Visualyzart Project – The role in education

The VisualYzARt project intends to develop research on mobile platforms, web and social scenarios in order to bring augmented reality and natural interaction for the general public, aiming to study and validate the adequacy of YVision platform in various fields of activity such as digital arts, design, education, culture and leisure. The VisualYzARt project members analysed the components available in YVision platform and are defining new ones that allow the creation of applications to a chosen activity, effectively adding a new language to the domain YVision. In this paper we will present the role of the InstitutoPolitécnico de Santarém which falls into the field of education.VisualYzART is funded by QREN – Sistema de Incentivos à Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico (SI I&DT), Project n. º 23201 - VisualYzARt (from January 2013 to December 2014). Partners: YDreams Portugal; Instituto Politécnico de Santarém - Gabinete de e-Learning; Universidade de Coimbra - Centro de Informática e Sistemas; Instituto Politécnico de Leiria - Centro de Investigação em Informática e Comunicações; Universidade Católica do Porto - Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using Cognitive Computing for Learning Parallel Programming: An IBM Watson Solution

While modern parallel computing systems provide high performance resources, utilizing them to the highest extent requires advanced programming expertise. Programming for parallel computing systems is much more difficult than programming for sequential systems. OpenMP is an extension of C++ programming language that enables to express parallelism using compiler directives. While OpenMP alleviates parallel programming by reducing the lines of code that the programmer needs to write, deciding how and when to use these compiler directives is up to the programmer. Novice programmers may make mistakes that may lead to performance degradation or unexpected program behavior. Cognitive computing has shown impressive results in various domains, such as health or marketing. In this paper, we describe the use of IBM Watson cognitive system for education of novice parallel programmers. Using the dialogue service of the IBM Watson we have developed a solution that assists the programmer in avoiding common OpenMP mistakes. To evaluate our approach we have conducted a survey with a number of novice parallel programmers at the Linnaeus University, and obtained encouraging results with respect to usefulness of our approach

Business-oriented development of telecommunication services

The development of software for distributed systems, e.g. telecommunication services, is a complex activity. Numerous issues have to be resolved when developing such systems, examples of which are language/system heterogeneity and remoteness of components. Interface definition languages (IDLs) are used as the basis for addressing some of these issues. IDLs allow for the specification of the syntactic aspects of the interfaces of the components in the system to be made. Whilst lending itself to issues of heterogeneity and location transparency, dealing with IDL as the basis for system development is not without its problems. Two of the main problems with IDL are its lack of behaviour and its lack of abstraction. Thus designers should not be constrained to work within the syntactic notations used to implement their systems, nor should they be unaided in how they might better design their systems. In this paper we show how these issues are being addressed in the TOSCA project in its development of a service creation and validation environment

Application of a MHD hybrid solar wind model with latitudinal dependences to Ulysses data at minimum

In a previous work, Ulysses data was analyzed to build a complete axisymmetric MHD solution for the solar wind at minimum including rotation and the initial flaring of the solar wind in the low corona. This model has some problems in reproducing the values of magnetic field at 1 AU despite the correct values of the velocity. Here, we intend to extend the previous analysis to another type of solutions and to improve our modelling of the wind from the solar surface to 1 AU. We compare the previous results to those obtained with a fully helicoidal model and construct a hybrid model combining both previous solutions, keeping the flexibility of the parent models in the appropriate domain. From the solar surface to the Alfven, point, a three component solution for velocity and magnetic field is used, reproducing the complex wind geometry and the well-known flaring of the field lines observed in coronal holes. From the Alfven radius to 1 AU and further, the hybrid model keeps the latitudinal dependences as flexible as possible, in order to deal with the sharp variations near the equator and we use the helicoidal solution, turning the poloidal streamlines into radial ones. Despite the absence of the initial flaring, the helicoidal model and the first hybrid solution suffer from the same low values of the magnetic field at 1 AU. However, by adjusting the parameters with a second hybrid solution, we are able to reproduce both the velocity and magnetic profiles observed by Ulysses and a reasonable description of the low corona, provided that a certain amount of energy deposit exists along the flow. The present paper shows that analytical axisymmetric solutions can be constructed to reproduce the solar structure and dynamics from 1 solar radius up to 1 AU.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure

Information and communication in a networked infosphere: a review of concepts and application in social branding

This paper aims at providing a contribution to the comprehensive review of the impact of information and communication, and their supporting technologies, in the current transformation of human life in the infosphere. The paper also offers an ex- ample of the power of new social approaches to the use of information and commu- nication technologies to foster new working models in organizations by presenting the main outcomes of a research project on social branding. A discussion about some trends of the future impact of new information and communication technologies in the infosphere is also included

Deep space network resource scheduling approach and application

Deep Space Network (DSN) resource scheduling is the process of distributing ground-based facilities to track multiple spacecraft. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has carried out extensive research to find ways of automating this process in an effort to reduce time and manpower costs. This paper presents a resource-scheduling system entitled PLAN-IT with a description of its design philosophy. The PLAN-IT's current on-line usage and limitations in scheduling the resources of the DSN are discussed, along with potential enhancements for DSN application

Magnetic braking in young late-type stars: the effect of polar spots

The concentration of magnetic flux near the poles of rapidly rotating cool stars has been recently proposed as an alternative mechanism to dynamo saturation in order to explain the saturation of angular momentum loss. In this work we study the effect of magnetic surface flux distribution on the coronal field topology and angular momentum loss rate. We investigate if magnetic flux concentration towards the pole is a reasonable alternative to dynamo saturation. We construct a 1D wind model and also apply a 2-D self-similar analytical model, to evaluate how the surface field distribution affects the angular momentum loss of the rotating star. From the 1D model we find that, in a magnetically dominated low corona, the concentrated polar surface field rapidly expands to regions of low magnetic pressure resulting in a coronal field with small latitudinal variation. We also find that the angular momentum loss rate due to a uniform field or a concentrated field with equal total magnetic flux is very similar. From the 2D wind model we show that there are several relevant factors to take into account when studying the angular momentum loss from a star. In particular, we show that the inclusion of force balance across the field in a wind model is fundamental if realistic conclusions are to be drawn from the effect of non-uniform surface field distribution on magnetic braking. This model predicts that a magnetic field concentrated at high latitudes leads to larger Alfven radii and larger braking rates than a smoother field distribution. From the results obtained, we argue that the magnetic surface field distribution towards the pole does not directly limit the braking efficiency of the wind.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted in A&

Math Search for the Masses: Multimodal Search Interfaces and Appearance-Based Retrieval

We summarize math search engines and search interfaces produced by the Document and Pattern Recognition Lab in recent years, and in particular the min math search interface and the Tangent search engine. Source code for both systems are publicly available. "The Masses" refers to our emphasis on creating systems for mathematical non-experts, who may be looking to define unfamiliar notation, or browse documents based on the visual appearance of formulae rather than their mathematical semantics.Comment: Paper for Invited Talk at 2015 Conference on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (July, Washington DC