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.

Bayesian tools for zero counts in compositional data

The log-ratio methodology makes available powerful tools for analyzing compositional data. Nevertheless, the use of this methodology is only possible for those data sets without null values. Consequently, in those data sets where the zeros are present, a previous treatment becomes necessary. Last advances in the treatment of compositional zeros have been centered especially in the zeros of structural nature and in the rounded zeros. These tools do not contemplate the particular case of count compositional data sets with null values. In this work we deal with \count zeros" and we introduce a treatment based on a mixed Bayesian-multiplicative estimation. We use the Dirichlet probability distribution as a prior and we estimate the posterior probabilities. Then we apply a multiplicative modi¯cation for the non-zero values. We present a case study where this new methodology is applied. Key words: count data, multiplicative replacement, composition, log-ratio analysis

Enhancing learning beyond the classroom: blogging and other social networking tools

Blogging has become one of the key ingredients of the so-called socials networks. This phenomenon has indeed invaded the world of education. Connections between people, comments on each other posts, and assessment of innovation are usually interesting characteristics of blogs related to students and scholars. Blogs have become a kind of new form of authority, bringing about (divergent) discussions which lead to creation of knowledge. The use of blogs as an innovative, educational tool is not at all new. However, their use in universities is not very widespread yet. Blogging for personal affairs is rather commonplace, but blogging for professional affairs – teaching, research and service, is scarce, despite the availability of ready-to-use, free tools. Unfortunately, Information Society has not reached yet enough some universities: not only are (student) blogs scarcely used as an educational tool, but it is quite rare to find a blog written by University professors. The Institute of Computational Chemistry of the University of Girona and the Department of Chemistry of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has joined forces to create “InnoCiència”, a new Group on Digital Science Communitation. This group, formed by ca. ten researchers, has promoted the use of blogs, twitters. wikis and other tools of Web 2.0 in activities in Catalonia concerning the dissemination of Science, like Science Week, Open Day or Researchers’ Night. Likewise, its members promote use of social networking tools in chemistry- and communication-related courses. This communication explains the outcome of social-network experiences with teaching undergraduate students and organizing research communication events. We provide live, hands-on examples and interactive ground to show how blogs and twitters can be used to enhance the yield of teaching and research. Impact of blogging and other social networking tools on the outcome of the learning process is very depending on the target audience and the environmental conditions. A few examples are provided and some proposals to use these techniques efficiently to help students are hinted

Analysis and regeneration of hypermedia contents through Java and XML tools

This paper presents a tool for the analysis and regeneration of Web contents, implemented through XML and Java. At the moment, the Web content delivery from server to clients is carried out without taking into account clients' characteristics. Heterogeneous and diverse characteristics, such as user's preferences, different capacities of the client's devices, different types of access, state of the network and current load on the server, directly affect the behavior of Web services. On the other hand, the growing use of multimedia objects in the design of Web contents is made without taking into account this diversity and heterogeneity. It affects, even more, the appropriate content delivery. Thus, the objective of the presented tool is the treatment of Web pages taking into account the mentioned heterogeneity and adapting contents in order to improve the performance on the Web

Tools to Create a Poster Using PowerPoint 2010

This step-by-step guide introduces the PowerPoint 2010 features that can be used to create attractive posters. For example, guidelines to help elements align neatly and text boxes with margins.

Tools for Communication, Collaboration �and for Mobile Learning

Introduction as part of UG TEL course

Tools to use when writing a thesis in Word 2010/2013 (PC)

This collection of videos shows you how to use a range of time-saving tools when writing a thesis in MS Word 2010/2013. See the full SupportGuide at http://www.go.soton.ac.uk/thesispc. There are videos on using styles; creating tables of contents and tables of figures; using the Navigation Pane; using the Browse Object tool and many more. There is an equivelent collection for use with Word 2011 which is for use with Apple computers.

Tools to use when writing a thesis using Word 2011 (for Apple computers)

A collection of videos on time saving features when using MS Word 2011 to write a thesis. Learn how to use styles, make table of contents, make table of figures, use the document map, use the browse object tool and keep a count of the words in your file and many more useful features of Word 2011. Word 2011 is for Apple computers, there is a collection of similar video for use with the PC version Word 2010.

De la morbilidad a la perdurabilidad Laboratorios Vogue

Este trabajo de grado tiene como objetivo identificar las rutas y métodos seguidos por una organización para salir de la crisis. El caso de estudio es la empresa Laboratorios Vogue, quienes estuvieron en acuerdos de reestructuración (Ley 550/1999), y a través de las decisiones tomadas por sus líderes empresariales sobrevivieron y permanecen en el mercado, razón por la cual la Facultad de Administración de la Universidad del Rosario le otorgó el Premio Ave Fénix 2009, con el que reconoce y destaca el esfuerzo colectivo de sus directivos y trabajadores que reconstruyen las empresas, identificando características que les permitan ser sostenibles, perdurables y exitosas. Con este panorama de la situación empresarial, se busca resaltar la gestión de empresarios que sobresalen de sus crisis y enfrentan mercados cada vez más competitivos. Para el desarrollo de la investigación se utilizaron varios instrumentos de análisis como las entrevistas, encuestas y visitas a la empresa en las que se analizaron las estrategias tomadas y su eficiencia para sobresalir de la crisis y alcanzar el cumplimiento de su acuerdo de reestructuración. El trabajo se organizó bajo el lineamiento de la Facultad de administración, en la que se analizaron también variables como la Dirección y Gerencia para identificar su gestión administrativa y la ruta del éxito para superar la crisis de Laboratorios Vogue.

Tidying up tools for writing a thesis in MS Word 2010 (PC) Manual

This manual shows you how to use a range of useful smaller features Word 2010 - cross referencing, track changes, word count, endnotes and footnotes, spell checker, autocorrect, screen split, comments and find and replace.

Tidying up tools in MS Word 2011 (Mac) Manual

This manual shows you how to use a range of useful smaller features Word 2011 - cross-referencing, track changes, word count, endnotes and footnotes, spell checker, autocorrect, screen split, comments and find and replace.

Tidying up tools for writing a thesis in MS Word 2013 (PC) Manual

This manual shows you how to use a range of useful smaller features Word 2013 - cross referencing, track changes, word count, endnotes and footnotes, spell checker, autocorrect, screen split, comments and find and replace.

Starting to Build: storyboards, scenarios,design tools

This lecture covers the use of Agile design tools: Storyboards and Scenarios, used in conjunction with Personas. These are also used in participatory design.