Engineering design in a different way: cognitive perspective on the contact and channel model approach

Engineering design often involves the integration of new design ideas into existing products, requiring designers to think simultaneously about abstract properties and functions as well as concrete solution constraints. Often designers struggle to reason with functional descriptions, while not fixating on existing solutions. This paper introduces the Contact & Channel Model (C&CM) approach, which combines abstract functional models of technical systems with the concrete geometric descriptions that many designers are familiar with. By locating functions at working surface pairs, they receive a concrete location in mental models. The C&CM approach can be applied to analyze existing product descriptions and synthesize creative new solutions for parts of the system or for entire new systems. At the moment the approach is being developed into an complete modeling and problem solving approach. C&CM has been used for several years in undergraduate engineering teaching at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) and is increasingly being introduced into industry by its use in research and development projects, by its students and its alumni

Pengaruh Komunikasi, Kepemimpinan dan Insentif Terhadap Kinerja Karyawan Pada PT. Jaya Anugrah Sukses Abadi

The importance of Human Resources needs to be realized by every level of management in the company, in order to improve the company's development. This research was conducted by researchers with the aim of testing and analyzing the influence of communication, leadership and incentives on employee performance at PT. Jaya Anugrah Sukses Abadi. In this study, the method used in this study is multiple linear regression analysis. Where the total population amounted to 176 consumers and the number of samples in this study amounted to 122 consumers. From the results of this study conducted by researchers, it was found that partially and simultaneously the quality of communication, leadership and incentives had a positive and significant effect on employee performance at PT. Jaya Anugrah Sukses Abadi. The coefficient of determination is 0.653 which means 65.3% of employee performance which can be explained by communication, leadership and incentives, while the remaining 34.7% is explained by other variables not examined in this study. Keywords: Incentives; Leadership; Employee performance; Communication

Morphological analysis for the Maltese language : the challenges of a hybrid system

Maltese is a morphologically rich language with a hybrid morphological system which features both concatenative and non-concatenative processes. This paper analyses the impact of this hybridity on the performance of machine learning techniques for morphological labelling and clustering. In particular, we analyse a dataset of morphologically related word clusters to evaluate the difference in results for concatenative and non-concatenative clusters. We also describe research carried out in morphological labelling, with a particular focus on the verb category. Two evaluations were carried out, one using an unseen dataset, and another one using a gold standard dataset which was manually labelled. The gold standard dataset was split into concatenative and non-concatenative to analyse the difference in results between the two morphological systems.non peer-reviewe

Open Source Platforms Under Co-opetition: A Comparative Analysis of SourceForge and \u27CodeX\u27 (Xerox) as Two \u27Co-opetitive Learning and Knowledge Exchange Networks\u27 (CoLKENs)

This paper investigates \u27Co-opetitive Learning and Knowledge Exchange Networks\u27 (CoLKENs) deploying open source platforms. The balancing act between cooperation and competition which CoLKENs must execute when engaging in collaboration with eventual competitors is heightened within an open source environment. This requires the designing and implementing of specific management processes to enable economic value maximization for participating individuals and firms. The authors first describe the concept of CoLKENs, their components and their generic structure. Relevant dimensions to examine when investigating CoLKENs are then identified. Specific characteristics of open source CoLKENs are reviewed and two cases, SourceForge and CodeX (Xerox) are analyzed. Findings indicate varying motivations for participation, diverse methods of leadership and governance, several specifically tailored tools for managing collaboration and primarily hidden coordination and control mechanisms for dealing with competition. Finally, the authors identify the need for future research, especially in the area of evaluating and managing the element of competition

Enhancing Knowledge Management Systems with Cognitive Agents

After identifying the key challenges of knowledge management and proposing a vision that address them, this paper explores how cognitive agents can be used to design management systems that implement this vision and that in particular support the knowledge management processes in both their social, organizational and individual dimension

Probing metal ion binding and conformational properties of the colicin E9 endonuclease by electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Nano-electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was used to study the conformational consequences of metal ion binding to the colicin E9 endonuclease (E9 DNase) by taking advantage of the unique capability of ESI-MS to allow simultaneous assessment of conformational heterogeneity and metal ion binding. Alterations of charge state distributions on metal ion binding/release were correlated with spectral changes observed in far- and near-UV circular dichroism (CD) and intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence. In addition, hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange experiments were used to probe structural integrity. The present study shows that ESI-MS is sensitive to changes of the thermodynamic stability of E9 DNase as a result of metal ion binding/release in a manner consistent with that deduced from proteolysis and calorimetric experiments. Interestingly, acid-induced release of the metal ion from the E9 DNase causes dramatic conformational instability associated with a loss of fixed tertiary structure, but secondary structure is retained. Furthermore, ESI-MS enabled the direct observation of the noncovalent protein complex of E9 DNase bound to its cognate immunity protein Im9 in the presence and absence of Zn2+. Gas-phase dissociation experiments of the deuterium-labeled binary and ternary complexes revealed that metal ion binding, not Im9, results in a dramatic exchange protection of E9 DNase in the complex. In addition, our metal ion binding studies and gas-phase dissociation experiments of the ternary E9 DNase-Zn2+-Im9 complex have provided further evidence that electrostatic interactions govern the gas phase ion stability

The occupational risk of Helicobacter pylori infection among gastroenterologists and their assistants

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Helicobacter pylori </it>is a widely spread bacterium that mainly inhabits the gastric mucosa and can lead to serious illnesses such as peptic ulcer disease, gastric carcinoma and gastric MALT lymphoma. The oral-oral route seems to be the main transmission route. The fact that endoscopes are contaminated after being used to perform a gastroscopy leads one to question whether gastroenterologists and endoscopy nurses and assistants run a higher risk of infection.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic search for literature was conducted in the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and further publications were found in reference lists of relevant articles. Epidemiological studies on the occupational exposure of endoscopy personnel were collected and their quality was assessed. Pooled effect estimates were identified in a meta-analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 24 studies included in the analysis, 15 were considered to be methodologically good. Of these 15 studies, eight single studies showed a statistically significant increased risk of infection for gastroenterologists, and five for their assistants. Meta-analysis across all methodologically good studies found a statistically significant risk of 1.6 (95%CI 1.3-2.0) for doctors. The pooled effect estimates also indicated a statistically significant risk of <it>Helicobacter pylori </it>infection (RR 1.4; 95%CI 1.1-1.8) for assistants too.</p> <p>When studies are stratified by medical and non-medical control groups, statistically significant risks can only be recognised in the comparison with non-medical controls.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In summary, our results demonstrated an increased risk of <it>Helicobacter pylori </it>infection among gastroenterological personnel. However, the choice of control group is important for making a valid assessment of occupational exposure risks.</p

The Scenario Refiner: Grounding subjects in images at the morphological level

Derivationally related words, such as "runner" and "running", exhibit semantic differences which also elicit different visual scenarios. In this paper, we ask whether Vision and Language (V\&L) models capture such distinctions at the morphological level, using a a new methodology and dataset. We compare the results from V\&L models to human judgements and find that models' predictions differ from those of human participants, in particular displaying a grammatical bias. We further investigate whether the human-model misalignment is related to model architecture. Our methodology, developed on one specific morphological contrast, can be further extended for testing models on capturing other nuanced language features.Comment: presented at the LIMO workshop (Linguistic Insights from and for Multimodal Language Processing @KONVENS 2023