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In today’s business, culture plays a vital role or to a high degree influences the attitude, perception and decision making process of an individual. Culture is an unavoidable state of rules and regulations that defines people’s daily life in a particular environment or society. There are plenty examples of business failures or stagnation or failure of joint ventures, on account of the management's inability to recognize cross-cultural challenges and tackle them appropriately.
OpenDaylight (ODL) is a commercial, collaborative, open-source platform to accelerate the adoption and innovation of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Visualization. This paper describes the novel ODL architecture in a simplified way to grasp a better understanding of such architecture. ODL architecture intends to foster new innovation and accelerate adoption of programming the network. The innovation of Model-Driven Service Abstraction Layer (MD-SAL) in the architecture leads to developing models for automatic management and configuration of the networks. MD-SAL provides ODL with the ability to support any protocol talking to the network elements as well as any network application. The flexibility inherent in ODL architecture could enable ODL to shape the next generation networks.
This study sought to determine the relationship between entrepreneurial education and youth employability and economic development in Kenya. A descriptive cross sectional design was used to collect data, with the main data collection instrument being a semi structured questionnaire. The population of the study comprised the micro, small and medium scale enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya. Out of the 100 questionnaires issued, 93 were completed and returned giving a response rate of 93%. Descriptive analysis (means and standard deviations ) and inferential analysis was used to analyze the data. Regression and correlation analysis was done to test the hypotheses. It was found that several indicators of entrepreneurial education had a significantly positive influence on youth employability. For example, entrepreneurial education enhances opportunity recognition as an indicator of entrepreneurial education was statistically significantly correlated with the statement that entrepreneurship endeavor is an employment alternative as an indicator of youth employability (r = 331**, P = 0.01). Similarly, the statement that entrepreneurial education sharpens competitiveness had a significantly positive influence on the statement that entrepreneurship endevour is an employment alternative (r =.313** P = 0.01). The overall model for entrepreneurial education and youth employability had an R Square value of 0.151, and an F value of 3.086, (p = 0.013 < 0.05), indicating that the influence is significant at the 0.05 level. The study found that most indicators of youth employability had a significantly positive correlation with indicators of economic development. It was found that there was a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development and entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (r =0.304**, P = 0.01), while entrepreneurial education enhances new product and service development also has a positive correlation with entrepreneurial education reduces youth unemployment (.304** , P = 0.01). The overall model for youth employability and economic development had an R square value of .087 and F value of 2.103, p =0.87 > 0.05, indication that although youth employability is responsible for 8.7% of economic development, the effect is not statistically significant. The implication for this is that entrepreneurial education should be encouraged as a way of enhancing entrepreneurial thinking among the youth, so that they can use this to venture into self employment. However, this study did not find a significant direct link between youth employability and economic development, and this can only be implied. We suggest increased government support for entrepreneurship training and for closer industry university collaboration and partnerships in order to accelerate economic development.
Access to affordable energy - for basic needs as well as for national economic development - is a crucial concern for developing countries. Access to modern and sustainable energy services in rural areas, where the majority of the population is living in poverty, is a particularly urgent challenge, and one which has been recognized as crucial within the global development agenda.
The current dominant development model, focused on achieving macro-economic growth, gives priority to large-scale or centralized energy infrastructures for national growth or for meeting the urban demand. Rural areas of poorer countries are often at a disadvantage in terms of access to all types of services – roads, health facilities, markets, information and clean water. The high cost of providing these services in remote areas has led to new approaches being tried, based on self-help and the private sector rather than traditional government-led solutions. The missing access to electricity is primarily the reason for the poor operational environment of entrepreneurship especially in rural areas of developing countries, which poses many barriers to their development and limits their competitiveness. Energy services for household, agriculture and production serve as best examples as sectors exposed to enable entrepreneurship by productive use of renewable energy.
This paper describes the line-up, the challenges and the outcome of a development project in rural Ethiopia to support entrepreneurship based on the usage of renewable energy, in this case mainly photo-voltaic technology. In particular, this study tries to show up key features which are required to enable sustainable energy access and foster implementation challenges of developed business models in practice. Based on this experience, the paper discusses implications and lessons learned for a further development.
The non-farm sector is critical for the socio-economic development of Ghana especially the rural poor. Literature suggest that people engage in non-farm enterprises as a way out of poverty or a survival strategy, perhaps as a substitute for the landless. This paper analyses the determinants of individual participation in non-farm enterprises and the intensity of participation. The paper uses EGC/ISSER Socio-Economic Panel Survey data collected in 2009. The paper estimated the determinants of participation using a probit model and then estimated the intensity of participation using a truncated regression model. The results indicate that majority of women (about 73%) are engaged in non-farm enterprises in rural Ghana. The study found that females tended to participate more in non-farm self-employment and are less likely to participate in non-farm wage employment. The results further showed that individual characteristics such as the gender of the individual, being head of a household, being the spouse of a household head, having formal education, age of the individual, having access to credit, possessing a mobile phone, per capita landing holding and ownership of livestock influenced the participation of individuals in self-and wage employment. Results from truncated regression model for self-employed enterprises showed that having access to mobile phones, owning more livestock and electricity are important in determining the intensity of participation in self-employed enterprises. For wage-employment, being a household head, spouse of household head, having access to mobile phone and owning more livestock increased the number of days working on wage employment. Education is relevant for employment in the non-farm sector especially wage-employment. Government should play a lead role in making formal education accessible to the rural people. Deliberate policies should focus on addressing critical factors such as access to credit, mobile phone, electricity and education which are relevant for increasing participation intensity in rural enterprises.
Over the past decades, growing trends in social media, e-literacy and globalisation have led to the increased use of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in offices, schools, homes, hospitals and other institutions. Although, there are more efforts at introducing diversity, innovation and increased use of EEE, there had been limited effort at managing the end?of?life of these electronic devices. Evidence from previous research showed that the management of the end of life of electronic waste is highly dominated by Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in the informal sector who employ more crude technology in their operations. This exploratory study therefore, sought to examine the activities of corporate bodies and MSMEs (formal and informal) in the e-waste sector in the Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan Areas in Ghana. Data was collected via questionnaires and interview from randomly selected respondents in the two metropolises. Results reveal that even though corporate institutions import a lot of electrical and electronic equipment, they do not have any policies on disposal of the e-waste generated. Thus, a high percentage of the e-waste generated is processed by the informal sector. The implications of the results are that policy makers and other stakeholders should encourage MSMEs to formalize their activities, support investment and green business development as well as funding and training for MSMEs operating in the sector.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are engine of economy both for developed and developing countries. They play a significant role in income generation, job creation, poverty reduction and reducing income inequality. In Burundi, key stakeholders such as policy-makers as well as other international and national actors have made more effort to develop the segment of SMEs. Indeed, many start-ups have been created but are however, exposed to several challenges in their business operations. This paper aimed at investigating main critical barriers to SMEs growth and development in Burundi. The research was based upon a sample survey of small firms in Burundi and 314 small enterprises were surveyed. Rural start-ups’ critical barriers identified are mainly poor management, lack of access to market flow, lack of working capital, inadequate qualified workforce and low selling prices. On the other hand, five severe obstacles for urban SMEs identified are insecurity, access to financing, macroeconomic situation, lack of customers and unfair competition. A better understanding of all these barriers that SMEs are facing is useful to set up best strategies susceptible to increase their growth.
Entrepreneurship education serves a conduit for new venture creation as it provides the knowledge and skills needed to increase the self-efficacy of individuals to start and run new businesses and to grow existing ones. This study, therefore, sought to assess the relationship between the approaches to the teaching of entrepreneur-ship and entrepreneurial intention on a cohort of 292 respondents consisting of students who have studied entrepreneurship in three selected Universities. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data randomly from students. The canonical correlation results indicate that education for and through entrepreneurship is the best approach to promoting entrepreneurial intensity among University students, if the aim of teaching entrepreneur-ship is to promote start-up activities. The findings provide valuable insights for institutions of higher learning and policy makers in Ghana with respect to the appropriate methodologies to be adopted in the teaching of entrepreneurship in our universities.
Media development cooperation has aimed for decades at enhancing free and independent media in developing countries as well as economies in transition. Within this field of activity, the concept of media viability has gained more and more attention in recent years. This is mainly due to a proposal of UNESCO`s intergovernmental Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). The UNESCO, in partnership with DW Akademie, has drafted a list of indicators that delineate the influencing factors of media viability for media organizations in any given country (UNESCO 2015).
As a consequence of the novelty of the media viability concept, the state of scientific research is restricted. It is frequently focused on isolated case studies without providing a scientific basis for comparison. Empirical studies and comparative analyses are limited to certain media sectors such as the print market, as well as for journalism startups and spin-offs in developed economies.
We present a new interface for interactive comparisons of more than two alternative documents in the context of a generative design system that uses generative data-flow networks defined via directed acyclic graphs. To better show differences between such networks, we emphasize added, deleted, (un)changed nodes and edges. We emphasize differences in the output as well as parameters using highlighting and enable post-hoc merging of the state of a parameter across a selected set of alternatives. To minimize visual clutter, we introduce new difference visualizations for selected nodes and alternatives using additive and subtractive encodings, which improve readability and keep visual clutter low. We analyzed similarities in networks from a set of alternative designs produced by architecture students and found that the number of similarities outweighs the differences, which motivates use of subtractive encoding. We ran a user study to evaluate the two main proposed difference visualization encodings and found that they are equally effective.
Biomass in general, wood and grasses in particular represent attractive renewable sources for the fabrication of so-called building block chemicals (1). Thus, environmentally benign antimicrobial nanoparticles based on a silver-infused lignin core were recently reported underlying the high potential for valorization of lignin (2). The contribution presents specific correlations regarding the structural differences of lignins depending on both: source (wood vs. grass) and isolation procedure (Kraft vs. Organosolv). Special focus will be drawn on detailed structure deviations caused by Miscanthus genotypes (M. gigantheus, M. robustus, M. sisnensis).
In Africa slowly but steadily a transformation is taking place in the management styles of enterprises. There is a trend towards more precise time management, more precision in dealing with increasingly sophisticated technology, more feedback from the bottom to the top in order to manage the processes properly, more professionalism and independence of the individual worker.
This contribution makes two points: first, neither cultures nor the so-called mental states of individuals are ever static, but always on the move. Second, the force of passion and inspiration by which particular cultural values are endorsed in a particular context makes all the difference in their impact.
The importance of these two propositions comes to the fore, if the concept of an “economic culture” is taken into consideration. The claim of the authors is that the ongoing cultural transformation can be better understood in the dynamic approach of cultural values as proposed here.
Entrepreneurship Development and New Business Challenges and Prospects for Ghanaian Entrepreneurs’
(2017)
This paper presents a framework for formulating strategies for business start-ups within the context of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in diverse industries. Using Ghana as a case study, it addresses how to increase entrepreneurs’ success rate in business ventures in developing countries. The objective of the study is to identify avenues through which entrepreneurs could address the challenges they face, and to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in the domestic and global business environments. The questions addressed are, what challenges face Ghanaian entrepreneurs’ new business start-ups and existing SME’s in developing countries? How could these challenges be addressed appropriately to make the private sector the engine of growth in Ghana’s economy? The methodology is based on the qualitative approach, involving interviews to achieve the study’s objectives. Four main themes emerged as challenges faced by the entrepreneurs business start-ups and operations which include the following: Funding availability & accessibility; Lack of planning, Skilled labour & proper management skills; Lack of competitiveness, technology innovation & customer loyalty; and finally, Legal & regulatory framework & social factors. Recommendations for entrepreneurs, policy makers, and scholars are discussed in the study.
Examining the Effect of Corruption and Bureaucracy on SMEs Growth in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana
(2017)
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are considered a seed-bed of entrepreneurship and innovation in most emerging economies; nevertheless, SMEs sometimes lack an enabling business climate, which hinders their potential growth. This paper examines the effect of corruption and bureaucracy on SMEs growth in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana. The study was a quantitative research, and convenience sampling method was employed to select 373 owners/managers as respondents for the study. Employing questionnaire as its main data collection instrument, the study used Gretl version 3.0 Statistical Software for the analysis of data collected. The results of the study revealed that 1% increase in corruption in the SMEs sector leads to 36.12% decline in SMEs growth (sales and employment), and 1% increase in bureaucracy leads to 28.76% decrease in the growth of SMEs. An interesting outcome of the study was that the excessive bureaucratic bottlenecks in the SMEs sector are implied by corruption. We, therefore, conclude that there is a significant negative relationship between corruption and bureaucracy and SMEs growth. It is, therefore, recommended that the government takes a giant-step to fight corruption in the SMEs sector by ensuring transparency and accountability of public officials and also streamline its systems and activities in the sector to reduce the excessive administrative barriers. The present study adds substantial value to the body of research on SMEs as it is the first research to have considered the joint effect of corruption and bureaucracy on SMEs growth in an emerging economy like Ghana.
Gender disproportions have been part and parcel of most African cultures since time immemorial. Demographically, women are over a half population in most of the African countries but their participation in sectors of socio-economic and political spheres have remained inadequately represented. The enduring and biased beliefs on gender roles that view women much less important as compared to men are what forms the basis of concern to the welfare of women and most importantly the women entrepreneurs. This study reveals the long-standing cultural practices that have contributed to gender inequality and goes further to demystify areas in which women have continually experienced inequality and thus affecting their entrepreneurial spirit. Through the desk research methodology, it can be deduced that the following are key areas that pause a threat to women socio-economic and political development and hence the inequality being experienced even today in the twenty first century: harmful marriage, female genital mutilation, wife inheritance and HIV scourge, access to land including land rights and right to property, over-emphasizing patriarchal system of family, and gender violence. These factors compounded together, have resulted for unfortunate experiences that have been witnessed in the education sector, political participation, participation in policy making, gender division of labour and inaccess to credit facility. These experiences have severely thwarted entrepreneurial growth of women. The study therefore recommends that there is imperative need for a paradigm shift in these areas to ensure women are not only liberated and empowered but also their full participation in the entrepreneurship activities are highly strengthened and promoted.
Climate change is having drastic effects on various areas of the planet, including extreme impacts on weather and rainfall, in various Sub-Saharan East African countries (Hendrix, C. S., & Glaser, S. M. (2007). The willingness (and need) of a niche market to actively improve the damaged ecosystems in small ways is rising. Weaver and Lawton (2007, p 1170) maintain that ecotourism should satisfy three core criteria: "(1) attractions should be predominantly nature-based; (2) visitor interactions with those attractions should be focused on learning or education, and (3) experience and product management should follow principles and practices associated with ecological, socio-cultural and economic sustainability." In this study, the niche market of active German "tree-planters" is to be defined and the potential willingness to travel to, learn from and invest in the ecosystem through tree-planting, specifically in Kenya, is explored.
This study sought to contribute to knowledge by assessing the moderating effect of industry forces on the relationship between linkage strategies and performance of universities in Kenya. Porter’s five forces model and Resource Based View (RBV) are the main theories anchoring the study. Cross-Sectional survey was adopted as the research design. The population of the study consists of sixtyfive (65) public and private universities incorporated in Kenya. Out of this, a sample of forty seven (47) universities which had undergone at least one graduation cycle was taken. Primary and secondary data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires and review of existing university documents and regulatory bodies websites respectively. The instrument was tested for reliability and found fit. Analysis was undertaken using correlation and regression analyses to test hypotheses. Analysis of variance was also used to determine the differences between group means. Coefficient of variation (C.V) was also used to measure variability and consistency in scores of different universities when standard deviation and arithmetic means are compared. Out of the targeted forty seven (47) respondents from forty seven (47) universities, a total of forty four (44) questionnaires were returned, representing 94% response rate. It was established that there is a moderating effect of industry forces on the relationship between linkage strategies and organizational performance. The results provided rich implications for theory, policy and practice. The significance of industry forces in strategy formulation and implementation requires concentrated attention. The findings offer insights to university authorities and policy makers by answering the question on the influence of industry forces on performance of higher learning institutions. The key recommendation that the study offers to the stakeholders, is the need to consider industry forces as critical determinants during strategy formulation and implementation process in order to enhance university performance. The main limitation of this study is that primary data was collected from only one respondent per university but common methods bias was mitigated through the use of additional secondary data to validate primary data. Thus, the limitation did not affect the credence of the results as presented and discussed. Secondly, although it was not possible to include all the determinants of institutional performance, balanced score card was appropriately used to represent financial and non-financial aspects that constitute performance indicators.
This paper focuses on entrepreneurship and private sector development in Ghana with regard to the government’s initiative towards supporting private sector development through the Microfinance & Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) and the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) initiatives to support new and existing small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in diverse industries. The study addresses some of the main problems facing the two government-sponsored initiatives and issues with accessing venture capital for business start-ups in Ghana. The objective of the study is to identify possible strategies through which the MASLOC and NBSSI could be improved to serve the needs of their customers more effectively and efficiently. Enhancing the performance of these public organizations could offer many SMEs in Ghana take advantage of the new opportunities in the domestic and global business environments. The questions to be addressed are; to what extent do the activities of the NBSSI and MASLOC meet the needs of SMEs in Ghana? What challenges are associated with their services and how can management of the two organizations address the challenges they face more appropriately? The methodology is based on the qualitative and quantitative approaches, involving interviews and the administration of questionnaires and surveys to achieve the study’s objectives and goals. Based on the identified challenges, the study concludes with findings and recommendations for the management of NBSSI and MASLOC as well as entrepreneurs engaged in different SMEs in diverse industries and policy makers.
Ghanaian tertiary graduates' perception of entrepreneurship education on employment opportunities
(2017)
This study focuses on whether entrepreneurship education increases entrepreneurial interest in students to set up new businesses. Entrepreneurship is a core course taken in the third year by all students of Ho Technical University. Out of the 1329 population of level 300 students of the 2016/2017 academic year, data were collected by convenience sampling from 325 (217 males and 108 females) with mean age of 24.75 years from 14 departments of four faculties. The students responded to 43-survey items derived from reviewed literature on a 5-Point Likert-Scale. It is concluded that more than 84% of the respondents agreed that entrepreneurship education informed students about entrepreneurship through the acquisition of practical skills, knowledge about acquisition of personal orientation, knowledge about business management principles and the availability of entrepreneurial support agencies. This shows that the students are highly confident of setting up their own businesses through the knowledge acquired. The study therefore has important implications for policy makers, management of tertiary institutions, students and educational evaluators on how to ensure that tertiary graduates set up entrepreneurship ventures in order to partially solve the unemployment problem in Ghana.
ICT integration by universities teaching professionals is emerging as a major concern, this study demonstrate the need to address the integration problem by encouraging existing metrics use in indexing ICT integration as an ICT governance strategy. Quality of integration depends on quality indexing which also depend on quality of existing metrics and their use. Considering the role that University Information Technology Teaching Professionals’ (UITTPs) continuous improvement indexing can offer, towards autonomic governance of the continuous emerging ICTs in the university teaching, this study examined extent in use of existing ICT integration metrics to index ICT integration by the UITTPs. Six metrics for ICT integration were investigated; time, workshop course content relevance, technical malfunctions, support conditions, support services, and motivation and commitment to student learning and staff professional development metrics. Descriptive survey design was used in which interviews were conducted to UITTPs in three (3) public and three (3) private purposively selected universities in Kenya. The findings were analyzed descriptively and inferentially using Kendall’s correlation of concordance and tested using Chi-square on the extent of concordance and presented with help of frequency tables, figures and percentages. The findings revealed that all the metrics are rarely used for indexing ICT integration (32.8%), and most UITTPs were in discordance on this level of all the six metrics use except for support condition. This implied that the use of metrics for indexing integration has not been formalized across the Kenyan universities. Universities need to be encouraged to identify suitable metrics, formalize them and improve their frequency in use. Secondly, socio based metrics such as content relevance are used more frequently for indexing integration as compared to Technical metrics, socio-technical metrics balance therefore need to be emphasized by the universities management when determining and using metrics for indexing ICT integration.
Experiential Learning through the Transformational Incubation Programme: a Ghanaian case study
(2017)
This paper explores experiential learning theory (ELT) from a case study describing the Transformational Incubation Programme for Coventry University Alumni in Ghana. The incubator represents a collaboration between Coventry University and British Council Ghana. The aim of the programme is to embed a blended, experiential learning approach to practice-based entrepreneurship education via an incubator designed to support scalable business start-up and growth. world venture creation, business development and acceleration. The paper offers a generic framework for Transformational entrepreneurship experiential learning in this context. The incubator offers an opportunity to engage with practice-oriented and experience based learning applied to real.
With trainings and research oriented towards sustainable development since 2006 (Water and Sanitation, Infrastructure, Renewable Energies and Energy Processes), Foundation 2iE is positioning itself as a reference institute that trains innovative engineers-entrepreneurs for the needs and challenges of Africa’s development. Center of Excellence of the UEMOA and the World Bank, CSR is at the heart of the Strategy of the institute which aims to be a showcase in this field in Africa.
Over the years, entrepreneurship has proven to be one of the key roles towards development. The cycle of business start-ups and growth are linked to the socio-economic benefits of the global world at large. With a growing world population of over 7billion people, the existence of universities (both public &private) as well as enterprises has increased globally in the 21st century. The mission and purpose behind Universities, Entrepreneurship and Enterprises thrive on development in the areas of capacity building, skill acquisition, training and knowledge amongst others. Africa alone has a population of over 1.2billion people with about 650 recognized universities and over 140,000 registered businesses (enterprises) in Ghana alone. A case study in Ghana reveals three key drivers towards entrepreneurship and the role university education has played in various business establishments. The drivers are problem statements, resources and research findings. Some of these notions to business include the management of risk, research findings and customer relationship. These are major features that need critical attention and play a role in business and entrepreneurship in Africa. A major success in business and entrepreneurship is the utilization of the human resource population and the lifeline support given to households in terms of income, while a barrier being the limited access to credit support from the financial companies at the inception stages. In conclusion, this conference should develop a practical book guide on business start-ups and entrepreneurship knowledge to be used at the various universities in Africa to enhance development.
Wo Laborexperimente zu aufwendig, zu teuer, zu langsam oder zu gefährlich oder Stoffeigenschaften gar nicht erst experimentell zugänglich sind, können Computersimulationen von Atomen und Molekülen diese ersetzen oder ergänzen. Sie ermöglichen dadurch Reduktion von Kosten, Entwicklungszeit und Materialeinsatz. Die für diese Simulationen benötigten Molekülmodelle beinhalten zahlreiche Parameter, die der Simulant einstellen oder auswählen muss. Eine passende Parametrierung ist nur bei entsprechenden Kenntnissen über die Auswirkungen der Parameter auf die zu berechnenden Größen und Eigenschaften möglich. Eine Gruppe von Standardparametern in molekularen Simulationen sind die Partialladungen der einzelnen Atome innerhalb eines Moleküls. Die räumliche Ladungsverteilung innerhalb des Moleküls wird durch Punktladungen auf den Atomzentren angenähert. Für diese Annäherung existieren diverse Ansätze für verschiedene Molekülklassen und Anwendungen. In diesem Teilprojekt des Promotionsvorhabens wurde systematisch der Einfluss der Wahl des Partialladungssatzes auf potentielle Energien und ausgewählte makroskopische Eigenschaften aus Molekulardynamik-Simulationen evaluiert. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass insbesondere bei stark polaren Molekülen die Auswahl des geeigneten Partialladungssatzes entscheidenden Einfluss auf die Simulationsergebnisse hat und daher nicht naiv, sondern nur ganz gezielt getroffen werden darf.
Die Detektion von Explosivstoffen stellt ein zentrales Feld der zivilen Sicherheitsforschung dar. Eine besondere Herausforderung liegt hierbei in dem Nachweis verpackter Substanzen, wie es bei Unkonventionellen Spreng- und Brandvorrichtung (USBV) häufig der Fall ist. Derzeit eingesetzte Verfahren arbeiten meist mit bildgebenden Techniken, durch die sich ein Anfangsverdacht ergibt. Der tatsächliche chemische Inhalt der USBV lässt sich jedoch nicht exakt ermitteln. Eine genaue Beurteilung der Gefährdung durch solche Substanzen ist allerdings von großer Bedeutung, insbesondere wenn die Entschärfung des Objekts in bewohntem Gebiet stattfinden muss. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Verfahren vorgestellt, das sich als Verifikationsverfahren bei bestehendem Anfangsverdacht gezielt einsetzen lässt. Hierzu wird mittels Laserbohrtechnik zunächst die äußere Hülle des zu untersuchenden Gegenstandes durchdrungen. Anschließend finden eine lasergestützte Probenahme des Inhalts sowie die Detektion unter Verwendung geeigneter Analysemöglichkeiten statt. Der Bohr- und Probenahmefortschritt wird über verschiedene spektroskopische und sensorische Verfahren begleitend überwacht. Zukünftig soll das System abstandsfähig auf Entschärfungsrobotern eingesetzt werden.
Simulating eye movements for virtual humans or avatars can improve social experiences in virtual reality (VR) games, especially when wearing head mounted displays. While other researchers have already demonstrated the importance of simulating meaningful eye movements, we compare three gaze models with different levels of fidelity regarding realism: (1) a base model with static fixation and saccadic movements, (2) a proposed simulation model that extends the saccadic model with gaze shifts based on a neural network, and (3) a user's real eye movements recorded by a proprietary eye tracker. Our between-groups design study with 42 subjects evaluates impact of eye movements on social VR user experience regarding perceived quality of communication and presence. The tasks include free conversation and two guessing games in a co-located setting. Results indicate that a high quality of communication in co-located VR can be achieved without using extended gaze behavior models besides saccadic simulation. Users might have to gain more experience with VR technology before being able to notice subtle details in gaze animation. In the future, remote VR collaboration involving different tasks requires further investigation.
Integration of Multi-modal Cues in Synthetic Attention Processes to Drive Virtual Agent Behavior
(2017)
“Building Bridges Across Continents” (BBAC) is an intercultural and student-centered project that seeks to promote international communication and helps students develop competencies in entrepreneurship, international trade and global cultural awareness. The project, which is in its fourth phase of implementation, connects students from the United States, Germany, Ghana and Kenya with the help of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in order to work on a common research assignment for a period of ten calendar weeks. The main ICTs used in the project are Skype, Facebook, wiki, email and WhatsApp. This paper describes and analyzes the background, structure, and results of the project.
This paper proposes a novel approach to the generation of state equations from a bond graph (BG) of a mode switching linear time invariant model. Fast state transitions are modelled by ideal or non-ideal switches. Fixed causalities are assigned following the Standard Causality Assignment Procedure such that the number of storage elements in integral causality is maximised. A system of differential and algebraic equations (DAEs) is derived from the BG that holds for all system modes. It is distinguished between storage elements with mode independent causality and those that change causality due to switch state changes.
Exploring Gridmap-based Interfaces for the Remote Control of UAVs under Bandwidth Limitations
(2017)
RPSL meets lightning: A model-based approach to design space exploration of robot perception systems
(2017)
Neuroevolution methods evolve the weights of a neural network, and in some cases the topology, but little work has been done to analyze the effect of evolving the activation functions of individual nodes on network size, an important factor when training networks with a small number of samples. In this work we extend the neuroevolution algorithm NEAT to evolve the activation function of neurons in addition to the topology and weights of the network. The size and performance of networks produced using NEAT with uniform activation in all nodes, or homogenous networks, is compared to networks which contain a mixture of activation functions, or heterogenous networks. For a number of regression and classification benchmarks it is shown that, (1) qualitatively different activation functions lead to different results in homogeneous networks, (2) the heterogeneous version of NEAT is able to select well performing activation functions, (3) the produced heterogeneous networks are significantly smaller than homogeneous networks.
Smart home systems change the way we experience the home. While there are established research fields within HCI for visualizing specific use cases of a smart home, studies targeting user demands on visualizations spanning across multiple use cases are rare. Especially, individual data-related demands pose a challenge for usable visualizations. To investigate potentials of an end-user development (EUD) approach for flexibly supporting such demands, we developed a smart home system featuring both pre-defined visualizations and a visualization creation tool. To evaluate our concept, we installed our prototype in 12 households as part of a Living Lab study. Results are based on three interview studies, a design workshop and system log data. We identified eight overarching interests in home data and show how participants used pre-defined visualizations to get an overview and the creation tool to not only address specific use cases but also to answer questions by creating temporary visualizations.
Food losses occur for many reasons at all stages of supply chains for fruits, vegetables and potatoes. They cause immense economic, environmental and social costs – not only in developing countries but also in developed countries. According to the European Commission, about 90 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in Europe alone. However, particularly for the early stages of supply chains for fruits, vegetables and potatoes there is still a lack of reliable data. Thus, one objective of this study is to contribute to the quantification of food losses between field and retail, where the main focus is set on potatoes, apples, carrots, strawberries and asparagus. Furthermore, neither reasons why products are removed from the supply chains nor their alternative uses are fully examined yet. This is why, the study takes a look on those issues, too. Results are based on data from an online survey among producers of fruits, vegetables and potatoes in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany and on interviews with producers and other supply chain experts. Findings suggest that the products’ size and form, their storage capabilities and food safety issues have big impacts on food losses. Despite a small sample size, these findings are in line with recent studies.
Von Spechten, Regentropfen und Herzschlägen: Vergleichende Frequenzanalyse periodischer Signale
(2017)
Nahezu jede Einleitung allgemeinverständlicher Publikationen zur Herzratenvariabilität beginnt mit dem Wang Shu-He zugeschriebenen Zitat: "Wenn das Herz so regelmäßig wie das Klopfen eines Spechtes oder das Tröpfeln des Regens auf dem Dach wird, wird der Patient innerhalb von 4 Tagen sterben". Trotz der häufigen Verwendung dieses Zitats sind keine vergleichenden Analysen von Herzratenvariabilität, Spechttrommlern und Regentropfen verfügbar. Dies war Anlass zu den hier vorgestellten Messungen und dem Versuch, die gewonnenen Registrierungen durch geeignete Aufbereitung mit dem menschlichen Herzschlag vergleichen und zum Zitat ins Verhältnis setzen zu können.
Ressourceneffiziente Optimierung von Hohlkörpern aus Kunststoff mittels Multiskalensimulation
(2017)
In order to achieve the highest possible performance, the ray traversal and intersection routines at the core of every high-performance ray tracer are usually hand-coded, heavily optimized, and implemented separately for each hardware platform—even though they share most of their algorithmic core. The results are implementations that heavily mix algorithmic aspects with hardware and implementation details, making the code non-portable and difficult to change and maintain.
In this paper, we present a new approach that offers the ability to define in a functional language a set of conceptual, high-level language abstractions that are optimized away by a special compiler in order to maximize performance. Using this abstraction mechanism we separate a generic ray traversal and intersection algorithm from its low-level aspects that are specific to the target hardware. We demonstrate that our code is not only significantly more flexible, simpler to write, and more concise but also that the compiled results perform as well as state-of-the-art implementations on any of the tested CPU and GPU platforms.
Synthesis of serving policies for objects flow in the system with refillable storage component
(2017)
Neben der Verbesserung des Gesundheitszustandes sind der Erhalt der Beschäftigungsfähigkeit und die berufliche (Wieder-)Eingliederung zentrale Ziele der Rehabilitationsleistungen der Deutschen Rentenversicherung. In der „Reha-QM-Outcome-Studie“ wurden sowohl mittels Patientenfragebogen Angaben zum subjektiven Nutzen der Behandlung als auch mittels Routinedaten der Rentenversicherung Angaben zum Erwerbsstatus bzw. zur Berentung erhoben, so dass eine Gegenüberstellung beider Zieldimensionen erfolgen kann.
In diesem Artikel wird darüber berichtet, ob die Glaubwürdigkeit von Avataren als mögliches Modulationskriterium für die virtuelle Expositionstherapie von Agoraphobie in Frage kommt. Dafür werden mehrere Glaubwürdigkeitsstufen für Avatare, die hypothetisch einen Einfluss auf die virtuelle Expositionstherapie von Agoraphobie haben könnten sowie ein potentielles Expositionsszenario entwickelt. Die Arbeit kann innerhalb einer Studie einen signifikanten Einfluss der Glaubwürdigkeitsstufen auf Präsenz, Kopräsenz und Realismus aufzeigen.
Culture is at the core of any social, economic and business interactions and relationships. The way people perceive the culture of others influences their decision to collaborate socially, politically and economically with them. It is therefore, imperative students appreciate the dynamics of cross-cultural interactions and collaborations, since it exposes them to a wider view of the world. In doing this, it is important they (students) are allowed to explore as much as possible with little interference by their teachers. Using the project students went through real-life experience in a self-directed enquiry. In the process, they were taught to solve problems encountered during the learning process. The focus of the intercultural communication project was to understand how people from different cultures speak, interact and perceive others’ culture. It was found students innovate if allowed to explore a certain phenomenon on their own. Furthermore, face-to-face meetings can be arranged between people in the different countries can be arranged using these Web 2.0 tools. Based on the experience from the project, it was observed that the success of a collaborative international project depends on the understanding of the crosscultural dynamics of partners. For such collaborations, it is imperative to establish personal relationships, be flexible and adaptable to situations and change as well as being swift resolving potential conflict situation.
Populating virtual worlds with intelligent agents can drastically improve a user's sense of presence. Applying these worlds to virtual training, simulations, or (serious) games, often requires multiple agents to be simulated in real time. The process of generating believable agent behavior starts with providing a plausible perception and attention process that is both efficient and controllable. We describe a conceptual framework for synthetic perception that specifically considers the mentioned requirements: plausibility, real-time performance, and controllability. A sample implementation will focus on sensing, attention, and memory to demonstrate the framework's capabilities in a real-time game engine scenario. A combination of dynamic geometric sensing and false coloring with static saliency information is provided to exemplify the collection of environmental stimuli. The subsequent attention process handles both bottom-up processing and task-oriented, top-down factors. Behavioral results can be influenced by controlling memory and attention The example case is demonstrated and discussed alongside future extensions.
Ressourceneffiziente Optimierung von Hohlkörpern aus Kunststoff mittels Multiskalensimulation
(2017)
Die mechanischen Eigenschaften von extrusionsblasgeformten Kunststoffhohlkörpern hängen wesentlich von den vom Verarbeitungsprozess beeinflussten Materialeigenschaften ab. Ziel der dargestellten Untersuchung ist, prozessabhängige Materialkennwerte in Simulationsprogrammen zu berücksichtigen und damit deren Vorhersagegenauigkeit zu erhöhen. Hierzu ist die Schaffung einer Schnittstelle zwischen Prozess- und Bauteilsimulation notwendig. Darüber hinaus wird vorgestellt, wie Simulationen auf Mikroebene (molekulardynamische Simulationen) genutzt werden können, um Materialkennwerte ohne die Durchführung eines Realexperiments zu ermitteln.
Vor Gericht werden Einsätze geruchsdifferenzierender Hunde derzeit nur unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen als Indizien-Beweis zugelassen (dokumentierter, ausreichender Ausbildungsstand des Hundes, Bestätigung der Suche durch zweiten Hund). Oft sind Leistungsgrenzen der Hunde hinsichtlich Alter der Geruchsspur, Einfluss bestimmter Witterungsbedingungen (Temperatur, Feuchtigkeit, etc.) auf die Detektierbarkeit menschlicher Geruchsspuren unklar und umstritten. Auch ist bis heute nicht wissenschaftlich untersucht, welche Bestandteile und Einzelsubstanzen des humanen Geruchs für die Hunde tatsächlich wahrnehmbar und wichtig zur Personensuche und -identifikation sind. Daher widmet sich ein aktuelles Promotionsprojekt im Institut für Detektionstechnologien der Erforschung dieser Fragen.
In der Regel werden für die Hundeausbildung lose Explosivstoffe im Grammbereich eingesetzt. Deren Umgang unterliegt jedoch aufgrund des Gefährdungspotenzials und aus rechtlichen Gründen sehr strikten Regeln. Diese können nur mit Schwierigkeiten mit den Erfordernissen der Hundeausbildung in Einklang gebracht werden. Der Umgang mit hoch-brisanten Zündstoffen und Selbstlaboraten (z.B. TATP und HMTD) stellt aufgrund der nochmals erhöhten Gefährlichkeit und zusätzlicher gesetzlicher Regelungen eine spezielle Herausforderung dar. Das Poster beschreibt die EMPK® (Echtstoff-Mikromengen-Prüfkörper), die eine sichere Alternative als Trainingshilfsmittel für Sprengstoffspürhunde darstellen.
A plethora of architectural patterns and elements for developing service-oriented applications can be gathered from the state-of-the-art. Most of these approaches are merely applicable for single-tenant applications. However, less methodical support is provided for scenarios, in which multiple different tenants with varying requirements access the same application stack concurrently. In order to fill this gap, both novel and existing architectural patterns, architectural elements, as well as fundamental design decisions must be considered and integrated into a framework that leverages the devel- opment of multi-tenant application. This paper addresses this demand and presents the SOAdapt framework. It promotes the development of adaptable multi-tenant applications based on a service-oriented architecture that is capable of incorporating specific requirements of new tenants in a flexible manner.
Argentina substantially contributes to the global organic agriculture and food sector due to its large areas of organically managed agricultural land. However, most of the organic production is foreseen for export. Overall, food supply for the domestic organic market is hardly tapped. This study investigates the current importance of organic agriculture and food production as well as its consumption within the country. The novelty of the study also lies in the observation, documentation and analysis of latest stakeholder-driven developments towards organic agriculture and food. The publication allows to make the Argentinian organic market significantly more visible for the international audience.
Reliable and regional differentiated power forecasts are required to guarantee an efficient and economic energy transition towards renewable energies. Amongst other renewable energy technologies, e.g. wind mills, photovoltaic (PV) systems are an essential component of this transition being cost-efficient and simply to install. Reliable power forecasts are however required for a grid integration of photovoltaic systems, which among other data requires high-resolution spatio-temporal global irradiance data.
Solar energy is one option to serve the rising global energy demand with low environmental impact. Building an energy system with a considerable share of solar power requires long-term investment and a careful investigation of potential sites. Therefore, understanding the impacts from varying regionally and locally determined meteorological conditions on solar energy production will influence energy yield projections.
A new method for design space exploration and optimization, Surrogate-Assisted Illumination (SAIL), is presented. Inspired by robotics techniques designed to produce diverse repertoires of behaviors for use in damage recovery, SAIL produces diverse designs that vary according to features specified by the designer. By producing high-performing designs with varied combinations of user-defined features a map of the design space is created. This map illuminates the relationship between the chosen features and performance, and can aid designers in identifying promising design concepts. SAIL is designed for use with compu-tationally expensive design problems, such as fluid or structural dynamics, and integrates approximative models and intelligent sampling of the objective function to minimize the number of function evaluations required. On a 2D airfoil optimization problem SAIL is shown to produce hundreds of diverse designs which perform competitively with those found by state-of-the-art black box optimization. Its capabilities are further illustrated in a more expensive 3D aerodynamic optimization task.
The MAP-Elites algorithm produces a set of high-performing solutions that vary according to features defined by the user. This technique to 'illuminate' the problem space through the lens of chosen features has the potential to be a powerful tool for exploring design spaces, but is limited by the need for numerous evaluations. The Surrogate-Assisted Illumination (SAIL) algorithm, introduced here, integrates approximative models and intelligent sampling of the objective function to minimize the number of evaluations required by MAP-Elites.
The ability of SAIL to efficiently produce both accurate models and diverse high-performing solutions is illustrated on a 2D airfoil design problem. The search space is divided into bins, each holding a design with a different combination of features. In each bin SAIL produces a better performing solution than MAP-Elites, and requires several orders of magnitude fewer evaluations. The CMA-ES algorithm was used to produce an optimal design in each bin: with the same number of evaluations required by CMA-ES to find a near-optimal solution in a single bin, SAIL finds solutions of similar quality in every bin.
Smart home systems are becoming an integral feature of the emerging home IT market. Under this general term, products mainly address issues of security, energy savings and comfort. Comprehensive systems that cover several use cases are typically operated and managed via a unified dashboard. Unfortunately, research targeting user experience (UX) design for smart home interaction that spans several use cases or covering the entire system is scarce. Furthermore, existing comprehensive and user-centered longterm studies on challenges and needs throughout phases of information collection, installation and operation of smart home systems are technologically outdated. Our 18-month Living Lab study covering 14 households equipped with smart home technology provides insights on how to design for improving smart home appropriation. This includes a stronger sensibility for household practices during setup and configuration, flexible visualizations for evolving demands and an extension of smart home beyond the location.
Real-World Performance of current Mesh Protocols in a small-scale Dual-Radio Multi-Link Environment
(2017)
Two key questions motivated the work in this paper: What is the impact of different usage schemes for multiple channels in a dual-radio Wireless Mesh Network (WMN), and what is the impact of some popular WMN routing protocols on its performance. These two questions were evaluated in a small and simple real-world scenario. A major concern was reproducibility of the results. We show that it is beneficial to use both radios on different frequencies in a fully meshed environment with four routers. The routing protocols Babel, B.A.T.M.A.N. V, BMX7 and OLSRv2 recognize a saturated channel and prefer the other one. We show that in our scenario all of the protocols perform equally well since the protocol overhead is comparably low not influencing the overall performance of the network.
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) should, on the one hand, provide theoretical and practical knowledge to students and, on the other hand, make valuable contributions to theoretical knowledge and provide new insights by means of research. However, HEIs have to face changing and increasing demands with respect to what they are expected to achieve. Education and research issues are no longer enough, what matters today is the so called “third mission”. A specific example for implementing a third mission is the cooperation between HEIs and business incubators. With this in mind, a local consortium consisting of regional HEIs, e.g. Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, as well as public and private institutions and partners initiated and established an incubator hub for the region Bonn/Rhein-Sieg in 2016, called “Digital Hub Region Bonn”. This conference contribution reports on our experience with regards to this cooperation approach resulting from the above- mentioned case. Furthermore the pros and cons as well as some issues of this kind of cooperation will be discussed. Last but not least this paper initiates the opportunity to share and compare the experiences of other university business incubators in Africa as well as in Germany. As we will describe, the financial investment of HEIs in a joint-incubator with other public as well as private partners offers substantial benefits, such as mutual know-how transfer from HEIs to the economy and vice versa. This strengthens entrepreneurial mindsets and activities and contributes to the development and growth of the local economy. Consequently, this cooperation sometimes creates challenges at various levels, for example due to differing interests between HEIs and business partners. This conference contribution offers approaches to solve these issues and to support private public partnership in business incubation.
Current global challenges such as climate change, lack of resources, desertification, land degradation as well as loss of biodiversity can ultimately be due to human actions. Reasons are excessive production and consumption of goods and services, along with using and consuming natural resources, causing emissions and waste products. Demand in the form of consumption and supply in the form of production are closely intertwined.
Der Asiatische Laubholzbockkäfer (Anoplophora glabripennis, kurz: ALB) ist ein Bockkäfer, der 2001 seinen Weg nach Europa fand. Er ist als Quarantäneschaderreger eingestuft und muss in Europa bekämpft werden. Eine der Möglichkeiten zum Aufspüren befallener Bäume ist der Einsatz von Spürhunden. Die Einstufung des ALB als Quarantäneschädling bringt große Probleme bei der Verwendung von Trainingsmaterial mit sich. Da es sich zudem um biologisches Material handelt, das geruchchemisch Änderungen und Variationen unterworfen ist, und da die für den Hund relevanten Geruchsstoffe nicht bekannt sind, ist es häufig schwierig, geeignete und frische Geruchsträger als Trainingshilfsmittel zur Verfügung zu stellen.
WiFi-based Long Distance (WiLD) networks have emerged as a promising alternative approach for Internet in rural areas. The main hardware components of these networks are commercial off-the-shelf WiFi radios and directional antennas. During our experiences with real-world WiLD networks, we encountered that interference among long-distance links is a major issue even with high gain directional antennas. In this work, we are providing an in-depth analysis of these interference effects by conducting simulations in ns-3. To closely match the real-world interference effects, we implemented a module to load radiation pattern of commonly used antennas. We analyze two different interference scenarios typically present as a part of larger networks. The results show that side-lobes of directional antennas significantly influence the throughput of long-distance WiFi links depending on the orientation. This work emphasizes that the usage of simple directional antenna models needs to be considered carefully.
Evolutionary illumination is a recent technique that allows producing many diverse, optimal solutions in a map of manually defined features. To support the large amount of objective function evaluations, surrogate model assistance was recently introduced. Illumination models need to represent many more, diverse optimal regions than classical surrogate models. In this PhD thesis, we propose to decompose the sample set, decreasing model complexity, by hierarchically segmenting the training set according to their coordinates in feature space. An ensemble of diverse models can then be trained to serve as a surrogate to illumination.
Raman-microspectroscopy was used for the non-destructive characterization and differentiation of six different meat spoilage associated microorganisms, namely Brochothrix thermosphacta DSM 20171, Micrococcus luteus, Pseudomonas fluorescens DSM 4358, Escherichia coli Top10 and K12 and Pseudomonas fluorescens DSM 50090. To evaluate and classify the Raman-spectroscopic data at species and strain level an adequate preprocessing and subsequent principal component analysis was used. The same procedure was extended to an independent test data set, which could be successfully assigned to the correct bacterial species and even to the right strain. The evaluation was not only successful in differentiation of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria but also the discrimination between the different bacterial species and strains was possible. This means that the training data set, the preprocessing method and the evaluation of the data lead to a robust principal component analysis. Even the correct assignment of unknown samples is possible. The results show that Raman-microspectroscopy in combination with an appropriate chemometric treatment can be a good tool for a rapid examination and classification of microbial cultures.