University of Duisburg-Essen

About: University of Duisburg-Essen is a education organization based out in Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 16072 authors who have published 39972 publications receiving 1109199 citations.

Variability modeling to support customization and deployment of multi-tenant-aware Software as a Service applications

Abstract: More and more companies are offering their software by following the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. The promise of the SaaS model is to exploit economies of scale on the provider side by hosting multiple customers (or tenants) on the same hardware and software infrastructure. However, to attract a significant number of tenants, SaaS applications have to be customizable to fulfill the varying functional and quality requirements of individual tenants. In this paper, we describe how variability modeling techniques from software product line engineering can support SaaS providers in managing the variability of SaaS applications and their requirements. Specifically, we propose using explicit variability models to systematically derive customization and deployment information for individual SaaS tenants. We also demonstrate how variability models could be used to systematically consider information about already deployed SaaS applications for efficiently deploying SaaS applications for new tenants. We illustrate our approach by a running example for a meeting planning application.

Age Correlates with Response to Anti-PD1, Reflecting Age-Related Differences in Intratumoral Effector and Regulatory T-Cell Populations

Abstract: Purpose: We have shown that the aged microenvironment increases melanoma metastasis, and decreases response to targeted therapy, and here we queried response to anti-PD1. Experimental Design: We analyzed the relationship between age, response to anti-PD1, and prior therapy in 538 patients. We used mouse models of melanoma, to analyze the intratumoral immune microenvironment in young versus aged mice and confirmed our findings in human melanoma biopsies. Results: Patients over the age of 60 responded more efficiently to anti-PD-1, and likelihood of response to anti-PD-1 increased with age, even when we controlled for prior MAPKi therapy. Placing genetically identical tumors in aged mice (52 weeks) significantly increased their response to anti-PD1 as compared with the same tumors in young mice (8 weeks). These data suggest that this increased response in aged patients occurs even in the absence of a more complex mutational landscape. Next, we found that young mice had a significantly higher population of regulatory T cells (Tregs), skewing the CD8+:Treg ratio. FOXP3 staining of human melanoma biopsies revealed similar increases in Tregs in young patients. Depletion of Tregs using anti-CD25 increased the response to anti-PD1 in young mice. Conclusions: While there are obvious limitations to our study, including our inability to conduct a meta-analysis due to a lack of available data, and our inability to control for mutational burden, there is a remarkable consistency in these data from over 500 patients across 8 different institutes worldwide. These results stress the importance of considering age as a factor for immunotherapy response. Clin Cancer Res; 24(21); 5347–56. ©2018 AACR. See related commentary by Pawelec, p. 5193

An efficient constructive heuristic for flowtime minimisation in permutation flow shops

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a heuristic for mean/total flowtime minimisation in permutation flow shops. The heuristic exploits the idea of ‘optimising’ partial schedules, already present in the NEH-heuristic (Omega 11 (1983) 91) with respect to makespan minimisation. We compare the proposed heuristic against the ones by Rajendran and Ziegler (Eur. J. Oper. Res. 32 (1994) 2541), and Woo and Yim (Comput. Oper. Res. 25 (1998) 175), which are considered the best constructive heuristics for flowtime minimisation so far. The computational experiments carried out show that our proposal outperforms both heuristics with respect to the quality of the solutions. Moreover, our heuristic can be embedded in an improvement scheme to build a composite heuristic in the manner suggested by Allahverdi and Aldowaisan (Int. J. Prod. Econom. 77 (2002) 71) for the flowtime minimisation problem. The so-constructed composite heuristic also improves the best results obtained by the original composite heuristics by Allahverdi and Aldowaisan.

Absence of intrinsic ferromagnetic interactions of isolated and paired Co dopant atoms in Zn1-xCoxO with high structural perfection.

Abstract: We report element specific structural and magnetic investigations on Zn(1-x)Co(x)O epitaxial films using synchrotron radiation. Co dopants exclusively occupy Zn sites as revealed by x-ray linear dichroism having an unprecedented degree of structural perfection. Comparative magnetic field dependent measurements by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism and conventional magnetometry consistently show purely paramagnetic behavior for isolated Co dopant atoms with a magnetic moment of 4.8 (mu B). However, the total magnetization is reduced by approximately 30%, demonstrating that Co-O-Co pairs are antiferromagnetically coupled. We find no sign of intrinsic ferromagnetic interactions for isolated or paired Co dopant atoms in Co:ZnO films.

Paul F. Lazarsfeld/Bernard Berelson/Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice. How the Voter Makes Up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign, New York/London 1944

Abstract: Die 1944 veroffentlichte, nach der Erhebungsregion oft als Erie County — Studie bezeichnete Untersuchung ist die erste der beiden bahnbrechenden Wahlanalysen der Columbia-Schule der Wahl-, Einstellungs- und Kommunikationsforschung. Zehn Jahre spater folgte die so genannte Elmira-Studie (Berelson u.a. 1954). Beide Projekte wurden durchgefuhrt am Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) der New Yorker Columbia University unter der Leitung von Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901–1976), einem 1935 in die USA ausgewanderten geburtigen Osterreicher. Ausgebildet als Mathematiker und Psychologe, war Lazarsfeld eine der methodologisch, aber auch wissenschaftsorganisatorisch innovativsten Figuren der empirischen Sozialwissenschaften des 20. Jahrhunderts. Am BASR wurde vielfaltigen Fragestellungen nachgegangen. Die Politikforschung machte nur einen kleineren Teil der Aktivitaten aus. Allen seinen Projekten gemeinsam war das Bestreben, mittels innovativer quantitativer und qualitativer Forschungsmethoden allgemeine Gesetzmasigkeiten des sozialen Verhaltens zu entdecken (Barton 2001). Das gilt in besonderem Mase auch fur die Erie County-Studie, deren Ziel es war, am Beispiel des Wahlkampfes zur amerikanischen Prasidentschaftswahl 1940 die Entstehung individueller Wahlentscheidungen nachzuzeichnen. Die Elmira-Studie vertiefte einige der dabei aufgeworfenen Fragestellungen anhand der Prasidentschaftswahl 1948. Bei beiden Untersuchungen handelte es sich um lokale Fallstudien.