Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mastering the requirements analysis for communication-intensive websites

Web application development still needs to employ effective methods to accommodate some distinctive aspects of the requirements analysis process: capturing high-level communication goals, considering several user profiles and stakeholders, defining hypermedia-specific requirements (concerning navigation, content, information structure and presentation aspects), and reusing requirements for an effective usability evaluation. Techniques should be usable by both stakeholders and the design team, require little training effort, and show relative advantage to project managers. Over the last few years, requirements methodologies applied to web-based applications have considered mainly the transactional and operational aspects typical of traditional information systems. The communicational aspects of web sites have been neglected in regards to systematic requirements methods. This thesis, starting from key achievements in Requirements Engineering (hereafter RE), introduces a model (AWARE) for defining and analyzing requirements for web applications mainly conceived as strategic communication means for an institution or organization. The model extends traditional goal and scenario-based approaches for refining highlevel goals into website requirements, by introducing the analysis of ill-defined user goals, stakeholder communication goals, and a hypermedia requirement taxonomy to facilitate web conceptual design, and paving the way for a systematic usability evaluation. AWARE comprises a conceptual toolkit and a notation for effective requirements documentation. AWARE concepts and notation represent a useful communication and analysis conceptual tool that may support in the elicitation, negotiation, analysis and validation of requirements from the relevant stakeholders (users included). The empirical validation of the model is carried out in two ways. Firstly, the model has been employed in web projects on the field. These case studies and the lessons learnt will be presented and discussed to assess advantages and limits of the proposal. Secondly, a sample of web analysts and designers has been asked to study and apply the model: the feedback gathered is positive and encouraging for further improvement. Mastering the Requirements Analysis for Communication-intensive Websites A dissertation presented by Davide Bolchini Supervised by Prof. Paolo Paolini Submitted to the Faculty of Communication Sciences University of Lugano for the degree of Ph.D. in Communication Sciences
GPU-based Real-Time Snow Avalanche Simulations

Snow is a physical phenomenon that is hard to simulate due to the wide range of behaviors that can be found. Snow avalanches are of interest due to their complex physical properties and because they can have a very high cost, both in terms of economic impact and lives lost. In this thesis, we investigate the possibility of using fluid dynamics to model snow avalanches at real-time speeds. Real-time simulations allow for interactivity which again may accelerate the speed of development processes. It also allows for the simulations to be used as an interactive educational tool. Although modern GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are primarily designed to accelerate graphics calculations in computer games, their computational power can now also be harnessed by several other applications. This thesis builds on our previous work on a simple Smoothing Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) fluid dynamics model accelerated by GPUs. We extend this work by developing a more complex SPH model and integrate these two models in our novel framework for GPU simulations. The simple SPH model is suitable for interactive simulations of low-viscosity Newtonian fluids, whereas our more complex SPH model includes support for Non-Newtonian fluids through the use of rheological models. By using a rheological model that describes the Non-Newtonian flow characteristics of snow avalanches, we can reproduce the flowing behavior of dense flowing snow avalanches at interactive speeds. Our work shows that using the GPU can lead to very large performance improvements that make it possible to do real-time simulations which previously required costly specialized hardware or took minutes or hours to run. Using our highly optimized framework, we demonstrate a large improvement in performance for the simple model, and achieve generally very high performance for both implementations compared to other state-of-the-art implementations. Our recent results on the new NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470 Fermi-based card, achieves 215.4 IPS (iterations per seconds) for 64K particles using our simple model, and 122.2 IPS and 64.9IPS for 128K and 256K particles, respectively. For the complex model, 69.6 IPS at 64K particles, 37.4 IPS at 128K particles and 19.1 IPS at 256K particles were achieved. Real-time simulations enabling interactivity for the simple model is achieved for up to 256K particles, and up to 32/64K particles for the complex model. Many other features, such as additional snow and fluid effects, could extend this work. A list of this and other possible avenues for future work is also included.
Mixture of beamformers for speech separation and extraction

In many audio applications, the signal of interest is corrupted by acoustic background noise, interference, and reverberation. The presence of these contaminations can significantly degrade the quality and intelligibility of the audio signal. This makes it important to develop signal processing methods that can separate the competing sources and extract a source of interest. The estimated signals may then be either directly listened to, transmitted, or further processed, giving rise to a wide range of applications such as hearing aids, noise-cancelling headphones, human-computer interaction, surveillance, and hands-free telephony. Many of the existing approaches to speech separation/extraction relied on beamforming techniques. These techniques approach the problem from a spatial point of view; a microphone array is used to form a spatial filter which can extract a signal from a specific direction and reduce the contamination of signals from other directions. However, when there are fewer microphones than sources (the underdetermined case), perfect attenuation of all interferers becomes impossible and only partial interference attenuation is possible. In this thesis, we present a framework which extends the use of beamforming techniques to underdetermined speech mixtures. We describe frequency domain non-linear mixture of beamformers that can extract a speech source from a known direction. Our approach models the data in each frequency bin via Gaussian mixture distributions, which can be learned using the expectation maximization algorithm. The model learning is performed using the observed mixture signals only, and no prior training is required. The signal estimator comprises of a set of minimum mean square error (MMSE), minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR), or minimum power distortionless response (MPDR) beamformers. In order to estimate the signal, all beamformers are concurrently applied to the observed signal, and the weighted sum of the beamformers’ outputs is used as the signal estimator, where the weights are the estimated posterior probabilities of the Gaussian mixture states. These weights are specific to each timefrequency point. The resulting non-linear beamformers do not need to know or estimate the number of sources, and can be applied to microphone arrays with two or more microphones with arbitrary array configuration. We test and evaluate the described methods on underdetermined speech mixtures. Experimental results for the non-linear beamformers in underdetermined mixtures with room reverberation confirm their capability to successfully extract speech sources.
EN-ROUTE UPDATING METHODOLOGY OF TRAVEL TIME PREDICTION USING ACCUMULATED PROBE-CAR DATA

Probe-car data include the information about the trajectory of speeds driver have experienced while passing through arbitrary selected sections. This paper discusses the methods of en-route updating travel time prediction, making effective use of probe-car data. Several methods suggested in this paper, which are en-route updating methods using both accumulated probe-car data and driver-experienced data, can predict travel time more accurately than methods that do not use both data in most cases.
Automatic, adaptive, and applicative sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is a challenging task today for computational linguistics. Because of the rise of the social Web, both the research and the industry are interested in automatic processing of opinions in text. In this work, we assume a multilingual and multidomain environment and aim at automatic and adaptive polarity classification.We propose a method for automatic construction of multilingual affective lexicons from microblogging to cover the lack of lexical resources. To test our method, we have collected over 2 million messages from Twitter, the largest microblogging platform, and have constructed affective resources in English, French, Spanish, and Chinese.We propose a text representation model based on dependency parse trees to replace a traditional n-grams model. In our model, we use dependency triples to form n-gram like features. We believe this representation covers the loss of information when assuming independence of words in the bag-of-words approach.Finally, we investigate the impact of entity-specific features on classification of minor opinions and propose normalization schemes for improving polarity classification. The proposed normalization schemes gives more weight to terms expressing sentiments and lower the importance of noisy features.The effectiveness of our approach has been proved in experimental evaluations that we have performed across multiple domains (movies, product reviews, news, blog posts) and multiple languages (English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese) including official participation in several international evaluation campaigns (SemEval'10, ROMIP'11, I2B2'11).
Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists: Bayesian approach to regression, ANOVA, mixed models and related analyses

Bayesian statistics has exploded into biology and its sub-disciplines such as ecology over the past decade. The free software program WinBUGS and its open-source sister OpenBugs is currently the only flexible and general-purpose program available with which the average ecologist can conduct their own standard and non-standard Bayesian statistics. Introduction to WINBUGS for Ecologists goes right to the heart of the matter by providing ecologists with a comprehensive, yet concise, guide to applying WinBUGS to the types of models that they use most often: linear (LM), generalized linear (GLM), linear mixed (LMM) and generalized linear mixed models (GLMM). Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists combines the use of simulated data sets "paired" analyses using WinBUGS (in a Bayesian framework for analysis) and in R (in a frequentist mode of inference) and uses a very detailed step-by-step tutorial presentation style that really lets the reader repeat every step of the application of a given mode in their own research. - Introduction to the essential theories of key models used by ecologists - Complete juxtaposition of classical analyses in R and Bayesian Analysis of the same models in WinBUGS- Provides every detail of R and WinBUGS code required to conduct all analyses- Written with ecological language and ecological examples- Companion Web Appendix that contains all code contained in the book, additional material (including more code and solutions to exercises)- Tutorial approach shows ecologists how to implement Bayesian analysis in practical problems that they face
Closing keynote speech: reconfigured self as basis for humanistic intelligence

John S. Quarterman asks the questions: "Will the U.S. continue to contain more than half of the Internet? Will one company make all the software? " [1]. One could also ask related questions like "Will one university or educational organization fabricate the future by manufacturing consensus of ideas and ideals? ". That the U.S. government, together with a single company, might control the world's information flow and software, and thus indirectly, the world's thoughts, ideas, etc., is a troubling thought to many. One possible solution to this problem is in the tradition of science, and thus the notion of disclosure and open peer review, as a basis for allowing anyone the option of acquiring, and thus advancing the world's knowledge base. A further construct called "Humanistic Intelligence (HI)", motivated by the philosophy of science, is proposed. HI provides a new synergy between humans and machines that seeks to involve the human rather than having computers emulate human thought or replace humans. Particular goals of HI are human involvement at the individual level, and providing individuals with tools to challenge society's pre-conceived notions of human-computer relationships. An emphasis in this article is on computational frameworks surrounding "visual intelligence" devices, such as video cameras interfaced to computer systems.
Formal Correctness of Security Protocols

The Analysis of Security Protocols. - The Inductive Method. - Verifying the Protocol Goals. - The Principle of Goal Availability. - Modelling Timestamping and Verifying a Classical Protocol. - Verifying a Deployed Protocol. - Modelling Agents' Knowledge of Messages. - Verifying Another Deployed Protocol. - Modelling Smartcards. - Verifying a Smartcard Protocol. - Modelling Accountability. - Verifying Two Accountability Protocols. - Conclusions.
WebHack: A research system for social massive multiplayer online games

The most popular Facebook games are being played by millions of users, sometimes only a few weeks after introduction. Although several of these games and their users have been studied, there currently exists no open-source version of such a game. In this thesis we present the design, implementation, and performance analysis of WebHack, a Facebook-integrated multiplayer game. WebHack is built upon the classic, but still popular, game of Nethack. We discuss the technical difficulties with file handles, process limits, communication networks, and handling failures. Further, we consider aspects specific to legacy applications, for example legal issues and technical limitations. We propose methods to circumvent these issues, and show a successful integration of the legacy game Nethack into our Facebookintegrated game system. We present the design of our system and evaluate the performance of the design in various scenarios. Among other results, we show that WebHack is a highperformance system, able to support over 300,000 concurrent players, handle arrival rates for up to 1,750 new players per second for over 60 seconds, and is able to recover within 10 seconds from a server failure.
Curricular Congruence at an Implementation Level: Are Two Interventions of a District's Early Literacy Project (Improved Classroom Instruction and Reading Recovery) Working Congruently To Address the Needs of Low-Achieving Readers?.

Historically when children have experienced difficulty in learning to read they have been served by remedial reading programs, special education programs, or retention practices. There is considerable evidence that these programs have been ineffective in raising the achievement levels of those they serve. In addition, because these programs are generally provided as a means of supplementing rather than supplanting the regular classroom program, the ineffective programming is confounded by a lack of articulation and lack of congruency between the two programs. This case study research examines the implementation of a district's Early Literacy Project whose goal was to establish curricular congruence for struggling readers who receive instruction both in their regular classroom and in a remedial setting. More specifically, it examines whether two interventions (improved classroom instruction and Reading Recovery) are working congruently along five curricular components: philosophy; instructional materials; instructional methods and student activities; reading strategies; and reading goals. In one case study, congruence between reading programs helped to alleviate tension the student felt toward reading, while in the second case study the student began to receive more appropriate instruction. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Curricular Congruence 1 Running head: CURRICULAR CONGRUENCE AT AN IMPLEMENTATION LEVEL Curricular Congruence at an Implementation Level: Are two interventions of a district's Early Literacy Project (improved classroom instruction and Reading Recovery) working congruently to address the needs of low-achieving readers? Wilson-Bridgman, J. Niagara University PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Diseño de antenas multibanda para telefonía móvil mediante la manipulación del plano de masa

The Ground Plane used in a handset device has a very important role in the behaviour of the antenna. This study consists on a Ground Plane modification in order to enhance bandwidth and design a multiband antenna. Through this technique is possible to improve matching and antenna efficiency while keeping the original volume of the PIFA antenna (Planar Inverted-F Antenna).
Diagnostic information in compliance checking

Compliance checking is gaining importance as today's organizations need to show that operational processes are executed in a controlled manner while satisfying predefined (legal) requirements. Deviations may be costly and expose the organization to severe risks. Compliance checking is of growing importance for the business process management and auditing communities. This paper presents a comprehensive compliance checking approach based on Petri-net fragments and alignments. 55 control flow oriented compliance rules, distributed over 15 categories. We formalize them in terms of Petri-net fragments describing the compliant behavior. To check compliance with respect to a rule, the event log describing the observed behavior is aligned with the corresponding fragment. The approach is flexible (easy to add new patterns), robust (the selected alignment between log and fragment is guaranteed to be optimal), and allows for both a quantification of compliance and intuitive diagnostics explaining deviations at the level of alignments. The approach can also handle resource-based and data-based compliance rules and is supported by ProM plug-ins.
Is the best good enough? : optimality and competition in syntax

WHOT? , Peter Ackema and Ad Neeleman optimality and inversion in Spanish, Eric Bakovic morphology competes with syntax - explaining typological variation in weak crossover effects, Joan Bresman anaphora and soft constraints, Luigi Burzio some observation on economy in generative grammar, Noam Chomsky locality in variable binding, Danny Fox optimality theory and human sentence processing, Edward Gibson and Kevin Broihier optimal subjects and subject universals, Jane Grimshaw and Vieri Samek-Lodovici semantic and pragmatic context-dependence - the case of reciprocals, Yookyung Kim and Stanley Peters when less is more? faithfulness and minimal links in wh-chains, Geraldine Legendre, Paul Smolensky and Colin Wilson reference set, minimal link condition and parameterization, Masanori Nakamura on the nature of inputs and outputs - a case study of negation, Mark Newson some optimality principles of sentence pronunciation, David Pesetsky constraints on local economy, Geoffrey Poole the logical problem of language acquisition in optimality theory, Douglas Pulleyblank and William J. Turkel error-driven learning in optimality theory via the efficient computation of optimal forms, Bruce B. Tesar.
Book review

The book starts off by comparing cognitive scientists’ attraction to the mind with a group of little boys pressing their noses to the display window of a candy store, who when asked why they do not use the door to enter the shop reply: ‘We don’t want a door! We want the sweets! ’ Keijzer’s point is that cognitive scientists, in the study of mind, as well as the boys in their pursuit of candy, might be well advised to take a more indirect approach that might be more likely to reach the goal. The approach to mind that Keijzer suggests goes via the study of behaviour. His specific target is representation, obviously a fundamental concept within cognitive science, which is generally considered indispensable in accounts of complex behaviour, in particular human behaviour. As Keijzer points out, ‘[r]epresentations form the heart of cognitive explanations and the basis for formulating theories of cognitive functioning’. Furthermore, at least during the early years of cognitive science, the commitment to and interest in internal mental representations were commonly taken to be central features that distinguished the new approach from its predecessor, behaviourism. However, rather than treating representation as given, Keijzer sets out ‘to explore cognitive science’s notion of representation from a behavioral perspective’. His agenda is to investigate the role that representation plays in generating behaviour, arguing that ‘the notion of representation can even be discarded altogether, should it come out that it is not necessary to explain the generation of behavior’. In Chapter 1, ‘Behavior: levels and explanations’, Keijzer sets the scene and formulates the central question of the book: ‘What place, if any, should representations occupy in an explanation of the generation of behavior? ’ He introduces his own ‘reconstructions’, as he calls them himself, of what he considers the main contenders for answering that question, agent theory (AT) and behavioural systems theory (BST). AT is Keijzer’s reconstruction of cognitivism and traditional, computationalist cognitive science. AT, according to Keijzer, is ‘the most sophisticated conceptual framework that has been formulated so far to account for the generation of behavior’. More specifically, AT subscribes to the view that representation is essential to explanations of behaviour and cognition in the above sense. Moreover, it involves the hypothesis that ‘agent-related properties like ‘perceives’, ‘wants’, or ‘thinks’ or more abstract ones like ‘cognitive’, ‘rational’, or ‘intentional’ can be applied to describe the operation of the processes that generate agent-like properties’. BST, on the other hand, ‘derives from the idea that behavior can be explained as the result of the interaction between an organism and its environment’. BST, as Keijzer points out, is a reconstructed position as much as AT is (or even more so). More specifically, BST is Keijzer’s re-formulation of what he also refers to as interactionism,