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Abstract: Students’ vocational interests can be described by Holland’s theory of occupational choice. Holland distinguishes six interest dimensions here: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Although these attributes are relatively stable during adolescence, their stability increases dramatically during university studies. Because vocational interests are often a factor in career counseling and the choice of what to study, it is essential to investigate the extent to which they develop during the first years of college. This study examines the NEPS first-year student cohort to investigate the stability of students’ interests and aspirations. The paper analyzes 2,442 male and 3,435 female students who studied within one of six major study clusters and provided data about their vocational interests at Wave 1 (study entry) and Wave 9 (about 4.5 years later close to the end their studies). The study’s results show strong and highly significant correlations for all interest dimensions, as well as a high stability of students’ aspirations. The correlations were strongest for artistic interests and weakest for conventional interests and were distinguishable between most dimensions. Furthermore, the analyses showed notable differences with respect to gender and field of study. Further analyses went beyond a variable-centered towards a person-centered approach showing that students with a stable interest vector also displayed higher profile correlations and a higher person-environment fit. The analysis shows that 28% of the sample are still developing their interests. This indicates notable adaption processes during university time that should be factored into course design, career counseling, and further research.

Various factors may be important while individuals develop vocational aspirations. Although occupations that fit one’s personal interests appear to be attractive, contextual factors may repel groups, such as young girls, to develop towards areas such as STEM. Especially, the sextype of STEM occupations, that is often considered as male, could limit STEM career choice of young girls. This study investigates career profiles of n = 9277 German university freshmen based on interests, prestige, and sextype. Eleven latent profiles were found. Five profiles can be characterized by their prestige levels and two further by their sextype. Certain profiles are significantly associated with study outcomes and study satisfaction, which allows to identify at-risk profiles. Of note, especially female students in STEM subjects with a low proportion of females distributed widely across the 11 profiles. The implications of this study suggest that career choice profiles according to Gottfredson’s framework can help to identify at-risk students.

John L. Holland’s theory of vocational choice is one of the most prominent career theories and is used by both researchers and practitioners around the world. The theory states that people should seek work environments that fit their vocational interests in order to be satisfied and successful. Its application in research and practice requires the determination of coefficients, which quantify its core concepts such as person-environment fit. The recently released R package holland aims at providing a holistic collection of the references, descriptions and calculations of the most important coefficients. The current paper presents the package and examines it in terms of its application for research and practice. For this purpose, the functions of the package are applied and discussed. Furthermore, recommendations are made in the case of multiple coefficients for the same theoretical concept and features that future releases should include are discussed. The R package holland is a promising computational environment providing multiple coefficients for Holland’s most important theoretical concepts.

Grounding on Holland’s RIASEC model of vocational interests and the respective assumptions on person-environment fit (congruence), this paper focuses on how congruence is related to study outcomes, especially students’ persistence, performance, and satisfaction. The paper distinguishes the measure of congruence with respect to social congruence (SOC) (interest fit with the study mates) and aspirational congruence (ASP) (interest fit with the occupation aspired) and also distinguishes the effects of congruence for gender and six different study areas including Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), medicine, economics, education, and languages. The paper analyses 10,226 university freshmen of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and follows them longitudinally with respect to their study outcomes. The results show that students’ persistence was more related to SOC than to ASP, especially for male students. Furthermore, SOC was particularly important for students in STEM areas. Regarding performance, however, ASP was more important. Here, we notably found correlations for STEM subjects with a balanced proportion of female students. Regarding satisfaction, mainly marginal correlations could be found. The results indicate conceptual differences between social and aspirational congruence as well as specific effects for gender and study area. While research might take this into account by specifically developing their models for different study areas, career counseling may reflect on the different significance of the interest-based person-environment fit for different study areas. Initiatives for raising young people’s participation in STEM should therefore specifically focus on students that have high chances to develop interest profiles that are congruent to STEM rather than students who show profiles which already indicate a low congruence.

Person-Environment fit theories claim that students choose their academic path according to their personality. In this regard, teacher candidates are of special interest. On the one hand, they all make the same choice to enroll in a teacher education program. On the other hand, they make different choices with respect to the subjects they are going to teach. If the Person-Environment fit approach also applies to the selection regarding teacher candidates’ subject areas, teacher candidates from different majors might have different personality traits and as a result, different starting conditions for becoming a successful teacher. Such differences need to be taken into account by teacher education in order to create programs that allow teacher candidates from different majors to equally succeed. Therefore, the current study investigates to what extent personality group differences across majors occur within the population of teacher candidates. Using data from a large-scale study, the Big Five personality traits of 1735 female and 565 male teacher candidates were analyzed, with teacher candidates compared to male (n = 1122) and female (n = 1570) students who studied the same major but who did not intend to become teachers. Unlike previous studies, academic majors were not grouped into few broad categories, but eight different majors were distinguished. The results indicate that teacher candidates are more extraverted than their non-teaching counterparts. In addition, personality trait differences between teacher candidates from different majors could be observed. The results are discussed as they relate to the recruitment and training of future teachers.

Sweet and bitter compounds excite different sensory cells and drive opposing behaviors. However, it remains unclear how sweet and bitter tastes are represented by the neural circuits linking sensation to behavior. To investigate this question in Drosophila, we devised trans-Tango(activity), a strategy for calcium imaging of second-order gustatory projection neurons based on trans-Tango, a genetic transsynaptic tracing technique. We found spatial overlap between the projection neuron populations activated by sweet and bitter tastants. The spatial representation of bitter tastants in the projection neurons was consistent, while that of sweet tastants was heterogeneous. Furthermore, we discovered that bitter tastants evoke responses in the gustatory receptor neurons and projection neurons upon both stimulus onset and offset and that bitter offset and sweet onset excite overlapping second-order projections. These findings demonstrate an unexpected complexity in the representation of sweet and bitter tastants by second-order neurons of the gustatory circuit.

RESUMO Reticulose pagetoide é a expressão utilizada para uma das mais raras formas de linfoma descritas em cães. Trata-se de um distúrbio linfoproliferativo cutâneo que emerge de linfócitos T intraepidérmicos. Descreve-se aqui um caso de reticulose pagetoide com apresentação localizada, muito semelhante à doença de Woringer-Kolopp dos humanos, que acometeu um cão, Boxer, fêmea de 10 anos de idade. O paciente foi atendido devido ao aparecimento de um nódulo na região nasolabial, com evolução clínica de cerca de 30 dias. Histologicamente o nódulo era composto por uma proliferação linfoide intraepidérmica e anexal. Os linfócitos neoplásicos, células T confirmadas por meio da imunomarcação positiva para CD3 e negativa para CD79, eram grandes células redondas e monomórficas. Apesar de rara, a reticulose pagetoide é um distúrbio linfoproliferativo de fácil suspeita com base apenas na morfologia celular. Esse neoplasma deverá ser lembrado sempre que um padrão linfoide intraepidérmico estiver presente.

The goal of the following study is to investigate whether first-year students in STEM fields that have a low proportion of females (STEM-L) show vocational interests that fit their vocational aspirations. To place our investigation into a broader context, we compared students in STEM-L with students of STEM subjects with a medium proportion of women (STEM-M) as well as with other subjects with a medium or a high proportion of females. We analyzed their vocational interests, vocational aspirations and their interest congruence. In both the comparison regarding interest profiles and the comparison of vocational aspirations, we focused on the things-orientation and people-orientation, all while taking respective gender differences into account. Following the suggestion from previous studies, in a further step we differentiated between subjects within STEM-L. Using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we analyzed the interest congruence of 5,530 male and 7,406 female students in STEM majors (with a low or medium proportion of women) and non-STEM majors (with a medium or high proportion of women). Students from different subjects showed different magnitudes regarding their things- and people-orientation. STEM-L students had a high things-orientation and a low people-orientation regarding both their interests and aspired occupations. Students of STEM-L and STEM-M showed a lower interest congruence than students from other subjects. With the exception of education, gender differences regarding the people- and things-orientation also existed within most of the subjects. Gender differences partly remain when distinguishing between the different subjects within STEM-L. And so, the result that not all STEM-L subjects are "created equal" is discussed in the context of their theoretical and methodological aspects.

Fur eine Gesellschaft ist ihr Bildungssystem ein bedeutsames Charakteristikum ihrer Struktur. Fragen sozialer Gerechtigkeit und Chancengleichheit betreffen daher immer auch die Rolle des Bildungssystems. Bildung in Form von Schulbildung von Personen ist in diesem Zusammenhang ein Mosaikstein von vielen im Berufswahl- und Ausbildungsprozess, der geeignet ist, gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen hinsichtlich des Bildungssystems aufzuzeigen. Dabei ist die Bedeutung der Familie als Sozialisationsinstanz fur die Schul- und Ausbildungswahl zu berucksichtigen. Gemeinsam sind Bildungssystem und Familie wesentliche Faktoren, welche die Bildungskarriere von Personen beeinflussen; das Bildungssystem als Angebot und die Familie als Ressource. Auf das Zusammenwirken von Familie und Bildungssystem konzentriert sich die vorliegende Untersuchung der intergenerationalen Bildungsmobilitat im geteilten und wiedervereinigten Deutschland.

Reaching the maximum yield of produced stainless flat products is an important aim to be successful in the competitive market. This paper describes a solution to optimise the allocation of orders to coils taking into account the actual product quality as well as the quality expected by the customer. In opposite to already available solutions also the appearance of over-quality products is taken into account. Especially for high quality stainless flat products the re-allocation of over-quality products to orders with higher demands can increase the added value distinctly. Another topic is the processing of Manufacturing Specifications (MS). A concept for the digitization of usually freely formulated MS is presented as well as a systematic monitoring, if the MS are really considered by the plant operators. The shown use cases were implemented at the German sites of Outokumpu Oyj, the Finnish producer of stainless flat products sited in Espoo.

In order to find a model parameterization such that the hydrological model performs well even under different conditions, appropriate model performance measures have to be determined. A common performance measure is the Nash Sutcliffe efficiency. Usually it is calculated comparing observed and modelled daily values. In this paper a modified version is suggested in order to calibrate a model on different time scales simultaneously (days up to years). A spatially distributed hydrological model based on HBV concept was used. The modelling was applied on the Upper Neckar catchment, a mesoscale river in south western Germany with a basin size of about 4000 km2. The observation period 1961-1990 was divided into four different climatic periods, referred to as "warm", "cold", "wet" and "dry". These sub periods were used to assess the transferability of the model calibration and of the measure of performance. In a first step, the hydrological model was calibrated on a certain period and afterwards applied on the same period. Then, a validation was performed on the climatologically opposite period than the calibration, e.g. the model calibrated on the cold period was applied on the warm period. Optimal parameter sets were identified by an automatic calibration procedure based on Simulated Annealing. The results show, that calibrating a hydrological model that is supposed to handle short as well as long term signals becomes an important task. Especially the objective function has to be chosen very carefully.

The uniqueness of the electrical environment (asynchronous connection to power system, variable frequency operation, and harmonics) on the output of adjustable-speed drives (ASDs) requires special consideration to be given to the motor protection. The Working Group has investigated and addressed these concerns. This paper announces the report on the findings of this activity and the recommendations made to the motor protection engineer. The full report can be found at www.pes-psrc.org under Published Reports.