Web Futures: Inclusive, Intelligent, Sustainable The 2020 Manifesto for Web Science

International audienceThis Manifesto was produced from the Perspectives Workshop 18262 entitled "10 Years of Web Science" that took place at Schloss Dagstuhl from June 24-29, 2018. At the Workshop, we revisited the origins of Web Science, explored the challenges and opportunities of the Web, and looked ahead to potential futures for both the Web and Web Science. We explain issues that society faces in the Web by the ambivalences that are inherent in the Web. All the enormous benefits that the Web offers-for information sharing, collective organization and distributed activity, social inclusion and economic growth-will always carry along negative consequences, too, and 30 years after its creation negative consequences of the Web are only too apparent. The Web continues to evolve and its next major step will involve Artificial Intelligence (AI) at large. AI has the potential to amplify positive and negative outcomes, and we explore these possibilities, situating them within the wider debate about the future of regulation and governance for the Web. Finally, we outline the need to extend Web Science as the science that is devoted to the analysis and engineering of the Web, to strengthen our role in shaping the future of the Web and present five key directions for capacity building that are necessary to achieve this: (i), supporting interdisciplinarity, (ii), supporting collaboration, (iii), supporting the sustainable Web, (iv), supporting the Intelligent Web, and (v), supporting the Inclusive Web. Our writing reflects our background in several disciplines of the social and technical sciences and that these disciplines emphasize topics to various extents. We are acutely aware that our observations occupy a particular point in time and are skewed towards our experience as Western scholars-a limitation that Web Science will need to overcome

Bias in data-driven artificial intelligence systems - An introductory survey

Artificial Intelligence (AI)‐based systems are widely employed nowadays to make decisions that have far‐reaching impact on individuals and society. Their decisions might affect everyone, everywhere, and anytime, entailing concerns about potential human rights issues. Therefore, it is necessary to move beyond traditional AI algorithms optimized for predictive performance and embed ethical and legal principles in their design, training, and deployment to ensure social good while still benefiting from the huge potential of the AI technology. The goal of this survey is to provide a broad multidisciplinary overview of the area of bias in AI systems, focusing on technical challenges and solutions as well as to suggest new research directions towards approaches well‐grounded in a legal frame. In this survey, we focus on data‐driven AI, as a large part of AI is powered nowadays by (big) data and powerful machine learning algorithms. If otherwise not specified, we use the general term bias to describe problems related to the gathering or processing of data that might result in prejudiced decisions on the bases of demographic features such as race, sex, and so forth

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Towards a smart availability assistant for desired work life balance

The traditional boundaries between work and private life have become more and more blurred in the last years because of rising information and communication technologies (ICTs) use. ICTs make it possible to stay connected with job at every place and time

CHALLENGES FOR A SMART AVAILABILITY ASSISTANT – AVAILABILITY PREFERENCES

The use of communication technologies (CTs) are blurring the traditional boundaries between work and private life. Practice suggests that employees experience both beneficial and detrimental outcomes associated with ICT-enabled availability. Alarmed with the detrimental effects of ICT-enabled availability many labor representatives and politicians intended to address these issues with different technological approaches. However, evidence suggests that these methods do not necessarily meet the employees’ approval since they are too strict and do not provide a flexible solution for the different needs of employees. Aiming to broaden the current state of research on availability management, this study presents valuable insights into the management of employees’ availability and key requirements for a Smart Availability Assistant. Based on our quantitative approach, in which we study 821 individuals, we conclude that a Smart Availability Assistant is desirable in case of inadequate enterprise availability management. Further, we posit that such an Assistant should not only focus on regulating the extent of ICT-enabled availability but rather aim at reflecting the diversity and complexity of individuals’ availability preferences

Ansätze zur Verbesserung der Work-Life-Balance durch Erreichbarkeitsmanagement

Smartphones und Laptops führen dazu, dass Arbeitnehmer über Handy oder E-Mail immer und überall arbeiten können und stets erreichbar sind. Da so die Grenzen von Privat- und Berufsleben immer mehr verschwimmen, befürchten Arbeitnehmervertreter und Politiker negative Folgen für Arbeitgeber und Beschäftigte. Deshalb suchen immer mehr Unternehmen nach Lösungen für ein effektives Erreichbarkeitsmanagement, um die Work-Life-Balance und die Gesundheit der Mitarbeitenden zu verbessern. Zur Umsetzung eines solchen Erreichbarkeitsmanagements können sowohl organisatorische als auch technische Ansätze herangezogen werden. Der Beitrag beschreibt den Stand der Forschung und Technik im Erreichbarkeitsmanagement und gibt Einblick in die Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts SANDRA. Das Projekt entwickelt neben organisatorischen Lösungen auch einen Erreichbarkeits-Assistenten für Smartphones, der in Pilot-Unternehmen erprobt wird. Diese technische Lösung kann intelligent und bedarfsgerecht Anrufe und E-Mails an Smartphones ablehnen beziehungsweise verzögern, um unterbrechungsfreie Ruhezeiten für Beschäftigte zu schaffen

Study protocol for evaluating the current status and needs assessment of health-related characteristics among students at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg.

Today, university students face study conditions that increase the risk of sedentary behavior, unhealthy eating, and the likelihood of stress, anxiety, and depression. Although the situation has likely worsened in recent months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, even in the pre-Corona era, several investigations have demonstrated that the students' health behaviors could increase the incidence of metabolic risk factors and non-communicable diseases, however, further and detailed information is needed to develop tailored counter-strategies. Therefore, in the present survey, the current health status of students at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (ALU) will be recorded by various questionnaires. In addition, barriers that could potentially influence their health behavior will be identified, and information on the use and awareness of existing health services will be obtained in order to derive concrete needs for further health promotion activities. The study is designed as a monocentric and prospective study at the ALU; the survey of students' situation and needs assessments will be conducted in the areas of nutrition, exercise, relaxation and stress reduction, self-management, psychosocial health and socio-demographic correlations via an anonymous and self-administered online questionnaire. Subsequently in two-year intervals, the survey will be repeated. Data will be collected over a period of 4 years. One goal of this survey is to gain more insight into the health situation of university students; another goal is to use the knowledge gained to integrate holistic health measures into the university landscape in a structured and sustainable manner. These health measures will be implemented by using the newly developed student health care management at the ALU (www.sgm.uni-freiburg.de). Every two years, after evaluation of the surveys, the effect of the health measures can be checked and adjusted. Trial registration: ETK: 20-1082; DRKS-ID: DRKS00024088