Programming Languages and Compilers Commons^™

An Immersive Telepresence System Using Rgb-D Sensors And Head-Mounted Display, Xinzhong Lu, Ju Shen, Saverio Perugini, Jianjun Yang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to effectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The …

Transforming C Openmp Programs For Verification In Civl, Michael Rogers

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There are numerous way to express parallelism which can make it challenging for developers to verify these programs. Many tools only target a single dialect but the Concurrency Intermediate Verification Language (CIVL) targets MPI, Pthreads, and CUDA. CIVL provides a general concurrency model that can represent pro- grams in a variety of concurrency dialects. CIVL includes a front-end that support all of the dialects mentioned above. The back-end is a verifier that uses model checking and symbolic execution to check standard properties.

In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a transformer that will take C OpenMP programs and transform …

Changes On Cran, Kurt Hornik, Achim Zeileis

The R Journal

New packages in CRAN task views

New contributed packages

Other changes

Abctools: An R Package For Tuning Approximate Bayesian Computation Analyses, Matthew A. Nunes, Dennis Prangle

The R Journal

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a popular family of algorithms which perform approximate parameter inference when numerical evaluation of the likelihood function is not possible but data can be simulated from the model. They return a sample of parameter values which produce simulations close to the observed dataset. A standard approach is to reduce the simulated and observed datasets to vectors of summary statistics and accept when the difference between these is below a specified threshold. ABC can also be adapted to perform model choice.

In this article, we present a new software package for R, abctools which provides methods …

Bsgs: Bayesian Sparse Group Selection, Kuo-Jung Lee, Ray-Bing Chen

The R Journal

An R package BSGS is provided for the integration of Bayesian variable and sparse group selection separately proposed by Chen et al. (2011) and Chen et al. (in press) for variable selection problems, even in the cases of large p and small n. This package is designed for variable selection problems including the identification of the important groups of variables and the active variables within the important groups. This article introduces the functions in the BSGS package that can be used to perform sparse group selection as well as variable selection through simulation studies and real data.

Fitting Conditional And Simultaneous Autoregressive Spatial Models In Hglm, Moudud Alam, Lars Rönnegård, Xia Shen

The R Journal

We present a new version ( 2.0) of the hglm package for fitting hierarchical generalized linear models (HGLMs) with spatially correlated random effects. CAR() and SAR() families for con ditional and simultaneous autoregressive random effects were implemented. Eigen decomposition of the matrix describing the spatial structure (e.g., the neighborhood matrix) was used to transform the CAR/SARrandomeffects into an independent, but heteroscedastic, Gaussian random effect. A linear predictor is fitted for the random effect variance to estimate the parameters in the CAR and SAR models. This gives a computationally efficient algorithm for moderately sized problems.

Conference Report: User! 2015, Torben Tvedebrink

The R Journal

The11thinternational R user conference, useR! 2015, took place in Aalborg, Denmark, 1–3 July 2015. The Department of Mathematical Sciences, Aalborg University, hosted the conference, which took place in Aalborg Congress and Culture Centre.

Working With Multilabel Datasets In R: The Mldr Package, Francisco Charte, David Charte

The R Journal

Most classification algorithms deal with datasets which have a set of input features, the variables to be used as predictors, and only one output class, the variable to be predicted. However, in late years many scenarios in which the classifier has to work with several outputs have come to life. Automatic labeling of text documents, image annotation or protein classification are among them. Multilabel datasets are the product of these new needs, and they have many specific traits. The mldr package allows the user to load datasets of this kind, obtain their characteristics, produce specialized plots, and manipulate them. The …

Altopt: An R Package For Optimal Experimental Design Of Accelerated Life Testing, Kangwon Seo, Rong Pan

The R Journal

The R package ALTopt has been developed with the aim of creating and evaluating optimal experimental designs of censored accelerated life tests (ALTs). This package takes the generalized linear model approach to ALT planning, because this approach can easily handle censoring plans and derive information matrices for evaluating designs. Three types of optimality criteria are considered: D-optimality for model parameter estimation, U-optimality for reliability prediction at a single use condition, and I-optimality for reliability prediction over a region of use conditions. The Weibull distribution is assumed for failure time data and more than one stress factor can …

News From The Bioconductor Project, The Bioconductor Team

The R Journal

The Bioconductor project provides tools for the analysis and comprehension of high throughput genomic data. The 1104 software packages available in Bioconductor can be viewed at http://bioconductor.org/packages/. Navigate packages using ‘biocViews’ terms and title search. Each package has an html page with a description, links to vignettes, reference manuals, and usage statistics. Start using Bioconductor version 3.2 by installing R 3.2.3 and evaluating the commands

Clustvarlv: An R Package For The Clustering Of Variables Around Latent Variables, Evelyne Vigneau, Mingkun Chen, El Mostafa Qannari

The R Journal

The clustering of variables is a strategy for deciphering the underlying structure of a data set. Adopting an exploratory data analysis point of view, the Clustering of Variables around Latent Variables (CLV) approach has been proposed by Vigneau and Qannari (2003). Based on a family of optimization criteria, the CLV approach is adaptable to many situations. In particular, constraints may be introduced in order to take account of additional information about the observations and/or the variables. In this paper, the CLV method is depicted and the R package ClustVarLV including a set of functions developed so far within this framework …

Codehow: Effective Code Search Based On Api Understanding And Extended Boolean Model (E), Fei Lv, Jian-Guang Lou, Shaowei Wang, Dongmei Zhang, Jainjun Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Over the years of software development, a vast amount of source code has been accumulated. Many code search tools were proposed to help programmers reuse previously-written code by performing free-text queries over a large-scale codebase. Our experience shows that the accuracy of these code search tools are often unsatisfactory. One major reason is that existing tools lack of query understanding ability. In this paper, we propose CodeHow, a code search technique that can recognize potential APIs a user query refers to. Having understood the potentially relevant APIs, CodeHow expands the query with the APIs and performs code retrieval by applying …

Challenges In Analyzing Software Documentation In Portuguese, Christoph Treude, Carlos A. Prolo, Fernando Figueira Filho

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many tools that automatically analyze, summarize, or transform software artifacts rely on natural language processing tooling for the interpretation of natural language text produced by software developers, such as documentation, code comments, commit messages, or bug reports. Processing natural language text produced by software developers is challenging because of unique characteristics not found in other texts, such as the presence of code terms and the systematic use of incomplete sentences. In addition, texts produced by Portuguese-speaking developers mix languages since many keywords and programming concepts are referred to by their English name. In this paper, we provide empirical insights into …

Detecting Broken Pointcuts Using Structural Commonality And Degree Of Interest, Raffi Khatchadourian, Awais Rashd, Hidehiko Masuhara, Takuya Watanabe

Publications and Research

Pointcut fragility is a well-documented problem in Aspect-Oriented Programming; changes to the base code can lead to join points incorrectly falling in or out of the scope of pointcuts. Deciding which pointcuts have broken due to base-code changes is daunting, especially in large and complex systems. We present an automated approach that recommends pointcuts that are likely to require modification due to a certain base-code change and ones that do not. Our hypothesis is that join points selected by a pointcut exhibit common structural characteristics. Patterns describing such commonalities recommend pointcuts that have potentially broken to the developer. The approach …

Contract-Based General-Purpose Gpu Programming, Alexey Kolesnichenko, Christopher M. Poskitt, Sebastian Nanz, Bertrand Meyer

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using GPUs as general-purpose processors has revolutionized parallel computing by offering, for a large and growing set of algorithms, massive data-parallelization on desktop machines. An obstacle to widespread adoption, however, is the difficulty of programming them and the low-level control of the hardware required to achieve good performance. This paper suggests a programming library, SafeGPU, that aims at striking a balance between programmer productivity and performance, by making GPU data-parallel operations accessible from within a classical object-oriented programming language. The solution is integrated with the design-by-contract approach, which increases confidence in functional program correctness by embedding executable program specifications into …

Leveraging Synergy Between Database And Programming Language Courses, Brian T. Howard

Computer Science Faculty publications

Undergraduate courses in database systems and programming languages are frequently taught without much overlap. This paper argues that there is a substantial benefit to emphasizing some areas of commonality, both old and new, between the two subjects. Examples of cross-fertilization that may be used to enhance one of both of the courses include query language design and implementation, object-relational mapping, transactional memory, and various aspects of the recent "NoSQL" movement.

Fraglight: Shedding Light On Broken Pointcuts In Evolving Aspect-Oriented Software, Raffi Khatchadourian, Awais Rashid, Hidehiko Masuhara, Takuya Watanabe

Publications and Research

Pointcut fragility is a well-documented problem in Aspect-Oriented Programming; changes to the base code can lead to join points incorrectly falling in or out of the scope of pointcuts. Deciding which pointcuts have broken due to base-code changes is daunting, especially in large and complex systems. We demonstrate an automated tool called FRAGLIGHT that recommends a set of pointcuts that are likely to require modification due to a certain base-code change. The underlying approach is rooted in harnessing unique and arbitrarily deep structural commonality between program elements corresponding to join points selected by a pointcut in a particular software version. …

Porting The Netbeans Java 8 Enhanced For Loop Lambda Expression Refactoring To Eclipse, Md Arefin, Raffi Khatchadourian

Publications and Research

Java 8 is one of the largest upgrades to the popular language and framework in over a decade. However, the Eclipse IDE is missing several key refactorings that could help developers take advantage of new features in Java 8 more easily. In this paper, we discuss our ongoing work in porting the enhanced for loop to lambda expression refactoring from the NetBeans IDE to Eclipse. We also discuss future plans for new Java 8 refactorings not found in any current IDE.

Porting The Netbeans Java 8 Enhanced For Loop Lambda Expression Refactoring To Eclipse, Md Arefin, Raffi Khatchadourian

Publications and Research

Java 8 is one of the largest upgrades to the popular language and framework in over a decade. However, the Eclipse IDE is missing several key refactorings that could help developers take advantage of new features in Java 8 more easily. In this paper, we discuss our ongoing work in porting the enhanced for loop to lambda expression refactoring from the NetBeans IDE to Eclipse. We also discuss future plans for new Java 8 refactorings not found in any current IDE.

Scalable Equivalence Checking For Behavioral Synthesis, Zhenkun Yang

Dissertations and Theses

Behavioral synthesis is the process of compiling an Electronic System Level (ESL) design to a register-transfer level (RTL) implementation. ESL specifications define the design functionality at a high level of abstraction (e.g., with C/C++ or SystemC), and thus provide a promising approach to address the exacting demands to develop feature-rich, optimized, and complex hardware systems within aggressive time-to-market schedules. Behavioral synthesis entails application of complex and error-prone transformations during the compilation process. Therefore, the adoption of behavioral synthesis highly depends on our ability to ensure that the synthesized RTL conforms to the ESL description. This dissertation provides an end-to-end scalable …