Concurrent Aggregates (CA): An Object-Oriented Language for Fine-Grained Message-Passing Machines

Fine-grained parallel machines have the potential for very high speed computation. To program massively-concurrent MIMD machines, programmers need tools for managing complexity. These tools should not restrict program concurrency. Concurrent Aggregates (CA) provides multiple-access data abstraction tools, Aggregates, which can be used to implement abstractions with virtually unlimited potential for concurrency. Such tools allow programmers to modularize programs without reducing concurrency. I describe the design, motivation, implementation and evaluation of Concurrent Aggregates. CA has been used to construct a number of application programs. Multi-access data abstractions are found to be useful in constructing highly concurrent programs.

Translucent Procedures, Abstraction without Opacity

This report introduces TRANSLUCENT PROCEDURES as a new mechanism for implementing behavioral abstractions. Like an ordinary procedure, a translucent procedure can be invoked, and thus provides an obvious way to capture a BEHAVIOR. Translucent procedures, like ordinary procedures, can be manipulated as first-class objects and combined using functional composition. But unlike ordinary procedures, translucent procedures have structure that can be examined in well-specified non-destructive ways, without invoking the procedure.

The Architect's Collaborator: Toward Intelligent Tools for Conceptual Design

In early stages of architectural design, as in other design domains, the language used is often very abstract. In architectural design, for example, architects and their clients use experiential terms such as "private" or "open" to describe spaces. If we are to build programs that can help designers during this early-stage design, we must give those programs the capability to deal with concepts on the level of such abstractions. The work reported in this thesis sought to do that, focusing on two key questions: How are abstract terms such as "private" and "open" translated into physical form? How might one build a tool to assist designers with this process? The Architect's Collaborator (TAC) was built to explore these issues. It is a design assistant that supports iterative design refinement, and that represents and reasons about how experiential qualities are manifested in physical form. Given a starting design and a set of design goals, TAC explores the space of possible designs in search of solutions that satisfy the goals. It employs a strategy we've called dependency-directed redesign: it evaluates a design with respect to a set of goals, then uses an explanation of the evaluation to guide proposal and refinement of repair suggestions; it then carries out the repair suggestions to create new designs. A series of experiments was run to study TAC's behavior. Issues of control structure, goal set size, goal order, and modification operator capabilities were explored. In addition, TAC's use as a design assistant was studied in an experiment using a house in the process of being redesigned. TAC's use as an analysis tool was studied in an experiment using Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses.

The Open Web of Things as a means to unlock the potential of the IoT

Abstract: There is a lot of hype around the Internet of Things along with talk about 100 billion devices within 10 years time. The promise of innovative new services and efficiency savings is fueling interest in a wide range of potential applications across many sectors including smart homes, healthcare, smart grids, smart cities, retail, and smart industry. However, the current reality is one of fragmentation and data silos. W3C is seeking to fix that by exposing IoT platforms through the Web with shared semantics and data formats as the basis for interoperability. This talk will address the abstractions needed to move from a Web of pages to a Web of things, and introduce the work that is being done on standards and on open source projects for a new breed of Web servers on microcontrollers to cloud based server farms. Speaker Biography -Dave Raggett : Dave has been involved at the heart of web standards since 1992, and part of the W3C Team since 1995. As well as working on standards, he likes to dabble with software, and more recently with IoT hardware. He has participated in a wide range of European research projects on behalf of W3C/ERCIM. He currently focuses on Web payments, and realising the potential for the Web of Things as an evolution from the Web of pages. Dave has a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England, and lives in the UK in a small town near to Bath.

Modelling complex systems for project planning - A semiotics motivated method

A large and complex IT project may involve multiple organizations and be constrained within a temporal period. An organization is a system comprising of people, activities, processes, information, resources and goals. Understanding and modelling such a project and its interrelationship with relevant organizations are essential for organizational project planning. This paper introduces the problem articulation method (PAM) as a semiotic method for organizational infrastructure modelling. PAM offers a suite of techniques, which enables the articulation of the business, technical and organizational requirements, delivering an infrastructural framework to support the organization. It works by eliciting and formalizing (e. g. processes, activities, relationships, responsibilities, communications, resources, agents, dependencies and constraints) and mapping these abstractions to represent the manifestation of the "actual" organization. Many analysts forgo organizational modelling methods and use localized ad hoc and point solutions, but this is not amenable for organizational infrastructures modelling. A case study of the infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer (IASI) will be used to demonstrate the applicability of PAM, and to examine its relevancy and significance in dealing with the innovation and changes in the organizations.

Re-thinking stakeholder management in construction: theory & research

From its roots in strategic management theory, stakeholder management has been adopted by the construction management academic community and applied as a valid paradigm around which research work has been generated aiming to improve project effi ciencies and effectiveness. However, academics have argued that stakeholder management should move away from purely theoretical discussions and engage more with the realities of construction project work. This paper re-appraises the stakeholder management concept for the construction domain by re-thinking some of the fundamental principles and ideals present within the more general stakeholder theory literature. It engages with issues which researchers have arguably failed to acknowledge and calls for a re-evaluation of construction stakeholder management research by presenting a review around four distinctive themes: the moral obligations of engaging with stakeholders against the business and efficiency driven imperatives of construction organisations; the contrast between theoretical abstractions and empirically grounded research; the tensions between theoretical convergence versus calls for multiple and divergent perspectives on stakeholder management and the practicalities of conducting stakeholder management in the construction domain. Such a critical re-appraisal of stakeholder management thinking both generates new lines of enquiry and promises to help inform and shape current and future industry practice.

Distributed multimedia quality: the user perspective

Distributed multimedia supports a symbiotic infotainment duality, i.e. the ability to transfer information to the user, yet also provide the user with a level of satisfaction. As multimedia is ultimately produced for the education and / or enjoyment of viewers, the user’s-perspective concerning the presentation quality is surely of equal importance as objective Quality of Service (QoS) technical parameters, to defining distributed multimedia quality. In order to extensively measure the user-perspective of multimedia video quality, we introduce an extended model of distributed multimedia quality that segregates quality into three discrete levels: the network-level, the media-level and content-level, using two distinct quality perspectives: the user-perspective and the technical-perspective. Since experimental questionnaires do not provide continuous monitoring of user attention, eye tracking was used in our study in order to provide a better understanding of the role that the human element plays in the reception, analysis and synthesis of multimedia data. Results showed that video content adaptation, results in disparity in user video eye-paths when: i) no single / obvious point of focus exists; or ii) when the point of attention changes dramatically. Accordingly, appropriate technical- and user-perspective parameter adaptation is implemented, for all quality abstractions of our model, i.e. network-level (via simulated delay and jitter), media-level (via a technical- and user-perspective manipulated region-of-interest attentive display) and content-level (via display-type and video clip-type). Our work has shown that user perception of distributed multimedia quality cannot be achieved by means of purely technical-perspective QoS parameter adaptation.

BodyCloud: a SaaS approach for community body sensor networks

Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) have been recently introduced for the remote monitoring of human activities in a broad range of application domains, such as health care, emergency management, fitness and behaviour surveillance. BSNs can be deployed in a community of people and can generate large amounts of contextual data that require a scalable approach for storage, processing and analysis. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of data streams generated in BSNs. This paper proposes BodyCloud, a SaaS approach for community BSNs that supports the development and deployment of Cloud-assisted BSN applications. BodyCloud is a multi-tier application-level architecture that integrates a Cloud computing platform and BSN data streams middleware. BodyCloud provides programming abstractions that allow the rapid development of community BSN applications. This work describes the general architecture of the proposed approach and presents a case study for the real-time monitoring and analysis of cardiac data streams of many individuals.

LiLEDDA – a six step forum-based netnographic research method for nursing and caring sciences

Internet research methods in nursing science are less developed than in other sciences. We choose to present an approach to conducting nursing research on an internet-based forum. This paper presents LiLEDDA, a six-step forum-based netnographic research method for nursing science. The steps consist of: 1. Literature review and identification of the research question(s); 2. Locating the field(s) online; 3. Ethical considerations; 4. Data gathering; 5. Data analysis and interpretation; and 6. Abstractions and trustworthiness. Traditional research approaches are limiting when studying non-normative and non-mainstream life-worlds and their cultures. We argue that it is timely to develop more up-to-date research methods and study designs applicable to nursing science that reflect social developments and human living conditions that tend to be increasingly online-based.

Automating the product derivation process of multi-agent systems product lines

Agent-oriented software engineering and software product lines are two promising software engineering techniques. Recent research work has been exploring their integration, namely multi-agent systems product lines (MAS-PLs), to promote reuse and variability management in the context of complex software systems. However, current product derivation approaches do not provide specific mechanisms to deal with MAS-PLs. This is essential because they typically encompass several concerns (e.g., trust, coordination, transaction, state persistence) that are constructed on the basis of heterogeneous technologies (e.g., object-oriented frameworks and platforms). In this paper, we propose the use of multi-level models to support the configuration knowledge specification and automatic product derivation of MAS-PLs. Our approach provides an agent-specific architecture model that uses abstractions and instantiation rules that are relevant to this application domain. In order to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach, we have implemented it as an extension of an existing product derivation tool, called GenArch. The approach has also been evaluated through the automatic instantiation of two MAS-PLs, demonstrating its potential and benefits to product derivation and configuration knowledge specification.

Psicologia social, ideológica e meta-ideológica: (psicogênese e sociogênese no modelo dialético)

O presente estudo propõe uma interpretação da Psicologia Social como expressão da relação homem/meio, baseada no modelo dialético genético-estrutural Piagetano. É conceituada uma interdependência entre diferentes níveis de análise teórica e uma continuidade do mais simples ao complexo, mantendo-se a autonomia relativa, em cada nível que, com suas próprias leis, obedecerá ao sistema global da organização vital: níveis biológicos, psicológicos e sociológicos encadeiam-se, sem que se possa definir um limite estrito entre eles. Supera-se assim o problema metodológico de abstração de níveis que leva a consideráveis distorções, especialmente quando se abstrai o nível político-social. Psicologia Social será o estudo da ação que uma estrutura social provoca no indivíduo e a ação recíproca que o indivíduo exerce sobre a estrutura social: o sujeito participa ativamente, em grupo, da construção da estrutura que sobre ele atua. Frente à abordagem psicossocial dominante, empírico-analítica e à abordagem alternativa, histórico-social, e introduzida uma visão interacionista que integra como complementares posições conflitantes, sendo criticadas teorias que pretendem reduzir o comportamento humano ao meio ou ao sujeito. É proposta uma teoria psicobiológica da relação homem/meio que definira o grau de desenvolvimento atingido pelo indivíduo e grupo como função da interação permitida: se o contexto for repressor, ocorrera uma atualização empobrecida de fenótipos culturais. O psicólogo social deverá ter um enfoque do desenvolvimento do indivíduo e sociedade, para poder atuar de forma politicamente relevante. A ideologia ê interpretada como expressa0 de uma função humana mais geral, a função simbólica e será sempre dependente da autorregularão atingida pelo grupo em um contexto sócio-político específico. Como uma ação concreta sempre é ideológica por sua práxis, um nível meta-ideológico só será atingido através da atuação num nível ideológico; apenas através da pesquisa psico e sociogenética se atingirá um dado não-ideológico.

Abordagem dirigida a modelos para redes de sensores sem fio

Research on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has evolved, with potential applications in several domains. However, the building of WSN applications is hampered by the need of programming in low-level abstractions provided by sensor OS and of specific knowledge about each application domain and each sensor platform. We propose a MDA approach do develop WSN applications. This approach allows domain experts to directly contribute in the developing of applications without needing low level knowledge on WSN platforms and, at the same time, it allows network experts to program WSN nodes to met application requirements without specific knowledge on the application domain. Our approach also promotes the reuse of the developed software artifacts, allowing an application model to be reused across different sensor platforms and a platform model to be reused for different applications

LWiSSy: uma linguagem específica de domínio para modelagem de sistemas de redes de sensores e atuadores sem fio

The field of Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSAN) is fast increasing and has attracted the interest of both the research community and the industry because of several factors, such as the applicability of such networks in different application domains (aviation, civil engineering, medicine, and others). Moreover, advances in wireless communication and the reduction of hardware components size also contributed for a fast spread of these networks. However, there are still several challenges and open issues that need to be tackled in order to achieve the full potential of WSAN usage. The development of WSAN systems is one of the most relevant of these challenges considering the number of variables involved in this process. Currently, a broad range of WSAN platforms and low level programming languages are available to build WSAN systems. Thus, developers need to deal with details of different sensor platforms and low-level programming abstractions of sensor operational systems on one hand, and they also need to have specific (high level) knowledge about the distinct application domains, on the other hand. Therefore, in order to decouple the handling of these two different levels of knowledge, making easier the development process of WSAN systems, we propose LWiSSy (Domain Language for Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks Systems), a domain specific language (DSL) for WSAN. The use of DSLs raises the abstraction level during the programming of systems and modularizes the system building in several steps. Thus, LWiSSy allows the domain experts to directly contribute in the development of WSANs without having knowledge on low level sensor platforms, and network experts to program sensor nodes to meet application requirements without having specific knowledge on the application domain. Additionally, LWiSSy enables the system decomposition in different levels of abstraction according to structural and behavioral features and granularities (network, node group and single node level programming)

Aprendizagem de conceitos geométricos pelo futuro professor das séries iniciais do Ensino Fundamental e as novas tecnologias

Com o movimento da Matemática Moderna, a partir de 1950, o ensino da matemática passou a enfatizar o simbolismo e a exigir dos alunos grandes abstrações, distanciando a matemática da vida real. O que se percebe é que o aluno formado por este currículo aprendeu muito pouco de geometria e não consegue perceber a relação deste conteúdo com sua realidade. Por outro lado, o professor que não conhece geometria não consegue perceber a beleza e a importância que a mesma possui para a formação do cidadão. A geometria estimula a criança a observar, perceber semelhanças, diferenças e a identificar regularidades. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar o nível de conhecimento dos alunos do Centro Específico de Formação e Aperfeiçoamento ao Magistério (CEFAM), futuros professores da 1ª a 4ª séries do Ensino Fundamental do Estado de São Paulo, quanto aos conceitos de ponto, reta, plano, ângulos, polígonos e circunferências e também verificar as contribuições do computador para a construção de conceitos geométricos. Para atingir esses objetivos, foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa com 30 alunos do CEFAM de Presidente Prudente-SP, na qual, com base no diagnóstico das dificuldades de aprendizagem, organizaram e desenvolveram-se os momentos de formação, que utilizaram o computador como ferramenta de aprendizagem e projetos de trabalho tendo como aporte teórico a abordagem construcionista. O futuro professor que não dominar a geometria e não perceber sua relação com a natureza não conseguirá contribuir para o desenvolvimento do pensamento geométrico da criança. Esse pensamento é que permite a criança observar, compreender, descrever e representar, de forma organizada, o mundo em que vive.

Ideias de estudantes sobre a origem da Terra e da vida e suas relações com o desenvolvimento cognitivo: um estudo psicogenético

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC