Learning at any-time, at anywhere, using any mobile computing platform learning (which we refer to as “education in your palm”) empowers informal and formal education. It supports the continued creation of knowledge outside a classroom, after-school programs, community-based organizations, museums, libraries, and shopping malls with under-resourced settings. In doing so, it fosters the continued creation of a cumulative body of knowledge in informal and formal education. Anytime, anywhere, using any device computing platform learning means that students are not required to attend traditional classroom settings in order to learn. Instead, students will be able to access and share learning resources from any mobile computing platform, such as smart phones, tablets using highly dynamic mobile and wireless ad-hoc networks. There has been little research on how to facilitate the integrated use of the service description, discovery and integration resources available in mobile and wireless ad-hoc networks including description schemas and mobile learning objects, and in particular as it relates to the consistency, availability, security and privacy of spatio-temporal and trajectory information. Another challenge is finding, combining and creating suitable learning modules to handle the inherent constraints of mobile learning, resource-poor mobile devices and ad-hoc networks. The aim of this research is to design, develop and implement the cutting edge context-aware and ubiquitous self-directed learning methodologies using ad-hoc and sensor networks. The emphasis of our work is on defining an appropriate mobile learning object and the service adaptation descriptions as well as providing mechanisms for ad-hoc service discovery and developing concepts for the seamless integration of the learning objects and their contents with a particular focus on preserving data and privacy. The research involves a combination of modeling, designing, and developing a mobile learning system in the absence of a networking infrastructure that integrates sensory data to support ubiquitous learning. The system includes mechanisms to allow content exchange among the mobile ad-hoc nodes to ensure consistency and availability of information. It also provides an on-the-fly content service discovery, query request, and retrieving data from mobile nodes and sensors.

<p>Quality has many definitions, and even more models and methods for assurance and evaluation associated with it. After an overview of existing concepts, we provide a comprehensive methodology for evaluating the quality of a software product, complete with methods for model structure and parameter elicitation and a way for mapping the quantitative results obtained from the evaluation to qualitative rankings of product characteristics (e.g. Poor, Good, Excellent). This is complemented with a compendium of quality characteristics and metrics associated with them and a generic quality model combining the works of McCall and Boehm with the international standard for software product quality ISO/IEC 9126-1. A discussion of the advantages that the use of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) can provide in this framework is also offered, as well as a method for transforming quality models to a form suited for BBN use. The methodology has been applied to a case study.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.5px Times}</p> <p>Most often the development of human-computer interfaces has been driven by the technology available at the time, and not by human factor issues. The popular 2D mouse is such a device. Through this effort we have developed an input pointing device which builds on tools and skills that humans have acquired through evolution and experience.</p> <p>Major trends of graphical input apparatus have gone from indirect computer input (mouse or trackball) to direct input (tablet and touch screen). The current and future trends are more towards 3D interaction and ubiquitous input concepts. Our current effort with the rpen falls somewhere in between. \iVhile it is desirable to take advantage of a mouse's device acquisition technique, we need the rpen to be a direct and more natural interactive input device. At the same time, the rpen is a 3D spatial input device, seeking to take advantage of the human knowledge and skills, naturally.</p> <p>The rpen is implemented on a Linux platform with the help of a kernel level p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.5px Times}</p> <p>device driver. The device uses an alternating current, electromagnetic motion</p> <p>tracker to provide six degrees-of-freedom absolute data. It also uses filtering and</p> <p>smoothing techniques to reduce the effects of electromagnetic distortions in the</p> <p>sensed data.</p> <p>With the rpen, a user can define a touch screen anywhere. The touch screen can be of any size and of any orientation, horizontal, vertical or tilted. A drafting board, drawing board or sketch board can be a touch sensitive surface. The basic concept of the rpen is implemented in software and is not dependent on the physical sensor used. So, multiple input modes can be implemented through the software interface and the rpen can switch between these modes seamlessly.</p> <p>This thesis presents a new 3D pointing device, the rpen, capable of doing both 2D and 3D interaction. As a byproduct of the current study it has beendetermined that the electromagnetic tracker is not suited to function as a motion tracker for any rpen-like generic pointing device.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.5px Times}</p> <p>Feature models are commonly used to capture the commonalities and the variability of product families. There are several feature modelling notations that correspondingly depict the concepts of feature modelling techniques. Therefore, the tools based on them reflect this diversity in the notations used and the fuzziness of the concepts adopted.</p> <p>The thesis discusses the design and the construction of a tool that is based on Product-Families Algebra (PFA) and on Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD). The first brings the mathematical formalism to the specifications of product families and the mathematical theory that enables calculations on feature-models. The second brings efficient algorithms in time and in space. Hence, the tool allows several algebraic manipulations of feature models that are specified within the language of PFA. We coined this tool Jory.</p> <p>The main contribution of the thesis is the design of the tool, and the implementation of four layers of its architectural design. As well, the thesis gives an implementation of multi-sets and the operations on them using BDDs.</p> <p>Several case studies are presented and used in the validation of the tool. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.5px Times}</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Times}</p> <p>Software certification is becoming a reasonable expectation from the ever growing number of software users. The process of software certification could be described as a process in which an auditing body ensures that the product conforms to certain requirements. The certification models which were analyzed included product based, component based and model based. With our results and findings we have developed a proof of concept context aware framework for product based software certification. The proposed product based software certification process is structured on component based certification principals, while the general core of the certification process is composed from known software certification models.</p> <p>The framework was developed within an OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative) environment which is being managed by a collection of automation scripts. The certification models which we reviewed did not represent their knowledge formally and did not have any mechanisms to derive indirect knowledge. To address this issue, we have developed an upper ontology to formally model higher level concepts for the certification, and described a general metric for assigning consistent weights to ontology classes. The framework provides a dynamic environment for the certification process by integrating development and certification domains with the help of ontology. Its main objective is to allow the certification process to be able to adjust to ever changing certification demands and extend more easily into different domains.</p> <p>The developed ontology can maintain many properties and attributes, but for some of these the measuring mechanism are unknown. Therefore, we have described the process on how to derive software metrics for measurable and subjective attributes which can be used to evaluate product, processes and resources. In conclusion, we have outlined some areas for future research.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>Version control systems are widely used to manage collections of files and directories, along with changes made to them over their lifetime. Any previously checked in version of a file is recoverable at any time from the repository. They allow people to work on the same files in a decentralized and concurrent way, while consistently managing and integrating changes.<br /> In this thesis we develop a subset of the SVN and CVS version control systems from specifications using Atelier B 4. Both of these systems are feature rich, widely used in cross-platform environments and representative of their class of file based extensional version control systems. Support for abstract data types like sets and refinement is well suited to the task. The most commonly used features such as Add, Check-in, Update are modeled in increasing detail in multiple refinement steps. Later refinement steps add features such as binary file support and the local cache. Having both models allows us to compare and contrast their feature sets. Documentation for SVN and CVS is extensive but informal. One feature of CVS required experimentation when the written documentation was insufficient. SVN is modelled in approximately 1400 lines in eight refinement steps with 109 proof obligations. CVS is likewise specified in roughly 1150 lines in seven steps with 29 proof obligations. With all proof obligations discharged we are confident the models represent the real systems and are a reasonable first step towards the goal of verifiable implementations of version control systems.</p> / Master of Computer Science (MCS)

<p>Domain experts, who create mathematical models and then implement scientific computing software typically focus on their models and implementation, but often pay less attention to systematic and extensive testing of their software. One reason for this situation is that domain experts usually lack software testing experience and know little about testing tools. However, it is desirable to introduce software testing techniques and tools into the development process of scientific computing software.</p> <p>This thesis originates from testing the scientific computing package DAETS, Differential-Algebraic Equations by Taylor Series. Documentation driven testing, code coverage analysis, and software testing tools are utilized to help verify and improve the quality of the software in this testing project. First, static inspection is used to check the correctness and completeness of the user guide, and verify the consistency of public interface information between the user guide and the source code. Then, black box test cases are designed based on public interface specifications in the user guide. After that, by executing code coverage analysis, test cases are added based on white box testing. Finally, the automatic testing framework tool CppUnit is used to automate the testing process, which greatly facilitates regression testing. In the DAETS testing projects, 163 test cases (more than 5000 line test code) are implemented, 27 documentation and software defects are found, and 150 lines of dead code are removed.</p> / Master in Advanced Studies (MAS)

<p>Specification of Large Scale Systems like Safety Critical Softwares is an important yet frequently tedious process. The requirement analysts often face a large number of conditions and cases during the process of requirement elicitation. One of the tools used to deal with this is employing multi-dimensional mathematical expressions, called <em>Tabular Expressions</em> by Parnas, to show and to study the specifications and to also check the properties of the system.</p> <p>The compositional syntax that was introduced by Kahl is a simple and comprehensible basis for implementation of tabular expressions. Kahl's implementation of his formalization in the functional programming language Haskell started a new approach to syntax and semantics of tabular expressions.</p> <p>In this thesis, we expand the project that Kahl initiated using his formalization to establish tool support of regular tables. A tool like this one has always been missing for people who use tabular expressions in the requirement analysis. We have designed a platform-independent, graphically interactive, and expansible tool using GTK in Haskell. In this thesis, we have also added the support of nested headers and implemented some features needed to work with nested headers for a better practical tool.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>Classification or Categorization is a text mining technique in which the given text documents are classified into specified categories. There are several techniques for classifying messages, ranging from simple K Nearest Neighbours to complicated Support Vector Machines. These classifiers have proven to be effective in cases where the documents in each category do not have a great deal of overlap with other documents. Designing a classifier that is effective in environments where there is no way to avoid this overlap, like em ails, text messages, or user opinions and comments, has remained a continuing challenge. This work is a proposal for a system that classifies such documents based on their content so they can be sorted by semantic significance. This has several applications in the real world, like triaging patient messages to physicians in the healthcare field or sorting user opinions on a product webpage. We have combined and tailored different classifiers to build a high performance classifier that supports this type of classification. The system has been tested and proven to have good performance with real-world user messages that were exchanged between patients and physicians during a hypertension prevention study.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>This project will implement an interactive system that allows users to interrogate the hierarchic program Library Index.</p> <p>Major components include transformation of the existing Index into the necessary Data Base and the Design and Implementation of the interactive query-answer system.</p> <p>The system will include the SCHEMA, SUB-SCHEMAS and the required application Programs.</p> / Master of Science (MS)