Hiord: A type-free higher-order logic programming language with predicate abstraction

A new formalism, called Hiord, for defining type-free higherorder logic programming languages with predicate abstraction is introduced. A model theory, based on partial combinatory algebras, is presented, with respect to which the formalism is shown sound. A programming language built on a subset of Hiord, and its implementation are discussed. A new proposal for defining modules in this framework is considered, along with several examples.

Performance and Professional Skills in an Online Java Programming Course for Engineering Students

The main purpose of this work is to describe the case of an online Java Programming course for engineering students to learn computer programming and to practice other non-technicalabilities: online training, self-assessment, teamwork and use of foreign languages. It is important that students develop confidence and competence in these skills, which will be required later in their professional tasks and/or in other engineering courses (life-long learning). Furthermore, this paper presents the pedagogical methodology, the results drawn from this experience and an objective performance comparison with another conventional (face-to-face) Java course.

A proposal for enhancing the motivation in students of computer programming

Computer programming is known to be one of the most difficult courses for students in the first year of engineering. They are faced with the challenge of abstract thinking and gaining programming skills for the first time. These skills are acquired by continuous practicing from the start of the course. In order to enhance the motivation and dynamism of the learning and assessment processes, we have proposed the use of three educational resources namely screencasts, self-assessment questionnaires and automated grading of assignments. These resources have been made available in Moodle which is a Learning Management System widely used in education environments and adopted by the Telecommunications Engineering School at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Both teachers and students can enhance the learning and assessment processes through the use of new educational activities such as self-assessment questionnaires and automated grading of assignments. On the other hand, multimedia resources such as screencasts can guide students in complex topics. The resources proposed allow teachers to improve their tutorial actions since they provide immediate feedback and comments to students without the enormous effort of manual correction and evaluation by teachers specially taking into account the large number of students enrolled in the course. In this paper we present the case study where three proposed educational resources were applied. We describe the special features of the course and explain why the use of these resources can both enhance the students? motivation and improve the teaching and learning processes. Our research work was carried out on students attending the "Computer programming" course offered in the first year of a Telecommunications Engineering degree at UPM. This course is mandatory and has more than 450 enrolled students. Our purpose is to encourage the motivation and dynamism of the learning and assessment processes.

Integrated learning of computer applications for production engineering

A high productivity rate in Engineering is related to an efficient management of the flow of the large quantities of information and associated decision making activities that are consubstantial to the Engineering processes both in design and production contexts. Dealing with such problems from an integrated point of view and mimicking real scenarios is not given much attention in Engineering degrees. In the context of Engineering Education, there are a number of courses designed for developing specific competencies, as required by the academic curricula, but not that many in which integration competencies are the main target. In this paper, a course devoted to that aim is discussed. The course is taught in a Marine Engineering degree but the philosophy could be used in any Engineering field. All the lessons are given in a computer room in which every student can use each all the treated software applications. The first part of the course is dedicated to Project Management: the students acquire skills in defining, using Ms-PROJECT, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the organization breakdown structure (OBS) in Engineering projects, through a series of examples of increasing complexity, ending up with the case of vessel construction. The second part of the course is dedicated to the use of a database manager, Ms-ACCESS, for managing production related information. A series of increasing complexity examples is treated ending up with the management of the pipe database of a real vessel. This database consists of a few thousand of pipes, for which a production timing frame is defined, which connects this part of the course with the first one. Finally, the third part of the course is devoted to the work with FORAN, an Engineering Production package of widespread use in the shipbuilding industry. With this package, the frames and plates where all the outfitting will be carried out are defined through cooperative work by the studens, working simultaneously in the same 3D model. In the paper, specific details about the learning process are given. Surveys have been posed to the students in order to get feed-back from their experience as well as to assess their satisfaction with the learning process. Results from these surveys are discussed in the paper

Comparative study of auxetic geometrics by means of computer-aided design and engineering

Auxetic materials (or metamaterials) are those with a negative Poisson ratio (NPR) and display the unexpected property of lateral expansion when stretched, as well as an equal and opposing densification when compressed. Such geometries are being progressively employed in the development of novel products, especially in the fields of intelligent expandable actuators, shape morphing structures and minimally invasive implantable devices. Although several auxetic and potentially auxetic geometries have been summarized in previous reviews and research, precise information regarding relevant properties for design tasks is not always provided. In this study we present a comparative study of two-dimensional and three-dimensional auxetic geometries carried out by means of computer-aided design and engineering tools (from now on CAD–CAE). The first part of the study is focused on the development of a CAD library of auxetics. Once the library is developed we simulate the behavior of the different auxetic geometries and elaborate a systematic comparison, considering relevant properties of these geometries, such as Poisson ratio(s), maximum volume or area reductions attainable and equivalent Young's modulus, hoping it may provide useful information for future designs of devices based on these interesting structures.

Benchmarking for stability evaluation of computer systems

In this paper we propose a new benchmark to drive making decisions in maintenance of computer systems. This benchmark is made from load average sample data. The main goal is to improve reliability and performance of a set of devices or components. In particular, the stability of the system is measured in terms of variability of the load. A forecast of the behavior of this stability is also proposal as part of the reporting benchmark. At the final stage, a more stable system is obtained and its global reliability and performance can be then evaluated by means of appropriate specifications.

Assesing the usefulness of the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula for the design of Computer-Related Engineering Curricula, an experience in Telematics

This paper presents the rationale to build up a Telematics Engineering curriculum. Telematics is a strongly computing oriented area; then, the authors have initially intended to apply the common requirements described in the computing curricula elaborated by the ACM/EEEE-CS Joint Curriculum Task Force. This experience has revealed some problematic aspects in the ACM/IEEE-CS proposal. From the analysis of these problems, a model to guide the selection and specially the approach of the Telematics curriculum contents is proposed. This model can be easily generalized to other strongly computing oriented curricula, whose number is growing everyday

Estudio preliminar acerca del uso de protocolos y actos comunicativos FIPA en el sistema COMPUTAPLEX

Este trabajo corresponde con la implementación de componentes software dentro de la Plataforma COMPUTAPLEX, la cual tiene como objetivo facilitar a los investigadores la realización de tareas del proceso experimental de ingeniería de software. Uno de los aportes a esta plataforma tecnológica corresponde con el desarrolló de los componentes necesarios para la recuperación de datos experimentales disponibles en diversas fuentes de datos, para ello se hizo uso de un mecanismo capaz de unificar la extracción de información de MySQL, ficheros excel y ficheros SPSS. Con ello diferentes grupos de investigación asociados pueden compartir y tener acceso a repositorios experimentales que se mantienen tanto de manera local como externa. Por otra parte, se ha realizado un estudio de la tecnología de agentes en la que se describe sus definiciones, lenguajes de comunicación, especificación FIPA, JADE como implementación FIPA y parser XML. Además para este trabajo se ha definido e implementado una ontología de comunicación entre agentes, la misma que fue diseñada en la herramienta Protégé. En lo que se refiere al desarrollo de componentes se hizo uso de una amplía variedad de tecnologías que incluye lenguaje de programación Java, framework JADE para el desarrollo de agentes, librería JENA para manejo de ontologías, librería SAXParser para lectura de archivos XML y patrón de diseño Factory. Finalmente se describe la metodología de trabajo utilizada en el proyecto, la cual por medio de la realización de varios ciclos iterativos permitió obtener prototipos que poco a poco fueron cubriendo las necesidades del producto software.----ABSTRACT---- This work relates to the implementation of software components within the platform Computaplex, which aims to enable researchers to conduct experimental software engineering process tasks. One of the contributions to this platform technology corresponds to the development of components which are necessary for the recovery of experimental data available in different data sources, to archive this goal a mechanism able to unify the extraction of information from MySQL, Excel and SPSS files was made. Therefore, associated research groups can share and access experimental repositories that remain both locally and externally. Moreover, it has been conducted a study of agent technology in its definition is described, languages communication, FIPA, JADE and FIPA implementation and XML parser. In addition to this work, it has been defined and implemented an ontology for communication between agents, the same as was designed in the Protégé tool. In what refers to the development of components, a wide range of technologies have been made which includes Java programming language, framework JADE for agent development, JENA library for handling ontologies, SAXParser for reading XML files and Factory design pattern. Finally, describing the work methodology used in this project, which through the implementation of several iterative cycles allowed to obtain prototypes were gradually meeting the needs of the software product.

Preface. The Language of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Preface

A toolbox with DERIVE: calculus on several variables, Applications of Computer Algebra

A toolbox is a set of procedures taking advantage of the computing power and graphical capacities of a CAS. With these procedures the students can solve math problems, apply mathematics to engineering or simply reinforce the learning of certain mathematical concepts. From the point of view of their construction, we can consider two types of toolboxes: (i) the closed box, built by the teacher, in which the utility files are provided to the students together with the respective tutorials and several worksheets with proposed exercises and problems,

An abstract machine based execution model for computer architecture design and efficient implementation of logic programs in parallel.

The term "Logic Programming" refers to a variety of computer languages and execution models which are based on the traditional concept of Symbolic Logic. The expressive power of these languages offers promise to be of great assistance in facing the programming challenges of present and future symbolic processing applications in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge-based systems, and many other areas of computing. The sequential execution speed of logic programs has been greatly improved since the advent of the first interpreters. However, higher inference speeds are still required in order to meet the demands of applications such as those contemplated for next generation computer systems. The execution of logic programs in parallel is currently considered a promising strategy for attaining such inference speeds. Logic Programming in turn appears as a suitable programming paradigm for parallel architectures because of the many opportunities for parallel execution present in the implementation of logic programs. This dissertation presents an efficient parallel execution model for logic programs. The model is described from the source language level down to an "Abstract Machine" level suitable for direct implementation on existing parallel systems or for the design of special purpose parallel architectures. Few assumptions are made at the source language level and therefore the techniques developed and the general Abstract Machine design are applicable to a variety of logic (and also functional) languages. These techniques offer efficient solutions to several areas of parallel Logic Programming implementation previously considered problematic or a source of considerable overhead, such as the detection and handling of variable binding conflicts in AND-Parallelism, the specification of control and management of the execution tree, the treatment of distributed backtracking, and goal scheduling and memory management issues, etc. A parallel Abstract Machine design is offered, specifying data areas, operation, and a suitable instruction set. This design is based on extending to a parallel environment the techniques introduced by the Warren Abstract Machine, which have already made very fast and space efficient sequential systems a reality. Therefore, the model herein presented is capable of retaining sequential execution speed similar to that of high performance sequential systems, while extracting additional gains in speed by efficiently implementing parallel execution. These claims are supported by simulations of the Abstract Machine on sample programs.

Programación en lenguaje Java de algoritmo Zig-Zag para procesado de archivos MIDI

El siguiente proyecto versa sobre la programación en lenguaje java del algoritmo de humanización MIDI desarrollado por Jorge Grundman en su tesis La Humanización de la Interpretación Virtual: Tres ejemplos significativos de la obra de Chopin. Este algoritmo, denominado Zig-Zag tiene como finalidad lograr que una partitura interpretada por un ordenador tenga unas características similares a la lectura a primera vista de la misma por un pianista. Para ello, basa su funcionamiento en una aleatorización del tempo en base a una serie de parámetros, a una modificación de la dinámica acorde a la modificación de tempo y a una segunda aleatorización para cada figura de la partitura. Este algoritmo tiene un gran campo de aplicación como complemento a los diversos secuenciadores y editores de partituras que existen en la actualidad, proporcionando nuevas características a los mismos. La programación del algoritmo se ha llevado a cabo empleando el Java SDK (Standard Developement Kit) 7 y las herramientas que proporciona esta plataforma para el manejo y modificación de los mensajes MIDI. ABSTRACT. The next project is about the programming in Java language of the MIDI humanization algorithm developed by Jorge Grundman in his thesis La Humanización de la Interpretación Virtual: Tres ejemplos significativos de la obra de Chopin. This algorithm, called Zig-Zag aims to have similar characteristics in a score performed by a computer than in the sight reading by a pianist. To this end, it bases its process in a randomization of the tempo from several parameters, a modification of the dynamic according to the change of tempo and a second randomization for each figure in the score. This algorithm has a big scope of application as complement for the different sequencers and score editors that already exist, providing new features to them. The algorithm has been programmed using the Java SDK (Standard Development Kit) 7 and the tools that this platform provides to handle and modify MIDI messages.

An automatic translation scheme from prolog to the andorra kernel language

The Andorra family of languages (which includes the Andorra Kernel Language -AKL) is aimed, in principie, at simultaneously supporting the programming styles of Prolog and committed choice languages. On the other hand, AKL requires a somewhat detailed specification of control by the user. This could be avoided by programming in Prolog to run on AKL. However, Prolog programs cannot be executed directly on AKL. This is due to a number of factors, from more or less trivial syntactic differences to more involved issues such as the treatment of cut and making the exploitation of certain types of parallelism possible. This paper provides basic guidelines for constructing an automatic compiler of Prolog programs into AKL, which can bridge those differences. In addition to supporting Prolog, our style of translation achieves independent and-parallel execution where possible, which is relevant since this type of parallel execution preserves, through the translation, the user-perceived "complexity" of the original Prolog program.

Using attributed variables in the implementation of concurrent and parallel logic programming systems

Incorporating the possibility of attaching attributes to variables in a logic programming system has been shown to allow the addition of general constraint solving capabilities to it. This approach is very attractive in that by adding a few primitives any logic programming system can be turned into a generic constraint logic programming system in which constraint solving can be user deñned, and at source level - an extreme example of the "glass box" approach. In this paper we propose a different and novel use for the concept of attributed variables: developing a generic parallel/concurrent (constraint) logic programming system, using the same "glass box" flavor. We argüe that a system which implements attributed variables and a few additional primitives can be easily customized at source level to implement many of the languages and execution models of parallelism and concurrency currently proposed, in both shared memory and distributed systems. We illustrate this through examples and report on an implementation of our ideas.

Independent AND-parallel implementation of narrowing

We present a parallel graph narrowing machine, which is used to implement a functional logic language on a shared memory multiprocessor. It is an extensión of an abstract machine for a purely functional language. The result is a programmed graph reduction machine which integrates the mechanisms of unification, backtracking, and independent and-parallelism. In the machine, the subexpressions of an expression can run in parallel. In the case of backtracking, the structure of an expression is used to avoid the reevaluation of subexpressions as far as possible. Deterministic computations are detected. Their results are maintained and need not be reevaluated after backtracking.