Meeting Radical Change and Regional Transition: Regional Closedowns and the Role of Entrepreneurship

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the effects of radical changes within regions by providing an empirical base from 12 Swedish municipalities from different regions. The specific focus of the paper is the role of entrepreneurship, both as an opportunity-seeking activity in order to find and develop new business undertakings, as well as entrepreneurship as a perspective for supporting activities in the public or private spheres. The results are based on interviews and surveys, secondary data, information from regional governments, municipal websites and also from other public information channels. Two questions were raised in analysing the case: (1) What types of contextual factors are of strategic importance when regions are challenged by radical change, and what role do these factors have in a regional restructuring and development process? (2) What types of policy and support measures are productive for entrepreneurial activities in regions when adaptation to radical change is required? The results presented by the study provide insight into how the development of local economies is affected when conditions change in a region due to the closure of a major public workplace. The paper also tries to present opportunities through which municipalities are able to prepare for and take action to help entrepreneurial activity face ongoing structural change and a globalized local economy.radical change, regional transition, entrepreneurship, restructure, strategies, closedowns

Integrating patient perspectives in medical decision-making: a qualitative interview study examining potentials within the rare disease information exchange process in practice

Background Many European countries have recently implemented national rare disease plans. Although the network is strengthening, especially on the macro and meso levels, patients still go a long way through healthcare systems, with many health professionals involved and scarce evidence to gather. Specifically, patient involvement in the form of shared decision-making can offer further potential to increase healthcare systems’ efficiency on a micro level. Therefore, we examine the implementation of the shared decision-making concept thus far, and explore whether efficiency potentials exist—which are particularly relevant within the rare disease field—and how they can be triggered. Methods Our empirical evidence comes from 101 interviews conducted from March to September 2014 in Germany; 55 patients, 13 family members, and 33 health professionals participated in a qualitative interview study. Transcripts were analyzed using a directed qualitative content analysis. Results The interviews indicate that the decision-making process is increasingly relevant in practice. In comparison, however, the shared decision-making agreement itself was rarely reported. A majority of interactions are dominated by individual, informed decision-making, followed by paternalistic approaches. The patient-physician relationship was characterized by a distorted trust-building process, which is affected by not only dependencies due to the diseases’ severity and chronic course, but an often-reported stigmatization of patients as stimulants. Moreover, participation was high due to a pronounced engagement of those affected, diminishing as patients’ strength vanish during their odyssey through health care systems. The particular roles of “expert patients” or “lay experts” in the rare disease field were revealed, with further potential in integrating the gathered information. Conclusions The study reveals the named efficiency potentials, which are unique for rare diseases and make the further integration of shared decision-making very attractive, facilitating diagnostics and disease management. It is noteworthy that integrating shared decision-making in the rare disease field does not only require strengthening the position of patients but also that of physicians. Efforts can be made to further integrate the concept within political frameworks to trigger the identified potential and assess the health-economic impact

From the Kids TV Series Die Pfefferkörner to the First-Person Shooter Call of Duty: Internet, Social Media and Smartphone Use in the Transition from Childhood to Adolescence

Der Beitrag stellt zwei qualitative Studien der Autorinnen vor, welche zum einen die Veränderung der (Online-)Mediennutzung im Übergang von später Kindheit zum Jugendalter fokussieren und zum anderen persönliche Deutungen, Umgangsweisen und Reflexionsprozesse des Medienhandelns sichtbar machen. Letztere bleiben in quantitativen Studien in der Regel unberücksichtigt, sodass ein qualitativer Zugang mittels Gruppendiskussionen mit Heranwachsenden gewählt wurde. Die Gruppendiskussionen mit Grundschulkindern (4. Klasse) zeigen, dass sich die im Durchschnitt Neunjährigen bereits Medien und deren Inhalten, die sich an Jugendliche und Erwachsene richten, zuwenden. Ihr Verständnis über das Internet im Allgemeinen und über Social Network Sites im Besonderen ist aber noch ungenau und oberflächlich. Die Nutzung findet zudem oftmals noch eingebunden in den familiären Kontext statt. Dies ändert sich mit dem Erwerb des ersten eigenen Smartphones. Dieses bekommen die Kinder in der Regel nach der vierten Klasse im Übergang zur weiterführenden Schule, wie die Gruppendiskussionen mit den Befragten aus der fünften, sechsten und siebten Klassenstufe zeigen. Im Hinblick auf die Herausforderungen im Umgang mit Internet, Social Media und Smartphones lässt sich resümieren, dass die Medienkompetenz der befragten Kinder im Laufe der Zeit zunimmt; Unsicherheiten bleiben aber bestehen.The article presents two qualitative studies by the authors, which focus on the changes regarding the (online) use of media from childhood to adolescence and make visible personal interpretations, ways of dealing and reflection processes of media action. The latter are generally not taken into account in quantitative studies, so that we chose a qualitative methodological approach with group discussions with adolescents. Group discussions with primary school children (4th grade) show that nine-year-olds (in average) are already turning to media (content) aimed primarily at young people and adults. However, their understanding about the Internet in general and social networking sites in particular is still inaccurate and superficial. In addition, the use often takes place in the family context. This changes with the receipt of their first smartphones. In general, the children get one after the fourth grade during the transition to secondary school, as shown by the group discussions with the respondents from the fifth, sixth and seventh grades. With regard to the challenges of dealing with the Internet, social media and smartphones, the media literacy of the children surveyed increases over time; uncertainties remain, however

The Krein-von Neumann Extension and its Connection to an Abstract Buckling Problem

We prove the unitary equivalence of the inverse of the Krein--von Neumann extension (on the orthogonal complement of its kernel) of a densely defined, closed, strictly positive operator, $S\geq \epsilon I_{\mathcal{H}}$ for some $\epsilon >0$ in a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ to an abstract buckling problem operator. In the concrete case where $S=\bar{-\Delta|_{C_0^\infty(\Omega)}}$ in $L^2(\Omega; d^n x)$ for $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ an open, bounded (and sufficiently regular) domain, this recovers, as a particular case of a general result due to G. Grubb, that the eigenvalue problem for the Krein Laplacian $S_K$ (i.e., the Krein--von Neumann extension of $S$), $$S_K v = \lambda v, \quad \lambda \neq 0,$$ is in one-to-one correspondence with the problem of {\em the buckling of a clamped plate}, $$(-\Delta)^2u=\lambda (-\Delta) u \text{in} \Omega, \quad \lambda \neq 0, \quad u\in H_0^2(\Omega),$$ where $u$ and $v$ are related via the pair of formulas $$u = S_F^{-1} (-\Delta) v, \quad v = \lambda^{-1}(-\Delta) u,$$ with $S_F$ the Friedrichs extension of $S$. This establishes the Krein extension as a natural object in elasticity theory (in analogy to the Friedrichs extension, which found natural applications in quantum mechanics, elasticity, etc.).Comment: 16 page

Some remarks on the notions of general covariance and background independence

In the first part of this paper I review some of the difficulties that seem to obstruct generally valid definitions of "general covariance" and/or "background independence" The second and more historical part deals with a rather strange argument that Einstein put forward in his 1913 "Entwurf paper" with M. Grossmann to discredit scalar theories of gravity in order to promote general covariance.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to ``An assessment of current paradigms in the physics of fundamental interactions'', edited by I.O. Stamatescu (Springer Verlag, to appear

Habitusformen von Eltern im Kontext der Computerspielnutzung ihrer Kinder

Dieser Artikel stellt die Sichtweisen von Eltern auf das Computerspielverhalten ihrer Kinder und ihr erzieherisches Handeln bezüglich des Computerspielens vor. Die Ergebnisse stammen aus einem Forschungsprojekt der Fakultät für Erziehungswissenschaft der Universität Bielefeld mit dem Titel "Computerspielnutzung aus Elternsicht". Die empirische Studie aus dem Jahr 2014 umfasst 28 leitfadengestützte Interviews mit Elternpaaren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen u. a., dass der mediale Habitus (Kommer/Biermann 2012) die Ausgestaltung des medienerzieherischen Habitus (Friedrichs 2013) beeinflusst; d. h. bspw., dass computerspielerfahrene Eltern ein differenzierteres Medienerziehungsverhalten im Hinblick auf Computerspiele zeigen, als Eltern, die keine eigenen Computerspielerfahrungen gemacht haben

Angles Between Infinite Dimensional Subspaces with Applications to the Rayleigh-Ritz and Alternating Projectors Methods

We define angles from-to and between infinite dimensional subspaces of a Hilbert space, inspired by the work of E. J. Hannan, 1961/1962 for general canonical correlations of stochastic processes. The spectral theory of selfadjoint operators is used to investigate the properties of the angles, e.g., to establish connections between the angles corresponding to orthogonal complements. The classical gaps and angles of Dixmier and Friedrichs are characterized in terms of the angles. We introduce principal invariant subspaces and prove that they are connected by an isometry that appears in the polar decomposition of the product of corresponding orthogonal projectors. Point angles are defined by analogy with the point operator spectrum. We bound the Hausdorff distance between the sets of the squared cosines of the angles corresponding to the original subspaces and their perturbations. We show that the squared cosines of the angles from one subspace to another can be interpreted as Ritz values in the Rayleigh-Ritz method, where the former subspace serves as a trial subspace and the orthogonal projector of the latter subspace serves as an operator in the Rayleigh-Ritz method. The Hausdorff distance between the Ritz values, corresponding to different trial subspaces, is shown to be bounded by a constant times the gap between the trial subspaces. We prove a similar eigenvalue perturbation bound that involves the gap squared. Finally, we consider the classical alternating projectors method and propose its ultimate acceleration, using the conjugate gradient approach. The corresponding convergence rate estimate is obtained in terms of the angles. We illustrate a possible acceleration for the domain decomposition method with a small overlap for the 1D diffusion equation.Comment: 22 pages. Accepted to Journal of Functional Analysi

Bosonization method for second super quantization

A bosonic-fermionic correspondence allows an analytic definition of functional super derivative, in particular, and a bosonic functional calculus, in general, on Bargmann- Gelfand triples for the second super quantization. A Feynman integral for the super transformation matrix elements in terms of bosonic anti-normal Berezin symbols is rigorously constructed.Comment: In memoriam of F. A. Berezin, accepted in Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physics, 15 page

Multidomain Spectral Method for the Helically Reduced Wave Equation

We consider the 2+1 and 3+1 scalar wave equations reduced via a helical Killing field, respectively referred to as the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional helically reduced wave equation (HRWE). The HRWE serves as the fundamental model for the mixed-type PDE arising in the periodic standing wave (PSW) approximation to binary inspiral. We present a method for solving the equation based on domain decomposition and spectral approximation. Beyond describing such a numerical method for solving strictly linear HRWE, we also present results for a nonlinear scalar model of binary inspiral. The PSW approximation has already been theoretically and numerically studied in the context of the post-Minkowskian gravitational field, with numerical simulations carried out via the "eigenspectral method." Despite its name, the eigenspectral technique does feature a finite-difference component, and is lower-order accurate. We intend to apply the numerical method described here to the theoretically well-developed post-Minkowski PSW formalism with the twin goals of spectral accuracy and the coordinate flexibility afforded by global spectral interpolation.Comment: 57 pages, 11 figures, uses elsart.cls. Final version includes revisions based on referee reports and has two extra figure