How to avoid cooling out? Experiences of young people in their transitions to work across Europe

In this working paper the authors investigate the active engagement of young women and men in shaping their transitions from school to work. How do they navigate through increasingly flexible and risk-laden transition systems? What strategies do they apply to develop and maintain learning motivation or to cope with de-motivation? The research was conducted with funding from the EUs Fifth Framework Programme and involves research teams from Denmark, East and West Germany, Great Britain (Northern Ireland), Ireland (Republic), Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain. Under the title "Youth Policy and Participation. Potentials of Participation and Informal Learning for Young People\u27s Transitions to the Labour Market" it investigates how young people use programmes and training measures which define active participation and the involvement of participants as essential for their approach towards young people. (Author)In diesem Arbeitspapier untersuchen die AutorInnen das aktive Engagement junger Frauen und Männer in der Gestaltung ihrer Übergänge von der Schule in den Beruf. Wie navigieren sie durch zunehmen flexibilisierte und risikobehaftete Übergangssysteme? Welche Strategien wenden sie an, um Lernmotivation zu entwickeln und aufrechtzuerhalten? Und wie gehen sie mit demotivierenden Erfahrungen um? Das zugrundeliegende Forschungsprojekt wurde finanziert mit Mitteln aus dem 5. Rahmenforschungsprogramm der EU. Beteiligt waren Forschungsteams aus Dänemark, Deutschland (Ost und West), Großbritannien (Nordirland), Irland, Italien, den Niederlanden, Portugal, Rumänien und Spanien. Unter dem Titel "Jugendpolitik und Partizipation. Potenziale von Partizipation und informellem Lernen für die Übergänge junger Menschen in den Arbeitsmarkt" untersucht das Projekt, wie Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene Unterstützungs- und Trainingsmaßnahmen nutzen, die aktive Beteiligung und Mitbestimmung der TeilnehmerInnen zum zentralen Bestandteil ihres Arbeitskonzeptes machen. (Autor

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder for broadband polarization analysis of soft x-ray radiation \ud

A W:B4C multilayer phase retarder has been designed and characterized which shows a nearly constant phase retardance between 640 and 850 eV photon energies when operated near the Bragg condition. This freestanding transmission multilayer was used successfully to determine, for the first time, the full polarization vector at soft x-ray energies above 600 eV, which was not possible before due to the lack of suitable optical elements. Thus, quantitative polarimetry is now possible at the 2p edges of the magnetic substances Fe, Co, and Ni for the benefit of magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy employing circularly polarized synchrotron radiatio

Towards the decentralized coordination of multiple self-adaptive systems

When multiple self-adaptive systems share the same environment and have common goals, they may coordinate their adaptations at runtime to avoid conflicts and to satisfy their goals. There are two approaches to coordination. (1) Logically centralized, where a supervisor has complete control over the individual self-adaptive systems. Such approach is infeasible when the systems have different owners or administrative domains. (2) Logically decentralized, where coordination is achieved through direct interactions. Because the individual systems have control over the information they share, decentralized coordination accommodates multiple administrative domains. However, existing techniques do not account simultaneously for both local concerns, e.g., preferences, and shared concerns, e.g., conflicts, which may lead to goals not being achieved as expected. Our idea to address this shortcoming is to express both types of concerns within the same constraint optimization problem. We propose CoADAPT, a decentralized coordination technique introducing two types of constraints: preference constraints, expressing local concerns, and consistency constraints, expressing shared concerns. At runtime, the problem is solved in a decentralized way using distributed constraint optimization algorithms implemented by each self-adaptive system. As a first step in realizing CoADAPT, we focus in this work on the coordination of adaptation planning strategies, traditionally addressed only with centralized techniques. We show the feasibility of CoADAPT in an exemplar from cloud computing and analyze experimentally its scalability

Justifying design decisions with theory-based design principles

Although the role of theories in design research is recognized, we show that little attention has been paid on how to use theories when designing new artifacts. We introduce design principles as a new methodological approach to address this problem. Design principles extend the notion of design rationales that document how a design decision emerged. We extend the concept of design rationales by using theoretical hypotheses to support or object to design decisions. At the example of developing a new conceptual modeling grammar we demonstrate two main benefits of using design principles. First, the link between theory and design decision enables the design researcher to reason about the resulting behavior of the IT artifact prior to instantiation. Second, design principles allow deducing empirically testable hypotheses to foster the rigorous evaluation of IT artifacts

A User Study on Explainable Online Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Systems

Online reinforcement learning (RL) is increasingly used for realizing adaptive systems in the presence of design time uncertainty. Online RL facilitates learning from actual operational data and thereby leverages feedback only available at runtime. However, Online RL requires the definition of an effective and correct reward function, which quantifies the feedback to the RL algorithm and thereby guides learning. With Deep RL gaining interest, the learned knowledge is no longer explicitly represented, but is represented as a neural network. For a human, it becomes practically impossible to relate the parametrization of the neural network to concrete RL decisions. Deep RL thus essentially appears as a black box, which severely limits the debugging of adaptive systems. We previously introduced the explainable RL technique XRL-DINE, which provides visual insights into why certain decisions were made at important time points. Here, we introduce an empirical user study involving 54 software engineers from academia and industry to assess (1) the performance of software engineers when performing different tasks using XRL-DINE and (2) the perceived usefulness and ease of use of XRL-DINE.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2210.0593

TOWARDS A RESEARCH METHOD FOR THEORYDRIVEN DESIGN RESEARCH

In this paper we outline a new methodical approach for integrating theories into the design research process. Incorporating theories in design projects allows design researchers to reason on the effects of the IT artifact prior to its realization. We argue that design decisions should be transparent claims of utility based on theory-grounded arguments. Documenting design decisions requires the design researcher to integrate appropriate theories and document the rationale behind a particular design decision. Overall, we demonstrate on the example of constructing a new modeling grammar how to integrate theories in the design research process and discuss conflicts which occur when applying these theories

The combined absence of NF-kappa B1 and c-Rel reveals that overlapping roles for these transcription factors in the B cell lineage are restricted to the activation and function of mature cells

Transcription factors NF-KB1 and c-Rel, individually dispensable during embryogenesis, serve similar, yet distinct, roles in the function of mature hemopoietic cells. Redundancy among Rel/ NF-KB family members prompted an examination of the combined roles of c-Rel and NF-KB1 by using mice that lack both proteins. Embryonic development and the maturation of hemopoietic progenitors were unaffected in nfkb1(-/-)c-rel(-/-) mice. Peripheral T cell populations developed normally, but follicular, marginal zone, and CD5(+) peritoneal B cell populations all were reduced. In culture, a failure of mitogen-stimulated nfkb1(-/-)c-rel(-/-) B cells to proliferate was caused by a cell cycle defect in early G(1) that prevented growth. In vivo, defects in humoral immunity and splenic architecture seen in nfkbl(-/-) and c-rel(-/-) mice were exacerbated in the double mutant mice. These findings demonstrate that in the B lineage overlapping roles for NF-K81 and c-Rel appear to be restricted to regulating the activation and function of mature cells

Second International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems. Proceedings

This ICB Research Report constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-intensive Systems (VaMoS'08), which was held from January 16-18, 2008 at the University of Duisburg-Essen

The Footprint of Things: A hybrid approach towards the collection, storage and distribution of life cycle inventory data

Life cycle assessment is a well-established methodology for assessing the environmental impacts of products and services. Unfortunately, an essential part of this life cycle assessment method, collecting inventory data, is extremely time consuming. The quality of manually conducted LCA studies is often limited by uncertainty in the inventory data or narrow scope. Past attempts to overcome these challenges through automation of data collection utilizing the Internet of Things have relied on fully centralized architectures. The drawback of a central repository is the complex coordination between all involved actors in supply chains of products and services. This paper proposes an alternative hybrid approach combining a primary distributed system supplemented with a central repository reducing the need for coordination. This hybrid approach is named "the Footprint of Things". We present a system design that embeds the automatic reporting of life cycle inventory data, such as energy and material flows, into all product components involved in a service delivery. The major strength of our novel system design, among others, is its capacity for real-time and more precise impact calculation of ICT services