Applying advisory agents on the semantic web for e-learning (2006)

Ralf Bruns Jürgen Dunkel Sascha Ossowski

In this article, we present the software architecture of a new generation of advisory systems using Intelligent Agent and Semantic Web technologies. Multi-agent systems provide a well-suited paradigm to implement negotiation processes in a consultancy situation. Software agents act as clients and advisors, using their knowledge to assist human users. In the presented architecture, the domain knowledge is modeled semantically by means of XML-based ontology languages such as OWL. Using an inference engine, the agents reason, based on their knowledge to make decisions or proposals. The agent knowledge consists of different types of data: on the one hand, private data, which has to be protected against unauthorized access; and on the other hand, publicly accessible knowledge spread over different Web sites. As in a real consultancy, an agent only reveals sensitive private data, if they are indispensable for finding a solution. In addition, depending on the actual consultancy situation, each agent dynamically expands its knowledge base by accessing OWL knowledge sources from the Internet. Due to the standardization of OWL, knowledge models easily can be shared and accessed via the Internet. The usefulness of our approach is proved by the implementation of an advisory system in the Semantic E-learning Agent (SEA) project, whose objective is to develop virtual student advisers that render support to university students in order to successfully organize and perform their studies.

Establishing service management in SOA (2012)

Carsten Kleiner Jürgen Dunkel

In service-oriented architectures the management of services is a crucial task during all stages of IT operations. Based on a case study performed for a group of finance companies the different aspects of service management are presented. First, the paper discusses how services must be described for management purposes. In particular, a special emphasis is placed on the integration of legacy/non web services. Secondly, the service lifecycle that underlies service management is presented. Especially, the relation to SOA governance and an appropriate tool support by registry repositories is outlined.

Learning thesaurus relations from distributional features (2016)

Rosa Tsegay Aga Christian Wartena Lucas Drumond Lars Schmidt-Thieme

In distributional semantics words are represented by aggregated context features. The similarity of words can be computed by comparing their feature vectors. Thus, we can predict whether two words are synonymous or similar with respect to some other semantic relation. We will show on six different datasets of pairs of similar and non-similar words that a supervised learning algorithm on feature vectors representing pairs of words outperforms cosine similarity between vectors representing single words. We compared different methods to construct a feature vector representing a pair of words. We show that simple methods like pairwise addition or multiplication give better results than a recently proposed method that combines different types of features. The semantic relation we consider is relatedness of terms in thesauri for intellectual document classification. Thus our findings can directly be applied for the maintenance and extension of such thesauri. To the best of our knowledge this relation was not considered before in the field of distributional semantics.

Finanzieller Druck im Studium : eine empirische Untersuchung über Auswirkungen subjektiv empfundener Geldknappheit auf die Studiensituation (2017)

Nestor Burgmann

Auf Basis einer standardisierten schriftlichen Befragung an der Hochschule Hannover wurden Auswirkungen von subjektiv empfundenem finanziellen Druck auf die Studiensituation untersucht. Schwerpunkt waren Auswirkungen auf die gesundheitliche Verfassung von Studierenden und auf verschiedene Aspekte des Studienerfolgs. Die erhobenen Daten wurden in einem zweistufigen Verfahren analysiert. Im ersten Schritt konnten mithilfe eines konfirmatorischen Analyseverfahrens unter Kontrolle verschiedener externer Faktoren signifikante Zusammenhänge des finanziellen Drucks mit der psychischen Gesundheit, der physischen Gesundheit, dem allgemeinen Stressempfinden im Studium, der Studienzufriedenheit und der Häufigkeit ernsthafter Zweifel an einem erfolgreichen Abschluss festgestellt werden. Für nicht signifikant wurden dagegen die Einflüsse auf die Studienabbruchneigung und auf die Studiendauer befunden. Im Rahmen einer nachfolgenden, explorativen Analyse mittels universeller Strukturgleichungsmodellierung wurde ein Modellentwurf ausgearbeitet, der ein hypothetisches Konstrukt der Wirkungsbeziehungen zwischen finanziellem Druck, der gesundheitlichen Situation und dem Studienerfolg darstellt. Im Hinblick auf den Studienerfolg könnte es sein, dass nur die Studienzufriedenheit direkt durch finanziellen Druck negativ beeinflusst wird. Die Abbruchneigung und die Häufigkeit ernsthafter Zweifel über einen erfolgreichen Abschluss könnten durch finanziellen Druck möglicherweise indirekt beeinflusst werden. Ebenso kann vermutet werden, dass die Einschätzung der Studierenden hinsichtlich ihres physischen Gesundheitszustands nur indirekt von finanziellem Druck abhängig ist.

Entwicklung eines generischen XML-Editors für ein interoperables Programmieraufgabenformat (2017)

Paul Reiser

Diese Bachelorarbeit befasst sich mit der Entwicklung eines generischen XML-Editors für das ProFormA-Aufgabenformat. ProFormA ermöglicht einen Aufgabenaustausch zwischen Hochschulen, Lernmanagementsystemen und Gradern. Aufgaben werden von Lehrkräften genutzt und für ihren individuellen Lehrkontext angepasst. Weil das manuelle Editieren von ProFormA-Aufgaben durch XML, Erweiterbarkeit und Komplexität des Formats erschwert wird, muss ein XML-Editor entwickelt werden, der generische Mechanismen implementiert, die das Anzeigen, Editieren, Hinzufügen und Entfernen von ProFormA- und Fremdformatelementen ermöglichen.

Bedarfsanalyse für das Projekt „Eine Webseite für die Forschung“ (2017)

Franziska Christiansen Elena Voit

Im Rahmen der Projektphase des 6. Semesters der Studiengänge Bachelor Informationsmanagement (BIM) und Bachelor medizinisches Informationsmanagement (BMI) wurde eine Webseite für die Forschung erstellt. Um die Notwendigkeit zu ermitteln, sowie den Wünschen und Bedürfnissen der Angestellten an der Hochschule nachkommen zu können, wurde eine Bedarfsanalyse durchgeführt. Der nachfolgende Beitrag zeigt die Ergebnisse in aufbereiteter Form. Nach einer kurzen Einleitung werden die Bereiche statistische und allgemeine Fragen, Fragen zu digitalen Forschungsdaten und Netzwerken, zur Forschungswebseite und zur Pflege der Daten ausgewertet dargestellt.

Hand hygiene practices and microbial investigation of hand contact swab among physiotherapists in an Ebola endemic region: implications for public health (2017)

Sam Ibeneme Victor Maduako Georgian Ibeneme Amarachi Ezuma Theresa Ettu Ngozi Onyemelukwe Dnyanesh Limaye Gerhard Fortwengel

Background: Hand hygiene practices (HHP), as a critical component of infection prevention/control, were investigated among physiotherapists in an Ebola endemic region. Method: A standardized instrument was administered to 44 randomly selected physiotherapists (23 males and 21 females), from three tertiary hospitals in Enugu, Nigeria. Fifteen participants (aged 22–59 years) participated in focus group discussions (FGDs) and comprised 19 participants in a subsequent laboratory study. After treatment, the palms/fingers of physiotherapists were swabbed and cultured, then incubated aerobically overnight at 37°C, and examined for microbial growths. An antibiogram of the bacterial isolates was obtained. Results: The majority (34/77.3%) of physiotherapists were aware of the HHP protocol, yet only 15/44.1% rated self-compliance at 71–100%. FGDs identified forgetfulness/inadequate HHP materials/infrastructure as the major barriers to HHP. Staphylococcus aureus were the most prevalent organisms, prior to (8/53.33%) and after (4/26.67%) HPP, while Pseudomonas spp. were acquired thereafter. E. coli were the most antibiotic resistant microbes but were completely removed after HHP. Ciprofloxacin and streptomycin were the most effective antibiotics. Conclusion: Poor implementation of HPP was observed due to inadequate materials/infrastructure/poor behavioral orientation. Possibly, some HPP materials were contaminated; hence, new microbes were acquired. Since HPP removed the most antibiotic resistant microbes, it might be more effective in infection control than antibiotic medication.

A study to assess the vaccination coverage of university students in Mumbai, India (2017)

Dnyanesh Limaye Vaidehi Limaye Gerhard Fortwengel

Background: Immunization is the most cost-effective intervention for infectious diseases which are the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. There is a scarcity of information on the vaccination status of young adults and the role of socioeconomic conditions in India. Objectives: Present study explored the adult vaccination status and influence of income and education of parents on adult vaccination status in university students from Mumbai, India. Methods: On the basis of the eligibility criterion 149 students were selected for the present study. A total of 8 vaccines namely Tdap/DTP, Varicella, MMR, Influenza, Pneumococcal, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Meningococcal were included in this study for all the respondents. In addition to these vaccines, Human Papilloma Virus vaccine was also included for female respondents. Results: There were total of 149 (75 male and 74 females) respondents with the mean age of 21.5 years. The top 3 immunizations were Td/Tdap (97.3%), MMR (66.4%) and Hepatitis B (55%) among the respondents. Only 4 (5.5%) female respondents have been immunized against the HPV. Conclusions: Td/Tdap (97.3%) and MMR (66.4%) coverage was in line with the recommendations. For all the other vaccines the coverage was low varying from 5.5% to 35.4%. The vaccination coverage was better in respondents with higher educated and higher income parents. We suggest that patient education, planning by government for the implementation of policy for adult vaccination and involvement of physicians are must for better adult vaccination coverage.

Regulatory roadmap for nanotechnology based medicines (2014)

Vaidehi Limaye Gerhard Fortwengel Dnyanesh Limaye

Nanotechnology is emerging as one of the key technologies of the 21st century and is expected to enable developments across a wide range of sectors that can benefit citizens. Nanomedicine is an application of nanotechnology in the areas of healthcare, disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. Nanomedicines pose problem of nanotoxicity related to factors like size, shape, specific surface area, surface morphology, and crystallinity. Currently, nanomedicines are regulated as medicinal products or as medical devices and there is no specific regulatory framework for nanotechnology-based products neither in the EU nor in the USA. This review presents a scheme for classification and regulatory approval process for nanotechnology based medicines.

A study to determine co-relation between disease burden, number of clinical trials done and success rates for Germany and India (2014)

Dnyanesh Limaye Gerhard Fortwengel Vaidehi Limaye

The drugs we use to treat any condition – from an innocuous cough to a life-threatening cancer – are the outcome of painstaking human clinical trials. These trials are the only way to credibly determine the safety and efficacy of drugs. In recent years there has been a clear shift in clinical trial sites from core developed countries like USA, European countries to developing countries like India, China, South American countries. This shift is related to challenges and opportunities like costs of trials, recruitment issues, and regulatory challenges in developed vs. developing countries. Developing countries and developed countries have their unique disease burden patterns based on various parameters like but not limited to age, health care facilities, health insurance, sanitary conditions, environmental issues, education, nutrition and GDP. Previous studies have reported that many of the important global diseases are not much explored in clinical trials and many published clinical trials have very less international health relevance. This study was aimed at finding the correlation between disease burdens, number of clinical trials done and trial success rates. We compared 2005 - 2010 Global Burden of Disease data for Germany, India and number of clinical trials from clinicaltrials.gov database done in the same period. Our findings indicated that there was a good correlation between the disease burden and clinical trials for Germany in 2005 and 2010. For India in 2005 there was a moderate positive correlation, 2010 data showed the improvement in India in terms of match between disease burden and clinical trials. But careful observation of the data shows still a need for more trials on Communicable, maternal, neonatal and nutritional disorders.