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This paper describes the robots TIAGo and Lisa used by
team homer@UniKoblenz of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany,
for the participation at the RoboCup@Home 2019 in Sydney,
Australia. We ended up first at RoboCup@Home 2019 in the Open Platform
League and won the competition in our league now three times
in a row (four times in total) which makes our team the most successful
in RoboCup@Home. We demonstrated approaches for learning from
demonstration, touch enforcing manipulation and autonomous semantic
exploration in the finals. A special focus is put on novel system components
and the open source contributions of our team. We have released
packages for object recognition, a robot face including speech synthesis,
mapping and navigation, speech recognition interface, gesture recognition
and imitation learning. The packages are available (and new packages
will be released) on http://homer.uni-koblenz.de.
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.
The bio-insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) has worldwide become the most commonly used agentin mosquito control programs that pursue two main objectives: the control of vector-borne diseases and the reduction of nuisance, mainly coming frommosquitoes that emerge in large quantities from seasonal wetlands. The Upper Rhine Valley, a biodiversity hotspot in Germany, has been treated withBti for decades to reduce mosquito-borne nuisance and increase human well-being.Although Btiis presumed to be an environmentally safe agent,adverse effects on wetland ecosystems are still a matter of debate especially when it comes to long-term and indirect effects on non-target organisms. In light of the above, this thesis aims at investigating direct and indirect effects of Bti-based mosquito control on non-target organisms within wetland food chains.Effects were examinedin studies with increasingeco(toxico)logical complexity, ranging from laboratory over mesocosm to field approaches with a focus on the non-biting Chironomidae and amphibian larvae (Rana temporaria, Lissotriton sp.).In addition, public acceptance of environmentally less invasive alternative mosquito control methods was evaluated within surveys among the local population.
Chironomids were the most severely affected non-target aquatic invertebrates. Bti substantially reduced larval and adult chironomid abundances and modified their species composition. Repeated exposures to commonly used Bti formulations induced sublethal alterations of enzymatic biomarkers activityin frog tadpoles. Bti-induced reductions of chironomid prey availability indirectly decreased body size of newts at metamorphosis and increased predation on newt larvae in mesocosm experiments. Indirect effects of severe reductions in midge biomassmight equally be passed through aquatic but also terrestrial food chains influencing predators of higher trophic levels. The majority ofaffectedpeople in the Upper Rhine Valley expressed a high willingness to contributefinancially to environmentally less harmful mosquito control.Alternative approaches could still include Bti applications excepting treatment of ecologically valuable areas. Potentially rising mosquito levels could be counteracted with local acting mosquito traps in domestic and urban areas because mosquito presence was experienced as most annoying in the home environment.
As Bti-based mosquito control can adversely affect wetland ecosystems, its large-scale applications, including nature conservation areas, should be considered more carefully to avoid harmful consequences for the environmentat the Upper Rhine Valley.This thesis emphasizesthe importance to reconsiderthe current practice of mosquito control and encourage research on alternative mosquito control concepts that are endorsed by the local population. In the context ofthe ongoing amphibian and insect declinesfurther human-induced effects onwetlands should be avoided to preserve biodiversity in functioning ecosystems.
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.
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 loss of biodiversity is recognised on a global scale and also in the anthropogenic landscapes used for agriculture, now covering almost 50% of the global terrestrial land surface. In agriculture pesticides, biologically active chemicals are deliberately distributed to control pests, disease and weeds in the cropped areas. The quantification of remaining semi-naturals structures such as field margins and hedges is a prerequisite to understand the impact of pesticides on biodiversity, since these structures represent habitats for many organisms in agricultural landscapes. The presence of organisms in these habitats and crops is required to obtain an estimate of their potential pesticide exposure. In this text I provide studies on animal groups so far not addressed in risk assessment procedures for the regulation of pesticides such as amphibians, moths and bats. For all groups it becomes apparent that they are present in agricultural landscapes and potentially coincide with pesticide applications indicating a risk. Risk quantification also requires data on the sensitivity of organisms and here data for plants, amphibians and bees are presented. Effects translating to community level were studied for herbicide, insecticide and fertiliser effects in a natural system. After three years the treatments resulted in simplified plant communities with lower species numbers and a reduction in flowering plants. This reduction of flowers is used as an example for an indirect effect and was especially obvious for the effect of an herbicide on the common buttercup. Sublethal herbicide effects for a plant translated in an impact on feeding caterpillars, indicating a reduction in food quality. Insecticide inputs realistic for field margins also reduced moth pollination of white champion flowers by 30%. These indirect effects by distortions of food web characteristics are playing a critical role to understand declines in organism groups, however so far are not accounted for in pesticide risk assessment schemes. The current intense use of pesticides in agriculture and their inherent toxicity may lead to a chemical landscape fragmentation, where populations may not be connected anymore. Source-sink dynamics are important ecological processes and as a final result not only population size but also genetic population structure might be affected. Including potential pesticide impacts as costs in a model for amphibians migrating to breeding ponds in vineyards in Rhineland-Palatinate indicated the isolation of investigated populations. A first validation by analyzing the population structure of the European common frog confirmed the model prediction for some sites. For the regulation of pesticides in Europe a risk assessment is required and for the organisms of the terrestrial habitat a multitude of guidance documents is in place or is recently developed or improved. The results of the presented research indicate that wild plants and especially their reproductive flower stage are highly sensitive and risks are underestimated. Population recovery of arthropods needs a reevaluation at landscape scale and the addition of amphibian risk assessment in regulation procedures is suggested. However, developing or adopting risk assessment procedures and test systems is a time consuming task and therefore the establishment of risk management options is a pragmatic alternative with immediate effects. Artificial wetlands in the agricultural landscape proved to be important foraging sites for bats and their creation could mitigate negative pesticide effects. The integration of direct and indirect effects in a risk assessment scheme for all organism groups addressing also landscape scale and pesticide mixtures requires a long developing time. The establishment of model landscapes where management options and integrated pest management are applied on a larger scale would allow us to study pesticide effects in a realistic scenario and to develop an approach for the agriculture of the future.
Software systems have an increasing impact on our daily lives. Many systems process sensitive data or control critical infrastructure. Providing secure software is therefore inevitable. Such systems are rarely being renewed regularly due to the high costs and effort. Oftentimes, systems that were planned and implemented to be secure, become insecure because their context evolves. These systems are connected to the Internet and therefore also constantly subject to new types of attacks. The security requirements of these systems remain unchanged, while, for example, discovery of a vulnerability of an encryption algorithm previously assumed to be secure requires a change of the system design. Some security requirements cannot be checked by the system’s design but only at run time. Furthermore, the sudden discovery of a security violation requires an immediate reaction to prevent a system shutdown. Knowledge regarding security best practices, attacks, and mitigations is generally available, yet rarely integrated part of software development or covering evolution.
This thesis examines how the security of long-living software systems can be preserved taking into account the influence of context evolutions. The goal of the proposed approach, S²EC²O, is to recover the security of model-based software systems using co-evolution.
An ontology-based knowledge base is introduced, capable of managing common, as well as system-specific knowledge relevant to security. A transformation achieves the connection of the knowledge base to the UML system model. By using semantic differences, knowledge inference, and the detection of inconsistencies in the knowledge base, context knowledge evolutions are detected.
A catalog containing rules to manage and recover security requirements uses detected context evolutions to propose potential co-evolutions to the system model which reestablish the compliance with security requirements.
S²EC²O uses security annotations to link models and executable code and provides support for run-time monitoring. The adaptation of running systems is being considered as is round-trip engineering, which integrates insights from the run time into the system model.
S²EC²O is amended by prototypical tool support. This tool is used to show S²EC²O’s applicability based on a case study targeting the medical information system iTrust.
This thesis at hand contributes to the development and maintenance of long-living software systems, regarding their security. The proposed approach will aid security experts: It detects security-relevant changes to the system context, determines the impact on the system’s security and facilitates co-evolutions to recover the compliance with the security requirements.
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.
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.