DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING BASED DISCRETE POWER LEVEL SMART HOME SCHEDULING USING FPGA

With the development and capabilities of the Smart Home system, people today are entering an era in which household appliances are no longer just controlled by people, but also operated by a Smart System. This results in a more efficient, convenient, comfortable, and environmentally friendly living environment. A critical part of the Smart Home system is Home Automation, which means that there is a Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) to control all the household appliances and schedule their operating times. This reduces electricity bills by shifting amounts of power consumption from the on-peak hour consumption to the off-peak hour consumption, in terms of different “hour price”. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for scheduling multi-user power consumption and implement it on an FPGA board, using it as the MCU. This algorithm for discrete power level tasks scheduling is based on dynamic programming, which could find a scheduling solution close to the optimal one. We chose FPGA as our system’s controller because FPGA has low complexity, parallel processing capability, a large amount of I/O interface for further development and is programmable on both software and hardware. In conclusion, it costs little time running on FPGA board and the solution obtained is good enough for the consumers.

An Experience-Driven Pedagogy for the Instruction of Software Testing in Computer Science

In the realm of computer programming, the experience of writing a program is used to reinforce concepts and evaluate ability. This research uses three case studies to evaluate the introduction of testing through Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (ELM). We then analyze the impact of those testing experiences to determine methods for improving future courses. The first testing experience that students encounter are unit test reports in their early courses. This course demonstrates that automating and improving feedback can provide more ELM iterations. The JUnit Generation (JUG) tool also provided a positive experience for the instructor by reducing the overall workload. Later, undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to work together in a multi-role Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) course. The interactions use usability analysis techniques with graduate students as usability experts and undergraduate students as design engineers. Students get experience testing the user experience of their product prototypes using methods varying from heuristic analysis to user testing. From this course, we learned the importance of the instructors role in the ELM. As more roles were added to the HCI course, a desire arose to provide more complete, quality assured software. This inspired the addition of unit testing experiences to the course. However, we learned that significant preparations must be made to apply the ELM when students are resistant. The research presented through these courses was driven by the recognition of a need for testing in a Computer Science curriculum. Our understanding of the ELM suggests the need for student experience when being introduced to testing concepts. We learned that experiential learning, when appropriately implemented, can provide benefits to the Computer Science classroom. When examined together, these course-based research projects provided insight into building strong testing practices into a curriculum.

The Design of Networked Exertion Games

Incorporating physical activity and exertion into pervasive gaming applications can provide health and social benefits. Prior research has resulted in several prototypes of pervasive games that encourage exertion as interaction form; however, no detailed critical account of the various approaches exists. We focus on networked exertion games and detail some of our work while identifying the remaining issues towards providing a coherent framework. We outline common lessons learned and use them as the basis for generalizations for the design of networked exertion games. We propose possible directions of further investigation, hoping to provide guidance for future work to facilitate greater awareness and exposure of exertion games and their benefits.

Cost Sharing under Uncertainty: An Algorithmic Approach to Cooperative Interval-Valued Games

Recently, Branzei, Dimitrov, and Tijs (2003) introduced cooperative interval-valued games. Among other insights, the notion of an interval core has been coined and proposed as a solution concept for interval-valued games. In this paper we will present a general mathematical programming algorithm which can be applied to find an element in the interval core. As an example, we discuss lot sizing with uncertain demand to provide an application for interval-valued games and to demonstrate how interval core elements can be computed. Also, we reveal that pitfalls exist if interval core elements are computed in a straightforward manner by considering the interval borders separately.

Mobile Games for Learning

Today, pupils at the age of 15 have spent their entire life surrounded by and interacting with diverse forms of computers. It is a routine part of their day-to-day life and by now computer-literacy is common at very early age. Over the past five years, technology for teens has become predominantly mobile and ubiquitous within every aspect of their lives. To them, being online is an implicitness. In Germany, 88% of youth aged between 12-19 years own a smartphone and about 20% use the Internet via tablets. Meanwhile, more and more young learners bring their devices into the classroom and pupils increasingly demand for innovative and motivating learning scenarios that strongly respond to their habits of using media. With this development, a shift of paradigm is slowly under way with regard to the use of mobile technology in education. By now, a large body of literature exists, that reports concepts, use-cases and practical studies for effectively using technology in education. Within this field, a steadily growing body of research has developed that especially examines the use of digital games as instructional strategy. The core concern of this thesis is the design of mobile games for learning. The conditions and requirements that are vital in order to make mobile games suitable and effective for learning environments are investigated. The base for exploration is the pattern approach as an established form of templates that provide solutions for recurrent problems. Building on this acknowledged form of exchanging and re-using knowledge, patterns for game design are used to classify the many gameplay rules and mechanisms in existence. This research draws upon pattern descriptions to analyze learning game concepts and to abstract possible relationships between gameplay patterns and learning outcomes. The linkages that surface are the starting bases for a series of game design concepts and their implementations are subsequently evaluated with regard to learning outcomes. The findings and resulting knowledge from this research is made accessible by way of implications and recommendations for future design decisions.

Designing a high performance parallel logic programming system

Compilation techniques such as those portrayed by the Warren Abstract Machine(WAM) have greatly improved the speed of execution of logic programs. The research presented herein is geared towards providing additional performance to logic programs through the use of parallelism, while preserving the conventional semantics of logic languages. Two áreas to which special attention is given are the preservation of sequential performance and storage efficiency, and the use of low overhead mechanisms for controlling parallel execution. Accordingly, the techniques used for supporting parallelism are efficient extensions of those which have brought high inferencing speeds to sequential implementations. At a lower level, special attention is also given to design and simulation detail and to the architectural implications of the execution model behavior. This paper offers an overview of the basic concepts and techniques used in the parallel design, simulation tools used, and some of the results obtained to date.

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.

An Introductory Course on Constraint Logic Programming

The purpose of this document is to serve as the printed material for the seminar "An Introductory Course on Constraint Logic Programming". The intended audience of this seminar are industrial programmers with a degree in Computer Science but little previous experience with constraint programming. The seminar itself has been field tested, prior to the writing of this document, with a group of the application programmers of Esprit project P23182, "VOCAL", aimed at developing an application in scheduling of field maintenance tasks in the context of an electric utility company. The contents of this paper follow essentially the flow of the seminar slides. However, there are some differences. These differences stem from our perception from the experience of teaching the seminar, that the technical aspects are the ones which need more attention and clearer explanations in the written version. Thus, this document includes more examples than those in the slides, more exercises (and the solutions to them), as well as four additional programming projects, with which we hope the reader will obtain a clearer view of the process of development and tuning of programs using CLP. On the other hand, several parts of the seminar have been taken out: those related with the account of fields and applications in which C(L)P is useful, and the enumerations of C(L)P tools available. We feel that the slides are clear enough, and that for more information on available tools, the interested reader will find more up-to-date information by browsing the Web or asking the vendors directly. More details in this direction will actually boil down to summarizing a user manual, which is not the aim of this document.

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.

AquaData and AquaGIS: Two computer utilities for temporal and spatial simulations of water-limited yield with AquaCrop.

The crop simulation model AquaCrop, recently developed by FAO can be used for a wide range of purposes. However, in its present form, its use over large areas or for applications that require a large number of simulations runs (e.g., long-term analysis), is not practical without developing software to facilitate such applications. Two tools for managing the inputs and outputs of AquaCrop, named AquaData and AquaGIS, have been developed for this purpose and are presented here. Both software utilities have been programmed in Delphi v. 5 and in addition, AquaGIS requires the Geographic Information System (GIS) programming tool MapObjects. These utilities allow the efficient management of input and output files, along with a GIS module to develop spatial analysis and effect spatial visualization of the results, facilitating knowledge dissemination. A sample of application of the utilities is given here, as an AquaCrop simulation analysis of impact of climate change on wheat yield in Southern Spain, which requires extensive input data preparation and output processing. The use of AquaCrop without the two utilities would have required approximately 1000 h of work, while the utilization of AquaData and AquaGIS reduced that time by more than 99%. Furthermore, the use of GIS, made it possible to perform a spatial analysis of the results, thus providing a new option to extend the use of the AquaCrop model to scales requiring spatial and temporal analyses.

A CAD development strategy for the next years

This paper suggests a new strategy to develop CAD applications taking into account some of the most interesting proposals which have recently appeared in the technology development arena. Programming languages, operating systems, user devices, software architecture, user interfaces and user experience are among the elements which are considered for a new development framework. This strategy considers the organizational and architectural aspects of the CAD application together with the development framework. The architectural and organizational aspects are based on the programmed design concept, which can be implemented by means of a three-level software architecture. These levels are the conceptual level based on a declarative language, the mathematical level based on the geometric formulation of the product model and the visual level based on the polyhedral representation of the model as required by the graphic card. The development framework which has been considered is Windows 8. This operating system offers three development environments, one for web pplications (HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript), and other for native applications C/C++) and of course yet another for .NET applications (C#, VB, F#, etc.). The use rinterface and user experience for non-web application is described ith XAML (a well known declarative XML language) and the 3D API for games and design applications is DirectX. Additionally, Windows 8 facilitates the use of hybrid solutions, in which native and managed code can interoperate easily. Some of the most remarkable advantages of this strategy are the possibility of targeting both desktop and touch screen devices with the same development framework, the usage of several programming paradigms to apply the most appropriate language to each domain and the multilevel segmentation of developers and designers to facilitate the implementation of an open network of collaborators.

A dynamic programming approach to the formulation and solution of finite element equations

A method for formulating and algorithmically solving the equations of finite element problems is presented. The method starts with a parametric partition of the domain in juxtaposed strips that permits sweeping the whole region by a sequential addition (or removal) of adjacent strips. The solution of the difference equations constructed over that grid proceeds along with the addition removal of strips in a manner resembling the transfer matrix approach, except that different rules of composition that lead to numerically stable algorithms are used for the stiffness matrices of the strips. Dynamic programming and invariant imbedding ideas underlie the construction of such rules of composition. Among other features of interest, the present methodology provides to some extent the analyst's control over the type and quantity of data to be computed. In particular, the one-sweep method presented in Section 9, with no apparent counterpart in standard methods, appears to be very efficient insofar as time and storage is concerned. The paper ends with the presentation of a numerical example

Corporate social responsibility in portfolio selection: A "goal games" against nature approach

Nowadays, there is an uprising social pressure on big companies to incorporate into their decision-making process elements of the so-called social responsibility. Among the many implications of this fact, one relevant one is the need to include this new element in classic portfolio selection models. This paper meets this challenge by formulating a model that combines goal programming with "goal games" against nature in a scenario where the social responsibility is defined through the introduction of a battery of sustainability indicators amalgamated into a synthetic index. In this way, we have obtained an efficient model that only implies solving a small number of linear programming problems. The proposed approach has been tested and illustrated by using a case study related to the selection of securities in international markets.