Coworking from the Company’s Perspective - Serendipity-biotope or Getaway-spot?

The phenomenon coworking has been around since 2005. While the initial drivers and beneficiaries where microbusinesses and freelancers, corporations have recently started to develop interest in the topic. Not because they see in coworking spaces a candidate to substitute their corporate office with, but because they are interested in the opportunities it offers in addition to the primary and secondary (home office) work location – be it from an innovation management or employee wellbeing standpoint. A pilot project with two Swiss ICT companies analysed the coworking movement from the perspective of corporations and identified value propositions as well as obstacles. Based on the different needs and behaviours of the experiment participants, four personae were identified. The study showed that although utilization by the pilot participants was on a very low level, the signal for change of the organizational culture is an interesting side effect of introducing coworking as an alternative work scenario

Workforce Demand Assessment to Shape Future GI-Education – First Results of a Survey

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Geographic Information Science & Technology (GIS&T) is constantly evolving in scientific and technological terms. In 2006 the GIS&T Body of Knowledge (BoK) initiative has provided a domain inventory that serves as a structured basis for curriculum development. The content and structure of the BoK are currently undergoing revision. One of the projects addressing an update of the BoK is the project Geographic Information: Need to Know. In this project an assessment of current and future workforce demand and educational supply in the geographic information (GI) domain provide the basis for revising the BoK. This article reports on first results from a survey regarding GI workforce demand in Europe. People working in the GIS&T domain were asked to rate BoK knowledge areas related to their relevance in a professional working context. These ratings are differentiated by types of organizations and educational backgrounds of respondents. The report is rounded off with an outlook to the results on future competences identified by respondents

Leaf Area, Competition with Grass, and Clover Cultivar: Key Factors to Successful Overwintering and Fast Regrowth of White Clover (Trifolium repens L.) in Spring

The greater sensitivity of white clover (Trifolium repens L.) to low temperature compared with perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) is a major problem in sustaining the relative contributions to yield of the two species in mixed swards. The objectives of this investigation were to examine the dynamics of leaf development of two white clover cultivars, AberHerald and Grasslands Huia, under field conditions, and to determine the significance of leaf area in winter, and of competition by perennial ryegrass, for the overwintering and regrowth of white clover in spring. Undefoliated white clover plants developed 3·8-6·6 new leaves between late autumn and early spring, and stolon dry matter and total non-structural carbohydrates (TNC) content increased by 262 and by 68% respectively. In contrast, white clover plants that were defoliated frequently during the winter showed a 28% decrease in stolon dry matter and an 82% decrease in the content of TNC. Frequent defoliation in winter caused severe reduction in the rates of emergence of nodes (by 60%) and of buds (by 67%), and the rate of death of nodes and buds increased by a factor of 10, leading to small stolon systems of individual plants in spring. Competition had similar, but weaker, effects to those of winter defoliation, presumably caused by shading of white clover leaves. AberHerald had a higher cumulative leaf emergence (by 22%), a higher mean leaf number (by 23%), a higher stolon DM (by 36%) and a higher TNC content per plant (by 115%) than Grasslands Huia. Results demonstrate the crucial positive role of leaf area during winter, the negative effect of grass competition, and the importance of the clover cultivar, for the overwintering and subsequent spring regrowth of white clove

Der Einfluss von Marktmacht auf die Spot- und Terminmarktpreise der Strombörsen

Bereits in den frühen 1990er-Jahren öffneten Großbritannien und Norwegen ihre Elektrizitätsmärkte. Im Jahr 1996 erfolgte mit der EU-Elektrizitätsbinnenmarktrichtlinie der Beschluss der EU auch ihre Mitgliedsmärkte für den Wettbewerb zu öffnen. Zu den wichtigsten Zielen zählten eine Effizienzsteigerung bei der Produktion, Übertragung und Verteilung von Elektrizität und die Sicherstellung der Versorgung innerhalb der EU. Mit der Einführung von Strombörsen sollte die Preissetzung durch Angebot und Nachfrage des freien Marktes bestimmt und somit Handelspreise entsprechend der Grenzkosten erzielt werden. Seit der Einführung der Börsen erhöhte sich jedoch die Konzentration vieler Märkte. Fusionen und Akquisitionen verringerten die Anzahl der Spieler und ließen große Akteure entstehen. Dies gibt zu denken, da eine hohe Konzentration die Marktmacht einzelner Spieler am Markt erhöht. Marktmacht wiederum ermöglicht Preismanipulation. Durch strategische Preissetzung können Unternehmen den Börsenpreis zu ihren Gunsten beeinflussen und Preise überhalb der Grenzkosten erzielen. Diese Diplomarbeit widmet sich den Entwicklungen seit Liberalisierung und Deregulierung von drei wichtigen europäischen Märkten: Großbritannien, Deutschland und dem nordischen Raum. Ausgewählte Parameter werden zunächst in einem Ländervergleich analysiert, um danach in einem einfachen ökonometrischen Modell auf ihren Einfluss auf die Preise der Strombörsen dieser Gebiete getestet zu werden. Bei den Preisen handelt es sich sowohl um Spot- als auch Terminpreise, da davon ausgegangen wird, dass bereits die gegenwärtige Marktmacht die zukünftigen Preise beeinflusst bzw. beeinflussen kann.In the early 1990ies Great Britain and Norway were the first countries in Europe to open their electricity markets. In 1996 the European Union followed with the Directive 96/92/EC which aimed at introducing free and competitive electricity markets in all member countries. The main goal was to reduce wholesale electricity prices to marginal costs as predicted by the economic theory of perfect competition. However, market trends since establishment of the first power exchanges suggest an increased market concentration. This leads to concerns, since high market concentration could offset the benefits of free markets. More oligopolistic market structures will enable producers to gain market power. This means that they will also be able to influence prices to their benefit. This research compares the development since liberalisation and deregulation of three important European markets: Great Britain, Germany and the Nordic countries. Moreover, selected parameters as suggested by current literature are tested against market prices of the respective power exchange. Since all of the exchanges covered by the research also introduced financial contracts, the model includes effects on spot and financial prices – assuming that today’s market power already influences future prices

Welcome to Thyroid Research

Welcome to the first issue of Thyroid Research, a new journal published by BioMed Central, which aims at providing a platform for both researchers and clinicians to discuss a broad spectrum of thyroidology and related issues. These include physiological mechanisms of thyroid hormone action, secretory regulations, immunological and genetic aspects and, finally, news and information on state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and treatment protocols for more effective management of thyroid disorders

Exploiting GPUs to investigate an inversion method that retrieves cardiac conductivities from potential measurements

Accurate cardiac bidomain conductivity values are essential for realistic simulation of various cardiac electrophysiological phenomena. A method was previously developed that can determine the conductivities from measurements of potential on a multi-electrode array placed on the surface of the heart. These conductivities, as well as a value for fibre rotation, are determined using a mathematical model and a two-pass process that is based on Tikhonov regularisation. Using simulated potentials, to which noise is added, the inversion method was recently shown to retrieve the intracellular conductivities accurately with up to 15% noise and the extracellular conductivities extremely accurately even with 20% noise. Recent work investigated the sensitivity of the method to the choice of the regularisation parameters. Such a study only became possible due to modifications that were made to the C++ code so that it could run on graphical processing units (GPUs) on the CUDA platform. As the method required the solution of a large number of matrix equations, the highly parallel nature of GPUs was exploited to accelerate execution of the code. Reorganisation of the code and more efficient memory management techniques allowed the data to completely fit in the GPU memory. Comparison between the execution time on the GPU versus the original CPU code shows a speedup of up to 60 times. In the future, the speedup could be further increased with greater use of shared memory, which has a much lower latency (access time) than global memory. References Clayton, R. H., Bernus, O., Cherry, E. M., Dierckx, H., Fenton, F. H., Mirabella, L., Panfilov, A. V., Sachse, F. B., Seemann, G., and Zhang, H. Models of cardiac tissue electrophysiology: Progress, challenges and open questions. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 104(1–3):22–48, 2011. doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2010.05.008 Arthur, R. M. and Geselowitz, D. B. 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