A dialectic view on Open Innovation

The paradigm of Open-Innovation allows software companies new forms of interactive innovation and its diffusion across socio-cultural boundaries. This process constitutes and is constituted by a heterogeneous network of interacting actors. In this interaction, seeds for innovation will be created and have to be adopted by the participants of the respective network. This paper studies the concept of Open Innovation from a dialectic perspective on innovation seeds, which regards diffusion and adoption as intertwined. Traditionally, innovation research mainly focuses on transferring processes, but in order to reflect on the interactive character of Open Innovation across socio-cultural boundaries, one has to enlarge this perspective. In this paper we have developed a theoretic model which integrates also the aspect of translation and transformation. Based on this theoretical understanding we have figured out competences to adopt innovation seeds that have been developed in a crosscultural setting. At the end of the paper we show how this model can be used to study empirically the behavior of a software company adopting externally created seeds

Proactive and reactive stopping when distracted: An attentional account

This is a postprint of an article published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance © 2014 copyright American Psychological Association. 'This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.' Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance is available online at: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xhp/index.aspxThe authors have deposited data related to this article in ORE on open access. See: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/13401Performance in response-inhibition paradigms is typically attributed to inhibitory control. Here we examined the idea that stopping may largely depend on the outcome of a sensory detection process. Subjects performed a speeded go task, but they were instructed to withhold their response when a visual stop signal was presented. The stop signal could occur in the centre of the screen or in the periphery. On half of the trials, perceptual distractors were presented throughout the trial. We found that these perceptual distractors impaired stopping, especially when stop signals could occur in the periphery. Furthermore, the effect of the distractors on going was smallest in the central stop-signal condition, medium in a condition in which no-signals could occur, and largest in the condition in which stop signals could occur in the periphery. The results show that an important component of stopping is finding a balance between ignoring irrelevant information in the environment and monitoring for the occurrence of occasional stop signals. These findings highlight the importance of sensory detection processes when stopping and could shed new light on a range of phenomena and findings in the response-inhibition literature.Economic and Social Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilEuropean Research Counci

Cortical regions involved in proactive control of task-set

This thesis is about what happens in the brain when people switch between tasks. Each task requires a particular assembly of cognitive processes, an orientation of attention and set of rules relating action to input — a "task-set". The research reported used a task-cueing paradigm to study preparatory control of task-set. On each trial a stimulus (a coloured shape) was preceded by a verbal task-cue specifying which task to do (judge the shape or the colour of the stimulus). Reaction time and error rate increase on trials when the task changes relative to trials on which it does not. When the cue stimulus interval (CSI) is increased, this "switch cost" is reduced, indexing a process of task-set reconfiguration in which top-down control is employed to reconfigure the task-set parameters. Effective reconfiguration may also be indicated by a reduction in the "response congruence effect" — poorer performance on stimuli mapped to different responses for the two tasks than for stimuli mapped to the same response. I present six experiments using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a technique for interfering briefly and harmlessly with neuronal activity in a small region of cortex, to address the question of which brain regions contribute to anticipatory control of task-set as indexed by these behavioural measures. To help guide the selection of candidate brain regions, I first present a review and meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of task-switching in the literature. Many fMRI studies, comparing brain activation on task-switch and -repeat trials have been published. Some have also tried to isolate activations related specifically to pro-active control of task-set. The activations reported are quite inconsistent over studies. I used a quantitative meta-analysis technique to identify which brain regions are most consistently found by studies reporting switch minus repeat contrasts and which may be specifically important for preparation on switch trials. The experiments examined the effect of stimulating several regions during the long cue-stimulus interval of a task-cueing paradigm, relative to control conditions. A first pair of experiments suggests an important role in proactive task-set control for two regions in dorsal medial frontal cortex, the supplementary motor area (SMA) and an area known as pre-SMA, though the former region appeared to contribute to reducing the switch cost while the latter appeared to reduce the effects of response congruence. In a further three experiments, I examined the role of the right intra-parietal sulcus (rIPS); this appears to play a crucial role in preparation for a task-switch but not post-stimulus task-set reconfiguration. In a final experiment, I used TMS guided by fMRI activations in the same participants to study the effects of stimulation over the left inferior frontal junction (IFJ). The results indicate that a region just anterior to the left IFJ is specifically important for preparing for a switch trial. I discuss the roles that may be played by these three regions in task-set control

Trends in premature avertable mortality from non-communicable diseases for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: A population-based study

Background: The reduction by a third of premature non-communicable disease (NCD) mortality by 2030 is the ambitious target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.4. However, the indicator is narrowly defined, including only four major NCDs (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases) and only for people aged 30–70 years. This study focuses on premature avertable mortality from NCDs—premature deaths caused by NCDs that could be prevented through effective public policies and health interventions or amenable to high-quality health care—to assess trends at global, regional, and national levels using estimates from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017. Methods: We reviewed existing lists of NCD causes of death that are either preventable through public health policies and interventions or amenable to health care to create a list of avertable NCD causes of death, which was mapped to the GBD cause list. We estimated age-standardised years of life lost (YLL) per 100 000 population due to premature avertable mortality from NCDs, avertable NCD cause clusters, and non-avertable NCD causes by sex, location, and year and reported their 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs). We examined trends in age-standardised YLL due to avertable and non-avertable NCDs, assessed the progress of premature avertable mortality from NCDs in achieving SDG 3.4, and explored specific avertable NCD cause clusters that could make a substantial contribution to overall trends in premature mortality. Findings: Globally, premature avertable mortality from NCDs for both sexes combined declined −1·3% (95% UI −1·4 to −1·2) per year, from 12 855 years (11 809 to 14 051) in 1990 to 9008 years (8329 to 9756) in 2017. However, the absolute number of avertable NCD deaths increased 49·3% (95% UI 47·3 to 52·2) from 23·1 million (22·0–24·1) deaths in 1990 to 34·5 million (33·4 to 35·6) in 2017. Premature avertable mortality from NCDs reduced in every WHO region and in most countries and territories between 1990 and 2017. Despite these reductions, only the Western Pacific and European regions and 25 countries (most of which are high-income countries) are on track to achieve SDG target 3.4. Since 2017, there has been a global slowdown in the reduction of premature avertable mortality from NCDs. In 2017, high premature avertable mortality from NCDs was clustered in low-income and middle-income countries, mainly in the South-East Asia region, Eastern Mediterranean region, and African region. Most countries with large annual reductions in such mortality between 1990 and 2017 had achieved low levels of premature avertable mortality from NCDs by 2017. Some countries, the most populous examples being Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Laos, and Egypt, reported both an upward trend and high levels of premature avertable mortality from NCDs. Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and chronic respiratory diseases have been the main drivers of the global and regional reduction in premature avertable mortality from NCDs, whereas premature mortality from substance use disorders, chronic kidney disease and acute glomerulonephritis, and diabetes have been increasing. Interpretation: Worldwide, there has been a substantial reduction in premature avertable mortality from NCDs, but progress has been uneven across populations. Countries vary substantially in current levels and trends and, hence, the extent to which they are on track to achieve SDG 3.4. By accounting for premature avertable mortality while avoiding arbitrary age cutoffs, premature avertable mortality from NCDs is a robust, comprehensive, and actionable indicator for quantifying and monitoring global and national progress towards NCD prevention and control. Funding: None

Role-based Eco-info Systems: An Organizational Theoretical View of Sustainable HCI at Work

So far, sustainable HCI has mainly focused on the domestic context, but there is a growing body of work looking at the organizational context. As in the domestic context, these works still rest on psy-chological theories for behaviour change used for the domestic context. We supplement this view with an organizational theory-informed approach that adopts organizational roles as a key element. We will show how a role-based analysis could be applied to uncover information needs and to give em-ployee’s eco-feedback, which is linked to their tasks at hand. We illustrate the approach on a qualita-tive case study that was part of a broader, on-going action research conducted in a German produc-tion company

The inhibitory control reflex (article)

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleThis is an open access article that is freely available in ORE or from the publisher's web site. Please cite the published version.Related dataset available in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15358 (see link above)Response inhibition is typically considered a hallmark of deliberate executive control. In this article, we review work showing that response inhibition can also become a ‘prepared reflex’, readily triggered by information in the environment, or after sufficient training, a ‘learned reflex’ triggered by the retrieval of previously acquired associations between stimuli and stopping. We present new results indicating that people can learn various associations, which influence performance in different ways. To account for previous findings and our new results, we present a novel architecture that integrates theories of associative learning, Pavlovian conditioning, and executive response inhibition. Finally, we discuss why this work is also relevant for the study of ‘intentional inhibition’.ESR

Lesetest für Berufsschüler/innen LTB-3. Handbuch

Klassenarbeiten, Klausuren und Fachprüfungen dauern oft mehrere Stunden,sowohl in ihrer Dauer wie in ihrer Auswertung. Die Dauer der Prüfungen ist in Prüfungsordnungen vorgegeben. Der vorliegende Test ermöglicht es, auf ökonomische und objektive Weise die Lesekompetenz von Schülerinnen und Schülern zu erfassen. Er ist einfach handzuhaben, Testdurchführung und -auswertung nehmen nur wenig Zeit in Anspruch und ermöglichen eine problemlose Integration in den Schulalltag. Ein Test kann nicht von einer Person entwickelt werden und so stehen als Autoren und Berater mehrere Personen auf der Titelseite. Neben den genannten Mitwirkenden waren noch unzählige Personen beteiligt, die hier und da konstruktiv an einer Frage „herumkritisierten“

Drivers of vegetation change in grasslands of the Sheffield region, northern England, between 1965 and 2012/13

Questions: How has vegetation species diversity and species composition changed between 1965 and 2012/13 in acidic and calcareous grasslands? What has driven this change in vegetation? Location: A 2400-km2 area around Sheffield, northern England. Methods: In 1965 a survey was conducted to describe grassland vegetation of the Sheffield region. We repeated this survey in 2012/13, revisiting acidic and calcareous grassland sites (455 quadrats). Climate, N and sulphur deposition, cattle and sheep stocking rates, soil pH, altitude, aspect and slope were considered to be potential drivers of variation in vegetation. We analysed temporal changes in vegetation and examined relationships with spatial and temporal variation in driver variables. Results: Both acidic and calcareous grasslands showed clear changes in species composition between the two time periods. In acidic grasslands there was no significant change in richness but there were declines in diversity. There were significant increases in Ellenberg N. Nitrogen deposition and grazing were identified as potential drivers of spatial and temporal patterns but it was not possible to discriminate the respective impacts of potential drivers. In calcareous grasslands there were declines in species richness, diversity and appropriate diversity indices. Climate and soil pH were identified as potential drivers of spatial and temporal patterns. Conclusions: Despite only small site losses compared to other surveys in the UK, especially within the national park, both calcareous and acidic grasslands showed very clear changes in species composition. In acidic grasslands, high abundance of Pteridium aquilinum was a particular problem and had increased considerably between the two survey periods. Atmospheric N deposition and grazing were identified as drivers of species diversity. A number of calcareous grasslands showed signs of reduced management intensity leading to scrub invasion

Why decision making may not require awareness.

CommentJournal ArticleCopyright © Cambridge University Press 2014Newell & Shanks (N&S) argue against the idea that any significant role for unconscious influences on decision making has been established by research to date. Inasmuch as this conclusion applies to the idea of an "intelligent cognitive unconscious," we would agree. Our concern is that the article could lead the unwary to conclude that there are no unconscious influences on decision making - and never could be. We give reasons why this may not be the case