The 10 most recently published documents
The circular economy is one of the emerging trends in value creation systems, which emphasises the efficient use of resources, minimising waste and the loss of value added as well as replacing the concept of “end of life” for products and services in value creation systems. Since many of products and complementary services available on the market are not designed for circularity, it is challenging to convert the linear product life to a circular life cycle. However, conceptualise value creation systems that are suitable for a circular economy is a challenge, as a large number of influence factors are interrelated. Thereby not all influence factors reinforce each other, but can also have no or even a negative influence. Thus, in order to make the mutual influence transparent and create a holistic understanding of how the circularity can be implemented in value creation systems, this paper proposes an interdependency matrix which is enhancing the decision-making in the conception of circular value creation systems. The research design follows the mixed method approach. First, a literature review is carried out to review the state of the art. The research is extended by structuring relevant influence factors in the design of circular value creation. The findings from the literature research are supplemented by expert knowledge from industry and research. Finally, the findings are then incorporated into the development of the interdependency matrix. The assessment of the correlations between the individual influence factors is based on unique morphologies. A case study serves as a reference and framework for the application of the developed interdependency matrix. In order to validate and further develop the interdependency matrix, a verification process is carried out by creating application examples for the developed case study. The application examples serve as practical instances to test the applicability and resilience of the interdependency matrix. The proposed interdependency matrix shows which influence factors have correlations to each other – a distinction is made between whether the influence has a positive or negative effect. It also shows which influence factors are to be considered independently and for which influence factors a statement about their correlation is only possible depending on the specific situation in the value creation system. The core of this study is the determination and evaluation of the correlations, which the influence factors of a circular value creation system exhibit. The developed interdependency matrix aims to ensure that decision-makers in value creation systems are increasingly able to make decisions that promote a circular value creation in future. However, therefore it is insufficient to consider only individual influence factors or measures without their correlations. The approach serves to take a holistic view of a circular value creation system and is intended to help accelerate the transformation towards a circular economy.
General practice-based research networks have become an integral tool to gain medical knowledge from primary care in many countries. For this purpose, a scalable IT-infrastructure is presented considering the limiting peculiarities in the German health system and enabling GPs to participate in clinical studies based on their patient population. The infrastructure consists of a central study management server and local clients for each practice. It adopts to the currently limited digital connectivity of GP practices, data protection regulations for clinical data and the needs of the medical staff to manage a clinical study. The infrastructure is in production at the four university hospitals in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Until now three clinical studies with over 70 GPs and 350 Participants are successfully conducted or have been finished. Further clinical studies are in the planning stages.
Currently the German healthcare system does not have a generic structure to answer research questions in primary care through clinical studies. The DESAM-ForNet initiative was founded as an association of German Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRN), to propose an appropriate and feasible solution. Aim is the integration of distributed, consensual information from practices into a single point of contact. To this end, a consensus-based concept for a digital infrastructure was developed in cooperation with all partners involved. Based on a joint requirements analysis the new concept integrates the federal structure of the German health system and the existing research structures.
Moonshot Project Goal 3 aims to develop an AI robot that grows alongside people’s lives by 2050. In order for robots to grow together with our lives, it is necessary for them to have personalities. We will discuss what characteristics an AI robot should have both internally and externally. Currently, chatbots using LLM such as ChatGPT are being developed, but problems have arisen such as chatbots encouraging users to commit suicide. We will also discuss the problems caused by chatbots having personalities. In addition to personality, qualitative identity is also important for robots to stay close to people for a lifetime. Today’s robots have fixed personalities and cannot be changed. Therefore, personality cannot be inherited. Furthermore, in the case of robots, their individuality is limited to their appearance and physical functions. We will discuss how robots can continue to be passed down from generation to generation despite these differences.
Purpose: While extant research does mention performance management systems as antecedent to a management accountant’s role, and that there is tension between both, there is little detailed research. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the extent to which a performance management system interacts with the role of a management accountant.
Design/methodology/approach: The study is a cross-sectional field study, using interviews with paired management accountants and operative managers in 16 multinational organisations in Germany. The perspectives of both management accountants and operative managers are analysed separately. The role episode model theoretically informs the study.
Findings: The findings reveal management accountants distinguish between three roles of scorekeeping, controlling and business support, similar to prior literature. By contrast, operating managers are concerned with the value-adding and non-value-adding character of activities and thus support a dichotomy of management accountants’ roles. Drawing upon the role episode model, this study elucidates the interplay between performance management systems and the roles of management accountants, which encompass both role-taking and role-making dynamics. Additionally, this study contributes to management control literature by operationalising the components of a performance management system framework and linking them to the role of management accountants, as proposed by role antecedents in previous literature. The study also uncovers factors influencing role-taking and role-making, alongside examining the repercussions of role consensus or conflict based on the interaction with the operating manager.
Research limitations/implications: This paper is subject to the normal limitations of case study research and generalisation. The findings may also be influenced by the cultural context of the study.
Originality/value: An updated role episode model is presented, highlighting further performance management systems’ components. The study also reveals factors enabling and/or inhibiting the management accountants’ business support role and the impact of role consensus/conflict.
Current noninvasive methods of clinical practice often do not identify the causes of conductive hearing loss due to pathologic changes in the middle ear with sufficient certainty. Wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) measurement is noninvasive, inexpensive and objective. It is very sensitive to pathologic changes in the middle ear and therefore promising for diagnosis. However, evaluation of the data is difficult because of large interindividual variations. Machine learning methods like Convolutional neural networks (CNN) which might be able to deal with this overlaying pattern require a large amount of labeled measurement data for training and validation. This is difficult to provide given the low prevalence of many middle-ear pathologies. Therefore, this study proposes an approach in which the WAI training data of the CNN are simulated with a finite-element ear model and the Monte-Carlo method. With this approach, virtual populations of normal, otosclerotic, and disarticulated ears were generated, consistent with the averaged data of measured populations and well representing the qualitative characteristics of individuals. The CNN trained with the virtual data achieved for otosclerosis an AUC of 91.1 %, a sensitivity of 85.7 %, and a specificity of 85.2 %. For disarticulation, an AUC of 99.5 %, sensitivity of 100 %, and specificity of 93.1 % was achieved. Furthermore, it was estimated that specificity could potentially be increased to about 99 % in both pathological cases if stapes reflex threshold measurements were used to confirm the diagnosis. Thus, the procedures’ performance is comparable to classifiers from other studies trained with real measurement data, and therefore the procedure offers great potential for the diagnosis of rare pathologies or early-stages pathologies. The clinical potential of these preliminary results remains to be evaluated on more measurement data and additional pathologies.
Eine Katze als Titel für ein Magazin zu Künstlicher Intelligenz? Und dann ausgerechnet mit diesen unnatürlichen Glubschaugen! Die Reaktionen unserer Hochschulmitglieder auf den Titel der neuesten Ausgabe von re:search - das Forschungsmagazin waren selten so kontrovers. Lassen Sie uns also ein paar Worte dazu sagen: Die Katze - mit KI erstellt und hier als Sinnbild für KI - wirkt klein und unschuldig. Doch in ihren Augen spiegelt sich auch eine Bedrohung, die noch nicht ganz greifbar ist. Wozu wird sie heranwachsen - zu einer Technologie, die uns hilft und unterstützt, oder zu einer Übermacht, die uns Menschen obsolet macht? Wir können das beeinflussen. Der erste Schritt dazu: Verständnis. Der zweite: Kritisches Denken. Also: Forschung. Die Professoren Notholt und Thomas zeigen uns zum Beispiel, wie wir mit Hilfe von KI die Energiewende schaffen können (Seite 20), ein Team des Hermann-Hollerith-Zentrums forscht mit dem Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt an zuverlässiger Software für sichere Raumfahrtmissionen (Seite 48) und Professor Himpel nutzt Methoden der Künstlichen Intelligenz, um die allgemeingültigste Sprache der Menschen zu verstehen: Die Musik (Seite 24). In diesem Heft zeigen wir Ihnen die vielfältigen Blickwinkel auf das Thema KI an der Hochschule Reutlingen.
This paper reviews the changes for database technology represented by the current development of the draft international standard ISO 39075 (Database Languages - GQL), which seeks a unified specification for property graphs and knowledge graphs. This paper examines these current developments as part of our review of the evolution of database technology, and their relation to the longer-term goal of supporting the Semantic Web using relational technology.
Assistant platforms
(2023)
Many assistant systems have evolved toward assistant platforms. These platforms combine a range of resources from various actors via a declarative and generative interface. Among the examples are voice-oriented assistant platforms like Alexa and Siri, as well as text-oriented assistant platforms like ChatGPT and Bard. They have emerged as valuable tools for handling tasks without requiring deeper domain expertise and have received large attention with the present advances in generative artificial intelligence. In view of their growing popularity, this Fundamental outlines the key characteristics and capabilities that define assistant platforms. The former comprise a multi-platform architecture, a declarative interface, and a multi-platform ecosystem, while the latter include capabilities for composition, integration, prediction, and generativity. Based on this framework, a research agenda is proposed along the capabilities and affordances for assistant platforms.
The selective oxidative conversion of seven representative fully characterized biomasses recovered as secondary feedstocks from the agroindustry is reported. The reaction system, known as the “OxFA process,” involves a homogeneous polyoxometalate catalyst (H8PV5Mo7O40), gaseous oxygen, p-toluene sulfonic acid, and water as solvent. It took place at 20 bar and 90°C and transformed agro-industrial wastes, such as coffee husks, cocoa husks, palm rachis, fiber and nuts, sugarcane bagasse, and rice husks into biogenic formic acid, acetic acid, and CO2 as sole products. Even though all samples were transformed; remarkably, the reaction obtains up to 64, and 55% combined yield of formic and acetic acid for coffee and cocoa husks as raw material within 24 h, respectively. In addition to the role of the catalysts and additive for promoting the reaction, the influence of biomass components (hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin) into biogenic formic acid formation has been also demonstrated. Thus, these results are of major interest for the application of novel oxidation techniques under real recovered biomass for producing value-added products.
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