Der photorefraktive Effekt an polymer-eingebetteten Flüssigkristallen

von Lutz PaelkePaderborn, Univ., Diss., 200

Relevance-driven acquisition and rapid on-site analysis of 3d geospatial data

One central problem in geospatial applications using 3D models is the tradeoff between detail and acquisition cost during acquisition, as well as processing speed during use. Commonly used laser-scanning technology can be used to record spatial data in various levels of detail. Much detail, even on a small scale, requires the complete scan to be conducted at high resolution and leads to long acquisition time, as well as a great amount of data and complex processing. Therefore, we propose a new scheme for the generation of geospatial 3D models that is driven by relevance rather than data. As part of that scheme we present a novel acquisition and analysis workflow, as well as supporting data-models. The workflow includes on-site data evaluation (e.g. quality of the scan) and presentation (e.g. visualization of the quality), which demands fast data processing. Thus, we employ high performance graphics cards (GPGPU) to effectively process and analyze large volumes of LIDAR data. In particular we present a density calculation based on k-nearest-neighbor determination using OpenCL. The presented GPGPU-accelerated workflow enables a fast data acquisition with highly detailed relevant objects and minimal storage requirements.State of Lower-SaxonyVolkswagen Foundatio

Integrating Software Engineering and Usability Engineering

The usability of products gains in importance not only for the users of a system but also for manufacturing organizations. According to Jokela, the advantages for users are far-reaching and include increased productivity, improved quality of work, and increased user satisfaction. Manufacturers also profit significantly through a reduction of support an

Location based context awareness through tag-cloud visualizations

People often only see what that they already know or explicitly look for. Thus, while mobile users might be interested in the historic background of their surrounding, its current significance or its relation to specific events, they are likely to miss places of interest if they are not explicitly pointed out. Location based services (LBS) like mobile tourist guides offer a potential technological solution, but the production cost of multimedia content is prohibitive in many cases, limiting the coverage of such services to major tourist areas. To provide mobile users with information on the spatial context of a location or a route we present an approach that gathers context information from freely available sources like Wikipedia and creates visualizations of this data that provide users with the necessary cues to increase awareness of their spatial context. In our approach we first gather geo-referenced information that is located close to a point or route. In the second step this data is filtered to extract key-words that characterize the environment. These are then rendered as a tag-cloud in the third step. By skimming the tag-clouds a user gets a good impression of the characteristic features of an environment and in essence performs a further filtering step. The user can interactively adjust the level of detail of the visualization or follow up on individual key-words to adjust the presentation to his interests. By combining web 2.0 technologies and public data sources with filtering and visualization techniques we exploit the browsing capability of humans to provide a service that increases location awareness at arbitrary locations. The approach makes it easy to author an additional text and it can incorporate the ever increasing amount of available geo-referenced information

The efficacy of electronic health-supported home exercise interventions for patients with osteoarthritis of the knee: Systematic review

Background: Osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common cause for disability and limited mobility in the elderly, with considerable individual suffering and high direct and indirect disease-related costs. Nonsurgical interventions such as exercise, enhanced physical activity, and self-management have shown beneficial effects for pain reduction, physical function, and quality of life (QoL), but access to these treatments may be limited. Therefore, home therapy is strongly recommended. However, adherence to these programs is low. Patients report lack of motivation, feedback, and personal interaction as the main barriers to home therapy adherence. To overcome these barriers, electronic health (eHealth) is seen as a promising opportunity. Although beneficial effects have been shown in the literature for other chronic diseases such as chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, a systematic literature review on the efficacy of eHealth interventions for patients with osteoarthritis of knee is missing so far. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of eHealth-supported home exercise interventions with no or other interventions regarding pain, physical function, and health-related QoL in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Methods: MEDLINE, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and PEDro were systematically searched using the keywords osteoarthritis knee, eHealth, and exercise. An inverse variance random-effects meta-analysis was carried out pooling standardized mean differences (SMDs) of individual studies. The Cochrane tool was used to assess risk of bias in individual studies, and the quality of evidence across studies was evaluated following the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation approach. Results: The literature search yielded a total of 648 results. After screening of titles, abstracts, and full-texts, seven randomized controlled trials were included. Pooling the data of individual studies demonstrated beneficial short-term (pain SMD=-0.31, 95% CI -0.58 to -0.04, low quality; QoL SMD=0.24, 95% CI 0.05-0.43, moderate quality) and long-term effects (pain -0.30, 95% CI -0.07 to -0.53, moderate quality; physical function 0.41, 95% CI 0.17-0.64, high quality; and QoL SMD=0.27, 95% CI 0.06-0.47, high quality). Conclusions: eHealth-supported exercise interventions resulted in less pain, improved physical function, and health-related QoL compared with no or other interventions; however, these improvements were small (SMD<0.5) and may not make a meaningful difference for individual patients. Low adherence is seen as one limiting factor of eHealth interventions. Future research should focus on participatory development of eHealth technology integrating evidence-based principles of exercise science and ways of increasing patient motivation and adherence

A framework for cloud-based context-aware information services for citizens in smart cities

© 2014 Khan et al.; licensee Springer. Background: In the context of smart cities, public participation and citizen science are key ingredients for informed and intelligent planning decisions and policy-making. However, citizens face a practical challenge in formulating coherent information sets from the large volumes of data available to them. These large data volumes materialise due to the increased utilisation of information and communication technologies in urban settings and local authorities’ reliance on such technologies to govern urban settlements efficiently. To encourage effective public participation in urban governance of smart cities, the public needs to be facilitated with the right contextual information about the characteristics and processes of their urban surroundings in order to contribute to the aspects of urban governance that affect them such as socio-economic activities, quality of life, citizens well-being etc. The cities on the other hand face challenges in terms of crowd sourcing with quality data collection and standardisation, services inter-operability, provisioning of computational and data storage infrastructure. Focus: In this paper, we highlight the issues that give rise to these multi-faceted challenges for citizens and public administrations of smart cities, identify the artefacts and stakeholders involved at both ends of the spectrum (data/service producers and consumers) and propose a conceptual framework to address these challenges. Based upon this conceptual framework, we present a Cloud-based architecture for context-aware citizen services for smart cities and discuss the components of the architecture through a common smart city scenario. A proof of concept implementation of the proposed architecture is also presented and evaluated. The results show the effectiveness of the cloud-based infrastructure for the development of a contextual service for citizens

Development and testing of a traffic information system driver interface. Final report

Notes: Report covers the period Sept 1991 - May 1993Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/1014/2/86541.0001.001.pd

Entry of destinations into route guidance systems: a human factors evaluation. Final report

Conger Alumnae Group, Ann Arbor, Mich.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/1040/2/86171.0001.001.pd