Open Access

Abstract: Thermal response curves that depict the probability of occurrence along a thermal gradient are used to derive various species’ thermal properties and abilities to cope with warming. However, different thermal responses can be expected for different portions of a species range. We focus on differences in thermal response curves (TRCs) and thermal niche requirements for four freshwater fishes (Coregonus sardinella, Pungitius pungitius, Rutilus rutilus, Salvelinus alpinus) native to Europe at (1) the global and (2) European continental scale. European ranges captured only a portion of the global thermal range with major differences in the minimum (Tmin), maximum (Tmax) and average temperature (Tav) of the respective distributions. Further investigations of the model-derived preferred temperature (Tpref), warming tolerance (WT = Tmax − Tpref), safety margin (SM = Tpref − Tav) and the future climatic impact showed substantially differing results. All considered thermal properties either were under- or overestimated at the European level. Our results highlight that, although continental analyses have an impressive spatial extent, they might deliver misleading estimates of species thermal niches and future climate change impacts, if they do not cover the full species ranges. Studies and management actions should therefore favor whole global range distribution data for analyzing species responses to environmental gradients.

Background: Large health organizations often struggle to build complex health information technology (HIT) solutions and are faced with ever-growing pressure to continuously innovate their information systems. Limited research has been conducted that explores the relationship between organizations’ innovative capabilities and HIT quality in the sense of achieving high-quality support for patient care processes. Objective: The aim of this study is to explain how core constructs of organizational innovation capabilities are linked to HIT quality based on a conceptual sociotechnical model on innovation and quality of HIT, called the IQHIT model, to help determine how better information provision in health organizations can be achieved. Methods: We designed a survey to assess various domains of HIT quality, innovation capabilities of health organizations, and context variables and administered it to hospital chief information officers across Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Data from 232 hospitals were used to empirically fit the model using partial least squares structural equation modeling to reveal associations and mediating and moderating effects. Results: The resulting empirical IQHIT model reveals several associations between the analyzed constructs, which can be summarized in 2 main insights. First, it illustrates the linkage between the constructs measuring HIT quality by showing that the professionalism of information management explains the degree of HIT workflow support (R²=0.56), which in turn explains the perceived HIT quality (R²=0.53). Second, the model shows that HIT quality was positively influenced by innovation capabilities related to the top management team, the information technology department, and the organization at large. The assessment of the model’s statistical quality criteria indicated valid model specifications, including sufficient convergent and discriminant validity for measuring the latent constructs that underlie the measures of HIT quality and innovation capabilities. Conclusions: The proposed sociotechnical IQHIT model points to the key role of professional information management for HIT workflow support in patient care and perceived HIT quality from the viewpoint of hospital chief information officers. Furthermore, it highlights that organizational innovation capabilities, particularly with respect to the top management team, facilitate HIT quality and suggests that health organizations establish this link by applying professional information management practices. The model may serve to stimulate further scientific work in the field of HIT adoption and diffusion and to provide practical guidance to managers, policy makers, and educators on how to achieve better patient care using HIT.

Today, system engineering companies face the challenge to align their processes optimally to the project goals to fulfill the project requirements. Process optimization is done on development process models as planning abstraction. This is currently, with the existing process models and process modeling languages, not possible because the languages are not suitable. This work presents a formal, yet flexible process modeling language that can be used to capture development processes on arbitrary abstraction levels. This modeling language is complemented by analysis and synthesis methods and tools to optimize process models appropriately and to bind process and process model tight together. Unternehmen der Systementwicklung stehen heutzutage vor der Aufgabe ihre Prozesse optimal auf die jeweiligen Projektziele auszurichten, um den Projektanforderungen gerecht zu werden. Die Optimierung der Prozesse geschieht dabei auf den Planungsabstraktionen der Entwicklungsprozesse, der Entwicklungsprozessmodellebene. In dieser Arbeit wird eine formale und gleichzeitig flexible Prozessmodellierungssprache vorgestellt, die in der Lage ist, Entwicklungsprozesse in beliebigen Abstraktionen wider zu spiegeln. Zudem wurden entsprechende Analyse- und Synthesemethoden implementiert, um die Optimierung der Prozessmodelle zu unterstützen und Prozesse und Prozessmodelle eng aneinander zu binden.

Social networking technologies such as social media, crowd concepts, or gamification represent key resources for the integration of customers, value network partners, and the community into sustainable business models. However, there is a lack of understanding of how sustainable enterprises apply such technologies. To close this gap, we propose a taxonomy of design options for social networking technologies in sustainable business models. Our taxonomy comprises eight dimensions that deal with relevant questions of the design of social networking technologies. When creating our taxonomy, we built on existing literature and use cases and involved experienced practitioners in the field of sustainable business models for the validation of our taxonomy. In this way, our study contributes to knowledge on the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models and how such technologies influence the boundaries of sustainable business models. Likewise, we provide practical insights into the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models.

Various overoxidized poly(1H-pyrrole) (PPy), poly(N-methylpyrrole) (PMePy) or poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) membranes incorporated into an acrylate-based solid polymer electrolyte matrix (SPE) were directly electrosynthesized by a two-step in situ procedure. The aim was to extend and improve fundamental properties of pure SPE materials. The polymer matrix is based on the cross-linking of glycerol propoxylate (1PO/OH) triacrylate (GPTA) with poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) and lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) as a conducting salt. A self-standing and flexible polymer electrolyte film is formed during the UV-induced photopolymerization of the acrylate precursors, followed by an electrochemical polymerization of the conducting polymers to form a 3D-IPN. The electrical conductivity of the conducting polymer is destroyed by electrochemical overoxidation in order to convert the conducting polymer into an ion-exchange membrane by introduction of electron-rich groups onto polymer units. The resulting polymer films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, thermal analysis and infrared spectroscopy. The results of this study show that the combination of a polyacrylate-matrix with ion selective properties of overoxidized CPs leads to new 3D materials with higher ionic conductivity than SPEs and separator or selective ion-exchange membrane properties with good stability by facile fabrication.