The Fluidity of the Self-Concept as a Framework to Explain the Motivation to Play Video Games

A better understanding of the motivation to play video games and potential antecedents have a long history in Human Computer Interaction research. Besides different motivational dimensions specific to video games, researchers already used the personality of players to explain the motivation to play and the subsequent video game use. At this juncture, they postulated a rather static self-concept underlying the personality of players. The study at hand tries to resolve this shortcoming and proposes a more holistic perspective on personality following the assumptions of the Social Identity Approach from psychology, which postulates a much more fluid and context-specific salient parts of the self-concept. Specifically, we use findings from consumer research arguing that the dimensional fit between the perception of the self-concept of a player and the corresponding video game holds the potential to explain the motivation to play as well as the subsequent usage of the video game

Moving modulating pulse and front solutions of permanent form in a FPU model with nearest and next-to-nearest neighbor interaction

We consider a nonlinear chain of coupled oscillators, which is a direct generalization of the classical FPU lattice and exhibits, besides the usual nearest neighbor interaction, also next-to-nearest neighbor interaction. For the case of nearest neighbor attraction and next-to-nearest neighbor repulsion we prove that such a lattice admits, in contrast to the classical FPU model, moving modulating front solutions of permanent form, which have small converging tails at infinity and can be approximated by solitary wave solutions of the Nonlinear Schrödinger equation. When the associated potentials are even, then the proof yields moving modulating pulse solutions of permanent form, whose profiles are spatially localized. Our analysis employs the spatial dynamics approach as developed by Iooss and Kirchgässner. The relevant solutions are constructed on a five-dimensional center manifold and their persistence is guaranteed by reversibility arguments

Investigating the Influence of Information Incongruity on Trust-Relations within Trilateral Healthcare Settings

Modern health information technologies (HIT) come with many benefits for healthcare, such as a decrease of necessary clinical visits or independent health monitoring. The deployment of these technologies to support medical treatments expands the traditional patient-physician relationship to a trilateral setting involving patient, physician, and HIT. Whereas patients formerly relied on health-related information given by their physician, the digitization of healthcare as well as increasing levels of individual health literacy represent new sources of information and, thus, call for investigating different forms of trust towards medical experts, technologies, and the patient’s own judgements. Information incongruities, however, can lead to new forms of trust issues, thus calling for dedicated research. We propose a vignette study in the form of an online survey to investigate the influence information incongruities can have on different forms of patient-sided trust. For this, we develop hypotheses representing our expected results

HOW AGILE IS YOUR IT DEPARTMENT? – DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF AN FRAMEWORK-INDEPENDENT AGILE SCALING MATURITY MODEL

Many IT departments seek to capitalize on the benefits of agile development by scaling agile practices. To manage the complex scaling, established approaches and frameworks promise guidance. However, although existing works envision a clear target state, they lack relevant capabilities along the scaling process, especially for vertical agile scaling. Managers need these capabilities to assess their company’s status quo and develop a clear scaling roadmap. Thus, within this work, we use the Design Science Research paradigm to build and evaluate a framework-independent agile scaling maturity model that provides management with a tool for ex-ante identification and evaluation of agile scaling capabilities in five maturity stages. To evaluate our model, we applied it at KUKA IT, the IT department of an international provider of automation solutions. As a result, this work provides insights into the application and outlines how IT departments can operationalize and utilize our model to guide agile scaling

Global-scale equatorial Rossby waves as an essential component of solar internal dynamics

The Sun's complex dynamics is controlled by buoyancy and rotation in the convection zone and by magnetic forces in the atmosphere and corona. While small-scale solar convection is well understood, the dynamics of large-scale flows in the solar convection zone is not explained by theory or simulations. Waves of vorticity due to the Coriolis force, known as Rossby waves, are expected to remove energy out of convection at the largest scales. Here we unambiguously detect and characterize retrograde-propagating vorticity waves in the shallow subsurface layers of the Sun at angular wavenumbers below fifteen, with the dispersion relation of textbook sectoral Rossby waves. The waves have lifetimes of several months, well-defined mode frequencies below 200 nHz in a co-rotating frame, and eigenfunctions of vorticity that peak at the equator. Rossby waves have nearly as much vorticity as the convection at the same scales, thus they are an essential component of solar dynamics. We find a transition from turbulence-like to wave-like dynamics around the Rhines scale of angular wavenumber of twenty; this might provide an explanation for the puzzling deficit of kinetic energy at the largest spatial scales.Comment: This is the submitted version of the paper published in Nature Astronomy. 23 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Extending the linear-noise approximation to biochemical systems influenced by intrinsic noise and slow lognormally distributed extrinsic noise

It is well known that the kinetics of an intracellular biochemical network is stochastic. This is due to intrinsic noise arising from the random timing of biochemical reactions in the network as well as due to extrinsic noise stemming from the interaction of unknown molecular components with the network and from the cell's changing environment. While there are many methods to study the effect of intrinsic noise on the system dynamics, few exist to study the influence of both types of noise. Here we show how one can extend the conventional linear-noise approximation to allow for the rapid evaluation of the molecule numbers statistics of a biochemical network influenced by intrinsic noise and by slow lognormally distributed extrinsic noise. The theory is applied to simple models of gene regulatory networks and its validity confirmed by comparison with exact stochastic simulations. In particular we show how extrinsic noise modifies the dependence of the variance of the molecule number fluctuations on the rate constants, the mutual information between input and output signalling molecules and the robustness of feed-forward loop motifs.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figure

Implant selection in cervical spondylodiscitis plays a non-detrimental role - a single-center retrospective case series of 24 patients [Abstract]

Oral e-Poster Presentations - Booth 3: Spine 2 (Tumors), September 26, 2023, 4:10 PM - 4:50 PM Background: Cervical spondylodiscitis is an uncommon entity, with an incidence of 0.5 to 2.5 per 100.000 population, which is potentially extremely harmful. This type of discogenic and vertebral infection might cause a high rate of neurological impairment. Radical surgical debridement of the infected segment with fusion and intravenous antibiotic regimen remains the gold standard in most spine centers. We aimed to analyze the overall outcome in a tertiary spine center. Methods: In this study, we retrospectively included all patients suffering from cervical spondylodiscitis between 01/2017 and 05/2022, treated at the university hospital of Augsburg. Clinical and radiological parameters as well as type of implant were collected and evaluated. Descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS, and relevant correlations were examined using the t-test for independent samples and the Chi-square test. Results: 24 patients were identified and included. 17 patients (71%) suffered from sepsis on admission, 17 patients (71%) were diagnosed with epidural abscess on primary imaging and 5 patients (21%) had more than one discitis focus in a distant spinal segment. The presence of epidural abscess was significantly associated with systemic sepsis (OR=6.2; p=0.03) and myelopathy symptoms (OR= 14.4; p=0.00). Septic status was significantly associated with the occurrence of discitis in other spine segments (p=0.02), higher CCI (p=0.03) and Clavien Dindo scores (p=0.01), as well as a longer ICU stay (p=0.04) and the occurrence of nonunion (p=0.06). The most commonly detected germ was a multisensitive staphylococcus aureus (10 patients, 42%). A total of 6 patients (25%) died after a median of 20 days despite antibiogram-accurate therapy. The follow-up data of 15 patients (63%) was available with the evidence of permanent neurological damage in 9 patients (38%). The type of osteosynthesis was not significantly associated with subsidence (p=0.13), nonunion (p=0.21) or revision surgery (p=0.20). However the extent of instrumentation correlated significantly with the rate of nonunion (p=0.05). Conclusions: Cervical spondylodiscitis presents a severe infectious disease that occurs in multimorbid elderly patients and, despite adequate surgical and antibiotic treatment, is often associated with permanent neurological damage or a fatal outcome. Implant selection did not play a decisive role for the clinical and radiological outcome in this study

Novel outpatient treatment strategy for cranial infections – a single-center experience [Abstract]

Oral e-Poster Presentations - Booth 1: Trends & Innovation A, September 26, 2023, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Background: Antibiotic therapy of cranial infections is a resource-intensive process. On the background of the recommendation for longer-term antibiotic administration for cranial infections, we established an outpatient intravenous antibiotic administration in our hospital. Methods: The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of outpatient antibiotic therapy in cranial neurosurgery. For this purpose, we included all patients who received a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC line) for intravenous antibiotic therapy for cranial infections between 01/20 and 9/22. We evaluated the available patient data with regard to the infectiological and neurosurgical issues. All patients received intravenous antibiotics for at least 6 weeks (inpatient and outpatient). Results: In total, we were able to include 30 patients. The median age was 58.12 years (SD +/- 13.39 years). The proportion of female patients was 43%. The mean hospital stay was 18.4 days (SD +/- 4.97 days) for total inpatient treatment. Subsequent mean outpatient antibiotic therapy was admitted for 71.7 days (SD +/- 23.18 days). Outpatient mean IV therapy accounted for 53.88 days (SD +/- 18.56 days). The most common pathogens were Staphylococcus epidermis and cutibacteria. In 9%, microbiological samples were. In all patients, neither radiographic nor laboratory evidence of inflammation was found in the final control. During outpatient intravenous therapy, 12% of patients experienced a difficult patency of the PICC line due to the prolonged administration of antibiotics. This could be corrected radiologically in each case. In addition, one patient, independent of therapy, showed structural epilepsy after the abscess healing. Conclusions: Outpatient IV antibiotic therapy via a PICC line catheter is a safe and feasible method for long-term antibiotic treatment of cranial infections