Physiolytics at the workplace: Affordances and constraints of wearables use from an employee's perspective

Wearables paired with data analytics and machine learning algorithms that measure physiological (and other) parameters are slowly finding their way into our workplace. Several studies have reported positive effects from using such “physiolytics” devices and purported the notion that it may lead to significant workplace safety improvements or to increased awareness among employees concerning unhealthy work practices and other job‐related health and well‐being issues. At the same time, physiolytics may cause an overdependency on technology and create new constraints on privacy, individuality, and personal freedom. While it is easy to understand why organizations are implementing physiolytics, it remains unclear what employees think about using wearables at their workplace. Using an affordance theory lens, we, therefore, explore the mental models of employees who are faced with the introduction of physiolytics as part of corporate wellness or security programs. We identify five distinct user types each of which characterizes a specific viewpoint on physiolytics at the workplace: the freedom loving, the individualist, the cynical, the tech independent, and the balancer. Our findings allow for better understanding the wider implications and possible user responses to the introduction of wearable technologies in occupational settings and address the need for opening up the “user black box” in IS use research.     

Support for Efficient Programming on the SB-PRAM

The SB-PRAM is a shared-memory parallel computer that has been designed according to the PRAM model from theoretical computer science. The SB-PRAM realizes a concurrent-read, concurrent-write PRAM where each processor can access the global memory in unit time. This article describes the programming environment of the SB-PRAM that enables a programmer to develop efficient and portable programs without dealing with architectural details of the machine. In particular, we discuss compiler and operating system issues and show that the runtime functions of the P4 environment and several parallel data structures can be implemented very efficiently by using special features of the SB-PRAM. In contrast to other parallel machines, the synchronization of processors and the management of concurrent accesses to the global memory only require a few machine instructions independent of the number of processors participating in the operation. This efficient implementation of the runtime system is the basis for good performance of many challenging applications.     

Response surface study of the performance of lean NOx storage catalysts as a function of reaction conditions and catalyst composition

NO_x storage and reduction (NSR) catalysts containing Pt, Ba and Fe were studied as a function of reaction conditions and catalyst composition using response surface methodology combined with high-throughput experimentation. The concentrations of the reactant gases and the reactor temperature were varied to probe their effect on catalyst performance, as quantified by lean NO_x storage and N₂O production. An empirical model relating the catalyst performance to five reaction condition variables and three metal weight loading variables has also been developed. It was found that the temperature and the concentrations of the reducing agents, i.e. carbon monoxide and ethylene, had the strongest effect on the lean NO_x storage. It was also found that the Pt and Ba weight loadings had a much greater effect than Fe weight loadings on the performance of NSR catalysts. This model provides insight about the factors controlling the NO_x conversion by NSR catalysts and also predicts the optimum catalyst composition for given reaction conditions and vice versa. As an additional study, the relationship between sulfur poisoning, nitrous oxide production, and exotherm generation was also explored.     

A case study on consistency management of business and IT process models in banking

Organizations that adopt process modeling often maintain several co-existing models of the same business process. These models target different abstraction levels and stakeholder perspectives. Maintaining consistency among these models has become a major challenge for such organizations. Although several academic works have discussed this challenge, little empirical investigation exists on how people perform process model consistency management in practice. This paper aims to address this lack by presenting an in-depth empirical study of a business-driven engineering process deployed at a large company in the banking sector. We analyzed more than 70 business process models developed by the company, including their change history, with over 1,000 change requests. We also interviewed 9 business and IT practitioners and surveyed 23 such practitioners to understand concrete difficulties in consistency management, the rationales for the specification-to-implementation refinements found in the models, strategies that the practitioners use to detect and fix inconsistencies, and how tools could help with these tasks. Our contribution is a set of eight empirical findings, some of which confirm or contradict previous works on process model consistency management found in the literature. The findings provide empirical evidence of (1) how business process models are created and maintained, including a set of recurrent patterns used to refine business-level process specifications into IT-level models; (2) what types of inconsistencies occur; how they are introduced; and what problems they cause; and (3) what stakeholders expect from tools to support consistency management.     

Flow properties of thermally insulating powders under different atmospheric conditions

We determined the flow properties of powders used as thermal insulative materials at different temperatures, pressures and moisture conditions. The powders used in this study, SiO₂-aerogel, precipitated and fumed silica, have primary particle sizes ranging from a few nanometers to hundred micrometers. Due to the porosity of the particles and/or their large interparticular forces compared to their weight, the powders have very low densities (about 100 kg/m³). Therefore they display very small solid thermal conductivities in the order of 1 to 2 · 10^х W/(m K) and thus are promising as evacuated thermal insulants. In addition these powders are resilent to external loads. A prerequisite for the use of these powders in technical applications is the determination of their flow properties. For this purpose the powder samples were filled into a stainless steel hopper and the flow rate through the bottom opening was measured using a balance. Simultaneously, the resulting angle of repose was determined. The hopper can be heated up to 200^°C to remove adsorbed water and gases from the inner surface of the powder. The measuring device was mounted into a vacuum chamber in order to determine the influence of atmospheric humidity or gas pressure (pressure variation from 30 to 10⁵ Pa).     

Wie sollten Ärzte mit Patientenverfügungen umgehen? Ein Vorschlag aus interdisziplinärer Sicht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Yield Improvement and Advanced Defect Control——Driving Forces for Modeling of Bulk Crystal Growth

Yield improvement and advanced defect control can be identified as the driving forces for modeling of industrial bulk crystal growth. Yield improvement is mainly achieved by upscaling of the whole crystal growth apparatus and increased processing windows with more tolerances for parameter variations. Advanced defect control means on one hand a reduction of the number of deficient crystal defects and on the other hand the formation of beneficial crystal defects with a uniform distribution and well defined concentrations in the whole crystal. This "defect engineering" relates to the whole crystal growth process as well as the following cooling and optional annealing processes, respectively. These topics were illustrated in the paper by examples of modeling and experimental results of bulk growth of silicon (Si), gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (InP) and calcium fluoride (CaF2). These examples also involve the state of the art of modeling of the most important melt growth techniques, crystal pulling (Czochralski methods) and vertical gradient freeze (Bridgman-type methods).     

Adolescents' Exposure to Sexually Explicit Online Material and Recreational Attitudes Toward Sex

Previous research has largely ignored the implications of adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit online material for their sexual attitude formation. To study whether adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit material on the Internet is related to recreational attitudes toward sex, we conducted an online survey among 471 Dutch adolescents aged 13–18. In line with an orientation 1 – stimulus – orientation 2 – response (O₁-S-O₂-R) model, we found a pattern of multiple mediated relationships. Male adolescents (O₁) used sexually explicit online material (S) more than female adolescents, which led to a greater perceived realism of such material (O₂). Perceived realism (O₂), in turn, mediated the relationship between exposure to sexually explicit online material (S) and recreational attitudes toward sex (R). Exposure to sexually explicit online material, then, is related to more recreational attitudes toward sex, but this relationship is influenced by adolescents' gender and mediated by the extent to which they perceive online sexual material as realistic.