Dynamic Education Webs – Expert Questionings, Scenarios, and Recommendations

Contemporary lifetime learning concepts require permeability between higher and further education. Today, human resources development is a critical success factor in a global environment. Shorter innovation cycles and the challenges of the service economy imply the alignment of further education concepts to the employees’ working situation. Standardized contents are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of both learners and companies. Public and private education providers have to collaborate to meet the customers’ learning needs. The providers can establish dynamic business webs – so-called dynamic education webs – in this collaborative process. These partnerships are temporary in nature and are based on incentives instead of contracts. We will focus on this new phenomenon and present research results with high practical relevance. The core questions arise: What promotes dynamic education webs? Who are the key players? What are critical success factors? These questions are answered based on literature and expert questionings of important market players. The recommendations derived can help the management to participate successfully in dynamic education webs. A glance at trends and market potentials as stated by the experts concludes the paper

Iron single crystal growth from a lithium-rich melt

\alpha-Fe single crystals of rhombic dodecahedral habit were grown from a melt of Li$_{84}$N$_{12}$Fe$_{\sim 3}$. Crystals of several millimeter along a side form at temperatures around $T \approx 800^\circ$C. Upon further cooling the growth competes with the formation of Fe-doped Li$_3$N. The b.c.c. structure and good sample quality of \alpha-Fe single crystals were confirmed by X-ray and electron diffraction as well as magnetization measurements and chemical analysis. A nitrogen concentration of 90\,ppm was detected by means of carrier gas hot extraction. Scanning electron microscopy did not reveal any sign of iron nitride precipitates.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Critical success factors and challenges for individual digital study assistants in higher education: A mixed methods analysis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the availability of online higher education programs and tools has grown rapidly. One example is an individual digital study assistant (IDSA) for students, which provides functionalities to train self-regulation skills, to engage with own educational goals and to offer automated, first-level support to higher education institution (HEI) units and employees. An IDSA further can guide students through HEI and their administration. But, what are the critical success factors (CSF) and challenges for an IDSA? We deduce these using a mixed methods approach with one quantitative student survey, two rounds of interviews with various HEI experts, and a literature review. We classified our results according to the information system (IS) success model of DeLone & McLean (2016). Our results and findings show, e.g., that skilled and reliable HEI personnel, well-organized and useful content, cross-platform usability, ease of use, and students’ social factors are essential. Attractive IDSA functionalities are a major challenge because students use many apps, daily. Based on our CSF and challenges, we deduce theoretical and practical recommendations and develop a further research agenda

Lifetime Extension, Repowering or Decommissioning? Decision Support for Operators of Ageing Wind Turbines

In Germany, more than one third of the installed wind energy capacity will leave the feed-in tariff funding between 2021 and 2025. Operators of affected turbines are therefore increasingly concerned with the design of profitable end-of-funding strategies. This requires feasibility analyses of both lifetime extension and repowering options and entails the subsequent challenge to determine the optimal lifetime extension and corresponding repowering timing. To support operators and other stakeholders dealing with wind turbines' end-of-life issues, this study presents a geographic information system that permits evaluating optimal end-of-funding strategies at different spatial scales reaching down to detailed analyses on individual turbine level. The decision support system processes topographic, wind, turbine, and finance data in an integrated system of resource simulations, spatial planning analyses and economic viability assessments. Case-study results show that a uniform end-of-funding strategy cannot be applied to all ageing turbines. Conducted sensitivity analyses rather indicate that the best strategy highly depends on various turbine-specific aspects, especially the location, type and maintenance costs as well as exogenous factors, including the developments of electricity spot market prices and tendered feed-in premiums. In light of latest trends regarding the exogenous factors, lifetime extension and repowering potentials increase. However, the results also indicate that dismantling, disposal and recycling of numerous ageing turbines will become a major challenge for the wind energy sector in the next decade. © 2019 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

How Can Mobile Applications Reduce Energy Consumption? An Experimental Investigation of Electric Vehicles

The role of information systems for environmental sustainability has received considerable attention over the last several years. In view of global warming and climate change, a transition from combustion to electric vehicles (EVs) can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since sustainable behavior often lacks relevant information about its environmental effects, the role of information systems in influencing energy consumption is being explored in this paper. The main focus is to investigate the impact of driver assistance systems in form of mobile applications on the energy consumption of EVs. To test such an impact, a field experiment is conducted by defining a control group and an experimental group. Test drives are performed with an all-electric, lithium-ion battery powered, small passenger city car. As the treatment of the study, a mobile application is chosen that monitors excessive acceleration and hard braking. The results reveal significant differences among the groups, which indicate that using smartphone-based driver assistance systems significantly reduces the energy consumption of EVs. This can entail several benefits, including an increase of range of EVs, electricity cost savings, decrease of vehicle wear, and reduction of GHG emissions. The findings are discussed and implications for research and practice are given

How is Your Mood Today? - A Taxonomy-based Analysis of Apps for Depression

Depression is a serious disease that affects partners, families, friends, and societies. Applications for depression therapy support assist users in daily life to cope with depression challenges. While the services provided can be advantageous, the benefits and apps provided in the market can be overwhelming and fragmented for its intended users. A rigorous classification and clustering of this important domain is still missing. We deduce insights examining a taxonomy and conducting a cluster analysis. We classify 55 applications into eleven dimensions and 46 corresponding characteristics. We identify six clusters of archetypical application configurations. Our procedure classifies this application domain and enables directions towards more tailored research for this eHealth and mHealth artefacts. (Potential) users and application developers can use our results and findings to improve their usage and development and select the most suitable application for their medical needs and interests

Evidence for an elevated aspartate pKa in the active site of human aromatase

Aromatase (CYP19A1), the enzyme that converts androgens to estrogens, is of significant mechanistic and therapeutic interest. Crystal structures and computational studies of this enzyme shed light on the critical role of Asp(309) in substrate binding and catalysis. These studies predicted an elevated pK(a) for Asp(309) and proposed that protonation of this residue was required for function. In this study, UV-visible absorption, circular dichroism, resonance Raman spectroscopy, and enzyme kinetics were used to study the impact of pH on aromatase structure and androstenedione binding. Spectroscopic studies demonstrate that androstenedione binding is pH-dependent, whereas, in contrast, the D309N mutant retains its ability to bind to androstenedione across the entire pH range studied. Neither pH nor mutation perturbed the secondary structure or heme environment. The origin of the observed pH dependence was further narrowed to the protonation equilibria of Asp(309) with a parallel set of spectroscopic studies using exemestane and anastrozole. Because exemestane interacts with Asp(309) based on its co-crystal structure with the enzyme, its binding is pH-dependent. Aromatase binding to anastrozole is pH-independent, consistent with the hypothesis that this ligand exploits a distinct set of interactions in the active site. In summary, we assign the apparent pK(a) of 8.2 observed for androstenedione binding to the side chain of Asp(309). To our knowledge, this work represents the first experimental assignment of a pK(a) value to a residue in a cytochrome P450. This value is in agreement with theoretical calculations (7.7–8.1) despite the reliance of the computational methods on the conformational snapshots provided by crystal structures