Mobilising information systems scholarship for a circular economy: Review,synthesis, and directions for future research

One of today's grand societal challenges is to replace the current ‘take‐make‐waste’ economic model with a circular economic model that allows a gradual decoupling of economic activities from the consumption of finite virgin resources. While circular economy (CE) scholars have long lauded digital technologies such as sensors, distributed ledgers, or platforms as key enablers, our own community has not fully explored the potentials of information systems (IS) for a CE. Considering recent technological advances in software and hardware and our history of helping address wicked challenges, we believe the time is ripe to mobilise IS scholarship for a CE. Our findings from an interdisciplinary literature review show that research has primarily examined IS potentials for increasing efficiency of isolated intra‐organisational processes while neglecting the larger sustainability potential of IS to establish circular material flows—that is, slow down and close material loops across entire product lifecycles. In response, we propose directions for IS research that develop our knowledge of how IS can help understand and enact circular material flows to intensify and extend use of products and components and recycle waste materials. Our directions offer pathways to building and evaluating the problem‐solution pairing that could characterise a prolific CE‐IS relationship.     

Formal testing for separation assurance

In order to address the rapidly increasing load of air traffic operations, innovative algorithms and software systems must be developed for the next generation air traffic control. Extensive verification of such novel algorithms is key for their adoption by industry. Separation assurance algorithms aim at predicting if two aircraft will get closer to each other than a minimum safe distance; if loss of separation is predicted, they also propose a change of course for the aircraft to resolve this potential conflict. In this paper, we report on our work towards developing an advanced testing framework for separation assurance. Our framework supports automated test case generation and testing, and defines test oracles that capture algorithm requirements. We discuss three different approaches to test-case generation, their application to a separation assurance prototype, and their respective strengths and weaknesses. We also present an approach for statistical analysis of the large numbers of test results obtained from our framework.     

Boundaries and roles: Positioning and social location in the Virtual Math Teams (VMT) online community

As research in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) expands its understanding of joint knowledge building, new perspectives on how social reality is constructed become necessary. Our research concentrates on the longitudinal or diachronic trajectories of Virtual Math Teams (VMT) at The Math Forum, an online community supporting mathematical inquiry. We investigate how these virtual teams constitute themselves while engaged in building collaborative knowledge. We describe as well, through the lens of positioning theory, the interactional activities that allow participants to situate themselves, others, and their collective knowledge resources over time. Our analysis suggests that positioning work is central to constructing a sustained problem space and illustrates how the configurations of positions and resources that co-participants put forward through interaction might change across a team’s trajectory. These changes constitute and are sensitive to the participants’ evolving reasoning routines and other forms of joint participation uniquely related knowledge building. In addition, we show that the VMT activity system affords participants a level of disciplinary engagement which is partly illustrated by active engagement in positioning work. Finally, we suggest that an interactional approach to roles and participation provides a fruitful framework for researchers, designers, and practitioners interested in understanding and creating engaging CSCL interactions.     

TimeLapseAnalyzer: multi-target analysis for live-cell imaging and time-lapse microscopy

The direct observation of cells over time using time-lapse microscopy can provide deep insights into many important biological processes. Reliable analyses of motility, proliferation, invasive potential or mortality of cells are essential to many studies involving live cell imaging and can aid in biomarker discovery and diagnostic decisions. Given the vast amount of image- and time-series data produced by modern microscopes, automated analysis is a key feature to capitalize the potential of time-lapse imaging devices. To provide fast and reproducible analyses of multiple aspects of cell behaviour, we developed TimeLapseAnalyzer. Apart from general purpose image enhancements and segmentation procedures, this extensible, self-contained, modular cross-platform package provides dedicated modalities for fast and reliable analysis of multi-target cell tracking, scratch wound healing analysis, cell counting and tube formation analysis in high throughput screening of live-cell experiments. TimeLapseAnalyzer is freely available (MATLAB, Open Source) at http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/mitarbeiter/HKestler/tla.     

Protokollierung im Abrufverfahren

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

An overview of vertical handover techniques: Algorithms, protocols and tools

Wireless technologies, under the “Anywhere, Anytime” paradigm, offer users the promise of being always attached to the network. Mobile devices enabled with multiple wireless technologies make possible to maintain seamless connectivity in highly dynamic scenarios such as vehicular networks (VNs), switching from one wireless network to another by using vertical handover techniques (VHO). In this paper we present an overview of VHO techniques, along with the main algorithms, protocols and tools proposed in the literature. In addition we suggest the most appropriate VHO techniques to efficiently communicate in VN environments considering the particular characteristics of this type of networks.     

Studying Organizational Creativity as Process: Fluidity or Duality?

This paper contributes to process studies on organizational creativity by developing two competing research agendas. The first perspective, the ‘becoming’ view, depicts creativity as a constant flow of activity that crystallizes every once in a while in unpredictable moments of creativity. The second perspective, the ‘practice’ view, understands creativity as a practised social process, in which structures play the important role of both enabling and constraining individual agents in pursuing creativity as a collective phenomenon. We compare and contrast these two theoretical perspectives, which are based on different process ontologies, and discuss their methodological implications. We argue that the practice perspective offers particular promise, because it allows us to address the important yet paradoxical question of how creativity may be organized and managed.     

Consumers' Creative Talent: Which Characteristics Qualify Consumers for Open Innovation Projects? An Exploration of Asymmetrical Effects

Virtual customer integration and open innovation are considered as appropriate means to improve the success of new product development. However, only when consumers are qualified and motivated to contribute promising ideas and relevant know‐how they are able to add value to a producer's innovation process. In this study, we explore the symmetric and asymmetric impact of various creativity components on consumers' idea generation, concept development, or prototype building abilities as well as interest in co‐creation projects. Our results show that creativity components are of different importance. While some characteristics are needed above certain thresholds to successfully accomplish a certain development task, exceeding those does not necessarily lead to better outputs. Other characteristics improve the creative output only if they exceed specific levels.     

Molecular simulations of droplet evaporation by heat transfer

Droplet evaporation by heat transfer is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations for a pure Lennard-Jones fluid. Two different initial conditions are treated: (1) a droplet surrounded by its vapor in equilibrium, (2) a cold droplet surrounded by warm vapor. In both cases heat is transferred from a heat bath. Results are the numbers of droplet molecules N _d and density, drift velocity, and temperature profiles as functions of time. For the small droplets considered N _d depends on the definition of a droplet molecule. The density profiles as function of time show a transition from a droplet with liquid–vapor interface to a cluster of interfacial type and finally to the gas state. The temperature at a given time is nearly constant within the droplets or clusters but strong gradients occur in the gas. In case of evaporation of a cold droplet surrounded by warm vapor we observed initially cooling down of the droplet corresponding to pressure jump evaporation and thereafter slower evaporation because of lower initial state vapor density.     

Vorratsdatenspeicherung: Ein fundamentaler Verfassungsverstoß

Zusammenfassung  Bie Bundesregierung will die Vorratsdatenspeicherung nach der EG-Richtlinie 2006/24/EG vom 15. M?rz 2006 durch einen neu geschaffenen § 113 a TKG umsetzen. Die Regelung ist erheblichen verfassungsrechtlichen Bedenken ausgesetzt, weil sie zu einer anlasslosen Massenspeicherung von Verkehrsdaten zu unbestimmten Zwecken führt. Sie führt zu einem Paradigmenwechsel im Verh?ltnis zwischen Bürger und Staat. Nicht die Einschr?nkung der Freiheit wird begründungspflichtig, sondern im Gegenteil die Ausübung der bürgerlichen Grundfreiheiten der elektronischen Kommunikation. Dr. Johann Bizer Stellvertretender Landesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein, Unabh?ngiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz (ULD).