Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development

Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we provide a roadmap of directions for future work.Comment: Invited Keynote Paper for the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'18

Retrieval of Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Soil Water Content (WC) Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing under Controlled Glass House Conditions for Spring Barley and Sugar Beet

Leaf area index (LAI) and water content (WC) in the root zone are two major hydro-meteorological parameters that exhibit a dominant control on water, energy and carbon fluxes, and are therefore important for any regional eco-hydrological or climatological study. To investigate the potential for retrieving these parameter from hyperspectral remote sensing, we have investigated plant spectral reflectance (400-2,500 nm, ASD FieldSpec3) for two major agricultural crops (sugar beet and spring barley) in the mid-latitudes, treated under different water and nitrogen (N) conditions in a greenhouse experiment over the growing period of 2008. Along with the spectral response, we have measured soil water content and LAI for 15 intensive measurement campaigns spread over the growing season and could demonstrate a significant response of plant reflectance characteristics to variations in water content and nutrient conditions. Linear and non-linear dimensionality analysis suggests that the full band reflectance information is well represented by the set of 28 vegetation spectral indices (SI) and most of the variance is explained by three to a maximum of eight variables. Investigation of linear dependencies between LAI and soil WC and pre-selected SI's indicate that: (1) linear regression using single SI is not sufficient to describe plant/soil variables over the range of experimental conditions, however, some improvement can be seen knowing crop species beforehand; (2) the improvement is superior when applying multiple linear regression using three explanatory SI's approach. In addition to linear investigations, we applied the non-linear CART (Classification and Regression Trees) technique, which finally did not show the potential for any improvement in the retrieval process

Results from 2+1 flavours of SLiNC fermions

QCD results are presented for a 2+1 flavour fermion clover action (which we call the SLiNC action). A method of tuning the quark masses to their physical values is discussed. In this method the singlet quark mass is kept fixed, which solves the problem of different renormalisations (for singlet and non-singlet quark masses) occuring for non-chirally invariant lattice fermions. This procedure enables a wide range of quark masses to be probed, including the case with a heavy up-down quark mass and light strange quark mass. Preliminary results show the correct splittings for the baryon (octet and) decuplet spectrum.Comment: 7 pages; talk given at the XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 26-31 2009, Peking University, Beijing, Chin

Semantic Web technologies in software engineering

Over the years, the software engineering community has developed various tools to support the specification, development, and maintainance of software. Many of these tools use proprietary data formats to store artifacts which hamper interoperability. However, the Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. Ontologies are used define the concepts in the domain of discourse and their relationships and as such provide the formal vocabulary applications use to exchange data. Beside the Web, the technologies developed for the Semantic Web have proven to be useful also in other domains, especially when data is exchanged between applications from different parties. Software engineering is one of these domains in which recent research shows that Semantic Web technologies are able to reduce the barriers of proprietary data formats and enable interoperability. In this tutorial, we present Semantic Web technologies and their application in software engineering. We discuss the current status of ontologies for software entities, bug reports, or change requests, as well as semantic representations for software and its documentation. This way, architecture, design, code, or test models can be shared across application boundaries enabling a seamless integration of engineering results

Small mirrors do the trick: A simple, but effective method to study mirror self-recognition in chimpanzees

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered an indicator of self-awareness. Standardized mirror tests reveal compelling evidence for MSR in a few non-human species, including all great apes. However, substantial inter-individual variation of MSR within species resulted in an ongoing methodological controversy, questioning the appropriateness of standard MSR tests for cross-species comparisons. Lack of motivation, in particular, is discussed as one possible cause for false negative results. Here, we compare the spontaneous behavioral response of 47 zoo-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to (i) standard body-sized, stationary mirrors and (ii) small, portable hand mirrors. We predicted that the monopolizability and maneuverability of small mirrors increase the chances of identifying MSR across a larger proportion of individuals. Chimpanzees both revealed a substantially higher frequency of general mirror-related behaviors and engaged in significantly more and longer behaviors specifically indicating MSR when provided with small mirrors compared to a large mirror. Handheld mirrors provide a more sensitive measure for MSR within and likely between primate species than the traditional large mirrors, and thereby are a potentially valuable tool for studying self-awareness across species

Reforming the EU emissions trading system: An alternative to the market stability reserve

Prices for emission allowances in Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) have remained low for many years. This fact has given rise to controversies on whether there is a need for a fundamental reform of the ETS. Potential reform proposals include the introduction of a price floor for certificates and a market stability reserve (MSR), which is a rule-based mechanism to steering the market volume of allowances and the preferred approach of the European Commission. With the introduction of the MRS, the Commission aims at increasing and stabilizing certificate prices in the medium- and long-term. In this article, we alternatively recommend retaining the ETS as it is, rather than supplementing it by introducing a minimum price floor or a market stability reserve. Instead, mistakes from the past should be corrected by a single intervention: the final elimination of those 900 million allowances that were taken out of the market in 2014, but would again emerge in the market in 2019 and 2020 via backloading

Empirical investigations into corporate reporting in Europe: A financial market perspective on determinants and consequences of sustainability and digital reporting

This paper-based dissertation comprises five essays dealing with corporate sustainability and digital reporting and is structured in six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction and provides an overview of the structure and aims of the dissertation, lays out the contribution of the work, and introduces the five manuscripts. The second chapter, respectively the first manuscript, deals with the consequences of mandatory sustainability reporting in Europe. Specifically, the study deals with the question whether Directive 2014/95/EU has achieved its objectives of increasing reporting quantity and quality. In the third chapter, the sustainability reports of the largest European firms are analyzed using computer-aided text analysis. This study investigates whether and how external assurance of sustainability reports is beneficial from the viewpoint of report transparency, which is proxied by reporting scope, optimism, and readability. In the fourth chapter, the role of corporate sustainability in the context of M&A transactions is examined, precisely whether sustainability influences the premia paid in M&A transactions. The fifth and the sixth chapters center around the voluntary usage of online financial reporting (OFR) in Europe. While the fifth chapter is concerned with the usage and empirical determinants of OFR, the analysis in the sixth chapter examines the impact of OFR on the financial market, specifically on analyst following and stock liquidity