Graphical User Interfaces

Information seeking has become increasingly interactive as tools and services on the WWW have evolved. Thus, there is more to searching than typing in a query and waiting for the search engine to display a set of possible webpages. In this paper, I argue that the only way to achieve substantial advances in search and browse capabilities is to combine research and development in human-computer interaction with research and development in information retrieval to create highly interactive systems that engage the user in defining their needs iteratively and going beyond retrieval to understanding the corpus and the retrieved information. This humancomputer information retrieval (HCIR) perspective is the basis for various designs and will be illustrated with examples from the Open Video Project, a digital video library for the education and research communities (www.open-video.org), and the Govstat Project, an effort to design interfaces, information architectures, and online help for non-specialists looking for statistical information from government websites (www.ils.unc.edu/govstat). Our experience demonstrates how good interface design and usability testing leads to improved information services. Traditionally, information retrieval has been approached as a problem of matching queries to documents. Documents are represented as sets of words and collections as large term-document matrices or inverted indexes. Queries are then similarly represented and a similarity function applied. This approach to information retrieval has been advanced in the WWW mainly by adding new kinds of representations such as the links between webpages and similarity metrics based on these links. However, the user interfaces have remained basically the same-either people type a query made up of a few words or they make selections from hierarchical menu structures. Marchionini (1995) calls the former 'analytical' search and the latter query style one form of 'browsing.' Increasingly, system designers are looking for new ways to improve user interfaces for WWW search services to get beyond the query and ranked list of results displays typical in search engines. This new paradigm in HCIR design is based on bringing the human information seeker more actively into the retrieval process. In this new HCIR paradigm information retrieval becomes human-centered, engaging an active human with information needs, information skills, powerful IR resources, and situated in global and local connected communities, all of which evolve over time. I term this close coupling of people and information 'syminforosis' to mean that people are continuously and inextricably engaged with meaningful information as part of their day-to-day lives. WWW trends toward this perspective are perceptible in search engines such as Clusty, which presents results as clusters of results rather than a single list. The idea is to get people closer to the information they need by giving them more control over the results partitions. This implies that people must take increasing responsibility and control for their activities. The key challenges this trend poses are in linking the conceptual interface to the system backend (e.g., alternative representations and control mechanisms, metadata generation); raising user literacy

Ce mémoire propose une évaluation critique de la théorie des espaces conceptuels de Peter Gärdenfors, qui est un cadre théorique qui vise à représenter la signification des concepts du langage naturel. Ce cadre se trouve à l’intersection des approches symboliques et des modèles distributionnels de la sémantique.
Le mémoire montre que la théorie des espaces conceptuels est une heuristique féconde, particulièrement efficace pour les domaines sensoriels mais qu’il faut nuancer sa portée en raison des difficultés à l'appliquer directement à la sémantique du langage naturel et aux processus cognitifs dynamiques, appelant ainsi à des enrichissements théoriques pour en étendre l'applicabilité.
Le premier chapitre établit la puissance explicative de la théorie en se concentrant sur son application aux couleurs. Le deuxième chapitre confronte la théorie à un défi majeur : la sémantique lexicale des mots abstraits, étudiée à travers le phénomène des distorsions de la mémoire dans le paradigme Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM). L'enjeu est de déterminer si la proximité dans un espace sémantique peut expliquer le fait que, dans les expériences DRM, les participants reconnaissent à tort des mots-leurres non présentés.Enfin, le troisième chapitre pousse la théorie dans ses retranchements en abordant les aspects dynamiques de la cognition, à travers l'étude des interférences entre les différentes langues chez les locuteurs bilingues. Ce phénomène met en lumière le caractère statique du modèle de Gärdenfors.

3D environments provide new possibilities for musical interaction. They allow musicians to manipulate and visualize large sets of sound processes associated to 3D objects by connecting graphical parameters to sound parameters. Several of these audiovisual mappings can be combined on a single 3D object. However, this brings up the issues of the choice of these mappings and of their combinations. We conducted a user study on sixteen musicians to evaluate audiovisual mappings and their combinations in the context of 3D musical interaction. This user study is composed of three experiments. The first experiment investigates subjects preferences for mappings between four perceptual sound parameters (amplitude, pitch, spectral centroid and noisiness) and ten graphical parameters, some of them specific to 3D environments. The second experiment focuses on efficiency of single mappings in an audiovisual identification task. The results show almost no significant differences, but some tendenci...

Upcoming parallelization with multi-core processors as well as the availability of large networks with high-speed interconnects require a change in the used programming paradigms and techniques to develop scalable applications. Techniques for library-centric application design have already proven to be very useful in the past and are of utmost importance in the field of parallel and scalable application design. However, the utilization of multi-core processors places new difficulties in application design for scientific computing. A parallel generic scientific simulation environment enables parallelization by facilitating a suitable combination of multiple programming paradigms and by following modern application design guidelines, which is necessary in order to keep development on multi-core processors as simple as possible, while not forsaking any of their computational power. Inherent parallel assembly mechanisms for large equations systems and multi-dimensional topological traversal mechanism are presented.

We report on our experience with a new test generation language for processor verification. The verification of two superscalar multiprocessors is described and we show the ease of expressing complex verification tasks. The cost and benefit are demonstrated: training takes up to six months; the simulation time required for a desired level of coverage has decreased by a factor of twenty; the number of escape bugs has k e n reduced.

R-Cubed (R 3 : Real-time Remote Robotics) is the concept and technology which attempts to provide a solution for people to telexist anywhere in the world by controlling remote robots as his avatars in real time base through the network. An R-Cubed system is supposed to allow people to control remote robots from terminals installed on homes, offices, or any public booths connected to Internet or other dedicated networks. As part of R-Cubed research, we proposed RCML/RCTP structure as a solution on implementing R-Cubed systems. To examine and verify practicability of RCML/RCTP structure, we also implemented an RCML system based on RCML and RCTP specification on a low-end platform. In this paper we will show how we implement the experimental system following the specification of RCML and RCTP. Observation and evaluation to the system results in some hints on designing next version of specification and are discussed in detail.

The Thinking Head project has as it aims to develop (i) a new generation Talking Thinking Head that embodies human attributes, and improves human-machine interaction; and (ii) a plug-and-play research platform for users to test software in an interactive real-time environment. Here, project progress is discussed in terms of the four teams: 1. Head Building–(i) Plug-and-Play architecture,(ii) Thinking Media Framework, and (iii) Animation; 2. Human-Head Interaction (HHI)–(i) Wizard of Oz studies, and (ii) joint attention by human ...

Music composition on computer is a challenging task, involving a range of data types to be managed within a single software tool. A composition typically comprises a complex arrangement of material, with many internal relationships between data in different locations repetition, inversion, retrograde, reversal and more sophisticated transformations. The creation of such complex artefacts is labour intensive, and current systems typically place a significant cognitive burden on the composer in terms of maintaining a work as a coherent whole. FrameWorks 3D is an attempt to improve support for composition tasks within a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) style environment via a novel three-dimensional (3D) user-interface. In addition to the standard paradigm of tracks, regions and tape recording analogy, FrameWorks displays hierarchical and transformational information in a single, fully navigable workspace. The implementation combines Java with Max/MSP to create a cross-platform, user-ex...

Visualization and knowledge of detailed pressure information can play a vital role in multimodal sensing of human movement. We have designed a highresolution pressure sensing floor prototype with a sensor density of one sensor per square centimeter that can provide real-time information about the location of the performer on the floor as well as the amount of pressure being exerted on the floor. Hardware and software have been developed for detecting, collecting, transmitting and rendering a graphical representation of the pressure data gathered from the sensors. This prototype can be easily reconfigured to cover large floor areas, and will integrate closely with video, audio and motion-based sensing technologies to facilitate robust multimodal sensing. In our demonstrations, we show that the system accurately captures and transmits pressure information, and we illustrate how this will form a basis for a variety of applications including use in rehabilitation, virtual reality, entertainment, and children activity centers.

Visualization and knowledge of detailed pressure information can play a vital role in multimodal sensing of human movement. We have designed a highresolution pressure sensing floor prototype with a sensor density of one sensor per square centimeter that can provide real-time information about the location of the performer on the floor as well as the amount of pressure being exerted on the floor. Hardware and software have been developed for detecting, collecting, transmitting and rendering a graphical representation of the pressure data gathered from the sensors. This prototype can be easily reconfigured to cover large floor areas, and will integrate closely with video, audio and motion-based sensing technologies to facilitate robust multimodal sensing. In our demonstrations, we show that the system accurately captures and transmits pressure information, and we illustrate how this will form a basis for a variety of applications including use in rehabilitation, virtual reality, entertainment, and children activity centers.

We present a system and a set of tools for producing special effects in film/video making by applying image processing and human centered computing techniques. A combination of shot detection, object segmentation, background generation, and image warping techniques are used. The user selects the image frame or the object of interest, and the image warp transformation to be used from the GUI. Wrapping can be performed either on a whole image sequence or on an object of interest in the sequence. In the latter, the object is first segmented and its motion tracked. Object segmentation is achieved either by snakes or graph cuts. Steerable Pyramid background generation is then used to fill in the portion cut from the foreground.

Numerous tools and techniques for human performance modeling have been introduced in the field of human-computer interaction. With such tools comes the ability to model legacy applications. Models can be used to compare design ideas to existing applications, or to evaluate products against those of competitors. One such modeling tool, CogTool, allows user interface designers and analysts to mock up design ideas, demonstrate tasks, and obtain human performance predictions for those tasks. This is one step towards a simple and complete analysis process, but it still requires a large amount of manual work. Graphical user interface (GUI) testing tools are orthogonal in that they provide automated model extraction of interfaces, methods for test case generation, and test case automation; however, the resulting test cases may not mimic tasks as they are performed by experienced users. In this thesis, we present CogTool-Helper, a tool that merges automated GUI testing with human performance modeling. It utilizes techniques from GUI testing to automatically create CogTool storyboards and models. We have designed an algorithm to find alternative methods for performing the same task so that the UI designer or analyst can study how a user might interact with the system beyond what they have specified. We have also implemented an approach to generate functional test cases that perform tasks in a way that mimics the user. We evaluate the feasibility of our approach in a human performance regression testing scenario in LibreOffice, and show how CogTool-Helper enhances the UI designer's analysis process. Not only do the generated designs remove the need for manual design construction, but the resulting data allows new analyses that were previously not possible. iv DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my mom and dad. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Myra Cohen, for her support and dedication to this work, and for her encouragement throughout this process. I would like to thank Bonnie John and Rachel Bellamy from IBM for being such wonderful collaborators and for teaching me so much. Also, thank-you to Don Morrison for promptly fixing CogTool issues that I had. I'd also like to thank Atif Memon for providing the GUITAR framework and technical support. I would also like to thank Anita Sarma and Gregg Rothermel for serving on my committee and offer your thoughtful comments and feedback. To my officemates and lab-mates especially Katie, Charlie, Brady, Javier, Elena, Josh, Corey, Sandeep, Lucy, Supat, Kaylei and everyone else in the ESQuaReD lab, you have been wonderful and provided me with a lot of inspiration, fun, and laughs. To all of the wonderful CSE professors at UNL I have had the privilege of taking classes from, you have been wonderful. I would especially like to thank Berthe Chouiery for providing me with so much inspiration and support, Ashok Samal for writing me a recommendation letter for the Anita Borg scholarship, and Charles Riedesel for being a wonderful undergraduate advisor and advisor to UPE. To mom and dad, for everything you have given me throughout the past two years, and my whole life, and for making me the person that I am today so that I could achieve this degree. Thanks for giving me the brains! To Stephanie and Elizabeth, thank-you for being there for me throughout this process and for being my two best friends. To all of my good friends, who have helped me to make it through the past two years of work, thanks. Finally, thank-you to Will for being there for me and keeping me from going insane throughout this process, making me delicious food, and everything else. Thanks! vi

Numerous tools and techniques for human performance modeling have been introduced in the field of human-computer interaction. With such tools comes the ability to model legacy applications. Models can be used to compare design ideas to existing applications, or to evaluate products against those of competitors. One such modeling tool, CogTool, allows user interface designers and analysts to mock up design ideas, demonstrate tasks, and obtain human performance predictions for those tasks. This is one step towards a simple and complete analysis process, but it still requires a large amount of manual work. Graphical user interface (GUI) testing tools are orthogonal in that they provide automated model extraction of interfaces, methods for test case generation, and test case automation; however, the resulting test cases may not mimic tasks as they are performed by experienced users. In this thesis, we present CogTool-Helper, a tool that merges automated GUI testing with human performance modeling. It utilizes techniques from GUI testing to automatically create CogTool storyboards and models. We have designed an algorithm to find alternative methods for performing the same task so that the UI designer or analyst can study how a user might interact with the system beyond what they have specified. We have also implemented an approach to generate functional test cases that perform tasks in a way that mimics the user. We evaluate the feasibility of our approach in a human performance regression testing scenario in LibreOffice, and show how CogTool-Helper enhances the UI designer's analysis process. Not only do the generated designs remove the need for manual design construction, but the resulting data allows new analyses that were previously not possible. iv DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my mom and dad. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Myra Cohen, for her support and dedication to this work, and for her encouragement throughout this process. I would like to thank Bonnie John and Rachel Bellamy from IBM for being such wonderful collaborators and for teaching me so much. Also, thank-you to Don Morrison for promptly fixing CogTool issues that I had. I'd also like to thank Atif Memon for providing the GUITAR framework and technical support. I would also like to thank Anita Sarma and Gregg Rothermel for serving on my committee and offer your thoughtful comments and feedback. To my officemates and lab-mates especially Katie, Charlie, Brady, Javier, Elena, Josh, Corey, Sandeep, Lucy, Supat, Kaylei and everyone else in the ESQuaReD lab, you have been wonderful and provided me with a lot of inspiration, fun, and laughs. To all of the wonderful CSE professors at UNL I have had the privilege of taking classes from, you have been wonderful. I would especially like to thank Berthe Chouiery for providing me with so much inspiration and support, Ashok Samal for writing me a recommendation letter for the Anita Borg scholarship, and Charles Riedesel for being a wonderful undergraduate advisor and advisor to UPE. To mom and dad, for everything you have given me throughout the past two years, and my whole life, and for making me the person that I am today so that I could achieve this degree. Thanks for giving me the brains! To Stephanie and Elizabeth, thank-you for being there for me throughout this process and for being my two best friends. To all of my good friends, who have helped me to make it through the past two years of work, thanks. Finally, thank-you to Will for being there for me and keeping me from going insane throughout this process, making me delicious food, and everything else. Thanks! vi

In this paper we apply the principles of Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis (ESDA) to simulation results analysis. We replicate a resource consumption simulation of occupants in a building and analyze the results using an open-source ESDA tool called UberTagger previously only used in the human-computer interaction (HCI) domain. We demonstrate the usefulness of ESDA by applying it to a hotel occupant simulation involving water and energy consumption. We have found that using a system which implements ESDA principles helps practitioners better understand their simulation models, form hypotheses about simulated behavior, more effectively debug simulation code, and more easily communicate their findings to others.

This research paper seeks to explore one of the critical issues affecting children, namely sexual exploitation in its various forms and manifestations. It aims to shed light on a key challenge faced by mental health professionals during the psychological assessment of these children-starting from the initial intake, identifying the reason for referral and the presenting concern, to understanding the issue in its multiple dimensions. The ultimate objective is to reconstruct the problem and propose appropriate interventions for children in vulnerable situations. To address this issue comprehensively, the paper is structured into two main parts: a theoretical section that offers a conceptual overview of sexual exploitation and its forms, and a practical section that presents a summary of a clinical case encountered during our professional practice.

Bu araştırmanın amacı, dijital oyunlarda var olan grafik kullanıcı arayüzlerinde gerçekleşen üslupsal değişimin
Cities: Skylines oyunları dahilinde incelenmesidir. Kullanıcı arayüzleri, insanın makinelerle kurduğu iletişimin
komutlar yoluyla gerçekleşmesine olanak tanıyan ve aracılık eden grafik tasarım ürünleridir. Günümüzün en sık
kullanılan teknolojik aletlerinden birisi olan bilgisayarlar da, kullanıcı arayüzleri sayesinde kullanılması mümkün
olan önemli bir araçtır. Bilgisayarın kendisi başta olmak üzere, bilgisayarda kullandığımız yazılımlar, araçlar ve
oyunlar da bir grafik kullanıcı arayüzüne sahiptir. Günümüzün en büyük eğlence sektörlerinden birisi haline gelen
oyun endüstrisinde, grafik kullanıcı arayüzü tasarımları oyun tasarımının en önemli unsurlarından birisidir. Grafik
kullanıcı arayüzü sayesinde oyuncular oyunla her türlü etkileşimi kurabilmektedir. Oyunu açma, oyun içerisinde
çeşitli ayarlamalar yapma, oyunu kaydetme ve yükleme gibi ana menü komutlarından, oyunların mekaniğine bağlı
oyun içi pek çok yönlendirme ve uygulama, grafik kullanıcı arayüzü vasıtasıyla gerçekleşir.
Yapılan bu çalışmada, Colossal Order firması tarafından geliştirilen bir şehir kurma simülasyon oyunu olan Cities:
Skylines ve Cities: Skylines 2 oyunlarının sahip olduğu grafik kullanıcı arayüzü tasarımları, sahip oldukları üslup
açısından karşılaştırılmıştır. Nitel bir çalışma olan bu araştırma durum çalışması desenindedir. Araştırma evreni
Cities: Skylines ve Cities: Skylines 2 oyunları olup, örneklem ise oyunların grafik kullanıcı arayüzü tasarımı
ögeleri olarak seçilmiştir. Örneklemi oluşturan görseller, dijital oyunların kullanıcı arayüzlerinin arşivlendiği
internet sitesi gameuidatabase.com’dan ve Cities: Skylines 2 oyunundan doğrudan edinilmiştir. Araştırma
sonucunda, 2015 yılında piyasaya sürülen Cities: Skylines 2 oyununun grafik kullanıcı arayüzünün skemorfik
üsluba daha yakın bir tasarım diline sahip olduğu; 2023 yılında piyasaya sürülen Cities: Skylines 2 oyununun ise
düz tasarım özelliklerini benimsediği görülmüştür. Bu bağlamda, oyun şirketlerinin grafik kullanıcı arayüzü
tasarımı noktasında güncel eğilimleri de göz önünde bulundurarak tasarımlarını güncelleyebildiğini söylemek
mümkündür. Araştırmanın dijital oyunlarda grafik kullanıcı arayüzlerinin tasarım dilinde yaşanabilen değişimlerin
betimlenmesi noktasında, dijital oyun tasarımı ve grafik tasarım alanları için bir örneklem oluşturma açısından
önemli olduğu düşünülmektedir.

The attempt of the present work is consequently to propose and experimentally estimate an automated system called Filtered Wall (FW) which is competent to filter unwanted messages from OSN user walls. One essential issue in today's Online Social Networks (OSNs) is to give users the provision to control the messages posted on their own private space to shun that unwanted content is displayed. This is achieved through a flexible rulebased system that let users to adapt the filtering criterion to be applied to their walls and a Machine Learning-based soft classifier automatically labelling messages in support of content-based filtering. The unique set of description imitative from endogenous properties of short texts is distended here including exogenous knowledge connected to the context from which the messages create. As far as the learning model is apprehensive we confirm in the current paper the use of neural learning which is today documented as one of the well-organized solutions in text classification. In particular we base the overall short text classification strategy on Radial Basis Function Networks (RBFN) for their established potential in acting as soft classifiers in managing noisy data and essentially vague classes.

Modern test case generation techniques can automatically achieve high code coverage. If they operate on the unit level, they run the risk of generating nonsensical inputs, which, when causing failures, are painful to identify and eliminate. Running a unit test generator on five open source Java programs, we found that all of the 181 reported failures were false failures-that is, indicating a problem in the generated test case rather than the program. By generating test cases at the GUI level, our EXSYST prototype can avoid such false failures by construction. In our evaluation, it achieves higher coverage than search-based test generators at the unit level; yet, every failure can be shown to be caused by a real sequence of input events. Whenever a system interface is available, we recommend considering search-based system testing as an alternative to avoid false failures.

A new CfP for a special issue of Feminist Media Histories (University of California Press), guest edited by me and Veronika Hanakova:

💿 Title: Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop Media
⏰ Deadline for abstracts: October 28, 2025

As media scholars and video essayists intrigued by formats that simulate the experience of navigating a computer (or smartphone) screen, we’re opening up this issue as a space to collectively explore how “desktop media” have engaged with and shaped the evolution of the graphical user interface.

We’re especially interested in how the desktop – as interface, metaphor, and media form – has been (or could be) denaturalized and reimagined through feminist, queer, and anti-racist perspectives.

This issue invites contributions that think across desktop cinema, computer history, media archaeology, and gender studies, and we welcome both written articles and video essays.

Join us in conversation, and in collaboration with the fabulous editorial team at Feminist Media Histories, led by Jennifer M. Bean.

Delivering configurable solutions, that is products tailored to the requirements of a particular customer, is a priority of most B2B and B2C markets. These markets now heavily rely on interactive configurators that help customers build complete and correct products. Reliability is thus a critical requirement for configurators. Yet, our experience in industry reveals that many configurators are developed in an ad hoc manner, raising correctness and maintenance issues. In this paper, we present a vision to re-engineering more reliable configurators and the challenges it poses. The first challenge is to reverse engineer from an existing configurator the variability information, including complex rules, and to consolidate it in a variability model, namely a feature model. The second challenge is to forward engineer a new configurator that uses the feature model to generate a customized graphical user interface and the underlying reasoning engine.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are playing an important role in the development of software platforms for Smart Cities to improve city services, sustainability, and citizen quality of life. Smart City software platforms have a significant role to transform a city into a smart city by providing support for the development and integration of intelligent services. Big data analytics is an emerging technology that has a huge potential to enhance smart city services by transforming city information into city intelligence. Despite this,it has attracted attention in a rather restricted range of application domains, and its joint application with self-adaptation mechanisms is rarely investigated. In this Ph.D. research, in collaboration with the Smart Cities and Communities Lab. of the Italian national agency ENEA, we focus on the design and development of a software platform for smart city based on self-adaptation, as realized in the IBM MAPE-K (Monitor, Analyze, Plan, and Execute over a shared Knowledge) control loop architecture model, and on machine intelligence, as provided by a big data analytics framework. This last is introduced in between the analysis and planning modules of the MAPE-K control loop model. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach with a real showcase in the public lighting domain.

ABSTRACT
The present study aimed to evaluate the reality of preparing Arabic language teachers in light of Digital Intelligence (DQ) standards by reviewing relevant Arabic literature, including research and studies focused on teacher preparation in general and Arabic language teachers in particular. To achieve this, the study surveyed Arab efforts in teacher training—especially in the technological and digital domains—during the period from 2014 to 2024, analyzing and assessing these initiatives. It then examined five key DQ standards related to information literacy: access to information, evaluation of digital information, organization and classification of information, analysis and transformation of information into knowledge, and the ethical use of digital information.
The study employed a descriptive-analytical approach to compare existing literature and practices with the DQ framework, revealing a noticeable gap between current Arabic efforts and the global digital intelligence standards. Despite numerous initiatives in the Arab world, these efforts often lacked a comprehensive and unified framework for digital education. Although forms of digital education appear in Arabic literature, they do not consistently reflect internationally recognized digital education concepts and competencies.
The study concluded by proposing a general framework for preparing Arabic language teachers as digital educators, grounded in the DQ framework's indicators for digital literacy. Key recommendations include conducting further research on empowering Arabic language teachers with digital skills, designing digital curricula tailored to Arabic language competencies, and assessing the extent to which digital skills are present in actual teaching practices.

The objectives of the study were to determine the interplay that exists between UX and UI design influence user engagement and learning outcomes in e-learning platforms and to establish the implications of defining UI as a distinct discipline versus a subset of UX on the design processes and collaborative practices within digital product teams. The study employed a qualitative research design with an interpretive philosophy to understand the subjective and socially constructed meanings expressed about the phenomenon under investigation. The study collected data using openended questionnaires from designers. The gathered data sheds light that UI is simply a by-product of good UX, which firmly places it under the UX umbrella. UX strategy, user research, information architecture, usability testing, and visual problem-solving for the user are all fundamentally focused on the user and UX cannot be separated from all the stages of the design process. The findings also revealed that designers should stop saying UI/UX since they are two different areas; hence, this shows that they don't understand the discipline. In response to this study's limitations, recommendations for future research were also addressed.

The study was conducted to design and obtain evidence concerning the software quality and acceptance of a graphical user interface (GUI) student electoral voting system. The intention of this research is three-fold; firstly, a system based on ISO 9126 software quality characteristics, secondly, a system that conforms to the current hardware and software standard and lastly, improve student participation to decision-making. Designing a usable system in the context of the user’s perception (needs) and let these perceptions dictate the design is therefore a great challenge. This study used descriptivedevelopment research method. Data were collected thru guided interviews and survey questionnaires from the respondents. The researcher adopted the Princeton Development Methodology through the entire life cycle of the software development process. A very substantial majority of the respondents stated that for them, the new voting system is highly acceptable as compared to the old system bo...

ROTATING GLOBE DEMONSTRATOR Projected multimedia installations or learning material are part of everyday life in museums, exhibitions and schools. Earlier research has introduced relatively much work on projection systems, where images are shown on arbitrary surfaces, see e.g. In the demonstration described in this paper we use non-planar surface, a sphere shaped object and project a visualization of rotating Earth on it. Earlier research has experimented with sphere shaped interactive displays. At Microsoft, Benko et al. built and experimented with a spherical multi touch screen Sphere [3], and in [4], a spherical volumetric display with touch input is described. Our demonstration does not currently have input functionality, but it is considered as the potential direction for future work. Bimber and Raskar [5] presents techniques involving both hardware and software to implement spatial augmented reality (SAR) installations. This demonstration presents a tangible 3D projection that...

The Onboard Autonomous Science Investigation System (OASIS) evaluates geologic data gathered by a planetary rover. This analysis is used to prioritize the data for transmission, so that the data with the highest science value is transmitted to Earth. In addition, the onboard analysis results are used to identify science opportunities. A planning and scheduling component of the system enables the rover to take advantage of the identified science opportunity. OASIS is a NASA-funded research project that is currently being tested on the FIDO rover at JPL for use on future missions. In this paper 1 , we provide a brief overview of the OASIS system, and then describe our recent successes in integrating with and using rover hardware. OASIS currently works in a closed loop fashion with onboard control software (e.g., navigation and vision) and has the ability to autonomously perform the following sequence of steps: analyze gray scale images to find rocks, extract the properties of the rocks, identify rocks of interest, retask the rover to take additional imagery of the identified target and then allow the rover to continue on its original mission. We also describe the early 2004 ground test validation of specific OASIS components on selected Mars Exploration Rover (MER) images. These components include the rockfinding algorithm, RockIT, and the rock size feature extraction code. Our team also developed the RockIT GUI, an interface that allows users to easily visualize and modify the rock-finder results. This interface has allowed us to conduct preliminary testing and validation of the rockfinder's performance.

Measuring the resistance fluctuations of gas sensors provides new opportunities to enhance the selectivity and sensitivity of the sensor. Taking advantage of this possibility requires special low-noise measurement hardware and software to acquire data and perform analysis. In our talk we will present a small, USB-powered device capable of doing precise measurement of the resistance fluctuations of different kinds of gas sensors. We have developed a graphical user interface software to control the parameters of the measurement, to collect data and perform real time analysis on the measured data. The analysis is based on a PCA algorithm, which is proven to be a high performance tool to support fluctuation enhanced sensing. The system has been tested on Taguchi and carbon nanotube based gas sensors as well. The main advantages of the system include the small form factor, low cost and the fully featured software performing all required data analysis operations. Complemented with a gas sensor and an optional test chamber, the setup can serve as an efficient tool for practical fluctuationenhanced gas sensing.

The rate of interictal high frequency oscillations (HFOs) is a promising biomarker of the seizure onset zone, though little is known about its consistency over hours to days. Here we test whether the highest HFO-rate channels are consistent across different 10-min segments of EEG during sleep. An automated HFO detector and blind source separation are applied to nearly 3000 total hours of data from 121 subjects, including 12 control subjects without epilepsy. Although interictal HFOs are significantly correlated with the seizure onset zone, the precise localization is consistent in only 22% of patients. The remaining patients either have one intermittent source (16%), different sources varying over time (45%), or insufficient HFOs (17%). Multiple HFO networks are found in patients with both one and multiple seizure foci. These results indicate that robust HFO interpretation requires prolonged analysis in context with other clinical data, rather than isolated review of short data segm...

Older drivers seem to have the greatest difficulty negotiating intersections, as indicated by overrepresentation in intersection crashes. Older drivers are also the fastest growing segment of the general population and the fastest growing sector of the driving population. To address this area of concern, this research is an effort aimed to support technology development that can mitigate older driver intersection crashes. This project explored a vehicle-based technology countermeasure for crashes associated with failure-to-obey (running a stop sign or stop light) violations developed under the Intelligent Transportation Systems' CICAS-V project. This system warned drivers when it determined it was likely the driver would violate a red light or stop sign. An evaluation was performed in the NADS-1 high-fidelity driving simulator. The experimental design used 36 participants from three age-related groups; 'middle-normal'(25-55), 'older normal'(>65) and 'older at-risk'(>65) drivers. The participants were presented two levels of vehicle system presence (present and not present). There was an overall benefit associated with the presence of the warning system as there were significantly fewer did-notstop outcomes when the system was present than when it was not. The benefit associated with the system was also seen in the stopping position data. Participants who experienced the system warning stopped instead of driving through the intersection, resulting in more stops past the stop bar, but before the collision zone. From the survey data, there was also a general perception that the system improved driving safety and that the system aided drivers in driving more carefully. Older-at-risk drivers had the greatest decrease in did-not-stop outcomes when the system was present, although this trend did not reach statistical significance. This study shows promise for improving the safety of all drivers, including at-risk-older drivers, with intersection warning systems. However, this study did not thoroughly explore possible unintended consequences of intersection warning systems such as overreliance on or inappropriate reactions to warnings under certain situations.

In this paper a workspace analysis for a three-degree of freedom parallel micro robot is outlined by using optimality criterion of workspace and numerical aspects. We proposed a numerical procedure for determining and evaluating the workspace of the 3-RRR robot architecture. The analysis and algorithm can be used as a design tool to select dimensions, actuators and joints in order to maximize the workspace and improve stiffness within the workspace. A program was created in MATLAB for workspace analysis of 3 DOF parallel robots.

Pipelining is a very important implementation technique in computer architecture which permits several instructions to be executed simultaneously, each of them in a different stage of the datapath. Students of computer science need to acquire this fundamental concept clearly but most of them find it unfathomable. Moreover, it is difficult for an instructor to teach these concepts on a paper and pencil basis. In this paper, we present ViSiMIPS, which simulates and dynamically visualizes the processing of instructions by MIPS32 pipelined processor to assist in teaching such concepts. In addition, it describes details of the basics of MIPS instruction set and pipelining, also designates ViSiMIPS, its main components and functionalities. Its graphical user interface (GUI) illustrates the register-transfer level and expedites students to comprehend the different stages of pipelining.

This paper presents a type of machine learning is reinforcement learning, this approach is often used in the field of robotics. It aims to determine a control law for a mobile robot in an unknown environment. This kind of technique applies when one assumes that the only information on the quality of actions performed by the mobile robot is a scalar signal which has a reward or punishment, the process of learning is to improve the choice of actions to maximize rewards. One of the most used algorithms for solving this problem is learning the Q-learning algorithm which is based on the Qfunction, and to ensure the generation of this latter function and the proper functioning of the apprenticeship system using an artificial neural network as the statements of changing environments where mobile robots have wide open spaces, the action performed by the mobile robot in its environment is ensured by using a selection function, this action is evaluated by a scalar signal which is -1, 0 and 1.

This paper reports the results of experiences with the use of parallel coordinates plots for the analysis of multi-objective, multivariate problems for architectural design at the micro-environmental scale, as possible through the support of thermal and lighting simulation analyses. Parametric analyses applied at the micro-urban level may produce a wealth of information which is difficult to exploit for what both design and decision-taking are concerned. One reason for this is the sheer difficulty of producing convincing visual representations of the complex relations between the most relevant variables in play. Pragmatic strategies for the use of parallel coordinate plots have been experimented by the author to produce pictorially eloquent representations blending quantitative and quantitative information. This was mainly done through three strategies: -texturing, allowing for an increase of understandability of large data domains; -layering, through the superimposition of suitably treated representations of distinct objective functions; -filtering, through the application of threshold levels to objective functions.

In this paper, we investigate different techniques for improving the cache memory use when running a parallel implementation of the modified equivalent current approximation (MECA) method. The MECA method allows the analysis of dielectric and lossy geometries, and reduces to the well-studied physical optics (PO) formulation in case of PEC scatterers. We discuss several memory-hierarchy-based optimization techniques and present how to implement them in C. We show through simulations that these optimization strategies are effective for reducing the total execution time when calculating the scattered fields with a parallel implementation of the MECA method.

This paper presents the development of a user interface based on eye/gaze tracking to control a smart home. The user interface proposed has some functionalities that can improve the usability of the system as a whole. In the experimental sessions, performed in an actual home, 29 participants performed the test protocol during about 5 to 10 minutes and then answered the SUS questionnaire. The SUS result showed that the participants evaluated the user interface with a mean of 89.9, positioning the tool as exceptional. Resumo-Este artigo apresenta o desenvolvimento de uma interface de usuário baseada em rastreamento de olhos para controlar uma casa inteligente. A interface do usuário proposta possui algumas funcionalidades que podem melhorar a usabilidade do sistema como um todo. Nas sessões experimentais, realizadas em uma casa real, 29 participantes realizaram o protocolo do teste durante cerca de 5 a 10 minutos e responderam ao questionário SUS. O resultado do SUS mostrou que os participantes avaliaram a interface do usuário com uma média de 89,9, classificando a ferramenta como excepcional.

This work presents a system for controlling a smart home by eye gaze. With this system it is possible to control everyday equipment of a residence, such as lamps, television, fan and radio. GlobalBox (gBox) is a new device controller module, which was assembled and customized in an actual home, where tests were conducted with 29 participants. At the end of the tests, users evaluated the system regarding the interest in using it, the available functionality, the complexity in using it, and the confidence in its functioning. Resumo-Este trabalho apresenta um sistema para controle de uma casa inteligente. Com este sistema é possível controlar equipamentos do cotidiano de uma residência, como lâmpadas, televisão, ventilador e rádio. Foi desenvolvida a GlobalBox (gBox), que é um novo circuito de acionamento de dispositivos, o qual foi montado e customizado em uma casa real, onde foram feitos testes com 29 participantes. Ao final dos testes, os usuários avaliaram o sistema com relação ao interesse em utilizá-lo, às funcionalidades disponíveis, à complexidade em utilizá-lo e à confiança no seu funcionamento.

This paper presents the design and development of a ray-traced, signal-level pulsed radar simulation algorithm and a novel ray aggregation technique using the NVIDIA® OptiXTM engine for propagation modelling. This is expected to aid radar engineers and researchers in systems design, testing, and training. The program supports the short- and long-range simulation of various radar scenarios using complex target and signal models with a high degree of realism. This was achieved through raytraced radio propagation and geometry modelling, simulating realistic multipath signal interactions with mesh-based objects as opposed to the more traditional point-model approach. The designed algorithm has also been implemented as an open-source ray-tracing module and was verified against an established radar software package.

This paper details the development of an innovative voice chatbot interface specifically designed for evaluating user options using a Likert scale by color. The core of this interface is designing a convolutional neural network architecture, which has been trained with MEL spectrogram inputs from seven possible words for each answer. These spectrograms are crucial in capturing the audio features necessary for effective voice recognition and establishing the interactions that occur between the chatbot and the user, allowing the convolutional network to learn and distinguish between different types of user responses accurately. During the training phase, the convolutional neural network achieved an accuracy rate of 91.4%, indicating its robust performance in processing and interpreting voice commands. The interface was tested in a controlled environment, with a group of ten users and a survey of 5 questions, where it achieved a perfect detection accuracy of 100%. The results demonstrate the system's capacity for natural user interaction by voice and employing a free text to speech (TTS) algorithm for the chatbot voice.

Along with the development of electronic technology, the integration of numerous components on printed circuit board (PCB) boards has resulted in increasingly complex and intricate layouts. Small defects in traces can lead to failures in electronic functions, making the inspection of PCB surface layouts a critical process in quality control. Given the limitations of manual inspection, which struggles to detect such defects due to their size and complexity, there is a growing need for a PCB inspection system that utilizes automated optical inspection (AOI) based on deep learning detection. This research develops and compares two deep learning algorithms, faster region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN) and YOLOv8, to identify the most effective algorithm for detecting defects on PCB layouts. The findings of this study indicate that the YOLOv8 algorithm outperforms faster R-CNN, with the YOLOv8x variant emerging as the best model for defect detection. The YOLOv8x model achieved performance scores of 0.962 (mAP@50), 0.503 (mAP@50:95), 0.953 (Precision), 0.945 (Recall), and 0.949 (F1-score). These results provide a strong foundation for further research into the application of AOI for PCB defect detection and other quality control processes in manufacturing, using optimized deep learning models.

The access transport infrastructure of a cellular communications network represents a significant proportion of the total network cost. This prevents the network designer from over-dimensioning these links. In the case of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) access network, the use of a packet-switched technology (ATM for the first Release of the system) and the multi-service nature of the traffic to be carried rise the dimensioning process complexity. At this respect, we have developed a simulation tool for supporting the network designer when making dimensioning and physical topology decisions related to Iub interface (between each UMTS base station and its controller), which is the most critical interface of UMTS access network. This simulator is capable of modelling the presence of multiple traffic classes as well as the Iub transport protocol stack with enough accuracy; it offers a graphical configuration interface and has been designed to have a great flexibility when choosing topologies and ATM configurations.

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Prezentowana książka opisuje biocybernetykę traktowaną jako zbiór metodologicznych podstaw dla inżynierii biomedycznej. Głównym narzędziem biocybernetyki są modele, więc ich właściwości a także metodykę ich tworzenia opisano w pierwszej kolejności. Potem podano przykłady modeli biocybernetycznych - najpierw bardzo uproszczonych, potem systematycznie coraz bardziej złożonych. Dużo uwagi poświęcono pojęciu sprzężenia zwrotnego i modelom biocybernetycznym systemów ze sprzężeniem zwrotnym.

Prezentowana Książka jest naprawdę bardzo skrótowym opisem dziejów rozwoju dziedziny nauki i techniki, jaką jest informatyka. Jednak mimo bardzo zwartej opowieści książka ma aż 271 stronic objętości, więc naprawdę jest co czytać. Pokazany w zeskanowanej części książki spis treści ujawnia, że podejmowane są w książce zarówno zagadnienia związane ze sprzętem komputerowym (hardware) i jego rozwojem, procesy rozwoju i doskonalenia oprogramowania (software), a także wydarzenia związane z rozwojem zastosowań. Dla zmniejszenia  objętości książki (i obniżenia jej ceny) wydawca wszystkie przygotowane przez autora ilustracje usunął z drukowanego tekstu lokując je na swoim serwerze, a w tekście podając QR-kody pozwalające pozyskiwać owe obrazy do smartfona lub komputera czytelnika. Rozwiązanie to jest dosyć oryginalne, ale zdaniem autora niewygodne. Niestety o formie książki zawsze decyduje Wydawca.