User-created persona: Namibian rural Otjiherero speakers

Persona is a communicative artefact for usability that currently functions under the umbrella of User-Centred Design (UCD). Since we argue usability methods differ across cultures, this project presents a cross-cultural research probe on persona generated by indigenous Otjiherero speakers in Namibia. The objective is to find out how participants in this milieu take on, understand and portray persona artefacts, what goals of User Experience (UX) emerge from the inquiry, and whether the artefacts created simulate or differ from those in literature. Tentative methods scaffold from benefits attained by persona in the attempt to advance persona technical communication in cross-cultural design. This experience report presents initial findings on narrative content, rhetorical preferences, and the physical layout of persona artefacts as so-far constructed by Otjiherero speakers in rural Namibia. The report draws to a close reflecting on present challenges and advances, and indicating upcoming pathways

Encouraging girls involvement in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) careers in Uruguay

The gender gap in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is regrettably universal and generally unacceptably broad. This phenomenon refers to women's underrepresentation in those fields, with the most significant disparities occurring in the critical fields of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The so-called pipeline problem contributes to this persisting gender gap, where women turn away from math and science at a young age due to negative stereotypes that cause them to believe they do not belong in STEM. All over the world, universities and organizations carry on initiatives to close this gap, showing varying degrees of success. Many of these programs focus on K-12 and high school girls, seeking to expose them to STEM-related activities to encourage girls' enrollment in STEM careers. Involving female teachers, and applying the role model approach, these programs offer in campus presentations, talks, or short courses aimed to break down stereotypes. In this article, we describe different sensibilization activities carried out at Facultad de Ingeniería (School of Engineering), Universidad de la República, Uruguay, to promote ICT careers in Uruguay. In particular, we present hands-on workshops for high school girls on robotics, electronic circuits, and geographic information systems on the occasion of the Girls in ICT Day

Recovering historical climate records using artificial neural networks in GPU

This article presents a parallel implementation of Artificial Neural Networks over Graphic Processing Units, and its application for recovering his-torical climate records from the Digi-Clima project. Several strategies are intro-duced to handle large volumes of historical pluviometer records, and the paral-lel deployment is described. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed approach is useful for recovering the climate information, achieving classification rates up to 76% for a set of real images from the Digi-Clima pro-ject. The parallel algorithm allows reducing the execution times, with an accel-eration factor of up to 2.15×

Red AUTI Red de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la Televisión Digital Interactiva (TVDi)

Desde el año 2012 diversas universidades iberoamericanas conforman la Red de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la Televisión Digital Interactiva (RedAUTI) de la CYTED coordinada por la UNLP. La línea de investigación y desarrollo presentada consiste en estudiar, desarrollar y evaluar aplicaciones de Televisión Digital Interactiva (TVDi). Uno de los principales objetivos es la formación de recursos humanos y fortalecimiento de la investigación mediante el trabajo intergrupal entre diferentes instituciones nacionales y extranjeras.Eje: Tecnología Informática Aplicada en Educació

Red AUTI Red de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la Televisión Digital Interactiva (TVDi)

Desde el año 2012 diversas universidades iberoamericanas conforman la Red de Aplicaciones y Usabilidad de la Televisión Digital Interactiva (RedAUTI) de la CYTED coordinada por la UNLP. La línea de investigación y desarrollo presentada consiste en estudiar, desarrollar y evaluar aplicaciones de Televisión Digital Interactiva (TVDi). Uno de los principales objetivos es la formación de recursos humanos y fortalecimiento de la investigación mediante el trabajo intergrupal entre diferentes instituciones nacionales y extranjeras.Eje: Tecnología Informática Aplicada en Educació

A Many-objective Ant Colony Optimization applied to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Evolutionary algorithms present performance drawbacks when applied to Many-objective Optimization Problems (MaOPs). In this work, a novel approach based on Ant Colony Optimization theory (ACO), denominated ACO λ base-p algorithm, is proposed in order to handle Manyobjective instances of the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). The proposed algorithm was applied to several Many-objective TSP instances, verifying the quality of the experimental results using the Hypervolume metric. A comparison with other state-of-the-art Multi Objective ACO algorithms as MAS, M3AS and MOACS as well as NSGA2 evolutionary algorithm was made, verifying that the best experimental results were obtained when the proposed algorithm was used, proving a good applicability to MaOPs.Facultad de Informátic

A Many-objective Ant Colony Optimization applied to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Evolutionary algorithms present performance drawbacks when applied to Many-objective Optimization Problems (MaOPs). In this work, a novel approach based on Ant Colony Optimization theory (ACO), denominated ACO λ base-p algorithm, is proposed in order to handle Manyobjective instances of the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). The proposed algorithm was applied to several Many-objective TSP instances, verifying the quality of the experimental results using the Hypervolume metric. A comparison with other state-of-the-art Multi Objective ACO algorithms as MAS, M3AS and MOACS as well as NSGA2 evolutionary algorithm was made, verifying that the best experimental results were obtained when the proposed algorithm was used, proving a good applicability to MaOPs.Facultad de Informátic

Trading Off Performance for Energy in Linear Algebra Operations with Applications in Control Theory

Abstract We analyze the performance-power-energy balance of a conventional Intel Xeon multicore processor and two low-power architectures -an Intel Atom processor and a system with a quad-core ARM Cortex A9+NVIDIA Quadro 1000M-using a high performance implementation of Gauss-Jordan elimination (GJE) for matrix inversion. The blocked version of this algorithm employed in the experimental evaluation mostly comprises matrix-matrix products, so that the results from the evaluation carry beyond the simple matrix inversion and are representative for a wide variety of dense linear algebra operations/codes

Profile of Promoters and Hindering Teachers Creativity: Own or Shared?

Creativity is now at days a valued quality in all its areas and most particulary in Education. However, there is still widespread ignorance of Creativity in the Formal Education’s field and a lack of scientific research about Creativity and Education, particularly in teacher training. In this article, we will present a categorization of teachers in either promoters or hindering of Creativity, based on interview’s data. The study was narrowed to the training of teachers in Biologic Sciences of the two Institutions with more students of the country. From an interpretive paradigm and with a qualitative design, semi-structured interviews to students and teachers were made and analyzed by “content”. Results show that teachers that highly promote creativity tend to have a close relationship with the student, as well as affectionate, and they are also characterized by recognizing and accepting their own mistakes and limitations. On the other hand, creativity’s highly hindering techers tend to be structured, distant, and believe to be all-wise. Additionally, creativity’s promoting activities are only remarked by students with a close relationship with the professor. At the same time, an affectionate treatment from the student could lead to creativity’s promoting activities by teachers who would normally fit in the hindering type. Considering the previous observation, we propose that affection between students and teachers consists of an essential component of a creative classroom’s atmosphere, continuing and amplifying the systematic model of Csikszentmihalyi. Analogously to the conception that a creative product doesn’t emerge from an isolated person, it seems appropriate to affirm that a creativity’s promoting or hindering profile of a theacher also depends on the interaction with his environment