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This dissertation presents a probabilistic state estimation framework for integrating data-driven machine learning models and a deformable facial shape model in order to estimate continuous-valued intensities of 22 different facial muscle movements, known as Action Units (AU), defined in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). A practical approach is proposed and validated for integrating class-wise probability scores from machine learning models within a Gaussian state estimation framework. Furthermore, driven mass-spring-damper models are applied for modelling the dynamics of facial muscle movements. Both facial shape and appearance information are used for estimating AU intensities, making it a hybrid approach. Several features are designed and explored to help the probabilistic framework to deal with multiple challenges involved in automatic AU detection. The proposed AU intensity estimation method and its features are evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively using three different datasets containing either spontaneous or acted facial expressions with AU annotations. The proposed method produced temporally smoother estimates that facilitate a fine-grained analysis of facial expressions. It also performed reasonably well, even though it simultaneously estimates intensities of 22 AUs, some of which are subtle in expression or resemble each other closely. The estimated AU intensities tended to the lower range of values, and were often accompanied by a small delay in onset. This shows that the proposed method is conservative. In order to further improve performance, state-of-the-art machine learning approaches for AU detection could be integrated within the proposed probabilistic AU intensity estimation framework.
Funktionseinschränkungen nach erworbener Hirnschädigung können die Mobilität der Betroffenen beeinträchtigen und zu gravierenden Änderungen des Lebensstils bis hin zur Inaktivität führen. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass ein inaktiver Lebensstil den Gesundheitszustand weiter verschlechtert und sich für die Betroffenen daraus ein erhöhtes Risiko für weitere chronische Erkrankungen ergibt. Bisherige Studienergebnisse beschreiben weder das Aktivitätsverhalten von Menschen mit erworbener Hirnschädigung noch wurden geeignete Interventionen zur nachhaltigen Steigerung der körperlichen Aktivität (KA) entwickelt. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es ein umfassendes Abbild des Aktivitätsverhaltens im Alltag von Menschen mit erworbener Hirnschädigung zu erstellen sowie die Machbarkeit und die Auswirkungen einer Bewegungsintervention auf das Aktivitätsverhalten und die Lebensqualität zu untersuchen.
The generation and maintenance of intricate spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression in multicellular organisms requires the establishment of complex mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. Estimations that up to one million enhancers exist in the human genome accentuates the utmost importance of this type of cis-regulatory element for gene regulation. However, surprisingly little is known about the mechanisms used to temporarily or permanently activate or inactivate enhancers during cellular differentiation. The current work addresses the question how enhancer regulation can be achieved.
Using the chemokine (C-C motif) ligand gene Ccl22 as a model, the first example is based on the question how the activation of an enhancer can be prevented in a physiological context. Ccl22 is expressed by myeloid cells, such as dendritic cells, upon exposure to inflammatory stimuli. The expression in other cell types, such as fibroblasts, is prevented by the strong accumulation of H3K9me3 at the enhancer's proximal region. This accumulation is attenuated in myeloid cells through activity of the stimulus-induced demethylase Jmjd2d. To tease out which genomic fragment or fragments in the Ccl22 locus could be responsible for the maintenance of enhancer inactivity, potentially through the recruitment of H3K9 methyltransferases, the enhancer repressing capacity of 1 kb fragments of the gene locus was analysed in retroviral reporter assays. It was found that a fragment adjacent to the Ccl22 enhancer that overlaps with a member of a subfamily of long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) showed strong repressive potential on a model enhancer. Subsequent retroviral reporter assays with LINEs from loci of other stimulus-dependent genes identified additional LINE fragments that exhibit strong enhancer repressive capacity. These findings suggest a mechanism for enhancer silencing involving LINEs.
The second example concentrates on the inactivation of an enhancer during colorectal cancer (CRC) progression. The adenoma to carcinoma transition during CRC progression often is accompanied by a downregulation of the tumour suppressor gene EPHB2. The EMT inducing factor SNAIL1 strongly downregulated EPHB2 expression in a CRC cell model. To gain insights into the transcriptional regulation of EPHB2, potential cis-regulatory elements in the EPHB2 upstream region were analysed using reporter assays. A cell-type-specific enhancer was identified and subsequent chromatin analyses revealed a correlation between enhancer chromatin conformation and EPHB2 expression in different CRC cell lines. Additionally, the overexpression of the murine Snail1 induced chromatin changes at the EPHB2 enhancer towards a poised, transcriptionally silent chromatin conformation. Mutational analyses of the minimal enhancer region pinpointed three transcription factor binding motifs to be essential for full enhancer activity. Different binding patterns between CRC cell lines at the TCF/LEF motif were subsequently identified. Furthermore, a switch from TCF7L2 to LEF1 occupancy was found upon overexpression of Snail1 in vitro and in vivo. The generation of LS174T CRC cells overexpressing LEF1 confirmed the involvement of LEF1 in the downregulation of EPHB2 and the competitive displacement of TCF7L2. This part of the work demonstrated that the SNAIL1 induced downregulation of EPHB2 is dependent on the decommissioning of a transcriptional enhancer and led to a hypothetical model involving LEF1 and ZEB1.
In summary, this work highlighted two distinct mechanisms for enhancer regulation. One mechanism is based on enhancer repressive LINE fragments that might prevent stimulus-dependent enhancer activation. In the second, enhancer silencing was shown to be based on a competitive transcription factor binding mechanism.
Obwohl kulturbezogene Fragestellungen eine zentrale Rolle für die erfolgreiche Implementierung von Anwendungssystemen und IKT spielen, erfolgen kulturbezogene Untersuchungen in der Disziplin oft zu unkritisch: Kulturelle Kontexte werden in der Literatur häufig nicht klar abgegrenzt, und verwendete Begriffe werden nicht oder nur unzureichend definiert. Darüber hinaus werden kulturbezogene Untersuchungen, die eigentlich Besonderheiten abgegrenzter Gesellschaften (z. B. Kundensegmente) aufdecken sollen, oft ohne weitere Prüfung auf der Ebene von Nationalkultur untersucht. Die Problematik eines zu unkritischen und bisweilen sogar unangemessenen Umgangs mit kulturbezogenen Fragestellungen ist nicht auf die Wirtschaftsinformatik begrenzt sondern zieht sich durch nahezu alle Disziplinen, die "Kultur" als eine unter vielen Einflussgrößen betrachten. In dieser Arbeit wird ein praktischer Ansatz entwickelt, mit dessen Hilfe nicht nur der eigene kulturbezogene Forschungskontext abgegrenzt werden, sondern darüber hinaus auch noch herausgefunden werden kann, ob bereits verfügbare Forschungsansätze ggf. auf den eigenen Kontext passen könnten. Als Ergebnisse der Arbeit wurde ein Schritt-für-Schritt Leitfaden erstellt und eine Vergleichsbasis geschaffen, die auf einer in ihrem Umfang bislang einzigartigen Sammlung bereits verfügbarer Kulturbeschreibungsansätze beruht.
The topic of this PhD project is in the context of cross-reality, a term that defines mixed reality environments that tunnel dense real-world data acquired through the use of sensor/actuator device networks into virtual worlds. It is part of the ongoing academia and industry efforts to achieve interoperability between virtual and real devices and services.
Multi-hop Netze sind seit vielen Jahren Forschungsthema. Seit einigen Jahren gibt es auch erste Realisierungen solcher Netze. Sie ermöglichen es, ohne feste Infrastruktur sich selbst organisierende Netze zu realisieren. Dies macht sie für vielfältige zivile wie taktische Szenarien interessant. In der vorliegenden Arbeit liegt der Fokus auf taktischen Szenarien, wie Szenarien der öffentlichen Sicherheit, militärischen oder Katastrophenszenarien. In solchen Szenarien kann für die Kommunikation auf der letzten Meile nicht von existierender Kommunikationsinfrastruktur ausgegangen werden. Taktische multi-hop Netze stellen eine Möglichkeit dar, die Kommunikation auf der letzen Meile trotzdem zu realisieren.
Software offshoring has been established as an important business strategy over the last decade. While research on such forms of Global Software Development (GSD) has mainly focused on the situation of large enterprises, small enterprises are increasingly engaging in offshoring, too. Representing the biggest share of the German software industry, small companies are known to be important innovators and market pioneers. They often regard their flexibility and customer-orientation as core competitive advantages. Unlike large corporations, their small size allows them to adopt software development approaches that are characterized by a high agility and flat hierarchies. At the same time, their distinct strategies make it unlikely that they can simply adopt management strategies that were developed for larger companies.
Flexible development approaches like the ones preferred by small corporations have proven to be problematic in the context of offshoring, as their strong dependency on constant communication is strongly affected by the various barriers of international cooperation between companies. Cooperating closely over companies’ borders in different time zones and in culturally diverse teams poses complex obstacles for flexible management approaches. It is still a matter of discussion in fields like Software Engineering and Computer Supported Cooperative Work how these obstacles can be tackled and how they affect companies in the long term. Hence, it is agreed that we need a more detailed understanding of distributed software development practices in order to come to feasible technological and organizational solutions.
This dissertation presents results from two ethnographically-informed case studies of software offshoring in small German enterprises. By adopting Anselm Strauss’ concept of articulation work, we want to deepen the understanding of managing distributed software development in flexible, customer-oriented organizations. In doing so, we show how practices of coordinating inter-organizational software development are closely related to aspects of organizational learning in small enterprises. By means of interviews with developers and project managers from both parties of the cooperation, we do not only take into account the multiple perspectives of the cooperation, but also include the socio-cultural background of international software development projects into our analysis.
Action planning has been used in the field of robotics for solving long-running tasks. In the robot architectures field, it is also known as the deliberative layer. However, there is still a gap between the symbolic representation on the one hand and the low-level control and sensor representation on the other. In addition, the definition of a planning problem for a complex, real-world robot is not trivial. The planning process could become intractable as its search spaces become large.
This thesis is dedicated to models and algorithms for the use in physical cryptanalysis which is a new evolving discipline in implementation security of information systems.
Physical observables such as the power consumption or electromagnetic emanation of a cryptographic module are so-called `side channels'. They contain exploitable information about internal states of an implementation at runtime. Physical effects can also be used for the injection of faults. Fault injection is successful if it recovers internal states by examining the effects of an erroneous state propagating through the computation.
The best currently known approach in physical cryptanalysis is a thorough experimental verification at a profiling stage, which is included in methods achieving maximum power. The final multivariate algorithms of this thesis can be seen as the most efficient ones in side channel cryptanalysis.