Trick of the Light: A Game Engine for Exploring Novel Fog of War Mechanics

Trick of the Light is an experiment in strategic game design based on imperfect information in a unique fog of war setting. A hybrid of real-time-strategy, role-playing-game and roguelike genres, the game challenges players to maintain an expansive base system without being able to see anything beyond their own limited vision radius. All units, allied or enemy, maintain private memories about what they have seen, and must directly exchange information to keep up to date. The player acts as commander, making decisions and giving orders while dealing with adversaries, sabotage and misinformation. Testing was done to see if the new concepts could be understood in-game and garner any interest for further development, which proved to be positive in both cases despite complaints related to having less direct control over allies

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Improvement of performance indicators after Scrum re-implementation in software development teams

Dissertação de mestrado em Engineering Project ManagementThe business world is more competitive than ever, and companies must adapt to a very fast passed consumer behaviour. Small and medium companies must be quick on their feet and have the ability to rapidly answer to the shifts in trends and products. In order to do so, businesses have shifted from Traditional project management to an Agile project management. Even though Agile project management has become very trendy, implementing an Agile framework requires work and an adaption period. Living Map adopted an Agile framework – Scrum – one year ago, but because they changed their Scrum Master, the process gradually broke and became problematic. This research was proposed by the company, to re-implement Scrum and analyse the changes on the performance indicators of the Software Development teams. The main goal was to collect data after each Sprint completion and compare it to old data collected previously by the researcher whilst being an intern. The first step was to re-define and re-implement Scrum within the two development teams. The researcher acted as the Scrum Master of both teams in order to be closer to them. This dissertation describes the re-implementation of Scrum, the adaptive measurements that were made during a 5-iteration cycle and the changes on the performance indicators that originated from it. In general, not only did every performance indicators had a significant growth but also, the understanding of Scrum increased, and the overall satisfaction of the Teams also improved.O mundo de negócios tem-se tornado mais competitivo do que nunca. As empresas têm de se adaptar às alterações rápidas do comportamento dos consumidores. Pequenas e médias empresas têm de ter a habilidade de responder rapidamente às mudanças das tendências e dos produtos. De forma a conseguirem fazer isto, há uma mudança da gestão de projetos tradicional para gestão de projetos ágil. Porém, implementar uma mentalidade ágil requer esforço e um período de adaptação. A empresa Living Map adotou um framework ágil - Scrum - há um ano atrás, mas por terem mudado de Scrum Master, o processo acabou por se deteriorar e tornar problemático. A pesquisa de reimplementar o Scrum em duas equipas de desenvolvimento de software foi proposta pela empresa, e o investigador desempenhou o papel de Scrum Master de ambas as equipas. O objetivo principal foi recolher dados após o fim de cada Sprint e comparar os mesmos com dados recolhidos de Sprints anteriores. O primeiro passo foi redefinir e reimplementar Scrum em duas equipas de desenvolvimento de software. Esta dissertação descreve a reimplementação de Scrum, as medidas adaptativas que foram tomadas durante um ciclo de 5 iterações e as mudanças dos indicadores de performance que ocorreram. Em geral, não só os indicadores de performance tiveram um crescimento significativo, mas o conhecimento sobre Scrum e a satisfação das equipas melhorou

The ATLAS TRT electronics

The ATLAS inner detector consists of three sub-systems: the pixel detector spanning the radius range 4cm-20cm, the semiconductor tracker at radii from 30 to 52 cm, and the transition radiation tracker (TRT), tracking from 56 to 107 cm. The TRT provides a combination of continuous tracking with many projective measurements based on individual drift tubes (or straws) and of electron identification based on transition radiation from fibres or foils interleaved between the straws themselves. This paper describes the on and off detector electronics for the TRT as well as the TRT portion of the data acquisition (DAQ) system

Agile Software Development: Exploring the Values and Principles, Collaboration and Boundary Objects

Agile software development, both a movement and a set of software development methods, guided by the values and principles state in the Manifesto for Agile development (Beck et al. 2001), should not be seen only as a collection of development methods. This thesis proposes that in order to understand what constitutes differences or similarities between Agile organisations, one should apply a holistic view of Agile development. This view consists of three elements that form the Agile development environment: the perspective the organisations have towards Agile, the Agile process the organisations follow and the Agile structures that form the basis for the process. By proposing this framework of Agile engagement, the thesis answers following research questions: 1. How does collaboration in organisations differ under the various approaches towards Agile? 2. How do organisations structure collaboration between Agile teams and business stakeholders? 3. How are boundary objects used in collaboration between these groups? As research method, I followed the eight steps of the SPS approach and conducted a qualitative, interpretive case study. The study consists of three case studies. First, the Extreme Inc. case is an example of an organisation where the members hold an Avid perspective towards Agile methods. The organisation had arranged the collaboration to follow a tightly integrated model where boundary objects are applied to support the pair programming method and foster face-to-face collaboration. The case of Escapade and Carmine presents an example of an Inclusive Agile perspective, where organisations strive to focus on collaboration and boundary mitigation. The organisations had set up a collaboration configuration, where boundary spanners and all boundary objects were designed to create a sense of presence and ease of collaboration. The last case, the PrecautionCorp program, is a study of an organisation where the members of the organisation have chosen to observe Agile methods in a Pragmatic way. All collaboration between the stakeholders was organised via selected boundary spanners who mitigated the boundaries but also maintained a level of control over the chaos by applying a variety of boundary objects. By analysing the three case studies, I have identified three main elements that impact Agile software development: the perspective the organisations have towards the Agile philosophy which impacts the Agile process, that is, how the Agile methods are applied in practice; the configuration of the business stakeholder collaboration; and the application of the boundary objects. Based on this analysis, I have presented the framework for Agile engagement, a holistic theory that tied together the elements of Agile development. The practical contributions of this thesis are several: practitioners can apply the framework for Agile engagement when analysing their own positions, can benefit from better understanding of the relations between Agile process, Agile perspective and Agile structures, and can enhance their understanding of the best possible application of boundary objects

Пособие по развитию основных видов речевой деятельности на английском языке для студентов специальностей ФЭИС дневной и вечерней форм обучения

Prokopyuk Olga Vasilievna; Shpudeyko Lyudmila Nikolaevna. English 4 IT. Manual on the development of the main types of speech activity in English for students of the specialties of FEIS full-time and evening forms of educationПособие предназначено для студентов первого курса специальностей: "Вычислительные машины, системы и сети" (1-40 02 01), "Автоматизированные системы обработки информации" (1-53 01 02), "Искусственный интеллект" (1-40 03 01), "Промышленная электроника" (1-36 04 02) (дневное и вечернее сокращенное обучение), "Программируемые мобильные системы" (1-39 03 02), "Программное обеспечение информационных технологий" (1-40 01 01). Данное пособие составлено в соответствии с требованиями учебной программы «Иностранный язык / английский» для студентов указанных специальностей дневной и вечерней форм обучения. Целью данного пособия является изучение профессиональной лексики, повторение и систематизация грамматического минимума, формирование навыков и умений чтения англоязычной документации по компьютерным программам и другой оригинальной литературы по специальности, совершенствование навыков перевода, а также развитие профессиональной устной речи в пределах проработанной тематики. Текстовый материал заимствован из зарубежных источников, его тематика определена программой подготовки специалистов технического профиля

Fault tolerant design implementation on radiation hardened by design SRAM-Based FPGAs

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2013.This electronic version was submitted and approved by the author's academic department as part of an electronic thesis pilot project. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections."June 2013." Cataloged from department-submitted PDF version of thesisIncludes bibliographical references (p. 197-204).SRAM-based FPGAs are highly attractive for space applications due to their in-flight reconfigurability, decreased development time and cost, and increased design and testing flexibility. The Xilinx Virtex-5QV is the first commercially available Radiation Hardened By Design (RHBD) SRAM-based FPGA; however, not all of its internal components are hardened against radiation-induced errors. This thesis examines and quantifies the additional considerations and techniques designers should employ with a RHBD SRAM-based FPGA in a space-based processing system to achieve high operational reliability. Additionally, this work presents the application of some of these techniques to the embedded avionics design of the REXIS imaging payload on the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.by Frank Hall Schmidt, Jr.S.M

Circuit Techniques for Low-Power and Secure Internet-of-Things Systems

The coming of Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to connect the physical world to the cyber world through ubiquitous sensors, actuators and computers. The nature of these applications demand long battery life and strong data security. To connect billions of things in the world, the hardware platform for IoT systems must be optimized towards low power consumption, high energy efficiency and low cost. With these constraints, the security of IoT systems become a even more difficult problem compared to that of computer systems. A new holistic system design considering both hardware and software implementations is demanded to face these new challenges. In this work, highly robust and low-cost true random number generators (TRNGs) and physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are designed and implemented as security primitives for secret key management in IoT systems. They provide three critical functions for crypto systems including runtime secret key generation, secure key storage and lightweight device authentication. To achieve robustness and simplicity, the concept of frequency collapse in multi-mode oscillator is proposed, which can effectively amplify the desired random variable in CMOS devices (i.e. process variation or noise) and provide a runtime monitor of the output quality. A TRNG with self-tuning loop to achieve robust operation across -40 to 120 degree Celsius and 0.6 to 1V variations, a TRNG that can be fully synthesized with only standard cells and commercial placement and routing tools, and a PUF with runtime filtering to achieve robust authentication, are designed based upon this concept and verified in several CMOS technology nodes. In addition, a 2-transistor sub-threshold amplifier based "weak" PUF is also presented for chip identification and key storage. This PUF achieves state-of-the-art 1.65% native unstable bit, 1.5fJ per bit energy efficiency, and 3.16% flipping bits across -40 to 120 degree Celsius range at the same time, while occupying only 553 feature size square area in 180nm CMOS. Secondly, the potential security threats of hardware Trojan is investigated and a new Trojan attack using analog behavior of digital processors is proposed as the first stealthy and controllable fabrication-time hardware attack. Hardware Trojan is an emerging concern about globalization of semiconductor supply chain, which can result in catastrophic attacks that are extremely difficult to find and protect against. Hardware Trojans proposed in previous works are based on either design-time code injection to hardware description language or fabrication-time modification of processing steps. There have been defenses developed for both types of attacks. A third type of attack that combines the benefits of logical stealthy and controllability in design-time attacks and physical "invisibility" is proposed in this work that crosses the analog and digital domains. The attack eludes activation by a diverse set of benchmarks and evades known defenses. Lastly, in addition to security-related circuits, physical sensors are also studied as fundamental building blocks of IoT systems in this work. Temperature sensing is one of the most desired functions for a wide range of IoT applications. A sub-threshold oscillator based digital temperature sensor utilizing the exponential temperature dependence of sub-threshold current is proposed and implemented. In 180nm CMOS, it achieves 0.22/0.19K inaccuracy and 73mK noise-limited resolution with only 8865 square micrometer additional area and 75nW extra power consumption to an existing IoT system.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138779/1/kaiyuan_1.pd