The Uses of Violence: An Examination of some Cross-Cutting Issues

A general theory of violence may only be possible in the sense of a meta-theoretical framework, As such it should comprise a parsimonious set of general mechanisms that operate across various manifestations of violence. In order to identify such mechanisms, a general theory of violence needs to equally consider all manifestations of violence, in all societies, and at all times. Departing from this assumption this paper argues that three theoretical approaches may be combined in a non-contradictory way to understand violence as goal-directed instrumental behaviour: a theory of the judgment and decision-making processes operating in the situations that give rise to violence; a theory of the evolutionary processes that have resulted in universal cognitive and emotional mechanisms associated with violence; and a theory of the way in which social institutions structure violence by selectively enhancing its effectiveness for some purposes (i.e legitimate use of force) and controlling other types of violence (i.e crime). To illustrate the potential use of such a perspective the paper then examines some general mechanisms that may explain many different types of violence. In particular, it examines how the mechanisms of moralistic aggression (Trivers) and moral disengagement (Bandura) may account for many different types of violence.

The MIRELA framework: modeling and analyzing mixed reality applications using timed automata

Mixed Reality (MR) aims to link virtual entities with the real world and has many applications such as military and medical domains [JBL+00, NFB07]. In many MR systems and more precisely in augmented scenes, one needs the application to render the virtual part accurately at the right time. To achieve this, such systems acquire data related to the real world from a set of sensors before rendering virtual entities. A suitable system architecture should minimize the delays to keep the overall system delay (also called end-to-end latency) within the requirements for real-time performance. In this context, we propose a compositional modeling framework for MR software architectures in order to specify, simulate and validate formally the time constraints of such systems. Our approach is first based on a functional decomposition of such systems into generic components. The obtained elements as well as their typical interactions give rise to generic representations in terms of timed automata. A whole system is then obtained as a composition of such defined components. To write specifications, a textual language named MIRELA (MIxed REality LAnguage) is proposed along with the corresponding compilation tools. The generated output contains timed automata in UPPAAL format for simulation and verification of time constraints. These automata may also be used to generate source code skeletons for an implementation on a MR platform. The approach is illustrated first on a small example. A realistic case study is also developed. It is modeled by several timed automata synchronizing through channels and including a large number of time constraints. Both systems have been simulated in UPPAAL and checked against the required behavioral properties.

Generisches Framework Studi-App

Mit der Idee eines generischen, an vielfältige Hochschulanforderungen anpassbaren Studierenden-App-Frameworks haben sich innerhalb des Arbeitskreises Web der ZKI ca. 30 Hochschulen zu einem Entwicklungsverbund zusammengefunden. Ziel ist es, an den beteiligten Einrichtungen eine umfassende Zusammenstellung aller elektronischen Studienservices zu evaluieren, übergreifende Daten- und Metadatenmodelle für die Beschreibung dieser Dienste zu erstellen und Schnittstellen zu den gängigen Campusmanagementsystemen sowie zu Infrastrukturen der elektronischen Lehre (LMS, Druckdienste, elektronischen Katalogen usw.) zu entwickeln. In einem abschließenden Schritt werden auf dieser Middleware aufsetzende Studienmanagement-Apps für Studierende erstellt, die die verschiedenen Daten- und Kommunikationsströme der standardisierten Dienste und Kommunikationskanäle bündeln und in eine für den Studierenden leicht zu durchschauende, navigationsfreundliche Aufbereitung kanalisiert. Mit der Konzeption eines dezentralen, über eine Vielzahl von Hochschulen verteilten Entwicklungsprojektes unter einer zentralen Projektleitung wird sichergestellt, dass redundante Entwicklungen vermieden, bundesweit standardisierte Serviceangebote angeboten und Wissenstransferprozesse zwischen einer Vielzahl von Hochschulen zur Nutzung mobiler Devices (Smartphones, Tablets und entsprechende Apps) angeregt werden können. Die Unterstützung der Realisierung klarer Schnittstellenspezifikationen zu Campusmanagementsystemen durch deren Anbieter kann durch diese breite Interessensgemeinschaft ebenfalls gestärkt werden. Weiterhin zentraler Planungsinhalt ist ein Angebot für den App-Nutzer zum Aufbau eines datenschutzrechtlich integeren, persönlichen E-Portfolios. Details finden sich im Kapitel Projektziele weiter unten.

A Fast Platform for Interactive E-Learning Systems

Modern e-learning systems represent a special type of web information systems. By definition, information systems are special computerized systems used to perform data operations by multiple users simultaneously. Each active user consumes an amount of hardware resources. A shortage of hardware resources can be caused by growing number of simultaneous users. Such situation can result in overall malfunctioning or slowed-down system. In order to avoid this problem, the underlying hardware system gets usually continuously upgraded. These upgrades, typically accompanied with various software updates, usually result in a temporarily increased amount of available resources. This work deals with the problem in a different way by proposing an implementation of a web e-learning system with a modified software architecture reducing resource usage of the server part to the bare minimum. In order to implement a full-scale e-learning system that could be used as a substitute to a conventional web e-learning system, a Rich Internet Application framework was used as basis. The technology allowed implementation of advanced interactivity features and provided an easy transfer of a substantial part of the application logic from server to clients. In combination with a special server application, the server part of the new system is able to run with a reasonable performance on a hardware with very limited computing resources.