Coverage of low-power electronics in digital design textbooks: A systematic review (2017)

Marco Winzker

Power consumption in digital circuits has been a research topic since the 1990s, and has been of significant importance in industry since at least 2000. This contribution investigates power consumption in engineering education by means of a systematic review; to determine the extent to which recent introductory textbooks on digital design address this topic. English and German textbooks that have been published since 2011 are selected, and their tables of contents are examined for the presence of sections or subsections on the topic of power consumption. A total of twenty-four textbooks match the inclusion criteria of our systematic review and, of these books, about 40% cover power dissipation in digital circuits. Thus, a significant number of authors regard power consumption as an important topic even for an introductory text. However, most authors devote only one or two pages to the topic of power dissipation, and 60% of the authors do not have a subsection on it. Therefore, a more thorough coverage of low-power design and implementation choices is often designated as supplementary material or more specialized textbooks are recommended.

How to handle large classrooms of engineering students: Two more applied methods/practices including a personal report (2017)

Irene Rothe

At the last Educon conference three practices were shared about how to handle large classrooms full of students as a short paper: Pingo with concept test questions, workshop-kind-of interactions to do peer-reviews and presenting at the first lecture of the semester only problems of the subject to be taught announcing that all those problems can be solved with the knowledge of the course. This paper will introduce two more methods newly applied in the winter and summer term 2015/16: using videos for very complicated parts of the subject matter and mixing instructing and explaining sections with exercising phases. The methods will be described and personal experiences will be reported.

Practical undergraduate projects within the BRSU race academy: An example for conducting a new tutored peer-teaching learning approach (2017)

Dirk Reith Tobias Haedecke Elena Schulz Lutz Langel Lukas Gemein Iris Groß

In this contribution we briefly recap the general concept of the BRSU Race Academy. We then concentrate on and demonstrate how practical projects can be set up and executed within this framework. We discuss what is needed to train the members of the Race Academy properly and how the faculty advisor could change his course of action during the projects. The feedback and the results of such projects have been extremely positive so far: The Race Academy members have been perceived as role models to their peers, and an efficient peer-group atmosphere could be set up that facilitated learning. With their experience, solid user knowledge and the close contact to several industrial partners, a productive, authentic and practical working atmosphere has been established. We will give examples of how to use our new teaching approach to surpass the qualities of classes held in the traditional way. Furthermore, it is shown that the technical understanding is improved, as well as the personal experience to work with and integrate into a professional team.

Robust and Computationally Efficient Navigation in Domestic Environments (2009)

Dirk Holz Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar Erich Rome

Presented in this paper is a complete system for robust autonomous navigation in cluttered and dynamic environments. It consists of computationally efficient approaches to the problems of simultaneous localization and mapping, path planning, and motion control, all based on a memory-efficient environment representation. These components have been implemented and integrated with additional components for human-robot interaction and object manipulation on a mobile manipulation platform for service robot applications. The resulting system performed very successfully in the 2008 RoboCup@Home competition.

Attitude stabilization of a small-scaled quadrotor in GPS-denied environments (2010)

Viatcheslav Tretyakov

This report presents an approach on a quadrotor dynamics stabilization based on ICP SLAM. Because the quadrotor lacks sensory information to detect its horizontal drift an additional sensor as Hokuyo-UTM has been used to perform on-line ICP-based SLAM. The obtained position estimates were used in control loops to maintain desired position and orientation of the vehicle. Such attitude parameters as height, yaw and position in space were controlled based on the laser data. As a result the quadrotor demonstrated two significant for autonomous navigation capabilities: performance of on-line SLAMon a flying vehicle and maintaining desired position in 3D space. Visual approach on optical flow based on Pyramid Lucas-Kanade algorithm has been touched and tested in different environmental conditions though hasn't been implemented in the control loop. Also the performance of the Hokuyo laser scanner and the related to it ICP SLAM algorithm have been tested in different environmental conditions indoors, outdoors and in presence of smoke. Results are presented and discussed. The requirement of performing on-line SLAM algorithm and to carry quite heavy equipment for it forced to seek a solution to increase the payload of the quadrotor with its computational power. A new hardware and distributed software architectures are therefore presented in the report.

Soziale Sicherung und internationale Politikdiffusion (2017)

Katja Bender

I. Einleitung II. Soziale Sicherung als Bestandteil entwicklungspolitischer Agenden – Eine internationale Perspektive III. Internationale Politikdiffusion und nationaler Politikwandel – Konzeptionelle Grundlagen IV. Die Rolle internationaler Politikdiffusion für den Wandel sozialer Sicherungssysteme – Empirische Evidenz V. Schlussfolgerungen

Workflow for Automatic i-Vector based Speaker Identification on German Parliament Speakers (2017)

Gunnar Åkermark

In order to help journalists investigate inside large audiovisual archives, as maintained by news broadcast agencies, the multimedia data must be indexed by text-based search engies. By automatically creating a transcript through automatic speech recognition (ASR), the spoken word becomes accessible to text search, and queries for keywords are made possible. But stil, important contextual information like the identity of the speaker is not captured. Especially when gathering original footage in the political domain, the identity of the speaker can be the most important query constraint, although this name may not be prominent in the words spoken. It is thus desireable to have this information provided explicitely to the search engine. To provide this information, the archive must be an alyzed by automatic Speaker Identification (SID). While this research topic has seen substantial gains in accuracy and robustness over last years, it has not yet established itself as a helpful, large-scale tool outside the research community. This thesis sets out to establish a workflow to provide automatic speaker identification. Its application is to help journalists searching on speeches given in the German parliament (Bundestag). This is a contribution to the News-Stream 3.0 project, a BMBF funded research project that addresses accessibility of various data sources for journalists.

Affordance-Based Action Abstraction in Robot Planning (2013)

Daniel Höller

This work extends the affordance-inspired robot control architecture introduced in the MACS project [35] and especially its approach to integrate symbolic planning systems given in [24] by providing methods to automated abstraction of affordances to high-level operators. It discusses how symbolic planning instances can be generated automatically based on these operators and introduces an instantiation method to execute the resulting plans. Preconditions and effects of agent behaviour are learned and represented in Gärdenfors conceptual spaces framework. Its notion of similarity is used to group behaviours to abstract operators based on the affordance-inspired, function-centred view on the environment. Ways on how the capabilities of conceptual spaces to map subsymbolic to symbolic representations to generate PDDL planning domains including affordance-based operators are discussed. During plan execution, affordance-based operators are instantiated by agent behaviour based on the situation directly before its execution. The current situation is compared to past ones and the behaviour that has been most successful in the past is applied. Execution failures can be repaired by action substitution. The concept of using contexts to dynamically change dimension salience as introduced by Gärdenfors is realized by using techniques from the field of feature selection. The approach is evaluated using a 3D simulation environment and implementations of several object manipulation behaviours.

Segmentierung von multimodalen Laserscanner-Daten im Außenbereich und Terrain-Klassifikation (2017)

Thomas Doll

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur Segmentierung von Außenszenen und Terrain-Klassifkation entwickelt. Dazu werden 360 Grad-Laserscanner-Aufnahmen von Straßen, Gebäudefassaden und Waldwegen aufgenommen. Von diesen Aufnahmen werden verschiedene visuelle Repräsentationen in 2D erstellt. Dazu werden die Distanzinformationen und Winkelübergänge der Polarkoordinaten, die Remissionswerte und der Normalenvektor eingesetzt. Die Berechnung des Normalenvektors wird über ein modernes Verfahren mit einerniedrigen Laufzeit durchgeführt. Anschließend werden Oberflächeneigenschaften innerhalb einer Punktwolke analysiert und vier Klassen unterschieden: Untergrund, Vegetation, Hindernis und Himmel. Die Segmentierung und Klassifkation geschieht in einem Schritt. Dazuwird die Varianz auf den N ormalen über eine Filtermaske berechnet und ein Deskriptor erstellt. Der Deskriptor beinhaltet die Normalenvektoren und die Normalenvarianz fürdie x-, y- und z-Achse. Die Ergebnisse werden als Überblendung auf dem Remissionsbilddargestellt. Die Auswertung wird über eigens erstellte Ground-Truth-Daten vorgenommen. Dazu wird das Remissionsbild genutzt und der Ground-Truth mit verschiedenen Farben eingezeichnet. Die Klassifkationsergebnisse sind in Precision-Recall-Diagrammen dargestellt.

Selbstlokalisation eines Mikroflugsystems mit Laserscannern zur 3D-Kartierung von Innenräumen (2017)

Kalle Knipp

In der Bachelorarbeit Selbstlokalisation eines Mikroflugsystems mit Laserscannern zur 3D-Kartierung von Innenräumen wird ein Verfahren vorgestellt, welches die Position eines Flugroboters in Abhängigkeit aller sechs Freiheitsgrade darstellen kann. Mithilfe von zwei Laserscannern werden zeitgleich dreidimensionale Karten der Umgebung erstellt. Zur Ermittlung der Bewegung des Flugroboters auf der horizontalen Ebene wird Hector SLAM verwendet. Um zusätzlich Höheninformationen zu erhalten, werden zwei verschiedene Verfahren implementiert: Das erste Verfahren misst die Höhe direkt mithilfe eines Laserscanners, das zweite Verfahren nutzt Hector SLAM zur Ermittlung der Höheninformationen aus der vertikalen Scanebene.

Wissen für die Wirtschaft (2017)

Es gehörte zum Gründungsauftrag der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft zusammenzubringen und gemeinsam Neues zu entwickeln. Die hier vorgestellte Broschüre ist vor allem als Anregung gedacht: Sie zeigt, welche Erfolge aus einer Zusammenarbeit erwachsen und erleichtert es Unternehmen, den ersten Schritt hin zu einer Kooperation mit der H-BRS zu gehen.

Influence of Amino Acids on the Crystallization of Calcium Silicates Hydrates (2017)

Steffen Thomas Witzleben Alexander Leiendecker Michael Wenzel

Structure Investigation of Lignin-based Polyurethanes using WAXS (2017)

Katharina Walbrück Stefanie Klein Jessica Rumpf Margit Schulze Steffen Witzleben

Facilitation of The OpenDaylight Architecture (2017)

Ahmad Hemid

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.

STAT3 gain-of-function mutations associated with autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome like disease deregulate lymphocyte apoptosis and can be targeted by BH3 mimetic compounds (2017)

Schafiq Nabhani Cyrill Schipp Hagit Miskin Carina Levin Sergey Postovsky Tal Dujovny Ariel Koren Dan Harlev Anne-Marie Bis Franziska Auer Baerbel Keller Klaus Warnatz Michael Gombert Sebastian Ginzel Arndt Borkhardt Polina Stepensky Ute Fischer

Autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS) is typically caused by mutations in genes of the extrinsic FAS mediated apoptotic pathway, but for about 30% of ALPS-like patients the genetic diagnosis is lacking. We analyzed 30 children with ALPS-like disease of unknown cause and identified two dominant gain-of-function mutations of the Signal Transducer And Activator Of Transcription 3 (STAT3, p.R278H, p.M394T) leading to increased transcriptional activity. Hyperactivity of STAT3, a known repressor of FAS, was associated with decreased FAS-mediated apoptosis, mimicking ALPS caused by FAS mutations. Expression of BCL2 family proteins, further targets of STAT3 and regulators of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, was disturbed. Cells with hyperactive STAT3 were consequently more resistant to intrinsic apoptotic stimuli and STAT3 inhibition alleviated this effect. Importantly, STAT3-mutant cells were more sensitive to death induced by the BCL2-inhibitor ABT-737 indicating a dependence on anti-apoptotic BCL2 proteins and potential novel therapeutic options.

Wege zum Mittelstand: Berührungsängste zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft abbauen (2017)

Hartmut Ihne Thomas Sattelberger

Die Hochschulen der „Hochschulallianz für den Mittelstand“ haben sich ganz bewusst für diese Namensgebung entschieden. Wir wollen uns gemeinsam für den Mittelstand in Deutschland engagieren. Hochschulen für angewandte Wissenschaften/Fachhochschulen sind in vielen Regionen der wichtigste Ausbildungs-, Forschungs- und Entwicklungspartner für mittelständische Unternehmen. Und dennoch konstatiert der aktuelle Innovationsindikator des BDI: Es gibt noch immer zu viele Berührungsängste zwischen Wissenschaftlern und KMU-Managern. Daran hat sich seit Jahrzehnten leider nicht viel geändert.

Exosomes derived from human autologous conditioned serum are nanocarriers for IL-6 and TNF-alfa (2017)

Jamal Ghanam Shaun Gaji Mustafa Haddouti Stephan Irsen Julio Reinecke Peter Wehling Maria Weisshaar

Qualitatives Analysensystem für energetische Materialien (2017)

Gerald Njio Florian Börner Gerhard Holl Kostyantin Konstantynovski

Die vorliegende Erfindung betrifft ein Analysesystem und ein bibliotheksunabhängiges Analyseverfahren zum qualitativen Nachweis und zur Klassifizierung energetischer Materialien, insbesondere zum Nachweis von Explosiv- und Sprengstoffen sowie für komplexe Stoffzusammensetzungen, welche in IEDS (Improvised Explosive Devices) Verwendung finden.

Remote laser drilling and sampling system for the detection of concealed explosives (2017)

D. Wild L. Pschyklenk C. Theiß G. Holl

The detection of hazardous materials like explosives is a central issue in national security in the field of counterterrorism. One major task includes the development of new methods and sensor systems for the detection. Many existing remote or standoff methods like infrared or raman spectroscopy find their limits, if the hazardous material is concealed in an object. Imaging technologies using x-ray or terahertz radiation usually yield no information about the chemical content itself. However, the exact knowledge of the real threat potential of a suspicious object is crucial for disarming the device. A new approach deals with a laser drilling and sampling system for the use as verification detector for suspicious objects. Central part of the system is a miniaturised, diode pumped Nd:YAG laser oscillator-amplifier. The system allows drilling into most materials like metals, synthetics or textiles with bore hole diameters in the micron scale. During the drilling process, the hazardous material can be sampled for further investigation with suitable detection methods. In the reported work, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is used to monitor the drilling process and to classify the drilled material. Also experiments were carried out to show the system’s ability to not ignite even sensitive explosives like triacetone triperoxide (TATP). The detection of concealed hazardous material is shown for different explosives using liquid chromatography and ion mobility spectrometry. © (2017) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Comparing Leaning-Based Motion Cueing Interfaces for Virtual Reality Locomotion (2017)

Alexandra Kitson Abraham M. Hashemian Ekaterina R. Stepanova Ernst Kruijff Bernhard Riecke E

In this paper, we describe a user study comparing five different locomotion interfaces for virtual reality locomotion. We compared a standard non-motion cueing interface, Joystick (Xbox), with four motion cueing interfaces, NaviChair (stool with springs), MuvMan (sit/stand active stool), Head-Directed (Oculus Rift DK2), and Swivel Chair (everyday office chair with leaning capability). Each interface had two degrees of freedom to move forward/backward and rotate using velocity (rate) control. The aim of this mixed methods study was to better understand relevant user experience factors and guide the design of future locomotion interfaces. This study employed methods from HCI to provide an understanding of why users behave a certain way while using the interface and to unearth any new issues with the design. Participants were tasked to search for objects in a virtual city while they provided talk-aloud feedback and we logged their behaviour. Subsequently, they completed a post-experimental questionnaire on their experience. We found that the qualitative themes of control, usability, and experience echoed the results of the questionnaire, providing internal validity. The quantitative measures revealed the Joystick to be significantly more comfortable and precise than the motion cueing interfaces. However, the qualitative feedback and interviews showed this was due to the reduced perceived controllability and safety of the motion cueing interfaces. Designers of these interfaces should consider using a backrest if users need to lean backwards and avoid using velocity-control for rotations when using HMDs.

Replik zu Spellbrink, Brauchen wir eine Sozialversicherungswissenschaft? (2016)

Susanne Peters-Lange

Soziale Netzwerke am Arbeitsplatz: Eine Bestandsaufnahme (2016)

Christian Rietz Anna Knieper Britta Krahn

Soziale Netzwerke wie Facebook oder Twitter sind nicht nur für den privaten Austausch weit verbreitet, sondern werden zunehmend auch im Arbeitskontext genutzt, wobei insbesondere für den deutschen Sprachraum nur wenige Untersuchungen über die Verbreitung und die Nutzung sozialer Netzwerke vorliegen. In einer ersten Bestandaufnahme beleuchtet die Untersuchung aus der Perspektive von Arbeitgeber/ innen aus Industrie und Dienstleistungssektor und aus der Sicht von Arbeitnehmer/innen, inwieweit externe, öffentlich zugängliche soziale Netzwerke und unternehmensinterne soziale Netzwerke am Arbeitsplatz verfügbar sind, wofür sie genutzt werden und ob Richtlinien für die Nutzung existieren. Dafür wurden in zwei Repräsentativstudien N = 1.886 Unternehmensentscheider/innen im Rahmen des Zukunftspanels des Instituts der Deutschen Wirtschaft Köln und N = 622 Arbeitnehmer/innen befragt. 80% der befragten Arbeitnehmer/innen nutzen soziale Netzwerke, fast 30% auch während der Arbeitszeit. In ungefähr der Hälfte der Unternehmen haben die Mitarbeiter unbeschränkten Zugriff auf soziale Netzwerke an ihrem Arbeitsplatz, wobei in lediglich einem Viertel der Unternehmen Richtlinien zur Nutzung sozialer Netzwerke existieren. Das am häufigsten genutzte externe soziale Netzwerk ist WhatsApp gefolgt von Facebook. Das wichtigste Kommunikationsmittel am Arbeitsplatz bleibt allerdings nach Angaben der Arbeitnehmer/innen das Telefon gefolgt von E-Mail.

Betriebswirtschaftliche Grundlagen der Auslagerung von Pensionsverpflichtungen (2009)

Norbert Seeger

Contractual Trust Arrangements auf dem Prüfstand (2007)

Norbert Seeger

Der Trend zum CTA-Model basiert auf Überlegungen zur Insolvenzsicherung, zur Verbesserung des Bilanzbilds und zur Steuerung des Risikos. Das Argument der Insolvenzsicherung ist nicht schlüssig, da einerseits die Sicherung der Verpflichtungen umfassender Personalbestände nicht im Vordergrund steht und andererseits potenzielle Konkursmasse verloren geht. Auch das Bilanz-, GuV- und Cash Flow-Bild wird bei einer sorgfältigen Arbeit der Analysten nur vordergründig beeinflusst. Bei Vorhandensein und Erkennbarkeit der potenziellen Auslagerungsmittel ändert sich die Effektivverschuldung nicht und im Fall der Notwendigkeit der Aufnahme von Fremdmitteln entsteht ein Passivtausch von zweifelhafter Wirkung. Insgesamt sei aber darauf hingewiesen, dass die Kombination von CTA-Modellen zusammen mit anderen externen Durchführungswegen, insbesondere dem Pensionsfonds, je nach unternehmerischer Präferenz der Grad der Zeilerreichung durchaus erhöht werden kann.

Ist jede verkürzte Bilanz eine bessere Bilanz? (2009)

Norbert Seeger