University of Applied Sciences Emden Leer
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A behavioural law and economics perspective on EU restructuring and insolvency law
No full textThe article discusses the relevance of behavioural insights in policy making by the European legislator when drafting the European Union Directive on restructuring and insolvency. The Directive imposes an obligation on the Member States to arrange for preventive restructuring frameworks, which will incentivize debtors in sight of distress but with a viable business model to renegotiate with creditors at an early stage. Early negotiations for restructuring would preserve these viable businesses instead of liquidating them through insolvency, thereby benefitting the Member States’ national economies as well as the European internal market
An Overview of the International Literature on Health-Related Quality of Life, Mental Health and Psychosocial Issues in People with Cancer
No full textBackground:
Cancer is one of the most important leading causes of death worldwide. Early detection, screening and diagnosis have been demonstrated to significantly improve patients’ survival rates and increase awareness of the benefit of prompt therapies and healthy lifestyles. In this context, Health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and several psychosocial difficulties are of relevance as prognostic factors for the trajectory of the diseases of people living with cancer.
Methods:
This Special Issue aims to present a set of systematic reviews and research studies focusing on several psychosocial aspects in people suffering from hematologic and solid cancer.
Results:
Three systematic reviews regard HRQoL, the quality of patient-physician communication, depression and other stress-related difficulties, respectively. One review pointed out the difficulties in diagnosing depression in the elderly with solid cancer; another one regards the risk of cancer in severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and severe depressive disorders. One additional review regards HRQoL in people with cancer in the present era of COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, some research studies pointed out the usefulness of a validated instrument to assess satisfaction with care in the oncology field, as well as of the self-reinforcing feedback loop to improve fatigue, insomnia and depression in people with cancer. Other two research studies evaluate, respectively, the attributable burden in worsening HRQoL in people suffering both from cancer and depression and the Type D personality as a risk factor for stress-related difficulties in women with breast cancer.
Conclusion:
This Special Issue is a contribution to enhance future research mainly about such interventions useful to assess and improve HRQoL and overall well-being in people with cancer
Establishing a Mental Health Surveillance in Germany: Development of a framework concept and indicator set
No full textIn the course of the recognition of mental health as an essential component of population health, the Robert Koch Institute has begun developing a Mental Health Surveillance (MHS) system for Germany. MHS aims to continuously report data for relevant mental health indicators, thus creating a basis for evidence-based planning and evaluation of public health measures. In order to develop a set of indicators for the adult population, potential indicators were identified through a systematic literature review and selected in a consensus process by international and national experts and stakeholders. The final set comprises 60 indicators which, together, represent a multidimensional public health framework for mental health across four fields of action. For the fifth field of action ‘Mental health promotion and prevention’ indicators still need to be developed. The methodology piloted proved to be practicable. Strengths and limitations will be discussed regarding the search and definition of indicators, the scope of the indicator set as well as the participatory decision-making process. Next steps in setting up the MHS will be the operationalisation of the single indicators and their extension to also cover children and adolescents. Given assured data availability, the MHS will contribute to broadening our knowledge on population mental health, supporting a targeted promotion of mental health and reducing the disease burden in persons with mental disorders
Protocol for Comparing Voice Assistant Risks and Potential with Technology-Based Users: A Study from Germany and Spain
No full textA Fuzzy Inference Model for Social-Sustainability Production Planning
No full textProduction planning is a scheduling process to acquire, utilize, and allocate production resources to specific production activities in the most efficient way, meeting customer expectations. Due to, e.g., climate crisis, customer expectations are changing shift to be more sustainably produced products. Therefore, decision-makers have to adjust economic production planning goals according to social and environmental aspects. However, driven by financial market expectations, most enterprises still consider the economic dimension more important than the other two. Especially the social dimension has been neglect in previous approaches for sustainable production planning. The paper presents a concept of a fuzzy inference model (FIM) to assess the social-sustainability of production programs using expert knowledge. The concept shows the formulation of the FIM using common methods and fuzzy operators from the fuzzy set theory. The FIM determines the sustainability potential to improve the production program. The concept was applied in a case study. For the case study, the FIM has been implemented in a simulation model of a job shop learning factory
MechanismsDriving Microbial Community Composition in Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Waste-Activated Sewage Sludge
No full textAnaerobic co-digestion (Co-AD) is used to increase the effectiveness of anaerobic digestion (AD) using local “wastes”, adding economic and environmental benefits. Since system stability is of existential importance for the operation of wastewater treatment plants, thorough testing of potential co-substrates and their effects on the respective community and system performance is crucial for understanding and utilizing Co-AD to its best capacity. Food waste (FW) and canola lecithin (CL) were tested in mesophilic, lab-scale, semi-continuous reactors over a duration of 120 days with stepwise increased substrate addition. Key performance indicators (biogas, total/volatile solids, fatty acids) were monitored and combined with 16S-rRNA amplicon sequencing to assess the impact of co-substrate addition on reactor performance and microbial community composition (MCC). Additionally, the latter was then compared with natural shifts occurring in the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP, source) at the same time. An almost linear increase in biogas production with both co-substrates at an approximate 1:1 ratio with the organic loading rate (OLR) was observed. The MCCs in both experiments were mostly stable, but also prone to drift over time. The FW experiment MCC more closely resembled the original WWTP community and the observed shifts indicated high levels of functional redundancy. Exclusive to the CL co-substrate, a clear selection for a few operational taxonomic units (OTUs) was observed. There was little evidence for a persistent invasion and establishment of microorganisms from typical primary substrates into the stable resident community of the reactors, which is in line with earlier findings that suggested that the inoculum and history mostly define the MCC. However, external factors may still tip the scales in favor of a few r-strategists (e.g., Prolixibacter) in an environment that otherwise favors K-strategists, which may in fact also be recruited from the primary substrate (Trichococcus). In our study, specialization and diversity loss were also observed in response to the addition of the highly specialized CL, which in turn, may have adverse effects on the system’s stability and reduced resilience and recovery
Decentralized ICN-based dataflow system implementation
No full textThis demo implements a distributed, data-oriented stream processing system. This system implements stream processing using Named Data Networking (NDN) -based communications. It exploits NDN-networking features to promote stream processing in an efficient, decentralized system
Towards a Standardized Questionnaire for Measuring Agility at Team Level
No full textContext: Twenty years after the publication of the agile manifesto, agility is becoming more and more popular in different contexts. Agile values are changing the way people work together and influence people’s mindset as well as the culture of organizations. Many organizations have understood that continuous improvement is based on measurement.
Objective: The objective of this paper is to present how agility can be measured at the team level. For this reason, we will introduce our questionnaire for measuring agility, which is based on the agile values of the manifesto.
Method: We developed a questionnaire comprising 36 items that measure the current state of a team’s agility in six dimensions (communicative, change-affine, iterative, self-organized, product-driven and improvement-oriented). This questionnaire has been evaluated with respect to several expert reviews and in a case study.
Results: The questionnaire provides a method for measuring the current state of agility, which takes the individual context of the team into account. Furthermore, our research shows, that this technique enables the user to uncover dysfunctionalities in a team.
Conclusion: Practitioners and organizations can use our questionnaire to optimize collaboration within their teams in terms of agility. In particular, the value delivery of an organization can be increased by optimizing collaboration at the team level. The development of this questionnaire is a continuous learning process with the aim to develop a standardized questionnaire for measuring agility
Integrating Agile Human-Centered Design with Lean UX and Scrum
No full textThe integration of Human-Centered Design into agile product development can be challenging. In particular, the application of established user research and UX design methods within short feedback cycles frequently leads to discussions. This article provides an overview of the development and current state of research in Agile UX. In particular, we analyse Lean UX and answer the following questions: How can user research be implemented in agile product development and which best practices can be used to achieve it? For this purpose, we conducted a literature review and analysed how user research in agile product development has progressed in recent years. We discuss an approach that leverages identified best practices for Agile UX by introducing a new model for integrating Lean UX with Scrum to address the needs of the users more strongly in agile product development. We conclude that existing best practices and patterns already aim to adapt established user research methods to the agile framework. Lean UX provides a suitable approach to integrate such user research methods for use in agile product development. This approach has the potential to improve the user experience
Parent Emigration, Physical Health and Related Risk and Preventive Factors of Children Left Behind: A Systematic Review of Literature
No full textThe aim of our study was to systematically review the literature on physical health and related consequences of internal and international parental migration on left-behind children (LBC). This review followed PRISMA guidelines. We searched the PubMed, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, PsycINFO, and Cochrane databases and included studies reporting physical health-related outcomes of children affected by parental migration. The quality of the studies was assessed using the Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies. We selected 34 publications from a total of 6061 search results. The study found that LBC suffer from poor physical health as compared with non-LBC. Physical health-related risk factors such as underweight, lower weight, stunted growth, unhealthy food preferences, lower physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, injuries, and incomplete vaccination tend to be more prevalent among LBC in China. Studies focussing on international migration argue that having migrant parents might be preventive for undernutrition. Overall, our study showed that children affected by internal or international migration tend to have similar physical health outcomes. Moreover, we identified a lack of evidence on international parental migration that may have influenced the overall impacts. Further studies addressing international migration would contribute to better understand the impacts of migration for LBC