Evaluating social games for kids and teenagers diagnosed with cancer

Serious games for health are interactive games with a focus on health care, physical and mental fitness. As it is assumed that social support can also indirectly influence patient's health condition, multiplayer online health games present an innovative approach of improving the player's health condition. In this paper we present the health game prototype "Adventures in Sophoria" developed at the University of Duisburg-Essen with the goal of facilitating the intercommunication of teenagers during cancer treatment. Two versions of the game were implemented, one explicitly referring to cancer and an implicit version with no cancer content. In a between-subjects experimental study with a clinical sample, both versions were compared. Additionally, parents and nursing staff were interviewed in order to evaluate the demand regarding health games. Results suggest that the implicit game version yielded higher enjoyment and acceptance compared to the explicit version. © 2011 IEEE

Seasonal changes of the volatile density in the coma and on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Starting from several monthly data sets of Rosetta's COmetary Pressure Sensor we reconstruct the gas density in the coma around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The underlying inverse gas model is constructed by fitting ten thousands of measurements to thousands of potential gas sources distributed across the entire nucleus surface. The ensuing self-consistent solution for the entire coma density and surface activity reproduces the temporal and spatial variations seen in the data for monthly periods with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.93 and higher. For different seasonal illumination conditions before and after perihelion we observe a systematic shift of gas sources on the nucleus.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted in MNRAS (2017

Surface localization of gas sources on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko based on DFMS/COPS data

We reconstruct the temporal evolution of the source distribution for the four major gas species H2O, CO2, CO, and O2 on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during its 2015 apparition. The analysis applies an inverse coma model and fits to data between August 6th 2014 and September 5th 2016 measured with the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS) of the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) and the COmet Pressure Sensor (COPS). The spatial distribution of gas sources with their temporal variation allows one to construct surface maps for gas emissions and to evaluate integrated productions rates. For all species peak production rates and integrated productions rates per orbit are evaluated separately for the northern and the southern hemisphere. The nine most active emitting areas on the comet's surface are defined and their correlation to emissions for each of the species is discussed.Comment: 11 page

Wissensmanagement am Beispiel der Einführung eines virtuellen Semesterapparates an der Universitätsbibliothek Hildesheim

Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Magisterarbeit wurde auf Basis der Magisterarbeit von Ioana Brandes der von ihr entwickelte virtuelle Semesterapparat weiterentwickelt. Einen besonderen Mehrwert der Weiterentwicklung stellt die in das Online Formular integrierte OPAC-Suche dar, sowie die Realisierung zusätzlicher Formularseiten für die Semesterapparate verwaltende Person durch eine Änderung des Workflows und die Hinzufügung zusätzlicher Bearbeitungsfunktionen. Die weiterentwickelte Version ermöglicht es den DozentInnen der Universität Hildesheim, und besonders der Semesterapparate verwaltenden Person der Universitätsbibliothek Hildesheim, die Semesterapparate mit wenig Arbeitsaufwand und auf einfache und komfortable Weise zu erstellen.In this thesis, on the basis of the M.A. of Ioana Brandes, the virtual "Semesterapparat" has been further developed. A special added value of the further development is represented by the OPACsearch, which is integrated in the online form, as well as the provision of additional form pages for the administrating person in the library, due to a change of workflow, and additional editing functions. The further developed version enables the lecturers of the University of Hildesheim, especially the "Semesterapparate" administrating person of the University Library of Hildesheim, to easily and comfortably assemble the "Semesterapparate" with less effort

Wissensmanagement am Beispiel der Einführung eines virtuellen Semesterapparates an der Universitätsbibliothek Hildesheim

Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Magisterarbeit wurde auf Basis der Magisterarbeit von Ioana Brandes der von ihr entwickelte virtuelle Semesterapparat weiterentwickelt. Einen besonderen Mehrwert der Weiterentwicklung stellt die in das Online Formular integrierte OPAC-Suche dar, sowie die Realisierung zusätzlicher Formularseiten für die Semesterapparate verwaltende Person durch eine Änderung des Workflows und die Hinzufügung zusätzlicher Bearbeitungsfunktionen. Die weiterentwickelte Version ermöglicht es den DozentInnen der Universität Hildesheim, und besonders der Semesterapparate verwaltenden Person der Universitätsbibliothek Hildesheim, die Semesterapparate mit wenig Arbeitsaufwand und auf einfache und komfortable Weise zu erstellen.In this thesis, on the basis of the M.A. of Ioana Brandes, the virtual "Semesterapparat" has been further developed. A special added value of the further development is represented by the OPACsearch, which is integrated in the online form, as well as the provision of additional form pages for the administrating person in the library, due to a change of workflow, and additional editing functions. The further developed version enables the lecturers of the University of Hildesheim, especially the "Semesterapparate" administrating person of the University Library of Hildesheim, to easily and comfortably assemble the "Semesterapparate" with less effort

The gas production of 14 species from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko based on DFMS/COPS data from 2014-2016

The coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been probed by the Rosetta spacecraft and shows a variety of different molecules. The ROSINA COmet Pressure Sensor and the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer provide in-situ densities for many volatile compounds including the 14 gas species H2O, CO2, CO, H2S, O2, C2H6, CH3OH, H2CO, CH4, NH3, HCN, C2H5OH, OCS, and CS2. We fit the observed densities during the entire comet mission between August 2014 and September 2016 to an inverse coma model. We retrieve surface emissions on a cometary shape with 3996 triangular elements for 50 separated time intervals. For each gas we derive systematic error bounds and report the temporal evolution of the production, peak production, and the time-integrated total production. We discuss the production for the two lobes of the nucleus and for the northern and southern hemispheres. Moreover we provide a comparison of the gas production with the seasonal illumination.Comment: 1. uncertainty for gas production with respect to limited surface coverage and to the l2-error for the parameter fit 2. ancillary files to create the plots in figure

Are Treatment Preferences Relevant in Response to Serotonergic Antidepressants and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Depressed Primary Care Patients? Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial Including a Patients' Choice Arm

Background Little is known about the influence of depressed patients' preferences and expectations about treatments upon treatment outcome We investigated whether better clinical outcome in depressed primary care patients is associated with receiving their preferred treatment Methods Within a randomized placebo-controlled single-centre 10-week trial with 5 arms (sertraline, placebo, cognitive-behavioral group therapy, CBT-G, moderated self-help group control, treatment with sertraline or CBT-G according to patients' choice), outcomes for 145 primary care patients with mild-to-moderate depressive disorders according to DSM-IV criteria were investigated Preference for medication versus psychotherapy was assessed at screening using a single item Post-baseline difference scores for the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17) were used to assess treatment outcome (mixed-model repeated-measures regression analysis) Results Depressed patients receiving their preferred treatment (n = 63), whether sertraline or CBT-G, responded significantly better than those who did not receive their preferred therapy (n = 54, p = 0 001) The difference in outcome between both groups was 8 0 points on the HAMD-17 for psychotherapy and 2 9 points on the HAMD-17 for treatment with antidepressants Results were not explained by differences in depression severity or dropout rates Conclusions Patients' relative preference for medication versus psychotherapy should be considered when offering a treatment because receiving the preferred treatment conveys an additional and clinically relevant benefit (HAMD-17 +2 9 points for drugs, +8 0 points for CBT-G) in outcome Copyright (C) 2010 S Karger AG Base

Data-driven extraction of relative reasoning rules to limit combinatorial explosion in biodegradation pathway prediction

Motivation: The University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS) is a rule-based expert system to predict plausible biodegradation pathways for organic compounds. However, iterative application of these rules to generate biodegradation pathways leads to combinatorial explosion. We use data from known biotransformation pathways to rationally determine biotransformation priorities (relative reasoning rules) to limit this explosion. Results: A total of 112 relative reasoning rules were identified and implemented. In one prediction step, i.e. as per one generation predicted, the use of relative reasoning decreases the predicted biotransformations by over 25% for 50 compounds used to generate the rules and by about 15% for an external validation set of 47 xenobiotics, including pesticides, biocides and pharmaceuticals. The percentage of correctly predicted, experimentally known products remains at 75% when relative reasoning is used. The set of relative reasoning rules identified, therefore, effectively reduces the number of predicted transformation products without compromising the quality of the predictions. Availability: The UM-PPS server is freely available on the web to all users at the time of submission of this manuscript and will be available following publication at http://umbbd.msi.umn.edu/predict/. Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin

Predicting biodegradation products and pathways: a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach

Motivation: Current methods for the prediction of biodegradation products and pathways of organic environmental pollutants either do not take into account domain knowledge or do not provide probability estimates. In this article, we propose a hybrid knowledge- and machine learning-based approach to overcome these limitations in the context of the University of Minnesota Pathway Prediction System (UM-PPS). The proposed solution performs relative reasoning in a machine learning framework, and obtains one probability estimate for each biotransformation rule of the system. As the application of a rule then depends on a threshold for the probability estimate, the trade-off between recall (sensitivity) and precision (selectivity) can be addressed and leveraged in practice. Results: Results from leave-one-out cross-validation show that a recall and precision of ∼0.8 can be achieved for a subset of 13 transformation rules. Therefore, it is possible to optimize precision without compromising recall. We are currently integrating the results into an experimental version of the UM-PPS server. Availability: The program is freely available on the web at http://wwwkramer.in.tum.de/research/applications/biodegradation/data. Contact: [email protected]

Integration auf dem Weg

Für die Umsetzung des Konzepts einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung tragen die Hochschulen eine be­sondere Verantwortung. Hier werden zukünftige Führungskräfte und damit Multiplikatoren aus­gebildet. Eine umfassende empirische Analyse zeigt, dass in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften um­weltorientierte Studieninhalte zunehmende Verbreitung gefunden haben. Dennoch bleiben Defizi­te bestehen