Will Algorithms Replace Managers? A Systematic Literature Review on Algorithmic Management

Algorithms increasingly take on tasks traditionally performed by humans. They not only serve as co-workers to their human counterparts but increasingly take over management tasks by supervising and coordinating human workers – a phenomenon referred to as Algorithmic Management (AM). There is a growing research interest in this topic, but currently, the field lacks an overview and thorough understanding of what types of managerial work algorithms already perform. We address this with a structured literature review. We find that the automation of management work and workers’ responses to it (so-called algoactivism) have received the most attention. However, the configuration of AM systems has so far received little systematic attention. We further analyze which management functions algorithms perform. We find that while algorithms primarily supervise and investigate workers, coordinating interdependent workers and tasks has not been addressed. We propose several avenues for future research

Solid State Joining of a Cold Rolled Zr-Based Bulk Metallic Glass to a Wrought Aluminum Alloy by Power Ultrasonics

Ultrasonic metal welding (UMW) enables joining in the solid state at relative low temperatures with short cycle times. This technique is of particular interest for joining metallic glasses to each other or to other materials, because crystallization of the amorphous structure can be prevented due to the low thermal loading and the rapidity of the process. In this work, UMW is applied to join one 1 mm thick sheet of a commercial wrought aluminum alloy (AA5754) and one 0.4 mm thick strip of a commercial Zr-based bulk metallic glass (AMZ4). The introduced heat of the welding process is detected with thermocouples and thermal imaging. To investigate the strength of the joint and the influence on the microstructure, mechanical tensile tests are carried out in combination with scanning electron microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. The results show that ultrasonic metal welding is a suitable technique to join amorphous bulk metallic glasses to crystalline aluminum alloys. The metallic glass component retains its amorphous structure in the joint, and the joint strength is higher than the strength of the Al sheet. These findings will help to develop future applications of BMG-based multi-material components, including medical tools

Digital Twins of Organizations: A Socio-Technical View on Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research

Digital twins of organizations are software models that leverage operational and other data streams in order to dynamically monitor, analyze and improve organizational activities over time. Despite surging interest in practice, there is little research about this emerging topic. In this report, we draw from a panel discussion that has taken place at the International Conference on Business Process Management in 2021. Panelists and discussants included scholars from the information systems field, organization science and computer science. Summarizing and integrating the variety of involved perspectives, we present a socio-technical view on this emerging phenomenon. We point to several implications for future research

A common approach for absolute quantification of short chain CoA thioesters in prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes

Background Thioesters of coenzyme A participate in 5% of all enzymatic reactions. In microbial cell factories, they function as building blocks for products of recognized commercial value, including natural products such as polyketides, polyunsaturated fatty acids, biofuels, and biopolymers. A core spectrum of approximately 5–10 short chain thioesters is present in many microbes, as inferred from their genomic repertoire. The relevance of these metabolites explains the high interest to trace and quantify them in microbial cells. Results Here, we describe a common workflow for extraction and absolute quantification of short chain CoA thioesters in different gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and eukaryotic yeast, i.e. Corynebacterium glutamicum, Streptomyces albus, Pseudomonas putida, and Yarrowia lipolytica. The approach assessed intracellular CoA thioesters down to the picomolar level and exhibited high precision and reproducibility for all microbes, as shown by principal component analysis. Furthermore, it provided interesting insights into microbial CoA metabolism. A succinyl-CoA synthase defective mutant of C. glutamicum exhibited an unaffected level of succinyl-CoA that indicated a complete compensation by the L-lysine pathway to bypass the disrupted TCA cycle. Methylmalonyl-CoA, an important building block of high-value polyketides, was identified as dominant CoA thioester in the actinomycete S. albus. The microbe revealed a more than 10,000-fold difference in the abundance of intracellular CoA thioesters. A recombinant strain of S. albus, which produced different derivatives of the antituberculosis polyketide pamamycin, revealed a significant depletion of CoA thioesters of the ethylmalonyl CoA pathway, influencing product level and spectrum. Conclusions The high relevance of short chain CoA thioesters to synthetize industrial products and the interesting insights gained from the examples shown in this work, suggest analyzing these metabolites in microbial cell factories more routinely than done so far. Due to its broad application range, the developed approach appears useful to be applied this purpose. Hereby, the possibility to use one single protocol promises to facilitate automatized efforts, which rely on standardized workflows

Significance of tumour regression in lymph node metastases of gastric and gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinomas.

The presence of lymph node (LN) metastases is one of the most important negative prognostic factors in upper gastrointestinal carcinomas. Tumour regression similar to that in primary tumours can be observed in LN metastases after neoadjuvant therapy. We evaluated the prognostic impact of histological regression in LNs in 480 adenocarcinomas of the stomach and gastro-oesophageal junction after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Regressive changes in LNs (nodular and/or hyaline fibrosis, sheets of foamy histiocytes or acellular mucin) were assessed by histology. In total, regressive changes were observed in 128 of 480 patients. LNs were categorised according to the absence or presence of both residual tumour and regressive changes (LN-/+ and Reg-/+). 139 cases were LN-/Reg-, 28 cases without viable LN metastases revealed regressive changes (LN-/Reg+), 100 of 313 cases with LN metastases showed regressive changes (LN+/Reg+), and 213 of 313 metastatic LN had no signs of regression (LN+/Reg-). Overall, LN/Reg categorisation correlated with overall survival with the best prognosis for LN-/Reg- and the worst prognosis for LN+/Reg- (p < 0.001). LN-/Reg+ cases had a nearly significant better outcome than LN+/Reg+ (p = 0.054) and the latter had a significantly better prognosis than LN+/Reg- (p = 0.01). The LN/Reg categorisation was also an independent prognostic factor in multivariate analysis (HR = 1.23; 95% CI 1.1-1.38; p < 0.001). We conclude that the presence of regressive changes after neoadjuvant treatment in LNs and LN metastases of gastric and gastro-oesophageal junction cancers is a relevant prognostic factor

Low energy analysis of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors

We analyze the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon to fourth order in relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory. We employ the recently proposed infrared regularization scheme and show that the convergence of the chiral expansion is improved as compared to the heavy fermion approach. We also discuss the inclusion of vector mesons and obtain an accurate description of all four nucleon form factors for momentum transfer squared up to Q^2 \simeq 0.4 GeV^2.Comment: 44 pp, LaTeX2e, uses epsf and amsbs

Getting in, moving up, dropping out. The threefold social selectivity of participation in political parties – an empirical analysis of party members, former party members and the general public in Germany in 2017

Does the probability to join a political party, to become a party functionary, and to leave a party depend on individuals’ socioeconomic status? Political parties are central mediating actors between the population and the state; thus, it is reasonable to assume that unequal participation within parties fosters unequal political representation. However, due to data limitations no study has hitherto examined the social selectivity of the whole party membership cycle. We shed light on these issues by analysing original data from the German Party Membership Study 2017. We find that socially disadvantaged individuals are less likely to become and to stay party members and have a lower proclivity for holding political offices. These effects persist even after controlling for socialpsychological variables and the general incentives for party membership. However, in line with recent findings on voter turnout we show that social selectivity is partly mediated by political efficacy

Die Sozialstruktur der deutschen Parteimitgliedschaften. Empirische Befunde der Deutschen Parteimitgliederstudien 1998, 2009 und 2017

In den Mitgliederverzeichnissen der deutschen Parteien sind außer dem Geschlecht und dem Alter keine weiteren sozialstrukturellen Merkmale der Parteimitglieder zuverlässig erfasst. Eine differenzierte Analyse der gesellschaftlichen Verankerung des deutschen Parteiensystems kann demzufolge nur auf der Grundlage national repräsentativer Befragungen der Mitglieder der wichtigsten deutschen Parteien erfolgen. Eine solche umfassende Parteimitgliederstudie ist in Deutschland in den Jahren 1998, 2009 und 2017 durchgeführt worden. Befragt wurden dabei jeweils die Mitglieder der CDU, der CSU, der SPD, der FDP, der PDS bzw. der Linken sowie von Bündnis90/Die Grünen. Nach einer ausführlichen Beschreibung der Datenerhebung der Deutschen Parteimitgliederstudien werden die wichtigsten Befunde im Hinblick auf die sozialstrukturelle Zusammensetzung der Parteimitgliedschaften präsentiert. Neben einem Vergleich der Parteimitglieder insgesamt mit der allgemeinen Bevölkerung erfolgt außerdem auch ein Vergleich der Mitgliedschaften der verschiedenen Parteien untereinander

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection of Paranasal Anomalies in the Maxillary Sinus

Deep learning (DL) algorithms can be used to automate paranasal anomaly detection from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). However, previous works relied on supervised learning techniques to distinguish between normal and abnormal samples. This method limits the type of anomalies that can be classified as the anomalies need to be present in the training data. Further, many data points from normal and anomaly class are needed for the model to achieve satisfactory classification performance. However, experienced clinicians can segregate between normal samples (healthy maxillary sinus) and anomalous samples (anomalous maxillary sinus) after looking at a few normal samples. We mimic the clinicians ability by learning the distribution of healthy maxillary sinuses using a 3D convolutional auto-encoder (cAE) and its variant, a 3D variational autoencoder (VAE) architecture and evaluate cAE and VAE for this task. Concretely, we pose the paranasal anomaly detection as an unsupervised anomaly detection problem. Thereby, we are able to reduce the labelling effort of the clinicians as we only use healthy samples during training. Additionally, we can classify any type of anomaly that differs from the training distribution. We train our 3D cAE and VAE to learn a latent representation of healthy maxillary sinus volumes using L1 reconstruction loss. During inference, we use the reconstruction error to classify between normal and anomalous maxillary sinuses. We extract sub-volumes from larger head and neck MRIs and analyse the effect of different fields of view on the detection performance. Finally, we report which anomalies are easiest and hardest to classify using our approach. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of unsupervised detection of paranasal anomalies from MRIs with an AUPRC of 85% and 80% for cAE and VAE, respectively