Parsing Using the Role and Reference Grammar Paradigm

Much effort has been put into finding ways of parsing natural language. Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is a linguistic paradigm that has credibility in linguistic circles. In this paper we give a brief overview of RRG and show how this can be implemented into a standard rule-based parser. We used the chart parser to test the concept on sentences from student work. We present results that show the potential role of this method for parsing ungrammatical sentences

The H.E.S.S. central data acquisition system

The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is a system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located in the Khomas Highland in Namibia. It measures cosmic gamma rays of very high energies (VHE; >100 GeV) using the Earth's atmosphere as a calorimeter. The H.E.S.S. Array entered Phase II in September 2012 with the inauguration of a fifth telescope that is larger and more complex than the other four. This paper will give an overview of the current H.E.S.S. central data acquisition (DAQ) system with particular emphasis on the upgrades made to integrate the fifth telescope into the array. At first, the various requirements for the central DAQ are discussed then the general design principles employed to fulfil these requirements are described. Finally, the performance, stability and reliability of the H.E.S.S. central DAQ are presented. One of the major accomplishments is that less than 0.8% of observation time has been lost due to central DAQ problems since 2009.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, published in Astroparticle Physic

RAVEN: a Node.js Static Metadata Extracting Solution for JavaScript Applications

Metadados são um tipo de dados que se encontram em qualquer tipo de recurso digital e que fornecem informações pertinentes sobre estes, como data de criação e autor. Ao analisar estáticamente ficheiros de código, é possível extrair metadados adicionais, para além daqueles já existentes, possibilitando uma melhor compreensão sobre os recursos analisados e a comparação com outros da mesma espécie.Análisar estaticamente um ficheiro de código consiste em examiná-lo sem ter que o executar. Esta análise permite obter uma representação do código, a qual pode ser utilizada para obter mais metdadados, na forma de métricas de software. Métricas de software são o resultado de medições efetuadas sobre software, sendo exemplos o número de linhas de código de um ficheiro ou a sua complexidade/qualidade.O objetivo desta dissertação prende-se com a criação de uma solução de extração de metadados de aplicações JavaScript, através do uso da plataforma Node.js. Esta solução procederá à análise estática de código JavaScript, existindo várias abordagens possíveis. Desta análise surgem um conjunto de métricas de software, que, em conjunto com outros dados como frameworks em uso, permitem obter uma ferramenta que traduz valor para o proponente da dissertação e comparar ficheiros quanto à sua complexidade.Metadata provide useful information about any type of digital resource. Examples of metadata are author and date of creation of a file. By extracting additional metadata from source code files, through static analysis, one can collect additional information, besides the already existent, and gather a better understanding of the resources and compare them with similar ones.Static analysis consists in examining code files without the need of executing them. This type of analysis allows the creation of a representation of the code which can be used for obtaining more metadata, in the form of software metrics. Software metrics are the result of measurements made over software. Lines of code and code complexity are examples of software metrics.The aim of this dissertation is to develop a metadata extraction solution for JavaScript applications, by leveraging the Node.js environment. This solution will statically analyze JavaScript code, where distinct approaches are possible. The analysis results in a group of software metrics that, in conjunction with other data such as frameworks in use, will produce a valuable tool for the proponent of this dissertation and allow the comparison of files regarding their complexity/quality

A new method for parsing student text to support computer-assisted assessment of free text answers

Due to current trends in staff-student ratios, the assessment burden on staff will increase unless either students are assessed less, or alternative approaches are used. Much research and effort has been aimed at automated assessment but to date the most reliable method is to use variations of multiple choice questions. However, it is hard and time consuming to design sets of questions that foster deep learning. Although methods for assessing free text answers have been proposed, these are not very reliable because they either involve pattern matching or the analysis of frequencies in a “bag of words”. The first step towards automatic marking of free text answers by comparing the meaning of student answers with a single model answer is to parse the student work. However, because not all students are good at writing grammatically correct English, it is vital that any parsing algorithm can handle ungrammatical text. In this paper, we present preliminary results of using a relatively new linguistic theory, Role and Reference Grammar, to parse student texts and show that ungrammatical sentences can be parsed

Web-based Annotation Tool for Inflectional Language Resources

We present Wasim, a web-based tool for semi-automatic morphosyntactic annotation of inflectional languages resources. The tool features high flexibility in segmenting tokens, editing, diacritizing, and labelling tokens and segments. Text annotation of highly inflectional languages (including Arabic) requires key functionality which we could not see in a survey of existing tools. Wasim integrates with morphological analysers to speed up the annotation process by selecting one from their proposed analyses. It integrates as well with external POS taggers for kick-start annotation and adaptive predicting based on annotations made so far. It aims to speed up the annotation by completely relying on a keyboard interface, with no mouse interaction required. Wasim has been tested on four case studies and these features proved to be useful. The source-code is released under the MIT license

Requirements for a software maintenance support environment

This thesis surveys the field of software maintenance, and addresses the maintenance requirements of the Aerospace Industry, which is developing inige projects, running over many years, and sometimes safety critical in nature (e.g. ARIANE 5, HERMES, COLUMBUS). Some projects are collaborative between distributed European partners. The industry will have to cope in the near and far future with the maintenance of these products and it will be essential to improve the software maintenance process and the environments for maintenance. Cost effective software maintenance needs an efficient, high quality and homogeneous environment or Integrated Project Support Environment (IPSE). Most IPSE work has addressed software development, and lias not fully considered the requirements of software maintenance. The aim of this project is to draw up a set of priorities and requirements for a Maintenance IPSE. An IPSE, however can only support a software maintenance method. The first stage of this project is to deline 'software maintenance best practice' addressing the organisational, managerial and technical aspects, along with an evaluation of software maintenance tools for Aerospace systems. From this and an evaluation of current IPSEs, the requirements for a Software Maintenance Support Environment are presented for maintenance of Aerospace software

Resource Efficient Authentication and Session Key Establishment Procedure for Low-Resource IoT Devices

open access journalThe Internet of Things (IoT) can includes many resource-constrained devices, with most usually needing to securely communicate with their network managers, which are more resource-rich devices in the IoT network. We propose a resource-efficient security scheme that includes authentication of devices with their network managers, authentication between devices on different networks, and an attack-resilient key establishment procedure. Using automated validation with internet security protocols and applications tool-set, we analyse several attack scenarios to determine the security soundness of the proposed solution, and then we evaluate its performance analytically and experimentally. The performance analysis shows that the proposed solution occupies little memory and consumes low energy during the authentication and key generation processes respectively. Moreover, it protects the network from well-known attacks (man-in-the-middle attacks, replay attacks, impersonation attacks, key compromission attacks and denial of service attacks)