Uncertainty About the Persistence of Inflation

This paper offers several contributions to actual research and discussion on monetary policy. It clarifies the relationship between uncertainty of inflation persistence and optimal monetary policy and discusses the consequences of the recent Blanchard proposal to implement a higher inflation target in the light of parameter uncertainty. Furthermore, it provides insights of general interest on the methodological level by analyzing the interrelations between normalization of variables and their independence properties and by extending standard solution methods of dynamic programming problems to non-orthogonal parameter uncertainty.Inflation Persistence, Parameter Uncertainty, Inflation Target, Dynamic Programming

A review of privacy and usability issues in mobile health systems: Role of external factors

The increased penetration of mobile devices has created opportunities in the health sector and led to emerging of mobile health systems. As much as the mobile health systems have registered tremendous progress, they have been faced with privacy and usability issues. Due to the sensitivity of health information, there is an ethical need to equip mobile health systems with adequate privacy measures. However, these systems should also be useable by the intended users. Even though many researchers are working on solutions, the issues still persist. External factors such as cultural differences have also contributed to the issues, yet they have been under researched. In this article, we conduct a systematic literature review of 22 articles, categorize and present privacy and usability issues and possible solutions. We then discuss the relevance and implications of external factors to the findings on privacy and usability. We end with recommendations to address these external factors.Peer Reviewe

Situation Creator: A Pedagogical Agent Creating Learning Opportunities

Miao, Y., Hoppe, H. U., & Pinkwart, N. (2007). Situation Creator: A Pedagogical Agent Creating Learning Opportunities. In R. Luckin, K. Koedinger & J. Greer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 614-617). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS Press.In a multi-user, real-time, and situation-based learning environment, the availability of enough and appropriate situations is crucial for success. In order to improve effectiveness and efficiency of learning, we develop a new type of pedagogical agent: situation creator. Such an agent intentionally creates specific situations in the shared virtual driving place according to users’ performance information. We conduct a pilot evaluation and found that the situation creators significantly increase the number of situations that a learner can expect to encounter while using the system

A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Situated Learning of Car Driving

In the view of situated learning theory, knowledge and understanding are fundamentally products of learning situations. Learning is situated and takes place by means of legitimate peripheral participation within the context of a community of practice. Based on the theory of situated learning, this article develops conceptual and technical approaches to build a web-based collaborative 3D car-driving simulation environment that requires only low computing, networking and development resources. Rather than instructing individuals on a formal, structured, intensive and programmed base, this simulation environment supports members of virtual communities of practice to perform informal, unstructured, spontaneous, collaborative, situated learning. Pilot studies conducted with the system show its partial success and demonstrate that it depends on the characteristics of specific educationally valuable learning situations whether the collaborative learning approach we propose can succeed also with smaller group sizes

A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Situated Learning of Car Driving

Miao, Y., Pinkwart, N., and Hoppe, H.U. (2006). "A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Situated Learning of Car Driving". International Journal on Advanced Technology for Learning (ATL), 3(4), 233-240.In the view of situated learning theory, knowledge and understanding are fundamentally products of learning situations. Learning is situated and takes place by means of legitimate peripheral participation within the context of a community of practice. Based on the theory of situated learning, this article develops conceptual and technical approaches to build a web-based collaborative 3D car-driving simulation environment that requires only low computing, networking and development resources. Rather than instructing individuals on a formal, structured, intensive and programmed base, this simulation environment supports members of virtual communities of practice to perform informal, unstructured, spontaneous, collaborative, situated learning. Pilot studies conducted with the system show its partial success and demonstrate that it depends on the characteristics of specific educationally valuable learning situations whether the collaborative learning approach we propose can succeed also with smaller group sizes

Horst Albach, one of the greats of the economy of the enterprise

15 p.Esta brillante aportación del Profesor Pinkwart va más allá de una mera reflexión necrológica. Plantea, de forma muy explícita, en base a su propia experiencia, la evolución de la Economía de la Empresa como ciencia y el papel del científico en el desarrollo de la disciplina. Y ello reflejado en un Científico como Horst Albach, que junto con Erich Gutenberg y Erich Schmalenbach constituyen no solo el eje de la contribución de la Cultura Alemana a la Economía de la Empresa, sino, principalmente, su internacionalización e interdisciplinaridad. Ha sido Horst Albach ese “Científico Schumpeteriano”, que ha realizado las tres claves del desarrollo científico de la empresa como disciplina de la Economía de la Empresa: innovación permanente del conocimiento en nuevos planteamientos, la interdisciplinaridad como clave de la integración del conjunto de la Economía de la Empresa como disciplina científica y no su desagregación en sectores, así como la dimensión ética propia y específica de la Economía de la Empresa. Estos son, sus “principios básicos” constituyentes de la “ética empresarial” propia, eficiente junto con la rentabilidad, la libertad, la igualdad y la fraternidad, todo ello en el marco de la “combinación de factores”, concepto básico de Erich Gutenberg.This brilliant contribution by Professor Pinkwart goes beyond a mere obituary reflection. He explicitly discusses, on the basis of his own experience, the evolution of business economics as a science and the role of the scientist in the development of the discipline. And this is reflected in a scientist like Horst Albach, who, together with Erich Gutenberg and Erich Schmalenbach, is not only the axis of the contribution of German culture to business economics, but, above all, its internationalisation and interdisciplinarity. It was Horst Albach, the "Schumpeterian scientist", who realised the three keys to the scientific development of business as a discipline of business economics: permanent innovation of knowledge in new approaches, interdisciplinarity as the key to the integration of the whole of business economics as a scientific discipline and not its disaggregation into sectors, as well as the specific ethical dimension of business economics. These are its constituent "basic principles" of its own "business ethics", efficient together with profitability, freedom, equality and fraternity, all within the framework of the "combination of factors", Erich Gutenberg's basic concept

The Influence of Some Electrolyte Additives on the Electrochemical Performance of Fe/Fe2+Redox Reactions for Iron/Iron Redox Flow Batteries

For the application in Fe/Fe-Redox-Flow-Batteries some important factors concerning the composition of the electrolyte and the influence of temperature on the properties of half-cell reactions were investigated. In contrast to previous investigations, the measurements were performed more realistically on deposited iron and by means of linear sweep voltammetry. Since the distinction between cathodic iron deposition and hydrogen generation is not possible by convention, with quantitative stripping analysis on a rotating disk electrode, partly a method was used to distinguish between these two reactions. The investigations were carried out at temperatures up to 80 °C, with addition of 10 mM of chlorides of Bi, Cu, In, Pb, Sn, Tl, Cd, Sb and Hg and different supporting salts of NH$_{4}$$^{+}$, Li$^{+}$, K$^{+}$. Na$^{+}$, Cs$^{+}$, Mg$^{2+}$ and Al$^{3+}$