internet) of censorship in the Anglophone and European cultural area is presented, including and re-evaluating the concepts of public and private. The cultural studies perspective also takes into account issues of gender.
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From the 1,270 book series now held by the Ute and Wolfram Neumann Foundation, 42 series were selected that were published in whole or in part during the First World War, i.e. between 1914 and 1918. An exhibition is being prepared from the collection of these series, which will be shown from December 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015 in the rooms of the Magdeburg University Library. The exhibition explores the question of whether and how the world war was reflected in the medium of book series. Do existing book series noticeably change their program to include war-related topics? Are there program changes in series that deal with the dissemination of foreign literature? Are position changes recognizable in the spectrum between pro-war and pacifist? Which literature is selected for book series that are published specifically for the front-line soldier's knapsack? These are some of the questions that the exhibition will explore.
A catalog (229 pp.) will be published by Wehrhahn Verlag Hannover to coincide with the opening of the exhibition.
The catalog and exhibition are being developed with a student project group from the Master's program in German Studies at the University of Magdeburg.
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Ernst Toller (1893-1939) gilt neben Bertolt Brecht als literarisch wie auch politisch wichtigster deutschsprachiger Dramatiker der Weimarer Republik. Nach seinem Selbstmord geriet er beim Lesepublikum in Vergessenheit, eine Entwicklung, die durch die Politik der Säuberung der Literatur durch die NS-Regierung schon lange vorher eingeleitet worden war und, aus verschiedenen Gründen, nach 1945 andauerte. Erst die in den 1970er Jahren erschienene fünfbändige Leseausgabe von Wolfgang Frühwald und John M. Spalek machte eine Vielzahl der verstreut veröffentlichten Texte wieder zugänglich. Seither sind aber weitere Fassungen und in der Ausgabe nicht berücksichtigte Texte wieder oder neu entdeckt worden. Im vorliegenden Projekt wird daher eine erweiterte und revidierte, kritische Studienausgabe vorbereitet, die erstmals alle Texte Tollers enthalten wird. In vielfacher Hinsicht wird das Gesamtbild des Autors durch die neue Ausgabe differenziert. Für Konzept und Ausführung hat sich ein internationales Herausgeberteam zusammengefunden, dem eine mit Drittmitteln des Österreichischen Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF) finanzierte Toller-Arbeitsstelle an der Universität Innsbruck zuarbeitet. Die Magdeburger Literaturwissenschaft ist gemeinsam mit Kollegen aus Frankfurt am Main und aus Halden, Norwegen, für den Band Stücke I verantwortlich.
Notiz vom 12.12.2014: Die Ausgabe ist im November 2014 im Wallstein Verlag Göttingen erschienen. Sie umfasst ca. 4.300 Seiten.

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A river like the Elbe is one of the landscape features that people living in its vicinity have always had to deal with in a creative way. The river as a natural trade route, as a supplier of water and energy and as a means of waste disposal, the river as a natural protection for towns located along it, but also as a threat due to its flood phases, the river as a natural border and as a natural link between regions, the river and its surroundings as biotopes that need to be understood and protected; these are just some of the aspects for which techniques and practices, but also legal standards, for example, had and still have to be developed and political decisions made. At the same time, the arts took up river motifs; in the visual arts as well as in literature, the Elbe not only plays a role as a historical landscape reference point, but in a stronger sense also as a theme. Iconographies as well as poetic and cultural semantizations of the river emerge. In addition, the design of the river landscape itself is a cultural theme, not least as a recreational or even artistic space. In the course of a new attention to places and spaces, cultural studies have therefore also recently been concerned with the thematic complex 'river'.
The facets of the Elbe as a natural and cultural space outlined above can only be approached from multiple perspectives through cooperation between various natural, cultural and engineering disciplines. This is what a lecture series with 14 lectures by experts from the following disciplines will attempt to do in the summer semester of 2012: geology, archaeology, hydrobiology and aquatic ecology, natural history, environmental history, horticulture, hydraulic engineering, medieval history, literary medieval studies, linguistic history, modern German literature, mechanical engineering, art history and cultural studies.
The contributions will be revised for publication in an anthology, which is due to be published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle in February 2014.
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"soundcheck philosophie" #3 continued the VW Foundation-funded project "Soundcheck Philosophie - Vermittlungsformate des Denkens" in Halle in 2013. It is a cooperation between the association "Expedition Philosophie e.V. - affiliated International Society for Performative Philosophy", of which I am the chairman, and the Department of Philosophy at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. (Prof. Dr. Matthias Kaufmann)
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In equestrian sport, the horse is always subject to the rider's aids. These aids are divided into weight aids, rein aids and leg aids. All three types of aids are interlinked and complement each other. In order to be able to give the horse effective weight aids[1], the rider must acquire a deep, secure and balanced seat. Even in dressage, which as an Olympic discipline is determined by a high degree of technical perfection, the seat is the basis for sporting success.
The aim of this research project is to use a complex set of measuring instruments based on an inertial measurement system (IMS) (Moven, Xsens) to analyze the rider's movement from a holistic perspective and to provide the trainer and rider with the first essential information immediately. In addition, the movement of the horse's trunk is measured using an additional inertial sensor. On the basis of this comprehensive movement analysis, a template for revising or expanding the written specifications of the German Equestrian Federation (FN) for describing the correct seat is to be developed. The aim is also to identify movement-related differences between riders who sit well and those who do not.
[1] Weight aids are implemented by shifting the rider's weight (horizontally, vertically, laterally). They cause the rider's center of gravity (CSP) to shift relative to that of the horse.
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Augmented Reality (AR) applied in gait retraining improves pelvis movements in patients with total hip replacement (Schega et al., 2011). The effect of AR-based gait training on dynamic gait stability, which is associated with risk of falling (Lockhart & Liu, 2008), remains unexplored. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of AR-based feedback on local dynamic stability of pelvis trajectories while walking in healthy elderly women.

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Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts sollen zunächst Methoden zur Erfassung der Emotionalen Kompetenz / Intelligenz erarbeitet werden. Durch die Forschungsgruppe wurde der Fragebogen "BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQi: YV)" von Bar-On & Parker (2000) ins Deutsche übersetzt und es erfolgt eine Überprüfung des Fragebogens an Probanden der Sportinternate bzw. der Sportschulen  des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt.
Gleichzeitig soll folgende  Fragestellung beantwortet werden: Welche Rolle spielt die emotionale Kompetenz in unterschiedlichen Sportarten unter dem Aspekt eines Nachwuchsleistungstrainings?
In einem zweiten Schritt sollen Veränderungen in der Emotionalen Kompetenz durch sportliche Aktivitäten analysiert werden. Es werden verschiedene Sportprogramme entwickelt bzw. laufende Programme im Rahmen einer Evaluierung unter diesen Aspekt geprüft.

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As part of the project, training science and performance diagnostics support is provided primarily for the sports of swimming, athletics and canoeing at the Magdeburg/Halle Olympic Training Center. This involves not only carrying out appropriate performance diagnostics measures with the respective athletes at regular intervals, but also developing new methods for performance diagnostics.
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Linguistische und mathematische Fähigkeiten werden oft als höherstufige kognitive Fähigkeiten gesehen, die sich von niegerstufigen sensomotorischen Fahigkeiten unterscheiden. Dieses Projekt hinterfragt diese Unterscheidung, und versucht, sogenannte symbolische Fahigkeiten sensomotorisch zu begründen. Eine wichtige Rolle spielen hierbei Prozesse der räumlichen Vorstellung sowie der visuellen Formerkennung.

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Fernziel ist das zuerst von Leibniz formulierte, von Humboldt im Rahmen der Sprachwissenschaften weitergeführte Programm einer Philosophie der Sprache als Philosophie des Geistes.

Erste Etappe: Die sog. "Ordinary Language Philosophy" im Streit um eine adäquate Philosophie des "Geistes" (richtiger: der Neurowissenschaften).

Erster Schritt: Peter Frederick STRAWSONs Variante der O.L.P. im Streit zwischen Bennett/Hacker auf der einen und Dennett und Searle auf der andren "Seite".

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This lecture series is a successful attempt at an interdisciplinary approach between the subject cultures of the humanities, engineering and medicine at OVGU Magdeburg. The joint consideration of the constantly changing relationship between humans and technology is at the center of the questions and enables dialogues between the different subject cultures. The need to offer the achievements of information technology a humanities-based accompaniment in a kind of technology impact assessment and to maintain the overall human perspective becomes clear. It is the task of the humanities to visualize and describe the processes of change in the relationship between man and technology from a historical perspective.
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The Ute and Wolfram Neumann Foundation set up in Magdeburg University Library currently comprises around 800 different book series from the 20th century; a further 500 series will be added over the next few years. This means that the library houses a unique collection of book series, the like of which cannot be found in any other library. The individual volumes of the series are indexed by the library and can be found in the OPAC. However, in order not only to pick out individual volumes or individual highlights among the series, but to be able to use the collection as a material basis for book series research as a whole, further indexing work is required that takes into account additional aspects in addition to the catalog features. In the sense of preliminary work on a typology of 20th century book series, this project will, for example, collect information on the concept of such series, on their content, on their target group, on the aesthetic design and layout of the volumes and on the series editors and publishers. In the future, these preliminary studies will lead to a longer-term research project on the book series, which will examine questions of selection, distribution and the reception of literature specific to the series in the various historical contexts of the 20th century.
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The aim of the project is to determine the forces on a bicycle with a total weight of 170 kg for the derivation of multi-stage test programs based on DIN 14764. Test rides are carried out with e-bikes with and without support from the electric motor. The weight of the test subjects should be between 110kg and 150kg.
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Das Projekt begleitet die Nachwuchsspielerinnen des MFFC Magdeburg und die Sportschülerinnen im Trainingsprozess und unterstützt die Aufnahme neuer Schülerinnen im Bereich Fußball am Sportschulkomplex Magdeburg. Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung sind Aussagen zur Schnelligkeit.

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Das "Russisch-Deutsche Wörterbuch" (RDW) wird von der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz getragen und in zwei Arbeitsstellen in Magdeburg und Berlin auf 3,5 hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiterstellen erarbeitet. Die Leiterin des Projekts ist Professorin für Slavistische Linguistik an der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg. Seit Oktober 2003 bestehen auf Werksvertragsgrundlage Kooperationsbeziehungen zum Institut für Linguistische Forschungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Russlands in Sankt Petersburg.

Das RDW ist auf insgesamt 250.000 Lemmata ausgelegt und wird den Allgemeinwortschatz der russischen Gegenwartssprache des 20. Jahrhunderts in einzigartig umfassender Weise präsentieren. Ein großer Teil der russischen Wörter und Bedeutungen ist erstmals in einem russisch-deutschen Allgemeinwörterbuch verzeichnet.
Als vorwiegend passives Wörterbuch für den deutschsprachigen Nutzer erfasst das RDW die heutige standardsprachliche Lexik wie auch nichtstandardsprachliche Wortschatzbereiche, deren Kenntnis für die originalsprachige Rezeption der russischen Literatur und Publizistik vom 19. Jh. bis in die Gegenwart notwendig ist. Es enthält veraltende und veraltete Lexik ebenso wie neue Benennungen und Bedeutungen der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte. In Auswahl werden landschaftlich gebundene Lexeme sowie Wörter und Bedeutungen aus dem Substandard aufgenommen, darunter Jargonwörter und Vulgarismen. In großem Umfang werden Fachwörter berücksichtigt, die auch für die gemeinsprachliche Kommunikation relevant sind.

Das Wörterbuch erscheint in Einzellieferungen im Harrassowitz-Verlag und wird bis 2017 abgeschlossen sein. Über die Druckveröffentlichung hinaus wird die schrittweise online-Publikation der Wortstrecken durch die Firma ABBYY vorbereitet.

Perspektivisch ist eine Drucklegung des Gesamtwerks vorgesehen.

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The effect of intermittent normobaric hypoxia in combination with strength endurance training on physical and cognitive performance will be investigated in a randomized controlled trial. Over an intervention period of six weeks, healthy subjects aged between 60 and 70 years will complete an intervention consisting of normobaric hypoxia vs. normobaric normoxia (60 minutes) three times a week, followed by 30 minutes of strength endurance training. The following instruments and methods are used to characterize the changes over time (pre-post measurements): medical history and physical examination, spiroergometry, venous and capillary blood sampling, questionnaires and tests to assess quality of life (SF-36, MDBF), motivation (EZ scale according to Nitzsch 1976), cognitive performance (MMST), attention and concentration (d2) and sleep behavior (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI].
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Im Rahmen der Vorbereitung der Ausstellung des Kulturhistorischen Museums Magdeburg "Magdeburg und die Stunde Null. Zusammnbruch und Neubeginn nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg" wird dieses Projekt die Neugründung der Sportbewegung in Magdeburg nach 1945 rekonstruieren und erklären. Ziel ist es, die besondere Entwicklung des Sports in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone am Beispiel der Stadt Magdeburg nachzuzeichnen und die strukturellen Voraussetzungen für den DDR-Sport zu kennzeichnen. Die Forschungsergebisse werden 2011 im Ausstellungskatalog veröffentlicht.

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The aim of the project is to develop a device that measures the forces and their distribution on the saddle, stirrup and knee of the rider and visualizes them in real time for both the rider and the trainer.
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Vermittlungsformate des Denkens. Philosophie als wissenschaftliche Disziplin steht unter dem Generalverdacht, schwer zugänglich zu sein. Dies stellt die Vermittlung von Philosophie an die Öffentlichkeit vor besondere Herausforderungen, vor Schwierigkeiten, denen das geplante Veranstaltungskonzept für das Stadttheater Halle mit der Erprobung neuartiger künstlerisch-performativer Vermittlungskonzepte entgegentritt. Die Veranstaltung ist vom Grundgedanken getragen, dass das genuine Labor der Geisteswissenschaften die Bühne ist und Geisteswissenschaftler, insbesondere Philosophen, auch wissenschaftlich von der "Aufführung" wissenschaftlicher Inhalte in Performance-Experimenten profitieren können.

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Zielsetzung des von Klaus Sachs-Hombach / Universität Tübingen geleiteten DFG-Netzwerkes "Bildphilosophie", in dem Eva Schürmann und Rainer Totzke von der Universität Magdeburg mitarbeiteten, war die (fach-)philosophische Bearbeitung des Phänomens Bild und die Klärung des Bildbegriffs im Kontext allgemeiner medienphilosophischer Überlegungen. Zentrales Anliegen einer Philosophie des Bildes ist dabei erstens zu untersuchen, was es grundsätzlich bedeutet, mit Bildern umgehen zu können und dabei zugleich die Frage zu beantworten, welchen Begriff wir uns von Wesen machen müssen, die über Bildfähigkeit verfügen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser prinzipiellen, anthropologischen Klärungen geht es dem Netzwerk dann zweitens um eine methodologische Reflexion des breiten Spektrums bild(er)wissenschaftlicher Forschungen, die in den letzten Jahren in den unterschiedlichen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen unternommen worden sind und die noch immer unternommen werden. Bildphilosophie soll einen Beitrag zur Systematisierung der Arbeit verschiedener bildwissenschaftlicher Disziplinen leisten, insbesondere indem methodologische Hilfestellung bei der inter- bzw. transdisziplinären Bezugnahme angeboten wird. Als Reflexion auf die Medialität und Materialität des Denkens wird das Projekt Bildphilosophie darüber hinaus aber drittens auch zur medialen und methodologischen Selbstvergewisserung von Philosophie beitragen. Die Ergebnisse der Netzwerkarbeit werden in Form dreier Sammelbände publiziert, die zugleich in Form einer virtuellen Bibliothek online zugänglich gemacht werden sollen. Herausgabe und Co-Autorschaft eines web-gestützten Glossars zum Thema interdisziplinäre Bildtheorie

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Das im Rahmen eines internationalen Projektes erarbeitete Prüfungsdossier Deutsch als Fremdsprache beinhaltet Materialien zur Überprüfung des Hör- und Leseverstehens, der Kenntnisse sprachlicher, insbesondere wissenschaftssprachlicher Strukturen sowie Materialien zur Überprüfung der schriftlichen Ausdrucksfähigkeit. Die Prüfungsmaterialien orientieren sich an den Anforderungen des Gemeinsamen Europäischen Referenzrahmens für Sprachen für die in diesem Dokument festgelegten Niveaustufen A1 C2. Allen erarbeiteten Materialien liegen neueste Erkenntnisse der Fremdsprachendidaktik zugrunde. Ziel der Erstellung des Prüfungsdossiers ist die Vergleichbarkeit der Prüfungsanforderungen im Fach Deutsch als
Fremdsprache und damit die Entwicklung vergleichbarer Curricula am Sprachenzentrum der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität und seinen ausländischen Partnereinrichtungen in der Ukraine, Polen und Ungarn. Die Studierenden der ausländischen Partnereinrichtungen beginnen in der Regel ihre Deutschausbildung an den Heimatuniversitäten und setzen diese an der Universität Magdeburg fort. Mit der Angleichung der Curricula und der Prüfungsanforderungen wird eine gleichbleibende Kontinuität der Ausbildung gewährleistet.

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Im Gesamtprojekt wird die These vertreten, dass verschiedene kognitive Repräsentationsformate konfligieren können und so zu Einbußen in kognitiven Leistungen führen können. Eine Erforschung der Aneignungs- und Anwendungsbedingungen, unter denen Repräsentationen in verschiedenen Formaten angelegt werden, ist lohnenswet, da mithilfe dieses Wissens z.B. Lernansätze entwickelt werden können, die solche möglichen Konflikte zu vermeiden helfen.

In meinem Teilprojekt geht darum, die wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundlagen zu erarbeiten, mit denen solche Konflikte zwischen Repräsentationsformaten beschrieben werden können. Meine Annahme ist, dass Repräsentationszuschreibungen nur insofern explanatorisch sind, wie sie im Kontext eines Mechanismus stehen, der darstellt, wie die Repräsentationen verarbeitet werden. In meiner Promotionsdissertation habe ich daher eine Theorie mechanistischer Erklärung erarbeitet, die sich von den derzeit vertretenen mechanistischen Positionen dadurch unterscheidet, dass sie klar reduktionistisch ist und hochgradig komplexe (nichtlineare) Interaktionen zwischen Komponenten zulässt. Andere mechanistische Ansätze marginalisieren komplexe Interaktionen als Grenzfall. Besonders kognitive Mechanismen lassen sich jedoch am fruchtbarsten als komplexe dynamische Systeme verstehen.

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In Kooperation mit dem VDTC (Fraunhoferinstitut) wurde ein VR-Messplatz (CAVE) zur Bestimmung der Antizipationsleistung von Sportlern entwickelt. Im Rahmen einer Machbarkeitsstudie konnte festgestellt werden, dass bei einer Ballfangaufgabe und im Karate-Kumite kürzere Reaktionszeiten realisiert werden als bei Videopräsentationen und PC-Tests.

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In der Literatur gibt es eine Vielzahl von Erkenntnissen zum Zusammenhang zwischen körperlicher Aktivität und kindlicher Entwicklung. Die vorliegende Studie verdeutlicht auf der Basis eines entwicklungs- und lerntheoretischen Zugangs, dass die Relationen zwischen Bewegung und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung wesentlich komplizierter sind, als oft angenommen wird. Die Untersuchung stellt eine Kombination von Querschnitt- und Längsschnittstudien mit explorativem Charakter dar. Sie begann im Jahre 2006 und wird nun im Teil II des Projektes fortgesetzt. Untersucht werden einmal jährlich alle 3-6 Jährigen Turnerinnen und Turner des SC Magdeburgs. Erfasst wird der Stand der grob- und feinmotorischen, der emotionalen sowie kognitiven Entwicklung.

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Unter der heutigen Korpuslinguistik wird allgemein die Untersuchung von Sprache auf der Grundlage von computerlesbaren Korpora verstanden. Solche computerlesbaren Korpora sind Sammlungen von natürlichem Sprachmaterial, d.h. von Texten, die in einem wirklichen sozialen Kontext und ohne Eingriff des Linguisten schriftlich oder mündlich geäußert worden sind. Das Projekt untersucht Anwendungsmöglichkeiten der Korpuslinguistik in unterschiedlichen Bereichen, wie Lexikographie, Grammatik, Sprachvarietätenforschung und Semantik.

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In Zusammenarbeit mit der Abteilung Turnen des Sportclub Magdeburg wird im Rahmen einer Längsschnittstudie der Zusammenhang zwischen der motorischen Entwicklung und der kognitiven sowie emotionalen und sozialen Entwicklung untersucht. Die empirischen Erhebungen an ca. 180 Vorschulkindern (4-6 Jahre) finden jährlich im Zeitraum April - Mai statt. Auf Wunsch wird allen Eltern eine Rückmeldung zum Entwicklungsstand ihrer Kinder angeboten. Für die Übungsleiter der teilnehmenden Kinder wird im herbst jeden Jahres eine Weiterbildungsveranstaltung angeboten.Die wissenschaftliche Auswertung der Daten bildet die Grundlage für Examensarbeiten sowie Veröffentlichungen.

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Das "Russisch-Deutsche Wörterbuch" (RDW) wird von der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz getragen und in zwei Arbeitsstellen in Magdeburg und Berlin auf 3,5 hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiterstellen erarbeitet. Die Leiterin des Projekts ist Professorin für Slavistische Linguistik an der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg. Seit Oktober 2003 bestehen auf Werksvertragsgrundlage Kooperationsbeziehungen zum Institut für Linguistische Forschungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Russlands in Sankt Petersburg.

Das RDW ist auf insgesamt ca. 250.000 Lemmata ausgelegt und wird den Allgemeinwortschatz der russischen Gegenwartssprache des 20. Jahrhunderts erstmalig in derart umfassender Weise präsentieren. Ein großer Teil der russischen Wörter und Bedeutungen ist erstmals in einem russisch-deutschen Allgemeinwörterbuch verzeichnet. Aufgenommen wurden unter anderem neue Benennungen der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte, Jargonwörter sowie veraltete Wörter, deren Kenntnis für die originalsprachige Lektüre der klassischen russischen Literatur von Nutzen ist.

Das Wörterbuch erscheint in jährlichen Lieferungen auf CD-ROM sowie (on demand) als Druckfassung. Die ersten fünf Lieferungen (A - M) umfassen ca. 89.600 Lemmata.

Im Weiteren sind die folgenden Lieferungen geplant: 6. 2007: N; 7. 2008: O; 8. 2009: P  (1. Teil); 9. 2010: P (2. Teil); 10. 2011: R; 11. 2012: S; 12. 2013: T, U; 13. 2014: F-C; 14. 2015: Č-Ja.

Perspektivisch ist eine Drucklegung des Gesamtwerks vorgesehen.

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Die Textsorte "Leserbrief" ist nicht in Isolation von anderen Texten als auch situellen und kulturellen Kontexten zu sehen, sondern muss in Relation zu diesen Kategorien gesetzt werden, um linguistische Merkmale adäquat beschreiben und analysieren zu können. Das Projekt zu englischsprachigen Leserbriefen in England und Indien untersucht die Versprachlichung der Aufforderungshandlung als einen wichtigen Aspekt der ausgewählten Textsorte in den beiden genannten Ländern, und zeigt die Kulturspezifik der verwendeten appellativen Muster auf. Anhand dieser sprachlichen Muster eröffnen sich folgende Perspektiven für die Diskursanalyse und interkulturelle Kommunikation einerseits, als auch für den Bereich Medien und journalistische Genres (mit dem Schwerpunkt "Leserbrief") im jeweiligen Kulturraum andererseits.

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Das Dissertationsprojekt beschäftigt sich mit Texten der externen Unternehmenskommunikation. Am Beispiel von Internetauftritten soll gezeigt werden, wie Unternehmen mit externen Interessengruppen in Interaktion treten.

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Im Rahmen des Projekts werden linguistische Parameter zur Beschreibung von Textsorten in unterschiedlichen Bereichen der Wirtschaft (z. B. Pressetexte, Texte in der betrieblichen Kommunikation) untersucht. Die Beschreibung richtet sich sowohl auf traditionelle Textmuster und -formen als auch auf Textsorten, die sich im Zusammenhang mit den neuen Medien entwickeln. Zu den zentralen Analysekategorien gehören sprachliche Mittel zum Ausdruck von Kulturspezifik, Identität und Firmenimage.

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An der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz (in den Arbeitsstellen Berlin und Magdeburg) wird das "Wörterbuch der russischen Sprache der Gegenwart Russisch-Deutsch" (RDW) erarbeitet.
Das RDW präsentiert den Allgemeinwortschatz der russischen Gegenwartssprache des 20. Jahrhunderts erstmalig in derart umfassender Weise. Es enthält eine große Zahl von Wörtern und Bedeutungen, die in den bisher erschienenen russisch-deutschen Allgemeinwörterbüchern nicht verzeichnet sind, mit ihren deutschen Entsprechungen. Einbezogen wurden unter anderem Neologismen der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte des 20. Jahrhunderts, in Auswahl Lexeme aus Soziolekten und aus der nichtstandardsprachlichen städtischen Umgangssprache, dem sog. Prostoreèie, sowie in großem Umfang Fachwörter und Mehrworttermini aus Bereichen, die auch für die gemeinsprachliche Kommunikation relevant sind. Vorrangig auf den deutschsprachigen Benutzer als passives Wörterbuch ausgerichtet, bezieht das RDW darüber hinaus auch heute veraltete Lexik ein, deren Kenntnis aber für die originalsprachige Rezeption der russischen Literatur und Publizistik des 19. Jahrhunderts notwendig ist. Insgesamt ist das Wörterbuch auf ca. 250.000 Lemmata ausgelegt. Es ist somit als das bisher bei weitem umfangreichste Wörterbuch der russischen Sprache konzipiert, sowohl innerhalb der russisch-deutschen Lexikographie als auch im Vergleich mit den zurzeit vorliegenden einsprachigen Bedeutungswörterbüchern des modernen Russischen. Mit dem RDW in seiner Eigenschaft als Akademiewörterbuch wird ein Standardwerk geschaffen, das nicht zuletzt auch eine solide Grundlage für weitere lexikographische Arbeiten unterschiedlicher Bereiche und Zielstellungen (z. B. Schulwörterbücher) im deutschen Sprachraum bieten wird. Die Lieferungen des RDW erscheinen seit 2002 in jährlichen Abständen im Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden auf CD-ROM und on demand in einer Druckfassung. Die Software wurde am Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren in den Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Trier erarbeitet.

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1) Bestimmung und Beschreibung von didaktisch-methodischen Funktionen einsprachiger erklärender Wörterbücher in einem kommunikativ orientierten Russischunterricht 2) Entwicklung eines auf theoretischer Grundlage basierenden Übungsangebots zur Arbeit mit dem einsprachigen erklärenden Wörterbuch 3) Erarbeitung von Positionen für eine schwierigkeitsgestufte Progression für Wörterbucharbeit im Russischunterricht 4) Exemplifizierung der Arbeitspositionen über Arbeitsblätter und Textbeispiele

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Das "Russisch-deutsche Wörterbuch neuer Wörter und Bedeutungen im Russischen (1985-2002)" stelltl eine repräsentative Auswahl neuer Benennungen und Wortbedeutungen im russischen Wortschatz der Zerit der Perestrolka und Postperestroika vor und bietet deutsche Entsprechungen an.
Das zweisprachige Neologismenwörterbuch repräsentiert einen in der Lexikographie noch jungen Wörterbuchtyp. Es wurde für einen breiten deutschsprachigen Nutzerkreis konzipiert und hat den Charakter eines überwiegend passiven Wörterbuchs, das aber auch für den aktiven Gebrauch des Russischen Hilfestellungen bietet.
Darüber hinaus wendet sich das Wörterbuch an alle, die sich für die aktuelle Entwicklung des russischen Wortschatzes interessieren: Die russische Stichwortliste stützt sich auf umfassende Recherchen der Autoren in russischsprachigen publizistischen Quellen sowie auf einsprachige Neologismenverzeichnisse des Russischen. Aufgenommen werden Benennungen, die im genannten Zeitraum in der russischen Standardsprache neu aufgetaucht sind und Verbreitung gefunden haben. (Einbezogen werden auch Neologismen, die nach Auffassung der Autoren aufgrund ihrer pragmatischen Relevanz zumindest eine Chance zur Usualisierung haben.) Zu den Stichwörtern gehören vornehmlich Neubildungen, Neubedeutungen und fremdsprachige Entlehnungen sowie neue Mehrwortlexeme. In geringerem Umfang werden auch Benennungen berücksichtigt, die bereits vor dem genannten Zeitraum im Russischen existierten, aber in den 80er und 90er Jahren eine breite Usualisierung in der Standardsprache erfahren haben (Reaktivierungen sowie "innere Entlehnungen" aus nichtstandardsprachlichen Varietäten, insbesondere aus Soziolekten). Ausgespart bleiben jene Benennungen aus der ersten Hälfte der 80er Jahre, die überlebte Erscheinungen von Politik und Gesellschaft der ehemaligen Sowjetunion bezeichnen.
Die russischen Neologismen werden linguistisch charakterisiert (u. a. Angabe von Benennungsverfahrens bzw. Wortbildungstyp, Gebrauchsmarkierungen, grammatischer Charakteristik) und mit je einem ausgewählten Kontextbeispiel belegt. Das Wörterbuch ermöglicht Rückschlüsse über die wichtigsten Bereiche sowie die produktiven Verfahren und Mittel der Benennungsbildung im modernen Russischen. Das Typoskript wurde im April 2004 im Verlag "Azbukovnik" (Moskau) zum Druck eingereicht und ist 2007 erschienen.

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Das Forschungsvorhaben soll zur weiteren Erklärung von Zusammenhängen zwischen Sprachwandel-,kommunikativen und sozial-historischen Prozessen beitragen, wobei der regionale Rahmen der Untersuchung durch das Niederdeutsche in Sachsen-Anhalt gesetzt wird. Als Datenbasis dienen Spracherhebungen zur Dialektkompetenz mittels standardisierter Fragebögen in ca. 15 Ortschaften, Interviews sowie Daten eines vorangegangenen Forschungsprojektes. Darüber hinaus erfolgt die Sicherung von Belegen zur niederdeutschen Sprachsubstanz.

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