Geometric algorithms for transposition invariant content-based music retrieval

We are grateful to Mika Turkia for the implementations.Peer reviewe

A Design-Science-Research Approach

Neue Organisationsformen, wie evolutionäre Organisationen, bilden in vielen Kooperationsszenarien sozio-technische Konstrukte mit modernen CSCW Anwendungen aus. Daher erfordern Veränderungen dieser sozialen Systeme eine kontinuierliche Anpassung der technischen Tools an die neuen sozialen Konfigurationen. Diese Dissertation ist als Design Science Research (DSR) Projekt konzipiert und addressiert die folgende Forschungsfrage (RQ): “Wie können soziotechnische, evolutionäre Organisationen die Herausforderungen der joint optimization und des organizational choice während ihrer autopoietischen Veränderungsprozesse addressieren?” Die Fallstudie Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. wurde mittels qualitativer und ethnographischer Methoden im Rahmen der entsprechenden DSR Zyklen untersucht. Das Forschungsprojekt fokussiert die Entwicklung von Artefakten indem sowohl eine technische, als auch eine soziale Perspektive eingenommen wird. Aus der technische Perspektive wird die RQ durch eine Microservice-Plattform adressiert. Die Architektur dient der Verteilung von Verantwortlichkeit für die Software in einem heterogenen Netzwerk von Entwickler:innen. Dabei müssen diverse neue Herausforderungen beachtet werden, wie etwa die Verteilung des User Interface. Durch die Betrachtung der RQ aus der sozialen Perspektive wird der USMU Workshop entwickelt. Dieses Artefakt dient der Verbindung der Charakteristika evolutionärer Organisationen mit agiler Software Entwicklung und mit Methoden des partizipativen Designs. Die Studien zeigen, dass beide Artefakte die RQ adressieren. Zudem konnte ich für beide Artefakte wertvolle Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten aufzeigen. Somit motivieren die Ergebnisse den nächsten Schritt des Projekts und die vorliegende Thesis wird Bestandteil des zyklischen Ablaufs eines DSR Projekts.The emergence of new types of organizational structures, such as evolutionary-teal organizations, almost always leads to the development of socio-technical constructs when it comes to working in collaboration with modern CSCW applications. A consequence of this is that the social system’s autopoietic change processes create challenges that compel one to adjust the implementation of the technical tool to the social system’s new configuration. This thesis is structured according to the design science research (DSR) approach and focuses on the research question (RQ): “How can socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations address the challenges of joint optimization and organizational choice during their autopoietic processes?” For this purpose, the case study Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. is investigated using a qualitative ethnographical approach during the DSR cycles. Addressing the RQ, two artifacts are designed from a technical as well as a social perspective. While the technical perspective primarily investigates the adjustments of technology, the social perspective focuses on the management of change in socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations. I propose a microservice platform as an artifact that addresses the RQ from a technical perspective. The microservice architecture aims at spreading the responsibility for the software through a heterogeneous ecosystem of developers. The newly designed USMU workshop is addressing the RQ from the social perspective. It strives to intertwine the characteristics of evolutionary-teal organizations with agile software development and participatory design methods. In my studies, I examine the fact that both artifacts can be used to address the RQ. Additionally, I was able to identify valuable improvements for both of my artifacts. Hence, the project follows the lifecycle of a DSR project by reasoning through the results presented here for its next iteration

The Value of Critical Knowledge, Ethics and Education

This book aims at six important conceptual tools developed by philosophers to address the meaning of ethics. The author develops each particular view in a chapter, hoping to constitute at the end a concise, interesting and easily readable whole. These concepts are: 1. Ethics and realism: elucidation of the distinction between understanding and explanation – the lighthouse type of normativity. 2. Leadership, antirealism and moral psychology – the lightning rod type of normativity. 3. Bright light on self-identity and positive reciprocity – the reciprocity type of normativity. 4. The virtue of generosity and its importance for inclusive education – the divine will type of normativity. 5. Ethical education as normative philosophical perspective. The normativity of self-transformation in education. 6. Aesthetics as expression of human freedom and concern for the whole world in which we live, and which lives in us. We share an artistic presence in communities of practice, and across wider human circles, and finally seek to unite in the celebration of friendship and humanity across boundaries in a philosophical garden

Crafting chaos: computational design of contraptions with complex behaviour

The 2010s saw the democratisation of digital fabrication technologies. Although this phenomenon made fabrication more accessible, physical assemblies displaying a complex behaviour are still difficult to design. While many methods support the creation of complex shapes and assemblies, managing a complex behaviour is often assumed to be a tedious aspect of the design process. As a result, the complex parts of the behaviour are either deemed negligible (when possible) or managed directly by the software, without offering much fine-grained user control. This thesis argues that efficient methods can support designers seeking complex behaviours by increasing their level of control over these behaviours. To demonstrate this, I study two types of artistic devices that are particularly challenging to design: drawing machines, and chain reaction contraptions. These artefacts’ complex behaviour can change dramatically even as their components are moved by a small amount. The first case study aims to facilitate the exploration and progressive refinement of complex patterns generated by drawing machines under drawing-level user-defined constraints. The approach was evaluated with a user study, and several machines drawing the expected pattern were fabricated. In the second case study, I propose an algorithm to optimise the layout of complex chain reaction contraptions described by a causal graph of events in order to make them robust to uncertainty. Several machines optimised with this method were successfully assembled and run. This thesis makes the following contributions: (1) support complex behaviour specifications; (2) enable users to easily explore design variations that respect these specifications; and (3) optimise the layout of a physical assembly to maximise the probability of real-life success

Academic Integrity in Canada

This open access book presents original contributions and thought leadership on academic integrity from a variety of Canadian scholars. It showcases how our understanding and support for academic integrity have progressed, while pointing out areas urgently requiring more attention. Firmly grounded in the scholarly literature globally, it engages with the experience of local practicioners. It presents aspects of academic integrity that is specific to Canada, such as the existence of an "honour culture", rather than relying on an "honour code". It also includes Indigenous voices and perspectives that challenge traditional understandings of intellectual property, as well as new understandings that have arisen as a consequence of Covid-19 and the significant shift to online and remote learning. This book will be of interest to senior university and college administrators who are interested in ensuring the integrity of their institutions. It will also be of interest to those implementing university and college policy, as well as those who support students in their scholarly work

A Study of Heuristic Approaches for Runway Scheduling for the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport

Recent work in air transit efficiency has increased en-route efficiency to a point that airport efficiency is the bottleneck. With the expected expansion of air transit it will become important to get the most out of airport capacity. Departure scheduling is an area where efficiency stands to be improved, but due to the complicated nature of the problem an optimal solution is not always forthcoming. A heuristic approach can be used to find a sub-optimal take-off order in a significantly faster time than the optimal solution can be found using known methods. The aim of this research is to explore such heuristics and catalog their solution characteristics. A greedy approach as well as a k-interchange approach were developed to find improved takeoff sequences. When possible, the optimal solution was found to benchmark the performance of the heuristics, in general the heuristic solutions were within 10-15% of the optimal solution. The heuristic solutions showed improvements of up to 15% over the first-in first-out order with a running time around 4 ms

Academic Integrity in Canada

This open access book presents original contributions and thought leadership on academic integrity from a variety of Canadian scholars. It showcases how our understanding and support for academic integrity have progressed, while pointing out areas urgently requiring more attention. Firmly grounded in the scholarly literature globally, it engages with the experience of local practicioners. It presents aspects of academic integrity that is specific to Canada, such as the existence of an "honour culture", rather than relying on an "honour code". It also includes Indigenous voices and perspectives that challenge traditional understandings of intellectual property, as well as new understandings that have arisen as a consequence of Covid-19 and the significant shift to online and remote learning. This book will be of interest to senior university and college administrators who are interested in ensuring the integrity of their institutions. It will also be of interest to those implementing university and college policy, as well as those who support students in their scholarly work