Continuous Market Engineering - Focusing Agent Behavior, Interfaces, and Auxiliary Services

Electronic markets spread out amongst business entities as well as private individuals. Albeit numerous approaches on developing electronic markets exist, a unified approach targeting market development, redesign, and refinement has been lacking. This thesis studies the potential of continuously improving electronic markets. Thereby, the experiments? design focuses on Agent Behavior, Interfaces, and Auxiliary Services and thus unveils the potential of continuously improving electronic markets

Beware of Performance Indicators - How Visual Cues Increase the Disposition Effect

Online trading interfaces are important instruments for retail investors. For sound reasons, regulators obligate online brokers to inform customers about certain trade related risks. Research has shown that different behavioral biases can decrease traders’ performance and hence lead to pecuniary losses. The disposition to hold losing stocks too long and sell winning stocks too early (‘disposition effect’) is such a deviation from rational behavior. The disposition effect is analyzed for the prediction market ‘Kurspiloten’ which predicts selected stock prices and counts nearly 2000 active traders and more than 200,000 orders. We show that the disposition effect can be aggravated by visual feedback on a trader’s performance via colored trend direction arrows and percentages. However, we find no evidence that such an interface modification leads to higher activity. Furthermore, we can not confirm that creating awareness of the disposition effect with textual information is suited to decreasing its strength

How to assess the impact of an electronic document? And what does impact mean anyway? : reliable usage statistics in heterogeneous repository communities

<b>Purpose</b> Usually impact of research and researchers is tried to be quantified by using citation data: Either by journal-centered citation data as in the case of the journal impact factor JIF or by author-centered citation data as in the case of the Hirsch- or h-index. The paper discusses a range of impact measures, especially usage based metrics. Furthermore the authors report the results of two surveys. The surveys focused on innovative features for open access repositories — with an emphasis on functionalities based on usage information. <b>Design/methodology/approach</b> The first part of the article analyzes both citation-based and usage-based metrics. The second part is based on the findings of the surveys: One in form of a brainstorming session with information professionals and scientists at the OAI6 conference in Geneva, the second in form of expert interviews mainly with scientists. <b>Findings</b> The results of the surveys indicate an interest in the social aspects of science like visualizations of social graphs both for persons and their publications. Furthermore usage data is considered an appropriate measure to describe quality and coverage of scientific documents, admittedly the consistence of usage information among repository has to be kept in mind. The scientist that took part in the survey also asked for community services, assuming these might help to identify relevant scientific information more easily. Some of the other topics of interest were personalization or easy submission procedures. <b>Originality/value</b> This paper delineates current discussions about citation-based and usage-based metrics. Based on the results of the surveys it depicts which functionalities could enhance repositories, what features are required by scientists and information professionals and whether usage-based services are considered valuable. These results also outline some elements of future repository research

Extending the Touchscreen Pattern Lock Mechanism with Duplicated and Temporal Codes

We investigate improvements to authentication on mobile touchscreen phones and present a novel extension to the widely used touchscreen pattern lock mechanism. Our solution allows including nodes in the grid multiple times, which enhances the resilience to smudge and other forms of attack. For example, for a smudge pattern covering 7 nodes, our approach increases the amount of possible lock patterns by a factor of 15 times. Our concept was implemented and evaluated in a laboratory user test (n = 36). The test participants found the usability of the proposed concept to be equal to that of the baseline pattern lock mechanism but considered it more secure. Our solution is fully backwards-compatible with the current baseline pattern lock mechanism, hence enabling easy adoption whilst providing higher security at a comparable level of usability

Understanding the Role of Culture in Eco-Innovation Adoption – An Empirical Cross-Country Comparison

In this paper we merge research approaches from information systems, social and environmental psychology, as well as innovation diffusion to investigate the effect of cultural factors on the adoption of eco-innovations. Specifically, we conduct an empirical study based on the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value Belief Norm Theory to estimate how culture influences the intention to adopt electric vehicles as a surrogate for eco-innovations. In our study we find evidence that there exist major differences in adoption behavior of eco-innovations between Germans and Chinese. Furthermore we were able to show that in contrast to prior findings on innovation adoption, primary sources’ influence was the most important predictor of the intention to adopt electric vehicles

Inorganic carbon and pH dependency of Trichodesmium's photosynthetic rates.

We established the relationship between photosynthetic carbon fixation rates and pH, CO2 and HCO3- concentrations in the diazotroph Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101. Inorganic 14C-assimilation was measured in TRIS-buffered ASW medium where the absolute and relative concentrations of CO2, pH and HCO3- were manipulated. First, we varied the total dissolved inorganic carbon concentration (TIC) (< 0 to ~ 5 mM) at constant pH, so ratios of CO2 and HCO3- remained relatively constant. Second, we varied pH (~ 8.54 to 7.52) at constant TIC, so CO2 increased whilst HCO3- declined. We found that 14C-assimilation could be described by the same function of CO2 for both approaches but showed different dependencies on HCO3- when pH was varied at constant TIC than when TIC was varied at constant pH. A numerical model of Trichodesmium's CCM showed carboxylation rates are modulated by HCO3- and pH. The decrease in Ci assimilation at low CO2, when TIC was varied, is due to HCO3- uptake limitation of the carboxylation rate. Conversely, when pH was varied, Ci assimilation declined due to a high-pH mediated increase in HCO3- and CO2 leakage rates, potentially coupled to other processes (uncharacterised within the CCM model) that restrict Ci assimilation rates under high-pH conditions

Design of Specific Mammalian Promoters by in silico Prediction

The purpose of this RFC is to provide a) a method for the design of rational synthetic promoter sequences based on a statistical analysis about the spatial preference of transcription factor binding sites in human promoter sequences and b) further introduce standards to provide compatibility with data formats introduced in this RFC. Description of promoters generated by this method can be found at http://2009.igem.org/Team:Heidelberg/HEARTBEAT_database

Ergebnisse und Implikationen aus dem Modellversuch zum Handel mit Flächenzertifikaten

Die Flächeninanspruchnahme liegt im Vierjahresdurchschnitt der Jahre 2011 bis 2014 mit 69 Hektar pro Tag immer noch mehr als doppelt so hoch wie von der Bundesregierung vor 14 Jahren in der nationalen Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie festgelegt. Vor dem Hintergrund des 30-Hektar-Zieles hat die Bundesregierung in den Koalitionsverträgen der 17. und 18. Legislaturperiode vereinbart, gemeinsam mit den Städten und Gemeinden den kommunalen Handel mit Flächenzertifikaten in einem Modellversuch zu erproben. Der vom Umweltbundesamt beauftragte Modellversuch wurde als Planspiel durchgeführt. Kernstück des Planspiels war ein praxisnahes kontrolliertes Feldexperiment, an dem sich 87 Kommunen beteiligten. In diesem Feldexperiment simulierten die teilnehmenden Kommunen für eigene, real geplante Baugebiete den Flächenzertifikatehandel über einen Zeitraum von 15 Jahren (2014-2028) mittels einer Online-Plattform. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ein Flächenhandelssystem in der Lage ist, die Flächenneuinanspruchnahme effektiv zu verringern. Flächensparziele lassen sich zudem im Verbund aus Planung und flexibler Mengensteuerung effizient erreichen. Die Kommunen konnten die überörtlichen Mengenvorgaben durch den Kauf und Verkauf von Zertifikaten flexibel vor Ort umsetzen. Insgesamt belegen die Ergebnisse, dass ein Flächenhandelssystem geeignet ist, eine nachhaltige Siedlungsentwicklung zu fördern und Kommunalfinanzen zu entlasten

CO2 modulation of the rates of photosynthesis and light-dependent O2 consumption in Trichodesmium

As atmospheric CO₂ concentrations increase, so too does the dissolved CO₂ and HCO₃‾ concentrations in the world’s oceans. There are still many uncertainties regarding the biological response of key groups of organisms to these changing conditions, which is crucial for predicting future species distributions, primary productivity rates, and biogeochemical cycling. In this study, we established the relationship between gross photosynthetic O₂ evolution and light-dependent O₂ consumption in Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 acclimated to three targeted pCO₂ concentrations (180 µmol mol‾¹=low-CO₂, 380 µmol mol‾¹=mid-CO₂, and 720 µmol mol‾¹=high-CO₂). We found that biomass- (carbon) specific, light-saturated maximum net O₂ evolution rates (PnC,max) and acclimated growth rates increased from low- to mid-CO₂, but did not differ significantly between mid- and high-CO₂. Dark respiration rates were five times higher than required to maintain cellular metabolism, suggesting that respiration provides a substantial proportion of the ATP and reductant for N₂ fixation. Oxygen uptake increased linearly with gross O₂ evolution across light intensities ranging from darkness to 1100 µmol photons m¯² s¯¹. The slope of this relationship decreased with increasing CO₂, which we attribute to the increased energetic cost of operating the carbon-concentrating mechanism at lower CO₂ concentrations. Our results indicate that net photosynthesis and growth of T. erythraeum IMS101 would have been severely CO₂ limited at the last glacial maximum, but that the direct effect of future increases of CO₂ may only cause marginal increases in growth