Models and evaluation of human-machine systems

"September 1993.""Prepared for: International Atomic Energy Association [sic], Wagramerstrasse 5, P. 0. Box 100 A-1400 Vienna, Austria."Part of appendix A and bibliography missingIncludes bibliographical referencesThe field of human-machine systems and human-machine interfaces is very multidisciplinary. We have to navigate between the knowledge waves brought by several areas of the human learning: cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics, ergonomy, control systems engineering, neurophysiology, sociology, computer sciences, among others. At the present moment, all these disciplines seek to be close each other to generate synergy. It is necessary to homogenize the different nomenclatures and to make that each one can benefit from the results and advances found in the other. Accidents like TMI, Chernobyl, Challenger, Bhopal, and others demonstrated that the human beings shall deal with complex systems that are created by the technological evolution more carefully. The great American writer Allan Bloom died recently wrote in his book 'The Closing of the American Mind' (1987) about the universities curriculum that are commonly separated in tight departments. This was a necessity of the industrial revolution that put emphasis in practical courses in order to graduate specialists in many fields. However, due the great complexity of our technological world, we feel the necessity to integrate again those disciplines that one day were separated to make possible their fast development. This Report is a modest trial to do this integration in a holistic way, trying to capture the best tendencies in those areas of the human learning mentioned in the first lines above. I expect that it can be useful to those professionals who, like me, would desire to build better human-machine systems in order to avoid those accidents also mentioned above

Digital television applications

Studying development of interactive services for digital television is a leading edge area of work as there is minimal research or precedent to guide their design. Published research is limited and therefore this thesis aims at establishing a set of computing methods using Java and XML technology for future set-top box interactive services. The main issues include middleware architecture, a Java user interface for digital television, content representation and return channel communications. The middleware architecture used was made up of an Application Manager, Application Programming Interface (API), a Java Virtual Machine, etc., which were arranged in a layered model to ensure the interoperability. The application manager was designed to control the lifecycle of Xlets; manage set-top box resources and remote control keys and to adapt the graphical device environment. The architecture of both application manager and Xlet forms the basic framework for running multiple interactive services simultaneously in future set-top box designs. User interface development is more complex for this type of platform (when compared to that for a desktop computer) as many constraints are set on the look and feel (e.g., TV-like and limited buttons). Various aspects of Java user interfaces were studied and my research in this area focused on creating a remote control event model and lightweight drawing components using the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Java Media Framework (JMF) together with Extensible Markup Language (XML). Applications were designed aimed at studying the data structure and efficiency of the XML language to define interactive content. Content parsing was designed as a lightweight software module based around two parsers (i.e., SAX parsing and DOM parsing). The still content (i.e., text, images, and graphics) and dynamic content (i.e., hyperlinked text, animations, and forms) can then be modeled and processed efficiently. This thesis also studies interactivity methods using Java APIs via a return channel. Various communication models are also discussed that meet the interactivity requirements for different interactive services. They include URL, Socket, Datagram, and SOAP models which applications can choose to use in order to establish a connection with the service or broadcaster in order to transfer data. This thesis is presented in two parts: The first section gives a general summary of the research and acts as a complement to the second section, which contains a series of related publications.reviewe

New Statistical Algorithms for the Analysis of Mass Spectrometry Time-Of-Flight Mass Data with Applications in Clinical Diagnostics

Mass spectrometry (MS) based techniques have emerged as a standard forlarge-scale protein analysis. The ongoing progress in terms of more sensitive machines and improved data analysis algorithms led to a constant expansion of its fields of applications. Recently, MS was introduced into clinical proteomics with the prospect of early disease detection using proteomic pattern matching. Analyzing biological samples (e.g. blood) by mass spectrometry generates mass spectra that represent the components (molecules) contained in a sample as masses and their respective relative concentrations. In this work, we are interested in those components that are constant within a group of individuals but differ much between individuals of two distinct groups. These distinguishing components that dependent on a particular medical condition are generally called biomarkers. Since not all biomarkers found by the algorithms are of equal (discriminating) quality we are only interested in a small biomarker subset that - as a combination - can be used as a fingerprint for a disease. Once a fingerprint for a particular disease (or medical condition) is identified, it can be used in clinical diagnostics to classify unknown spectra. In this thesis we have developed new algorithms for automatic extraction of disease specific fingerprints from mass spectrometry data. Special emphasis has been put on designing highly sensitive methods with respect to signal detection. Thanks to our statistically based approach our methods are able to detect signals even below the noise level inherent in data acquired by common MS machines, such as hormones. To provide access to these new classes of algorithms to collaborating groups we have created a web-based analysis platform that provides all necessary interfaces for data transfer, data analysis and result inspection. To prove the platform's practical relevance it has been utilized in several clinical studies two of which are presented in this thesis. In these studies it could be shown that our platform is superior to commercial systems with respect to fingerprint identification. As an outcome of these studies several fingerprints for different cancer types (bladder, kidney, testicle, pancreas, colon and thyroid) have been detected and validated. The clinical partners in fact emphasize that these results would be impossible with a less sensitive analysis tool (such as the currently available systems). In addition to the issue of reliably finding and handling signals in noise we faced the problem to handle very large amounts of data, since an average dataset of an individual is about 2.5 Gigabytes in size and we have data of hundreds to thousands of persons. To cope with these large datasets, we developed a new framework for a heterogeneous (quasi) ad-hoc Grid - an infrastructure that allows to integrate thousands of computing resources (e.g. Desktop Computers, Computing Clusters or specialized hardware, such as IBM's Cell Processor in a Playstation 3)

Forder Application

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaIn Portugal eating out is a part of the lifestyle. People meet in coffee shops and restaurants, creating business opportunities for the owners of the places. In the summer season there are many bars that open their terrace service. Like many business, there are some ‘quiet times’ during the day – moments, when the place doesn’t receive so many clients. This project proposes an idea on how to maintain the efficiency of the outdoor service with possibly lower costs for the company. The application presented in the given project enables clients to make their requests directly from the table using a cellphone. In the next step the employee receives a notification with the request and he can prepare and deliver the order. Combining Proximity Communication Technologies and a web and mobile application, the communication between a client and an employee may turn out to be fast and comfortable. This solution can have an impact on the number of employees during a calmer time. It is also expected that the client will be able to receive his order in the faster way, through the implemented innovation

Proceedings experiencing light 2009 : international conference on the effects of light on welbeing

no abstrac

Proceedings experiencing light 2009 : international conference on the effects of light on welbeing

no abstrac

Mechanisms for Unbounded, Conflict-Robust Hardware Transactional Memory

Conventional lock implementations serialize access to critical sections guarded by the same lock, presenting programmers with a difficult tradeoff between granularity of synchronization and amount of parallelism realized. Recently, researchers have been investigating an emerging synchronization mechanism called transactional memory as an alternative to such conventional lock-based synchronization. Memory transactions have the semantics of executing in isolation from one another while in reality executing speculatively in parallel, aborting when necessary to maintain the appearance of isolation. This combination of coarse-grained isolation and optimistic parallelism has the potential to ease the tradeoff presented by lock-based programming. This dissertation studies the hardware implementation of transactional memory, making three main contributions. First, we propose the permissions-only cache, a mechanism that efficiently increases the size of transactions that can be handled in the local cache hierarchy to optimize performance. Second, we propose OneTM, an unbounded hardware transactional memory system that serializes transactions that escape the local cache hierarchy. Finally, we propose RetCon, a novel mechanism for detecting conflicts that reduces conflicts by allowing transactions to commit with different values than those with which they executed as long as dataflow and control-flow constraints are maintained

Energy harvesting schemes for radio technologies used in IoT: overview and suitability study

The number of devices connected to the Internet increases day by day. Moreover people start using the network in their everyday life to shopping, to control the house by remote, to check news or the weather forecast, to check the traffic, to call their friend or their family and so on. Their phones are interconnected all the time with other devices and sensors to gather all the information the users need. This network of object and the exchange of data are described with the Internet of Things idea. With the Internet of Thing concept all object are connected to the Internet and they are able to transmit data to each other. Thanks to sensors, inanimate object are able to understand the environment around them and to make decision and to interact with it. With this scenario the amount of data exchanged is huge. The main two challenges of the Internet of Things concept are the energy consumption and the portability of a given sensor or node in the network. In this way all the object and people can be connected everywhere and all the time. To reach those aims it is important that the devices implement specific communication standards that require low energy to work and that guaranty, at the same time, quality and security to the transmission of the data. Batteries or cable are not suitable to satisfy the IoT requirements and new energy sources using energy harvesting schemes, are needed to power the devices. Moreover the communication protocols have to be faster and have to use as less power as possible to work. In this thesis an overview on multiple energy harvesting schemes given and different communication standards used in the Wireless Sensor Networks are analyzed. The main focus is on the energy consumption of the Wireless Sensor Networks that implements the communication standard IEEE 802.11ah. The aim was to understand whether it could be possible to power one node network or even a more complex one, only with the energy harvesting schemes described in the thesis. Networks of different sizes are simulated and analyzed. All the networks present only one AP but they differentiate from each other by the number of nodes (STAs). Moreover two different scenarios are simulated to better understand the energy consumption in different traffic case. Both saturated and non-saturated traffic scenario were simulated and analyzed. To enhance the throughput and to decrease the energy needed to power the sensors, different Modulation and Code Schemes where implemented. To assess the performance of simulated scenarios, the throughput and the energy consumption where analyzed. The results have showed that different networks required a small amount of energy to send and receive data. Therefore it is technically possible to power them only with some existing energy harvesting schemes