Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy Signal Processing Tool for Materials Research

Allowing scientists to analyze materials’ structure and chemistry at an atomic level, the electron microscope has become a vital tool in materials engineering. Due to the inherent nature of signals (inelastic electrons or X-ray) having a low signal-to-noise ratio, processing the signal collected with an electron microscope is frequently required and uses sophisticated computer code. The software written to do this can be very difficult to learn and use. To make these tools more easily accessible to new users, we will create a simple user interface and host it online. Using the Rappture development tool, a menu driven graphical user interface was created for the HyperSpy software package allowing all software commands to be handled automatically. Choosing the Rappture development tool means the interface will also be easily updated to include new functionality as HyperSpy evolves. When completed, this interface will be made available online via the NanoHUB server at Purdue University. This will help scientists analyze materials in a uniform and repeatable manner using a readily available and easy to learn interface

A Questioning Agent for Literary Discussion

Developing a compelling and cohesive thesis for analytical writing can be a daunting task, even for those who have produced many written works, and finding others to engage with in literary discussion can be equally challenging. In this paper, we describe our solution: Questioner, a discussion tool that engages users in conversation about an academic topic of their choosing for the purpose of collecting thoughts on a subject and constructing an argument. This system will ask informed questions that prompt further discussion about the topic and provide a discussion report after the conversation has ended. We found that our system is effective in providing users with unique questions and excerpts that are relevant, significant, and engaging. Such a discussion tool can be used by writers building theses, students looking for study tools, and instructors who want to create individualized in-class discussions. Once more data is gathered, efficient and accurate machine learning models can be used to further improve the quality of question and excerpt recommendations. Co-creative discussion tools like Questioner are useful in assisting users in developing critical analyses of written works, helping to maximize human creativity

An Experimental Digital Library Platform - A Demonstrator Prototype for the DigLib Project at SICS

Within the framework of the Digital Library project at SICS, this thesis describes the implementation of a demonstrator prototype of a digital library (DigLib); an experimental platform integrating several functions in one common interface. It includes descriptions of the structure and formats of the digital library collection, the tailoring of the search engine Dienst, the construction of a keyword extraction tool, and the design and development of the interface. The platform was realised through sicsDAIS, an agent interaction and presentation system, and is to be used for testing and evaluating various tools for information seeking. The platform supports various user interaction strategies by providing: search in bibliographic records (Dienst); an index of keywords (the Keyword Extraction Function (KEF)); and browsing through the hierarchical structure of the collection. KEF was developed for this thesis work, and extracts and presents keywords from Swedish documents. Although based on a comparatively simple algorithm, KEF contributes by supplying a long-felt want in the area of Information Retrieval. Evaluations of the tasks and the interface still remain to be done, but the digital library is very much up and running. By implementing the platform through sicsDAIS, DigLib can deploy additional tools and search engines without interfering with already running modules. If wanted, agents providing other services than SICS can supply, can be plugged in

Building Knowledge Bases for the Generation of Software Documentation

Automated text generation requires a underlying knowledge base from which to generate, which is often difficult to produce. Software documentation is one domain in which parts of this knowledge base may be derived automatically. In this paper, we describe \drafter, an authoring support tool for generating user-centred software documentation, and in particular, we describe how parts of its required knowledge base can be obtained automatically.Comment: 6 pages, from COLING-9

RAPID WEBGIS DEVELOPMENT FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

The use of spatial data during emergency response and management helps to make faster and better decisions. Moreover spatial data should be as much updated as possible and easy to access. To face the challenge of rapid and updated data sharing the most efficient solution is largely considered the use of internet where the field of web mapping is constantly evolving. ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action) is a non profit association founded by Politecnico di Torino and SITI (Higher Institute for the Environmental Systems) as a joint project with the WFP (World Food Programme). The collaboration with the WFP drives some projects related to Early Warning Systems (i.e. flood and drought monitoring) and Early Impact Systems (e.g. rapid mapping and assessment through remote sensing systems). The Web GIS team has built and is continuously improving a complex architecture based entirely on Open Source tools. This architecture is composed by three main areas: the database environment, the server side logic and the client side logic. Each of them is implemented respecting the MCV (Model Controller View) pattern which means the separation of the different logic layers (database interaction, business logic and presentation). The MCV architecture allows to easily and fast build a Web GIS application for data viewing and exploration. In case of emergency data publication can be performed almost immediately as soon as data production is completed. The server side system is based on Python language and Django web development framework, while the client side on OpenLayers, GeoExt and Ext.js that manage data retrieval and user interface. The MCV pattern applied to javascript allows to keep the interface generation and data retrieval logic separated from the general application configuration, thus the server side environment can take care of the generation of the configuration file. The web application building process is data driven and can be considered as a view of the current architecture composed by data and data interaction tools. Once completely automated, the Web GIS application building process can be performed directly by the final user, that can customize data layers and controls to interact with the

EGO: a personalised multimedia management tool

The problems of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) sys- tems can be attributed to the semantic gap between the low-level data representation and the high-level concepts the user associates with images, on the one hand, and the time-varying and often vague nature of the underlying information need, on the other. These problems can be addressed by improving the interaction between the user and the system. In this paper, we sketch the development of CBIR interfaces, and introduce our view on how to solve some of the problems of the studied interfaces. To address the semantic gap and long-term multifaceted information needs, we propose a "retrieval in context" system. EGO is a tool for the management of image collections, supporting the user through personalisation and adaptation. We will describe how it learns from the user's personal organisation, allowing it to recommend relevant images to the user. The recommendation algorithm is detailed, which is based on relevance feedback techniques

GRAPHICAL CONFIGURATION PROGRAMMING - THE STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTION, CONSTRUCTION AND EVOLUTION OF SOFTWARE SYSTEMS USING GRAPHICS

Published versio

APFEL Web: a web-based application for the graphical visualization of parton distribution functions

We present APFEL Web, a web-based application designed to provide a flexible user-friendly tool for the graphical visualization of parton distribution functions (PDFs). In this note we describe the technical design of the APFEL Web application, motivating the choices and the framework used for the development of this project. We document the basic usage of APFEL Web and show how it can be used to provide useful input for a variety of collider phenomenological studies. Finally we provide some examples showing the output generated by the application.Comment: Final version, matches published version in JPhysG. Web-application available from http://apfel.mi.infn.it