Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg
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Demystification of Technology: Empowering Consumers to Access and Visualize Voice Interaction Data
Full text linkVoice assistants (VAs) in households are becoming increasingly commonplace, with many users expressing their appreciation of the devices’ convenience. Nonetheless, a notable number of users have raised concerns that the devices are ‘always listening’, and that there is a lack of clear information from providers about the data collected and processed through their microphones. Adopting a socio-informatics research perspective, we used the living lab approach to work with users over three years to investigate their uncertainties regarding the data collected by VAs in everyday usage. Based on our findings from interviews, fieldwork, and participatory design workshops with 35 households, we developed the web tool “CheckMyVA” to support users to access and visualize their own VA data. This chapter presents the observations and findings of the three-year study by outlining the implemented features of the tool and reflecting on how its design can help improve data literacy and enable users to reflect on their long-term interactions with VAs, ultimately serving to ‘demystify’ the technology
A Critical Analysis of Russia's Maternity Capital Program: Demographic Intentions vs. Socioeconomic Realities
Full text linkRussia's Maternity Capital program, launched in 2007, is a key policy with an obvious pro-natalist focus aimed at countering the country's long-term depopulation trend by encouraging families to have more children. Initially, providing financial incentives for second and subsequent births. The program was moderately effective in influencing reproductive decisions within this target group. In 2020, the government revised the Maternity Capital program to include first-born children. This redesign shifted the program's emphasis from promoting higher-order births, which are more likely to raise fertility, to broader poverty reduction among families with children, weakening its demographic effectiveness. This study provides a literature review and demographic analysis to evaluate the program's effectiveness in achieving its stated goals.
The data sources include state legislation, strategic demographic and family policy documents, official government reports, peer-reviewed research, and expert opinions. The findings show that while Maternity Capital investments have supported families in improving housing and educational access, the program's limited flexibility, due to its paternalistic design restricting fund usage, may constrain its ability to meet diverse family needs. The study observed short-term increases in fertility. Still, the program alone has proven insufficient to reverse long-term demographic decline. This paper identifies gaps between the policy's intentions and the socioeconomic realities faced by families, offering recommendations to improve the Maternity Capital program to achieve more favourable demographic outcomes and address social protection needs and providing insights for policymakers and researchers from the standpoint of its impacts on family social protection and child well-being. It argues that financial support must be substantial, well-targeted, particularly toward families considering a second or subsequent child, and paired with complementary pro-natalist measures rather than replaced by them
Fine-tuning property domain weighting factors and the objective function in force-field parameter optimization
Full text linkForce field (FF) based molecular modeling is an often used method to investigate and study structural and dynamic properties of (bio-)chemical substances and systems. When such a system is modeled or refined, the force-field parameters need to be adjusted. This force-field parameter optimization can be a tedious task and is always a trade-off in terms of errors regarding the targeted properties. To better control the balance of various properties’ errors, in this study we introduce weighting factors for the optimization objectives. Different weighting strategies are compared to fine-tune the balance between bulk-phase density and relative conformational energies (RCE), using n-octane as a representative system. Additionally, a non-linear projection of the individual property-specific parts of the optimized loss function is deployed to further improve the balance between them. The results show that the combined error for the reproduction of the properties targeted in this optimization is reduced. Furthermore, the transferability of the force field parameters (FFParams) to chemically similar systems is increased. One interesting outcome is a large variety in the resulting optimized FFParams and corresponding errors, suggesting that the optimization landscape is multi-modal and very dependent on the weighting factor setup. We conclude that adjusting the weighting factors can be a very important feature to lower the overall error in the FF optimization procedure, giving researchers the possibility to fine-tune their FFs
Sizing optimization of hybrid hydrogen energy storage systems: A metamodel-based approach
Full text linkHybrid energy storage systems (HESS), consisting of a battery, hydrogen storage, electrolyzer and fuel cell, have received increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years as they can help increase the use of renewable energy. In this paper, a novel metamodel-based sizing optimization workflow is developed. The workflow is demonstrated on residential building scenarios with real solar power data. Sobol sequences are utilized to vary the component size in simulation, while radial basis functions are employed to approximate simulation results, which are then used for the optimization. The utilization of waste heat from Power-to-Gas and Gas-to-Power processes is evaluated using thermal equations by extending an existing coupled electrochemical and thermodynamic HESS model built in the multiphysical energy system simulator MEgy. The results show a functional workflow that optimizes sizing for a given scenario and outputs the component’s daily energy balance and state of charge
Verbesserung der Performanz und Zuverlässigkeit von 3D-Laufzeitkamerasystemen
No full textIn den letzten Jahren haben 3D-Laufzeitkamerasysteme (ToF-Kameras) Einzug in immer mehr Anwendungen der Industrie und des Alltags gehalten. Sie sind insbesondere dort gefragt, wo herkömmliche 2D-Kameras durch fehlende Tiefeninformationen an ihre Grenzen stoßen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Performanz und Zuverlässigkeit dieser Systeme zu verbessern. Sie konzentriert sich auf den Einsatz von Sensorfusion, um die Limitierungen von ToF-Kameras zu adressieren. Hierzu werden weitere 3D-Messverfahren integriert, di die Genauigkeit und Zuverlässigkeit der Daten verbessern und den Einsatz des Systems für Anwendungen der funktionalen Sicherheit ermöglichen
Soziale Innovationen in Kunst und Kultur als Faktor für kulturelle Teilhabe in ländlichen Räumen. Diskurse und Impulse aus dem Forschungsprojekt SIKUL
No full textWenn Kulturelle Bildung sozial innovativ ist, flößen dann endlich mehr Mittel in die Kulturelle Bildung in ländlichen Räumen? Der Begriff „Soziale Innovation“ ist in unterschiedlichen Politikfeldern, Wirtschaftsund Wissenschaftszweigen mit hohen Erwartungen und Hoffnungen verbunden. Als Containerbegriff verspricht er, diverse soziale Probleme unserer Zeit auf neue Weise anzugehen und zu lösen. Die Bedeutung, die beispielsweise die Bundesregierung Sozialen Innovationen zuschreibt, wird in der „Nationalen Strategie für Soziale Innovationen und Gemeinwohlorientierte Unternehmen“ (2023) sichtbar. Was genau der Begriff aber meint, bleibt häufig diffus. Im Forschungsprojekt SIKUL nutzen wir seine Offenheit und stellen ihn in Bezug zu unterschiedlichen Orten Kultureller Bildung in ländlichen Räumen. Auf Basis unserer empirischen Untersuchung von vier Kulturinitiativen stellen wir eine Definition von Sozialen Innovationen in Kunst und Kultur vor, die zum einen herausstellt, dass diese in hohem Maße auf das Engagement der Zivilgesellschaft angewiesen sind, ihr Gelingen und langfristiges Bestehen zum anderen aber politisch gewährleistete Strukturen wie öffentliche Räume und langfristig angelegte Förderungen braucht. Diese Definition kann anderen Forscher*innen und Praxisakteuren Kultureller Bildung dienen, gemeinsame Entstehungsursachen und -bedingungen sowie damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten (Ehrenamt, Förderlogiken, kulturelle Infrastrukturen etc.) unterschiedlicher Formen Kultureller Bildung sichtbar zu machen und bereits bestehendes Wissen unter einem Term zu bündeln, der es ermöglicht, den vagen politischen Erklärung, Soziale Innovationen fördern zu wollen, mit konkreten Handlungsaufforderungen zu begegnen. Denn Einsparmaßnahmen bedrohen heute im besonderen Maße Kultur und Soziales; Soziale Innovationen hingegen erleben einen Aufwind, den Akteure Kultureller Bildung nutzen könnten
