Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013

This report contains the papers presented at the Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013, held in Kiel (Germany) during September 11-13, 2013. The Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013 unified the following events: * 20th International Conference on Applications of Declarative Programming and Knowledge Management (INAP 2013) * 22nd International Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming (WFLP 2013) * 27th Workshop on Logic Programming (WLP 2013) All these events are centered around declarative programming, an advanced paradigm for the modeling and solving of complex problems. These specification and implementation methods attracted increasing attention over the last decades, e.g., in the domains of databases and natural language processing, for modeling and processing combinatorial problems, and for high-level programming of complex, in particular, knowledge-based systems

Executable specifications for Java programs

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-57).In this thesis, we present a unified environment for running declarative specifications in the context of an imperative object-oriented programming language. Specifications are Alloy-like, written in first-order relational logic with transitive closure, and the imperative language for this purpose is Java. By being able to mix imperative code with executable declarative specifications, the user can easily express constraint problems in-place, i.e. in terms of the existing data structures and objects on the heap. After a solution is found, our framework will automatically update the heap to reflect the solution, so the user can continue to manipulate the program heap in the usual imperative way, without ever having to manually translate the problem back and forth between the host programming environment and the solver language. We show that this approach is not only convenient, but, for certain problems, like puzzles or NP-complete graph algorithms, it can also outperform the manual implementation. We also present an optimization technique that allowed us to run our tool on heaps with almost 2000 objects.by Aleksandar Milicevic.S.M

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Automating abstraction functions

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-119).Data abstraction has been the dominant structuring paradigm for programs for decades. The essence of a data abstraction is the abstraction function, which relates the concrete program representation to its abstract meaning. However, abstraction functions are not generally considered to be a part of the executing program. We propose that making abstraction functions an executable part of the program can enable programmers to write clearer and more concise programs with fewer errors. In particular, we show that the object equality and hashing operations (which programmers are required to write), can often be expressed more clearly and more concisely in terms of the abstract state of the object. Getting these methods right has proven to be difficult for programmers at all skill levels, from novice through expert. In a case study of the standard Java libraries we show that rewriting the code with explicit declarative abstraction functions (and generating equality and hashing methods automatically) removed object-contract compliance faults previously found by Pacheco et al. To make abstraction functions part of the executing program we develop four techniques for the dynamic evaluation of abstraction functions written in a declarative first-order logic with relations and transitive closure. We observe that the abstraction functions programmers write in practice may often be viewed as navigation queries on the heap, and two of our techniques exploit this insight to synthesize executable code from declarative abstraction functions. The performance of our research prototype is within striking distance of hand-written code.by Derek F. Rayside.Ph.D

Web-based strategies in the manufacturing industry

The explosive growth of Internet-based architectures is allowing an efficient access to information resources over geographically dispersed areas. This fact is exerting a major influence on current manufacturing practices. Business activities involving customers, partners, employees and suppliers are being rapidly and efficiently integrated through networked information management environments. Therefore, efforts are required to take advantage of distributed infrastructures that can satisfy information integration and collaborative work strategies in corporate environments. In this research, Internet-based distributed solutions focused on the manufacturing industry are proposed. Three different systems have been developed for the tooling sector, specifically for the company Seco Tools UK Ltd (industrial collaborator). They are summarised as follows. SELTOOL is a Web-based open tool selection system involving the analysis of technical criteria to establish appropriate selection of inserts, toolholders and cutting data for turning, threading and grooving operations. It has been oriented to world-wide Seco customers. SELTOOL provides an interactive and crossed-way of searching for tooling parameters, rather than conventional representation schemes provided by catalogues. Mechanisms were developed to filter, convert and migrate data from different formats to the database (SQL-based) used by SELTOOL.TTS (Tool Trials System) is a Web-based system developed by the author and two other researchers to support Seco sales engineers and technical staff, who would perform tooling trials in geographically dispersed machining centres and benefit from sharing data and results generated by these tests. Through TTS tooling engineers (authorised users) can submit and retrieve highly specific technical tooling data for both milling and turning operations. Moreover, it is possible for tooling engineers to avoid the execution of new tool trials knowing the results of trials carried out in physically distant places, when another engineer had previously executed these trials. The system incorporates encrypted security features suitable for restricted use on the World Wide Web. An urgent need exists for tools to make sense of raw data, extracting useful knowledge from increasingly large collections of data now being constructed and made available from networked information environments. This explosive growth in the availability of information is overwhelming the capabilities of traditional information management systems, to provide efficient ways of detecting anomalies and significant patterns in large sets of data. Inexorably, the tooling industry is generating valuable experimental data. It is a potential and unexplored sector regarding the application of knowledge capturing systems. Hence, to address this issue, a knowledge discovery system called DISKOVER was developed. DISKOVER is an integrated Java-application consisting of five data mining modules, able to be operated through the Internet. Kluster and Q-Fast are two of these modules, entirely developed by the author. Fuzzy-K has been developed by the author in collaboration with another research student in the group at Durham. The final two modules (R-Set and MQG) have been developed by another member of the Durham group. To develop Kluster, a complete clustering methodology was proposed. Kluster is a clustering application able to combine the analysis of quantitative as well as categorical data (conceptual clustering) to establish data classification processes. This module incorporates two original contributions. Specifically, consistent indicators to measure the quality of the final classification and application of optimisation methods to the final groups obtained. Kluster provides the possibility, to users, of introducing case-studies to generate cutting parameters for particular Input requirements. Fuzzy-K is an application having the advantages of hierarchical clustering, while applying fuzzy membership functions to support the generation of similarity measures. The implementation of fuzzy membership functions helped to optimise the grouping of categorical data containing missing or imprecise values. As the tooling database is accessed through the Internet, which is a relatively slow access platform, it was decided to rely on faster Information retrieval mechanisms. Q-fast is an SQL-based exploratory data analysis (EDA) application, Implemented for this purpose

Noninvasive methods for children\u27s cholesterol level determination

Today, there is a controversy about the role of cholesterol in infants and the measurement and management of blood cholesterol in children. Several scientific evidences are supporting relationship between elevated blood cholesterol in children and high cholesterol in adults and development of adult arteriosclerotic diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. Therefore controlling the level of blood cholesterol in children is very important for the health of the whole population. Non-invasive methods are much more convenient for the children because of their anxieties about blood examinations. In this paper we will present a new try to find non-invasive methods for determining the level of blood cholesterol in children with the use of intelligent system

Surface EMG decomposition using a novel approach for blind source separation

We introduce a new method to perform a blind deconvolution of the surface electromyogram (EMG) signals generated by isometric muscle contractions. The method extracts the information from the raw EMG signals detected only on the skin surface, enabling longtime noninvasive monitoring of the electromuscular properties. Its preliminary results show that surface EMG signals can be used to determine the number of active motor units, the motor unit firing rate and the shape of the average action potential in each motor unit