Refine
Year of publication
- 2015 (106) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of Periodical (34)
- Doctoral Thesis (33)
- Bachelor Thesis (19)
- Master's Thesis (18)
- Conference Proceedings (1)
- Lecture (1)
Keywords
- Vorlesungsverzeichnis (4)
- OpenGL (3)
- Android (2)
- Compute Shader (2)
- Crowdsourcing (2)
- Eyetracking (2)
- Führung (2)
- Grafikkarte (2)
- Serviceorientierte Architektur (2)
- 360 Grad (1)
Institute
Virtueller Konsum - Warenkörbe, Wägungsschemata und Verbraucherpreisindizes in virtuellen Welten
(2015)
Virtual worlds have been investigated by several academic disciplines for several years, e.g. sociology, psychology, law and education. Since the developers of virtual worlds have implemented aspects like scarcity and needs, even economic research has become interested in these virtual environments. Exploring virtual economies mainly deals with the research of trade regarding the virtual goods used to supply the emerged needs. On the one hand, economics analyzes the meaning of virtual trade according to the overall interpretation of the economical characteristics of virtual worlds. As some virtual worlds allow the change of virtual world money with real money and vice versa, virtual goods are traded by the users for real money, researchers on the other hand, study the impact of the interdependencies between virtual economies and the real world. The presented thesis mainly focuses on the trade within virtual worlds in the context of virtual consumption and the observation of consumer prices. Therefore, the four virtual worlds World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Entropia Universe and Second Life have been selected. There are several components required to calculate consumer price indices. First, a market basket, which contains the relevant consumed goods existing in virtual worlds, must be developed. Second, a weighting scheme has to be established, which shows the dispersion of consumer tendencies. Third, prices of relevant consumer goods have to be taken. Following real world methods, it is the challenge to apply those methods within virtual worlds. Therefore, this dissertation contains three corresponding investigation parts. Within a first analysis, it will be evaluated, in how far virtual worlds can be explored to identify consumable goods. As a next step, the consumption expenditures of the avatars will be examined based on an online survey. At last, prices of consumable goods will be recorded. Finally, it will be possible to calculate consumer price indices. While investigating those components, the thesis focuses not only on the general findings themselves, but also on methodological issues arising, like limited access to relevant data, missing legal legitimation or security concerns of the users. Beside these aspects, the used methods also allow the examination of several other economic aspects like the consumption habits of the avatars. At the end of the thesis, it will be considered to what extent virtual world economic characteristics can be compared with the real world.
Aspects like the important role of weapons or the different usage of food show significant differences to the real world, caused by the business models of virtual worlds.
Uniprisma Ausg. 2010
(2015)
Uniprisma Ausg. 2009
(2015)
Uniprisma Ausg. 2008
(2015)
Uniprisma Ausg. 2007
(2015)
Uniprisma Ausg. 2006
(2015)
Uniprisma Ausg. 2005
(2015)
This research examines information audit methodologies and information capturing methods for enterprise social software which are an elementary part of the audit process. Information auditing is lacking of a standardized definition and methodology because the scope of the audit process is diversified and dependent on the organization undertaking the audit. The benefits of information auditing and potential challenges of Enterprise 2.0 the audit can overcome are comprehensive and provide a major incentive for managers to conduct an audit. Information asset registers as a starting point for information auditing are not specifically focusing on social software assets. Therefore this research pro-ject combines asset registers from different areas to create a new register suitable for the requirements of Enterprise 2.0. The necssary adaptations caused by the new character of the assets are minor. The case study applying the asset register for the first time however reveals several problematic areas for information auditors completing the register. Rounding up the thesis a template is developed for setting up new work spaces on enterprise social software systems with appropriate metadata taking into account the meaningful metadata discovered in the asset register.
Aquatic macrophytes can contribute to the retention of organic contaminants in streams, whereas knowledge on the dynamics and the interaction of the determining processes is very limited. The objective of the present study was thus to assess how aquatic macrophytes influence the distribution and the fate of organic contaminants in small vegetated streams. In a first study that was performed in vegetated stream mesocosms, the peak reductions of five compounds were significantly higher in four vegetated stream mesocosms compared to a stream mesocosm without vegetation. Compound specific sorption to macrophytes was determined, the mass retention in the vegetated streams, however, did not explain the relationship between the mitigation of contaminant peaks and macrophyte coverage. A subsequent mesocosm study revealed that the mitigation of peak concentrations in the stream mesocosms was governed by two fundamentally different processes: dispersion and sorption. Again, the reductions of the peak concentrations of three different compounds were in the same order of magnitude in a sparsely and a densely vegetated stream mesocosm, respectively, but higher compared to an unvegetated stream mesocosm. The mitigation of the peak reduction in the sparsely vegetated stream mesocosm was found to be fostered by longitudinal dispersion as a result of the spatial distribution of the macrophytes in the aqueous phase. The peak reduction attributable to longitudinal dispersion was, however, reduced in the densely vegetated stream mesocosm, which was compensated by compound-specific but time-limited and reversible sorption to macrophytes. The observations on the reversibility of sorption processes were subsequently confirmed by laboratory experiments. The experiments revealed that sorption to macrophytes lead to compound specific elimination from the aqueous phase during the presence of transient contaminant peaks in streams. After all, these sorption processes were found to be fully reversible, which results in the release of the primarily adsorbed compounds, once the concentrations in the aqueous phase starts to decrease. Nevertheless, the results of the present thesis demonstrate that the processes governing the mitigation of contaminant loads in streams are fundamentally different to those already described for non-flowing systems. In addition, the present thesis provides knowledge on how the interaction of macrophyte-induced processes in streams contributes to mitigate loads of organic contaminants and the related risk for aquatic environments.
Taxonomy and Systematics of Spiny-Backed Treefrogs, Genus Osteocephalus (Amphibia: Anura: Hylidae)
(2015)
The pan-Amazonian treefrog genus Ostecephalus is poorly understood both on a taxonomic and phylogenetic level. The status of several frogs already or not yet referred to the genus is unclear and the relationships among the genus and with respect to related genera is not understood. In this work O. cabrerai (Cochran and Goin, 1970) from Colombia and Peru is redescribed and O. festae (Peracca, 1904) from the foothills of the Andes in Ecuador is revalidated. Hyla inframaculata Boulenger, 1882, from the lower Amazon in Brazil, is reallocated to Osteocephalus and O. elkejungingerae (Henle, 1981) from the Andean foothills in Peru is shown to be a synonym of Hyla mimetica (Melin, 1941), the valid name being O. mimeticus. Hyla vilarsi Melin, 1941 is considered a valid species in the genus Osteocephalus and revalidated from the synonymies of several other frogs. Three new species, O. castaneicola from northern Bolivia and southern Peru, O. duellmani from a sub-Andean mountain range in southern Ecuador, and O. camufatus from central Amazonian Brazil, are described. A phylogenetic analysis based on up to nine mitochondrial genes and one nuclear one reveals the paraphyly of the genus as previously understood with respect to the genus Tepuihyla. A new taxonomy is proposed, securing the monophyly of Osteocephalus and Tepuihyla by rearranging and redefining the content of both genera. A new genus, Dryaderces, is erected for the sister group of Osteocephalus. The colouration of newly metamorphosed individuals is proposed as a morphological synapomorphy for Osteocephalus. Five monophyletic species groups within Osteocephalus are recognized, three species of Osteocephalus (O. germani, O.rnphasmatus, O. vilmae) and three species of Tepuihyla (T. celsae, T. galani, T. talbergae) synonymized and three species (Hyla helenae to Osteocephalus, O.rnexophthalmus to Tepuihyla and O. pearsoni to Dryaderces gen. n.) reallocated. Furthermore, nine putative new species are flagged (an increase to 138% of the current diversity), an indication that species numbers are largely underestimated, with most hidden diversity centred on widespread and polymorphic nominal species. The evolutionary origin of breeding strategies within Osteocephalus is discussed in the light of this new phylogeny and a novel type of amplexus (gular amplexus) is described.
Simulation von Schnee
(2015)
Physic simulations allow the creation of dynamic scenes on the computer. Computer generated images become lively and find use in movies, games and engineering applications. GPGPU techniques make use of the graphics card to simulate physics. The simulation of dynamic snow is still little researched. The Material Point Method is the first technique which is capable of showing the dynamics andrncharacteristics of snow.
The hybrid use of Lagrangian particles and a regular cartesian grid enables solving of partial differential equations. Therefore articles are transformed to the grid. The grid velocities can then be updated with the calculation of gradients in an FEM-manner (finite element method). Finally grid node velocities are weight back to the particles to move them across the scene. This method is coupled with a constitutive model to cover the dynamic nature of snow. This include collisions and breaking.
This bachelor thesis connects the recent developments in GPGPU techniques of OpenGL with the Material Point Method to efficiently simulate visually compelling, dynamic snow scenes.
The mitral valve is one of the four valves in the human heart. It is located in the left heart chamber and its function is to control the blood flow from the left atrium to the left ventricle. Pathologies can lead to malfunctions of the valve so that blood can flow back to the atrium. Patients with a faulty mitral valve function may suffer from fatigue and chest pain. The functionality can be surgically restored, which is often a long and exhaustive intervention. Thorough planning is necessary to ensure a safe and effective surgery. This can be supported by creating pre-operative segmentations of the mitral valve. A post-operative analysis can determine the success of an intervention. This work will combine existing and new ideas to propose a new approach to (semi-)automatically create such valve models. The manual part can guarantee a high quality model and reliability, whereas the automatic part contributes to saving valuable labour time.
The main contributions of the automatic algorithm are an estimated semantic separation of the two leaflets of the mitral valve and an optimization process that is capable of finding a coaptation-line and -area between the leaflets. The segmentation method can perform a fully automatic segmentation of the mitral leaflets if the annulus ring is already given. The intermediate steps of this process will be integrated into a manual segmentation method so a user can guide the whole procedure. The quality of the valve models generated by the method proposed in this work will be measured by comparing them to completely manually segmented models. This will show that commonly used methods to measure the quality of a segmentation are too general and do not suffice to reflect the real quality of a model. Consequently the work at hand will introduce a set of measurements that can qualify a mitral valve segmentation in more detail and with respect to anatomical landmarks. Besides the intra-operative support for a surgeon, a segmented mitral valve provides additional benefits. The ability to patient-specifically obtain and objectively describe the valve anatomy may be the base for future medical research in this field and automation allows to process large data sets with reduced expert dependency. Further, simulation methods that use the segmented models as input may predict the outcome of a surgery.
The increasing, anthropogenic demand for chemicals has created large environmental problems with repercussions for the health of the environment, especially aquatic ecosystems. As a result, the awareness of the public and decision makers on the risks from chemical pollution has increased over the past half-century, prompting a large number of studies in the field of ecological toxicology (ecotoxicology). However, the majority of ecotoxicological studies are laboratory based, and the few studies extrapolating toxicological effects in the field are limited to local and regional levels. Chemical risk assessment on large spatial scales remains largely unexplored, and therefore, the potential large-scale effects of chemicals may be overlooked.
To answer ecotoxicological questions, multidisciplinary approaches that transcend classical chemical and toxicological concepts are required. For instance, the current models for toxicity predictions - which are mainly based on the prediction of toxicity for a single compound and species - can be expanded to simultaneously predict the toxicity for different species and compounds. This can be done by integrating chemical concepts such as the physicochemical properties of the compounds with evolutionary concepts such as the similarity of species. This thesis introduces new, multidisciplinary tools for chemical risk assessments, and presents for the first time a chemical risk assessment on the continental scale.
After a brief introduction of the main concepts and objectives of the studies, this thesis starts by presenting a new method for assessing the physiological sensitivity of macroinvertebrate species to heavy metals (Chapter 2). To compare the sensitivity of species to different heavy metals, toxicity data were standardized to account for the different laboratory conditions. These rankings were not significantly different for different heavy metals, allowing the aggregation of physiological sensitivity into a single ranking.
Furthermore, the toxicological data for macroinvertebrates were used as input data to develop and validate prediction models for heavy metal toxicity, which are currently lacking for a wide array of species (Chapter 3). Apart from the toxicity data, the phylogenetic information of species (evolutionary relationships among species) and the physicochemical parameters for heavy metals were used. The constructed models had a good explanatory power for the acute sensitivity of species to heavy metals with the majority of the explained variance attributed to phylogeny. Therefore, the integration of evolutionary concepts (relatedness and similarity of species) with the chemical parameters used in ecotoxicology improved prediction models for species lacking experimental toxicity data. The ultimate goal of the prediction models developed in this thesis is to provide accurate predictions of toxicity for a wide range of species and chemicals, which is a crucial prerequisite for conducting chemical risk assessment.
The latter was conducted for the first time on the continental scale (Chapter 4), by making use of a dataset of 4,000 sites distributed throughout 27 European countries and 91 respective river basins. Organic chemicals were likely to exert acute risks for one in seven sites analyzed, while chronic risk was prominent for almost half of the sites. The calculated risks are potentially underestimated by the limited number of chemicals that are routinely analyzed in monitoring programmes, and a series of other uncertainties related with the limit of quantification, the presence of mixtures, or the potential for sublethal effects not covered by direct toxicity.
Furthermore, chemical risk was related to agricultural and urban areas in the upstream catchments. The analysis of ecological data indicated chemical impacts on the ecological status of the river systems; however, it is difficult to discriminate the effects of chemical pollution from other stressors that river systems are exposed to. To test the hypothesis of multiple stressors, and investigate the relative importance of organic toxicants, a dataset for German streams is used in chapter 5. In that study, the risk from abiotic (habitat degradation, organic chemicals, and nutrients enrichment) and biotic stressors (invasive species) was investigated. The results indicated that more than one stressor influenced almost all sites. Stream size and ecoregions influenced the distribution of risks, e.g., the risks for habitat degradation, organic chemicals and invasive species increased with the stream size; whereas organic chemicals and nutrients were more likely to influence lowland streams. In order to successfully mitigate the effects of pollutants in river systems, co-occurrence of stressors has to be considered. Overall, to successfully apply integrated water management strategies, a framework involving multiple environmental stressors on large spatial scales is necessary. Furthermore, to properly address the current research needs in ecotoxicology, a multidisciplinary approach is necessary which integrates fields such as, toxicology, ecology, chemistry and evolutionary biology.
The present work introduces a rigid-body physics engine, focusing on the collision detection by GPU. The increasing performance and accessibility of modern graphics cards ensures that they can be also used for algorithms that are meant not only for imaging. This advantage is used to implement an efficient collision detection based on particles. The performance differences between CPU and GPU are presented by using a test environment.
Real-time graphics applications are tending to get more realistic and approximate real world illumination gets more reasonable due to improvement of graphics hardware. Using a wide variation of algorithms and ideas, graphics processing units (GPU) can simulate complex lighting situations rendering computer generated imagery with complicated effects such as shadows, refraction and reflection of light. Particularly, reflections are an improvement of realism, because they make shiny materials, e.g. brushed metals, wet surfaces like puddles or polished floors, appear more realistic and reveal information of their properties such as roughness and reflectance. Moreover, reflections can get more complex, depending on the view: a wet surface like a street during rain for example will reflect lights depending on the distance of the viewer, resulting in more streaky reflection, which will look more stretched, if the viewer is locatedrnfarther away from the light source. This bachelor thesis aims to give an overview of the state-of-the-art in terms of rendering reflections. Understanding light is a basic need to understand reflections and therefore a physical model of light and its reflection will be covered in section 2, followed by the motivational section 2.2, that will give visual appealing examples for reflections from the real world and the media. Coming to rendering techniques, first, the main principle will be explained in section 3 followed by a short general view of a wide variety of approaches that try to generate correct reflections in section 4. This thesis will describe the implementation of three major algorithms, that produce plausible local reflections. Therefore, the developed framework is described in section 5, then three major algorithms will be covered, that are common methods in most current game and graphics engines: Screen space reflections (SSR), parallax-corrected cube mapping (PCCM) and billboard reflections (BBR). After describing their functional principle, they will be analysed of their visual quality and the possibilities of their real-time application. Finally they will be compared to each other to investigate the advantages and disadvantages over each other. In conclusion, the gained experiences will be described by summarizing advantages and disadvantages of each technique and giving suggestions for improvements. A short perspective will be given, trying to create a view of upcoming real-time rendering techniques for the creation of reflections as specular effects.
101worker is the modular knowledge engineering component of the 101companies project. It has developed maintainability and performance problems due to growing organically, rather than following best software design practices. This thesis lays out these problems, drafts a set of requirements for refactoring the system and then describes and analyzes the resulting implementation. The solution involves collation of scattered and redundant information, setup of unit and functional test suites and incrementalization of the bus architecture of 101worker.