Energieinformatik

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and highly dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.     

Syntheses and reactions of urethanes of cellobiose and cellulose-containing uretdione groups

Urethanes of cellobiose and cellulose-containing uretdione groups are synthesized by the reaction of aliphatic and aromatic diisocyanate uretdiones with the saccharides. The syntheses are performed as a heterogeneous reaction in dimethyl acetamide using dibutyl tin dilaurate as a catalyst, as well as a homogeneous reaction in dimethyl acetamide-lithium chloride. Thus, Semisynthetic prepolymers are formed that offer the reactivity of (blocked) isocyanate groups. To demonstrate their reactivity, ring opening of the uretdiones is performed by the addition of a secondary amine to yield the corresponding ureas.     

Gibt es eine Pflicht zum pr?natalen Nichtwissen?

Fall und Kommentare

Gibt es eine Pflicht zum pr?natalen Nichtwissen?     

Das deutsche Arzneimittelpatent – eine moralische Bewertung

Definition of the problem

This paper deals with the question whether the current German intellectual property right on pharmaceuticals is morally justifiable. To answer this question, I will map the relevant discourse and arrange the different positions with respect to their level of abstraction.

Arguments

I underline that both deontological and consequentialist arguments point out the moral deficits within the system.

Conclusion

The consequentialist position emphasizes the unsatisfying relationship between patented pharmaceutical costs and the number of innovations on the market. The deontological approach on the other hand highlights the dangers to citizens’ autonomy.

     

Macklins Substitutionsthese und der Begriff der Menschenwürde in der Bioethik

Definition of the problem

Ruth Macklin’s influential essay “Dignity is a useless concept” has revitalized a broad debate on the question whether the concept of dignity is meaningful in medical ethics. In this paper, I would like to examine Macklin’s so-called redundancy claim: according to this claim, the concept of human dignity can be replaced by other concept(s)—the concept of autonomy most prominent among them. What is the meaning of this claim?

Arguments

Starting from an analysis of Macklin’s arguments, I am going to show under which conditions a redundancy claim indeed leads to the eliminating consequences emphasized by its defenders—we should abandon the concept of dignity.

Conclusion

I am going to identify the advantages of her position both in comparison with more radical eliminative standpoints as well as positions that regard it as valid, but unanalyzable.     

INSIGMA: an intelligent transportation system for urban mobility enhancement

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) aim to improve safety, mobility and environmental performance of road transport. The INSIGMA project provides a fresh look at the possible innovations in this field, by enhancing the functionality and accuracy of ITS in urban environments. This paper describes the architecture, sensors, processing algorithms, output modules and advantages of the developed system. A comparison of existing ITS systems has been provided as background. Special attention has been given to performance and privacy issues, as the system includes social aspects such as location monitoring.     

SOA-enabled compliance management: instrumenting, assessing, and analyzing service-based business processes

Facilitating compliance management, that is, assisting a company’s management in conforming to laws, regulations, standards, contracts, and policies, is a hot but non-trivial task. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) has evolved traditional, manual business practices into modern, service-based IT practices that ease part of the problem: the systematic definition and execution of business processes. This, in turn, facilitates the online monitoring of system behaviors and the enforcement of allowed behaviors—all ingredients that can be used to assist compliance management on the fly during process execution. In this paper, instead of focusing on monitoring and runtime enforcement of rules or constraints, we strive for an alternative approach to compliance management in SOAs that aims at assessing and improving compliance. We propose two ingredients: (i) a model and tool to design compliant service-based processes and to instrument them in order to generate evidence of how they are executed and (ii) a reporting and analysis suite to create awareness of a company’s compliance state and to enable understanding why and where compliance violations have occurred. Together, these ingredients result in an approach that is close to how the real stakeholders—compliance experts and auditors—actually assess the state of compliance in practice and that is less intrusive than enforcing compliance.     

A PC-controlled microwave tomographic scanner for breast imaging

This article presents the design and development of a personal computer based controller for a microwave tomographic system for breast cancer detection. The system uses motorized, dual-polarized antennas and a custom-made GUI interface to control stepper motors, a wideband vector network analyzer (VNA) and to coordinate data acquisition and archival in a local MDSPlus database. Both copolar and cross-polar scattered field components can be measured directly. Experimental results are presented to validate the various functionalities of the scanner.