Cerstin Mahlow, Michael Hess, Sven Grund, Evolution by Evaluation, In: Proc. of the IADIS International Conference E-Learning, IADIS Press, Lisbon, Jul 2007. (Conference or Workshop Paper)
This paper describes the process of formally evaluating an E-Learning
system that has been in use for several years. Professional usability
evaluation offers deeper insight into user behaviour and needs than
accidental feedback collection or introspection by system developers. A
first analysis of the evaluation samples shows satisfaction of users
with the general design of the system but also dissatisfaction with
certain aspects of navigation that would otherwise have escaped our
attention. State of the art formal evaluation turned out to be
instrumental in making an existing system considerably more
user-friendly. |
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Patrick Ziegler, Evaluation of SIRUP with the SIRUP Classification of Data Integration Conflicts, No. IFI-2007.0007, Version: 1, July 2007. (Technical Report)
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Katharina Reinecke, Abraham Bernstein, Culturally Adaptive Software: Moving Beyond Internationalization, In: Proceedings of the HCI International (HCII), Springer, Beijing, China, July 2007. (Conference or Workshop Paper)
So far, culture has played a minor role in the design of software. Our experience with imbuto, a program designed for Rwandan agricultural advisors, has shown that cultural adaptation increased efficiency, but was extremely time-consuming and, thus, prohibitively expensive. In order to bridge the gap between cost-savings on one hand, and international usability on the other, this paper promotes the idea of culturally adaptive software. In contrast to manual localization, adaptive software is able to acquire details about an individual's cultural identity during use. Combining insights from the related fields international usability, user modeling and user interface adaptation, we show how research findings can be exploited for an integrated approach to automatically adapt software to the user's cultural frame. |
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Matthias Linherr, Data Mining auf Kundendaten, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2007. (Master's Thesis)
The aim of this thesis is to implement a platform to enable the alumni associations to
analyse their member-databases. Using statistical methods and data-mining algorithms,
this platform should allow the visualization and appraisal of member behaviour and
member structure. Four different alumni organisations utilise this platform in form of a
web-based application to maintain their databases. They form the base of the following
evaluations.
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Gian Marco Laube, SemClip - Ontology Mediation and Content Negotiation for the Semantic Clipboard, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2007. (Master's Thesis)
When using operating system clipboards to copy and paste data between applications, the information’s context is usually lost. In this thesis we introduce the semantic clipboard SemClip, which uses Semantic Web technologies to formally define the semantics of the exchanged data and therefore preserves the context during the data transfer. Additionally SemClip provides an ontology mediation service, to allow for the exchange of data between applications that are based on different syntactical or semantical definitions. This way SemClip augments content negotiation protocols of existing operating system clipboards. Our prototype implementation shows the feasibility and the added value of SemClip based on everyday scenarios with standard desktop applications. |
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Catharina Müller, Ausgabe von Lehrtexten in die MIO-Lernumgebung, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2007. (Master's Thesis)
In this diploma thesis, a web-based learning platform has been further developed. The master concept for onscreen text output of learning texts and the corresponding XML datamodel were elaborated. Further, the XSL stylesheets for the transformation of texts have been adjusted to actual knowledge about web-usability. By prototyping, the specification was derived and implemented in both, the text editing and the asset module. All XML text assets were prepared for further formatting by authors of the learning texts and the publishing concept was revised and extended. |
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David Dorn, Justina A V Fischer, Gebhard Kirchgässner, Alfonso Sousa-Poza, Is It Culture or Democracy? The Impact of Democracy and Culture on Happiness, Social Indicators Research, Vol. 82 (3), 2007. (Journal Article)
We analyze the relation between democracy and perceived subjective well-being while controlling for other relevant determinants such as culture measured by languages. We conduct a cross-national analysis covering 28 countries using data from the 1998 International Social Survey Programme. Contrasting existing empirical evidence, we observe a significant positive relationship between democracy and happiness even when controlling for income and culture measured by language and religion. The effect of democracy on happiness is stronger in countries with an established democratic tradition. |
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Maria Olivares, German Higher Education Institutions and Efficiency – Empirical Evidence from a Data Envelopment Analysis. Accounting for Heterogeneity, In: 10th European Workshop on Efficiency and Productivity Analysis (EWEPA X). 2007. (Conference Presentation)
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Gregor Schaffrath, P2P SIP, find your neighbour, In: SWITCH ECS Workshop. 2007. (Conference Presentation)
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Thomas Bocek, Peter Ming, Java-based Management of Biometric Data in a Distributed Internet Environment, In: Jazoon 07 / The International Conference on Java Technology. 2007. (Conference Presentation)
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Helmut Max Dietl, Egon Franck, Erfolgreiches Geschäftsmodell des FC Barcelona, In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 142, p. 62, 22 June 2007. (Newspaper Article)
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Enrico De Giorgi, Evolutionary Portfolio Selection With Liquidity Shocks , In: Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, Kos, Greece, June 21, 2007. . 2007. (Conference Presentation)
The wealth dynamics of insurance companies strongly depends on the success of their investment strategies, but also on liquidity shocks which occur during unfavorable years, when indemnities to be paid to the clients exceed collected premia. An investment strategy that does not take liquidity shocks into account, exposes insurance companies to the risk of bankruptcy.
This paper analyzes the behavior of insurance companies in an evolutionary framework. We show that an insurance company that merely satisfies regulatory constraints will eventually vanish from the market. We give a more restrictive no-bankruptcy condition for the investment strategies and we characterize trading strategies that are evolutionary stable, i.e., able to drive out any mutation. We study the existence of such strategies and the conditions under which financial and insurance markets are stable. |
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Jürg Syz, Presenting the First European Property Derivatives Trades, In: Marcus Evans Conference on Discovering the Pan-European Property Derivatives Market. 2007. (Conference Presentation)
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David Seidl, A Note on the Concept of Relevance, In: Organization Studies Summer Workshop. 2007. (Conference Presentation)
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T Kuhn, AceRules: executing rules in controlled natural language, In: First International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems 2007, Springer, Heidelberg, 2007-06-07. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Expressing rules in controlled natural language can bring us closer to the vision of the Semantic Web since rules can be written in the notation of the application domain and are understandable by anybody. AceRules is a prototype of a rule system with a multi-semantics architecture. It demonstrates the formal representation of rules using the controlled natural language ACE. We show that a rule language can be executable and easily understandable at the same time. AceRules is available via a web service and two web interfaces. |
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Felix-Robinson Aschoff, Marco Prestipino, Gerhard Schwabe, Cooperation technology and timeliness of information: Comparing travelbooks, wikis and online communities, In: 15th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), 2007-06-07. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Based on an information systems metaphor for virtual communities this paper discusses up-todateness as one crucial factor of travel information quality. Two empirical studies are presented which show that the up-to-dateness of information in travelbooks, wikis and in forum communities does not differ systematically. Based on this empirical evidence we focus on understanding the factors influencing the up-to-dateness of the three media. We propose a framework with three determining factors: 1) the initial up-to-dateness at the time the information is first available for the user 2) the information volatility in a certain domain and 3) the length of the revision cycles. From these factors we hypothesize a) that the initial up-to-dateness is best in travelbooks and worst in forums and b) that the revision cycle is shortest in forums and longest in travelbooks. Since wikis come close the initial up-to-dateness of travelbooks and its revision cycle is almost as short as in forums, we finally argue why we believe wikis to be the most up-to-date medium in the long run. |
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K Kaljurand, N E Fuchs, Verbalizing OWL in Attempto controlled English, In: Proceedings of OWL: Experiences and Directions (OWLED 2007), 2007-06-06. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
We describe a verbalization of the logical content of OWL
ontologies — using OWL 1.1 without data-valued properties — in Attempto Controlled English (ACE). Because ACE is a subset of English,
the verbalization makes OWL ontologies accessible to people with no
training in formal methods. We conclude that OWL can be verbalized
in concise and understandable English provided that a certain naming
style is adopted for OWL individuals, classes, and properties. |
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Cristian Morariu, Burkhard Stiller, A Distributed Architecture for IP Traffic Analysis, In: 1st international conference on Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security: Inter-Domain Management (AIMS), Springer, 2007-06-06. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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Peer-to-Peer Large-scale Collaborative Storage Networks, In: AIMS 2007 / Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security, Oslo, Norway, 2007. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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N E Fuchs, R Schwitter, Web-annotations for humans and machines, In: 4th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2007), 2007-06-03. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
We propose to manually annotate web pages with computer-processable controlled natural language. These annotations have well-defined
formal properties and can be used as query relevant summaries to automatically
answer questions expressed in controlled natural language, and as the basis for
other forms of automated reasoning. Last, but not least, the annotations can also
serve as human-readable summaries of the contents of the web pages. Arguably, annotations written in controlled natural language can bridge the gap between informal and formal notations and leverage true collaboration between
humans and machines. This is a position paper that proposes a solution combining existing methods and techniques to achieve a highly relevant practical goal,
namely how to effectively access information on the web. However, our solution introduces a "chicken and egg" problem: a critical mass of web annotations
will be necessary that people perceive the value of these annotations and start
annotating web pages themselves. Only the future will show whether this – basically non-technical – problem can be solved. |
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