Contributions in Merlin

Despite increasing popularity of collaborative information technologies (CIT) in supporting virtual teams, we know little about the impacts brought about by their use. Based upon a review of existing literature, a framework highlighting several impacts of CIT use in virtual teams is presented for empirical validation.

Economic Traffic Management (ETM) determines an innovative approach to manage application traffic flows in overlay networks. ETM inter-relates traditional mechanisms of network management with economic incentives. To enable a suitable theoretical understanding of this approach, relevant ETM approaches are studied and classified. The key outcome of these investigations shows that a large potential exists for ETM’s applicability in Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. Therefore, a dedicated architecture for integrating ETM into ISP networks is developed by the EU FP7 SmoothIT project (Simple Economic Management Approaches of Overlay Traffic in Heterogeneous Internet Topologies). This architecture enables the integration of all identified ETM approaches due to its flexible and modular nature.

Purpose. To study extraocular muscle (EOM) function, the local physiologic contraction and elongation (deformation) along human horizontal EOMs were quantified using motion-encoded MRI. Methods. Eleven subjects (healthy right eye) gazed at a target that moved horizontally in a sinusoidal fashion (period 2s, amplitude +/-20 degrees ), during MR imaging with an optimized protocol. In addition, EOM longitudinal deformation of two patients with Duane's syndrome type I were analyzed. The horizontal EOMs and the optic nerve were tracked through 15 time frames and their local deformation was calculated. Eight segments were separated along the EOMs and compared for left-to-right and right-to-left eye movements. Results. In healthy subjects, the maximal EOM deformation was situated at approximately 2/3 of the muscle lengths from the scleral insertions. The EOM deformations were similar for the entire movement range as well as in both movement directions. In two patients with Duane's syndrome type I, the abnormal innervation of lateral rectus muscle affected specific EOM segments only. The posterior muscle segments contracted and the anterior muscle segments relaxed during adduction. Conclusions. Motion-encoded MRI is a useful technique to advance the understanding of the physiology and pathophysiology of EOMs in humans during eye movement.

This paper presents a general framework called ontographs that relies on a graphical notation and enables the tool-independent and reliable evaluation of human understandability of knowledge representation languages. An experiment with 64 participants is presented that applies this framework and compares a controlled natural language to a common formal language. The results show that the controlled natural language is easier to understand, needs less learning time, and is more accepted by its users. This work was funded by the research grant (Forschungskredit) programs 2006 and 2008 of the University of Zurich. I would like to thank Alain Cohn, Norbert E. Fuchs, Kaarel Kaljurand, Marc Lutz, Cerstin Mahlow, Philipp Müller and Michael Piotrowski for their suggestions and corrections. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics of the University of Zurich for organizing the recruitment of the participants for the experiment.

Clinicians could benefit from decision support systems incorporating the knowledge contained in clinical practice guidelines. However, the unstructured form of these guidelines makes them unsuitable for formal representation. To address this challenge we translated a complete set of pediatric guideline recommendations into Attempto Controlled English (ACE). One experienced pediatrician, one physician and a knowledge engineer assessed that a suitably extended version of ACE can accurately and naturally represent the clinical concepts and the proposed actions of the guidelines. Currently, we are developing a systematic and replicable approach to authoring guideline recommendations in ACE.

This paper presents a general framework how controlled natural languages can be evaluated and compared on the basis of user experiments. The subjects are asked to classify given statements (in the language to be tested) as either true or false with respect to a certain situation that is shown in a graphical notation called "ontographs". A first experiment has been conducted that applies this framework to the language Attempto Controlled English (ACE).

As organizations increase their offshore software development efforts, they must develop new methods and models for handling the vast amount of knowledge involved in these projects. Successful knowledge management and transfer is considered key to the success of contemporary organizations. When transferring knowledge to other operating units of a multi national company, the overall goal is to successfully implement the knowledge sent to the receiver. Cultural differences however, can interfere with successful knowledge management intentions. This paper investigates storytelling as a tool to transfer knowledge between global corporate units. A case study on how this instrument is used to communicate knowledge between a German and an Indian IT company gives first insights into factors that influence implementation success.

SAML federations provide students the possibility to use their home university’s account even in case they decide to study one or more semesters abroad. The visited university can rely on the identity information transmitted via the federation’s mechanisms. However, when services at the visited university require payment, such as using a printer, the roaming student is nevertheless required to have a local account, since the federation does not support payment. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to provide information about changes and enhancements to the federation’s architecture as well as to the used protocol, i.e., SAML, to enable payment within SAML federations. Thus, the SAML definitions have been taken as fundamentals for payment related enhancements. Furthermore, the enhanced federation was validated and prototypically implemented to prove correctness and real-life usage. This led to the result that it is feasible to provide payments within a SAML federation as long as the modifications proposed within this paper are carried out.

null

Users in online social networks ostensibly have relationships with a large number of other users. This has prompted many to comment that the nature of friendship in the online world is different from the offline world. However, even though a user may connect with many others, a majority of such connections become inactive after a period of time, and therefore, many relationships cease to exist. A challenge in modeling such connections is that death is unobserved, as the connection remains, but is not active. As a consequence, models that ignore the death of relationships overestimate the density of a network and can bias measures of user influence. We model interactivity among users in an online social network and explicitly account for unobserved relationship death via extensions of the well known Pareto-NBD and BG-NBD models to social network settings. We estimate our model on a network of musicians using hierarchical Bayesian methods and find that accounting for the death of relationships is beneficial for predicting future interactivity.