Making Quantum Computing Open: Lessons from Open-Source Projects

Quantum computing (QC) is an emerging computing paradigm with potential to revolutionize the field of computing. QC is a field that is quickly developing globally and has high barriers of entry. In this paper we explore both successful contributors to the field as well as wider QC community with the goal of understanding the backgrounds and training that helped them succeed. We gather data on 148 contributors to open-source quantum computing projects hosted on GitHub and survey 46 members of QC community. Our findings show that QC practitioners and enthusiasts have diverse backgrounds, with most of them having a PhD and trained in physics or computer science. We observe a lack of educational resources on quantum computing. Our goal for these findings is to start a conversation about how best to prepare the next generation of QC researchers and practitioners

Strip-TIC : exploring augmented paper strips for Air Traffic Controllers

International audienceThe current environment used by French air traffic controllers mixes digital visualization such as radar screens and tangible artifacts such as paper strips. Tangible artifacts do not allow controllers to update the system with the instructions they give to pilots. Previous attempts at replacing them in France failed to prove efficient. This paper is an engineering paper that describes Strip-TIC, a novel system for ATC that mixes augmented paper and digital pen, vision-based tracking and augmented rear and front projection. The system is now working and has enabled us to run workshops with actual controllers to study the role of writing and tangibility in ATC. We describe the system and solutions to technical challenges due to mixing competing technologies

Of Models, Rationales and Prototypes: Studying Designer Needs in an Airborne Maritime Surveillance Drawing Tool to Support Audio Communication

International audienceIn this work, we seek to understand the needs of interaction designers involved in industrial system engineering processes. While current research offers a set of methods and tools for them, we believe that more empirical user studies focusing on designers are needed, in particular to support how model-based activity analysis may inform their decisions. Our designers’ need analysis is conducted through participatory design and contextual inquiry, and applied through a real use-case project: a distributed tactile tool for airborne maritime surveillance. Thanks to this study, we report on our insights on the usability problems and needs related in particular to scenario-based modeling, model-based design rationales and design-based model refinement

Etude exploratoire du stylo électronique pour le contrôle aérien

International audienceCurrent environment used by air traffic controllers mixes digital visualizations (radar screen), and tangible systems with paper strip. Despite the fact that paper strip are robust, flexible and complementary to the radar screen, authorities decided to abandon it in the profit of digital strip. The main issue of paper strip is that the system does not have access to the information written on it. In this paper, we studied an alternative solution with hybrids Anoto pens with contiuous streaming. We first retrieved important tasks performed by air traffic controller, second, we investigated to find out efficient interaction paradigm for their activity. Finally, we developed and assessed an operational prototype with new functionalities. This suggests that it is possible to retain advantages of existing paper strip while informing informatics systems and improving interaction

Genoscape: a Cytoscape plug-in to automate the retrieval and integration of gene expression data and molecular networks

Summary: Genoscape is an open-source Cytoscape plug-in that visually integrates gene expression data sets from GenoScript, a transcriptomic database, and KEGG pathways into Cytoscape networks. The generated visualisation highlights gene expression changes and their statistical significance. The plug-in also allows one to browse GenoScript or import transcriptomic data from other sources through tab-separated text files. Genoscape has been successfully used by researchers to investigate the results of gene expression profiling experiments

Former les futurs concepteurs de systèmes Homme-Machine complexes

L'ingénierie des systèmes homme-machine implique la définition des besoins des utilisateurs en tant qu'éléments de l'architecture du système. Or l'analyse des pratiques industrielles dans la conception des systèmes complexes met en évidence des problèmes dans la prise en compte de l'utilisateur. Ces problèmes semblent insuffisamment traités par l'apport de cours d'analyse du besoin ou de conception d'IHM. En tant que formateurs de futurs concepteurs de systèmes homme-machine complexes, nous proposons une réponse à ces problèmes par la définition d'un nouvel enseignement en ingénierie des systèmes hommemachine complexes. Cet article présente la conception de cet enseignement, issue d'une réflexion sur les disciplines de l'analyse fonctionnelle, la conception participative et l'approche orientée objet, et menée à la lumière de quatre exigences : définir l'usage, susciter la co-évolution besoin-solution, définir de façon exhaustive les caractéristiques techniques, formaliser les besoins

Human factors evaluation of tangible devices for airplane cockpit

In airliner cockpits, pilots interact with aircraft systems via specialized interfaces, grouped into functional units and displayed on different screens dedicated to each of the crew’s main activities. They operate these systems and digital displays with physical controllers: buttons, switches, pulls, joysticks… (Vinot et al. 2016). Recently, many aircraft manufacturers and suppliers have proposed innovative cockpit concepts based on the use of touch screens (Alapetite et al. 2012). The touch cockpit concept allows manufacturers to offer high-performance, adaptive (to the flight context and the new needs of air transport), and generic product lines to address civil or military avionics. However, contrary to current physical interactors, whose perception and manipulation are also promoted via the sense of touch and proprioception, the touchscreen interfaces suffer severe limitations in operational settings: they place a high demand on the visual channel to adjust the actions, thus eyes- free interaction is nearly impossible [ 8]; they are extremely complex to use during turbulent conditions (Cockburn et al. 2017); perception of the information can be difficult because the screen can get dirty or because of the presence of smoke in the cockpit (Vinot et al. 2016); and their usability is markedly reduced by stress or cognitive overload (Boy 2012). A possible avenue to improve the safety and efficiency of touch-based interaction in the cockpit can be to combine the advantages of touchscreen interfaces and physical controllers into tangible devices (Del Castillo and Couture 2016)

Tangible Encoding of Temporal Data in Air Traffic Control

In this position paper, we describe a tangible de sign to support temporal processes in Air Traffic Control. We discuss how we balanced between physical and digital allocation of time - related features, relying on cognitive studies that show how physical space and physical objects manipulation support the encoding of real - time and planification concerns

BIRCH: A user-oriented, locally-customizable, bioinformatics system

BACKGROUND: Molecular biologists need sophisticated analytical tools which often demand extensive computational resources. While finding, installing, and using these tools can be challenging, pipelining data from one program to the next is particularly awkward, especially when using web-based programs. At the same time, system administrators tasked with maintaining these tools do not always appreciate the needs of research biologists. RESULTS: BIRCH (Biological Research Computing Hierarchy) is an organizational framework for delivering bioinformatics resources to a user group, scaling from a single lab to a large institution. The BIRCH core distribution includes many popular bioinformatics programs, unified within the GDE (Genetic Data Environment) graphic interface. Of equal importance, BIRCH provides the system administrator with tools that simplify the job of managing a multiuser bioinformatics system across different platforms and operating systems. These include tools for integrating locally-installed programs and databases into BIRCH, and for customizing the local BIRCH system to meet the needs of the user base. BIRCH can also act as a front end to provide a unified view of already-existing collections of bioinformatics software. Documentation for the BIRCH and locally-added programs is merged in a hierarchical set of web pages. In addition to manual pages for individual programs, BIRCH tutorials employ step by step examples, with screen shots and sample files, to illustrate both the important theoretical and practical considerations behind complex analytical tasks. CONCLUSION: BIRCH provides a versatile organizational framework for managing software and databases, and making these accessible to a user base. Because of its network-centric design, BIRCH makes it possible for any user to do any task from anywhere

t2prhd: a tool to study the patterns of repeat evolution

BACKGROUND: The models developed to characterize the evolution of multigene families (such as the birth-and-death and the concerted models) have also been applied on the level of sequence repeats inside a gene/protein. Phylogenetic reconstruction is the method of choice to study the evolution of gene families and also sequence repeats in the light of these models. The characterization of the gene family evolution in view of the evolutionary models is done by the evaluation of the clustering of the sequences with the originating loci in mind. As the locus represents positional information, it is straightforward that in the case of the repeats the exact position in the sequence should be used, as the simple numbering according to repeat order can be misleading. RESULTS: We have developed a novel rapid visual approach to study repeat evolution, that takes into account the exact repeat position in a sequence. The "pairwise repeat homology diagram" visualizes sequence repeats detected by a profile HMM in a pair of sequences and highlights their homology relations inferred by a phylogenetic tree. The method is implemented in a Perl script (t2prhd) available for downloading at http://t2prhd.sourceforge.net and is also accessible as an online tool at http://t2prhd.brc.hu. The power of the method is demonstrated on the EGF-like and fibronectin-III-like (Fn-III) domain repeats of three selected mammalian Tenascin sequences. CONCLUSION: Although pairwise repeat homology diagrams do not carry all the information provided by the phylogenetic tree, they allow a rapid and intuitive assessment of repeat evolution. We believe, that t2prhd is a helpful tool with which to study the pattern of repeat evolution. This method can be particularly useful in cases of large datasets (such as large gene families), as the command line interface makes it possible to automate the generation of pairwise repeat homology diagrams with the aid of script