In this response to reviewers, I revisit some of the central positions and theses of my book The Transformative Classroom and engage with several important criticisms. In doing so, I try to point out what I think is of particular value for further understanding the transformative potential of the classroom, especially where I think I could have captured this better in the book.

Emphasising implicit assumptions behind our ways of seeing ‘slums’, this essay calls for a radical understanding of ‘ordinary neighbourhoods’. Borrowing from Robinson’s ‘ordinary cities’ concept, it conceptualises ‘ordinariness’ as a way of rejecting the ‘absolute otherness’ of slums, stressing heterogeneity within and between neighbourhoods as well as the significance of comparative empirical research. Beyond the need for alternative, less stigmatised terms, the article urges for a new terri...

Recently, accelerator hardware in the form of graphics cards including Tensor Cores, specialized for AI, has significantly gained importance in the domain of high-performance computing. For example, NVIDIA’s Tesla V100 promises a computing power of up to 125 TFLOP/s achieved by Tensor Cores, but only if half precision floating point format is used. We describe the difficulties and discrepancy between theoretical and actual computing power if one seeks to use such hardware for numerical simula...

Osmolytes are well-known biocatalyst stabilisers as they promote the folded state of proteins, and a stabilised biocatalyst might also improve reaction kinetics. In this work, the influence of four osmolytes (betaine, glycerol, trehalose, and trimethylamine N-oxide) on the activity and stability of Candida bondinii formate dehydrogenase cbFDH was studied experimentally and theoretically. Scanning differential fluorimetric studies were performed to assess the thermal stability of cbFDH, while ...

Ten-eleven translocation dioxygenases (TETs) are the erasers of 5-methylcytosine (mC), the central epigenetic regulator of mammalian DNA. TETs convert mC to three oxidized derivatives with unique physicochemical properties and inherent regulatory potential, and it initializes active demethylation by the base excision repair pathway. Potent small molecule inhibitors would be useful tools to study TET functions by conditional control. To facilitate the discovery of such tools, we here report a ...

Proton activity, which is usually expressed as a pH value, is among the most important properties in the design of chemical and biochemical processes as it determines the dissociation of species in aqueous mixtures. This article addresses the prediction of pH values in multiphase systems based on the IUPAC definition via proton activity. The required proton activity coefficients were predicted using the thermodynamic equation of state ePC-SAFT advanced. The developed framework considers react...

This study has investigated the effects of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR) and the Voicing Effect (VE) in 21st century spoken Standard Scottish English (SSE). It is the first study which has analyzed all the vowels of SSE in all possible contexts on a countrywide scale. Due to contradictive findings in previous studies, the first aim of the present investigation was to find out which vowels are affected by the SVLR / VE in 21st century spoken SSE (Research question 1) and in how far the...

Radio interferometers achieve the highest resolutions at the cost of sparse data coverage. Incompletely sampled sky distributions in Fourier space result in noise artifacts in the source reconstructions. Established cleaning software is often time-consuming and lacks reproducibility. In this work, I propose a novel cleaning strategy for radio interferometer data based on convolutional neural networks to adjust current analysis strategies to the new telescope standards. This deep learnin...

The adoption of software development technologies is very closely related to the topic of user support. This is especially true in early phases, when the users are not familiar with the modification or the build processes of the software that has to be developed nor with the technology used for software development. This work introduces an approach to improve the usability of software development technologies represented by the Combinatory Logic Synthesizer (CL)S Framework. (CL)S is base...

The LHCb experiment is undergoing its first major detector upgrade to operate at a five times higher instantaneous luminosity during the Run 3 data taking period. It is equipped with a new set of tracking detectors (VELO, UT, SciFi) to match the conditions of an increased track multiplicity and radiation damage. The hardware trigger stage is removed. The first stage of the software trigger system is implemented to run on about 200 GPU cards with a throughput of 30MHz. An alternative tracking ...

This database contains data of collapses in tunnels during construction or operation and cases of extensive maintenance signifying the end of service life. It can form the basis for statistical interpetations as well as hisotrical review of various tunnel projects. This database also forms the basis for the investigations reported in the papers "Revised Comparison of Tunnel Collapse Frequencies and Tunnel Failure Probabilities" by P. Spyridis and D. Proske (DOI:10.1061/AJRUA6.0001107) and "As...

In dieser Arbeit wird die Anwendung von Modellen und Methoden, die aus der elektrischen Leitungstheorie bekannt sind, für Wärmeübertragungsprobleme in Kabeln analysiert. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen werden aufgezeigt. Basierend auf der konsequenten Nutzung von Analogien zwischen elektrischer und thermischer Domäne wird ein thermisches Analogon zur elektrischen Leitungstheorie für ein einadriges Kabel abgeleitet. Die notwendigen Annahmen und Vereinfachungen werden diskutiert. Für komplexere Kabel...

Personality plays a significant role in the workplace, and organizations need to take this into consideration when making decisions about hiring, task design, and creating a positive work environment. However, there is no universally agreed personality model or theory. Instead, there are interindividual (between-person differences) and intraindividual (within-person dynamics) perspectives on personality, which provide different insights each. The combination of both interindividual difference...

Die Gewinnung von Aluminium und seine Weiterverarbeitung zu Produkten ist mit einem hohen Energiebedarf und Treibhausgasemissionen verbunden. Andererseits führen die Folgen des Klimawandels zu verstärkten Anstrengungen in den Bereichen Energieeffizienz, Emissionsminderung und Ressourcenschonung. Das direkte Recycling ohne Wiedereinschmelzen ermöglicht Energie-, Treibhausgas- und Materialeinsparungen. Eine neue Prozesskette, bestehend aus dem Strangpressen von Aluminiumspänen zu einem zylindr...

Die Technologie der additiven Fertigung (AM) bietet ein großes Potenzial für Leichtbauanwendungen und wird neben dem Rapid Prototyping auch immer häufiger für industrielle Anwendungen eingesetzt. Ein Nachteil dieses Verfahrens sind die lange Produktionszeit und die begrenzte Baugröße. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung und Untersuchung einer neuen Prozesskombination zur effizienten Herstellung von umformbaren Blechen mit strukturiertem Kern. Es wird ein kombinierter Prozess aus AM und ans...

Transformative research requires transdisciplinary collaboration, forcing researchers out of their disciplinary comfort zones. In transdisciplinary research projects, the role of (social) scientists changes, and non-scientific actors become part of research projects. Transdisciplinary research is particularly suited to not only generate scientific knowledge, but also invent real-world solutions and to innovative. This, however, does not come without challenges. Implementing a transdisciplinar...

The glass transitions of amorphous ices as well as of aqueous phosphoric acid solutions were reported to display very large 1H/2H isotope effects. Using dielectric spectroscopy, in both types of glassformers for equimolar protonated/deuterated mixtures an almost ideal isotope-mixing behavior rather than a bimodal relaxation is found. For the amorphous ices this finding is interpreted in terms of a glass-to-liquid rather than an orientational glass transition scenario. Based on calorimetric re...