Using a multi-level tailored design process to develop a customer satisfaction survey for university evaluation

A multi-level procedure is described in order to develop a total quality management survey tool in the field of engineering academia. As a first step a review of available evaluation tools for universities is conducted, resulting in over 150 items used for evaluation purposes. Secondly all dimensions of educational evaluation used in previous research are summarized, resulting in 15 dimensions. In a third step, items are assigned to the dimensions, overlapping items were combined or removed, and item content and dimensions were adjusted to the specific conditions of the target faculty. Fourthly, the resulting twelve dimensions were used in first, investigative interviews in the target population. Results indicate that eleven dimensions sufficiently mapped all aspects of evaluation. After revising the items to improve understanding in a fifth step cognitive pretests were conducted. The final revision resulted in 83 items assigned to eleven dimensions

Fluid demixing kinetics on spherical geometry: power spectrum and Minkowski functional analysis

Dynamic density functional theory calculations of fluid–fluid demixing on spherical geometries are characterized via their angular power spectrum as well as via the Minkowski functionals (MFs) of their binarized fluid density fields. MFs form a complete set of additive, motion invariant and continuous morphological measures sensitive to nonlinear (spatial) correlations. The temporal evolution of the fluid density fields is analyzed for different sphere sizes and mixing compositions. The demixing process in the stages of early spinodal decomposition and consecutive domain growth can be characterized by both methods and a power-law domain growth $L(t)\propto {t}^{\alpha }$ is evidenced for the MF measures. The average domain size obtained by the structure factor only responds to the late stage domain growth of the demixing process. MFs provide refined insights into the demixing process: they allow the detection of distinct stages in the early spinodal decomposition, provide a precise measure of the relative species composition of the mixture and, most importantly: after a proper rescaling, they allow the detection of a universal demixing behavior for a wide range of mixture fractions and for different sphere sizes

Wir bitten um ein differenziertes Urteil: Möglichkeiten zur Reduktion von Nondifferentiation bei Rating-Skalen

Nondifferentiation ist ein generelles Phänomen bei der Einschätzung von Meinungsgegenständen mittels Rating-Skalen: Zwischen den Meinungsgegenständen wird nicht so deutlich unterschieden, wie aufgrund der Skalen möglich. In zwei experimentellen Studien zu unterschiedlichen Meinungsgegenständen werden in der Literatur diskutierte Verfahren zur Reduzierung der Nondifferentiation zusammen mit einem hierfür bisher nicht verwendeten Verfahren (konstante Summe, KS) hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf Nondifferentiation verglichen. Eine erste Studie (N = 139) belegt eine signifikant erhöhte Differenzierung bei KS im Vergleich zu einem verbalen Einschub. Für eine zweite Studie werden in einer Voruntersuchung (N = 138) stark positiv und stark negativ eingeschätzte Meinungsgegenstände ausgewählt, die in der anschließenden Hauptuntersuchung (N = 200) ohne Messwiederholung bewertet werden. Hierbei werden insgesamt 3 verschiedene Verfahren zur Verbesserung der Differenzierung verwendet und einem rein verbalen Einschub gegenübergestellt. Auch hierbei erweist sich die KS generell als das Verfahren, das die höchste Differenzierung bewirkt

Mesoscopic superconductors in the London limit: equilibrium properties and metastability

We present a study of the behaviour of metastable vortex states in mesoscopic superconductors. Our analysis relies on the London limit within which it is possible to derive closed analytical expressions for the magnetic field and the Gibbs free energy. We consider in particular the situation where the vortices are symmetrically distributed along a closed ring. There, we obtain expressions for the confining Bean-Livingston barrier and for the magnetization which turns out to be paramagnetic away from thermodynamic equilibrium. At low temperature, the barrier is high enough for this regime to be observable. We propose also a local description of both thermodynamic and metastable states based on elementary topological considerations; we find structural phase transitions of vortex patterns between these metastable states and we calculate the corresponding critical fields.Comment: 24 pages, 20 figure

Association of the Salivary Microbiome With Animal Contact During Early Life and Stress-Induced Immune Activation in Healthy Participants

The prevalence of stress-associated somatic and psychiatric disorders is increased in environments offering a narrow relative to a wide range of microbial exposure. Moreover, different animal and human studies suggest that an overreactive immune system not only accompanies stress-associated disorders, but might even be causally involved in their pathogenesis. In support of this hypothesis, we recently showed that urban upbringing in the absence of daily contact with pets, compared to rural upbringing in the presence of daily contact with farm animals, is associated with a more pronounced immune activation following acute psychosocial stressor exposure induced by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Here we employed 16S rRNA gene sequencing to test whether this difference in TSST-induced immune activation between urban upbringing in the absence of daily contact with pets (n = 20) compared with rural upbringing in the presence of daily contact with farm animals (n = 20) is associated with differences in the composition of the salivary microbiome. Although we did not detect any differences in alpha or beta diversity measures of the salivary microbiome between the two experimental groups, statistical analysis revealed that the salivary microbial beta diversity was significantly higher in participants with absolutely no animal contact (n = 5, urban participants) until the age of 15 compared to all other participants (n = 35) reporting either daily contact with farm animals (n = 20, rural participants) or occasional pet contact (n = 15, urban participants). Interestingly, when comparing these urban participants with absolutely no pet contact to the remaining urban participants with occasional pet contact, the former also displayed a significantly higher immune, but not hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis or sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation, following TSST exposure. In summary, we conclude that only urban upbringing with absolutely no animal contact had long-lasting effects on the composition of the salivary microbiome and potentiates the negative consequences of urban upbringing on stress-induced immune activation.</p

Polarizability of closed shell atoms and ions in LDA

The dipole polarizability of rare gas atoms, positive alkali ions and negative halogen ions has been calculated in the local density approximation (LDA) to the density functional theory, corrected for the self-interaction error. The results for the rare gas atoms and the alkali ions are within a few percent of the values obtained by ab initio configuration interaction or many-body perturbation theory (CI) and by experiment. For the negative ions the agreement with coupled Hartree-Fock calculations is also within a few percent but the correlation reduces the LDA values by about 5 % while the CI values exceed the CHF values by 40-60 % for F- and by 12-18 % for Cl-.La polarisabilité dipolaire des atomes de gaz rares, des ions alcalins positifs et des ions halogènes négatifs a été calculée en utilisant la théorie de la fonctionnelle de la densité dans l'approximation dite de densité locale (LDA), modifiée pour tenir compte de l'auto-interaction. Les résultats obtenus pour les atomes de gaz rares et les ions alcalins ne diffèrent que de quelques pour cent des valeurs obtenues par les méthodes de perturbation ou d'interaction de configuration ab initio et des valeurs expérimentales. Pour les ions négatifs l'accord avec les calculs Hartree-Fock couplés est du même ordre mais l'introduction de la corrélation réduit les valeurs LDA de 5 % environ alors que l'interaction de configuration ab initio augmente la polarisabilité de 40-60 % pour le F- et de 12-18 % pour le Cl-

Hydrogen in Nb and Nb Ti Nb thin films

Epitaxial Nb and Nb Ti Nb films on sapphire substrates were prepared by e beam evaporation and sealed with thin Pd or Au layers to avoid oxidation. Hydrogen charging was performed from the gas phase and the concentration in the films was measured by the N 15 nuclear reaction method. For the single Nb layer the hydrogen concentration in the film as a function of the external hydrogen pressure solubility was investigated. For the Nb Ti Nb sandwich samples the distribution of hydrogen among the different layers was studied. In both cases deviations from the bulk behavior were observed. They are attributed to restrictions in the lateral expansion of epitaxial films. In addition interface effects were studie