Educational experiences detecting, using, and representing ternary relationships in database design

Conceptual models are applied as the first step in software design methodologies for collecting the semantics involved in the universe of discourse. Nevertheless, the abstraction process creates some misunderstandings for novice designers, such as difficulties in modeling some constructs and in understanding the semantics that they represent. This paper presents a thorough study of errors detected among Database Design students in Computer Science Engineering when they apply the abstraction process to generate a conceptual schema using a specific model. Specifically, the paper focuses on errors made in the design of ternary relationships. Some heuristics are proposed in order to help novice designers avoid these common errors, and an experimental study is presented to compare the number of errors made by the students before and after applying these heuristics. (Contains 10 figures, 2 tables, and 3 footnotes.)This work was supported in part by the Software Process Management platform project Modeling, Reuse and Measurement (TIN2004/07083), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, which supports the APEINTA research and innovation project.Publicad

Guidelines for representing complex cardinality constraints in binary and ternary relationships

Ternary relationships represent the association among three entities whose constraints database designers do not always know how to manage. In other words, it is very difficult for the designer to detect, represent and add constraints in a ternary relationship according to the domain requirements. To remedy the shortcomings in capturing the semantics required for the representation of this kind of relationship, the present paper discusses a practical method to motivate the designer's use of ternary relationships in a methodological framework. The method shows how to calculate cardinality constraints in binary and ternary relationships and to preserve the associated semantics until the implementation phase of the database development method.This work forms part of the ‘Thuban: Natural Interaction Platform for Virtual Attending in Real Environments’ project (TIN2008-02711), the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade through the project Semants (TSI-020100-2009-419) and also by the Spanish research projects: MA2VICMR: Improving the access, analysis and visibility of the multilingual and multimedia information in web for the Region of Madrid (S2009/TIC-1542).Publicad

An ontological approach to the study of European popular culture

Like any other field of contemporary scholarly research, the Humanities in general, and Cultural Studies in particular are today confronted with the challenges of complexity at an unprecedented scale. What has been described as the \u201castonishing growth\u201d of academic publications worldwide is paralleled by a similar proliferation of browsable online databases, like digital archives, collections and catalogues, which offer access to an immense and continuously increasing volume of virtually interesting research material, stored in the form of information bytes. As we discussed in Deliverable 2.1, \u201cSorting out the archive for the study of European popular culture\u201d, the problem of how to cope with such an unseizable of virtually relevant sources of evidence is all the more sensible in the case of a project like DETECt, which deals with one of the most prolific narrative genres of contemporary media production, that is, the European crime narrative genre. Not only an exhaustive catalogue of this production could easily count\u2014especially when considered in all of its transnational scope\u2014in thousands of thousands, and even\u2014in historical perspective\u2014millions of items, but the transdisciplinary scope of the studies it has inspired has produced a wealth of research in many domains of knowledge. These difficult challenges make DETECt an ideal laboratory for experimenting new methods to manage complexity in a transnational/transcultural research environment. This methodological experimentation aims to respond to the problem of how to generate effective syntheses of portions and/or aspects of a given knowledge domain in a context of information overload. To this purpose, the ontological approach chosen by DETECt focuses on the application of knowledge mapping techniques to encourage the formulation of partial knowledge syntheses within a \u201crealist\u201d, and even \u201cpragmatic\u201d theoretical framework

AI Solutions for MDS: Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Misuse Detection and Localisation in Telecommunication Environments

This report considers the application of Articial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the problem of misuse detection and misuse localisation within telecommunications environments. A broad survey of techniques is provided, that covers inter alia rule based systems, model-based systems, case based reasoning, pattern matching, clustering and feature extraction, articial neural networks, genetic algorithms, arti cial immune systems, agent based systems, data mining and a variety of hybrid approaches. The report then considers the central issue of event correlation, that is at the heart of many misuse detection and localisation systems. The notion of being able to infer misuse by the correlation of individual temporally distributed events within a multiple data stream environment is explored, and a range of techniques, covering model based approaches, `programmed' AI and machine learning paradigms. It is found that, in general, correlation is best achieved via rule based approaches, but that these suffer from a number of drawbacks, such as the difculty of developing and maintaining an appropriate knowledge base, and the lack of ability to generalise from known misuses to new unseen misuses. Two distinct approaches are evident. One attempts to encode knowledge of known misuses, typically within rules, and use this to screen events. This approach cannot generally detect misuses for which it has not been programmed, i.e. it is prone to issuing false negatives. The other attempts to `learn' the features of event patterns that constitute normal behaviour, and, by observing patterns that do not match expected behaviour, detect when a misuse has occurred. This approach is prone to issuing false positives, i.e. inferring misuse from innocent patterns of behaviour that the system was not trained to recognise. Contemporary approaches are seen to favour hybridisation, often combining detection or localisation mechanisms for both abnormal and normal behaviour, the former to capture known cases of misuse, the latter to capture unknown cases. In some systems, these mechanisms even work together to update each other to increase detection rates and lower false positive rates. It is concluded that hybridisation offers the most promising future direction, but that a rule or state based component is likely to remain, being the most natural approach to the correlation of complex events. The challenge, then, is to mitigate the weaknesses of canonical programmed systems such that learning, generalisation and adaptation are more readily facilitated

Free vibration of symmetric angly-plane layered truncated conical shells under classical theory

Truncated conical shell finds wide ranging of engineering applications. They are used in space crafts, robots, shelters, domes, tanks, nozzles and in machinery devices. Thus, the study of their vibrational characteristics has long been of interest for the designers. The use of the lamination for the structures leads to design with the maximum reliability and minimum weight. Moreover, the study of free vibration of laminated conical shells has been treated by a number of researchers. Irie et al. (1982) studied free vibration of conical shells with variable thickness using Rayleigh-Ritz method of solution. Wu and Wu (2000) provided 3D elasticity solutions for the free vibration analysis of laminated conical shells by an asymptotic approach. Wu and Lee (2001) studied the natural frequencies of laminated conical shells with variable stiffness using the differential quadrature method under first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). Tripathi et al. (2007) studied the free vibration of composite conical shells with random material properties of the finite element method. Civalek (2007) used the Discrete Singular Convolution (DSC) to investigate the frequency response of orthotropic conical and cylindrical shells. Sofiyez et al. (2009) studied the vibrations of orthotropic non-homogeneous conical shells with free boundary conditions. Ghasemi et al. (2012) presented their study of free vibration of composite conical shells which was investigated under various boundary conditions using the solution of beam function and Galerkin method. Viswanathan et al. (2007, 2011) studied free vibration of laminated cross-ply plates, including shear deformation, symmetric angle-ply laminated cylindrical shells of variable thickness with shear deformation theory using the spline collocation method. In the present work, free vibration of symmetric angle-ply laminated truncated conical shells is analyzed and displacement functions are approximated using cubic and quantic spline and collocation procedure is applied to obtain a set of field equations. The field equations along with the equations of boundary conditions yield a system of homogeneous simultaneous algebraic equations on the assumed spline coefficients which resulting to the generalized eigenvalue problem. This eigenvalue problem is solved using eigensolution technique to get as many eigenfrequencies as required. The effect of circumferential mode number, length ratio, cone angle, ply angles and number of layers under two boundary conditions on the frequency parameter is studied for three- and five- layered conical shells consisting of two types of layered materials

Accountable, Explainable Artificial Intelligence Incorporation Framework for a Real-Time Affective State Assessment Module

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions has seen it adopted across various industries. However, the concern of ‘black-box’ approaches has led to an increase in the demand for high accuracy, transparency, accountability, and explainability in AI/ML approaches. This work contributes through an accountable, explainable AI (AXAI) framework for delineating and assessing AI systems. This framework has been incorporated into the development of a real-time, multimodal affective state assessment system

Almacenamiento de calor sensible en materiales de base cemento para infraestructuras de centrales termosolares

The continuous increase in global energy demand has intensified the negative effects of Climate Change, owing to the fact that the current models for producing energy are mainly based on fossil fuels. That is the reason why society needs for accelerating the transition into renewable energy sources and world leaders are struggling to cope with the future of energy to attain a better sustainable world. Research in solar energy with the aim of finding a clean alternative to fossil fuels began to become popular almost 4 decades ago. However, energy storage and particularly thermal energy storage became popular at the beginning of the 21st century. The importance of doing a transition to a society based on renewable energies has expanded the interest and funding of these kinds of technologies and, as a consequence, the research has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. Because of the increasing construction of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Plants around the World, the interest in thermal energy storage systems able to store energy at high temperatures has been also increased. The use of concrete as solid material for Thermal Energy Storage (TES) has been proved in some trials at laboratory and demonstration sites up to 450°C. However, as the knowledge on the topic goes on, the limits of operation are changing to upper temperatures and the mediums of TES needs to be adapted and improved without compromising its performance for the operation of the facility. Nevertheless, the new limits of operation up to 600°C due to the advances in the molten salts force the designed concrete for TES to operate at higher limits of temperatures and under thermal cycling. Unfortunately, the knowledge on the performance of concrete at high temperatures is most limited to structures under a fire scenario. However, the boundary conditions of concrete exposed to a fire differs from the application of energy storage, in the first case the concrete is designed for resisting under Ultimate Limit State (ULS) and the second for Serviceability Limit State (SLS). New limits also influence the thermophysical properties of concrete, whose evolution with temperature is limited in the literature. This fact also affects the results of the heat transfer models because those parameters are usually assumed constant and temperature-independent. This doctoral thesis focuses on demonstrating the suitability of using concrete for TES infrastructures at temperatures up to 550°C and validating the performance in both the commissioning and operation processes. To do so firstly has been proposed the design and testing of concrete for being operated under cyclic regimes of the temperature of a CSP Plant so as to validate the performance and its appropriateness for being used in the TES infrastructures. A wide set of experiments were carried out in order to characterize the mechanical and physicochemical properties of the materials. Furthermore, the evolution of the thermal parameters was analysed in deep owing to the importance of the application of TES. A test protocol for measuring the thermal conductivity of concrete at high temperatures was developed and the parameter was measured during two heating and cooling processes. This is the most complete work up to date in the evolution of thermal conductivity with temperatures up to 600°C and for repetitive heating and cooling cycles. This outcome has revealed that the variations in the thermal conductivity of concretes exposed to the cycles experienced a significant variation in the first heating and, hence, the temperature-dependence expressions are valuable for models of heat transfer. Later, the commissioning of concrete before its operation at high temperatures was validated in different compositions. The proposed protocol allows following the level of drying of concrete exposed to heat in real time by monitoring the concrete. The level of drying detectable with this methodology was above 90% and it was verified at the lab-scale. The lack of knowledge in the closest prior art of this discovery made it feasible to protect the knowledge and apply for a National Patent, which was registered at OEPM. After that, a mock-up section of a thermocline tank made of concrete was built in collaboration with some industrial partners to evaluate the commissioning and operation at an up-scale. The challenge consisted of using concrete as an element in thermocline tanks where both cold and heated molten salts are placing in the same tank. The mock-up of a section of a thermocline tank simulates the following components: a steel container, an air chamber, a concrete layer and finally, the insulating layer. The outcomes of this development allowed learning some lessons related to the construction, commissioning and operation of thermocline tanks made of concrete for the TES of molten salts in CSP Plants. Then, the thermal performance of the mock-up section of a thermocline tank was simulated through two MATLAB® codes. The first one represented the profiles of temperature in the prototype for analyzing the depth of the heat along with the prototype during the test. The second code simulates a thermal model of the whole mock-up in order to analyze in more detail the type of convection in the air chamber during the thermal cyclic performance. The results of both codes highlighted the role of the concrete as an insulating material and its adequacy for being used in the TES infrastructure. Furthermore, the effect of the air gap between the steel and the concrete is significant due to the forced convection during the operation. The evolution of the research developed in this PhD has produced an improvement in the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) starting from the idea or concept (TRL 2-3), which was probed and validated at lab-scale (TRL 4) and in a relevant simulated environment (TRL 5). As the research of the thesis has been undertaken under a European Innovation Project within Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (“NewSOL”, grant agreement No 720985), the present thesis has applied for the Industrial PhD distinction.El continuo aumento de la demanda de energía mundial ha intensificado los efectos negativos del cambio climático debido al hecho de que los modelos actuales de producción de energía están basados principalmente en combustibles fósiles. Esa es la razón por la cual la sociedad necesita acelerar la transición hacia fuentes de energía renovables y los líderes mundiales se esfuerzan por afrontar el futuro de la energía para conseguir un mundo mejor y más sostenible. La investigación en energía solar con el objetivo de encontrar una alternativa limpia a los combustibles fósiles comenzó a popularizarse hace casi cuatro décadas. Sin embargo, el almacenamiento de energía, y en particular el almacenamiento de energía térmica comenzó a popularizarse a principios del siglo XXI. La importancia de hacer una transición hacia una sociedad basada en energías renovables ha incrementado el interés y la financiación de este tipo de tecnologías y, como consecuencia, la investigación ha crecido exponencialmente en los últimos 10 años. Debido a la creciente construcción de plantas termosolares de concentración en todo el mundo, también ha aumentado el interés por los sistemas de almacenamiento de energía térmica capaces de almacenar energía a altas temperaturas. El uso del hormigón como material sólido para el Almacenamiento de Energía Térmica (AET) ha sido probado en algunos ensayos en laboratorio y en demostradores hasta 450°C. Sin embargo, a medida que avanzan los conocimientos sobre el tema, los límites de funcionamiento están cambiando a temperaturas superiores y es necesario adaptar y mejorar los medios de AET sin comprometer su rendimiento para el funcionamiento de la instalación. Los nuevos límites de funcionamiento hasta 600°C debido a los avances en las sales fundidas obligan a que el hormigón diseñado para el AET funcione con límites de temperaturas más elevados y bajo ciclos térmicos. Lamentablemente, el conocimiento sobre el comportamiento del hormigón a altas temperaturas se limita sobre todo a las estructuras sometidas a fuego. Sin embargo, las condiciones de contorno del hormigón expuesto a un incendio difieren de la aplicación del almacenamiento de energía, en el primer caso el hormigón se diseña para resistir bajo el Estado Límite Último (ELU) y en el segundo para el Estado Límite de Servicio (ELS). Los nuevos límites también influyen en las propiedades termofísicas del hormigón, cuya evolución con la temperatura es muy limitada en la literatura. Este hecho también afecta a los resultados de los modelos de transferencia de calor, ya que estos parámetros se suelen suponer constantes e independientes de la temperatura. Esta tesis doctoral se centra en demostrar la capacidad del uso del hormigón para infraestructuras de AET a temperaturas de hasta 550°C y en validar el funcionamiento tanto en el proceso de puesta en marcha como en el de operación de la instalación. Para ello se ha propuesto, en primer lugar, el diseño y ensayo de hormigones operados bajo regímenes cíclicos de temperatura propios de una central termosolar con el fin de validar las prestaciones y su idoneidad para ser utilizados en las infraestructuras AET. Se realizó un amplio conjunto de experimentos para caracterizar las propiedades mecánicas y fisicoquímicas de los materiales. Además, se analizó la evolución de los parámetros térmicos en profundidad debido a su importancia en aplicaciones de AET. Se desarrolló un protocolo de ensayo para medir la conductividad térmica del hormigón a altas temperaturas y se midió el parámetro durante dos procesos de calentamiento y enfriamiento. Este es el trabajo más completo hasta la fecha en la evolución de la conductividad térmica con temperaturas de hasta 600°C y para ciclos repetitivos de calentamiento y enfriamiento. Los resultados han revelado que las variaciones de la conductividad térmica de los hormigones expuestos a ciclos experimentaron un cambio significativo en el primer calentamiento y, por tanto, las expresiones que demuestran su dependencia con la temperatura son valiosas para los modelos de transferencia de calor. Posteriormente, se validó la puesta en servicio del hormigón antes de su funcionamiento a altas temperaturas en diferentes composiciones. La metodología propuesta permite seguir el nivel de secado del hormigón expuesto al calor en tiempo real mediante su monitorización. El nivel de secado detectable con este protocolo fue superior al 90% y se verificó a escala de laboratorio. La falta de conocimiento en el estado de la técnica más cercano de este descubrimiento hizo que se protegiera el conocimiento y se solicitara una Patente Nacional, que fue registrada en la OEPM. Posteriormente, se construyó una maqueta de un tanque termoclino de hormigón en colaboración con algunos socios industriales para evaluar la puesta en marcha y el funcionamiento a escala superior. El reto consistía en utilizar el hormigón como elemento en tanques termoclinos en los cuales se alojan sales fundidas tanto frías como calientes en el mismo tanque. La maqueta de la sección de tanque termoclino simuló los siguientes componentes: un depósito de acero, una cámara de aire, una capa de hormigón y finalmente, una capa de aislante. Los resultados de este desarrollo permitieron aprender algunas lecciones relacionadas con la construcción, la puesta en marcha y operación de los tanques termoclinos hechos de hormigón para el AET de sales fundidas en las plantas termosolares de concentración. A continuación, se simuló el funcionamiento térmico de la maqueta de la sección de un tanque termoclino mediante dos códigos MATLAB®. El primero representó los perfiles de temperatura en el prototipo para analizar la profundidad del calor a través del prototipo durante el ensayo. El segundo código simuló un modelo térmico de todo el prototipo para analizar con más detalle el tipo de convección en la cámara de aire durante el funcionamiento de los ciclos térmicos. Los resultados de ambos códigos pusieron de manifiesto el papel del hormigón como material aislante y su idoneidad para ser utilizado en la infraestructura de AET. Además, el efecto del aire entre el acero y el hormigón es significativo debido a la convección forzada durante la operación. El desarrollo de la investigación llevada a cabo en este doctorado ha producido una mejora en el Nivel de Madurez de la Tecnología (NMT) partiendo de la idea o concepto (NMT 2-3), que fueron probados y validados a escala de laboratorio (NMT 4) y en un entorno simulado relevante (NMT 5). Dado que la investigación de la tesis se ha llevado a cabo en el marco de un Proyecto Europeo de Innovación dentro del Programa Marco Horizonte 2020 ("NewSOL", acuerdo n° 720985), se ha solicitado la Mención de Doctorado Industrial para la presente tesis.This PhD dissertation has been supported by the Spanish National Research Council, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) under a predoctoral contract. The work was undertaken at Eduardo Torroja Institute for Construction Sciences, Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja (IETcc). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 720985. This research has been developed in an H2020 project named NewSOL “New StOrage Latent and sensible concept for high efficient CSP Plants”Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Mecánica y de Organización Industrial por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Néstor García Hernando.- Secretario: José Antonio Tenorio Ríos.- Vocal: José Vera-Agull

National Music Education Standards and Adherence to Bloom\u27s Revised Taxonomy

Pressures from education reforms have contributed to the need for music educators to embrace new and diverse instructional strategies to enhance the learning environment. Music teachers need to understand the pedagogy of teaching and learning and how these affect their praxis. The purpose of this multiple case evaluative study was to investigate the instructional methods used in 10 middle school general music programs to assist students in obtaining the National Standards for Music Education. Bloom\u27s revised taxonomy was the theoretical framework used to evaluate the teaching praxis of the participating teachers. The research questions for the study addressed the effectiveness of the instructional strategies in the music classroom and how they align with the National Standards Music Education and Bloom\u27s Revised Taxonomy. Data were collected from an open ended survey, individual interviews, and unobtrusive documents from 10 general music teachers from suburban, rural, and urban school districts. A line-by-line analysis was followed by a coding matrix to categorize collected data into themes and patterns. The results indicated that standards-based metacognitive instructional strategies can assist music teachers in their classrooms and unite cognitive, affective, and kinesthetic experiences applicable beyond the music classroom. It is recommended that music teachers use alternative teaching techniques to promote and connect critical thinking skills through musical learning experiences. Implications for positive social change include training music educators to create learning environments that support and motivate students to learn and achieve academic success