LifeWatch – A European e-Science and observatory infrastructure supporting access and use of biodiversity and ecosystem data

There are many promising earth and biodiversity-monitoring projects underway across the globe, but they often operate in information islands, unable easily to share data with others. This is not convenient: It is a barrier to scientists collaborating on complex, cross-disciplinary projects which is an essential nature of biodiversity research. 

LifeWatch (www.lifewatch.eu) is an ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) initiative which has just entered its construction phase. It is aiming at new ways of collaboration, in an open-access research environment to solve complex societal and scientific questions on biodiversity and ecosystems. It installs a range of new services and tools to help the researchers communicate, share data, create models, analyze results, manage projects and organize the community. The power of LifeWatch comes from linking all kinds of biodiversity related databases (e.g. collections, long-term monitoring data) to tools for analysis and modeling, opening entirely new avenues for research with the potential for new targeted data generation. At this level the interface with national data repositories becomes most important, as this opens the opportunity for users to gain advantage from data availability on the European level. LifeWatch will provide common methods to discover, access, and develop available and new data, analytical capabilities, and to catalog everything, to track citation and re-use of data, to annotate, and to keep the system secure. This includes computing tool-kits for researchers: for instance, an interoperable computing environment for statistical analysis, cutting-edge software to manage the workflow in scientific projects, and access to new or existing computing resources. The result: ‘e-laboratories’ or virtual labs, through which researchers distributed across countries, time zones and disciplines can collaborate. With emphasis on the open sharing of data and workflows (and associated provenance information) the infrastructure allows scientists to create e-laboratories across multiple organizations, controlling access where necessary

Estimating the Neighborhood Influence on Decision Makers: Theory and an Application on the Analysis of Innovation Decisions

When making decisions, agents tend to make use of decisions others have made in similar situations. Ignoring this behavior in empirical models can be interpreted as a problem of omitted variables and may seriously bias parameter estimates and harm inference. We suggest a possibility of integrating such outside in uences into models of discrete choice decisions by defining an abstract space in which agents with similar characteristics are neighbors who possibly in uence each other. In order to correct for correlations between the characteristics, the design of this space allows for nonorthogonality of its dimensions. Several Monte Carlo simulations show the small sample properties of spatial models with binary choice. When applying the estimator to innovation decisions data of German firms, we find evidence for the existence of neighborhood effects.

Growing into Work - Pseudo Panel Data Evidence on Labor Market Entrance in Germany

The German apprenticeship training system is generally acknowledged to solve the youth unemployment problem prevalent in many European countries by providing on-the-job training that often leads into subsequent regular employment within the training firms. Little attention has been paid to those youths who either fail their apprenticeship training or do not find a job afterwards. Both events may not only be associated with a depreciation of human capital but also may serve as a screening device for potential employers. In this paper we try to analyze empirically if a failed labor market entrance reduces subsequent earnings and if a potential reduction lasts over the individual's labor market history. We construct a pseudo panel of birth cohorts for a sample of West German males born between 1930 and 1965 from three repeated cross sections observed in 1979, 1985/86, and 1991/92. Analyzing the pseudo panel data we find a strong negative impact on earnings for both a failed apprenticeship training and a failed transition into regular employment. While the latter effect lasts over the individual's labor market history the former effect is compensated with increasing labor market experience

Studie zu gewerblichen Strompreisen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Strom als Wettbewerbsfaktor und Gegenstand der Standortvermarktung

In einer im Mai 2010 von der Wirtschaftsfördergesellschaft Vorpommern mbH (WFG) in Zusammenarbeit mit kreislichen und städtischen Wirtschaftsförderern sowie der Fachhochschule Stralsund, Fachbereich Wirtschaft, durchgeführten branchenübergreifenden Unternehmensbefragung zur Zufriedenheit mit dem Wirtschaftsstandort Vorpommern zeigte sich, dass immerhin 70,06 % der über 350 teilnehmenden Unternehmen mit dem Standortfaktor Energie- sowie Ver- und Entsorgungspreise eher unzufrieden oder sehr unzufrieden waren. Der Frage, inwieweit diese Unzufriedenheit berechtigt ist, wird in diesem Arbeitspapier durch die Darstellung der Fakten im Bereich der Stromversorgung in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern nachgegangen. Als ein wesentliches Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass der durchschnittliche Strompreis für gewerbliche Kunden in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern über dem bundesweiten Strompreisniveau liegt. Im Vergleich der Bundesländer befindet sich Mecklenburg-Vorpommern allerdings im Mittelfeld. Als ein wesentlicher Kostentreiber können die im Bundesländervergleich relativ hohen Netzentgelte in Mecklenburg Vorpommern angesehen werden. Der mittlere Strompreis für die Bedarfsart Gewerbe liegt in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern zwar über dem bundesweiten Mittelwert. Es gibt aber in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern mehrere Energieversorgungsunternehmen, die Stromlieferungen zu Preisen anbieten, die - zum Teil deutlich - unter dem Bundesdurchschnitt liegen. Hier bieten sich somit sowohl durch die freie Versorgerwahl als auch durch das Ausschöpfen von Verhandlungsspielräumen Potenziale für die Einsparung betrieblicher Stromkosten

Der Einfluß von Kalkhydrat auf Keimung und Wachstum ausgewählter Arten

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Causing factors, outcomes, and governance of Shadow IT and business-managed IT: a systematic literature review

Shadow IT and Business-managed IT describe the autonomous deployment/procurement or management of Information Technology (IT) instances, i.e., software, hardware, or IT services, by business entities. For Shadow IT, this happens covertly, i.e., without alignment with the IT organization; for Business-managed IT this happens overtly, i.e., in alignment with the IT organization or in a split responsibility model. We conduct a systematic literature review and structure the identified research themes in a framework of causing factors, outcomes, and governance. As causing factors, we identify enablers, motivators, and missing barriers. Outcomes can be benefits as well as risks/shortcomings of Shadow IT and Business-managed IT. Concerning governance, we distinguish two subcategories: general governance for Shadow IT and Business-managed IT and instance governance for overt Business-managed IT. Thus, a specific set of governance approaches exists for Business-managed IT that cannot be applied to Shadow IT due to its covert nature. Hence, we extend the existing conceptual understanding and allocate research themes to Shadow IT, Business-managed IT, or both concepts and particularly distinguish the governance of the two concepts. Besides, we find that governance themes have been the primary research focus since 2016, whereas older publications (until 2015) focused on causing factors