Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:51:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Message Sequence Charts (MSC) é uma linguagem gráfica, usada na academia e na indústria, cujo objetivo é descrever o comportamento de componentes de sistemas e seus ambientes. A sintaxe e a semântica de um diagrama MSC padrão são definidos pelo International Telecommunication Union. A motivação para esse trabalho foi originada a partir de esforços para modelar cenários de aplicações de aparelhos móveis com o objetivo de automatizar a geração de testes, no contexto de uma colaboração entre Centro de Informática da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (CIn- UFPE) e a Motorola, no contexto do projeto Brasil Test Center (BTC). Ao modelar algumas destas aplicações que envolvem múltipla sincronização utilizando como linguagem de modelagem, MSC padrão, constatou-se que os diagramas são de difícil entendimento ou com um comportamento diferente do desejado. É proposta neste trabalho uma extensão de MSC com o objetivo de permitir a descrição de mensagens síncronas, que permitem descrever eventos instantâneos (abstraindo-se a duração do tempo real para que a conexão seja estabelecida) e podendo envolver várias instâncias de MSC. Essa extensão é conservativa, no sentido que o comportamento das construções existentes não é afetado pela mesma; além disso, em um mesmo diagrama é possível conter mensagens síncronas e mensagens assíncronas. Foi desenvolvido um algoritmo de transformação, que a partir de um diagrama escrito na notação MSC estendido, gera um diagrama correspondente na notação de MSC padrão. Este algoritmo tem por objetivo permitir a transitividade entre as notações e demonstrar suas equivalências. Este algoritmo de transformação implementa mensagens síncronas como uma seqüência de mensagens assíncronas seguindo um algoritmo particular de handshake. A segunda contribuição desse trabalho é a definição de uma semântica para a notação padrão e estendida de MSC. Essa definição é dada em termos da álgebra de processos CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes). O formalismo introduzido na notação de Message Sequence Charts com CSP permite mostrar a equivalência entre um diagrama na notação de MSC estendido e seu correspondente descrito em MSC padrão, gerado a partir do algoritmo de transformação. Além disso, modelar MSC como um processo descrito na notação CSP permite uma análise sobre seus diagramas, usando um rico conjunto de leis algébricas de CSP, bem como o uso de ferramentas, como FDR2 e o Probe. Finalmente, para validar a estratégia proposta, desenvolveu-se um exemplo que ilustra a utilização da notação estendida de MSC, notação síncrona; a conversão desta notação para a notação padrão e a equivalência entre o MSC estendido e o padrão. Mostramos, ainda, o uso da ferramenta Power Tool Kit(PTK) para geração de casos de teste a partir de diagramas MSC

Submitted by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2016-02-18T18:24:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Marcus de Lima Braga.pdf: 6450946 bytes, checksum: 146975a14889793868be80d04a6c46c5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2016-02-18T19:37:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Marcus de Lima Braga.pdf: 6450946 bytes, checksum: 146975a14889793868be80d04a6c46c5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2016-02-18T19:39:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Marcus de Lima Braga.pdf: 6450946 bytes, checksum: 146975a14889793868be80d04a6c46c5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-18T19:39:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Marcus de Lima Braga.pdf: 6450946 bytes, checksum: 146975a14889793868be80d04a6c46c5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-01-05 / Não informada / Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has attracted the interest of researchers in applications development that operate on monitoring and control of physical phenomena, relying on its autonomy and exibility, and on its distributed nature and pervasive. If for one hand, this interest provides the development of new applications, on the other it increases its complexity and therefore costs. This is easily understood due their restrictive features, which make the crucial stages of software development (modeling, veri cation and testing) become a non-trivial task. The programming is carried out very close to the operating system (low level), favoring the distraction in the application of logic and thus requiring more concentration of the developer, as well as technical training, rare among experts. This scenario enables the creation of methodologies and tools that support development on this platform. This study aims to use the formal method called Communicating X-Machine in the construction of WSN applications, o ering an intuitive approach and a modular development, providing to the programmer a higher level of abstraction, making it easier to build applications until the code generation in nesC language programming (TinyOS platform). So, this paper aims to facilitate the development of applications, from their modeling until the code generation, providing to the developer an increase in the level of abstraction, a better understanding of the problem through its partitioning and ease of building WSN applications. / Rede de Sensores Sem Fio (RSSF) tem despertado o interesse de pesquisadores no desenvolvimento de aplicações que atuem no monitoramento e controle de fenômenos físicos, apoiando-se em sua autonomia e exibilidade, e em sua natureza distribuída e pervasiva. Se por um lado, esse interesse proporciona o desenvolvimento de novas aplica- ções, por outro, eleva sua complexidade e consequentemente seus custos. Isto é facilmente entendido devido suas características restritivas, que fazem com que os estágios cruciais do desenvolvimento de software (modelagem, veri cação e testes) se tornem tarefas não triviais. A programação é realizada muito próxima ao sistema operacional (baixo nível), favorecendo a distração na aplicação da lógica e exigindo, portanto, ao desenvolvedor maior concentração, além de formação técnica rara entre os especialistas. Este cenário propicia a criação de metodologias e ferramentas que deem suporte ao desenvolvimento nesta plataforma. Este trabalho tem por objetivo utilizar o método formal Communicating X-Machine na construção de aplicações RSSF, oferecendo uma abordagem intuitiva e um desenvolvimento modular, provendo ao programador elevação no nível de abstração, facilitando a construção de aplicações até a geração de código na linguagem de programa- ção nesC (plataforma TinyOS). Portanto, o presente trabalho pretende facilitar o desenvolvimento de aplicações, desde sua modelagem até a geração de código, proporcionando ao desenvolvedor o aumento no nível de abstração, melhor entendimento do problema através de seu particionamento e facilidade na construção de aplicações em RSSF.

Context. Public procurement is an important economic factor. To protect against corruption government organizations are required to apply principles of non-discrimination and transparency for the procurement of goods such as software and of services such as software development. As a consequence, communicating requirements in software procurement has become challenging from the perspective of fairness and transparency, and also from the perspectives of system value and acceptance. Objectives. This study investigates requirements communication techniques which are being practiced in WTO-regulated tenders. The study also identifies challenges and determines the efficiency, effectiveness, and legal compliances of these techniques Methods. A systematic literature review is used to determine requirements communication approaches used in public procurement projects and the difficulties identified. This is followed by a case study to research the known requirements communication techniques used in the selected case through conducting interviews and artifact analysis. Results. The contributions are guidelines for stakeholders to select suitable techniques to communicate requirements during the procurement process. Challenges and recommendations are presented to be taken into consideration while planning software procurements. Conclusions. This study concluded that from a total of 17 requirements communication techniques, 14 have been used in the project analyzed in the case study. It is also stated by the interviewees that all of the techniques are legal to use in public procurement with the exception of one, and this is Interview. From both the literature review and the case study conducted in this research, balanced communication techniques are concluded to be most recommended since they will lead to more interaction between customers and suppliers to communicate requirements.

This Master’s thesis explores environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) in the alpine sport industry. A mixed methods case with a single alpine sport provider in Quebec was performed. The first study is a qualitative examination of how and why ECSR is employed and communicated. Results indicate ECSR is strategically motivated, and as such, the focal organization runs the risk of using several greenwashing techniques in communications that could jeopardize gaining competitive advantage. The second study quantitatively investigates alpine sport consumers’ environmental expectations, engagement with environmental products, and perceptions of the focal organization’s environmental reputation. The results show the focal organization’s customers do indeed have environmental expectations, but believe the focal organization’s environmental reputation remains neutral. The thesis supports arguments of corporate social responsibility (CSR) being strategically motivated and other findings of skiers having conflicting environmental values. Lastly, the thesis provides insight regarding greenwashing, a phenomenon that remains unexplored in sport management.

This study explores what a company, that is working with sustainability or environmental issues, knows of their customers knowledge about this topic. How can this company get their customers more involved in sustainability issues and should they get them involved at all? This study was in collaboration with Big Image System (BIG) and data was collected and reviewed regarding the company’s recent social media activities on how they communicate their sustainability work to their customers. A survey was conducted and results show that most customers are aware of sustainability work in general and that the interest in environmental issues is high. They also show that distributing more relevant information to the customers is something the customers value and are interested in getting.

I alla designprocesser måste man ta hänsyn till ett mediums egenskaper. Detta är inget nytt inom design. Ändå förekommer det ofta inom människa --‐ dator interaction (HCI) och interaktiv systemdesign att teknikens egenskaper bara ses över som hastigast. Tekniken är ofta abstraherad, utan att tillräcklig uppmärksamhet ges till hur deras distinkta egenskaper öppnar upp för designmöjligheter. I den här rapporten beskrivs ett tillvägagångssätt som kallas Inspirational Bits för att bli mer bekant med designmaterialet inom HCI, det digitala materialet. Det är också ett sätt för att bli bättre på att förmedla kunskapen till alla gruppmedlemmar i ett interdisciplinärt designteam. Inspirational Bits skapas ”snabbt och smutsigt” men är fullt fungerande system i både hard--‐ och mjukvara, med målet att blotta en eller flera av de dynamiska egenskaperna hos digitala material. / In any design process, a medium’s properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still it is found that in Human--‐Computer Interaction (HCI) and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black--‐boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. This thesis describes an approach using Inspirational Bits to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. It is also a way to become better able to share some of this knowledge with all members of an interdisciplinary design team. Inspirational Bits are quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software with the single aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of some of the digital materials.

In a broader sense the main research objective of this thesis (and ongoing research work) is distributed knowledge management for mobile dynamic systems. But the primary focus and presented work focuses on communication/interoperability of heterogeneous entities in an infrastructure less paradigm, a distributed resource manipulation infrastructure and distributed learning in the absence of global knowledge. The research objectives achieved discover the design aspects of heterogeneous distributed knowledge systems towards establishing a seamless integration. This thesis doesn’t cover all aspects in this work; rather focuses on interoperability and distributed learning. Firstly a discussion on the issues in knowledge management for swarm of heterogeneous entities is presented. This is done in a broader and rather abstract fashion to provide an insight of motivation for interoperability and distributed learning towards knowledge management. Moreover this will also serve the reader to understand the ongoing work and research activities in much broader perspective. Primary focus of this thesis is communication/interoperability of heterogeneous entities in an infrastructure less paradigm, a distributed resource manipulation infrastructure and distributed learning in the absence of global knowledge. In dynamic environments for mobile autonomous systems such as robot swarms or mobile software agents there is a need for autonomic publishing and discovery of resources and just-in-time integration for on-the-fly service consumption without any a priori knowledge. SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) serves the purpose of resource reuse and sharing of services different entities. Web services (a SOA manifestation) achieves these objectives but its exploitation in dynamic environments, where the communication infrastructure is lacking, requires a considerable research. Generally Web services are exploited in stable client-server paradigms, which is a pressing assumption when dynamic distributed systems are considered. UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) is the main pediment in the exploitation of Web services in distributed control and dynamic natured systems. UDDI can be considered as a directory for publication and discovery of categorized Web services but assumes a centralized registry; even if distributed registries and associated mechanism are employed problems of collaborative communication in infrastructure less paradigms are ignored. Towards interoperability main contribution this thesis is a mediator-based distributed Web services discovery and invocation middleware, which provides a collaborative and decentralized services discovery and management middleware for infrastructure-less mobile dynamic systems with heterogeneous communication capabilities. Heterogeneity of communication capabilities is abstracted in middleware by a conceptual classification of computing entities on the basis of their communication capabilities and communication issues are resolved via conceptual overlay formation for query propagation in system. The proposed and developed middleware has not only been evaluated extensively using Player Stage simulator but also been applied in physical robot swarms. Experimental validations analyze the results in different communication modes i. active and ii. passive mode of communication with and without shared resource conflict resolution. I analyze discoverable Web services with respect to time, services available in complete view of cluster and the impact and resultant improvements in distributed Web services discovery by using caching and semantics. Second part of this thesis focuses on distributed learning in the absence of global information. This thesis takes the argument of defeasibility (common-sense inference) as the basis of intelligence in human-beings, in which conclusions/inferences are drawn and refuted at the same time as more information becomes available. The ability of common-sense reasoning to adapt to dynamic environments and reasoning with uncertainty in the absence of global information seems to be best fit for distributed learning for dynamic systems. This thesis, thus, overviews epistemic cognition in human beings, which motivates the need of a similar epistemic cognitive solution in fabricated systems and considers formal concept analysis as a case for incremental and distributed learning of formal concepts. Thesis also presents a representational schema for underlying logic formalism and formal concepts. An algorithm for incremental learning and its use-case for robotic navigation, in which robots incrementally learn formal concepts and perform common-sense reasoning for their intelligent navigation, is also presented. Moreover elaboration of the logic formalism employed and details of implementation of developed defeasible reasoning engine is given in the latter half of this thesis. In summary, the research results and achievements described in this thesis focus on interoperability and distributed learning for heterogeneous distributed knowledge systems which contributes towards establishing a seamless integration in mobile dynamic systems. / QC 20100614 / ROBOSWARM EU FP6

This report is the result of several interviews of employees within the field of pedagogy. The background behind this report is my period as a trainee in one of the daily activities in Malmo. In daily activities the employers gets training, education and guidance in Marte meo, which is funded by public finances. The method, which this study focuses upon is called Marte meo. It is a method of communicating and developing the means for the participants to evolve their skills in communicating and increase self esteem. In my time as a trainee I noticed that there was no follow up and no feedback to the educators. Nobody knew if the method was, in any way practiced. This study confirms that it in fact is practiced, but in several different ways, which leads to the conclusion that the qualities in the method is many and different from each other . The focus of this report lies completely on the employers in the daily activities. They have been given the opportunity to freely describe in detail how Marte meo is practiced, the pro's and con's of Marte meo and in which way the relations with the participants effect the professional pedagogy.

The ever-growing competition in current electronics industry has resulted in stringent time-to-market goals and reduced design time available to engineers. Lesser design time has subsequently raised a need for high-level synthesis design methodologies that raise the design to a higher level of abstraction. Higher level of abstraction helps in increasing the predictability and productivity of the design and reduce the number of bugs due to human-error. It also enables the designer to try out dierent optimization strategies early in the design stage. In-spite of all these advantages, high-level synthesis design methodologies have not gained much popularity in the mainstream design flow mainly because of the reasons like lack of readability and reliability of the generated register transfer level (RTL) code. The compiler framework presented in this thesis allows the user to draw high-level graphical models of the system. The compiler translates these models into synthesizeable RTL Verilog designs that exhibit their desired functionality following communicating sequential processes (CSP) model of computation. CSP model of computation introduces a good handshaking mechanism between different components in the design that makes designs less prone to timing violations during implementation and bottlenecks while in actual operation. / Master of Science

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / Using the framework for politeness developed by Brown and Levinson (1987), this research evaluates the production of politeness strategies by sophomore and senior EFL learners in Afghanistan by focusing on the language used in letters of inquiry. Twenty eight letters emailed by Afghan students at Balkh University were surveyed by thirteen native American English speakers. Each letter was surveyed by six different American participants who gave their perspectives about the effectiveness and politeness of the language used in the letters by the students. The American participants’ evaluations of politeness were compared with actual linguistic features employed, including the word choice in the salutation and closing, the use of indirect language, and politeness markers (e.g. thank you or other expressions of appreciation). The results show that a relationship between proficiency and politeness exists, consistent with the findings of Tanaka and Kawade (1982) who found that second language learners acquire both linguistic and pragmatic knowledge as the learning of the target language progresses. In addition, this study describes the linguistic behavior perceived as most polite by the native speakers and reflects on possible instructional implications.