Current trends in e-commerce development in hospitality

Object of study in this report are the technological innovations in electronic commerce and the opportunities for growing the sales in the hotels. Following the trend that more and more people are using Internet for shopping and therefore to book their reservation online, there will be outlined the key current trends in e-commerce development. The report is based on the actual innovations such as mobile commerce and the expectations that most of electronic sales during the upcoming years will be through mobile devices; chatbots and the opportunity for optimizing the operational workload; alternative payment methods, which are becoming more preferable when finalizing the sales

Efficient resolution of potentially conflicting linear constraints in robotics

Submitted to IEEE TRO (05/August/2015)—A classical approach to handling potentially conflicting linear equality and inequality constraints in robotics is to impose a strict prioritization between them. Ensuring that the satisfaction of constraints with lower priority does not impact the satisfaction of constraints with higher priority is routinely done by solving a hierarchical least-squares problem. Such a task prioritization is often considered to be computationally demanding and, as a result, it is often approximated using a standard weighted least-squares problem. The main contribution of this article is to address this misconception and demonstrate, both in theory and in practice, that the hierarchical problem can in fact be solved faster than its weighted counterpart. The proposed approach to efficiently solving hierarchical least-squares problems is based on a novel matrix factorization, to be referred to as " lexicographic QR " , or ℓ-QR in short. We present numerical results based on three representative examples adopted from recent robotics literature which demonstrate that complex hierarchical problems can be tackled in real-time even with limited computational resources

Efficient resolution of potentially conflicting linear constraints in robotics

Submitted to IEEE TRO (05/August/2015)—A classical approach to handling potentially conflicting linear equality and inequality constraints in robotics is to impose a strict prioritization between them. Ensuring that the satisfaction of constraints with lower priority does not impact the satisfaction of constraints with higher priority is routinely done by solving a hierarchical least-squares problem. Such a task prioritization is often considered to be computationally demanding and, as a result, it is often approximated using a standard weighted least-squares problem. The main contribution of this article is to address this misconception and demonstrate, both in theory and in practice, that the hierarchical problem can in fact be solved faster than its weighted counterpart. The proposed approach to efficiently solving hierarchical least-squares problems is based on a novel matrix factorization, to be referred to as " lexicographic QR " , or ℓ-QR in short. We present numerical results based on three representative examples adopted from recent robotics literature which demonstrate that complex hierarchical problems can be tackled in real-time even with limited computational resources

Improving Accessibility of Cancer Research (Canadian Cancer Society - Research Information Outreach Team)

Cancer is one of the largest human health problems faced globally. Therefore, it is an important focus of research for many disciplines. Cancer research has made significant advancements as clinicians and researchers have expanded their knowledge to better understand this complex disease. Throughout this semester we completed a community engagement learning (CEL) project with the Research Information Outreach Team (RIOT) team from the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) to promote cancer research amongst adolescents and the general public. We completed blog posts for their website, along with promotional material for their Let’s Talk Cancer (LTC) event and infographics for their social media channels. Blogs were designed to engage adolescents in cancer research and related careers. Promotional material was generated to attract high school students to the event, where they can engage in cancer-related workshops and learn about the emerging fields of cancer research. Lastly, infographics were created for a general audience to summarize research on common cancers

EUCLID: EdUcational curriculum for the usage of LInked data

Linked Data has established itself as an emerging standard for the publication of structured data over the Web, enjoying amazing growth in terms of the number of organizations committing to use its best practices and technologies for ex- posing and interlinking data sets for seamless exchange, integration, and reuse. More and more ICT ventures offer innovative data management services on top of Linked (Open) Data, creating a demand for data practitioners with a back- ground in semantic technologies. Ensuring the availability of such expertise will prove crucial if European businesses are to reap the full benefits of the advanced data management technology, and the know-how accumulated over the past years by researchers, technology enthusiasts and early adopters in various European countries. EUCLID had a major contribution to this goal by providing a com- prehensive educational curriculum, supported by multi-modal training materials and state-of-the-art eLearning distribution channels, tailored to the real needs of data practitioners. Building upon experience reports from over twenty Linked Data projects with over forty companies and public offices in more than ten countries, complemented by feedback from hundreds of training events, and an in-depth analysis of the community discourse through mailing lists, discussion forums, Twitter, and the blogosphere, the curriculum focuses on techniques and software to integrate, query, and visualize Linked Data, as core areas in which practitioners state to require most assistance. It is realized as a combination of multi-modal learning resources, including an iBook published on iTunes U, and evaluated through webinars, f2f training, and continuous community feedback. By providing these key knowledge-transfer components, EUCLID will not only promote the industrial uptake of Linked Data best practices and technologies, but, most importantly, will contribute to their further development and consol- idation, and support the sustainability of the community, all essential aspects given the rapid pace at which the field has recently advanced