User Representation in eCommerce and Collaboration Applications

The development of the Internet was originally based on the assumption that a user remains anonymous. However, more and more services need to know the user for providing personalized services or for presenting the user to other users. As in real life, a user will interact with different services hosted by different providers. With the current approach users have to provide and update information about their identity and interests for each service independently. That results in cold-start problems for new services and in inconvenience for the user. In this paper we argue that user-centric global identity management is needed for future e-commerce and collaboration applications. We present the current state of art in the area of identity management, discuss needs and possibilities for future developments, and show some results of the work we have done in this context. 1

Does resemblance really matter? : A commentary on Gerard O'Brien

In this commentary on Gerard O’Brien’s “How does mind matter? —Solving the content causation problem”, I will investigate the notion of representational content presented in the latter. With this notion, O’Brien aims at giving an explanation of how mind matters in physicalist terms. His argumentation is motivated by, and supposedly directed towards, a problem he calls the content causation problem. Regarding this, I am most interested in reconstructing how his account relates to the presuppositions that make this problem so pressing in philosophical enquiry. O’Brien provides a very interesting answer to the question of “why mental content matters”, as motivated by the content causation problem. In particular, I will try to show that by making use of the notion of dispositions, it provides an interesting way of avoiding the presupposition that understanding content causation always requires the reduction of individual relational properties to individual intrinsic properties —probably because it is presupposed that such a reduction is impossible

Pi0 and Eta measurement with photon conversions in ALICE in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

We present a measurement of the Pi0 transverse momentum spectrum and of the Eta/Pi0 ratio in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the CERN LHC. In this analysis the reconstruction of Pi0 and Eta mesons has been done via photon conversions in the central tracking system of ALICE. Therefore, this method is completely independent from the electromagnetic calorimeters. It makes the Pi0 (Eta) measurement possible down to pt = 0.4 (0.6) GeV/c with a very good resolution and a very small background. For 100 Mio. pp collisions the pt reach is 7 GeV/c. The results are compared to NLO pQCD calculations.Comment: Proceedings to talk at HardProbes 2010, 4 page

Community mirrors for supporting corporate innovation and motivation

In this paper we are exploring the idea of applying community support concepts and ubiquitous user interfaces to supporting the motivation to innovate in corporate settings. Our special focus is on the early phase of the innovation process – the phase of idea generation and suggestion management. The key idea is to provide awareness for a company’s creative potential and appreciation for the idea creators in a corporate setting by displaying information from community platforms handling the suggestion management process on public shared displays (“Idea Mirrors”) in the office space

Measurement of pi0 and eta mesons with photon conversions in ALICE in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76, 7 TeV

In this thesis the differential invariant cross sections of the inclusive pi0 and eta meson production in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76 and 7TeV are presented. They have been obtained by the reconstruction of electrons and positrons from photon conversions in the Inner Tracking System and the Time Projection Chamber of the ALICE experiment. Therefore, the method is completely independent of calorimeters and allows the extraction of the pi0 (eta) signal down to very low transverse momenta of 0.3 GeV/c (0.4 GeV/c) for sqrt(s) = 7TeV. The resulting differential invariant cross sections are compared to those of the PHOton Spectrometer and charged pions and found to be almost everywhere in good agreement. The combined spectra of the photon conversion method and PHOS cover a broad transverse momentum range. The pi0 and eta spectra agree with NLO perturbative QCD predictions at sqrt(s) = 0.9TeV, however, the calculations overestimate the data at sqrt(s) = 7TeV. Also mT scaling has been tested at sqrt(s) = 2.76 and 7TeV. For sqrt(s) = 2.76TeV no clear statement can be made while for sqrt(s) = 7TeV an indication of violation is observed at low mT . The measured eta/pi0 ratios at the different energies are in agreement with world data. Furthermore, the production of pi0 mesons as a function of charged particle multiplicity has been investigated for sqrt(s) = 7TeV. A strong dependence is observed. With increasing charged-particle multiplicity an increase of the neutral pion yield and of the average transverse momentum is seen

A Curriculum Mining Method for Clustering Study Modules and Assessing their Uniqueness

Curriculum development can pursue several pedagogical goals. One is to design a curriculum that is attractive in comparison with other competing universities. To contribute to such a comparative assessment and, thereby, to the targeted development of curricula, the idea of a curriculum mining method is presented. Here, study modules are divided into homogeneous groups by means of a document clustering procedure. The generated knowledge improves the comparative assessment of curricula in two ways: First, depending on the context, it can be used to assess either the extent of the uniqueness of a module or its consecutiveness with other modules. Second, by supplementing the modules with metadata (e.g., region), a competitive analysis is provided in terms of modules offered by competing institutions. An exemplary case study demonstrates how this improves the evaluation of a specific IS curriculum. In conclusion, the current limitations and next steps of the research project are summarized

Atrial Natriuretic Peptide, a Regulator of Nuclear Factor-κB Activation in Vivo

Natriuretic peptides (NPs) comprise a family of vasoactive hormones that play important roles in the regulation of cardiovascular and renal homeostasis. Along this line, atrial NP (ANP) (international non-proprietary name: carperitide, HANP) is an approved drug for the treatment of acute heart failure. In recent years, evidence has been given that the NP system possesses a far broader biological spectrum than the regulation of blood pressure and volume homeostasis. In fact, a substantial amount of in vitro work indicates that ANP affects important inflammatory processes and signaling pathways. Quite surprisingly, however, no information exists on the in vivo antiinflammatory potential and signaling of ANP. We show here that pretreatment of lipopolysaccharide (Salmonella abortus equi, 2.5 mg/kg)-challenged mice with ANP (5μg/kg iv, 15 min) rapidly inhibits nuclear factor-κB activation via inhibition of phosphorylation and degradation of the IκB-α protein. ANP also reduces Akt activation upon lipopolysaccharide injection. In ANP-pretreated mice, the increase of TNF-α serum concentration is markedly prevented; most importantly, the survival of these animals improved. These findings demonstrate both in vitro and in vivo an antiinflammatory profile of ANP that deserves to be further investigated in a therapeutic perspective

From Mass Customization to Collaborative Customer CoDesign

The idea of integrating users into the design and production process is a promising strategy for companies being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. The use of e-business applications has been discussed as a approach for mass customization for over one decade. There is a huge amount of literature on manufacturing and information systems for mass customization. However, there has been little research looking at the role of the customer within the co-design process. Customers face new uncertainties and risks (“mass confusion”) when acting as co-designers. We discuss possible risks evolving during the interaction between customers and suppliers. We propose solutions for the “mass confusion” problem, and we challenge the assumption made by most mass customization researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between the customer and the supplier. We envision a different way of addressing the problem by using communities instead of one-to-one relationships. The objective of our paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design