Open Access

The impact of work environment factors has to be considered in an integrated ergonomic analyzing and designing process. To capture relevant environmental exposures, measurements must be carried out. In companies, an increasing use of smartphones for initial measurements of work environment factors can be noticed. Here, the question arises whether it is possible to determine adequate data for scientific work analyses by using built-in sensors in smartphones. For that purpose, the operational readiness of smartphone applications to measure the work environment factors noise, climate and lighting is investigated. Here, the assessing of measuring accuracy and the recordable measurement quantities for different combinations of applications and smartphones is analyzed. In result, a wide variety of the measurement accuracy for the analyzed environmental factors can be observed.

The Faculty of Languages at the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau has a knowledge base on critical incidents. Critical incidents capture and structure insights from critical situations in international mobility [Fet15]. With the rapid development of data and information, the research platform CIs to Go has a clear need for a central search infrastructure that will allow users to find and discover more relevant critical incidenst (or intercultural experinces as named in the research platform CIs to Go). The data and information about critical incidents are stored in open-source relational database management system PostgreSQL. Nowadays it is inconceivable to use traditional RDBMS tools to analyze the data as they grow very fast. The amount of information has steadily increased for years. Big Data provides a solution for analyzing large amounts of data. Many search engine providers offer the solution for analyzing large volumes of data, and companies are looking for open source solutions that can quickly and reliably search, analyze, and evaluate large volumes of data. Elasticsearch is a Lucene based search engine. Elasticsearch uses the concept of indexing to speed up the search. This search engine provides a variety of options for free text queries, fuzzy matching and indexing data. First, search engines and NLP toolkits are reviewed. This thesis also defines the functional requirements of these tools. Then, an evaluation is given by indicating the positive and negative aspects of the tools. This thesis presents a complete search engine to be deployed on the research platform CIs to Go as a new visual tool that helps in the process of searching for and finding intercultural experiences.

Our life is becoming faster, more connected and more global - this developments have a lot of positive but also negative effects. Being fearful towards the "different" is a growing phenomenon and the question arises of we heading towards a global identity or a clash of civilizations, which factors play the important parts and how did they come into existence. By using North African immigration in France as an example, an approach is made to put this topic in a smaller context in order to see where the scenario is heading to and what is conducive and/or detrimental.

This thesis will examine the process of internationalization which generates international changes and growth, entry into new markets and the creation of new businesses. Projecting this on the sports industry, businessmen tend to take more risks than a few decades ago in the interest of becoming more competitive. The sports industry is used to transmit multiple messages as it reaches global audiences. The term sports covers much more than the physical activity. The term also comprises possibilities for lucrative business actions, sponsoring and image creation. Furthermore, it induces a pooling of diverse cultures. Thanks to this boundary-spanning connection of sportsmen and arising opportunities to increase sales, managers have decided to go international and to expand their company

An omnipresent topic in the economic news of the current year 2018 were the developments regarding the smoldering trade dispute between the USA and China. Within short periods of time, a downright exchange of strikes between the administrations of the two countries evolved, with the President of the USA, Donald Trump, in particular, pithily announcing to China an increasingly serious threat of sanctions. Although the Chinese side was noticeably striving to de-escalate the verbal dispute, it also presented a series of sanctions which were described in the relevant press as so-called retaliatory tariffs. The reason behind this diplomatic duel, however, has substance. It is evident that the USA and China share an exceptional status with regard to economic fundamentals. The US has the largest international trade deficit of US$ 375.2 billion vis-à-vis China. China, on the other hand, is by far the largest creditor of the USA on an international scale and currently holds around US$ 1.2 trillion in government bonds. Accordingly, China exerts a major economic influence over the USA. This objective situation opposes the subjective self-reflection of the government under President Trump, which hardly misses an opportunity to operate on an international level with the help of supposed deals according to the credo "America first".