A Conversational Bot Expert in TCP/IP

When studying a telecommunication degree, it can be sometimes hard to remember all concepts or memorizing in detail how certain protocols work. To answer this problem, this project aimed to study how to create a bot in order to answer simple questions regarding the TCP/IP protocols. First of all, it was necessary to analyse general information about conversational bots and programming tools in order to choose how to make the best implementation possible. Afterwards, we proposed different design alternatives that had to be done in order to develop the bot. These alternatives included the creation of a new algorithm to analyse text from users and obtain the main concepts for creating answers to questions. Finally, we divided TeCePe’s implementation in programming modules that perform each of its functionalities separately to make easier its analysis and addition to the general code. Users’ results suggest that bots like TeCePe could provide some benefits to students while studying a subject. They usually prefer realistic human interactions and want more additional features besides bot’s main functionality in order to be encouraged to use conversational bots, which are not very popular in the education field at this moment. The main results of this project are generally favourable, as the bot developed fulfilled most requirements using all algorithms proposed. TeCePe is fast when searching, and can correctly detect users’ intention in order to output the best possible answer.Al estudiar un grado en ingeniería de telecomunicaciones, puede ocurrir que sea difícil recordar todos los conceptos dados en clase o memorizar cómo funcionan algunos protocolos. Para resolver este problema, en este proyecto se ha estudiado como crear un bot para resolver preguntas sencillas relacionadas con los protocolos TCP/IP. En primer lugar fue necesario un análisis sobre los bots conversacionales y herramientas de programación para poder realizar la mejor implementación posible. A continuación se propusieron diferentes alternativas de diseño que deberían realizarse para desarrollar el bot. Estas alternativas incluyen crear un nuevo algoritmo para analizar textos de los usuarios y obtener los principales conceptos e ideas para crear las respuestas del bot. Por último, dividimos la implementación de TeCePe en diferentes módulos de programación, realizando cada una de las funciones de TeCePe por separado para hacer la programación más sencilla y facilitar su integración con el código principal. Los resultados con usuarios sugieren que bots como TeCePe podrían otorgar algunos beneficios a los estudiantes que estén estudiando una asignatura concreta. Normalmente prefieren interacciones realistas (similares a las humanas) y quieren funcionalidades extra para que estén motivados a utilizar bots conversacionales, que no son muy populares en el campo educativo por el momento. Los principales resultados del proyecto son generalmente favorables, puesto que el bot desarrollado cumple la mayoría de los requisitos utilizando todos los algoritmos propuestos anteriormente. TeCePe es rápido en sus búsquedas y puede detectar las intenciones de los usuarios para dar la mejor respuesta posible en cada caso.Ingeniería Telemátic

SOCIALQ&A: A NOVEL APPROACH TO NOTIFIYING THE CORRECT USERS IN QUESTION AND ANSWERING SYSTEMS

Question and Answering (Q&A) systems are currently in use by a large number of Internet users. Q&A systems play a vital role in our daily life as an important platform for information and knowledge sharing. Hence, much research has been devoted to improving the performance of Q&A systems, with a focus on improving the quality of answers provided by users, reducing the wait time for users who ask questions, using a knowledge base to provide answers via text mining, and directing questions to appropriate users. Due to the growing popularity of Q&A systems, the number of questions in the system can become very large; thus, it is unlikely for an answer provider to simply stumble upon a question that he/she can answer properly. The primary objective of this research is to improve the quality of answers and to decrease wait times by forwarding questions to users who exhibit an interest or expertise in the area to which the question belongs. To that end, this research studies how to leverage social networks to enhance the performance of Q&A systems. We have proposed SocialQ&A, a social network based Q&A system that identifies and notifies the users who are most likely to answer a question. SocialQ&A incorporates three major components: User Interest Analyzer, Question Categorizer, and Question- User Mapper. The User Interest Analyzer associates each user with a vector of interest categories. The Question Categorizer algorithm associates a vector of interest categories to each question. Then, based on user interest and user social connectedness, the Question-User Mapper identifies a list of potential answer providers for each question. We have also implemented a real-world prototype for SocialQ&A and analyzed the data from questions/answers obtained from the prototype. Results suggest that social networks can be leveraged to improve the quality of answers and reduce the wait time for answers. Thus, this research provides a promising direction to improve the performance of Q&A systems

How Do University Student Cyclists Ride? The Case of University of Bologna

In a general urban planning context, in which sustainable active mobility progressively takes up increasing attention, studies of cyclists’ attitudes and behaviors represent a relevant step to help any enhancing measures for urban cycling. Among different categories, university student cyclists represent a still unidentified class, despite the relevant impacts in terms of mass and variability of attitudes in urban areas. The novelty of this paper is to propose an innovative overview on the specific category of university student cyclists. The integrated methodology, based on direct observation through GPS detection, GIS processing, and qualitative survey, permits the evaluation of some interesting issues related to students’ propensity to cycling and their mobility patterns. The approach finds relevance in speed, frequency of movements, routing, and related infrastructure preferences. The methodology has been applied to a sample of more than 300 students of the University of Bologna who were allowed an original university-designed bicycle from February 2021 to June 2021. The analysis was applied in the Bologna urban area and allowed the evaluation of students’ preferences of using existing cycle paths, when available, the limited relevance of speed factors, the main distribution of commuter journeys concentrated in the main avenues directed to city center, and other behaviors

Proceedings of the 3rd Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium OGRS 2014

The third Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium (OGRS) was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 to 13 June 2014. The symposium was hosted and organized by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aalto University School of Engineering, in partnership with the OGRS Community, on the Espoo campus of Aalto University. These proceedings contain the 20 papers presented at the symposium. OGRS is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas in and results from the development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education.  The symposium offers several opportunities for discussing, learning, and presenting results, principles, methods and practices while supporting a primary theme: how to carry out research and educate academic students using, contributing to, and launching open source geospatial initiatives. Participating in open source initiatives can potentially boost innovation as a value creating process requiring joint collaborations between academia, foundations, associations, developer communities and industry. Additionally, open source software can improve the efficiency and impact of university education by introducing open and freely usable tools and research results to students, and encouraging them to get involved in projects. This may eventually lead to new community projects and businesses. The symposium contributes to the validation of the open source model in research and education in geoinformatics

An empirical evaluation of a novel domain-specific language – modelling vehicle routing problems with Athos

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are a popular approach among software engineers who demand for a tailored development interface. A DSL-based approach allows to encapsulate the intricacies of the target platform in transformations that turn DSL models into executable software code. Often, DSLs are even claimed to reduce development complexity to a level that allows them to be successfully applied by domain-experts with limited programming knowledge. Recent research has produced some scientifically backed insights on the benefits and limitations of DSLs. Further empirical studies are required to build a sufficient body of knowledge from which support for different claims related to DSLs can be derived. In this research study, we adopt current DSL evaluation approaches to investigate potential gains in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, through the application of our DSL Athos, a language developed for the domain of traffic and transportation simulation and optimisation. We compare Athos to the alternative of using an application library defined within a general-purpose language (GPL). We specified two sets of structurally identical tasks from the domain of vehicle routing problems and asked study groups with differing levels of programming knowledge to solve the tasks with the two approaches. The results show that inexperienced participants achieved considerable gains in effectiveness and efficiency with the usage of Athos DSL. Though hinting at Athos being the more efficient approach, the results were less distinct for more experienced programmers. The vast majority of participants stated to prefer working with Athos over the usage of the presented GPL’s API