Raphael Ochsenbein, The influence of online trust across cultural borders: research project, 2011-01-01. (Other Publication)
This thesis describes the mediating role of online trust on the behaviour of people on the Internet. Building on current literature on the topic, the definition of online trust is extended in order to account for cultural influences on trust. After laying out the theoretical foundations, the implementation of a browser extension, that could serve as an instrument to measure online trust, is given. In the end, a review of the used literature is provided and the limitations of the extension are discussed. |
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Silke Gegenbauer, The nature of people’s attachment to objects - how emotional ties can help inform the design of electronic devices, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
The goal of this study is to better understand how people acquire, use and dispose of interactive devices, in order to provide insights on how such devices can be made more sustainable. To achieve this, interviews were conducted concentrating on items the participants own and their attitude towards them. This was supported by exploring the participants' homes during the interviews. By initiating a conversation about objects, a better understanding of the strength of attachment to them as well as the motive for doing so was provided. The collected data was analyzed and formed into a framework, consisting of the derived attachment categories and exemplary quotes. This was preliminarily applied by providing the framework to an industrial design student to create preliminary designs for interactive devices. |
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Pascal Muther, IT-gestützte Anlageberatung: Entwicklung eines Web-Tools zur Vor- und Nachbereitung von Anlageberatungen, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Customers rate the quality of financial advisory services in banks as unsatisfactory. To improve this situation a system, supporting the collaborative advisory approach, is developed. At the moment this system was not integrated into existing systems. In the course of this thesis a web-tool based upon the principles of User-centered Design and Scenario-Based development is developed. This tool supports preparing processes for advisory meetings. The development is done, the intermediary results are validated with various stakeholders and the results are integrated in the next step. The web-tool is an extension to the cooperative system and acts as an interface to existing systems. |
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Karin Bühler, Geschäftsmodellgetriebene Webseiten-Entwicklung am Beispiel eines Reiseanbieters: Facharbeit, 2011-01-01. (Other Publication)
In this paper, the website of a travel agency was prototypically redesigned, motivated by the drive to keep the company competitive in comparison to pure e-commerce companies. The reorientation is based on a redesign of the business model, which was developed on the basis of an analysis of interaction and service problems of the current website as well as on the basis of a “metaphorical brainstorming”. Subsequently, the scenario-based development was used in order to envision the new application, i.e. “activity scenarios”, “information and interaction scenarios” and finally a low fidelity prototype were created. The new service was considerably modified with regard to the home page as well as the presentation of single tours and was complemented by the following elements; specific inspiration pages, a personal user account, information about hotels and their regions and a knowledge database with descriptions of single attractions, to which travel advisers as well as customers contribute. These alterations can increase the website's attractiveness and, by supporting customers in gathering information and making bookings, can decrease advisory activities. The prototypical implementation was evaluated in a panel of experts by means of a cognitive walkthrough. The suggested modifications can improve the products' learnability and usability.
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Emanuel Stöckli, Interaktive Anlageberatung mit dem iPad: Konzeption, Umsetzung & Evaluation eines kooperativen Beratungsansatzes, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
The private banking and thus the financial advisory process is changing,
the quality of the current advisory services is low and the diffusion of tablets like the iPad is progressed throughout the year.
This provides the background and motivation to investigate the improvement of the financial advisory process with the usage of an iPad.
A new conception was designed and implemented with low- and high-fidelity prototypes.
Experimental evaluations show that we could maintain the improved transparency and high acceptance and satisfaction of the tabletop system.
Furthermore, we increased the advisor's perceived ability to control the encounter.
In return, the client's desire for more influence increased as well.
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Simon Poltier, Incentives and social welfare in liveshift : a congestion games - based approach, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
In this thesis, a game-theoretic model of peer behavior for LiveShift is developed, dividing peers' behavior between download and upload phases, modeled as separate games. The behavior of peers under static, deterministic conditions is discussed and its outcomes presented; payoff functions reflecting peers' preferences in both the download and upload games are proposed. From these elements, rules of behavior are developed to improve the system's performance, both in settings where peers are selfish and in those where they are well behaved.
Then, a simulation is implemented to test the approach's effectiveness in various scenarios, varying the system's level of dynamicity as well as peer behavior. Results are positive overall, but only present strong evidence of improved performance in some scenarios.
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Silvan Troxler, Using ontology matching for generating rdb-to-rdf mappings, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Legacy business applications using relational databases hinder the adoption of new data storage models. Improvements, for example brought by semantic web technologies, can not be used. Instead, backward compatibility has to be preserved what coerces into reusing the old data source or run several storage systems in parallel. A possible solution to that dilemma is using an RDB to RDF mapping. Therewith, a relational database can be accessed from the semantic web. Queries formulated in SPARQL will be translated to SQL. So the legacy database can be reused from a semantic context. OntoAccess is such an RDB to RDF mapping approach, while it is the only one which explicitly supports read and write access. In order to work, OntoAccess requires a mapping file with information about a database including tables, attributes and constraints. Creating such a mapping by hand is time-consuming and error-prone, hence it should be automated. |
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Dorian-Raphael Signer, Modellierungsparadigmen globaler ressourcenökonomischer Simulationsmodelle, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
The master paper here focuses on the identification of the paradigms within global economic resource simulation models. Based on the view that the paradigms present in models are to be found in the assumptions and the logic structure, a bottom-up approach is pursued: the assumptions and the logic structure of four global resource models are analysed (World3, SARUM, FUGI and the Metal Model), whereas the outcomes of the respective models are only discussed to the extent that the assumptions or the logic applied are the cause of the outcome of simulation models. The models analysed and mentioned here all simulate the long term sustainability of not renewable resources. Special attention was given to all aspect of the sustainability of metal resources, but without limiting analysis only on metals. The paradigms identified in the presented models are discussed under various angles. The finding here is that any sustainable solution for the use of resources stands and falls with the intensity and quality of the future technological progress. |
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Marco Creola, Simulation einer Elektromotorradfahrt: Modellbildung und Implementierung in Android, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
At the EMPA institute in St. Gallen they engineered a sensor box, which collects data during a ride of an electric powered motorcycle. The data are built up of GPS data and of measure data of the accumulator of the electric powered motorcycle. The ride of a motorcycle along a rectilinear driving surface is influenced by various physical forces: aerodynamic resistance, wheel resistance, slope resistance, acceleration resistance and driving force. With the aid of a simulation model, which is based on the System Dynamics approach, the physical forces and their causes, effects and feedbacks are showed and modeled. On the basis of this simulation model an Android application is developed. The application allows on the one hand to process the sensor box data and to compute the physical forces. On the other hand it allows to simulate a ride with different parameters and lets compare it with the real ride.
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Jens Birchler, Entwicklung eines Werkzeugs zur Planung und Visualisierung von Zeiten für die softwareunterstützte Beratung im öffentlichen Sektor, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Time planning is an important element in many counseling situations of the public sector. This paper describes possible visualizations and relevant temporal aspects for scheduling in software-supported counseling. The theoretical foundation is building on project management, calendar-theory and existing counseling literature. In a second step, an already existing counseling software for the public sector is further developed to improve time planning and visualization of the temporal aspect. The method used is scenario-based development. An empirical evaluation of this implementation in a student counseling environment, proves the developed functions and visualizations valuable and useful. |
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Stefan Zehnder, OntoX: a scriptable visualization framewok for the semantic web, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
In information science, an ontology represents a shared vocabulary for a domain of interest with
the purpose to describe entities of the domain and the relationships between these entities. One
of the more common goals in developing ontologies, is to share a common understanding of the
domain knowledge among people and software agents. An agent can process large amounts
of data in native ontology syntax, whereas human beings need to have the data in a visualized
form to be able to detect patterns, structures, and elements in the ontology. But most of todayís
visualization tools have problems in scalability, cannot include domain specific knowledge, and
confront the user with too much visualized details.
The aim of this thesis is to create novel and powerful way for the user to analyse the data
integrated into ontologies. Therefore a framework named OntoX has been developed that can
read RDF/OWL files and present this data as an interactive information graph. In contrast to
traditional tools that only rely on the user interface to interact with the graph, OntoX comes with
its own implemented domain specific language. Through this simple language, a user can write
ontology specific scripts that filter out elements, modify the design, or change the structure of the
graph. Therefore the user gets a tool that assists him in analyzing the domain knowledge, and
allows an individual configuration for every ontology. |
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Hannes Tresch, Managing and querying derived nutrient parameters in the Swiss Feed database, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
The aim of the thesis has been to integrate the computation of derived nutrients into the Swiss animal feed database. Derived nutrients are parameters calculated by a formula that involves other nutrient parameters. The computation of these parameters replaces expensive chemical lab analyses. In order to get a meaningful temporal distribution of derived nutrients, an efficient method that supports time-varying regressions must be found.
For that, different SQL-queries, SQL-views and PL/pg SQL functions are implemented and presented in this document. The most efficient solution is then used for the implementation of an extension to the actual web application, so that all the functionalities that currently exist for non-derived nutrients are to be supported for derived nutrients as well. |
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Mengia Zollinger, OGD ZH - a prototype implementation, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
This thesis describes the implementation of a prototype OGD for the city of Zurich. The main focus was the achievement of a data catalogue and several apps for example data visualization.
At the beginning, an overview of the procedure and the used framework are introduced, followed by the explanation of the implementation and the resulted challenges. The thesis ends with a comparison of the prototype with similar projects of different countries and with another framework.
It is shown that an OGD ZH is possible, but that there are still unsolved issues such as the realization of version control, multilingualism and the automatic generation and assignment of metadata. |
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Hanspeter Kunz, Implications of embodiment and situatedness on the social organization of fish schools, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Dissertation)
In this thesis we investigate how the social organization of fish schools is influenced by the morphology and the sensory capabilities of the individuals as well as by those of their predators. We do this by means of individual-based models. Here, behavior at the group-level (schooling) is a consequence of local interactions, i.e. the responses of individuals to their neighbors and the interactions between predator and prey.We demonstrate how modeling the embodiment and the perceptual capabilities (situatedness) both of the individuals and of the predator influences their interaction and therefore the patterns at the group-level. Representing the individuals’ body affects the inter-individual spacing, such that large individuals occupy more space compared to small ones. Modeling the individuals’ situatedness, by reflecting the masking of distant neighbors by closer ones, restricts interaction to the local
environment of the individual. This influences many schooling characteristics, such as nearest neighbor distance or group speed, and in mixed schools of large and small individuals it leads to the segregation of the two sizes. In large groups school shape becomes complex and variable and the distribution of individuals heterogeneous, with regions of high and low density occurring anywhere in the school. Modeling morphological and sensory constraints of a predator affects its success in capturing prey and, therefore, influences whether schooling behavior is beneficial for the individuals or not. We demonstrate that when the predator is confusable, i.e. when its sensory capabilities to detect the movements of individuals in a group are limited, schooling is almost always beneficial.
In summary, incorporating aspects of embodiment and situatedness leads to more realistic models, first, because the real world is reflected more accurately, and, second, because they lead to a more realistic social organization of the simulated schools. |
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Igor V Evstigneev, Thorsten Hens, Klaus Reiner Schenk-Hoppé, Local stability analysis of a stochastic evolutionary financial market model with a risk-free asset, Mathematics and Financial Economics, Vol. 5 (3), 2011. (Journal Article)
This paper introduces and analyzes an evolutionary model of a financial marketwith a risk-free asset. Focus is on the study of local stability of the wealth dynamics through the application of recent results on the linearization and stability of random dynamical systems (Evstigneev et al. Proc Am Math Soc 139:1061–1072, 2011). Conditions are derived for the linearization of the model at an equilibrium state which ensure local convergence of sample paths to this equilibrium. The paper also shows that the concept of local stability is closely related to the notion of evolutionary stability. A locally evolutionarily stable investmentstrategy in the evolutionary model with a risk-free asset is derived, extending previousresearch. The method illustrated here is applicable for the analysis of manifold economic and financial dynamic models involving randomness. |
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Thorsten Hens, Rabah Amir, I V Evstigneev, Le Xu, Evolutionary finance and dynamic games, Mathematics and Financial Economics, Vol. 5 (3), 2011. (Journal Article)
The paper examines a game-theoretic evolutionary model of an asset marketwith endogenous equilibrium asset prices. Assets pay dividends that are partially consumed and partially reinvested. The investors use general, adaptive strategies (portfolio rules), distributing their wealth between assets, depending on the exogenous states of the world and the observed history of the game. The main objective of the work is to identify strategies, allowing an investor to “survive”, i.e. to possess a positive, bounded away from zero, share ofmarket wealth over the whole infinite time horizon. This work brings together recent studies on evolutionary finance with the classical topic of non-cooperative market games. |
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Florim Shabani, Auftrags- und Änderungsmanagement in einem SAP Umfeld: Prozessmodellierung und Umsetzungskonzept unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rückverfolgbarkeit, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Bachelor's Thesis)
Lately, we often hear the phrase: „One hundred percent risk for the supplier means zero percent for the client“. The clients want to carry zero risk in the general Terms & Conditions and thereby unlimited liability for the suppliers.
In order to continue, expand and not to take any risks from other companies, Siemens Switzerland - Division of Mobility and Logistics (MOL) would like to improve their processes.
As part of my bachelor thesis, I analyzed the MOL processes by focusing on traceability in three defined use cases for Order & Change Management in an SAP® environment and modeled these in BPMN. The goal was to find the vulnerabilities that traceability may negatively affect the process and suggest methods to improve them.
My research findings show the following weaknesses:
a) „No single process definition and Compliance“ b) „Redundancy of information in the same process“
c) „Information system with large media breaks“ and
d) „No one to one traceability process of the product and its components, with special attention to purchased materials by foreign suppliers“.
In conclusion, the new process definition eliminates the weaknesses that hinder the traceability process and this is also a prerequisite for the newly defined processes and methods of traceability (e.g.: to identify materials as a small total amount). These newly defined processes and methods relate ensures that the material is exactly where it is mounted and can be identified one to one (e.g.: screws).
The improvement of today’s weak points is the condition for one to one traceability and with these newly defined processes and methods MOL will overcome the long-term challenge of the market and improve their competitive position. |
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Igor Sokolovski, Reproducing human motion by an antropo-mimetic robot using a kinect camera, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
This master’s thesis deals with the implementation of a motion capture system measuring joints’ angles and estimating the kinematic model of human and the ECCERobot in real time as well as of a control mechanism for robot’s ‘muscles’. In the framework of my master project I created several components. The first component is used for motion capture from a human. For this purpose, I used a Kinect camera. The module was built in a way to control the camera, visualize a human 3D character from the data received and estimate the position of her limbs. The second component has the same functionality, but it was created for the robot. Kinect could not ‘catch’ the robot’s skeleton, so this I used retro-reflective markers, OptiTrack cameras and Tracking Tools software. I suggested, developed and tested a method of estimation of the robot’s upper body kinematical model. The method showed accurate and stable results. Also I proposed an algorithm based on an echo state neural network for the reproduction of human movement and control of the robot’s 'muscles'. |
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Daniel Pfeifer, Parallel out-of-core rendering of massive meshes, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Master's Thesis)
Advances in computer aided design technologies and 3D scanning lead to geometric
models of ever increasing complexity. Today's massive models not only exceed the
capability for interactive rendering on high-end graphics hardware, they also
exceed the amount of main memory available on a common PC. Out-of-Core
algorithms are a common approach of keeping only a subset of data in main
memory. In addition, parallel rendering can be used to distribute rendering
tasks to a number of rendering nodes where each node only loads a subset of the
complete model. Loading a subset of the model however is not easily adaptable
with current standard polygonal mesh files. This thesis presents a new, flexible
file format for massive meshes along with a set of reusable programming
libraries and utilities to convert, modify, and visualize files in this format.
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Thomas Scharrenbach, End-user assisted ontology evolution in uncertain domains, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2011. (Dissertation)
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