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Most social media platforms allow users to freely express their opinions, feelings, and beliefs. However, in recent years the growing propagation of hate speech, offensive language, racism and sexism on the social media outlets have drawn attention from individuals, companies, and researchers. Today, sexism both online and offline with different forms, including blatant, covert, and subtle lan- guage, is a common phenomenon in society. A notable amount of work has been done over identifying sexist content and computationally detecting sexism which exists online. Although previous efforts have mostly used peoples’ activities on social media platforms such as Twitter as a public and helpful source for collecting data, they neglect the fact that the method of gathering sexist tweets could be biased towards the initial search terms. Moreover, some forms of sexism could be missed since some tweets which contain offensive language could be misclassified as hate speech. Further, in existing hate speech corpora, sexist tweets mostly express hostile sexism, and to some degree, the other forms of sexism which also appear online was disregarded. Besides, the creation of labeled datasets with manual exertion, relying on users to report offensive comments with a tremendous effort by human annotators is not only a costly and time-consuming process, but it also raises the risk of involving discrimination under biased judgment.
This thesis generates a novel sexist and non-sexist dataset which is constructed via "UnSexistifyIt", an online web-based game that incentivizes the players to make minimal modifications to a sexist statement with the goal of turning it into a non-sexist statement and convincing other players that the modified statement is non-sexist. The game applies the methodology of "Game With A Purpose" to generate data as a side-effect of playing the game and also employs the gamification and crowdsourcing techniques to enhance non-game contexts. When voluntary participants play the game, they help to produce non-sexist statements which can reduce the cost of generating new corpus. This work explores how diverse individual beliefs concerning sexism are. Further, the result of this work highlights the impact of various linguistic features and content attributes regarding sexist language detection. Finally, this thesis could help to expand our understanding regarding the syntactic and semantic structure of sexist and non-sexist content and also provides insights to build a probabilistic classifier for single sentences into sexist or non-sexist classes and lastly find a potential ground truth for such a classifier.
Knowledge-based authentication methods are vulnerable to Shoulder surfing phenomenon.
The widespread usage of these methods and not addressing the limitations it has could result in the user’s information to be compromised. User authentication method ought to be effortless to use and efficient, nevertheless secure.
The problem that we face concerning the security of PIN (Personal Identification Number) or password entry is shoulder surfing, in which a direct or indirect malicious observer could identify the user sensitive information. To tackle this issue we present TouchGaze which combines gaze signals and touch capabilities, as an input method for entering user’s credentials. Gaze signals will be primarily used to enhance targeting and touch for selecting. In this work, we have designed three different PIN entry method which they all have similar interfaces. For the evaluation, these methods were compared based on efficiency, accuracy, and usability. The results uncovered that despite the fact that gaze-based methods require extra time for the user to get familiar with yet it is considered more secure. In regards to efficiency, it has the similar error margin to the traditional PIN entry methods.
One task of executives and project managers in IT companies or departments is to hire suitable developers and to assign them to suitable problems. In this paper, we propose a new technique that directly leverages previous work experience of developers in a systematic manner. Existing evidence for developer expertise based on the version history of existing projects is analyzed. More specifically, we analyze the commits to a repository in terms of affected API usage. On these grounds, we associate APIs with developers and thus we assess API experience of developers. In transitive closure, we also assess programming domain experience.
Predictive Process Monitoring is becoming more prevalent as an aid for organizations to support their operational processes. However, most software applications available today require extensive technical know-how by the operator and are therefore not suitable for most real-world scenarios. Therefore, this work presents a prototype implementation of a Predictive Process Monitoring dashboard in the form of a web application. The system is based on the PPM Camunda Plugin presented by Bartmann et al. (2021) and allows users to easily create metrics, visualizations to display these metrics, and dashboards in which visualizations can be arranged. A usability test is with test users of different computer skills is conducted to confirm the application’s user-friendliness.
Public electronic procurement (eProcurement), here electronic sourcing (eSourcing) in particular, is almost certainly on the agenda when eGovernment experts meet. Not surprisingly is eProcurement the first high-impact service to be addressed in the European Union- recent Action Plan. This is mainly dedicated to the fact that public procurement makes out almost 20% of Europe- GDP and therefore holds a huge saving potential. To some extent this potential lies in the common European market, since effective cross-boarder eSourcing solutions can open many doors, both for buyers and suppliers. To achieve this, systems and processes and tools, need to be adoptable, transferable as well as be able to communicate with each other. In one word, they need to be interoperable. In many relevant domains, interoperability has reached a very positive level, standards have been established, workflows been put in place. In other domains however, there is still a long road ahead. As a consequence it is crucial to define requirements for such interoperable eSourcing systems and to identify the progress in research and practice.
This thesis explores the possibilities of probabilistic process modelling for the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems in order to predict the behaviour of the users present in the CSCW system. Toward this objective applicability, advantages, limitations and challenges of probabilistic modelling are excavated in context of CSCW systems. Finally, as a primary goal seven models are created and examined to show the feasibilities of probabilistic process discovery and predictions of the users behaviour in CSCW systems.
Implementation of Agile Software Development Methodology in a Company – Why? Challenges? Benefits?
(2019)
The software development industry is enhancing day by day. The introduction of agile software development methodologies was a tremendous structural change in companies. Agile transformation provides unlimited opportunities and benefits to the existing and new developing companies. Along with benefits, agile conversion also brings many unseen challenges. New entrants have the advantage of being flexible and cope with the environmental, consumer, and cultural changes, but existing companies are bound to rigid structure.
The goal of this research is to have deep insight into agile software development methodology, agile manifesto, and principles behind the agile manifesto. The prerequisites company must know for agile software development implementation. The benefits a company can achieve by implementing agile software development. Significant challenges that a company can face during agile implementation in a company.
The research objectives of this study help to generate strong motivational research questions. These research questions cover the cultural aspects of company agility, values and principles of agile, benefits, and challenges of agile implementation. The project management triangle will show how benefits of cost, benefits of time, and benefits of quality can be achieved by implementing agile methodologies. Six significant areas have been explored, which shows different challenges a company can face during implementation agile software development methodology. In the end, after the in depth systematic literature review, conclusion is made following some open topics for future work and recommendations on the topic of implementation of agile software development methodology in a company.
Simulation of fractures
(2014)
Real-time computing often avoids the simulation of fractures due to its complexity. The field of engineering science provides methods to create these simulations to improve games and other applications. Steadily rising computer capacities allow suitable simulations on a real-time basis and make this aspect increasingly interesting. The topic and aim of this research is to simulate fractures of stiff bodies. The primary objective is the physical plausibility and performance of the application. This thesis analyses the potential of computer science to realize the simulation of fractures.
Three existing as well as one self-created were implemented and analysed. The works "Real time simulation of deformation and Fracture of stiff material" from Müller et al., "real time simulation of Brittle Fracture using Modal analysis" from Glondu et al. and "Fast and Controllable simulation of the Shattering of Brittle Objects" from Smith et al. form the basis of this thesis. The introduced methods use different computation of forces and fractures. The developed procedure uses the idea of generating secondary breaks. The approaches were implemented based on the Bullet physics-engine. The results of the work show that physically based breaks are realizable on a real-time basis.
The analysis of the physical methods demonstrates that their performance mainly depends on the constitution of the used objects. This thesis shows that the further investigation of this topic can discover new possibilities. The improvement of the realism in virtual worlds can be achieved by executing physically plausible methods.
The goal of this master thesis was to develop a CRM system for the Assist team of CompuGroup Medical that is aiding in integrating open innovation into the development of the Minerva 2.0 software. To achieve this, CRM methodology has been combined with Social Networking Systems, following the research of Lin and Chen (2010, pp. 11 – 30). To achieve the predefined goals literature has been analyzed on how to successfully im- plement a CRM system as well as an online community. Subsequently the results have been applied to the development of the Minerva Community according to the guidelines of Design Science suggested by Hevner et al. (2004, pp. 75 – 104). The finished product is designed based on customer and management requirements and evaluated from a customer and company perspective.
The lasting hype around the mobile internet and the related technology of the mobile applications seem not to drop off. The immense economic potential of this market leads the businesses and ventures to continuously find new ways of monetization. The underlying causes of that phenomenon are rarely challenged. Scientific research in the field of "ubiquitous mobile" has not yet developed a clear overall picture of the causes and effect chains. Attempts of deriving causes by studies in related mass media such as the computer or the internet have been discussed controversially. By combining the research streams of media motive usage and the customer retention, this paper will present a new research model. Based on a quantitative survey in the German speaking the gained data proves the motives for mobility, information gathering and entertainment purposed to be the most important drivers of customer satisfaction in mobile applications. The paper also highlights a significant correlation between the customer satisfaction and the other determinants of customer retention.
A guideline for the examination of business models is developed in this research project and M.Sc. study, focusing on young, innovative enterprises ("start-ups"). Start-ups often start to operate in uncertainty and tentativeness. To forecast the success of such an enterprise is therefore today hardly possible by means of quantitative data. The evaluation of innovative business models ("Business Model Check") today is a gap in Business Administration and Management studies.
In scientific data visualization huge amounts of data are generated, which implies the task of analyzing these in an efficient way. This includes the reliable detection of important parts and a low expenditure of time and effort. This is especially important for the big-sized seismic volume datasets, that are required for the exploration of oil and gas deposits. Since the generated data is complex and a manual analysis is very time-intensive, a semi-automatic approach could on one hand reduce the time required for the analysis and on the other hand offer more flexibility, than a fully automatic approach.
This master's thesis introduces an algorithm, which is capable of locating regions of interest in seismic volume data automatically by detecting anomalies in local histograms. Furthermore the results are visualized and a variety of tools for the exploration and interpretation of the detected regions are developed. The approach is evaluated by experiments with synthetic data and in interviews with domain experts on the basis of real-world data. Conclusively further improvements to integrate the algorithm into the seismic interpretation workflow are suggested.
In dieser Arbeit wird eine Unterrichtsreihe beschrieben, welche aus den drei Bereichen „mathematische Relationen“, „Datenbanken in Sozialen Netzwerken“ und „Datenschutz“ zusammengesetzt ist. Zu jedem Bereich wird ein eigener Unterrichtsentwurf präsentiert.
Außerdem wurde im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit ein Programm zur Visualisierung der Relationen des Sozialen Netzwerks Instahub entworfen, welches im Anschluss an die Beschreibung der Unterrichtsreihe aufgeführt wird.
In this thesis, a computer simulation model created in the early 1960s by Robert P. Abelson and Alex Bernstein is examined. The simulation described was built to reflect processes involved in formation of a public opinion within a population taking into account direct communication as well as communication mediated through mass media. After describing and thoroughly analyzing the available description of the simulation model this thesis produces the implementation of a running software simulation system implementing this model. The software is developed and described using common computer science procedures and finally examined for its properties during different tests.
The industry standard Decision Model and Notation (DMN) has enabled a new way for the formalization of business rules since 2015. Here, rules are modeled in so-called decision tables, which are defined by input columns and output columns. Furthermore, decisions are arranged in a graph-like structure (DRD level), which creates dependencies between them. With a given input, the decisions now can be requested by appropriate systems. Thereby, activated rules produce output for future use. However, modeling mistakes produces erroneous models, which can occur in the decision tables as well as at the DRD level. According to the Design Science Research Methodology, this thesis introduces an implementation of a verification prototype for the detection and resolution of these errors while the modeling phase. Therefore, presented basics provide the needed theoretical foundation for the development of the tool. This thesis further presents the architecture of the tool and the implemented verification capabilities. Finally, the created prototype is evaluated.
In order to plan the interior of a room, various programs for computers,
smart phones or head-mounted displays are available. The transfer to the
real environment is a difficult task. Therefore an augmented reality approach
is developed to illustrate the planning in the real room. If several
people want to contribute their ideas, conventional systems require to
work on one device together. The aim of this master thesis is to design and
develop a collaborative spatial planning application in augmented reality.
The application is developed in Unity with ARCore and C#.
This thesis proposes the use of MSR (Mining Software Repositories) techniques to identify software developers with exclusive expertise about specific APIs and programming domains in software repositories. A pilot Tool for finding such
“Islands of Knowledge” in Node.js projects is presented and applied in a case study to the 180 most popular npm packages. It is found that on average each package has 2.3 Islands of Knowledge, which is possibly explained by the finding that npm packages tend to have only one main contributor. In a survey, the maintainers of 50 packages are contacted and asked for opinions on the results produced by the Tool. Together with their responses, this thesis reports on experiences made with the pilot Tool and how future iterations could produce even more accurate statements about programming expertise distribution in developer teams.
Soziale Netzwerke spielen im Alltagsleben der Schülerinnen und Schüler eine entscheidende Rolle. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Masterarbeit wurde ein Konzept für die Anzeige von Profilvorschlägen innerhalb des sozialen Netzwerks „InstaHub“, welches ein speziell für den Informatikunterricht programmiertes Werkzeug zum Thema „Datenbanken“ darstellt, entwickelt. Als Hürde stellte sich dabei dar, dass von den etablierten sozialen Netzwerken nur wenig bis gar keine Informationen über die Berechnung von Profil- oder Freundschaftsvorschlägen preisgegeben werden. Daher wurde zunächst das Wesen von Beziehungen zwischen Menschen in nicht-internetbasierten und in internetbasierten sozialen Netzwerken sowie die Gründe für Beziehungen zwischen Menschen in diesen Netzwerken dargelegt. Anhand der Beobachtung von Vorschlägen in anderen sozialen Netzwerken sowie der in InstaHub gespeicherten Nutzerdaten wurde ein Algorithmus für Profilvorschläge in InstaHub entworfen und mitsamt einer passenden Visualisierung entsprechend implementiert. Den zweiten Teil der Arbeit bildete eine Unterrichtseinheit für die Sekundarstufe II mit dem Thema Gefahren der Erzeugung und Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten. In der Unterrichtseinheit dienen die Profilvorschläge in InstaHub, die auf von InstaHub über dessen Nutzer gesammelten Daten aufbauen, als Einstieg in die Thematik. Anschließend wird der Fokus von sozialen Netzwerken auf andere Online-Dienste erweitert und auf die Verarbeitung und Weitergabe dieser Daten eingegangen.
Aufgrund des branchenweiten Bedarfs den Konkurrenzkampf zu umgehen, entwickelten Kim und Mauborgne die Blue Ocean Strategy, um neue Märkte zu ergründen. Diese bezeichnen sie als einzigartig. Da jedoch weitere Strategien zur Ergründung neuer Märkte existieren, ist es das Ziel dieser Arbeit herauszufinden, anhand welcher Charakterisierungsmerkmale die Blue Ocean Strategy als einzigartig angesehen werden kann.
Die Strategie von Kim und Mauborgne soll daher mit Schumpeters schöpferischen Zerstörung, Ansoffs Diversifikationsstrategie, Porters Nischenstrategie und Druckers Innovationsstrategien verglichen werden. Für den Vergleich werden die Charakterisierungsmerkmale herangezogen, nach denen Kim und Mauborgne die Blue Ocean Strategy als einzigartig beurteilen. Auf Basis dieser Kriterien wird ein Metamodell entwickelt, mit dessen Hilfe die Untersuchung durchgeführt wird.
Der Vergleich zeigt, dass die Konzepte von Schumpeter, Ansoff, Porter und Drucker in einigen Kriterien der Blue Ocean Strategy ähneln. Keine der Strategien verhält sich jedoch in allen Punkten so wie das Konzept von Kim und Mauborgne. Während die Blue Ocean Strategy ein Differenzierung und Senkung der Kosten anstrebt, orientieren sich die meisten Konzepte entweder an einer Differenzierung oder an einer Kostenreduktion. Auch die Betretung des neuen Marktes wird unterschiedlich interpretiert. Während die Blue Ocean Strategy auf einen Markt abzielt, der unergründet ist und somit keinen Wettbewerb vorweist, werden bei den anderen Strategien oft bestehende Märkte als neu interpretiert, auf denen das Unternehmen bisher nicht agiert hat. Dies schließt die vorherige Existenz der Märkte jedoch nicht aus.
Auf Basis der durch den Vergleich gezogenen Erkenntnisse, kann somit die Blue Ocean Strategy als einzigartig bezeichnet werden.
As a result of the technical progress, processes have to be adjusted. On the one hand, the digital transformation is absolutely necessary for every organization to operate efficient and sustainable, on the other hand whose accomplishment is a tremendous challenge. The huge amount of personal data, which accrue in this context, is an additional difficulty.
Against the background of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this thesis focuses on process management and ways of optimizing processes in a Human Resources Department. Beside the analysis of already existing structures and workflows, data management and especially the handling of personal data in an application process are examined. Both topics, the process management and the data protection are vitally important by itself, but it is necessary to implement the requirements of data protection within the appropriate position of a corresponding process. Relating to this, the thesis deals with the research question of what barriers may occur by a sustainable process integration and to which extend the GDPR prevent an unobstructed workflow within the Human Resources Department of the Handwerkskammer Koblenz. Additionally, answering the question of which subprocesses are convenient for a process automation is highly significant.
In scope of these questions Business Process Management is the solution. By means of the graphical representation standard, Business Process Model and Notation, a process model with the relevant activities, documents and responsibilities of the recruitment process is designed. Based on a target-actual comparison it becomes apparent, that standardized process steps with less exceptions and a large amount of information are basically convenient for automation respectively partial automation. After the different phases of the recruitment process are documented in detail, a Workflow-Management-System can ex-port the transformed models, so the involved employees just have to carry out a task list with assigned exercises. Against the background of the data protection regulations, access rights and maturities can be determined. Subsequently only authorized employees have admission to the personal data of applicants. Because of impending sanctions by violation against the GDPR, the implementation of the relevant legal foundations within the recruitment process is necessary and appropriate. Relating to the defined research questions, it appears that in principle not every activity is appropriate for a process automation. Especially unpredictable and on a wide range of factors depending subprocesses are unsuitable. Additionally, media discontinuities and redundant data input are obstacles to an enduring process integration. Nevertheless, a coherent consideration of the topics of business process management and the data protection regulations is required.
With the emergence of current generation head-mounted displays (HMDs), virtual reality (VR) is regaining much interest in the field of medical imaging and diagnosis. Room-scale exploration of CT or MRI data in virtual reality feels like an intuitive application. However in VR retaining a high frame rate is more critical than for conventional user interaction seated in front of a screen. There is strong scientific evidence suggesting that low frame rates and high latency have a strong influence on the appearance of cybersickness. This thesis explores two practical approaches to overcome the high computational cost of volume rendering for virtual reality. One lies within the exploitation of coherency properties of the especially costly stereoscopic rendering setup. The main contribution is the development and evaluation of a novel acceleration technique for stereoscopic GPU ray casting. Additionally, an asynchronous rendering approach is pursued to minimize the amount of latency in the system. A selection of image warping techniques has been implemented and evaluated methodically, assessing the applicability for VR volume rendering.
On-screen interactive presentations have got immense popularity in the domain of attentive interfaces recently. These attentive screens adapt their behavior according to the user's visual attention. This thesis aims to introduce an application that would enable these attentive interfaces to change their behavior not just according to the gaze data but also facial features and expressions. The modern era requires new ways of communications and publications for advertisement. These ads need to be more specific according to people's interests, age, and gender. When advertising, it's important to get a reaction from the user but not every user is interested in providing feedback. In such a context more, advance techniques are required that would collect user's feedback effortlessly. The main problem this thesis intends to resolve is, to apply advanced techniques of gaze and face recognition to collect data about user's reactions towards different ads being played on interactive screens. We aim to create an application that enables attentive screens to detect a person's facial features, expressions, and eye gaze. With eye gaze data we can determine the interests and with facial features, age and gender can be specified. All this information will help in optimizing the advertisements.
In usage of information systems the maintenance of their actuality and their extensibility is of importance. There is a constant reoccurrence of situations, when these goals cannot be supported by keeping on the old system, the legacy system. A solution for that is its migration into a new environment. The migration of software is to be considered as a subdiscipline of software engineering, more precisely, as a part of software maintenance. In this thesis the reference migration process model ReMiP, introduced in another thesis of the institute, was applied. The goal of this examination is to bring this model to practice in a website migration project and to analyze its validity. Here, especially the subject of completeness and generalizability of the model for migration processes and the gathering of concrete experiences with the intensity of its activities is of interest. The target environment for the website migration will be the content management system Plone. Within this thesis it will be described thoroughly. Finally, the website to migrate will be brought to its new target environment. The result of this thesis is the migrated GXL-Website in the target system Plone using the ReMiP. By this migration, the ReMiP was successfully validated as a reference process model for software migrations.
Motion capture refers to the process of capturing, processing and trans- lating real motions onto a 3D model. Not only in the movie and gaming industries, motion capture creates an indispensable realism of human and animal movement. Also in the context of robotics, medical movement therapy, as well as in AR and VR, motion capture is used extensively. In addition to the well established optical processes, especially in the last three areas, alternative systems based on inertial navigation (IMUs) are being used in-creasingly, because they do not rely on external cameras and thus limit the area of movement considerably less.
Fast evolving technical progress in the manufacturing of such IMUs allows building small sensors, wearable on the body which can transfer movements to a computer. The development of applying inertial systems to a motion capture context, however, is still at an early state. Problems like drift can currently only be minimized by adding additional hardware for correcting the read data.
In the following master thesis an IMU based motion capture system is designed and constructed. This contains the assembly of the hardware components as well as processing of the received movement data on the software side and their application to a 3D model.
Belief revision is the subarea of knowledge representation which studies the dynamics of epistemic states of an agent. In the classical AGM approach, contraction, as part of the belief revision, deals with the removal of beliefs in knowledge bases. This master's thesis presents the study and the implementation of concept contraction in the Description Logic EL. Concept contraction deals with the following situation. Given two concept C and D, assuming that C is subsumed by D, how can concept C be changed so that it is not subsumed by D anymore, but is as similar as possible to C? This approach of belief change is different from other related work because it deals with contraction in the level of concepts and not T-Boxes and A-Boxes in general. The main contribution of the thesis is the implementation of the concept contraction. The implementation provides insight into the complexity of contraction in EL, which is tractable since the main inference task in EL is also tractable. The implementation consists of the design of five algorithms that are necessary for concept contraction. The algorithms are described, illustrated with examples, and analyzed in terms of time complexity. Furthermore, we propose an new approach for a selection function, adapt for the concept contraction. The selection function uses metadata about the concepts in order to select the best from an input set. The metadata is modeled in a framework that we have designed, based on standard metadata frameworks. As an important part of the concept contraction, the selection function is responsible for selecting the best concepts that are as similar as possible to concept C. Lastly, we have successfully implemented the concept contraction in Python, and the results are promising.
Rudolf Virchows Vorstellungen von einer human-bürgerlichen Krankenpflege in der Zeit des preußischen Kulturkampfes
Über die Auseinandersetzungen im Preußischen Haus der Abgeordneten zwischen Rudolf Virchow, dem Kultusministerium und der Zentrumspartei über die katholischen Kranken-pflegeorden – von Hilmar Conrad
Der Mediziner und liberale Abgeordnete des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten Rudolf Virchow ist vielen bekannt für den Satz „‹Omnis cellula e cellula›“1, aus seinem Werk ‚Die Zellularpathologie‘. Er wies mit diesem Lehrsatz und der zugrundeliegenden Forschung nach, dass Zellen in Morphologie und Funktion die kleinste Einheit des menschlichen Körpers sind.2 Der spätere Medizinprofessor wurde am 13. Oktober 1821 in Schivelbein geboren und verstarb am 5. September 1902 in Berlin. Das Jahr 1848 ist in zweierlei Hinsicht als Schicksalsjahr für Virchow zu betrachten. Er war in dieser Zeit Militärarzt und wurde in diesem Winter 1847/48 von der preußischen Regierung nach Ober-schlesien entsendet, wo eine Typhus-Epidemie wütete. Sein Auftrag war die wissenschaftliche Analyse der Geschehnisse. An seinem 80. Geburtstag sagte er über diese Reise: „Jene 16 Tage in Oberschlesien, 1848, waren das entscheidende Ereignis meines Lebens.“3 Es war Revolution in Berlin und dort zurück, nahm er an den Kämpfen für Demokratie teil.4 Im Bericht über seine Reise schlussfolgerte er, dass zur Prävention einer solchen Seuche in Oberschlesien Demokratisierung und Bildung für die Bevölkerung notwendig seien – das war der Beginn der Sozialmedizin. Ab 1859 war er Berliner Stadtverordneter und ab 1861 Mitglied des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses für die linksliberale Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, die er zusammen mit Mitstreitern gegründet hatte. Von 1880 bis 1893 war er Abgeordneter im Deutschen Reichstag.5 Für ihn war „[d]ie Medizin […] eine soziale Wissenschaft, und die Politik ist weiter nichts als Medizin im Großen.“6
Was diese Person also so spannend macht, ist, dass sie gleich zwei relevanten Gruppen angehörte, welche einflussreich über die Krankenpflege sprachen: die der Politik und die der Ärzte.
Rudolf Virchow forderte am 9. November 1869 auf dem Kongress der deutschen Frauenvereine in Berlin eine Pflege, die sich außerhalb der Kirchen organisieren solle:
„Organisiren wir ganz und gar ausserhalb der kirchlichen Organisation, organisiren wir ganz innerhalb der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft als solcher, nach rein menschlichen Aufgaben, ohne irgend einen weiteren Nebenzweck.“7
Was Virchow hier forderte ist eine Hinwendung zum ‚Humanen‘8, wie er es nannte und auch in mehreren Debatten im Abgeordnetenhaus erläuterte. Dies überrascht nicht, war er doch maßgeblich am Kulturkampf im Parlament beteiligt und ein vehementer Verfechter der Säkularisierung.9 Das wissenschaftlich relevante Problem an dieser Stelle ist Virchows zentrale Äußerungen über die Krankenpflege im Kontext der geführten Debatten im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus darzustellen. Die wissenschaftliche Literatur geht hierbei, nur sehr oberflächlich auf das vor- und hinterher Gesagte ein, obwohl es sich um Debatten handelt. Und hier zeigt sich auch die Relevanz der Arbeit. Natürlich liegt das Interesse darauf, Virchows Vorstellungen über die Krankenpflege anhand seiner Beiträge im Preußischen Haus der Abgeordneten nachzuvollziehen, aber eben auch nachzuzeichnen, wie sich die gesamten Debatten um die Krankenpflege, in denen sich Virchow bewegte, zugetragen hatten.
Demnach ist das Erkenntnisinteresse dieser Arbeit herauszuarbeiten, welche Ansichten Rudolf Virchow über die Krankenpflege seiner Zeit hatte, wie er sie im Preußischen Haus der Abgeordneten verteidigte, wie sich die Ansichten seiner politischen Gegner und der preußischen Regierung dazu verhielten sowie daraus folgend, wie die Debatten über die Krankenpflege im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus verliefen.
1 Virchow, zit. n. Schipperges (1994): Rudolf Virchow, S. 58.
2 Schipperges (2008): Virchow, Rudolf (Ludwig Carl), S. 257.
3 Andree (2006): Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) im Spannungsfeld von Glauben, Kirche und Staat, S. 99.
4 Vgl. ebd., S. 99–100.
5 Vgl. Schipperges (2008): Virchow, Rudolf (Ludwig Carl), S. 257–258.
6 Schipperges (1994): Rudolf Virchow, S. 113. Im Original kursiv.
7 Virchow (1879): Die berufsmässige Ausbildung zur Krankenpflege, auch ausserhalb der kirchlichen Organisationen, S. 49. Im Original gesperrt.
8 Vgl. Virchow (1875): Rede im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin. 8. Mai 1875, S. 207.
9 Vgl. Virchow (1873): Rede im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin. 17. Januar 1873, S. 359.
Entwicklung eines Regelungsverfahrens zur Pfadverfolgung für ein Modellfahrzeug mit Sattelanhänger
(2009)
Besides the progressive automation of internal goods traffic, there is an important area that should also be considered. This area is the carriage of goods in selected external areas. The use of driverless trucks in logistic centers can report economic efficiency. In particular, these precise control procedures require that trucks drive on predetermined paths. The general aim of this work is the adaption and evaluation of a path following control method for articulated vehicles. The differences in the kinematic behavior between trucks with one-axle trailer and semi-trailer vehicles will be emphasized. Additionally, the characteristic kinematic properties of semi-trailers for the adaptation of a control procedure will be considered. This control procedure was initially designed for trucks with one-axle trailer. It must work in forwards and backwards movements. This control process will be integrated as a closed component on the control software of the model vehicle. Thus, the geometry of the model vehicle will be specified, and the possible special cases of the control process will be discovered. The work also documents the most relevant software components of the implemented control process.
Mit dieser Arbeit werden die folgenden Ziele verfolgt: Eine repräsentative Auswahl und Sammlung von Beispielen für Mobile Ticketing Systeme (insbesondere aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum) zu recherchieren, die sich im praktischen Einsatz befinden. Eine Zusammenstellung sinnvoller Kategorien (Charakteristika) zu erarbeiten, anhand derer sich Mobile Ticketing Systeme unterscheiden oder strukturieren lassen. Eine Gegenüberstellung der Beispiele und Kategorien zu erstellen, um zu untersuchen, welche typischen Klassen bei Mobile Ticketing Systemen identifiziert werden können.
Business rules have become an important tool to warrant compliance at their business processes. But the collection of these business rules can have various conflicting elements. This can lead to a violation of the compliance to be achieved. This conflicting elements are therefore a kind of inconsistencies, or quasi incon- sistencies in the business rule base. The target for this thesis is to investigate how those quasi inconsistencies in business rules can be detected and analyzed. To this aim, we develop a comprehensive library which allows to apply results from the scientific field of inconsistency measurement to business rule formalisms that are actually used in practice.
Gartner predicts that 33 per cent of total accesses to Business Intelligence (BI) functionalities will be done until 2013 using mobile devices. While mobile devices have already spread to a high extent in private life they have recently become more and more part of the professional life as well and businesses are seeking to develop smart scenarios on how to integrate the new technologies in their processes. The development of mobile software applications is also booming in the field of BI. The research topic of Mobile Business Intelligence (mBI) is focussing on how to expand traditional BI concepts to the new mobility dimension thus enabling to apply BI functionalities on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers. The increasing significance of mBI for research in combination with the tremendous economic growth potential forecasted for the next years is the driver for writing this thesis. The main aspect of the present thesis is a concept on how to develop a consistent mBI Strategy aligning all structures, processes and stakeholders to one standard set of goals and guidelines. Crucial points when implementing an mBI strategy are the definition of goals, the identification of risks and opportunities, the adaptation of mBI to the user context, the integration of mBI into the existing IT landscape, as well as a proper set-up of system architectures and security concepts. Besides analyzing the aspect of mBI strategy this thesis also considers the market situation of mBI. Clearly defined goals and the systematic development of a consistent mBI strategy which is in line with these goals can be considered as a crucial prerequisite for companies to successfully implement mBI.
This master thesis deals basically with the design and implementation of a path planning system based on rapidly exploring search trees for general-n-trailers. This is a probabilistic method that is characterized by a fast and uniform exploration. The method is well established, however, has been applied only to vehicles with simple kinematics to date. General-n-trailers represent a particular challenge as their controllability is limited. For this reason the focus of this thesis rests on the application of the mentioned procedure to general-n-trailers. In this context systematic correlations between the characteristics of general-n-trailers and the possibilities for the realization and application of the method are analyzed.
The status of Business Process Management (BPM) recommender systems is not quite clear as research states. The use of recommenders familiarized itself with the world during the rise of technological evolution in the past decade.Ever since then, several BPM recommender systems came about. However, not a lot of research is conducted in this field. It is not well known to what broad are the technologies used and how are they used. Moreover, this master’s thesis aims at surveying the BPM recommender systems existing. Building on this, the recommendations come in different shapes. They can be positionbased where an element is to be placed at an element’s front, back or to autocomplete a missing link. On the other hand, Recommendations can be textual, to fill the labels of the elements. Furthermore, the literature review for BPM recommender systems took place under the guides of a literature review framework. The framework suggests 5stages of consecutive stages for this sake. The first stage is defining a scope for the research. Secondly, conceptualizing the topic by choosing key terms for literature research. After that in the third stage, comes the research stage.As for the fourth stage, it suggests choosing analysis features over which the literature is to be synthesized and compared. Finally, it recommends defining the research agenda to describe the reason for the literature review. By invoking the mentioned methodology, this master’s thesis surveyed 18 BPM recommender systems. It was found as a result of the survey that there
are not many different technologies for implementing the recommenders. It was also found that the majority of the recommenders suggest nodes that are yet to come in the model, which is called forward recommending. Also, one of the results of the survey indicated the scarce use of textual recommendations to BPM labels. Finally, 18 recommenders are considered less than excepted for a developing field therefore as a result, the survey found a shortage in the number of BPM recommender systems. The results indicate several shortages in several aspects in the field of BPM recommender systems. On this basis, this master’s thesis recommends the future work on it the results.
Das Ziel der vorliegenden Masterarbeit ist es, einen Einführungskurs in die Computervisualistik mit dem Schwerpunkt Computergrafik zu konzeptionieren und zu prototypisieren. Der Kurs sollte Grundlagen der Computergrafik vermitteln und dabei Bezüge zu anderen Veranstaltungen des Studiums herstellen, um Motivation und Verständnis für die komplexen Zusammenhänge der Studieninhalte in der Computervisualistik zu schaffen. Der aktuelle Studiengangplan weist hier bislang ein erkennbares Defizit auf. Für den Einführungskurs wurden prototypische Lerneinheiten auf Grundlage der didaktischen Methode der Moderation und unter Verwendung von Unity entwickelt. Konzept und Prototypen wurden an Probanden ohne informationstechnischen Hintergrund evaluiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass Unity eine geeignete Oberfläche für die Vermittlung der Informationen bietet. Diese stieß auf Akzeptanz und konnte leichte Zugänglichkeit bei den Probanden aufweisen, obwohl die Lerneinheiten selbst kleinere Schwächen aufwiesen. Im Anschluss an die erste Evaluationsphase wurde eine qualitative Umfrage mit Alumini der Computervisualistik durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse bestätigten den Bedarf nach einer einführenden Veranstaltung zur Orientierung und zur Förderung von Motivation und Verständnis für die breiten Themengebiete der Computervisualistik.
Magnetic resonance (MR) tomography is an imaging method, that is used to expose the structure and function of tissues and organs in the human body for medical diagnosis. Diffusion weighted (DW) imaging is a specific MR imaging technique, which enables us to gain insight into the connectivity of white matter pathways noninvasively and in vivo. It allows for making predictions about the structure and integrity of those connections. In clinical routine this modality finds application in the planning phase of neurosurgical operations, such as in tumor resections. This is especially helpful if the lesion is deeply seated in a functionally important area, where the risk of damage is given. This work reviews the concepts of MR imaging and DW imaging. Generally, at the current resolution of diffusion weighted data, single white matter axons cannot be resolved. The captured signal rather describes whole fiber bundles. Beside this, it often appears that different complex fiber configurations occur in a single voxel, such as crossings, splittings and fannings. For this reason, the main goal is to assist tractography algorithms who are often confound in such complex regions. Tractography is a method which uses local information to reconstruct global connectivities, i.e. fiber tracts. In the course of this thesis, existing reconstruction methods such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and q-ball imaging (QBI) are evaluated on synthetic generated data and real human brain data, whereas the amount of valuable information provided by the individual reconstruction mehods and their corresponding limitations are investigated. The output of QBI is the orientation distribution function (ODF), where the local maxima coincides with the underlying fiber architecture. We determine those local maxima. Furthermore, we propose a new voxel-based classification scheme conducted on diffusion tensor metrics. The main contribution of this work is the combination of voxel-based classification, local maxima from the ODF and global information from a voxel- neighborhood, which leads to the development of a global classifier. This classifier validates the detected ODF maxima and enhances them with neighborhood information. Hence, specific asymmetric fibrous architectures can be determined. The outcome of the global classifier are potential tracking directions. Subsequently, a fiber tractography algorithm is designed that integrates along the potential tracking directions and is able to reproduce splitting fiber tracts.
In dieser Arbeit wird eine Softwarebibliothek zur Nutzung des USB-Hostmodus von Mikrocontrollern der Baureihe AT90USB entwickelt. Die Eigenschaften des USB werden erläutert und darauf aufbauend die Hardware des verwendeten Mikrocontrollers beschrieben. Anschließend wird die entwickelte Software und deren Funktionsweise erläutert. Abschließend werden Treiber für diverse Geräteklassen vorgestellt, die auch dem Test der entwickelten Bibliothek dienen.
Multi-agent systems are a mature approach to model complex software systems by means of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE). However, their application is not widely accepted in mainstream software engineering. Parallel to this the interdisciplinary field of Agent-based Social Simulation (ABSS) finds increasing recognition beyond the purely academic realm which starts to draw attention from the mainstream of agent researchers. This work analyzes factors to improve the uptake of AOSE as well as characteristics which separate the two fields AOSE and ABSS to understand their gap. Based on the efficiency-oriented micro-agent concept of the Otago Agent Platform (OPAL) we have constructed a new modern and self-contained micro-agent platform called µ². The design takes technological trends into account and integrates representative technologies, such as the functionally-inspired JVM language Clojure (with its Transactional Memory), asynchronous message passing frameworks and the mobile application platform Android. The mobile version of the platform shows an innovative approach to allow direct interaction between Android application components and micro-agents by mapping their related internal communication mechanisms. This empowers micro-agents to exploit virtually any capability of mobile devices for intelligent agent-based applications, robotics or simply act as a distributed middleware. Additionally, relevant platform components for the support of social simulations are identified and partially implemented. To show the usability of the platform for simulation purposes an interaction-centric scenario representing group shaping processes in a multi-cultural context is provided. The scenario is based on Hofstede's concept of 'Cultural Dimensions'. It does not only confirm the applicability of the platform for simulations but also reveals interesting patterns for culturally augmented in- and out-group agents. This explorative research advocates the potential of micro-agents as a powerful general system modelling mechanism while bridging the convergence between mobile and desktop systems. The results stimulate future work on the micro-agent concept itself, the suggested platform and the deeper exploration of mechanisms for seemless interaction of micro-agents with mobile environments. Last but not least the further elaboration of the simulation model as well as its use to augment intelligent agents with cultural aspects offer promising perspectives for future research.
„La liaison est un phénomène complexe dont la phénoménologie est encore aujourd’hui sujette à recherches et à débats. Dans la littérature classique, orthoépique ou descriptive, comme dans les recherches les plus actuelles, la liaison est considérée comme un phénomène multi-paramétrique et tous les niveaux linguistiques sont convoqués : phonologie, prosodie et syllabation, morphologie, syntaxe, lexique et sémantique, diachronie, orthographe et différentiation des styles [...] toutes les dimensions de la variation externe : variation dans le temps, dans l’espace géographique et dans l’espace social, variation dans l’espace stylistique des genres de discours“
(Eychenne/Laks 2017:1).
Dieses Zitat beschreibt die Liaison als ein sehr komplexes, von vielen Parametern beeinflusstes Phänomen. Wie gehen Lernende 1 mit einem solchen Phänomen um? Welche Liaison realisie-ren sie wie häufig? Welche Fehler treten auf? Welche Gründe gibt es für diese Fehler? Welche Auswirkungen hat ein längerer Auslandsaufenthalt des Lernenden in einem französischsprachi-gen Land auf die Produktion von Liaisons? Gibt es Unterschiede zwischen dem Erwerb der Liaison bei Kindern mit Französisch als Erstsprache (L1) und Lernenden des Französischen als Fremdsprache (L2)?
Auf all diese Fragen möchte ich im Laufe der vorliegenden Arbeit eingehen. Nach dem Zusam-mentragen einiger grundlegender Fakten über die Liaison soll daher ein Korpus mit französi-schen Sprachaufnahmen von deutschen Studierenden ausgewertet werden. Die Ergebnisse wer-den im Anschluss präsentiert und zunächst mit Resultaten von Kindern mit Französisch als L1 sowie anschließend mit Ergebnissen anderer Studien über Französischlernende verglichen.
Identifying reusable legacy code able to implement SOA services is still an open research issue. This master thesis presents an approach to identify legacy code for service implementation based on dynamic analysis and the application of data mining techniques. rnrnAs part of the SOAMIG project, code execution traces were mapped to business processes. Due to the high amount of traces generated by dynamic analyses, the traces must be post-processed in order to provide useful information. rnrnFor this master thesis, two data mining techniques - cluster analysis and link analysis - were applied to the traces. First tests on a Java/Swing legacy system provided good results, compared to an expert- allocation of legacy code.
In this thesis the possibilities for real-time visualization of OpenVDB
files are investigated. The basics of OpenVDB, its possibilities, as well
as NanoVDB and its GPU port, were studied. A system was developed
using PNanoVDB, the graphics API port of OpenVDB. Techniques were
explored to improve and accelerate a single ray approach of ray tracing.
To prove real-time capability, two single scattering approaches were
also implemented. One of these was selected, further investigated and
optimized to achieve interactive real-time rendering.
It is important to give artists immediate feedback on their adjustments, as
well as the possibility to change all parameters to ensure a user friendly
creation process.
In addition to the optical rendering, corresponding benchmarks were
collected to compare different improvement approaches and to prove
their relevance. Attention was paid to the rendering times and memory
consumption on the GPU to ensure optimal use. A special focus, when
rendering OpenVDB files, was put on the integrability and extensibility of
the program to allow easy integration into an existing real-time renderer
like U-Render.
Diese Masterarbeit beschreibt und evaluiert die im Rahmen der Arbeit entwickelten Erweiterungen zur Schellings Segregationsimulation. Der Nobelpreisträger Thomas C. Schelling simulierte als erster ab 1969 die Segregation. Die dabei entstandenen Ergebnisse erlaubten eine genauere Analyse der auftretenden Phänomene. Uri Wilensky, Mitarbeiter der "Northwestern University", entwickelte seit 1999 eine Segregationssimulation in NetLogo.
Im Rahmen meiner Masterarbeit habe ich das NetLogo-Model von Uri Wilensky in sechs unterschiedlichen Szenarien weiterentwickelt.
Digital Transformation Maturity of Vietnam Aviation Industry: The Effect of Organizational Readiness
(2023)
The paper studies the digital transformation maturity in the context of the aviation industry in Vietnam. Digital transformation can mean enhancing existing processes, finding new opportunities within existing business domains, or finding new opportunities outside existing business domains. In the era of post Covid-19, digital transformation will play a vital role in the recovery with the support from digital technology to leverage the communication and implementation of new projects or changes.
Digital transformation and digital transformation maturity sometimes are used indistinguishing, but they are two different definitions. This paper will further explain the differences and will apply digital transformation maturity as a scale for the digital transformation in the report.
Due to the lack of experiment in the relationship between digital transformation maturity and the organizational readiness, the study will explore four components of organizational readiness, including digital leadership, digital culture, digital capabilities, and digital partnering.
Systems to simulate crowd-behavior are used to simulate the evacuation of a crowd in case of an emergency. These systems are limited to the moving-patterns of a crowd and are generally not considering psychological and/or physical conditions. Changing behaviors within the crowd (e.g. by a person falling down) are not considered.
For that reason, this thesis will examine the psychological behavior and the physical impact of a crowd- member on the crowd. In order to do so, this study develops a real-time simulation for a crowd of people, adapted from a system for video games. This system contains a behavior-AI for agents. In order to show physical interaction between the agents and their environment as well as their movements, the physical representation of each agent is realized by using rigid bodies from a physics-engine. The movements of the agents have an additional navigation mesh and an algorithm for collision avoidance.
By developing a behavior-AI a physical and psychological state is reached. This state contains a psychological stress-level as well as a physical condition. The developed simulation is able to show physical impacts such as crowding and crushing of agents, interaction of agents with their environment as well as factors of stress.
By evaluating several tests of the simulation, this thesis examines whether the combination of physical and psychological impacts is implementable successfully. If so, this thesis will be able to give indications of an agent- behavior in dangerous and/or stressful situations as well as a valuation of the complex physical representation.
Exploring Academic Perspectives: Sentiments and Discourse on ChatGPT Adoption in Higher Education
(2024)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more widely used in a number of industries, including in the field of education. Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming crucial for schools and universities, whether for automated evaluation, smart educational systems, individualized learning, or staff support. ChatGPT, anAI-based chatbot, offers coherent and helpful replies based on analyzing large volumes of data. Integrating ChatGPT, a sophisticated Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool developed by OpenAI, into higher education has sparked significant interest and debate. Since the technology is already adapted by many students and teachers, this study delves into analyzing the sentiments expressed on university websites regarding ChatGPT integration into education by creating a comprehensive sentiment analysis framework using Hierarchical Residual RSigELU Attention Network (HR-RAN). The proposed framework addresses several challenges in sentiment analysis, such as capturing fine-grained sentiment nuances, including contextual information, and handling complex language expressions in university review data. The methodology involves several steps, including data collection from various educational websites, blogs, and news platforms. The data is preprocessed to handle emoticons, URLs, and tags and then, detect and remove sarcastic text using the eXtreme Learning Hyperband Network (XLHN). Sentences are then grouped based on similarity and topics are modeled using the Non-negative Term-Document Matrix Factorization (NTDMF) approach. Features, such as lexico-semantic, lexico structural, and numerical features are extracted. Dependency parsing and coreference resolution are performed to analyze grammatical structures and understand semantic relationships. Word embedding uses the Word2Vec model to capture semantic relationships between words. The preprocessed text and extracted features are inputted into the HR-RAN classifier to categorize sentiments as positive, negative, or neutral. The sentiment analysis results indicate that 74.8% of the sentiments towards ChatGPT in higher education are neutral, 21.5% are positive, and only 3.7% are negative. This suggests a predominant neutrality among users, with a significant portion expressing positive views and a very small percentage holding negative opinions. Additionally, the analysis reveals regional variations, with Canada showing the highest number of sentiments, predominantly neutral, followed by Germany, the UK, and the USA. The sentiment analysis results are evaluated based on various metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, F-measure, and specificity. Results indicate that the proposed framework outperforms conventional sentiment analysis models. The HR-RAN technique achieved a precision of 98.98%, recall of 99.23%, F-measure of 99.10%, accuracy of 98.88%, and specificity of 98.31%. Additionally, word clouds are generated to visually represent the most common terms within positive, neutral, and negative sentiments, providing a clear and immediate understanding of the key themes in the data. These findings can inform educators, administrators, and developers about the benefits and challenges of integrating ChatGPT into educational
settings, guiding improvements in educational practices and AI tool development.
In this thesis, we deal with the question if challenge, flow and fun in computer games are related to each other, and which influence the motivational, psychological components motivation of success, motivation of failure and the chance of success do have. In addition, we want to know if a free choice in the level of difficulty is the optimal way to flow. To examine these theories, a study based on an online survey was executed, in which the participants played the game “flOw“. The results were evaluated with the help of a two-factorial analysis of variance with repeated measurement and tests on correlation. Thereby we found out that there actually exists a relation between challenge, flow and fun and that motivation does matter indirectly.
The paper is a study focusing on exploring which factors and examining the impact of those factors influencing the entrepreneurial intention among students in the Construction industry, specifically among students of Hanoi Construction University and Hanoi Architecture University. The study also mentions some solution of this findings for entrepreneurship in the Construction field in Vietnam that the author might think of based on this research work for future study. The Theory of planned behavior is used as the theoritical framework for this study. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. The questionaire will be conducted among students of the two universities mentioned above. Then, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) will performed to test the validity of the constructs. The research findings provide factors and their impact factors influencing the entrepreneurial intention and propose some solutions to improve the entrepreneurship in the Construction field in Vietnam.
A service excellence culture is determined by various factors. Some factors are supporting the realization of a service excellence culture, others are more about to inhibit excellent service. The internal environment of the organisation is the foundation for excellent service. While the employees are known as the key of excellent service, it is up to the management to support their employees with a respective treatment. Especially empowerment and encouragement are known as supportive elements concerning service-orientated behaviour of the employees. The term internal excellence describes the optimal internal situation of the organisation for introducing a service excellence culture. Within an internal excellence, the front-line-employees are creating customer satisfaction and delight among the customers by working off the customers problems as well with standardized processes, as well as with innovative processes. An inhibiting factor is the complexity of the customers problems. With a rising complexity, it gets more difficult to solve the problem and to create customer satisfaction and customer delight. In the IT service industry, the complexity has a special impact. Due to the characteristics of the industry, encountered problems are often complicated and technical sophisticated. These individual characteristics lead to an increased complexity, the front-line-employees have to deal with. To manage this challenge, several measures have to be adopted. The service-employee can be supported by a clearly defined guideline, that includes all relevant steps of the service process. Additionally, a learning culture can be enhanced by creating a knowledge database, where service-cases are documented. The technical support of the service-employee by using special software tools is another measure, which supports the service excellence culture of the organisation.
This thesis presents a prototypical application for speech therapy as a therapeutical tool, simulating the articulation of German phonemes and the swallowing reflex. A special attention is given to a three-dimensional visualization of anatomical models of the pharyngolaryngeal region, which can be used in an interactive way. For examining the benefits of such an application in relation to conventional therapy mediums, the thesis considers iteratively the requirements of speech therapists.
Using semantic data from general-purpose programming languages does not provide the unified experience one would want for such an application. Static error checking is lacking, especially with regards to static typing of the data. Based on the previous work of λ-DL, which integrates semantic queries and concepts as types into a typed λ-calculus, this work takes its ideas a step further to meld them into a real-world programming language. This thesis explores how λ-DL's features can be extended and integrated into an existing language, researches an appropriate extension mechanism and produces Semantics4J, a JastAdd-based Java language semantic data extension for type-safe OWL programming, together with examples of its usage.
The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a very important communication channel. Its usage has steadily grown within the past. Interest by website owners in identifying user behaviour has been around since Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser in 1990. But as the influence of the online channel today eclipses all other media the interest in monitoring website usage and user activities has intensified as well. Gathering and analysing data about the usage of websites can help to understand customer behaviour, improve services and potentially increase profit.
It is further essential for ensuring effective website design and management, efficient mass customization and effective marketing. Web Analytics (WA) is the area addressing these considerations. However, changing technologies and evolving Web Analytic methods and processes present a challenge to organisations starting with Web Analytic programmes. Because of lacking resources in different areas and other types of websites especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) as well as non-profit organisations struggle to operate WA in an effective manner.
This research project aims to identify the existing gap between theory, tool possibilities and business needs for undertaking Web Analytic programmes. Therefore the topic was looked at from three different ways: the academic literature, Web Analytic tools and an interpretative case study. The researcher utilized an action research approach to investigate Web Analytics presenting an holistic overview and to identify the gaps that exists. The outcome of this research project is an overall framework, which provides guidance for SMEs who operate information websites on how to proceed in a Web Analytic programme.