Calculateur d’impact pour la transition énergétique

Ce travail de Bachelor est réalisé en été 2016 par Guillaume Fallet, étudiant à la HES- SO Valais/Wallis en filière informatique de gestion et est suivi par M. Arnaud Zufferey, professeur dans cette même école. L’idée est venue du professeur Philippe Jacquod de l’ISI. L’objectif principal est de développer un calculateur en ligne qui permet la visualisation de la transition énergétique en Suisse jusqu’à l’année 2050. Ce calculateur est composé d’une série de paramètres que l’utilisateur peut modifier pour ensuite afficher sous forme de graphiques l’évolution de la consommation ainsi que la production des différentes sources d’électricité. Le calculateur est entièrement développé en « HTML / CSS / JavaScript » et est donc accessible depuis un navigateur web

The Complementarity of Tangible and Paper Interfaces in Tabletop Environments for Collaborative Learning

The current trend in Human-Computer Interaction aims at bridging the gap between the digital and the real world, exploring novel ways to engage users with computational devices. Computers take new forms that are better integrated into our environment and can be embedded in buildings, furniture or clothes. Novel forms of interfaces take advantage of people's intuitive knowledge of everyday objects to offer more direct and natural interactions. Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allow users to interact with digital objects through tangible artifacts, building on their rich physical affordances. Paper User Interfaces (PUIs) add digital capabilities to paper documents, synchronizing for instance their content with their digital counterpart. Unique properties of paper are also used to create engaging and intuitive interfaces to computer applications. This dissertation is interested in the complementarity of tangible and paper interfaces in tabletop environments. We introduce the concept of Tangible and Paper Environments (TaPEs) where Interactive Paper Forms (IPFs), a particular type of PUIs based on the paper form metaphor, are used as a complementary interface to a TUI. We evaluate the potential of IPFs to overcome two main shortcomings of TUIs, in terms of scalability and pedagogy. The scalability issue comes from the limited expressiveness of task-specific physical artifacts, which offer rich physical affordances but limit the complexity of applications that can be controlled by a TUI. The pedagogy issue is raised by the lack of consistent evidence regarding the use of physical manipulatives in educational settings, which is one of the main application domain of TUIs. IPFs overcome the scalability issue by offering a set of generic interaction elements that allow TaPEs to cope with applications of any complexity. In a pedagogical setting, IPFs present learners with abstract representation which facilitate understanding by the embodied and concrete representations offered by tangible artifacts. A TaPE, the Tinker Environment, has been developed with two logistics teachers in the context of the Swiss vocational training system. It consists of a warehouse physical small-scale model (TUI) and TinkerSheets, our implementation of IPFs. It aims at helping apprentices understand theoretical concepts presented at schools. We followed a Design-based Research (DBR) approach: ten studies were conducted during the development of the Tinker Environment in authentic classroom settings. Controlled experiments were conducted to address specific questions. v The general research questions concern the respective affordances of paper and tangible components of TaPEs. The analysis is not limited to usability aspects but also considers their impact on group problem-solving activities and their potential in terms of integration of the system in its context of use. A descriptive model is proposed, built around three interaction circles: individual (usability), group (collaboration) and context (integration). Results identify design guidelines that limit the impact of the less direct interaction modality offered by IPFs, allowing TaPEs to overcome the scalability issue while supporting rich interactions. At the group level, observations of groups of apprentices solving problems around the Tinker Environment show that the consistent physical interaction modality offered by TaPEs naturally supports collaborative interactions. Apprentices tend to take implicit roles based on their location around the system. Regarding the context circle, we observed that carefully designed IPFs play the role of bridges between offline and online activities and contribute to a tight integration of the system in a its context (i.e. a classroom). The specific research questions address the potential of the Tinker Environment in this pedagogical context and its appropriation by teachers. The observations conducted with the Tinker Environment show that the warehouse small-scale model reduces the complexity of problems and allows apprentices to engage in meaningful problem-solving activities. Controlled experiments comparing a TUI to a mulitouch interface demonstrate that tangible artifacts lead to a higher learning gain and an increased performance in a problem-solving activity. Collaboration quality and perceived playfulness are also improved. The teacher plays a central role in the use of the environment, guiding apprentices through activities and encouraging reflections during debriefing sessions. The design of IPFs, emphasizing either their interface or document nature, has a strong influence on their ability to support teachers. We finally discuss the two-way adaptation process that took place between teachers and the system during the development of the Tinker Environment

Surgical management of abdominal and retroperitoneal Castleman's disease

BACKGROUND: Abdominal and retroperitoneal Castleman's disease could present either as a localized disease or as a systemic disease. Castleman's disease is a lymphoid hyperplasia related to human Herpes virus type 8, which could have an aggressive behavior, similar to that of malignant lymphoid neoplasm mainly with the systemic type, or a benign one in its localized form. METHODS: The authors report two cases of localized Castleman's disease in the retroperitoneal space and review the current and recent progress in the knowledge of this atypical disease. CASES PRESENTATION: The two patients were young healthy women presenting with a hyper vascular peri-renal mass suggestive of malignant tumor. Both have been resected in-toto. One of them had an extensive resection with nephrectomy, while the second had a kidney preserving surgery. Pathological examination revealed localized Castleman's disease and surgical margins were free of disease. Postoperative course was uneventful, and after more than 5-years of follow-up no recurrences have been observed. CONCLUSION: Localized Castleman's disease should be considered when facing a solid hypervascular abdominal or retroperitoneal mass. A better knowledge of this disorder and its characteristic would help surgeon to avoid unnecessarily extensive resection for this benign disorder when dealing with abdominal or retroperitoneal tumors. Surgical resection is curative for the localized form, when complete, while splenectomy could be indicated for the systemic form

A hybrid genetic algorithm for constrained hardware- software partitioning

In this article, we propose a novel partitioning method for hardware-software codesign based on a genetic algorithm that has been enhanced for this specific task. Given a high- level program and an area constraint, our software considers different granularities levels to discover the most interesting blocks to be implemented in ad hoc functional units that can then be used as new instructions in a Move processor. Various optimizations are conducted to obtain a clean, very fast (in the order of a few seconds) and efficient partitioning on programs ranging from a few to several hundreds of lines of code

A Dynamically Constrained Genetic Algorithm For Hardware-software Partitioning

In this article, we describe the application of an enhanced genetic algorithm to the problem of hardware-software codesign. Starting from a source code written in a high-level language our algorithm determines, using a dynamically-weighted fitness function, the most interesting code parts of the program to be implemented in hardware, given a limited amount of resources, in order to achieve the greatest overall execution speedup. The novelty of our approach resides in the tremendous reduction of the search space obtained by specific optimizations passes that are conducted on each generation. Moreover, by considering different granularities during the evolution process, very fast and effective convergence (in the order of a few seconds) can thus be attained. The partitioning obtained can then be used to build the different functional units of a processor well suited for a large customization, thanks to its architecture that uses only one instruction, Move

An empirical evaluation of touch and tangible interfaces for tabletop displays

Tabletop systems have become quite popular in recent years, during which there was considerable enthusiasm for the development of new interfaces. In this paper, we establish a comparison between touch and tangible interfaces. We set up an experiment involving several actions like translation and rotation. We recruited 40 participants to take part in a user study and we present our results with a discussion on the design of touch and tangible interfaces. Our contribution is an empirical study showing that overall, the tangible interface is much faster but under certain conditions, the touch interface could gain the upper hand

Using Augmentations as Bridges from Concrete to Abstract Representations

We describe a pedagogical approach supporting the acquisition of abstraction skills by apprentices in logistics. Apprentices start with a concrete representation in the form of a small-scale model which aims at engaging them in learning activities. Multiple External Representations are used to progressively introduce more abstract representations displayed on paper-based forms called TinkerSheets. We present the implementation of this approach on the TinkerTable, a tabletop learning environment which is used in two professional schools by four different teachers. We report observations of the use of the environment at different stages of the curriculum with first- and second-year apprentices

MOOC Learning in Spontaneous Study Groups: Does Synchronously Watching Videos Make a Difference?

Study groups are common approaches for students to study together at schools. However, little is known about how this approach is suited to MOOC based learning, where learners watch and discuss MOOC lecture videos in a collaborative manner. Watching MOOCs with peers creates learning experiences that blend the way students learn in classroom with learning through a computer: Students get a chance to “pause” the professor as well as to discuss with other learners. In this paper, we explore this type of MOOC-based learning. Findings from our longitudinal study on spontaneous collocated MOOC study groups suggest that groups tend to stick to a certain kind of study style. A strong positive relationship was found between how often students pause and replay the videos and the synchronicity among groups. Further, synchronous groups tended to perceive better group learning experience, in terms of self-assessed quality and mutual participation. Future MOOC designers as well as schools that offer courses in a flipped classroom format can use the insights to provide guided support for group learners of MOOCs

Task Performance vs. Learning Outcomes: A Study of Tangible User Interface in Classroom Setting

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) offer the potential to facilitate collaborative learning in new ways. This paper presents an empirical study that investigated the effects of a TUE in a classroom setting on task performance and learning outcomes. In the tangible condition, apprentices worked together around an interactive tabletop warehouse simulation using tangible inputs. In the paper condition, they performed the same activity with only paper and pens. Results showed that the tangible condition resulted in better task performance (more alternative solutions explored and better final solution) but did not affect learning outcomes, i.e. understanding of important concepts and applying them to a problem-solving question. We discuss reasons for this in terms of task structure and type, nature of tangible user interfaces and effective interaction requirements