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Background
Post-COVID-19 syndrome (PCS) is a lingering disease with ongoing symptoms such as fatigue and cognitive impairment resulting in a high impact on the daily life of patients. Understanding the pathophysiology of PCS is a public health priority, as it still poses a diagnostic and treatment challenge for physicians.
Methods
In this prospective observational cohort study, we analyzed the retinal microcirculation using Retinal Vessel Analysis (RVA) in a cohort of patients with PCS and compared it to an age- and gender-matched healthy cohort (n = 41, matched out of n = 204).
Measurements and main results
PCS patients exhibit persistent endothelial dysfunction (ED), as indicated by significantly lower venular flicker-induced dilation (vFID; 3.42% ± 1.77% vs. 4.64% ± 2.59%; p = 0.02), narrower central retinal artery equivalent (CRAE; 178.1 [167.5–190.2] vs. 189.1 [179.4–197.2], p = 0.01) and lower arteriolar-venular ratio (AVR; (0.84 [0.8–0.9] vs. 0.88 [0.8–0.9], p = 0.007). When combining AVR and vFID, predicted scores reached good ability to discriminate groups (area under the curve: 0.75). Higher PCS severity scores correlated with lower AVR (R = − 0.37 p = 0.017). The association of microvascular changes with PCS severity were amplified in PCS patients exhibiting higher levels of inflammatory parameters.
Conclusion
Our results demonstrate that prolonged endothelial dysfunction is a hallmark of PCS, and impairments of the microcirculation seem to explain ongoing symptoms in patients. As potential therapies for PCS emerge, RVA parameters may become relevant as clinical biomarkers for diagnosis and therapy management.
Preprint: Studies on the enzymatic reduction of levulinic acid using Chiralidon-R and Chiralidon-S
(2023)
The enzymatic reduction of levulinic acid by the chiral catalysts Chiralidon-R and Chiralidon-S which are commercially available superabsorbed alcohol dehydrogenases is described. The Chiralidon®-R/S reduces the levulinic acid to the (R,S)-4-hydroxy valeric acid and the (R)- or (S)- gamma-valerolactone.
In recent years, the development of large pretrained language models, such as BERT and GPT, significantly improved information extraction systems on various tasks, including relation classification. State-of-the-art systems are highly accurate on scientific benchmarks. A lack of explainability is currently a complicating factor in many real-world applications. Comprehensible systems are necessary to prevent biased, counterintuitive, or harmful decisions.
We introduce semantic extents, a concept to analyze decision patterns for the relation classification task. Semantic extents are the most influential parts of texts concerning classification decisions. Our definition allows similar procedures to determine semantic extents for humans and models. We provide an annotation tool and a software framework to determine semantic extents for humans and models conveniently and reproducibly. Comparing both reveals that models tend to learn shortcut patterns from data. These patterns are hard to detect with current interpretability methods, such as input reductions. Our approach can help detect and eliminate spurious decision patterns during model development. Semantic extents can increase the reliability and security of natural language processing systems. Semantic extents are an essential step in enabling applications in critical areas like healthcare or finance. Moreover, our work opens new research directions for developing methods to explain deep learning models.
Extracting workflow nets from textual descriptions can be used to simplify guidelines or formalize textual descriptions of formal processes like business processes and algorithms. The task of manually extracting processes, however, requires domain expertise and effort. While automatic process model extraction is desirable, annotating texts with formalized process models is expensive. Therefore, there are only a few machine-learning-based extraction approaches. Rule-based approaches, in turn, require domain specificity to work well and can rarely distinguish relevant and irrelevant information in textual descriptions. In this paper, we present GUIDO, a hybrid approach to the process model extraction task that first, classifies sentences regarding their relevance to the process model, using a BERT-based sentence classifier, and second, extracts a process model from the sentences classified as relevant, using dependency parsing. The presented approach achieves significantly better resul ts than a pure rule-based approach. GUIDO achieves an average behavioral similarity score of 0.93. Still, in comparison to purely machine-learning-based approaches, the annotation costs stay low.
The work in modern open-pit and underground mines requires the transportation of large amounts of resources between fixed points. The navigation to these fixed points is a repetitive task that can be automated. The challenge in automating the navigation of vehicles commonly used in mines is the systemic properties of such vehicles. Many mining vehicles, such as the one we have used in the research for this paper, use steering systems with an articulated joint bending the vehicle’s drive axis to change its course and a hydraulic drive system to actuate axial drive components or the movements of tippers if available. To address the difficulties of controlling such a vehicle, we present a model-predictive approach for controlling the vehicle. While the control optimisation based on a parallel error minimisation of the predicted state has already been established in the past, we provide insight into the design and implementation of an MPC for an articulated mining vehicle and show the results of real-world experiments in an open-pit mine environment.
Supervised machine learning and deep learning require a large amount of labeled data, which data scientists obtain in a manual, and time-consuming annotation process. To mitigate this challenge, Active Learning (AL) proposes promising data points to annotators they annotate next instead of a subsequent or random sample. This method is supposed to save annotation effort while maintaining model performance.
However, practitioners face many AL strategies for different tasks and need an empirical basis to choose between them. Surveys categorize AL strategies into taxonomies without performance indications. Presentations of novel AL strategies compare the performance to a small subset of strategies. Our contribution addresses the empirical basis by introducing a reproducible active learning evaluation (ALE) framework for the comparative evaluation of AL strategies in NLP.
The framework allows the implementation of AL strategies with low effort and a fair data-driven comparison through defining and tracking experiment parameters (e.g., initial dataset size, number of data points per query step, and the budget). ALE helps practitioners to make more informed decisions, and researchers can focus on developing new, effective AL strategies and deriving best practices for specific use cases. With best practices, practitioners can lower their annotation costs. We present a case study to illustrate how to use the framework.
Messenger apps like WhatsApp and Telegram are frequently used for everyday communication, but they can also be utilized as a platform for illegal activity. Telegram allows public groups with up to 200.000 participants. Criminals use these public groups for trading illegal commodities and services, which becomes a concern for law enforcement agencies, who manually monitor suspicious activity in these chat rooms. This research demonstrates how natural language processing (NLP) can assist in analyzing these chat rooms, providing an explorative overview of the domain and facilitating purposeful analyses of user behavior. We provide a publicly available corpus of annotated text messages with entities and relations from four self-proclaimed black market chat rooms. Our pipeline approach aggregates the extracted product attributes from user messages to profiles and uses these with their sold products as features for clustering. The extracted structured information is the foundation for further data exploration, such as identifying the top vendors or fine-granular price analyses. Our evaluation shows that pretrained word vectors perform better for unsupervised clustering than state-of-the-art transformer models, while the latter is still superior for sequence labeling.
To fulfil the CO2 emission reduction targets of the European Union (EU), heavy-duty (HD) trucks need to operate 15% more efficiently by 2025 and 30% by 2030. Their electrification is necessary as conventional HD trucks are already optimized for the long-haul application. The resulting hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) truck gains most of the fuel saving potential by the recuperation of potential energy and its consecutive utilization. The key to utilizing the full potential of HEV-HD trucks is to maximize the amount of recuperated energy and ensure its intelligent usage while keeping the operating point of the internal combustion engine as efficient as possible. To achieve this goal, an intelligent energy management strategy (EMS) based on ECMS is developed for a parallel HEV-HD truck which uses predictive discharge of the battery and adaptive operating strategy regarding the height profile and the vehicle mass. The presented EMS can reproduce the global optimal operating strategy over long phases and lead to a fuel saving potential of up to 2% compared with a heuristic strategy. Furthermore, the fuel saving potential is correlated with the investigated boundary conditions to deepen the understanding of the impact of intelligent EMS for HEV-HD trucks.
Using scenarios is vital in identifying and specifying measures for successfully transforming the energy system. Such transformations can be particularly challenging and require the support of a broader set of stakeholders. Otherwise, there will be opposition in the form of reluctance to adopt the necessary technologies. Usually, processes for considering stakeholders' perspectives are very time-consuming and costly. In particular, there are uncertainties about how to deal with modifications in the scenarios. In principle, new consulting processes will be required. In our study, we show how multi-criteria decision analysis can be used to analyze stakeholders' attitudes toward transition paths. Since stakeholders differ regarding their preferences and time horizons, we employ a multi-criteria decision analysis approach to identify which stakeholders will support or oppose a transition path. We provide a flexible template for analyzing stakeholder preferences toward transition paths. This flexibility comes from the fact that our multi-criteria decision aid-based approach does not involve intensive empirical work with stakeholders. Instead, it involves subjecting assumptions to robustness analysis, which can help identify options to influence stakeholders' attitudes toward transitions.
This study evaluates neuromechanical control and muscle-tendon interaction during energy storage and dissipation tasks in hypergravity. During parabolic flights, while 17 subjects performed drop jumps (DJs) and drop landings (DLs), electromyography (EMG) of the lower limb muscles was combined with in vivo fascicle dynamics of the gastrocnemius medialis, two-dimensional (2D) kinematics, and kinetics to measure and analyze changes in energy management. Comparisons were made between movement modalities executed in hypergravity (1.8 G) and gravity on ground (1 G). In 1.8 G, ankle dorsiflexion, knee joint flexion, and vertical center of mass (COM) displacement are lower in DJs than in DLs; within each movement modality, joint flexion amplitudes and COM displacement demonstrate higher values in 1.8 G than in 1 G. Concomitantly, negative peak ankle joint power, vertical ground reaction forces, and leg stiffness are similar between both movement modalities (1.8 G). In DJs, EMG activity in 1.8 G is lower during the COM deceleration phase than in 1 G, thus impairing quasi-isometric fascicle behavior. In DLs, EMG activity before and during the COM deceleration phase is higher, and fascicles are stretched less in 1.8 G than in 1 G. Compared with the situation in 1 G, highly task-specific neuromuscular activity is diminished in 1.8 G, resulting in fascicle lengthening in both movement modalities. Specifically, in DJs, a high magnitude of neuromuscular activity is impaired, resulting in altered energy storage. In contrast, in DLs, linear stiffening of the system due to higher neuromuscular activity combined with lower fascicle stretch enhances the buffering function of the tendon, and thus the capacity to safely dissipate energy.
There is a growing demand for more flexibility in manufacturing to counter the volatility and unpredictability of the markets and provide more individualization for customers. However, the design and implementation of flexibility within manufacturing systems are costly and only economically viable if applicable to actual demand fluctuations. To this end, companies are considering additive manufacturing (AM) to make production more flexible. This paper develops a conceptual model for the impact quantification of AM on volume and mix flexibility within production systems in the early stages of the factory-planning process. Together with the model, an application guideline is presented to help planners with the flexibility quantification and the factory design process. Following the development of the model and guideline, a case study is presented to indicate the potential impact additive technologies can have on manufacturing flexibility Within the case study, various scenarios with different production system configurations and production programs are analyzed, and the impact of the additive technologies on volume and mix flexibility is calculated. This work will allow factory planners to determine the potential impacts of AM on manufacturing flexibility in an early planning stage and design their production systems accordingly.
The popularity of social media and particularly Instagram grows steadily. People use the different platforms to share pictures as well as videos and to communicate with friends. The potential of social media platforms is also being used for marketing purposes and for selling products. While for Facebook and other online social media platforms the purchase decision factors are investigated several times, Instagram stores remain mainly unattended so far. The present research work closes this gap and sheds light into decisive factors for purchasing products offered in Instagram stores. A theoretical research model, which contains selected constructs that are assumed to have a significant influence on Instagram user´s purchase intention, is developed. The hypotheses are evaluated by applying structural equation modelling on survey data containing 127 relevant participants. The results of the study reveal that ‘trust’, ‘personal recommendation’, and ‘usability’ significantly influences user’s buying intention in Instagram stores.
The complex questions of today for a world of tomorrow are characterized by their global impact. Solutions must therefore not only be sustainable in the sense of the three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social) but must also function globally. This goes hand in hand with the need for intercultural acceptance of developed services and products. To achieve this, engineers, as the problem solvers of the future, must be able to work in intercultural teams on appropriate solutions, and be sensitive to intercultural perspectives. To equip the engineers of the future with the so-called future skills, teaching concepts are needed in which students can acquire these methods and competencies in application-oriented formats. The presented course "Applying Design Thinking - Sustainability, Innovation and Interculturality" was developed to teach future skills from the competency areas Digital Key Competencies, Classical Competencies and Transformative Competencies. The CDIO Standard 3.0, in particular the standards 5, 6, 7 and 8, was used as a guideline. The course aims to prepare engineering students from different disciplines and cultures for their future work in an international environment by combining a digital teaching format with an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and intercultural setting for solving sustainability challenges. The innovative moment lies in the digital application of design thinking and the inclusion of intercultural as well as trans- and interdisciplinary perspectives in innovation development processes. In this paper, the concept of the course will be presented in detail and the particularities of a digital implementation of design thinking will be addressed. Subsequently, the potentials and challenges will be reflected and practical advice for integrating design thinking in engineering education will be given.
Like all preceding transformations of the manufacturing industry, the large-scale usage of production data will reshape the role of humans within the sociotechnical production ecosystem. To ensure that this transformation creates work systems in which employees are empowered, productive, healthy, and motivated, the transformation must be guided by principles of and research on human-centered work design. Specifically, measures must be taken at all levels of work design, ranging from (1) the work tasks to (2) the working conditions to (3) the organizational level and (4) the supra-organizational level. We present selected research across all four levels that showcase the opportunities and requirements that surface when striving for human-centered work design for the Internet of Production (IoP). (1) On the work task level, we illustrate the user-centered design of human-robot collaboration (HRC) and process planning in the composite industry as well as user-centered design factors for cognitive assistance systems. (2) On the working conditions level, we present a newly developed framework for the classification of HRC workplaces. (3) Moving to the organizational level, we show how corporate data can be used to facilitate best practice sharing in production networks, and we discuss the implications of the IoP for new leadership models. Finally, (4) on the supra-organizational level, we examine overarching ethical dimensions, investigating, e.g., how the new work contexts affect our understanding of responsibility and normative values such as autonomy and privacy. Overall, these interdisciplinary research perspectives highlight the importance and necessary scope of considering the human factor in the IoP.
Herein, fibroin, polylactide (PLA), and carbon are investigated for their suitability as biocompatible and biodegradable materials for amperometric biosensors. For this purpose, screen-printed carbon electrodes on the biodegradable substrates fibroin and PLA are modified with a glucose oxidase membrane and then encapsulated with the biocompatible material Ecoflex. The influence of different curing parameters of the carbon electrodes on the resulting biosensor characteristics is studied. The morphology of the electrodes is investigated by scanning electron microscopy, and the biosensor performance is examined by amperometric measurements of glucose (0.5–10 mM) in phosphate buffer solution, pH 7.4, at an applied potential of 1.2 V versus a Ag/AgCl reference electrode. Instead of Ecoflex, fibroin, PLA, and wound adhesive are tested as alternative encapsulation compounds: a series of swelling tests with different fibroin compositions, PLA, and Ecoflex has been performed before characterizing the most promising candidates by chronoamperometry. Therefore, the carbon electrodes are completely covered with the particular encapsulation material. Chronoamperometric measurements with H2O2 concentrations between 0.5 and 10 mM enable studying the leakage current behavior.
It has been shown that muscle fascicle curvature increases with increasing contraction level and decreasing muscle–tendon complex length. The analyses were done with limited examination windows concerning contraction level, muscle–tendon complex length, and/or intramuscular position of ultrasound imaging. With this study we aimed to investigate the correlation between fascicle arching and contraction, muscle–tendon complex length and their associated architectural parameters in gastrocnemius muscles to develop hypotheses concerning the fundamental mechanism of fascicle curving. Twelve participants were tested in five different positions (90°/105°*, 90°/90°*, 135°/90°*, 170°/90°*, and 170°/75°*; *knee/ankle angle). They performed isometric contractions at four different contraction levels (5%, 25%, 50%, and 75% of maximum voluntary contraction) in each position. Panoramic ultrasound images of gastrocnemius muscles were collected at rest and during constant contraction. Aponeuroses and fascicles were tracked in all ultrasound images and the parameters fascicle curvature, muscle–tendon complex strain, contraction level, pennation angle, fascicle length, fascicle strain, intramuscular position, sex and age group were analyzed by linear mixed effect models. Mean fascicle curvature of the medial gastrocnemius increased with contraction level (+5 m−1 from 0% to 100%; p = 0.006). Muscle–tendon complex length had no significant impact on mean fascicle curvature. Mean pennation angle (2.2 m−1 per 10°; p < 0.001), inverse mean fascicle length (20 m−1 per cm−1; p = 0.003), and mean fascicle strain (−0.07 m−1 per +10%; p = 0.004) correlated with mean fascicle curvature. Evidence has also been found for intermuscular, intramuscular, and sex-specific intramuscular differences of fascicle curving. Pennation angle and the inverse fascicle length show the highest predictive capacities for fascicle curving. Due to the strong correlations between pennation angle and fascicle curvature and the intramuscular pattern of curving we suggest for future studies to examine correlations between fascicle curvature and intramuscular fluid pressure.
Germany is a frontrunner in setting frameworks for the transition to a low-carbon system. The mobility sector plays a significant role in this shift, affecting different people and groups on multiple levels. Without acceptance from these stakeholders, emission targets are out of reach. This research analyzes how the heterogeneous preferences of various stakeholders align with the transformation of the mobility sector, looking at the extent to which the German transformation paths are supported and where stakeholders are located.
Under the research objective of comparing stakeholders' preferences to identify which car segments require additional support for a successful climate transition, a status quo of stakeholders and car performance criteria is the foundation for the analysis. Stakeholders' hidden preferences hinder the derivation of criteria weightings from stakeholders; therefore, a ranking from observed preferences is used. This study's inverse multi-criteria decision analysis means that weightings can be predicted and used together with a recalibrated performance matrix to explore future preferences toward car segments.
Results show that stakeholders prefer medium-sized cars, with the trend pointing towards the increased potential for alternative propulsion technologies and electrified vehicles. These insights can guide the improved targeting of policy supporting the energy and mobility transformation. Additionally, the method proposed in this work can fully handle subjective approaches while incorporating a priori information. A software implementation of the proposed method completes this work and is made publicly available.
The aim of the present study was the characterisation of three true subtilisins and one phylogenetically intermediate subtilisin from halotolerant and halophilic microorganisms. Considering the currently growing enzyme market for efficient and novel biocatalysts, data mining is a promising source for novel, as yet uncharacterised enzymes, especially from halophilic or halotolerant Bacillaceae, which offer great potential to meet industrial needs. Both halophilic bacteria Pontibacillus marinus DSM 16465ᵀ and Alkalibacillus haloalkaliphilus DSM 5271ᵀ and both halotolerant bacteria Metabacillus indicus DSM 16189 and Litchfieldia alkalitelluris DSM 16976ᵀ served as a source for the four new subtilisins SPPM, SPAH, SPMI and SPLA. The protease genes were cloned and expressed in Bacillus subtilis DB104. Purification to apparent homogeneity was achieved by ethanol precipitation, desalting and ion-exchange chromatography. Enzyme activity could be observed between pH 5.0–12.0 with an optimum for SPPM, SPMI and SPLA around pH 9.0 and for SPAH at pH 10.0. The optimal temperature for SPMI and SPLA was 70 °C and for SPPM and SPAH 55 °C and 50 °C, respectively. All proteases showed high stability towards 5% (w/v) SDS and were active even at NaCl concentrations of 5 M. The four proteases demonstrate potential for future biotechnological applications.