Learning with facilitation affordances: The case of citizens’ advice services

How can employees be qualified to provide sound customer advisory services? How can they be empowered to deliver the value of public sector modernization to customers? In this paper, we offer a novel approach to qualify service personnel on-the-job using “facilitation affordances”. In this approach, artifacts, providing appropriately designed facilitation affordances, are introduced into service personnel’s work practices. These facilitation artifacts invite them to start experiential learning, and, hence, to improve their advice giving behavior. To develop our approach, we followed a design research approach, here we developed a set of design requirements and, ultimately, five design principles for facilitation artifacts. We tested our approach in the context of citizens’ advice services in public administrations. We implemented a prototype facilitation artifact and conducted a user study with six real-world advisors and twelve clients. Our preliminary results show that the “learning with facilitation affordances”-approach promises to enhance the service personnel’s skills that matter in modern public administrations. Furthermore, with the proposed qualification approach and the design principles for facilitation artifacts, we seek to deepen the knowledge on the importance of affordances for learning and, concurrently, provide practitioners with useful guidelines to implement the “learning with facilitation affordances”-approach in their organizations

When Learning Turns To Surveillance – Using Pedagogical Agents in Organizations

Workplace learning is often used to train employees systematically. New in this context is workplace learning with the help of a pedagogical agent (PA). Following Actions Design Research (ADR), this paper describes organizational training for telephone service using such PA. To develop the training, existing employee telephone service problems were analyzed, and the content of the learning program was determined based on this analysis. Subsequently, a PA was developed, implemented, and used in three municipalities. The evaluation of the learning outcome shows promising results but also yields some challenges: even though the employees improved in various aspects of the learning, they also developed a perception of surveillance. This research concludes with the formulation of design principles and suggestions for the organizational embedding of a PA in a workplace setting

When Learning Turns To Surveillance – Using Pedagogical Agents in Organizations

Workplace learning is often used to train employees systematically. New in this context is workplace learning with the help of a pedagogical agent (PA). Following Actions Design Research (ADR), this paper describes organizational training for telephone service using such PA. To develop the training, existing employee telephone service problems were analyzed, and the content of the learning program was determined based on this analysis. Subsequently, a PA was developed, implemented, and used in three municipalities. The evaluation of the learning outcome shows promising results but also yields some challenges: even though the employees improved in various aspects of the learning, they also developed a perception of surveillance. This research concludes with the formulation of design principles and suggestions for the organizational embedding of a PA in a workplace setting

Transport calculationof Semiconductor Nanowires Coupled to Quantum Well Reservoirs

Semiconductor nanowires are possible candidates to replace the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET) since they can act both as active devices or as device connectors. In this article, the transmission coefficients of Si and GaAs nanowires with arbitrary transport directions and cross sections are simulated in the nearest-neighbor sp3d5s* semi-empirical tight-binding method. The open boundary conditions (OBC) are calculated with a new scattering boundary method where a normal eigenvalue problem of reduced size is solved. Two different types of contacts are studied. In the ideal case, semi-infinite reservoirs (the source and the drain) that are the prolongation of the device are assumed. In a more realistic configuration, the active nanowire is embedded between two quantum well (QW) reservoirs. The electrical properties of the device are obtained by a non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) calculatio

Suburbane Räume als Kulturlandschaften - Einführung

Der Aufsatz besteht aus drei Teilen. In einem ersten Abschnitt werden die bisherigen Arbeiten zu Kulturlandschaften seit Ende der 1990er Jahre im Kontext der ARL und in Verbindung mit anderen raumwissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen resümiert. Daraus wird deutlich, dass Kulturlandschaften zwischenzeitlich ein zentrales Forschungsfeld der Raumwissenschaften geworden sind. Motor dieser Entwicklung waren sich wandelnde Verständnisse von Kulturlandschaft in bundesdeutschen und europäischen Dokumenten zur Raumordnung und zur Strukturpolitik. Diese werden im zweiten Abschnitt vorgestellt. Dabei wird offenkundig, dass der Begriff "Kulturlandschaft" zunehmend auch auf suburbane Räume bezogen wird. Das bildet den Hintergrund für aktuelle Diskussionen darüber, welchen Mehrwert es bringt, solche Räume auch als Kulturlandschaften zu verstehen. Der dritte Abschnitt skizziert die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auf suburbane Räume, wie sie in den Beiträgen dieses Bandes zur Diskussion gestellt werden.The paper is divided into three parts. The first section reviews work undertaken on cultural landscapes since the end of the 1990s in the context of the ARL and in connection to other spatial research institutions. The review shows that cultural landscapes have become a central field of research for spatial planning and regional development. Driving this development was a changing understanding of cultural landscape in German Federal and European documentation on spatial planning and structural policy, as is discussed in the second section of the paper. It becomes obvious that the concept of cultural landscape is being increasingly used with reference to suburban spaces. This provides a background for current discussions about the advantages of conceptualising such spaces as cultural landscapes. The third section outlines the various perspectives on suburban spaces taken in the contributions to this volume

Spectroscopic and mechanistic studies of dinuclear metallohydrolases and their biomimetic complexes

An enhanced understanding of the metal ion binding and active site structural features of phosphoesterases such as the glycerophosphodiesterase from Enterobacter aerogenes (GpdQ), and the organophosphate degrading agent from Agrobacterium radiobacter (OpdA) have important consequences for potential applications. Coupled with investigations of the metalloenzymes, programs of study to synthesise and characterise model complexes based on these metalloenzymes can add to our understanding of structure and function of the enzymes themselves. This review summarises some of our work and illustrates the significance and contributions of model studies to knowledge in the area

Seven different genes encode a diverse mixture of isoforms of Bet v 1, the major birch pollen allergen

BACKGROUND: Pollen of the European white birch (Betula pendula, syn. B. verrucosa) is an important cause of hay fever. The main allergen is Bet v 1, member of the pathogenesis-related class 10 (PR-10) multigene family. To establish the number of PR-10/Bet v 1 genes and the isoform diversity within a single tree, PCR amplification, cloning and sequencing of PR-10 genes was performed on two diploid B. pendula cultivars and one interspecific tetraploid Betula hybrid. Sequences were attributed to putative genes based on sequence identity and intron length. Information on transcription was derived by comparison with homologous cDNA sequences available in GenBank/EMBL/DDJB. PCR-cloning of multigene families is accompanied by a high risk for the occurrence of PCR recombination artifacts. We screened for and excluded these artifacts, and also detected putative artifact sequences among database sequences. RESULTS: Forty-four different PR-10 sequences were recovered from B. pendula and assigned to thirteen putative genes. Sequence homology suggests that three genes were transcribed in somatic tissue and seven genes in pollen. The transcription of three other genes remains unknown. In total, fourteen different Bet v 1-type isoforms were identified in the three cultivars, of which nine isoforms were entirely new. Isoforms with high and low IgE-reactivity are encoded by different genes and one birch pollen grain has the genetic background to produce a mixture of isoforms with varying IgE-reactivity. Allergen diversity is even higher in the interspecific tetraploid hybrid, consistent with the presence of two genomes. CONCLUSION: Isoforms of the major birch allergen Bet v 1 are encoded by multiple genes, and we propose to name them accordingly. The present characterization of the Bet v 1 genes provides a framework for the screening of specific Bet v 1 genes among other B. pendula cultivars or Betula species, and for future breeding for trees with a reduced allergenicity. Investigations towards sensitization and immunotherapy should anticipate that patients are exposed to a mixture of Bet v 1 isoforms of different IgE-reactivity, even if pollen originates from a single birch tree

Molecular Evolutionary Analysis of the Thiamine-Diphosphate-Dependent Enzyme, Transketolase

Members of the transketolase group of thiamine- diphosphate-dependent enzymes from 17 different organisms including mammals, yeast, bacteria, and plants have been used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Alignment of the amino acid and DNA sequences for 21 transketolase enzymes and one putative transketolase reveals a number of highly conserved regions and invariant residues that are of predicted importance for enzyme activity, based on the crystal structure of yeast transketolase. One particular sequence of 36 residues has some similarities to the nucleotide-binding motif and we designate it as the transketolase motif. We report further evidence that the recP protein from Streptococcus pneumoniae might be a transketolase and we list a number of invariant residues which might be involved in substrate binding. Phylogenies derived from the nucleotide and the amino acid sequences by various methods show a conventional clustering for mammalian, plant, and gramnegative bacterial transketolases. The branching order of the gram-positive bacteria could not be inferred reliably. The formaldehyde transketolase (sometimes known as dihydroxyacetone synthase) of the yeast Hansenula polymorpha appears to be orthologous to the mammalian enzymes but paralogous to the other yeast transketolases. The occurrence of more than one transketolase gene in some organisms is consistent with several gene duplications. The high degree of similarity in functionally important residues and the fact that the same kinetic mechanism is applicable to all characterized transketolase enzymes is consistent with the proposition that they are all derived from one common ancestral gene. Transketolase appears to be an ancient enzyme that has evolved slowly and might serve as a model for a molecular clock, at least within the mammalian clade

Molecular Evolutionary Analysis of the Thiamine-Diphosphate-Dependent Enzyme, Transketolase

Members of the transketolase group of thiamine- diphosphate-dependent enzymes from 17 different organisms including mammals, yeast, bacteria, and plants have been used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Alignment of the amino acid and DNA sequences for 21 transketolase enzymes and one putative transketolase reveals a number of highly conserved regions and invariant residues that are of predicted importance for enzyme activity, based on the crystal structure of yeast transketolase. One particular sequence of 36 residues has some similarities to the nucleotide-binding motif and we designate it as the transketolase motif. We report further evidence that the recP protein from Streptococcus pneumoniae might be a transketolase and we list a number of invariant residues which might be involved in substrate binding. Phylogenies derived from the nucleotide and the amino acid sequences by various methods show a conventional clustering for mammalian, plant, and gramnegative bacterial transketolases. The branching order of the gram-positive bacteria could not be inferred reliably. The formaldehyde transketolase (sometimes known as dihydroxyacetone synthase) of the yeast Hansenula polymorpha appears to be orthologous to the mammalian enzymes but paralogous to the other yeast transketolases. The occurrence of more than one transketolase gene in some organisms is consistent with several gene duplications. The high degree of similarity in functionally important residues and the fact that the same kinetic mechanism is applicable to all characterized transketolase enzymes is consistent with the proposition that they are all derived from one common ancestral gene. Transketolase appears to be an ancient enzyme that has evolved slowly and might serve as a model for a molecular clock, at least within the mammalian clade