Assessment of Today’s Mobile Banking Applications from the View of Customer Requirements

Mobile banking is a subset of electronic banking which underlies not only the determinants of the banking business but also the special conditions of mobile commerce. This paper analyzes customer needs and expectations from the mobile applications’ view and from the banking view in order to derive a defined set of requirements. Based on these results, existing mobile banking applications are assessed. Their major shortcomings are explained, opportunities for their improvement are shown and the impact of upcoming new technology is discussed. The outcome of the paper is a defined set of customer requirements to mobile banking applications, the identification and assessment of four standard types of current mobile banking applications and an explanation of major failure reasons along with opportunities for their improvement.

Assessment of Today’s Mobile Banking Applications from the View of Customer Requirements

Mobile banking is a subset of electronic banking which underlies not only the determinants of the banking business but also the special conditions of mobile commerce. This paper analyzes customer needs and expectations from the mobile applications’ view and from the banking view in order to derive a defined set of requirements. Based on these results, existing mobile banking applications are assessed. Their major shortcomings are explained, opportunities for their improvement are shown and the impact of upcoming new technology is discussed. The outcome of the paper is a defined set of customer requirements to mobile banking applications, the identification and assessment of four standard types of current mobile banking applications and an explanation of major failure reasons along with opportunities for their improvement

Time-of-flight imaging of invisibility cloaks

As invisibility cloaking has recently become experimental reality, it is interesting to explore ways to reveal remaining imperfections. In essence, the idea of most invisibility cloaks is to recover the optical path lengths without an object (to be made invisible) by a suitable arrangement around that object. Optical path length is proportional to the time of flight of a light ray or to the optical phase accumulated by a light wave. Thus, time-of-flight images provide a direct and intuitive tool for probing imperfections. Indeed, recent phase-sensitive experiments on the carpet cloak have already made early steps in this direction. In the macroscopic world, time-of-flight images could be measured directly by light detection and ranging (LIDAR). Here, we show calculated time-of-flight images of the conformal Gaussian carpet cloak, the conformal grating cloak, the cylindrical free-space cloak, and of the invisible sphere. All results are obtained by using a ray-velocity equation of motion derived from Fermat's principle.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, journal pape

Das Abgeordneten-Statut des Europäischen Parlaments

Der Status von Parlamentsmitgliedem gehört wegen seiner grundlegenden Bedeutung für das Verhältnis Bürger - Staat zum Verfassungsrecht im materiellen Sinn. Das kürzlich vom Europäischen Parlament beschlossene Abgeordnetenstatut, das noch der Zustimmung des Rats bedarf, muss deshalb in die aktuelle Diskussion um eine europäische Verfassung einbezogen werden. Das Statut, dessen Inhalt bisher öffentlich kaum bekannt ist, erscheint im Grundsatz und in vielen Einzelheiten nicht hinnehmbar. Sein In-Kraft-Treten würde dem Europagedanken schweren Schaden zufügen

Die Besoldung und Versorgung von Angehörigen des Öffentlichen Dienstes und die Ausgestaltung der Politikfinanzierung in der Europäischen Union

Die Politikfinanzierung in der Europäischen Union, die vor allem die Finanzierung von Abgeordneten und Parteien umfasst, ist Teil der Verfassung im materiellen Sinn. Sie gehört deshalb in den Zusammenhang der Diskussion um die Europäische Verfassung. Auch die Bezahlung und Versorgung des Öffentlichen Dienstes der EU ist von praktischer Relevanz und hoher Aktualität. Aus dem vorliegenden Forschungsprojekt sind zahlreiche wissenschaftliche Monographien und Aufsätze in deutscher und englischer Sprache hervorgegangen. Die Titel der Veröffentlichungen und die Verlage und Zeitschriften, in denen sie erschienen sind, sind im Anhang aufgelistet. Erste Besprechtungen und sonstige Reaktionen der Wissenschaft werden, soweit sie uns bekannt geworden sind, im Text unter Angabe der Fundsteile angezeigt. Es macht aber keinen Sinn, den viele hundert Seiten umfassenden wissenschaftlichen Output des Forschungsprojekts hier erneut wiederzugeben. Der Inhalt der einzelnen Publikationen wird lediglich kurz skizziert. Teilweise sind sie auch auf meiner Homepage nachzulesen: http://www.arnimvon.de/ In diesem Bericht sollen vor allem die Wirkungen dokumentiert werden, die unsere wissenschaftliche Arbeit auf die Praxis entfaltete. Es geht um den so genannten Impact der Forschung, der bei dem vorliegenden Projekt besonders ausgeprägt war. So führten unsere Arbeiten dazu, dass der Rat der Europäischen Union in seiner Sitzung am 26. Januar 2004 dem Abgeordnetenstatut, das das Europäische Parlament bereits beschlossen hatte, seine Zustimmung verweigerte. Ein weiteres Beispiel: Im Verlauf der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzungen kam es zu Gerichtsurteilen. Diese hatten - erstmals in Deutschland - die Reichweite der Indemnität, das heißt der Unverantwortlichkeit von Europaabgeordneten für ihr gesprochenes Wort, zum Gegenstand und dürften damit zu Leitentscheidungen werden

Reconfigurable quantum metamaterials

By coupling controllable quantum systems into larger structures we introduce the concept of a quantum metamaterial. Conventional meta-materials represent one of the most important frontiers in optical design, with applications in diverse fields ranging from medicine to aerospace. Up until now however, metamaterials have themselves been classical structures and interact only with the classical properties of light. Here we describe a class of dynamic metamaterials, based on the quantum properties of coupled atom-cavity arrays, which are intrinsically lossless, reconfigurable, and operate fundamentally at the quantum level. We show how this new class of metamaterial could be used to create a reconfigurable quantum superlens possessing a negative index gradient for single photon imaging. With the inherent features of quantum superposition and entanglement of metamaterial properties, this new class of dynamic quantum metamaterial, opens a new vista for quantum science and technology.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Depth of Field Segmentation for Near-Lossless Image Compression and 3D Reconstruction

Over the years, photometric 3d reconstruction gained increasing importance in several disciplines, especially in cultural heritage preservation. While increasing sizes of images and datasets enhanced the overall reconstruction results, requirements in storage got immense. Additionally, unsharp areas in the background have a negative influence on 3d reconstructions algorithms. Handling the sharp foreground differently from the background simultaneously helps to reduce storage size requirements and improves 3d reconstruction results. In this paper, we examine regions outside the Depth of Field (DoF) and eliminate their inaccurate information to 3d reconstructions. We extract DoF maps from the images and use them to handle the foreground and background with different compression backends making sure that the actual object is compressed losslessly. Our algorithm achieves compression rates between 1:8 and 1:30 depending on the artifact and DoF size and improves the 3d reconstruction

Arrays of Ag split-ring resonators coupled to InGaAs single-quantum-well gain

We study arrays of silver split-ring resonators operating at around 1.5-{\mu}m wavelength coupled to an MBE-grown single 12.7-nm thin InGaAs quantum well separated only 4.8 nm from the wafer surface. The samples are held at liquid-helium temperature and are pumped by intense femtosecond optical pulses at 0.81-{\mu}m center wavelength in a pump-probe geometry. We observe much larger relative transmittance changes (up to about 8%) on the split-ring-resonator arrays as compared to the bare quantum well (not more than 1-2%). We also observe a much more rapid temporal decay component of the differential transmittance signal of 15 ps for the case of split-ring resonators coupled to the quantum well compared to the case of the bare quantum well, where we find about 0.7 ns. The latter observation is ascribed to the Purcell effect that arises from the evanescent coupling of the split-ring resonators to the quantum-well gain. All experimental results are compared with a recently introduced analytical toy model that accounts for this evanescent coupling, leading to excellent overall qualitative agreement

Caspase-2 Mediated Apoptotic and Necrotic Murine Macrophage Cell Death Induced by Rough Brucella abortus

Brucella species are Gram-negative, facultative intracellular bacteria that cause zoonotic brucellosis. Survival and replication inside macrophages is critical for establishment of chronic Brucella infection. Virulent smooth B. abortus strain 2308 inhibits programmed macrophage cell death and replicates inside macrophages. Cattle B. abortus vaccine strain RB51 is an attenuated rough, lipopolysaccharide O antigen-deficient mutant derived from smooth strain 2308. B. abortus rough mutant RA1 contains a single wboA gene mutation in strain 2308. Our studies demonstrated that live RB51 and RA1, but not strain 2308 or heat-killed Brucella, induced both apoptotic and necrotic cell death in murine RAW264.7 macrophages and bone marrow derived macrophages. The same phenomenon was also observed in primary mouse peritoneal macrophages from mice immunized intraperitoneally with vaccine strain RB51 using the same dose as regularly performed in protection studies. Programmed macrophage cell death induced by RB51 and RA1 was inhibited by a caspase-2 inhibitor (Z-VDVAD-FMK). Caspase-2 enzyme activation and cleavage were observed at the early infection stage in macrophages infected with RB51 and RA1 but not strain 2308. The inhibition of macrophage cell death promoted the survival of rough Brucella cells inside macrophages. The critical role of caspase-2 in mediating rough B. abortus induced macrophage cell death was confirmed using caspase-2 specific shRNA. The mitochondrial apoptosis pathway was activated in macrophages infected with rough B. abortus as demonstrated by increase in mitochondrial membrane permeability and the release of cytochrome c to cytoplasm in macrophages infected with rough Brucella. These results demonstrate that rough B. abortus strains RB51 and RA1 induce apoptotic and necrotic murine macrophage cell death that is mediated by caspase-2. The biological relevance of Brucella O antigen and caspase-2-mediated macrophage cell death in Brucella pathogenesis and protective Brucella immunity is discussed