Proceedings of the First Karlsruhe Service Summit Workshop - Advances in Service Research, Karlsruhe, Germany, February 2015 (KIT Scientific Reports ; 7692)

Since April 2008 KSRI fosters interdisciplinary research in order to support and advance the progress in the service domain. KSRI brings together academia and industry while serving as a European research hub with respect to service science. For KSS2015 Research Workshop, we invited submissions of theoretical and empirical research dealing with the relevant topics in the context of services including energy, mobility, health care, social collaboration, and web technologies

Risk factors for homelessness among women with schizophrenia

A study of risk factors for homelessness among the severely mentally ill was extended to include women, and a case-control study of 100 indigent women with schizophrenia meeting criteria for literal homelessness and 100 such women with no history of homelessness was conducted. Subjects were recruited from shelters, clinics, and inpatient psychiatric programs in New York City. Clinical interviewers used standardized research instruments to probe three domains of risk factors: severity of mental illness, family background, and prior mental health service use. Findings adjusted for ethnicity revealed that homeless women had higher rates of a concurrent diagnosis of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and antisocial personality disorder. Homeless women also had less adequate family support

From the animal house to the field : are there consistent individual differences in immunological profile in wild populations of field voles (Microtus agrestis)?

Inbred mouse strains, living in simple laboratory environments far removed from nature, have been shown to vary consistently in their immune response. However, wildlife populations are typically outbreeding and face a multiplicity of challenges, parasitological and otherwise. In this study we seek evidence of consistent difference in immunological profile amongst individuals in the wild. We apply a novel method in this context, using longitudinal (repeated capture) data from natural populations of field voles, Microtus agrestis, on a range of life history and infection metrics, and on gene expression levels. We focus on three immune genes, IFN-γ, Gata3, and IL-10, representing respectively the Th1, Th2 and regulatory elements of the immune response. Our results show that there was clear evidence of consistent differences between individuals in their typical level of expression of at least one immune gene, and at most all three immune genes, after other measured sources of variation had been taken into account. Furthermore, individuals that responded to changing circumstances by increasing expression levels of Gata3 had a correlated increase in expression levels of IFN-γ. Our work stresses the importance of acknowledging immunological variation amongst individuals in studies of parasitological and infectious disease risk in wildlife populations

Socio-demographic and lifestyle factors associated with overweight in a representative sample of 11-15 year olds in France: Results from the WHO-Collaborative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The prevalence of overweight in children and adolescents is high and overweight is associated with poor health outcomes over short- and long-term. Lifestyle factors can interact to influence overweight. Comprehensive studies linking overweight concomitantly with several demographic and potentially-modifiable lifestyle factors and health-risk behaviours are limited in adolescents - an age-group characterized by changes in lifestyle behaviours and high prevalence of overweight. Thus, the objective of the current study was to examine the association of overweight with several socio-demographic and lifestyle variables simultaneously in a representative sample of adolescents.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A nationally representative sample of 11-15 year-olds (n = 7154) in France participated as part of the WHO-Collaborative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. Students reported data on their age, height, weight, socio-demographic variables, lifestyle factors including nutrition practices, physical activity at two levels of intensity (moderate and vigorous), sedentary behaviours, as well as smoking and alcohol consumption patterns using standardized HBSC protocols. Overweight (including obesity) was defined using the IOTF reference. The multivariate association of overweight with several socio-demographic and lifestyle factors was examined with logistic regression models.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The adjusted odds ratios for the association with overweight were: 1.80 (95% CI: 1.37-2.36) for low family affluence; 0.73 (0.60-0.88) for eating breakfast daily; 0.69 (0.56-0.84) for moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA); and 0.71 (0.59-0.86) for vigorous physical activity (VPA). Significant interactions between age and gender as well as television (TV) viewing and gender were noted: for boys, overweight was not associated with age or TV viewing; in contrast, for girls overweight correlated negatively with age and positively with TV viewing. Fruit and vegetable intake, computer and video-games use, smoking and alcohol consumption were not associated with overweight.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In multivariate model, family affluence, breakfast consumption and moderate to vigorous as well as vigorous physical activity were negatively associated with overweight. These findings extend previous research to a setting where multiple risk and protective factors were simultaneously examined and highlight the importance of multi-faceted approaches promoting physical activity and healthy food choices such as breakfast consumption for overweight prevention in adolescents.</p

Combustion Characterization and Ignition Delay Modeling of Low- and High-Cetane Alternative Diesel Fuels in a Marine Diesel Engine

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ef500565tIn support of an ongoing U.S. Navy alternative fuel evaluation program, the combustion characteristics of two very different alternative diesel fuels were evaluated in a direct-injection marine diesel engine across a variety of speeds and loads. The fuels were an algal-based hydrotreated renewable diesel fuel (HRD) with cetane number of ∼75 and a synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK) with cetane number of ∼25. These fuels were experimentally tested as blends with conventional petroleumbased military diesel fuel (designated F-76) with cetane ≈ 46, giving a cetane number range from 25 to 75. Start of injection (SOI) was characterized using a strain gauge to determine actuation of the mechanical unit injector; SOI remained essentially unchanged for changes in fuel type. As expected based on cetane number, ignition delay (IGD) increased with greater amounts of SPK fuel and decreased for greater amounts of HRD fuel in the test blend. Energy release analysis showed that longer IGD led consistently to slightly advanced combustion phasing, as indicated by the location of 50% mass fraction burned, decreased overall combustion duration, and greater maximum rate of pressure rise due to greater fuel-air premixing. Fuel consumption was 0−5% higher for these alternative fuels. Ignition delay was modeled using a detailed primary reference fuel mechanism tuned to match the measured cetane number of each neat and blended fuel. The modeled chemistry was able to capture relative changes in the experimentally observed IGD, suggesting that the measured differences in physical properties, which will affect spray development, do not contribute as significantly to differences in IGD. The results suggest that typical higher cetane alternative fuels, such as HRD, have no deleterious effects from the perspective of combustion characteristics. Processes that yield lower cetane alternative fuels, such as SPK, while still achieving satisfactory performance, begin to show signs of problems through delayed combustion, increased rates of pressure rise, and higher peak pressures, which induce higher mechanical stress and combustion noise.Office of Naval Research as part of the Alternate Naval Fuels Program (N0001413WX20922)Office of Naval Research as part of the Alternate Naval Fuels Program (N0001413WX20922

Settling for the state: Pastoralists and colonial rule in southwestern Panjab, 1840–1900

Colonization and sedentarization formed the same narrative in southwestern Panjab, writing the shift in discursive production from lineage to state over the spatial, material, and cultural transformation from herding to cultivating society. The dynamics of class among pastoralists in southwestern Panjab provided the framework for the variable pathways and outcomes of localized power transactions among Panjabis and British that produced the colonial state. The transition from irregular payment to regular taxation and from animal to land capital formed the most important mechanisms of social change in the nineteenth century. In both cases the ruling elites of the precolonial and the colonial states attempted to persuade pastoralists to participate in the discourses which produced the state. British efforts of sedentarization and state-building succeeded because the exclusionary character of property in land under British law allowed pastoral chiefs to make permanent claims for control of pasture and water. Poorer herders threw in their lot with the state as they became legally and physically excluded from pasture and as their leaders became functionaries of the state and powerful landlords. By according analytical primacy to power transactions at their most local level, this study allows scholars to detach colonialism from its metanarratives, of both the imperialist and nationalist varieties, and to explore a rich middle ground between studies that segregate social and cultural causation

Settling for the state: Pastoralists and colonial rule in southwestern Panjab, 1840–1900

Colonization and sedentarization formed the same narrative in southwestern Panjab, writing the shift in discursive production from lineage to state over the spatial, material, and cultural transformation from herding to cultivating society. The dynamics of class among pastoralists in southwestern Panjab provided the framework for the variable pathways and outcomes of localized power transactions among Panjabis and British that produced the colonial state. The transition from irregular payment to regular taxation and from animal to land capital formed the most important mechanisms of social change in the nineteenth century. In both cases the ruling elites of the precolonial and the colonial states attempted to persuade pastoralists to participate in the discourses which produced the state. British efforts of sedentarization and state-building succeeded because the exclusionary character of property in land under British law allowed pastoral chiefs to make permanent claims for control of pasture and water. Poorer herders threw in their lot with the state as they became legally and physically excluded from pasture and as their leaders became functionaries of the state and powerful landlords. By according analytical primacy to power transactions at their most local level, this study allows scholars to detach colonialism from its metanarratives, of both the imperialist and nationalist varieties, and to explore a rich middle ground between studies that segregate social and cultural causation

DeepQPrep: Neural Network Augmented Search for Quantum State Preparation

There is an increasing interest in the area of quantum computing but developing quantum algorithms is difficult. Neural Network augmented search algorithms have proven quite successful for general search problems (like program generation) but current approaches to quantum program generation make very restricted use of them. In this paper we present DeepQPrep, a Neural Network based approach to generate quantum circuits for state preparation; a common yet expensive task needed in many applications of quantum computing. We illustrate that Neural Network augmented search algorithms have significant promise for automated quantum program generation; DeepQPrep generated programs were able to solve 99&#x0025; and 76.9&#x0025; of 20000 previously unseen state prepartion tasks in a supervised machine learning context within two different application scenarios. The circuits produced by DeepQPrep are also shallower (on average) than their ground truth counterparts. We also compare DeepQPrep to IBM Qiskit&#x2019;s approach to state preparation and illustrate that even when constrained, DeepQPrep generates significantly shallower circuits despite Qiskit solving more of the state preparation tasks. Based on our results, we argue that neural network augmented search approaches exhibit significant promise for generalised approaches to quantum program induction warranting further study in more complex scenarios