The concept of Application modeling is a basic and essential component to the design and development of any computer-based application. Application modeling ensures that an application is developed to meet standards that have been set for level of Performance, Maintainability, Scalability, Reliability and Security. Application modeling is not restricted to only large-scale enterprise applications. Its scope covers a range of all applications from single user simple spreadsheet applications to Large Scale Web Applications that are accessed by millions of users at the same time all over the World by using the World Wide Web.Application modeling is mostly a subject that is totally ignored or not used to an extent that its benefits are realized and hence it is often overlooked after the first few weeks or totally confined to a very small subset of the whole application. This can have very drastic effects to the overall design and effectiveness of the application once it is put into production.Different types of Applications have been developed over the passage of time starting off with the large-scale applications, which ran on large Main Frame computers to applications designed to run on dumb terminals systems. Later, a new trend was born with the arrival of the Personal Computer and a new era was seen in computing.The Desktop Enterprise application has been a very common type of application, which covers the aspect of thick clients installed on various user terminals all communicating with a central database via some fast connection Link. These applications have been in use for many years now. However, the latest trend, which has been seen is the development of Web Applications. These are applications that are not restricted to a certain geographical area but are available to the whole world if needed. Of course, these applications can be restricted in access if required and only be run and used within an organization on an Intranet or be restricted to a certain number of organizations running on an extranet. But, whatever the case the scope and range of web applications is certainly much more than any other typical applications, which have been developed in the past.As we have seen above, Web Applications are the most common applications in development these days and even after the fall of the “dot com” era their utility and demand keeps on growing. Due to these factors my dissertation will concentrate on this type of application.As we have already discussed, Application modeling is crucial to the design and development of any application. But when we come to Web Applications, especially ones that will be running on the World Wide Web, it becomes even more crucial because the range of users can grow from a few hundred to millions in a very small space of time. Hence, modeling the application to meet the required needs of Performance, Reliability, Scalability, Maintainability and Security become even more crucial. Another factor, which is as much important as the above five mentioned factors, is the Usability or User experience. The first five factors mentioned above will not be of much use if the user of a particular application cannot easily find the information he or she is looking for or cannot easily complete the task he or she wants to perform. Hence, modeling an application from the point of view of these six factors, is very crucial to the success of any application, especially web based applications. Throughout my dissertation I will be looking at the various factors of Application modeling with reference to Web Applications, mainly the web applications designed for world wide web users as these exhibit the most crucial requirements of an efficient modeling solution. Why I call this dissertation “Enhanced Application modeling techniques for Web Applications” is because I will move ahead of the standard and conventional modeling technique used today where only certain subsets of an application, mainly the middle and data tier, are clearly modeled. I will try to engulf the whole application with special emphasis on the presentation tier and model it to meet the requirements, which are defined as the ultimate goal to be achieved by the end product. I will also highlight the benefits that are achieved by modeling each of the three tiers of the web application as compared to the traditional method of modeling only two tiers of the same application.

The World Wide Web is a great source of products and services available to people. Scientists have made a huge effort to create effective strategies to personalize those products/services for anyone willing to use them. The personalization may be provided by Recommender Systems which are able to match people’s preferences to specific products or services. Scientists from different research areas such as Psychology, Neurology and Affective Computing agree that human reasoning and decision-making are hardly ever affected by psychological aspects. Thus, to maintain the same level of personalized service provided by humans, computers should also “reason”, taking into account users’ psychological aspects. Nevertheless, the psychological aspects have, unfortunately, not been highly applied in most models of User Profiles used in Recommender Systems. As a result, the existing Recommender Systems do not actually use psychological aspects such as Personality Traits during their decision-making process in order to generate their recommendations. In this thesis we propose the implementation of the Personality Traits in User Profiles so it is possible to obtain evidence that the use of Personality Traits in Recommender Systems might be coherent and effective for the improvement of the recommendations for users and, therefore, act proactively towards users’ needs, offering more adaptable products and services according to their future needs. / CAPES - URI

El presente trabajo de investigación tiene por objetivo formular un Plan Estratégico para el desarrollo del Gobierno Electrónico de la Provincia de Misiones, como una integración de los conocimientos adquiridos por el autor en la Maestría en Informática y Computación dictada en conjunto por la Universidad Nacional de Misiones, la Universidad Nacional del Nordeste y la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (España).El Gobierno de Misiones ha expresado su voluntad de adoptar al Gobierno Electrónico como Política de Estado, conoce las actividades que pueden desarrollarse, tiene la capacidad para lograrlo y es consciente de los beneficios futuros; pero para este proyecto no hay un plan de acción claramente definido, no se posee una metodología ni un cronograma de actividades establecido.Formular un Plan Estratégico para el proyecto del Gobierno Electrónico de la Provincia de Misiones es una necesidad para asegurar el éxito de esta iniciativa, al definir un marco metodológico que establezca las pautas de implementación de las actividades.Para que el Gobierno Electrónico sea una realidad, es necesario entonces desarrollar este Plan en consenso con los actores claves que articulen la visión del gobierno, los objetivos y las metas, el enfoque técnico y normas para los sistemas de gobierno electrónico. Este marco debe contemplar además la privacidad de la información, la seguridad, el mantenimiento, y los estándares tecnológicos.

Berlin, Freie Universiẗat, Diss., 2003. / Dateiforamt: zip, Dateien im PDF-Format.

Fundraising with venture capitalists can remain a largely mysterious process. In a world shrouded with non-disclosure agreements, the entrepreneurs are often unaware of the common practices of deal terms and are unable to benchmark their term sheets with respect to those given to others. Inherent conflicts of interest in the split of the financial returns, liquidation, and control of the company lead the venture capitalists to structure the deals which benefit their interests at cost to the interests of the entrepreneurs. This dissertation identifies and characterizes the term sheet structures used by venture capitalists today and establishes their frequency. This information can be used by entrepreneurs to benchmark their term sheets and by venture capitalists to evaluate their investment strategies.

Different music performances of the same score may significantly differ from each other. It is obvious that not only the composer’s work, the score, defines the listener’s music experience, but that the music performance itself is an integral part of this experience. Music performers use the information contained in the score, but interpret, transform or add to this information.Four parameter classes can be used to describe a performance objectively: tempo and timing, loudness, timbre and pitch. Each class contains a multitude of individual parameters that are at the performers’ disposal to generate a unique physical rendition of musical ideas.The extraction of such objective parameters is one of the difficulties in music performance research. This work presents an approach to the software-based extraction of tempo and timing, loudness and timbre parameters from audio files to provide a tool for the automatic parameter extraction from music performances.The system is applied to extract data from 21 string quartet performances and a detailed analysis of the extracted data is presented. The main contributions of this thesis are the adaptation and development of signal processing approaches to performance parameter extraction and the presentation and discussion of string quartet performances of a movement of Beethoven’s late String Quartet op. 130.

In this dissertation, several algorithms to design linear phase Finite Impulse Response (FIR) and Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filters have been discussed.Contrary to various already existing standard algorithms,the proposed methods approximate magnitude and phase characteristics simultaneously. The basic mechanism used in this study is polynomial based design of digital filters. We have used several already existing polynomials; e.g., Chebyshev polynomials, Legendre polynomials, to develop linear phase digital filters and developed some two dimensional polynomials following orthogonal properties to design digital filters for image processing, their design methodology have also been discussed.Filters of proposed type can be used for applications where exact linear phase is required. Another application of this type of filters is the design of filters with zero group delay. IIR filters are designed with absolute linear phase and zero group delay. The algorithms proposed in the present thesis allow user to design filters with his set of constraints, which is required in practical filter design problems. Very narrow band 1D and 2D linear phase FIR filters can easily be designed by the proposed methodology. The IIR filters proposed provide the guarantee to result in a stable filter.All the algorithms have been discussed stepwise to make sure that any one with basic programming capability can easily design them. We have not used any standard routine of any particular platform, therefore any freely available programming platform (like C, C++, Scilab, Octave, etc.) can be used to design these filters.

In this thesis, "Human behavior on the Internet", the human anxiety is conceptualized. The following questions have guided the writing of the thesis: How humans behave with the Internet technology? What goes in their mind? What kinds of behaviors are shown while using the Internet? What is the role of the content on the Internet and especially what are the types of anxiety behavior on the Internet? By conceptualization this thesis aims to provide a model for studying whether humans show signs of less or exacerbated anxiety while using the Internet.The empirical part of this thesis was built on new developed model and user study that utilizes that model. For the user study, the target users were divided into two groups based on their skill level. The user study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The qualitative research was conducted using interviews and observational analysis. The quantitative research was conducted in three iterations by using questionnaires and surveys.These results suggest that the significance of human on using technology would be integral part of such a study. The study also suggests that Internet has lulled humans with the sense of dependency to greater extent. In particular, the results identified seven main areas of human anxiety. These forms of anxiety require further studies to encompass human anxiety in more detail.

München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2002.

A study comparing University of Wisconsin-Stout freshmen and senior education majors’ computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge and associated learning experiences was conducted. Instruments used in this study included the IC³® Exam by Certiport, Inc. and the investigator’s Computing and Internet Skills Learning Experiences survey. UW-Stout freshmen education majors participating in the study demonstrated poor computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge. UW-Stout senior education majors participating in the study demonstrated marginal computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge. Both UW-Stout freshmen and senior education major study participants identified evidence of poor formal and informal learning experiences to develop computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge in elementary school, middle school and high school. Senior education major participants indicated more instances of formal and informal learning experiences in post-secondary schooling and employment. Informal self-teaching methods to develop computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge were more evident with UW-Stout senior education majors who participated in the study. Notable comparisons by class and major were conducted after initial analysis showing the impact of specific formal and informal learning experiences. Recommendations to improve UW-Stout education majors computing and Internet technology skills/knowledge follow Robin Kay’s Evaluating Strategies Used to Incorporate Technology into Preservice Education (2006).