Nous avons étudié dans le cadre de cette thèse le design, la vérification et l'implémentation des systèmes à composants. Nous nous sommes intéressés en particulier aux formalismes exprimant des interactions complexes, dans lesquels les connecteurs servent non seulement au transfert de données mais également à la synchronisation entre composants. 1. DESIGN ET VÉRIFICATION Le design par contrat est une approche largement répandue pour développer des systèmes lorsque plusieurs équipes travaillent en parallèle. Les contrats représentent des contraintes sur les implémentations qui sont préservées tout au long du développement et du cycle de vie d'un système. Ils peuvent donc servir également à la phase de vérification d'un tel système. Notre but n'est pas de proposer un nouveau formalisme de spécification, mais plutôt de définir un ensemble minimal de propriétés qu'une théorie basée sur les contrats doit satisfaire pour permettre certains raisonnements. En cela, nous cherchons à séparer explicitement les propriétés spécifiques à chaque formalisme de spécification et les règles de preuves génériques. Nous nous sommes attachés à fournir des définitions suffisamment générales pour exprimer un large panel de langages de spécification, et plus particulièrement ceux dans lesquels les interactions sont complexes, tels que Reo ou BIP. Pour ces derniers, raisonner sur la structure du système est essentiel et c'est pour cette raison que nos contrats ont une partie structurelle. Nous montrons comment découle de la propriété nommée raisonnement circulaire une règle pour prouver la dominance sans composer les contrats, et comment cette propriété peut être affaiblie en utilisant plusieurs relations de raffinement. Notre travail a été motivé par les langages de composants HRC L0 et L1 définis dans le projet SPEEDS. 2. IMPLÉMENTATION Synthétiser un contrôleur distribué imposant une contrainte globale sur un système est dans le cas général un problème indécidable. On peut obtenir la décidabilité en réduisant la concurrence: nous proposons une méthode qui synchronise les processus de façon temporaire. Dans les travaux de Basu et al., le contrôle distribué est obtenu en pré-calculant par model checking la connaissance de chaque processus, qui reflète dans un état local donné toutes les configurations possibles des autres processus. Ensuite, à l'exécution, le contrôleur local d'un processus décide si une action peut être exécutée sans violer la contrainte globale. Nous utilisons de même des techniques de model checking pour pré-calculer un ensemble minimal de points de synchronisation au niveau desquels plusieurs processus partagent leur connaissance au court de brèves périodes de coordination. Après chaque synchronisation, les processus impliqués peuvent de nouveau progresser indépendamment les uns des autres jusqu'à ce qu'une autre synchronisation ait lieu. Une des motivations pour ce travail est l'implémentation distribuée de systèmes BIP. / In this thesis, we have studied how component-based systems are designed, verified and then implemented. We have focused in particular on formalisms involving complex interactions, where connectors are not only used to transfer data but also play a role in the synchronization of components. 1. DESIGN AND VERIFICATION Contracts are emerging as a concept of choice when systems are designed by teams working independently. They are design constraints for implementations which are maintained throughout the development and life cycle of the system, thus being also useful for verification. Our goal is not to propose a new design framework but rather to define a minimal set of properties which a given contract theory should satisfy to offer some reasoning rules. In that sense, we aim at a separation of concerns between framework-dependent properties and generic proof rules. We have focused on finding definitions expressive enough to encompass a great variety of existing specification formalisms, and in particular those in which interaction is complex, like Reo and BIP. For those, reasoning about the structure of the system is essential and this is why our contracts have a structural part. We show how so-called circular reasoning entails a rule for proving dominance (refinement between contracts) without composing contracts and how it can be relaxed by combining several refinement relations. Our work has a practical motivation in the component frameworks HRC L0 and L1 defined in the SPEEDS IP project. 2. IMPLEMENTATION The problem of synthesizing a distributed controller that imposes some global constraint on a system is, in general, undecidable. One can achieve decidability at the expense of reducing concurrency: we propose a method that synchronizes processes temporarily. In Basu et al., distributed control is achieved by first using model checking to precalculate the knowledge of each process, which reflects in a given local state all the possible situations of the other processes. Then, at runtime, the local controller of a process decides whether an action of that process can be executed without violating the imposed constraint. We use model checking techniques as well to precalculate a minimal set of synchronization points, where joint knowledge, i.e., knowledge common to several processes, can be achieved during short coordination phases. After each synchronization, the participating processes can again progress independently until a further synchronization is called for. One practical motivation for this work is the distributed implementation of BIP systems.

Todos os equinos que participam de competições de alto rendimento devem ser submetidos a um plano de treinamento estruturado baseado nas suas condições fisiológicas. Este deve ter como finalidade desenvolver um atleta que expresse o máximo do seu potencial, preservando o equino para que ele tenha uma vida desportiva mais duradoura possível e com o menor número de lesões. O treinamento físico promove alterações fisiológicas nos sistemas energético, aeróbico e anaeróbico, cardiovascular e respiratório, endócrino e musculoesquelético. O presente estudo teve como objetivos avaliar o metabolismo de equinos destinados à modalidade de Concurso Completo de Equitação (CCE) de uso militar, por um protocolo de treinamento intervalado, utilizando testes a campo, através da frequência cardíaca, respiratória e bioquímica sanguínea (Lactato, Glicose, Creatina Quinase, Lactato Desigrogenase e Aspartato Aminotransferase). Os equinos destinados à equipe de CCE foram submetidos primeiramente a três dias de teste (Etapa 1) com intervalo de quatro dias de descanso entre cada teste, após participaram de um programa de treinamento intervalado por três dias semanais durante seis semanas consecutivas e novamente foram submetidos aos mesmos testes realizados no inicio do programa (Etapa 2) Os testes consistiam em Teste de Velocidade Incremental (TVI) em cinco estágios de velocidades crescentes (240, 320, 400, 480 e 560 m/min); Teste de Salto Incremental (TSI) realizado em três estágios de altura crescente (40, 55 e 70 cm) e Percurso de Salto (PS) contendo 13 esforços em uma velocidade de 325m/min. No TVI foi encontrado aumento da Frequência Cardíaca (FC) em todos estágios de acordo com aumento de velocidade. Os valores de FC da Etapa 1 foram inferiores ao da Etapa 2. Obtivemos diferença significativa nas velocidades 240m/min; 320m/min; 480m/min e 10 min/Ap. A FR dos animais foi superior na Etapa 1 comparada à Etapa 2. A diminuição dessa variável se mostrou significativa em todas velocidades. O nível de lactato plasmático não teve diferença significativa comparando as duas etapas. Os valores de glicose, durante o teste, mostraram diferença significativa somente na velocidade de 240 m/min da Etapa 2 em comparação com a Etapa 1. A mensuração das enzimas musculares CK, AST e LDH mostraram, em quase totalidade, diminuição significativa nas velocidades da Etapa 2 comparadas a Etapa 1. Na velocidade de 560 m/min e 10min/Ap, Etapa 2, o nível de CK sanguíneo não mostrou diminuição significativa, nesta mesma velocidade não houve decréscimo significativo no valor de AST. Durante o TSI a frequência cardíaca mostrou aumento significativo nas alturas 55 e 70 cm A frequência respiratória mostrou uma diminuição significativa nas duas últimas voltas, 55 e 70cm, e nos 10min após exercício da Etapa 2 comparado a Etapa 1. Os valores de Lactato e glicose não distinguiram estatisticamente com algum nível de significância comparando as duas etapas. A enzima CK não teve diferença significativa entre as duas etapas em contrapartida a LDH mostrou diminuição em todos valores das mensurações da Etapa 2 comparado a Etapa 1. Os valores de AST diminuíram com significância aos 55cm e nos 10 min após exercício da Etapa 2. No PS a frequência cardíaca no não teve variação na comparação entre as duas etapas. A frequência respiratória teve uma taxa de recuperação com diminuição significativa na Etapa 2. Os valores de lactato não aumentaram durante o percurso de salto na Etapa 2; os valores de glicose diminuíram durante o percurso, mas não mostraram variações significativas em nenhuma das etapas. As enzimas musculares CK e AST tiveram um aumento significativo nos 10 min/Ap durante a Etapa 2 comparado a Etapa 1. Os três testes demonstraram um efeito positivo na avaliação do condicionamento dos equinos destinados ao CCE. Se este efeito pode ser maximizado aumentando a intensidade, frequência ou período de treinamento intervalado, pesquisas adicionais são recomendadas. / All horses that participate in high level competitions should be submitted to a training protocol based on their own physiological conditions. Its aim must be to develop an athlete able to achieve its maximum potential, preserving the horse in order to permit the longest sportive life as possible and with the minimum of injuries. The physical training promotes physiological changes in aerobic and anaerobic energetic systems, cardiac, respiratory, endocrine and muscleskeletal systems. This study’s objective is to evaluate the athletic metabolism of eventing horses, using an interval training protocol. Field tests observing heart rate, respiratory rate and blood biochemistry (Lactate, Glucose, Kinase Creatine, Dehydrogenase Lactate and Aminotransferase) were used. The eventing team’s horses were submitted, firstly, to three tests (Phase 1), with a four days rest between each test. Then, after accomplishing a six week interval training protocol, a new sequence of tests were performed (Phase 2), repeating exactly those performed on Phase 1. The tests were: Incremental Speed Test in five raising speed stages (240, 320, 400, 480 and 560 m/min); Incremental Jumping Test in three increasing heights (40, 55 and 70cm); and Show Jumping Course Test with 13 fences and 380m/min speed. In the IST a heart rate increment was found in all stages according to the speed raising. The heart rate numbers on Phase 1 were lower than in Phase 2. Significant difference was found in speeds 240, 320 and 480m/min, and also 10 minutes after the last stage. The animals´ respiratory rate in Phase 1 was higher than in Phase 2. The lowering in this parameter was significant at all speed stages Plasma lactate levels showed no significant difference between the two Phases. Glucose numbers showed significant difference between Phase 1 and 2 only in the 240m/min speed stage. The measurement of CK, AST and LDH enzymes showed, in almost all tests, significant decreasing numbers in Phase 2 compared to Phase 1. In 560m/min speed and 10’ after, at Phase 2, Blood CK and AST levels showed no significant decrease. During IJT the heart rate numbers increased significantly in 55cm and 70cm heights. Respiratory rates decreased significantly in 55cm and 70cm heights and also 10’ after, comparing Phase 2 to Phase 1. Glucose and Lactate values had no significant statistic difference between the two Phases. CK enzyme showed no significant difference between the two Phases, although LDH showed decreasing measurement values in Phase 2 when compared to Phase 1. AST values decreased significantly in 55cm, 70cm and 10’after at Phase 2. In SJCT the heart rate had no variation comparing the two Phases. Respiratory rate showed significant decreasing in recovery rate on Phase 2. Lactate values did not increase during SJCT on Phase two; Glucose decreased during the SJCT, but did not show significant variation in any of the two Phases. CK and AST muscle enzymes increased significantly in 10’after at Phase 2 when compared to Phase 1. All three tests have a positive effect on the physical fitness level of eventing horses. Whether this effect can be maximized by increasing intensity, frequency or interval training period, further research is recommended.

abstract: UVLabel was created to enable radio astronomers to view and annotate their own data such that they could then expand their future research paths. It simplifies their data rendering process by providing a simple user interface to better access sections of their data. Furthermore, it provides an interface to track trends in their data through a labelling feature. The tool was developed following the incremental development process in order to quickly create a functional and testable tool. The incremental process also allowed for feedback from radio astronomers to help guide the project's development. UVLabel provides both a functional product, and a modifiable and scalable code base for radio astronomer developers. This enables astronomers studying various astronomical interferometric data labelling capabilities. The tool can then be used to improve their filtering methods, pursue machine learning solutions, and discover new trends. Finally, UVLabel will be open source to put customization, scalability, and adaptability in the hands of these researchers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Software Engineering 2019

The problem studied was the poor academic achievement of middle school students in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Research indicates that a growth mindset positively affects a student's academic achievement and motivation to learn. However, despite the importance of mindset in fostering student success and enhancing learning, mindset remains underexplored in the CNMI. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to fill this gap in knowledge by investigating teachers' knowledge, perceptions, and practices concerning mindset in the CNMI. Three research questions examined teachers' knowledge and perceptions of mindset in the CNMI and how teachers described and demonstrated the use of mindset in their practices. Dweck's seminal work on mindset served as the conceptual framework. Social constructivism guided the study process. Qualitative data were collected from 15 purposively sampled teachers at a local CNMI middle school. Data were analyzed through categorization and codification, from which emerging themes were used to answer research questions. Results indicated that teachers in the local middle school have limited knowledge and inaccurate perceptions regarding the mindset concept. Accordingly, the analysis recommended the need for and served as the basis for the design of a professional development workshop about mindset for teachers throughout the CNMI to enhance teacher instruction and improve student learning, thus promoting positive social change.

In this thesis we present an incremental learning algorithm for learning and classifying the pattern of movement of multiple objects in a dynamic scene. The method that we describe is based on symbolic representations of the patterns. The typical representation has a spatial component that describes the relationships of the objects and a temporal component that describes the ordering of the actions of the objects in the scene. The incremental learning algorithm (ILF) uses evidence based forgetting, generates compact concept structures and can track concept drift.We also present two novel algorithms that combine incremental learning and image analysis. The first algorithm is used in an American Football application and shows how natural language parsing can be combined with image processing and expert background knowledge to address the difficult problem of classifying and learning American Football plays. We present in detail the model developed to representAmerican Football plays, the parser used to process the transcript of the American Football commentary and the algorithms developed to label the players and classify the queries. The second algorithm is used in a cricket application. It combines incremental machine learning and camera motion estimation to classify and learn common cricket shots. We describe the method used to extract and convert the camera motion parameter values to symbolic form and the processing involved in learning the shots.Finally, we explore the issues that arise from combining incremental learning with incremental recognition. Two methods that combine incremental recognition and incremental learning are presented along with a comparison between the algorithms.

This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part considers and develops some of the statistics used in genetic programming (GP) while the second uses those statistics to study and develop a form of incremental evolution and an early termination heuristic for GP. The first part looks in detail at success proportion, Koza's minimum computational effort, and a measure we rename "success effort". We describe and develop methods to produce confidence intervals for these measures as well as confidence intervals for the difference and ratio of these measures. The second part studies Jackson's fitness-based incremental evolution. If the number of fitness evaluations are considered (rather than the number of generations) then we find some potential benefit through reduction in the effort required to find a solution. We then automate the incremental evolution method and show a statistically significant improvement compared to GP with automatically defined functions (ADFs). The success effort measure is shown to have the critical advantage over Koza's measure as it has the ability to include a decreasing cost of failure. We capitalise on this advantage by demonstrating an early termination heuristic that again offers a statistically significant advantage.

Dr. Christenson determined that the current project critical success factors identified in the literature are necessary but not sufficient to explain all project success. He explored the construct of 'project vision' as a critical success factor impacting project success. The findings of the multiple case studies strongly suggest that a project's 'vision' is a critical success factor to successful project outcomes. As such, the projects examined represented a continuum of change projects from changes to business practices to holistic cultural change (where the desired end state was not fully known). The project vision was found to be instrumental in signalling change to all stakeholders. Similarly, the project vision was found to be critical in knowledge management projects where the purpose is to share new, best or next best practices. The research also shows that the maintenance of a project vision has significant impacts on the successful completion of the project, especially on its timeliness for completion due to enhanced decision making. A project vision needs to be a shared vision of all stakeholders and the project champion, sponsor, and manager all have a role in communicating and maintaining the project vision throughout the lifecycle of the project. A multiple case study method was conducted within a public service organization. The study's findings provide a significant contribution to the practice of project management.

<p>The aim of the main work in the thesis is to investigate Incremental Evolution methods for designing a suitable behavior arbitration mechanism for behavior-based (BB) robot controllers for autonomous mobile robots performing tasks of higher complexity. The challenge of designing effective controllers for autonomous mobile robots has been intensely studied for few decades. Control Theory studies the fundamental control principles of robotic systems. However, the technological progress allows, and the needs of advanced manufacturing, service, entertainment, educational, and mission tasks require features beyond the scope of the standard functionality and basic control. Artificial Intelligence has traditionally looked upon the problem of designing robotics systems from the high-level and top-down perspective: given a working robotic device, how can it be equipped with an intelligent controller. Later approaches advocated for better robustness, modifiability, and control due to a bottom-up layered incremental controller and robot building (Behavior-Based Robotics, BBR). Still, the complexity of programming such system often requires manual work of engineers. Automatic methods might lead to systems that perform task on demand without the need of expert robot programmer. In addition, a robot programmer cannot predict all the possible situations in the robotic applications. Automatic programming methods may provide flexibility and adaptability of the robotic products with respect to the task performed. One possible approach to automatic design of robot controllers is Evolutionary Robotics (ER). Most of the experiments performed in the field of ER have achieved successful learning of target task, while the tasks were of limited complexity. This work is a marriage of incremental idea from the BBR and automatic programming of controllers using ER. Incremental Evolution allows automatic programming of robots for more complex tasks by providing a gentle and easy-to understand support by expertknowledge — division of the target task into sub-tasks. We analyze different types of incrementality, devise new controller architecture, implement an original simulator compatible with hardware, and test it with various incremental evolution tasks for real robots. We build up our experimental field through studies of experimental and educational robotics systems, evolutionary design, distributed computation that provides the required processing power, and robotics applications. University research is tightly coupled with education. Combining the robotics research with educational applications is both a useful consequence as well as a way of satisfying the necessary condition of the need of underlying application domain where the research work can both reflect and base itself.</p>

<p>This master thesis has been done at Enea Epact AB. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement a Link Quality Control algorithm for GPRS/EPGRS in the current testing tool. A Link Quality Control (LQC) shall take quality values from mobile stations and base stations and decide a codingsscheme that opimizes the throughput of data. </p><p>The Advantage with LQC is that it adapts the used coding scheme to the channel quality. If the channel quality is too bad for the used coding scheme, a slower coding scheme with more redundancy should be selected. On the other hand, if the channel quality is too good for the used coding scheme, LQC should recommend a faster coding scheme with less redundancy. </p><p>The testing tool is now using a static coding schme that doesn’t change during a data session. An LQC is therefore necessary for better simulation of the traffic and to make the tests more real.</p>

There is now considerable controversy concerning the role that incremental change plays in the process of organizational transformation. Some scholars assert that incremental change is the primary source of resistance to more radical re-orientations, while others argue that on occasion, ongoing incremental change can produce dramatic transformation. To help reconcile these competing perspectives, in this paper I report the results of an inductive study of one firm's successful attempt to improve continuously and incrementally its core manufacturing process. The principal results of this effort are: (1) to challenge the current view of the source of change in process-oriented improvement initiatives; and (2) to offer an alternative characterization of the mechanisms through which competence-enhancing, incremental change actually occurs. The theory emerging from this analysis provides one path to resolving the dilemma posed by incremental change processes that can, on occasion, produce organizational transformation, but more often limit the organization's ability to adapt to its environment. / MIT Center for Innovation in Product Development under NSF Cooperative Agreement Number EEC-9529140