Developing a Contemporary Operating Systems Course

The objective of this tutorial presentation is to foster innovation in the teaching of operating systems (os) at the undergraduate level as part of a three-year NSF-funded IUSE (Improving Undergraduate STEM Education) project titled “Engaged Student Learning: Reconceptualizing and Evaluating a Core Computer Science Course for Active Learning and STEM Student Success” (2017–2020)

Developing a Contemporary and Innovative Operating Systems Course

This birds-of-a-feather provides a discussion forum to foster innovation in teaching operating systems (os) at the undergraduate level. This birds-of-a-feather seeks to generate discussion and ideas around pedagogy for os and, in particular, how we might develop a contemporary and innovative model, in both content and delivery, for an os course—that plays a central role in a cs curriculum—and addresses significant issues of misalignment between existing os courses and employee professional skills and knowledge requirements. We would like to exchange ideas regarding a re-conceptualized course model of os curriculum and related pedagogy, especially in the areas of mobile OSs and Internet of Things; concurrent programming and synchronization; and cloud computing and big data processing

A Study of Out-of-turn Interaction in Menu-based, IVR, Voicemail Systems

We present the first user study of out-of-turn interaction in menu-based, interactive voice-response systems. Out-ofturn interaction is a technique which empowers the user (unable to respond to the current prompt) to take the conversational initiative by supplying information that is currently unsolicited, but expected later in the dialog. The technique permits the user to circumvent any flows of navigation hardwired into the design and navigate the menus in a manner which reflects their model of the task. We conducted a laboratory experiment to measure the effect of the use of outof- turn interaction on user performance and preference in a menu-based, voice interface to voicemail. Specifically, we compared two interfaces with the exact same hierarchical menu design: one with the capability of accepting out-ofturn utterances and one without this feature. The results indicate that out-of-turn interaction significantly reduces task completion time, improves usability, and is preferred to the baseline. This research studies an unexplored dimension of the design space for automated telephone services, namely the nature of user-addressable input (utterance) supplied (in-turn vs. out-of-turn), in contrast to more traditional dimensions such as input modality (touch-tone vs. text vs. voice) and style of interaction (menu-based vs. natural language)

Money Walks: A Human-Centric Study on the Economics of Personal Mobile Data

In the context of a myriad of mobile apps which collect personally identifiable information (PII) and a prospective market place of personal data, we investigate a user-centric monetary valuation of mobile PII. During a 6-week long user study in a living lab deployment with 60 participants, we collected their daily valuations of 4 categories of mobile PII (communication, e.g. phonecalls made/received, applications, e.g. time spent on different apps, location and media, photos taken) at three levels of complexity (individual data points, aggregated statistics and processed, i.e. meaningful interpretations of the data). In order to obtain honest valuations, we employ a reverse second price auction mechanism. Our findings show that the most sensitive and valued category of personal information is location. We report statistically significant associations between actual mobile usage, personal dispositions, and bidding behavior. Finally, we outline key implications for the design of mobile services and future markets of personal data.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. To appear in ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2014

The gatekeeper: individual differences are key in the chain from perception to behaviour

A basic assumption in mainstream social cognition is that the path from perception to behaviour is often automatic and direct, as supported for example by several experimental studies showing that priming can lead directly to a congruent behaviour without any need of conscious awareness of the process. However, we argue that the priming of a goal or an object activates individual differences in automatic evaluations at the associative level that in turn are the key predictors of action (gatekeeper model). A study (n = 90) on the American stereotype is presented to support the model. The results show that individual differences of the American stereotype as assessed with the IAT predicts a relevant action (essay evaluation) but only under condition of priming. Broader implications for predictive validity of implicit measures are also discussed

Butyrylcholinesterase distribution in the mouse gastrointestinal tract: An immunohistochemical study

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) is a hydrolytic enzyme that together with acetylcholinesterase (AChE) belongs to the cholinesterase family. Whereas AChE has a well-established role in regulating cholinergic neurotransmission in central and peripheral synapses, the physiological role of BChE remains elusive. In this morphological immunohistochemical and double-label confocal microscopy study we investigated the distribution of BChE in the mouse gastrointestinal tract. BChE-positive cells were detected in the liver (both in hepatocytes and cholangiocytes), in the keratinised layers of the squamous epithelium of the oesophagus and forestomach, in the oxyntic mucosa of the stomach, in the mucus-secreting cells of duodenal Brunner glands and the small and large intestinal mucosa. Interestingly, BChE-positive cells were often detected close to gastrointestinal proliferative niches. In the oxyntic mucosa, the close proximity of ghrelin-producing and BChE-positive parietal cells suggests that BChE may be involved in ghrelin hydrolysation through paracrine action. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive morphological study performed to gain insight into the physiological role of BChE in the gastrointestinal tract

The Good, Bad and the Indifferent: Explorations in Recommender System Health

Our work is based on the premise that analysis of the connections exploited by a recommender algorithm can provide insight into the algorithm that could be useful to predict its performance in a fielded system. We use the jumping connections model defined by Mirza et al. [6], which describes the recommendation process in terms of graphs. Here we discuss our work that has come out of trying to understand algorithm behavior in terms of these graphs. We start by describing a natural extension of the jumping connections model of Mirza et al., and then discuss observations that have come from our studies, and the directions in which we are going

Anti-angiogenic potential of VEGF blocker dendron-laden gellan gum hydrogels for tissue engineering applications

Damage of non-vascularised tissues such as cartilage and cornea can result in healing processes accompanied by a non-physiological angiogenesis. Peptidic aptamers have recently been reported to block the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). However, the therapeutic applications of these aptamers is limited due to their short half-life in vivo. In this work, an enhanced stability and bioavailability of a known VEGF blocker aptamer sequence (WHLPFKC) was pursued through its tethering of molecular scaffolds based on hyperbranched peptides, the poly(É -lysine) dendrons, bearing three branching generations. The proposed design allowed simultaneous and orderly-spaced exposure of sixteen aptamers per dendrimer to the surrounding biological microenvironent, as well as a relatively hydrophobic core based on di-phenylalanine aiming to promote an hydrophobic interaction with the hydrophobic moieties of ionically-crosslinked metacrylated gellan gum (iGG-MA) hydrogels. The VEGF blocker dendrons were entrapped in iGG-MA hydrogels and their capacity to prevent endothelial cell sprouting was assessed qualitatively and quantitatively using 3D in vitro models and the in vivo chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. The data demonstrate that at nanoscale concentrations, the dendronised structures were able to enhance control of the biological actvity of WHLPFKC at the material/tissue interface and hence the anti-angiogenic capacity of iGG-MA hydrogels not only preventing blood vessel invasion, but also inducing their regression at the tissue/iGG-MA interface. The in ovo study confirmed that iGG-MA functionalised with the dendron VEGF blockers do inhibit angiogenesis by controlling both size and ramifications of blood vessels in proximity of the implanted gel surface.This work was mainly supported by the EC FP7 project Disc Regeneration (Contract No NMP3-LA-2008-213904). This study was also funded by the EC FP7 Programme contract agreement no REGPOT-CT2012-316331-POLARIS

Eruption dynamics of the 22–23 April 2015 calbuco volcano (Southern Chile): Analyses of tephra fall deposits

After 54 years since its last major eruption in 1961, Calbuco Volcano (Ensenada, Southern Chile) reawakened with few hours of warning on 22 April 2015 at 18:05 local time. The main explosive eruption consisted of two eruption pulses (lasting ~1.5 and 6 h each one) on 22 and 23 April, producing stratospheric (>15 km height) eruption columns. The erupted materials correspond to porphyritic basaltic andesite (~55 wt.% of SiO2). The tephra fall affected mainly the area northeast of the volcano and the finest ash was deposited over Southern Chile and Patagonia Argentina. We studied the tephra fall deposits of both pulses in terms of stratigraphy, distribution, volume, emplacement dynamics and eruption source parameters. Here, we show field observations that have been made 5-470 km downwind and distinguish five layers (Layers A, B, B1, C and D) representing different stages of the eruption evolution: eruption onset (Layer A; pulse 1), followed by the first paroxysmal event (Layer B; pulse 1), in some places interbedded by layer B1, tentatively representing the sedimentation of a secondary plume during the end of pulse 1. We recognized a second paroxysm (Layer C; pulse 2) followed by the waning of the eruption (Layer D; pulse 2). The total calculated bulk tephra fall deposit volume is 0.27 ± 0.007 km3 (0.11-0.13 km3 dense rock equivalent), 38% of which was erupted during the first phase and 62% during the second pulse. This eruption was a magnitude 4.45 event (VEI 4 eruption) of subPlinian type.Fil: Romero, J. E.. Universidad de Atacama; ChileFil: Morgavi, D.. Università di Perugia; ItaliaFil: Arzilli, F.. University of Manchester; Reino UnidoFil: Daga, Romina Betiana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Centro Atómico Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Caselli, Alberto Tomás. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro; ArgentinaFil: Reckziegel, Florencia Mabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía no Convencional. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía no Convencional; ArgentinaFil: Viramonte, Jose German. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía no Convencional. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física. Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía no Convencional; ArgentinaFil: Díaz Alvarado, J.. Universidad de Atacama; ChileFil: Polacci, M.. University of Manchester; Reino UnidoFil: Burton, M.. University of Manchester; Reino UnidoFil: Perugini, D.. Università di Perugia; Itali

A Generative Programming Approach to Interactive Information Retrieval:Insights and Experiences

Abstract. We describe the application of generative programming to a problem in interactive information retrieval. The particular interactive information retrieval problem we study is the support for ‘out of turn interaction ’ with a website – how a user can communicate input to a website when the site is not soliciting such information on the current page, but will do so on a subsequent page. Our solution approach makes generous use of program transformations (partial evaluation, currying, and slicing) to delay the site’s current solicitation for input until after the user’s out-of-turn input is processed. We illustrate how studying out-of-turn interaction through a generative lens leads to several valuable in-sights: (i) the concept of a web dialog, (ii) an improved understanding of web taxonomies, and (iii) new web interaction techniques and interfaces. These notions allow us to cast the design of interactive (and responsive) websites in terms of the underlying dialog structure and, further, suggest a simple implementation strategy with a clean separation of concerns. We also highlight new research directions opened up by the generative pro-gramming approach to interactive information retrieval such as the idea of web interaction axioms.