Contributions in Merlin

Low frequency “off-line” repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the course of several minutes has attained considerable attention as a research tool in cognitive neuroscience due to its ability to induce functional disruptions of brain areas. This disruptive rTMS effect is highly valuable for revealing a causal relationship between brain and behavior. However, its influence on remote interconnected areas and, more importantly, the duration of the induced neurophysiological effects, remain unknown. These aspects are critical for a study design in the context of cognitive neuroscience. In order to investigate these issues, 12 healthy male subjects underwent 8 H215O positron emission tomography (PET) scans after application of long-train low frequency rTMS to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Immediately after the stimulation train, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) increases were present under the stimulation site as well as in other prefrontal cortical areas, including the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) ipsilateral to the stimulation site. The mean increases in rCBF returned to baseline within nine minutes. The duration of this unilateral prefrontal rTMS effect on rCBF is of particular interest to those who aim to influence behavior in cognitive paradigms that use an “off-line” approach.

We report on several experiments on the optimal allocation of ownership rights. The experiments confirm the property rights approach by showing that the ownership structure affects relationship-specific investments and that subjects attain the most efficient ownership allocation despite starting from different initial conditions. However, in contrast to the property rights approach, the most efficient ownership structure is joint ownership. These results cannot be explained by the self-interest model nor by models that assume that all people behave fairly, but they are largely consistent with approaches that focus on the interaction between selfish and fair players.

Witnessing the distress of others can result both in empathy and personal distress. Perspective-taking has been assigned a major role in the elicitation and modulation of these vicarious responses. However, little is known about how perspective-taking affects the psychophysiological correlates of empathy vs. personal distress. We recorded facial electromyographic and electrocardiographic activity while participants watched videos of patients undergoing painful sonar treatment. These videos were watched using two distinct perspectives: a) imagining the patient's feelings ('imagine other'), or b) imagining to be in the patient's place ('imagine self'). The results revealed an unspecific frowning response as well as activity over the M. orbicularis oculi region which was specific to the 'imagine self' perspective. This indicates that the pain-related tightening of the patients orbits was matched by participants when adopting this perspective. Our findings provide a physiological explanation for the more direct personal involvement and higher levels of personal distress associated with putting oneself explicitly into someone elses shoes. They provide further evidence that empathy does not only rely on automatic processes, but is also strongly influenced by top-down control and cognitive processes.

Modular self-reconfigurable robots are robotic systems that are able to change their shape through appropriate reconfiguration of their modules according to the task environment encountered. In recent work, a biologically inspired modular robot called Slimebot has been shown to exhibit amoebic locomotion and obstacle negotiation in a fully emergent manner. The goal of this thesis is to further investigate the capabilities of the Slimebot under a variety of scenarios, which include simple locomotion, obstacle negotiation, locomotion towards a moving light source, malfunction of modules and merging of Slimebots. A special focus is set on optimization, i.e. on the attempt to find parameter values for which the Slimebot performs best in a given task environment.

Community research assumes that mobile tourism communities could change the way how travelers achieve the information needed. A successful community can only be established, if it is able to meet the user's demands. There is a gap in research in this area regarding the required investigation with basic methods. By focusing on the main interests individual travelers had, we tried to figure out in which scenarios they could be put in most possibly where a mobile tourism community could succeed. Therefore we used the methods focus group, field trip and travel diary to clarify which methods suit for further research in this domain. The results show that information about public transportation and accommodation is the most common need. A mobile community could be a good tool to resolve several needs, although we found out that too much information available could reduce travel experience.

The emergence of peer-to-peer systems poses a challenge for network providers, in particular the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Since the routing in such peer-to-peer applications works unaware of the underlying topology, the chosen paths are not always optimal for the ISPs - on the contrary, a lot of unnecessary routes and costly connections are a consequence. ISPs have to pay for certain connections that leave their network and enter the network of another provider. By favouring intradomain traffic over the costly interdomain traffic, the ISPs have the potential to save resources and costs. Different universities and companies formed a project called SmoothIT which set itself the goal to optimise these shortcomings. The critical success factor to overcome these problems was co-operation as opposed to standalone, individual efforts to optimise the network by itself. By creating incentives for all participants the aim is to facilitate collaboration and information exchange in order to find shorter and less expensive routes. A possible architecture to enhance the communication between the ISPs and the application providers, bases on a SmoothIT information system (SIS) that shares information with the applications through a web service. The application can then choose an ideal path to route the traffic that stays within the borders of the ISP as much as possible. For the end users this results in faster download, reduced delay times and a better service quality.

Due to the increase in technology used in the financial sector, which continues to intensify competition, tailoring consulting services is playing a decisive role in differentiating oneself from the competition. The increase in technology has created prerequisites which companies can use to offer the customer better consulting through IT support. Six Swiss banks were interviewed as part of this paper to find out whether these prerequisites are being utilized in investment consulting. The results showed that investment consulting without the help of IT tools is currently unimaginable. However, there is great room for improvement in the information technology deployed. Based on specialist literature and the interviews carried out, this paper shows improvement measures for the investment process of Swiss banks. Durch die zunehmende Technologisierung im Finanzsektor und der dadurch immer intensiver werdende Wettbewerb, spielt die Individualisierung der Beratungsdienstleistungen eine entscheidende Rolle um sich von der Konkurrenz abzuheben. Mit der Technologisierung wurden die Voraussetzungen geschaffen, dass der Kunde durch IT-Unterstu?tzung besser beraten werden kann. Um herauszufinden ob diese Voraussetzungen in der Anlageberatung genutzt werden, wurden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit sechs Schweizer Banken befragt. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass eine Anlageberatung ohne IT-Hilfsmittel heute kaum mehr vorstellbar ist. Dennoch besteht bei der eingesetzten Informationstechnologie ein grosses Verbesserungspotential. Basierend auf die Fachliteratur und die durchgefu?hrten Interviews soll die vorliegende Arbeit Verbesserungsmassnahmen im Anlageprozess von Schweizer Banken aufzeigen.

Sensory-motor coordination is one of the key principles that underlie intelligent and adaptive behaviour of agents. The goal of this work was to explore the sensory-motor coordination in two embodied, situated agents – a ‘dog’ robot “Puppy”, and a ‘fish’ robot “Wanda” – and to discover ways how they can efficiently sense their environment and adapt to it. In particular, in the quadruped platform different gaits and their impact on terrain recognition were investigated. This offered the possibility to adapt its behaviour better to the environmental conditions. The fish robot “Wanda” was also developed further in terms of adaptive behaviour and a whiskered microphone was tested as an additional sensor type. As a result, both robots were able to evolve optimal gaits taking specific environmental conditions into account and react thus autonomously to different, not pre-learned, environmental situations, while exploiting the mechanical properties of their bodies.

Die internationale Verflechtung der Finanzmärkte hat stark zugenommen. Viele kritisieren, dies habe die gegenwärtige Kreditkrise verschärft, wenn nicht gar ausgelöst, und fordern schärfere Regulierungen. Der Autor wendet sich gegen diese Kritik. Die Verteilung von Kreditrisiken über die Welt hinweg bringe Wohlfahrtsgewinne. Zudem würden globalisierte Finanzmärkte mithelfen, die Folgen der Krise zu dämpfen.