In agent-based social simulation, crowd models are used to generate agent behaviors that should correspond closely to human crowds. Despite significant progress in this area, many existing crowd models do not yet account for important cultural factors in crowd behavior, and even more so, for mixed-culture crowds. Moreover, evaluation of crowd models accounting for culture is particularly difficult, e.g., as controlled experiments are more difficult to set up, due to lack of subjects from different cultures. In this paper we examine the impact of cultural differences on crowd dynamics in pedestrian and evacuation domains. We account for micro-level cultural attributes: personal spaces, speed, pedestrian avoidance side and group formations. We then quantitatively validate the macro-level predictions of an agent-based simulation utilizing these against data from web-cam movies of human pedestrian crowds recorded in five

Abstract: Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are two recently-developed technologies that uniquely function without xed infrastructure support, and sense at scales, resolutions, and durations previously not possible. While both offer great potential in many applications, developing software for these types of networks is extremely dffcult, preventing their wide-spread use. Three primary challenges are (1) the high level of dynamics within the network in terms of changing wireless links and node hardware con gurations, (2) the wide variety of hardware present in these networks, and (3) the extremely limited computational and energy resources available. Until now, the burden of handling these issues was put on the software application developer. This dissertation presents three novel programming models and middleware systems that address these challenges: Limone, Agilla, and Servilla. Limone reliably handles high levels of dynamics within MANETs. It does this through lightweight coordination primitives that make minimal assumptions about network connectivity. Agilla enables self-adaptive WSN applications via the integration of mobile agent and tuple space programming models, which is critical given the continuously changing network. It is the rst system to successfully demonstrate the feasibility of using mobile agents and tuple spaces within

I herewith certify that all material in this dissertation which is not my own work has been properly acknowledged.

den angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmitteln angefertigt zu haben. Alle Stellen, die aus Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht. Diese Arbeit hat in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch keiner Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegen. Darmstadt, den 15.01.2013

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Torsten Braun, head of the Computer Network and Distributed Systems group (RVS), for supervising this work and for his insightful advises. Prof. Dr. Torsten Braun encouraged and motivated me to publish my research results and he provided me the opportunity to present

belowground functioning of tropical biomes

, abstract data, mobile devices. INTRODUCTION As per known information, mobile devices have so many limitations as compared to desktop computers like displays are very limited, the width/height ratio is very different from the usual, the on-board hardware is much less powerful; the input peripherals

available for most of the TRBV subgroups. Repertoire analysis with flow cytometry provides a qualitative and quantitative analyses of the variable region, often done on heterogeneous cell populations, in order to decipher, for example, selection events related to aging, perturbations, and treatments (7

RECHERCHES Elastographie par ondes de cisaillement

As wireless sensor networks continue to grow in size, we are faced with the prospect of emerging wireless networks with hundreds or thousands of nodes. Geographic routing algorithms are a promising alternative to tradition ad hoc routing algorithms in this new domain for point-to-point routing, but deployments of such algorithms are currently uncommon because of some practical difficulties.