Programming Languages and Compilers Commons^™

Program Transformations For Information Personalization, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation. The central thesis of this dissertation is that modeling interaction explicitly in a representation, and studying how partial information can be harnessed in it by program transformations to direct the flow of the interaction, can provide insight into, reveal opportunities for, and define a model for personalized interaction. To evaluate this thesis, a formal modeling methodology is developed for personalizing interactions with information systems, especially hierarchical hypermedia, based on program transformations. The …

Staging Transformations For Multimodal Web Interaction Management, Michael Narayan, Christopher Williams, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations – …

Personalizing Software Development Practice Using Mastery-Based Coaching, Chris Boesch, Sandra Boesch

Chris BOESCH

The authors previously developed a system to facilitate the self-directed learning and practicing of software languages in Singapore. One of the goals of this self-directed learning was to enable the development of student mentors who would then be able to assist other students during classroom sessions. Building on this work, the authors extended the platform to support personalized coaching with the goals of further enabling and preparing students to mentor their peers. This paper covers the challenges, insights, and features that were developed in order to develop and deploy this mastery-based coaching feature.

Romeo: A System For More Flexible Binding-Safe Programming, Paul Stansifer, Mitchell Wand

Mitchell Wand

Current languages for safely manipulating values with names only support term languages with simple binding syntax. As a result, no tools exist to safely manipulate code written in those languages for which name problems are the most challenging. We address this problem with Romeo, a language that respects α-equivalence on its values, and which has access to a rich specification language for binding, inspired by attribute grammars. Our work has the complex-binding support of David Herman's λm, but is a full-fledged binding-safe language like Pure FreshML.

Understanding The Genetic Makeup Of Linux Device Drivers, Peter Senna Tschudin, Laurent Reveillere, Lingxiao Jiang, David Lo, Julia Lawall

David LO

No abstract provided.

Popularity, Interoperability, And Impact Of Programming Languages In 100,000 Open Source Projects, Tegawende F. Bissyande, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang, Laurent Réveillère

David LO

Programming languages have been proposed even before the era of the modern computer. As years have gone, computer resources have increased and application domains have expanded, leading to the proliferation of hundreds of programming languages, each attempting to improve over others or to address new programming paradigms. These languages range from procedural languages like C, object oriented languages like Java, and functional languages such as ML and Haskell. Unfortunately, there is a lack of large scale and comprehensive studies that examine the “popularity”, “interoperability”, and “impact” of various programming languages. To fill this gap, this study investigates a hundred thousands …

An Example Derivation For =R, Paul Stansifer, Mitchell Wand

Mitchell Wand

No abstract provided.

Some Definitions And Proofs Regarding Romeo, Paul Stansifer, Mitchell Wand

Mitchell Wand

No abstract provided.

An Example Derivation For =R, Paul Stansifer, Mitchell Wand

Paul Stansifer

This is intended to accompany Romeo: a system for more flexible binding-safe programming.

Some Definitions And Proofs Regarding Romeo, Paul Stansifer, Mitchell Wand

Paul Stansifer

This is intended to accompany Romeo: a system for more flexible binding-safe programming.

Nanohub - Crystal Viewer 2.0, Kevin Margatan, Gerhard Klimeck

Gerhard Klimeck

nanoHUB is an online compilation of tools for simulations. Equipped with 3-D simulations and a capability to solve very complex calculations, nanoHUB provides its users worldwide with various tools to help them finish their assignments. One of the tools available is called a Crystal Viewer Tool, an advanced crystal visualization tool. This tool allows users to generate various crystal types including their every single detail. Currently, a newer version, called Crystal Viewer 2.0, is being tested prior to its release. However, this tool is lacking some important features and a GUI that is not as user friendly as expected. The …

Spring­11: Pdc In Cs1/2 And A Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Mobile/Cloud Intermediate Software Design Course, Joseph P. Kaylor, Konstantin Läufer, Chandra N. Sekharan, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

Recent changes in the environment of Loyola University Chicago’s Department of Computer Science include a better differentiation of our four undergraduate majors, growing interest in computing among science majors, and an increased demand for graduates with mobile and cloud skills. In our continued effort to incorporate parallel and distributed computing topics into the undergraduate curriculum, we are focusing on these three existing courses: CS1: In response to a request from the physics department, we started to offer a CS1 section aimed at majors in physics and other hard sciences this spring semester. This section includes some material on numerical methods …

Network Technologies Used To Aggregate Environmental Data, Paul Stasiuk, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

The goal of the Loyola Weather Service (lws) project is to design and build a system of functioning environmental monitoring widgets that can intelligently and autonomously control the environment around them based on set thresholds and triggers. The widgets will also have the ability to aggregate their data and easily display this data in various ways: through a user interface in the room that the widget is placed, via a web application, and programmatically via a RESTful web service.

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Catherine Putonti, George K. Thiruvathukal, Konstantin Läufer

George K. Thiruvathukal

RNA-interference has potential therapeutic use against HIV-1 by targeting highly-functional mRNA sequences that contribute to the virulence of the virus. Empirical work has shown that within cell lines, all of the HIV-1 genes are affected by RNAi-induced gene silencing. While promising, inherent in this treatment is the fact that RNAi sequences must be highly specific. HIV, however, mutates rapidly, leading to the evolution of viral escape mutants. In fact, such strains are under strong selection to include mutations within the targeted region, evading the RNAi therapy and thus increasing the virus’ fitness in the host. Taking a phylogenetic approach, we …

Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization And Sensing Clusters From Commodity Tablets, Thomas Delgado Dias, Xian Yan, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

We explore the application of clusters of commodity tablet devices to problems spanning a “trilogy” of concerns: visualization, sensing, and computation. We conjecture that such clusters provide a low-cost, energy-efficient, flexible, and ultimately effective platform to tackle a wide range of problems within this trilogy. This is a work in progress, and we now elaborate our position and give a preliminary status report. A wide range of Android tablet devices are available in terms of price and capabilities. “You get what you pay for” w.r.t. display resolution, sensors, and chipset---corresponding to the trilogy. $200 gets one a 1280x800-pixel touch display, …

A Static Cost Analysis For A Higher-Order Language, Norman Danner, Jennifer Paykin, James Royer

Norman Danner

We develop a static complexity analysis for a higher-order functional language with structural list recursion. The complexity of an expression is a pair consisting of a cost and a potential. The former is defined to be the size of the expression's evaluation derivation in a standard big-step operational semantics. The latter is a measure of the "future" cost of using the value of that expression. A translation function ||.|| maps target expressions to complexities. Our main result is the following Soundness Theorem: If t is a term in the target language, then the cost component of ||t|| is an upper …

Two Algorithms In Search Of A Type System, Norman Danner, James Royer

Norman Danner

The authors’ ATR programming formalism is a version of call-by-value PCF under a complexity-theoretically motivated type system. ATR programs run in type-2 polynomial-time and all standard type-2 basic feasible functionals are ATR -definable ( ATR types are confined to levels 0, 1, and 2). A limitation of the original version of ATR is that the only directly expressible recursions are tail-recursions. Here we extend ATR so that a broad range of affine recursions are directly expressible. In particular, the revised ATR can fairly naturally express the classic insertion- and selection-sort algorithms, thus overcoming a sticking point of most prior implicit-complexity-based …

How To Build An Rss Feed Using Asp, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

RSS is a XML based format. The Current popular version of RSS is RSS version 2.0. The purpose of adding an RSS feed to your site is to show if anything new is added to the site. For example, if a new article or blog or news item is added to your site that should automatically appear in the RSS feed so that the visitors/ RSS readers will automatically get updated about this new addition. The RSS feed is also called RSS channel.

There are two main elements of the RSS XML file, one is the header or channel element …

Etd Conversion Utility, Logan E. Jewett

Logan E. Jewett

This presentation describes the development and operation of an ETD Conversion Utility created to prepare electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) received from ProQuest for deposit in Iowa State University's Digital Commons-based institutional repository.

Distractions In Programming Evironments, Raina Mason, Graham Cooper

Raina Mason

No abstract provided.

Data Curation Is For Everyone! The Case For Master's And Baccalaureate Institutional Engagement With Data Curation, Yasmeen Shorish

Yasmeen Shorish

This article describes the fundamental challenges to data curation, how these challenges may be compounded for smaller institutions, and how data management is an essential and manageable component of data curation. Data curation is often discussed within the confines of large, research universities. As a result, master’s and baccalaureate institutions may be left with the impression that they cannot engage with data curation. However, by proactively engaging with faculty, libraries of all sizes can build closer relationships and help educate faculty on data documentation and organization best practices. Experiences from one master’s comprehensive institution as it engages with data management …

A Parameterized Stereo Vision Core For Fpgas, Mark Chang, Stephen Longfield

Mark L. Chang

We present a parameterized stereo vision core suitable for a wide range of FPGA targets and stereo vision applications. By enabling easy tuning of algorithm parameters, our system allows for rapid exploration of the design space and simpler implementation of high-performance stereo vision systems. This implementation utilizes the census transform algorithm to calculate depth information from a pair of images delivered from a simulated stereo camera pair. This work advances our previous work through implementation improvements, a stereo camera pair simulation framework, and a scalable stereo vision core.

Precis: A Design-Time Precision Analysis Tool, Mark L. Chang, Scott Hauck

Mark L. Chang

Currently, few tools exist to aid the FPGA developer in translating an algorithm designed for a general-purpose-processor into one that is precision-optimized for FPGAs. This task requires extensive knowledge of both the algorithm and the target hardware. We present a design-time tool, Precis, which assists the developer in analyzing the precision requirements of algorithms specified in MATLAB. Through the combined use of simulation, user input, and program analysis, we demonstrate a methodology for precision analysis that can aid the developer in focusing their manual precision optimization efforts.

Precis: A Usercentric Word-Length Optimization Tool, Mark Chang, Scott Hauck

Mark L. Chang

Translating an algorithm designed for a general-purpose processor into an algorithm optimized for custom logic requires extensive knowledge of the algorithm and the target hardware. Precis lets designers analyze the precision requirements of algorithms specified in Matlab. The design time tool combines simulation, user input, and program analysis to help designers focus their manual precision optimization efforts.

Low-Cost Stereo Vision On An Fpga, Chris A. Murphy, Daniel Lindquist, Ann Marie Rynning, Thomas Cecil, Sarah Leavitt, Mark L. Chang

Mark L. Chang

We present a low-cost stereo vision implementation suitable for use in autonomous vehicle applications and designed with agricultural applications in mind. This implementation utilizes the Census transform algorithm to calculate depth maps from a stereo pair of automotive-grade CMOS cameras. The final prototype utilizes commodity hardware, including a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA, to process 320times240 pixel images at greater than 150 frames per second and deliver them via a USB 2.0 interface.

Logo Programming (Part 1) - A Creative And Fun Way To Learn Mathematics And Problem-Solving, Abhay B. Joshi, Sandesh R. Gaikwad

Abhay B Joshi

Programming means tapping into the computerʹs immense power by talking with it directly. Through programming, children use the computerʹs terrific power to draw graphics, design animation, solve mathematical or word puzzles, and even build robots. This idea was first proposed in the famous book ʺMindstormsʺ by Seymour Papert and has subsequently been appreciated and praised by educators and parents all over the world.

Through programming, students discover that the computer is a powerful and flexible tool. Using interesting ideas embedded in programming environments, students solve problems in their favorite subjects, and also develop interest in ʺdifficultʺ subjects like Math and …

Logo Programming (Part 2) - A Creative And Fun Way To Learn Mathematics And Problem-Solving, Abhay B. Joshi, Sandesh R. Gaikwad

Abhay B Joshi

Programming means tapping into the computerʹs immense power by talking with it directly. Through programming, children use the computerʹs terrific power to draw graphics, design animation, solve mathematical or word puzzles, and even build robots. This idea was first proposed in the famous book ʺMindstormsʺ by Seymour Papert and has subsequently been appreciated and praised by educators and parents all over the world.

Through programming, students discover that the computer is a powerful and flexible tool. Using interesting ideas embedded in programming environments, students solve problems in their favorite subjects, and also develop interest in ʺdifficultʺ subjects like Math and …

Improving The Relevancy Of Document Search Using The Multi-Term Adjacency Keyword-Order Model, Ram Gopal Raj

Ram Gopal Raj

This paper presents an enhanced vector space model, Multi-Term Adjacency Keyword-Order Model, to improve the relevancy of search results, specifically document search. Our model is based on the concept of keyword grouping. The keyword-order relationship in the adjacency terms is taken into consideration in measuring a term’s weight. Assigning more weights to adjacency terms in a query order results in the document vector being moved closer to the query vector, and hence increases the relevancy between the two vectors and thus eventually results in documents with better relevancy being retrieved. The performance of our model is measured based on precision …

Automated Web Based System For Bone Age Assessment Using Historam Technique, Ram Gopal Raj

Ram Gopal Raj

Bone age assessment (BAA) is often used to evaluate the growth status of children as part of the detection of hormonal problems and genetic disorders. The determination of skeletal maturity is done based on a radiological examination of the hand-wrist skeletal area.This paper introduces a novel approach for BAA that utilizes a histogram based comparison technique. This approach is executed as a web based system that uses an image repository and similarity measures based on content-based image retrieval. This study aims to overcome to the limitations of traditional methods utilized to estimate human age which were often imprecise.The system provides …

Ramified Structural Recursion And Corecursion, Norman Danner, James Royer

Norman Danner

We investigate feasible computation over a fairly general notion of data and codata. Specifically, we present a direct Bellantoni-Cook-style normal/safe typed programming formalism, RS1, that expresses feasible structural recursions and corecursions over data and codata specified by polynomial functors. (Lists, streams, finite trees, infinite trees, etc. are all directly definable.) A novel aspect of RS1 is that it embraces structure-sharing as in standard functional-programming implementations. As our data representations use sharing, our implementation of structural recursions are memoized to avoid the possibly exponentially-many repeated subcomputations a naive implementation might perform. We introduce notions of size for representations of data (accounting …