Collaborative geographic visualization

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe present document is a revision of essential references to take into account when developing ubiquitous Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with collaborative visualization purposes. Its chapters focus, respectively, on general principles of GIS, its multimedia components and ubiquitous practices; geo-referenced information visualization and its graphical components of virtual and augmented reality; collaborative environments, its technological requirements, architectural specificities, and models for collective information management; and some final considerations about the future and challenges of collaborative visualization of GIS in ubiquitous environment

Task switching in the prefrontal cortex

The overall goal of this dissertation is to elucidate the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying flexible behavior in the prefrontal cortex. We are often faced with situations in which the appropriate behavior in one context is inappropriate in others. If these situations are familiar, we can perform the appropriate behavior without relearning how the context relates to the behavior — an important hallmark of intelligence. Neuroimaging and lesion studies have shown that this dynamic, flexible process of remapping context to behavior (task switching) is dependent on prefrontal cortex, but the precise contributions and interactions of prefrontal subdivisions are still unknown. This dissertation investigates two prefrontal areas that are thought to be involved in distinct, but complementary executive roles in task switching — the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Using electrophysiological recordings from macaque monkeys, I show that synchronous network oscillations in the dlPFC provide a mechanism to flexibly coordinate context representations (rules) between groups of neurons during task switching. Then, I show that, wheras the ACC neurons can represent rules at the cellular level, they do not play a significant role in switching between contexts — rather they seem to be more related to errors and motivational drive. Finally, I develop a set of web-enabled interactive visualization tools designed to provide a multi-dimensional integrated view of electrophysiological datasets. Taken together, these results contribute to our understanding of task switching by investigating new mechanisms for coordination of neurons in prefrontal cortex, clarifying the roles of prefrontal subdivisions during task switching, and providing visualization tools that enhance exploration and understanding of large, complex and multi-scale electrophysiological data

Designing web-based adaptive learning environment : distils as an example

In this study, two components are developed for the Web-based adaptive learning: an online Intelligent Tutoring Tool (ITT) and an Adaptive Lecture Guidance (ALG). The ITT provides students timely problem-solving help in a dynamic Web environment. The ALG prevents students from being disoriented when a new domain is presented using Web technology. A prototype, Distributed Intelligent Learning System (DISTILS), has been implemented in a general chemistry laboratory domain. In DISTILS, students interact with the ITT through a Web browser. When a student selects a problem, the problem is formatted and displayed in the user interface for the student to solve. On the other side, the ITT begins to solve the problem simultaneously. The student can then request help from the ITT through the interface. The ITT interacts with the student, verifying those solution activities in an ascending order of the student knowledge status. In DISTILS, a Web page is associated with a HTML Learning Model (HLM) to describe its knowledge content. The ALG extracts the HLM, collects the status of students\u27 knowledge in HLM, and presents a knowledge map illustrating where the student is, how much proficiency he/she already has and where he/she is encouraged to explore. In this way, the ALG helps students to navigate the Web-based course material, protecting them from being disoriented and giving them guidance in need. Both the ITT and ALG components are developed under a generic Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)-driven framework. Under this framework, knowledge objects model domain expertise, a student modeler assesses student\u27s knowledge progress, an instruction engine includes two tutoring components, such as the ITT and the ALG, and the CORBA-compatible middleware serves as the communication infrastructure. The advantage of such a framework is that it promotes the development of modular and reusable intelligent educational objects. In DISTILS, a collection of knowledge objects were developed under CORBA to model general chemistry laboratory domain expertise. It was shown that these objects can be easily assembled in a plug-and-play manner to produce several exercises for different laboratory experiments. Given the platform independence of CORBA, tutoring objects developed under such a framework have the potential to be easily reused in different applications. Preliminary results showed that DISTILS effectively enhanced learning in Web environment. Three high school students and twenty-two NJIT students participated in the evaluation of DISTILS. In the final quiz of seven questions, the average correct answers of the students who studied in a Web environment with DISTILS (DISTILS Group) was 5.3, and the average correct answers of those who studied in the same Web environment without DISTILS (NoDISTILS Group) was 2.75. A t-test conducted on this small sample showed that the DISTILS group students significantly scored better than the NoDISTILS group students

EPOS : evolving personal to organizational knowledge spaces

EPOS will leverage the user´s personal workspace with its manyfold native information structures to his personal knowledge space and in cooperation with other personal workspaces contribute to the organizational knowledge space which is represented in the organizational memory. This first milestone presents results from the project´s first year in the areas of the personal informational model, user observation for context elicitation, collaborative information retrieval and information visualization

Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbilTS) framework : a solution for building complex multimodal data capture and interactive systems

Contemporary Data Capture and Interactive Systems (DCIS) systems are tied in with various technical complexities such as multimodal data types, diverse hardware and software components, time synchronisation issues and distributed deployment configurations. Building these systems is inherently difficult and requires addressing of these complexities before the intended and purposeful functionalities can be attained. The technical issues are often common and similar among diverse applications. This thesis presents the Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbiITS) framework, a generic solution to address the technical complexities in building DCISs. The proposed solution is an abstract software framework that can be extended and customised to any application requirements. UbiITS includes all fundamental software components, techniques, system level layer abstractions and reference architecture as a collection to enable the systematic construction of complex DCISs. This work details four case studies to showcase the versatility and extensibility of UbiITS framework’s functionalities and demonstrate how it was employed to successfully solve a range of technical requirements. In each case UbiITS operated as the core element of each application. Additionally, these case studies are novel systems by themselves in each of their domains. Longstanding technical issues such as flexibly integrating and interoperating multimodal tools, precise time synchronisation, etc., were resolved in each application by employing UbiITS. The framework enabled establishing a functional system infrastructure in these cases, essentially opening up new lines of research in each discipline where these research approaches would not have been possible without the infrastructure provided by the framework. The thesis further presents a sample implementation of the framework on a device firmware exhibiting its capability to be directly implemented on a hardware platform. Summary metrics are also produced to establish the complexity, reusability, extendibility, implementation and maintainability characteristics of the framework.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants - EP/F02553X/1, 114433 and 11394

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Work flows in life science

The introduction of computer science technology in the life science domain has resulted in a new life science discipline called bioinformatics. Bioinformaticians are biologists who know how to apply computer science technology to perform computer based experiments, also known as in-silico or dry lab experiments. Various tools, such as databases, web applications and scripting languages, are used to design and run in-silico experiments. As the size and complexity of these experiments grow, new types of tools are required to design and execute the experiments and to analyse the results. Workflow systems promise to fulfill this role. The bioinformatician composes an experiment by using tools and web services as building blocks, and connecting them, often through a graphical user interface. Workflow systems, such as Taverna, provide access to up to a few thousand resources in a uniform way. Although workflow systems are intended to make the bioinformaticians' work easier, bioinformaticians experience difficulties in using them. This thesis is devoted to find out which problems bioinformaticians experience using workflow systems and to provide solutions for these problems.\u

On the Development of Adaptive and User-Centred Interactive Multimodal Interfaces

Multimodal systems have attained increased attention in recent years, which has made possible important improvements in the technologies for recognition, processing, and generation of multimodal information. However, there are still many issues related to multimodality which are not clear, for example, the principles that make it possible to resemble human-human multimodal communication. This chapter focuses on some of the most important challenges that researchers have recently envisioned for future multimodal interfaces. It also describes current efforts to develop intelligent, adaptive, proactive, portable and affective multimodal interfaces

Formal Object Interaction Language: Modeling and Verification of Sequential and Concurrent Object-Oriented Software

As software systems become larger and more complex, developers require the ability to model abstract concepts while ensuring consistency across the entire project. The internet has changed the nature of software by increasing the desire for software deployment across multiple distributed platforms. Finally, increased dependence on technology requires assurance that designed software will perform its intended function. This thesis introduces the Formal Object Interaction Language (FOIL). FOIL is a new object-oriented modeling language specifically designed to address the cumulative shortcomings of existing modeling techniques. FOIL graphically displays software structure, sequential and concurrent behavior, process, and interaction in a simple unified notation, and has an algebraic representation based on a derivative of the π-calculus. The thesis documents the technique in which FOIL software models can be mathematically verified to anticipate deadlocks, ensure consistency, and determine object state reachability. Scalability is offered through the concept of behavioral inheritance; and, FOIL’s inherent support for modeling concurrent behavior and all known workflow patterns is demonstrated. The concepts of process achievability, process complete achievability, and process determinism are introduced with an algorithm for simulating the execution of a FOIL object model using a FOIL process model. Finally, a technique for using a FOIL process model as a constraint on FOIL object system execution is offered as a method to ensure that object-oriented systems modeled in FOIL will complete their processes based activities. FOIL’s capabilities are compared and contrasted with an extensive array of current software modeling techniques. FOIL is ideally suited for data-aware, behavior based systems such as interactive or process management software