Vocational, college and career counseling in Switzerland : blended information and e-counseling in a digitized world

In the course of the 2030 agenda of vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland, career development and career management skills in a digitized working world play an important role (SERI, 2017). Therefore the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) commissioned a scientific report on the future of career counseling in Switzerland (Hirschi, 2018) as part of the mission statement for vocational education and training in Switzerland. In this paper we will present two stand-alone initiatives directed at fostering vocational, college and career counseling in Switzerland by incorporating elements of automation and digitization. First, a blended information concept for the media libraries of the public career guidance centres in the Canton of Berne / Switzerland and second an ecounseling concept for vocational, college and career counseling at the IAP Institute of Applied Psychology at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)

Can Programming be Liberated from the Two-Level Style? Multi-Level Programming with DeepJava

Since the introduction of object-oriented programming few programming languages have attempted to provide programmers with more than objects and classes, i.e., more than two levels. Those that did, almost exclusively aimed at describing language properties—i.e., their metaclasses exert linguistic control on language concepts and mechanisms— often in order to make the language extensible. In terms of supporting logical domain classification levels, however, they are still limited to two levels. In this paper we conservatively extend the object-oriented programming paradigm to feature an unbounded number of domain classification levels. We can therefore avoid the introduction of accidental complexity into programs caused by accommodating multiple domain levels within only two programming levels. We present a corresponding language design featuring “deep instantiation ” and demonstrate its features with a running example. Finally, we outline the implementation of our compiler prototype and discuss the potentials of further developing our language design

An Open-Source 7-Axis, Robotic Platform to Enable Dexterous Procedures within CT Scanners

This paper describes the design, manufacture, and performance of a highly dexterous, low-profile, 7 Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) robotic arm for CT-guided percutaneous needle biopsy. Direct CT guidance allows physicians to localize tumours quickly; however, needle insertion is still performed by hand. This system is mounted to a fully active gantry superior to the patient's head and teleoperated by a radiologist. Unlike other similar robots, this robot's fully serial-link approach uses a unique combination of belt and cable drives for high-transparency and minimal-backlash, allowing for an expansive working area and numerous approach angles to targets all while maintaining a small in-bore cross-section of less than $16cm^2$. Simulations verified the system's expansive collision free work-space and ability to hit targets across the entire chest, as required for lung cancer biopsy. Targeting error is on average $<1mm$ on a teleoperated accuracy task, illustrating the system's sufficient accuracy to perform biopsy procedures. The system is designed for lung biopsies due to the large working volume that is required for reaching peripheral lung lesions, though, with its large working volume and small in-bore cross-sectional area, the robotic system is effectively a general-purpose CT-compatible manipulation device for percutaneous procedures. Finally, with the considerable development time undertaken in designing a precise and flexible-use system and with the desire to reduce the burden of other researchers in developing algorithms for image-guided surgery, this system provides open-access, and to the best of our knowledge, is the first open-hardware image-guided biopsy robot of its kind.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, final submission to IROS 201

Real-Life Lying, Stealing Kicks Off Book Project for Teen and Dad, Patrick and Dennis Doyle

News release announces that Patrick Doyle wrote a book with his father, Dennis Doyle, called Rumors at School: A Tale of Honesty

Spectroscopic Confirmation of Multiple Red Galaxy-Galaxy Mergers in MS1054-03 (z=0.83)

We present follow-up spectroscopy of the galaxy cluster MS1054-03 (z=0.83) confirming that at least six of the nine merging galaxy pairs identified by van Dokkum et al. (1999) are indeed bound systems: they have projected separations of R_s<10 kpc and relative line-of sight velocities of dv<165 km/s. For the remaining three pairs, we were unable to obtain redshifts of both constituent galaxies. To identify a more objective sample of merging systems, we select bound red galaxy pairs (R_s<=30 kpc, dv<=300 km/s) from our sample of 121 confirmed cluster members: galaxies in bound red pairs make up 15.7+/-3.6% of the cluster population. The (B-K_s) color-magnitude diagram shows that the pair galaxies are as red as the E/S0 members and have a homogeneous stellar population. The red pair galaxies span a large range in luminosity and internal velocity dispersion to include some of the brightest, most massive members (L>L*, sigma>200 km/s); these bound galaxy pairs must evolve into E/S0 members by z~0.7. These results combined with MS1054's high merger fraction and reservoir of likely future mergers indicates that most, if not all, of its early-type members evolved from (passive) galaxy-galaxy mergers at z<~1.Comment: accepted by ApJ Letters; high resolution version of Fig. 2 available at http://www.exp-astro.phys.ethz.ch/tran/outgoing/ms1054mgrs.ps.g

Temporally Resolved Intensity Contouring (TRIC) for characterization of the absolute spatio-temporal intensity distribution of a relativistic, femtosecond laser pulse

Today's high-power laser systems are capable of reaching photon intensities up to $10^{22}$ W/cm^2, generating plasmas when interacting with material. The high intensity and ultrashort laser pulse duration (fs) make direct observation of plasma dynamics a challenging task. In the field of laser-plasma physics and especially for the acceleration of ions, the spatio-temporal intensity distribution is one of the most critical aspects. We describe a novel method based on a single-shot (i.e. single laser pulse) chirped probing scheme, taking nine sequential frames at framerates up to THz. This technique, to which we refer as temporally resolved intensity contouring (TRIC) enables single-shot measurement of laser-plasma dynamics. Using TRIC, we demonstrate the reconstruction of the complete spatio-temporal intensity distribution of a high-power laser pulse in the focal plane at full pulse energy with sub picosecond resolution.Comment: Daniel Haffa, Jianhui Bin and Martin Speicher are corresponding author

Application of system dynamics for holistic product-service system development

In order to develop Product Service Systems (PSS), a holistic view on the system and a coequal development of service and product parts is necessary. Particularly for the beginning of the development of PSS, existing approaches show lacks and start with vague defined initial phases. This leads to inadequate methodological support for the consistent design of the overall system and simultaneous elaboration of the requirements down to the parameters of individual components. Therefore, a procedure is required that completely maps the PSS and enables detailed development for relevant individual areas, taking into account existing constraints. At the beginning of the development a model is necessary, which first defines the system boundaries of the PSS and maps the performance and control flows of the system. In addition, the integration of further actors into the PSS must be made possible. This paper presents an approach that uses System Dynamics (SD) to design a PSS. With this approach, the representation of the system is initially possible at a high level of abstraction, whereby the representation can be further refined and detailed. Parallel to this, a preliminary design for planning and controlling media flows can be carried out from the first system representation and further detailed parallel to the system representation. An essential advantage is that the detailing can also only be carried out for individual areas, which can be displayed in sub-models, but can also be reintegrated into the overall representation. The sub-models can be implemented function-specifically on the basis of resources and competencies of individual actors. For system-relevant areas, planning and design can be concretized in the sub-models (which can be realized by products as well as services) down to the lowest hierarchy level. This can take place up to the definition of individual physical component parameters and has thus up to the phase of the elaboration effects on the development of the parts. In return, the effects of changes in system-relevant parameters on the overall system can also be examined. For the PSS, a model is built in which system-determining functions and principles are represented and developed. The model is constructed in such a way that non-system-determining functions and principles are defined as variables or black boxes. Requirements and parameters are derived from this system development. These are used for the further development steps in the development process. Depending on whether it concerns system-relevant areas or not, the entry into the development process takes place later in the elaboration phase (e.g. in the area of detailed design) or partly earlier in the concept phase (e.g. function development). It is also possible to enter an early phase in the development process of the individual parts, accompanied by already defined functions, sub-functions or parameters that must not be changed in the course of development. With this approach a holistic development of the system with all product and service parts as well as their connections and dependencies is possible

Using transfer entropy to study synaptic integration in Purkinje cells

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