Evaluation of E-Participation Efficiency with Biodiversity Measures - the Case of the Digital Agenda Vienna

We introduce the Effective Number of Issues measure for e-participation efficiency. This novel index is based on the Shannon entropy measure of biodiversity and summarizes the amount of information gained through an e-participation project in one number. This makes the comparison between different e-participation projects straightforward and lays the foundation for the rigorous analysis of success factors of e-participation projects in a data-driven way. After providing the formula and rationale for the new measure we use the ENI index to benchmark the idea generation process for the digital agenda Vienna against other projects. It turns out that the efficiency of this project is significantly higher than those observed for other cases. We conjecture that this can be attributed to the user-friendly design of the software platform and the effective communication strategy of the process management. Finally, suggestions for further research are given. (authors' abstract

Untersuchung des ökonomischen Potenzials der "Creative Industries" in Wien

Der Artikel untersucht das Markt-, Innovations- und Arbeitsplatzpotenzial der so genannten Creative Industries (CIs) in Wien. Dazu gehören die Bereiche Architektur, Audiovisueller Bereich, Bildende Kunst und Kunstmarkt, Darstellende Kunst und Unterhaltungskunst, Grafik, Mode, Design, Literatur und Verlagswesen, Multimedia/Software/Spiele/Internet, Museen und Bibliotheken, Musikwirtschaft sowie Werbung. In einem ersten Schritt werden die Wiener CIs in einem Überblick hinsichtlich der Beschäftigungssituation und ihrer Unternehmensstruktur dargestellt. Die Stärke der CI-Unternehmen liegt im hohen künstlerisch-kreativen Potenzial, in der Ausbildung, in der Wissenschaft und Forschung. In Wien existiert ein sehr ausgeprägtes urbanes und kunstkulturelles Milieu, eine hohe Dichte an Ausbildungsstätten und eine gut ausgebaute Forschungslandschaft, sowohl im universitären als auch im außeruniversitären Bereich. Ein weiteres spezifisches CI-Merkmal ist die wirtschaftliche Interdependenz zwischen Teilen der Wiener Creative Industries-Unternehmen und der öffentlichen Kunst- und Kulturfinanzierung. Die Schwächen der Wiener CIs liegen in der Verwertung, in der geringen Umsetzung des kreativen Potenzials in ökonomische Aktivitäten und im Export. Zurückzuführen ist dies auf die kleinteilige Unternehmensstruktur, die Kapitalschwäche und Managementdefizite. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden in einem zweiten Schritt die Hauptstoßrichtungen für die Entwicklung des CI-Standorts Wien herausgearbeitet, die für alle Sektoren - wenn auch nicht immer im gleichen Umfang - von Bedeutung sind. So umfasst eine nachhaltige Strategie zur Verbesserung des CI-Standorts Wien vier Unternehmens-Dimensionen: (1) eine Wachstumsstrategie, (2) Internationalisierung, (3) Clusterorientierung sowie (4) die Entwicklung von Governancestrukturen. (ICG2

Demonstrating public value to funders and other stakeholders—the journey of ELIXIR, a virtual and distributed research infrastructure for life science data

Open Science is a founding principle of ELIXIR, a pan-European research infrastructure for life science data, with 21 Member countries plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. The mission of ELIXIR is to coordinate bioinformatics resources so that they form a single, integrated and pan-European infrastructure, which can be used freely by academic and private-sector researchers across the globe. As a recipient of public and charitable funding, ELIXIR must demonstrate its value, and the need to produce evidence in support of this is intensifying. Our practice-led journey towards demonstrating public value is articulated around five main challenges and, for each, we present our pragmatic approach for tackling it. We begin by showing how we are working towards demystifying what research infrastructures do. We then shed light on the sort of evidence our funders and other stakeholders are asking us for, how this evidence varies in nature and scope, and our tactics to satisfy them. We follow-on by providing our thoughts on possible barriers and solutions to embedding impact evaluation in our activities. Finally, we provide lessons learned, which we believe are sufficiently transferable and will be inspirational to other research infrastructures as they embark on their own journeys to demonstrate public value.publishedVersio

The SXS Collaboration catalog of binary black hole simulations

Accurate models of gravitational waves from merging black holes are necessary for detectors to observe as many events as possible while extracting the maximum science. Near the time of merger, the gravitational waves from merging black holes can be computed only using numerical relativity. In this paper, we present a major update of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration catalog of numerical simulations for merging black holes. The catalog contains 2018 distinct configurations (a factor of 11 increase compared to the 2013 SXS catalog), including 1426 spin-precessing configurations, with mass ratios between 1 and 10, and spin magnitudes up to 0.998. The median length of a waveform in the catalog is 39 cycles of the dominant $\ell=m=2$ gravitational-wave mode, with the shortest waveform containing 7.0 cycles and the longest 351.3 cycles. We discuss improvements such as correcting for moving centers of mass and extended coverage of the parameter space. We also present a thorough analysis of numerical errors, finding typical truncation errors corresponding to a waveform mismatch of $\sim 10^{-4}$. The simulations provide remnant masses and spins with uncertainties of 0.03% and 0.1% ($90^{\text{th}}$ percentile), about an order of magnitude better than analytical models for remnant properties. The full catalog is publicly available at https://www.black-holes.org/waveforms .Comment: 33+18 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, 2,018 binaries. Catalog metadata in ancillary JSON file. v2: Matches version accepted by CQG. Catalog available at https://www.black-holes.org/waveform

On-target restoration of a split T cell-engaging antibody for precision immunotherapy

T cell-engaging immunotherapies are changing the landscape of current cancer care. However, suitable target antigens are scarce, restricting these strategies to very few tumor types. Here, we report on a T cell-engaging antibody derivative that comes in two complementary halves and addresses antigen combinations instead of single molecules. Each half, now coined hemibody, contains an antigen-specific single-chain variable fragment (scFv) fused to either the variable light (V-L) or variable heavy (V-H) chain domain of an anti-CD3 antibody. When the two hemibodies simultaneously bind their respective antigens on a single cell, they align and reconstitute the original CD3-binding site to engage T cells. Employing preclinical models for aggressive leukemia and breast cancer, we show that by the combinatorial nature of this approach, T lymphocytes exclusively eliminate dual antigen-positive cells while sparing single positive bystanders. This allows for precision targeting of cancers not amenable to current immunotherapies