The role of heritage assets in public financial reporting : an assessment on the current status of financial reporting of heritage assets in Switzerland

In the wake of public financial management reforms, academics and practitioners have discussed and elaborated the impact of accounting reforms on heritage assets for more than three decades. Both national and international standard-setting bodies and the scientific community were not able to provide a common definition for heritage asset in an accounting context. This article presents the most relevant definitions used in public financial management as well as it elaborates on the critical issues concerning recognition, measurement and disclosure of heritage assets. Based on publicly accessible documents from twenty Swiss states and selected interviews with accounting officers from these states this paper presents an overview of what importance is being given to heritage assets in public financial reporting in Switzerland. The empirical results indicate that despite modern public financial management regimes (i.e. HAM2 or IPSAS) transparency regarding heritage assets remains very limited. As a result, recommendations for, but not limited to Switzerland are presented, which offer a possible approach to increase the level of information available on heritage assets in financial reporting

A Comparison of Data Traffic in Standardized Personal Health Monitoring Solutions

The publication of the HL7-FHIR standard offers new possibilities for integrated applications in healthcare. Although trial implementations have only recently started, the application of FHIR in context of a Personal Health Monitoring solution is worth investigating. Most of the existing telemonitoring solutions in healthcare rely on guidelines defined by the Continua Health Alliance (CHA). This paper compares the requirements of CHA and HL7-FHIR with respect to data traffic between client devices and server side applications. Therefore an existing CHA-compliant telemonitoring solution is extended towards supporting HL7-FHIR. Both approaches were simultaneously evaluated in a live system with 68 participants. The results of the evaluation show that the FHIR approach offers the possibility of reducing data traffic in comparison to the CHA solution

Automated On-Demand Generation Of Patient Summary Documents

Patient summary documents provide crucial information about a patient, like allergies and adverse reactions, which are necessary for an efficient and safe treatment and offer a quick overview of the patient’s health status. Automatically generating patient summaries from Electronic Health Records (EHR) reduces the workload of medical personnel. Nevertheless, existing approaches do not take several challenges that occur in live operation into account . Based on a health standard-compliant approach, a system for on-demand generation of patient summaries was implemented and evaluated using real data. This work shows several problems which could be identified. Those problems are not covered sufficiently by current research. Possible approaches to a solution are suggested, which have to be further investigated in future work

Electrocardiographic Imaging Using a Spatio-Temporal Basis of Body Surface Potentials - Application to Atrial Ectopic Activity

Electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) strongly relies on a priori assumptions and additional information to overcome ill-posedness. The major challenge of obtaining good reconstructions consists in finding ways to add information that effectively restricts the solution space without violating properties of the sought solution. In this work, we attempt to address this problem by constructing a spatio-temporal basis of body surface potentials (BSP) from simulations of many focal excitations. Measured BSPs are projected onto this basis and reconstructions are expressed as linear combinations of corresponding transmembrane voltage (TMV) basis vectors. The novel method was applied to simulations of 100 atrial ectopic foci with three different conduction velocities. Three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and bases of six different temporal lengths were considered. Reconstruction quality was evaluated using the spatial correlation coefficient of TMVs as well as estimated local activation times (LAT). The focus localization error was assessed by computing the geodesic distance between true and reconstructed foci. Compared with an optimally parameterized Tikhonov-Greensite method, the BSP basis reconstruction increased the mean TMV correlation by up to 22, 24, and 32% for an SNR of 40, 20, and 0 dB, respectively. Mean LAT correlation could be improved by up to 5, 7, and 19% for the three SNRs. For 0 dB, the average localization error could be halved from 15.8 to 7.9 mm. For the largest basis length, the localization error was always below 34 mm. In conclusion, the new method improved reconstructions of atrial ectopic activity especially for low SNRs. Localization of ectopic foci turned out to be more robust and more accurate. Preliminary experiments indicate that the basis generalizes to some extent from the training data and may even be applied for reconstruction of non-ectopic activity

Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeiten der Förderung von Financial Literacy in Deutschland

Die zunehmende Bedeutung finanzieller Kompetenzen ergibt sich aus einer Reihe institutioneller, individueller und gesamtwirtschaftlicher Gründe. Sie führen dazu, dass Menschen im Verlaufe ihres Lebens nicht nur mehr, sondern auch immer komplexere und risikobehaftetere Entscheidungen treffen müssen. Aus diesem Grund wird gerade in der jüngeren Vergangenheit immer stärker gefordert, (sozio-)ökonomische und damit finanzielle Inhalte in der Schulbildung zu berücksichtigen, sodass Schülerinnen und Schüler als zukünftige finanzielle Entscheidungsträger gleichermaßen zu einem guten persönlichen Finanzmanagement und zur aktiven Mitgestaltung des Wirtschafts- und Finanzsystems befähigt werden. Aktuelle, vermehrt praxisnahe Studien legen jedoch nahe, dass es bei der ökonomischen und damit bei der finanziellen Bildung in Schulen vielerlei Optimierungspotenziale gibt. Auch aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht besteht im Hinblick auf konkrete Forschungsbemühungen zur systematischen Etablierung finanzieller Bildungsmaßnahmen in Schulen eine Forschungslücke. Die vorliegende Dissertation greift diese Lücke auf: Zunächst bestätigt sie die Vorteilhaftigkeit von Financial Literacy in der Rolle als Bankeinlegerin bzw. Bankeinleger. Anschließend wird mithilfe einer Lehrplan- und einer Schulbuchanalyse untersucht, wie die finanziellen Kompetenzen bislang abgedeckt sind und welche konkreten Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten sich hieraus ableiten lassen. In der ersten Studie wird untersucht, wie sich Financial Literacy auf das Verhalten von Bankeinlegerinnen und Bankeinleger auswirkt. Dazu analysiert die Studie, ob Personen mit einem höheren Finanzwissen Informationen, die Banken über ihre Geschäfte veröffentlichen, besser interpretieren können und wie sich Bankveröffentlichungen auf ihre Entscheidungen auswirken. Dabei zeigt sich, dass ein im Durchschnitt höheres Finanzwissen dazu führt, dass Bankeinlegerinnen und Bankeinleger ihre Einlagen stärker zu Banken verlagern, die als weniger riskant wahrgenommen werden. Auf der anderen Seite verzeichnen Banken mit einem höheren Risiko umso mehr Einlagenabflüsse, je besser ihre Einlegerinnen und Einleger über finanzielle Zusammenhänge informiert sind. Die zweite Studie analysiert Lehrpläne aus ausgewählten Bundesländern hinsichtlich ihrer Abdeckung finanzieller Kompetenzen. Dafür wird zunächst eine umfassende Diskussion einschlägiger Kompetenzmodelle in der Literatur durchgeführt. Anschließend wird eine für die Untersuchung zweckmäßige Definition des "Financial Literacy"-Begriffs festgelegt und ein passendes Kompetenzmodell ausgewählt. Es handelt sich dabei um das "OECD/INFE Core Competencies Framework on Financial Literacy for Youth". Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen eine insgesamt geringe curriculare Verankerung von "Financial Literacy"-Inhalten in den Lehrplänen. Zudem stellen sie - auf geringem Niveau - deutliche Unterschiede zwischen den Lehrplänen der untersuchten Bundesländer fest. In der dritten Studie wird die Analyse weiter ausgedehnt. Anknüpfend an die Auswertung der Lehrpläne werden einschlägige Schulbücher aus den Bundesländern Baden-Württemberg und Niedersachsen auf ihre Abdeckung von "Financial Literacy"-Inhalten hin untersucht. Im Gegensatz zu der Lehrplananalyse in der zweiten Studie zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass die Schulbücher "Financial Literacy"-Inhalte grundsätzlich relativ gut abdecken. Als problematisch angesehen werden allerdings die unterschiedlichen didaktischen Ansätze, da die Erklärungen und Darstellungen, die zur Vermittlung der Inhalte in den Schulbüchern gewählt werden, mitunter stark vereinfacht sind und dadurch unpräzise werden. Zudem ist die Pluralität in der ökonomischen Bildung in den Schulbüchern nicht abgebildet. Dies führt zu der Schlussfolgerung, dass knapp und abstrakt formulierte Lehrpläne für die Konzeption von Schulbüchern gleichermaßen Vor- und Nachteile bieten. Die vorliegende Dissertation fasst die Ergebnisse der drei Studien zusammen und diskutiert diese vor dem Hintergrund der breiten Forschungslandschaft. Abschließend werden Implikationen sowohl für die zukünftige Forschung in diesem Bereich als auch für die Praxis in den (Hoch-)Schulen und in der Bildungspolitik gegeben

Evaluation of the benefits for mapping faint archaeological features by using an ultra‐dense ground‐penetrating‐radar antenna array

Modern archaeo-geophysical radar surveys are often executed with multichannel antenna arrays, which allows a much faster survey progress combined with a denser profile spacing. Furthermore, from a methodological point of view, a full 3D dataset is necessary to resolve small targets of a few decimetre diameter. However, only a few test surveys deal with the evaluation of the real improvement in data quality by applying such multichannel arrays. In this paper, a test survey with the IDS Stream-C 600-MHz radar device on a small area covering the Roman Bath of Kempten-Cambodunum is presented. The aim of the study is to figure out whether faint archaeological remains like hypocaust pillars, that is, the pillars of a Roman floor heating system, that are missed by single-channel devices, are detectable in an ultra-dense antenna array. Thus, the same area was simultaneously mapped with both GPR configurations. The results of this case study demonstrate the benefit of such antenna arrays for the archaeological prospection of small subsurface features with a diameter of 25 cm or less. For ground-truthing of the results, a comparison with old excavation maps was executed

The Impact of Standard Ablation Strategies for Atrial Fibrillation on Cardiovascular Performance in a Four-Chamber Heart Model

Purpose: Atrial fibrillation is one of the most frequent cardiac arrhythmias in the industrialized world and ablation therapy is the method of choice for many patients. However, ablation scars alter the electrophysiological activation and the mechanical behavior of the affected atria. Different ablation strategies with the aim to terminate atrial fibrillation and prevent its recurrence exist but their impact on the performance of the heart is often neglected. Methods: In this work, we present a simulation study analyzing five commonly used ablation scar patterns and their combinations in the left atrium regarding their impact on the pumping function of the heart using an electromechanical whole-heart model. We analyzed how the altered atrial activation and increased stiffness due to the ablation scars affect atrial as well as ventricular contraction and relaxation. Results: We found that systolic and diastolic function of the left atrium is impaired by ablation scars and that the reduction of atrial stroke volume of up to 11.43% depends linearly on the amount of inactivated tissue. Consequently, the end-diastolic volume of the left ventricle, and thus stroke volume, was reduced by up to 1.4 and 1.8%, respectively. During ventricular systole, left atrial pressure was increased by up to 20% due to changes in the atrial activation sequence and the stiffening of scar tissue. Conclusion: This study provides biomechanical evidence that atrial ablation has acute effects not only on atrial contraction but also on ventricular performance. Therefore, the position and extent of ablation scars is not only important for the termination of arrhythmias but is also determining long-term pumping efficiency. If confirmed in larger cohorts, these results have the potential to help tailoring ablation strategies towards minimal global cardiovascular impairment