Software business : A short history and trends for the future

During its 70 years of existence, the software business has been following an evolution curve that can be considered typical for several fields of industrial businesses. Technological breakthroughs and innovations are typically seen as enablers for business evolution in the domain of technology and innovation management. Software, data collection, and data analysis represent a greater and greater part of the value of products and services, and today, their role is also becoming essential in more traditional fields. This, however, requires business and technology competences that traditional industries do not have. The transformation also enables new ways of doing business and opens the field for new kinds of players. Together, all this leads to transformation and new possibilities for the software industry. In this paper we study the overall trajectory of the software business, and then offer some viewpoints on the change in different elements of business models. Copyright © by the paper's authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes.Peer reviewe

Experimental Evidence for Efimov Quantum States

Three interacting particles form a system which is well known for its complex physical behavior. A landmark theoretical result in few-body quantum physics is Efimov's prediction of a universal set of weakly bound trimer states appearing for three identical bosons with a resonant two-body interaction. Surprisingly, these states even exist in the absence of a corresponding two-body bound state and their precise nature is largely independent of the particular type of the two-body interaction potential. Efimov's scenario has attracted great interest in many areas of physics; an experimental test however has not been achieved. We report the observation of an Efimov resonance in an ultracold thermal gas of cesium atoms. The resonance occurs in the range of large negative two-body scattering lengths and arises from the coupling of three free atoms to an Efimov trimer. We observe its signature as a giant three-body recombination loss when the strength of the two-body interaction is varied near a Feshbach resonance. This resonance develops into a continuum resonance at non-zero collision energies, and we observe a shift of the resonance position as a function of temperature. We also report on a minimum in the recombination loss for positive scattering lengths, indicating destructive interference of decay pathways. Our results confirm central theoretical predictions of Efimov physics and represent a starting point from which to explore the universal properties of resonantly interacting few-body systems.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of ICAP-2006 (Innsbruck

Prolyl hydroxylase PHD3 activates oxygen-dependent protein aggregation

The HIF prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs/EGLNs) are central regulators of the molecular responses to oxygen availability. One isoform, PHD3, is expressed in response to hypoxia and causes apoptosis in oxygenated conditions in neural cells. Here we show that PHD3 forms subcellular aggregates in an oxygen-dependent manner. The aggregation of PHD3 was seen under normoxia and was strongly reduced under hypoxia or by the inactivation of the PHD3 hydroxylase activity. The PHD3 aggregates were dependent on microtubular integrity and contained components of the 26S proteasome, chaperones, and ubiquitin, thus demonstrating features that are characteristic for aggresome-like structures. Forced expression of the active PHD3 induced the aggregation of proteasomal components and activated apoptosis under normoxia in HeLa cells. The apoptosis was seen in cells prone to PHD3 aggregation and the PHD3 aggregation preceded apoptosis. The data demonstrates the cellular oxygen sensor PHD3 as a regulator of protein aggregation in response to varying oxygen availability

Bias and Misrepresentation of Science Undermines Productive Discourse on Animal Welfare Policy: A Case Study

Reliable scientific knowledge is crucial for informing legislative, regulatory, and policy decisions in a variety of areas. To that end, scientific reviews of topical issues can be invaluable tools for informing productive discourse and decision-making, assuming these reviews represent the target body of scientific knowledge as completely, accurately, and objectively as possible. Unfortunately, not all reviews live up to this standard. As a case in point, Marino et al.’s review regarding the welfare of killer whales in captivity contains methodological flaws and misrepresentations of the scientific literature, including problematic referencing, overinterpretation of the data, misleading word choice, and biased argumentation. These errors and misrepresentations undermine the authors’ conclusions and make it impossible to determine the true state of knowledge of the relevant issues. To achieve the goal of properly informing public discourse and policy on this and other issues, it is imperative that scientists and science communicators strive for higher standards of analysis, argumentation, and objectivity, in order to clearly communicate what is known, what is not known, what conclusions are supported by the data, and where we are lacking the data necessary to draw reliable conclusions

Validation and refinement of gene-regulatory pathways on a network of physical interactions

As genome-scale measurements lead to increasingly complex models of gene regulation, systematic approaches are needed to validate and refine these models. Towards this goal, we describe an automated procedure for prioritizing genetic perturbations in order to discriminate optimally between alternative models of a gene-regulatory network. Using this procedure, we evaluate 38 candidate regulatory networks in yeast and perform four high-priority gene knockout experiments. The refined networks support previously unknown regulatory mechanisms downstream of SOK2 and SWI4

Computers in Education

Computers, or in wider scope, information and communication technology (ICT), have had revolutionary impact on education. ICT is both merged to the education process and is supporting it. Computers and information technology are typical enabling technologies not in the focus itself, but when available, these are adopted in use. Performance of computers has grown exponentially: According to Moore's law processing power and RAM capacity is doubled in 1.5 years. The similar growth rate relates to mass memories and data transmission speed. During the era of computing (from the middle 1940s) information technology has gradually transferred to new areas of use. In the beginning, the computers themselves were in focus. In the 1970s microelectronics has been the key to changes: first personal computers, then networking and cloud technologies, further embedded intelligence of devices, distributed computing, complex software, wide access to heterogeneous data sources etc. have brought the computer to the growing number of applications, also in the education sector. The purpose of this paper is to have a look at the concept 'computers in education It has been the title of the conference track in Mipro over decades. It is widely handled in literature, journals, and other publications. These provide forum for experience transfer in the area, as well as encourage researchers to study the topic from the scientific direction. The paper is partially based on the experiences of the authors and aimed to clarify the term from a variety point of view.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

IT Education in Clouds and Clouds in IT Education

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) and growing participation of students in work life has already in several decades moved ICT education into 'clouds', using sources of knowledge on Internet from all around the world. The COVID pandemic has increased this process, forcing universities to restrict classroom teaching and rapidly increased student's self-study.At the same time, increase of amounts of data to be processed is constantly introducing new high-level software technologies, layers and layers of packages and libraries, deeper and more complex. This has created a new 'top-down' programming style: a new project is started with importing mass of libraries which have been used in earlier projects and only then is considered how to use them in order to solve the programming task. The self-studying ICT students see only tips of modern software icebergs and it is difficult for them to understand their working without face-to-face classroom communication where details of the 'depths' are explained.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Convolutional Embedding of Attributed Molecular Graphs for Physical Property Prediction

The task of learning an expressive molecular representation is central to developing quantitative structure–activity and property relationships. Traditional approaches rely on group additivity rules, empirical measurements or parameters, or generation of thousands of descriptors. In this paper, we employ a convolutional neural network for this embedding task by treating molecules as undirected graphs with attributed nodes and edges. Simple atom and bond attributes are used to construct atom-specific feature vectors that take into account the local chemical environment using different neighborhood radii. By working directly with the full molecular graph, there is a greater opportunity for models to identify important features relevant to a prediction task. Unlike other graph-based approaches, our atom featurization preserves molecule-level spatial information that significantly enhances model performance. Our models learn to identify important features of atom clusters for the prediction of aqueous solubility, octanol solubility, melting point, and toxicity. Extensions and limitations of this strategy are discussed

Fresh perspectives on customer experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide directions for future research on: broadening the role of customers in customer experience; taking a practice-based approach to customer experience; and recognizing the holistic, dynamic nature of customer experience across all touch points and over time. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is conceptual identifying current gaps in research on customer experience. Findings – The findings include a set of research questions and research agenda for future research on customer experience. Originality/value – This research suggests fresh perspectives for understanding the customer experience which can inspire future research and advance theory and managerial practice

Strategies and challenges to facilitate situated learning in virtual worlds post-Second Life

Virtual worlds can establish a stimulating environment to support a situated learning approach in which students simulate a task within a safe environment. While in previous years Second Life played a major role in providing such a virtual environment, there are now more and more alternative—often OpenSim-based—solutions deployed within the educational community. By drawing parallels to social networks, we discuss two aspects: how to link individually hosted virtual worlds together in order to implement context for immersion and how to identify and avoid “fake” avatars so people behind these avatars can be held accountable for their actions