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The research focuses on detecting tourist flows in the Province of Styria in Austria based on crowdsourced data. Twitter data were collected in the time range from 2008 until August 2018. Extracted tweets were submitted to an extensive filtering process within non-relational database MongoDB. Hotspot Analysis and Kernel Density Estimation methods were applied, to investigate spatial distribution of tourism relevant tweets under temporal variations. Furthermore, employing the VADER method an integrated semantic analysis provides sentiments of extracted tweets. Spatial analyses showed that detected Hotspots correspond to typical Styrian touristic areas. Apart from mainly successful sentiment analysis, it pointed out also a problematic aspect of working with multilingual data. For evaluation purposes, the official tourism data from the Province of Styria and federal Statistical Office of Austria played a role of ground truth data. An evaluation with Pearson’s correlation coefficient was employed, which proves a statistically significant correlation between Twitter data and reference data. In particular, the paper shows that crowdsourced data on a regional level can serve as accurate indicator for the behaviour and movement of users.

This paper contributes to the expansion of green energy production, which is being pursued in order to mitigate climate change and carbon emissions from energy production. It addresses the delineation of areas that are suitable for the application of photovoltaics in the context of agricultural areas, water bodies, and parking spaces. Three specific photovoltaic types are examined in order to find out which criteria influence their geographic potential and whether spatial multi-criteria decision analysis methods are suitable for identifying suitable areas. The proposed approach consists of four steps: (1) collecting factors through expert interviews and questionnaires; (2) mapping the criteria to the spatial datasets; (3) deriving weighted scores for individual criteria through expert interviews; (4) applying the multi-criteria decision analysis method to compute and aggregate the final scores. We test our methodology at selected sites in the state of Styria, Austria. The test sites represent the topographical characteristics of the state and are about 5% of the size of Styria, approximately 820 km2. The key contributions are a weighted set of criteria that are relevant for the geographic potential of alternative photovoltaic types and the developed methodology to determine this potential.

The hepatitis E virus (HEV) can cause hepatitis E in humans. Recently, the occurrence of HEV strains carrying insertions in their hypervariable genome region has been described in chronically infected patients. The insertions originate from human genes or from the HEV genome itself. Although their distinct functions are largely unknown, an involvement in efficient cell culture replication was shown for some strains. The HEV strain 47832c, originally isolated from a chronically infected transplant patient, carries a bipartite insertion composed of HEV genome duplications. Here, several mutants with deletions and substitutions of the insertion were generated and tested in cell culture. Complete deletion of the insertion abolished virus replication and even a single glycine to arginine substitution led to reduced cell culture growth. A mutant encoding a frameshift of the inserted sequence was not infectious, whereas a mutant carrying synonymous codons in this region replicated similar like the wild type. Substitution of the insertion with the S17 insertion from HEV strain Kernow C1-p6 did not result in viable virus, which might indicate strain- or cell type-specificity of the insertions. Generally, the translated amino acid sequence of the insertion, but not the RNA sequence, seems to be responsible for the observed effect.

Working with contemporary, monolithic desktop Geographical Information Systems can be laborious and confusing, especially for non-experts. An alternative for a more user friendly approach to spatial data edition and spatial analysis may be an “app-based” web application that is offering single tasks for the user—“micro applications”. In this paper, a method for determining such “micro applications” based on user stories is presented and applied to a specific use case—the case is centered around an Austrian Governmental Institution that digitizes and edits infrastructure data. The results of this process are implemented in an app-based web application. To measure the impacts of the app-based approach, we evaluate the user experience of the app-based approach in comparison to a desktop Geographical Information System offering the same functionality. For the measurement of the user experience, we used a focus group. The group had to accomplish tasks with the desktop Geographical Information System and with the app-based web application. To measure their user experience, we employed the tool AttrakDiff. The app-based web application achieves significantly better results in terms of user experience. This result is confirmed in a discussion panel carried out afterwards. Test persons responded that positive aspects of the app-based web application were the easy and intuitive handling and reduced user interface that helps the users to focus on their tasks without any distraction.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) particles are released from infected cells in a quasi-enveloped form, typically via the multivesicular body (MVB) pathway, which is mediated by the viral accessory protein pORF3. However, cell-type specific aspects of this release mechanism remain poorly understood. We analyzed the release and envelopment characteristics of a pORF3-deficient genotype 3c HEV (HEVΔORF3) in comparison to wild-type HEV (HEVwt) in two human cell lines: hepatoma-derived PLC/PRF/5 and lung carcinoma-derived A549/D3 cells. While viral release of HEVΔORF3 was strongly impaired in A549/D3 cells, PLC/PRF/5 cells supported efficient viral release despite the absence of pORF3. In PLC/PRF/5 cells, HEV particles retained quasi-envelopment and utilized an alternative, Golgi-associated egress pathway in the absence of pORF3. In contrast, A549/D3 cells did not support this compensatory release route. Our findings highlight a pronounced cell line-dependent variability in HEV release pathways, emphasizing the importance of cellular context in studies of HEV biology and antiviral strategies targeting virus egress.

Incorporating continuous carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CCFRP) parts within additive manufacturing processes presents a significant advancement in the fabrication of robust lightweight parts, particularly relevant to aerospace, engineering, and various industrial sectors. Nonetheless, prevailing additive manufacturing methodologies for CCFRP parts exhibit notable limitations. Techniques reliant on resin and extrusion entail extensive and costly post-processing procedures to eliminate support structures, constraining design versatility and complicating small-scale production endeavours. In contrast, laser sintering (LS) emerges as a promising avenue for industrial application. It facilitates the efficient and cost-effective manufacturing of resilient parts without needing support structures. However, the current state of research and technological capabilities has yet to yield an LS machine that integrates the benefits of continuous fibre reinforcement with the inherent advantages of the LS process. This paper describes the systematic development process according to VDI 2221 of a new type of LS machine with automated continuous fibre integration while keeping the advantages of the LS process. The resulting physical prototype of the machine is also presented. Furthermore, this study presents an approach to integrate the cost and Product Carbon Footprint of the process in the product design. For this purpose, a machine state model was developed, and the costs and Product Carbon footprint of a part were analysed based on the model. The promising potential for future lightweight products is demonstrated through the production of CCFRP parts.

Full exhaustion in specific energy/energy density of state‐of‐the‐art LiNi x Co y Mn z O 2 (NCM)‐based Li‐ion batteries (LIB) is currently limited for reasons of NCM stability by upper cut‐off voltages (UCV) below 4.3 V. At higher UCV, structural decomposition triggers electrode crosstalk in the course of enhanced transition metal dissolution and leads to severe specific capacity/energy fade; in the worst case to a sudden death phenomenon (roll‐over failure). The additive lithium difluorophosphate (LiDFP) is known to suppress this by scavenging dissolved metals, but at the cost of enhanced toxicity due to the formation of organofluorophosphates (OFPs). Addition of film‐forming electrolyte additives like vinylene carbonate (VC) can intrinsically decrease OFP formation in thermally aged LiDFP‐containing electrolytes, though the benefit of this dual‐additive approach can be questioned at higher UCVs. In this work, VC is shown to decrease the formation of potentially toxic OFPs within the electrolyte during cycling at conventional UCVs but triggers OFP formation at higher UCVs. The electrolyte contains soluble VC‐polymerization products. These products are formed at the cathode during VC oxidation (and are found within the cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI), suggesting an OFP electrode crosstalk of VC decomposition species, as the OFP‐precursor molecules are shown to be formed at the anode.

Interfaces between dentin, enamel and luting agents were characterized using low vacuum Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). After smear layer creation, one of three luting agents (RelyX Unicem 2, Clearfil SA Cement and Panavia F 2.0/ED Primer II) was applied on 60 enamel-dentin specimens and dual-cured or self-cured. Specimens were polished (Experiment 1) and subsequently demineralized and deproteinized (Experiment 2). Adhesive interfaces were analyzed (low vacuum SEM, ×3000). Presence of an interdiffusion zone, tag-like structures (dentin) and marginal gaps (enamel) were assessed. Non-parametrical tests (χ2-test, α = 0.05) were performed. The first null-hypothesis was that the adhesive interface micromorphology between enamel and dentin and self-adhesive resin cements (SARCs) is similar with conventional resin cement used with a self-etch adhesive (CRC+SE). The second null-hypothesis was that the micromorphology is not influenced by curing modes. Interdiffusion zones and tag-like structures (dentin) were observed more frequently for CRC+SE compared to SARCs. For each luting agent, there was a non-significant (p > 0.05) tendency for interdiffusion zone and tag-like structures detectable in more specimens after self-curing compared to dual-curing. Marginal gaps (enamel) were found only for SARCs. The first null-hypothesis was not rejected fully: Tag-like structures and interdiffusion zones in dentin were found for CRC+SE and SARCs. The second null-hypothesis was not rejected.

In manufacturing companies, productivity and efficiency are the main priorities, besides an emphasis on quality issues. The outcome of this research contributes to increasing production quality and efficiency in manufacturing. The article deals with indoor manufacturing environments and the transportation processes of production assets—referred to as smart transportation. The authors modelled the objects present in the indoor manufacturing environment with ontologies including their affordances and spatial suitability. To support flexible production and dynamic transportation processes have to be tailored towards the ‘needs’ of the production asset. Hence, the authors propose an approach utilizing an ad-hoc suitability network to support the “optimal” path computation for transportation processes. The objective is to generate a graph for routing purposes for each individual production asset, with respect to the affordances of the indoor space for each production asset, and measurements of a sensor network. The generation of the graph follows an ad-hoc strategy, in two ways. First, the indoor navigation graph is created exactly when a path needs to be found—when a production asset shall be transported to the next manufacturing step. Secondly, the transportation necessities of each production asset, as well as any disturbances present in the environment, are taken into account at the time of the path calculation. The novelty of this approach is that the development of the navigation graph—including the weights—is done with affordances, which are based on an ontology. To realize the approach, the authors developed a linked data approach based on manufacturing data and on an application ontology, linking the indoor manufacturing environment and a graph-based network. The linked data approach is finally implemented as a spatial graph database containing walkable corridors, production equipment, assets and a sensor network. The results show the optimal path for transportation processes with respect to affordances of the indoor manufacturing environments. An evaluation of the computational complexity shows that the affordance-based ad-hoc graphs are thinner and thus reduce the computational complexity of shortest path calculations. Hence, we conclude that an affordance-based approach can help to decrease computational efforts for calculating “optimal” paths for transportation purposes.