MARIA: A universal, declarative, multiple abstraction-level language for service-oriented applications in ubiquitous environments

n/

Supramolecular interactions in clusters of polar and polarizable molecules

We present a model for molecular materials made up of polar and polarizable molecular units. A simple two state model is adopted for each molecular site and only classical intermolecular interactions are accounted for, neglecting any intermolecular overlap. The complex and interesting physics driven by interactions among polar and polarizable molecules becomes fairly transparent in the adopted model. Collective effects are recognized in the large variation of the molecular polarity with supramolecular interactions, and cooperative behavior shows up with the appearance, in attractive lattices, of discontinuous charge crossovers. The mean-field approximation proves fairly accurate in the description of the gs properties of MM, including static linear and non-linear optical susceptibilities, apart from the region in the close proximity of the discontinuous charge crossover. Sizeable deviations from the excitonic description are recognized both in the excitation spectrum and in linear and non-linear optical responses. New and interesting phenomena are recognized near the discontinuous charge crossover for non-centrosymmetric clusters, where the primary photoexcitation event corresponds to a multielectron transfer.Comment: 14 pages, including 11 figure

Combination of searches for Higgs boson pairs in pp collisions at \sqrts = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This letter presents a combination of searches for Higgs boson pair production using up to 36.1 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy root s = 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The combination is performed using six analyses searching for Higgs boson pairs decaying into the b (b) over barb (b) over bar, b (b) over barW(+)W(-), b (b) over bar tau(+)tau(-), W+W-W+W-, b (b) over bar gamma gamma and W+W-gamma gamma final states. Results are presented for non-resonant and resonant Higgs boson pair production modes. No statistically significant excess in data above the Standard Model predictions is found. The combined observed (expected) limit at 95% confidence level on the non-resonant Higgs boson pair production cross-section is 6.9 (10) times the predicted Standard Model cross-section. Limits are also set on the ratio (kappa(lambda)) of the Higgs boson self-coupling to its Standard Model value. This ratio is constrained at 95% confidence level in observation (expectation) to -5.0 &lt; kappa(lambda) &lt; 12.0 (-5.8 &lt; kappa(lambda) &lt; 12.0). In addition, limits are set on the production of narrow scalar resonances and spin-2 Kaluza-Klein Randall-Sundrum gravitons. Exclusion regions are also provided in the parameter space of the habemus Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and the Electroweak Singlet Model. For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.135103</p

Developing Touchless Interfaces with GestIT

This article presents a solution for supporting adaptive user interfaces in work environments. Its architecture is built upon the concept of model-based UI design extended by context aware and adaptive features. Model-based languages provide the software development process with useful support for, building design prototypes and actual implementations for devices with various interaction resources. The proposed architecture is able to adapt to selected aspects of the context during run-time by communicating with a context server and applying the specified adaptation rules. In order to show the possibilities of the proposed solution, we report on its application in the development of an adaptive user interface prototype to be used in a warehouse picking system

Improving support for visual task modelling

ConcurTaskTrees (CTT) and its supporting environment (CTTE) have been widely used for a significant period of time. However, users have expressed various concerns regarding their usability. In this paper, we present the modifications made so as to provide more effective support. In particular, the environment has been enhanced in order to make it more suitable for designing real-world applications, including improved support for task model editing and early prototype generation. We also report on two evaluation tests that provided useful feedback in order to decide how to improve the environment

Engineering the authoring of usable service front ends

This paper presents a method and the associated authoring tool for supporting the development of interactive applications able to access multiple Web Services, even from different types of interactive devices. We show how model-based descriptions are useful for this purpose and describe the associated automatic support along with the underlying rules. The proposed environment is able to aid in the design of new interactive applications that access pre-existing Web Services, which may contain annotations supporting the user interface development. This is achieved through the use of task models as a starting point for the design and development of the corresponding implementations. We also provide an example to better illustrate the features of the approach, and report on two evaluations conducted to assess the support tool

User task-based development of multi-device service-oriented applications

In this paper, we discuss a method and the associated tool support able to exploit Web services in model-based user interface development, starting with the results of a task analysis phase, and using the content of Web service annotations. The resulting environment is a powerful support for developing multi-device interactive applications based on Web Services, since it is able to generate usable service front ends specified in a variety of implementation languages. This is achieved through connecting preexisting Web services with the task model of the interactive application that has to be built. Then, the task model is used as a starting point for the generation of corresponding user interfaces descriptions at different abstraction levels, through a number of transformations that aim to preserve the usability of the corresponding models or implementations

Preface

In this paper we propose to use radial layouts for representing the matching between the user’s interest and particular objects and/or categories. The technique supports the visualization of different data: we discuss here the relationships on social networks, the related videos on YouTube and topics in Wikipedia. The user can change the position of the object in the representation, which can be used in recommender systems for providing a fine-grained control over its internal preference representation