CoMIC : an exploration into computer-mediated intercultural communication

This thesis explores how cultural differences manifest themselves in computermediated intercultural communication (CoMIC). This study particularly looks at the role and use of digital nonverbals (DNVs) and their regulatory functions. The data analyzed is from a global virtual team working together for a period of three months. The grounded theory method has been employed to code the electronic transcript of the team\u27s communication. Furthermore, the participants were surveyed regarding their personal backgrounds, their work, and their perception of the communication processes that took place. The study shows that in an intercultural communication process DNVs are used to avoid intercultural misunderstandings and to underline the various communication styles. The different styles, hand in hand with the DNVs used, vary depending on the team\u27s overall situation. However, the absence of DNVs can be an indicator for a state of crisis

Wechseljahre – und jetzt? : Beeinflussung des Hormons Östrogen durch Aktivitäten bei Frauen in den Wechseljahren

Thema : Frauen in den Wechseljahren leiden häufig unter diversen Beschwerden, fühlen sich in ihren alltäglichen Aktivitäten eingeschränkt und berichten über eine niedrige Lebensqualität. Ausschlaggebend dafür sind die schwankenden und anschliessend absinkenden Sexualhormonspiegel und die generelle hormonelle Umstellung in den Wechseljahren. Ziel : Das Ziel dieser Bachelorarbeit ist es, Aktivitäten zur Beeinflussung des Hormons Östrogen bei Frauen in den Wechseljahren zu identifizieren. Daraus wurde folgende Leitfrage formuliert: «Wie können Frauen in den Wechseljahren das Hormon Östrogen durch Aktivitäten beeinflussen?» Methode : Anhand eines Literaturreviews werden Ergebnisse aus vier Hauptstudien zusammengefasst, kritisch gewürdigt, diskutiert und mit weiteren Quellen verglichen. Relevante Ergebnisse : Durch Yoga und verschiedene Ernährungsweisen kann der Östrogenspiegel erhöht werden. Eine Senkung des Östrogenspiegels kann durch Gewichtsreduktion, körperliches Training und die Exposition gegenüber Sonnenlicht erreicht werden. Schlussfolgerung : Frauen, die sich in den Wechseljahren befinden, können mit Anpassungen im Lebensstil durch die genannten Aktivitäten Einfluss auf das Hormon Östrogen nehmen. Dadurch können sowohl Beschwerden in den Wechseljahren reduziert, sowie längerfristige Risiken minimiert werden. Es bedarf jedoch weiterer Forschung zu nichtmedikamentösen Handlungsoptionen zur Beeinflussung des Hormons

Summer Universities for Women in Computer Science

A cross-university approach will be discussed that reflects moneducation, networking, and gender oriented organizational reforms in university programs. The concept was developed in Germany in 1997 as a national approach. Each year “Informatica Feminale” (www. Informatica-feminale.de) attracts more than 70 female lectures from universities, research, or industry to give courses on all topics of computer science oriented to the existing university curricula. Participants are female students as well as women interested in further education. The approach has won an European award for best practice. Since 2003 Austria provides a similar project called the “ditact-women’s IT summer studies” (www.ditact.ac.at). Another project will be located in New Zealand in 2005 as the “Computing Women Conference” (www/ cwc.org.nz)

Dynamics of the Wang-Landau algorithm and complexity of rare events for the three-dimensional bimodal Ising spin glass

We investigate the performance of flat-histogram methods based on a multicanonical ensemble and the Wang-Landau algorithm for the three-dimensional +/- J spin glass by measuring round-trip times in the energy range between the zero-temperature ground state and the state of highest energy. Strong sample-to-sample variations are found for fixed system size and the distribution of round-trip times follows a fat-tailed Frechet extremal value distribution. Rare events in the fat tails of these distributions corresponding to extremely slowly equilibrating spin glass realizations dominate the calculations of statistical averages. While the typical round-trip time scales exponential as expected for this NP-hard problem, we find that the average round-trip time is no longer well-defined for systems with N >= 8^3 spins. We relate the round-trip times for multicanonical sampling to intrinsic properties of the energy landscape and compare with the numerical effort needed by the genetic Cluster-Exact Approximation to calculate the exact ground state energies. For systems with N >= 8^3 spins the simulation of these rare events becomes increasingly hard. For N >= 14^3 there are samples where the Wang-Landau algorithm fails to find the true ground state within reasonable simulation times. We expect similar behavior for other algorithms based on multicanonical sampling.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

The ground state energy of the Edwards-Anderson spin glass model with a parallel tempering Monte Carlo algorithm

We study the efficiency of parallel tempering Monte Carlo technique for calculating true ground states of the Edwards-Anderson spin glass model. Bimodal and Gaussian bond distributions were considered in two and three-dimensional lattices. By a systematic analysis we find a simple formula to estimate the values of the parameters needed in the algorithm to find the GS with a fixed average probability. We also study the performance of the algorithm for single samples, quantifying the difference between samples where the GS is hard, or easy, to find. The GS energies we obtain are in good agreement with the values found in the literature. Our results show that the performance of the parallel tempering technique is comparable to more powerful heuristics developed to find the ground state of Ising spin glass systems.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figures. A new section added. Accepted for publication in Physica

CoMIC : an exploration into computer-mediated intercultural communication

This thesis explores how cultural differences manifest themselves in computermediated intercultural communication (CoMIC). This study particularly looks at the role and use of digital nonverbals (DNVs) and their regulatory functions. The data analyzed is from a global virtual team working together for a period of three months. The grounded theory method has been employed to code the electronic transcript of the team\u27s communication. Furthermore, the participants were surveyed regarding their personal backgrounds, their work, and their perception of the communication processes that took place. The study shows that in an intercultural communication process DNVs are used to avoid intercultural misunderstandings and to underline the various communication styles. The different styles, hand in hand with the DNVs used, vary depending on the team\u27s overall situation. However, the absence of DNVs can be an indicator for a state of crisis

Managing Organizational Change

This paper focuses on organizational change, its causes and how to deal with it in the Project management framework. We will present different types of change that can occur in the organization. Change and change management will be defined in general terms, and specific connections will be made to managing change as a project. When change occurs as a finite entity, the project life cycle can be analyzed and approached with specific project tools. An overview will be presented to emphasize specific steps and project management elements that will make the change project successful, as well as common pitfalls that should be avoided. The theory as discussed in the first section of the report will be used to analyze two cases; a merger and an internal implementation of a new software information system. We conclude that the most important aspects of successful change are the creation of tangible objectives, clear planning, continuous and engaged communication, and hands-on management of the process