With an increasing number of people who live in cities, urban mobility becomes one of the most important research fields in the so-called smart city environments. Urban mobility can be defined as the ability of people to move around the city, living and interacting with the space. For these reasons, urban accessibility represents a primary factor to keep into account for social inclusion and for the effective exercise of citizenship. In this thesis, we researched how to use crowdsourcing and participative sensing to effectively and efficiently collect data about aPOIs (accessible Point Of Interests) with the aim of obtaining an updated, trusted and completed accessible map of the urban environment. The data gathered in such a way, was integrated with data retrieved from external open dataset and used in computing personalized accessible urban paths. In order to deeply investigate the issues related to this research, we designed and prototyped mPASS, a context-aware and location-based accessible way-finding system.

Choreographies are a relatively new tool for designing distributed systems from a global viewpoint. Moreover, choreographies are also free from deadlocks and race conditions by design. Recent theoretical results defined proper Endpoint Projection (EPP) functions to compile choreographic specifications into their single components. Since EPPs are behavioural preserving, projected systems also enjoy freedom from deadlocks and races by construction. Aim of this PhD is to formalise non-trivial features of distributed systems with choreographies and to translate our theoretical results into the practice of implemented systems. To this purpose, we provide two main contributions. The first contribution tackles one of the most challenging features of distributed development: programming correct and consistent runtime updates of distributed systems. Our solution is a theoretical model of dynamic choreographies that provides a clear definition of which components and behaviours can be updated. We prove that compiled choreographic specifications are correct and consistent after any update. We also refine our theoretical model to provide a finer control over updates. On this refinement, we develop a framework for programming adaptable distributed systems. The second contribution covers one of the main issues of implementing theoretical results on choreographies: formalising the compilation from choreographies to executable programs. There is a sensible departure between the present choreographic frameworks and their theoretical models because their theories abstract communications with synchronisation on names (a la CCS/π-calculus) yet they compile to Jolie programs, an executable language that uses correlation — a renown technology of Service-Oriented Computing — for message routing. Our solution is a theory of Applied Choreographies (AC) that models correlation-based message passing. We pinpoint the key theoretical problems and formalise the principles that developers should follow to obtain correct implementations. Finally, we prove our approach by defining a correct compiler from AC to the calculus behind the Jolie language.

The continuous technological progress and the constant growing of information flow we observe every day, brought us an urgent need to find a way to defend our data from malicious intruders; cryptography is the field of computer science that deals with security and studies techniques to protect communications from third parties, but in the recent years there has been a crisis in proving the security of cryptographic protocols, due to the exponential increase in the complexity of modeling proofs. In this scenario we study interactions in a typed lambda-calculus properly defined to fit well into the key aspects of a cryptographic proof: interaction, complexity and probability. This calculus, RSLR, is an extension of Hofmann's SLR for probabilistic polynomial time computations and it is perfect to model cryptographic primitives and adversaries. In particular, we characterize notions of context equivalence and context metrics, when defined on linear contexts, by way of traces, making proofs easier. Furthermore we show how to use this techniqe to obtain a proof methodology for computational indistinguishability, a key notion in modern cryptography; finally we give some motivating examples of concrete cryptographic schemes.

La usabilidad es un punto dentro la calidad de software que muchas veces es omitida por los desarrolladores de productos software sobre todo en los productos educativos, este aspecto que aparenta poco relevante, es desde un punto de vista el mas importante puesto que de el depende la amplia conexión software – persona (usuario), muchas veces el termino software amigable es expresado pero desconocen que se esta ablando de la usabilidad de un producto software, algunos nos preguntamos ¿el software es fácil de usar para mi?, o ¿es fácil usar para ti?, ¿quien podría usar este software sin dificultad? La respuesta es muy sencilla que el termino usabilidad es de carácter subjetivo, de esta manera nace la iniciativa de formular un modelo que evalué la usabilidad de productos software educativos. En el presente trabaj o se estudia la usabilidad como elemento subjetivo dentro la calidad de software, para esto tomamos como punto de referencia a las normas ISO 9126 de calidad de software y además las teorías de la lógica difusa para tratar la subjetividad de la usabilidad y convertirla en un termino entendible y razonable, con este modelo podremos medir el grado de usabilidad de un producto educativo en cuestión, y expresar si este producto será entendido, aprendido, agradable y fácil de operar, por otro lado se trata de definir criterios de usuario o requerimientos de niños entre 5 a 7 años que son los candidatos perfectos para el experimento, y tratar de averiguar que es lo que necesita un niño en esta edad para poder usar un software educativo sin dificultad.

El presente Trabajo de Grado forma parte de los diversos Proyectos del Instituto de Investigaciones Geológicas de la utaller. El área de estudio abarca un segmento ubicado en zonas aledañas a las localidades de Viscachani y Patacamaya (Prov. Aroma, Departamento de La Paz) en el borde occidental de la Faja Plegada y Corrida de Huarina (FPCH) y parte del Altiplano Norte donde una serie de pliegues y cabalgamientos de vergencia SW afectan a rocas del Paleozoico y el Mesozoico, así como también a las formaciones continentales del Cenozoico asociadas al funcionamiento de eventos tectónicos. Durante el Cenozoico, particularmente en el Mioceno medio, la actividad magmática se manifestó con gran intensidad formando un cinturón longitudinal de rumbo N-S, desde el sur del Perú hasta el norte argentino. Este magmatismo se dio en condiciones de solevantamiento de la región andina, acortamiento y espesamiento de la corteza terrestre ligado a largas fases compresionales del ciclo Andino II, además de la subducción de la placa oceánica en el borde occidental y el bajocorrimiento del Cratón Brasileño por debajo de la Cordillera Oriental crearon las condiciones necesarias para dicho magmatismo. En La región de Patacamaya- Viscachani se hace evidente el emplazamiento de cuerpos intrusivos o sub-volcánicos de dimensiones moderadas pertenecientes al magmatismo Cenozoico (Mioceno Medio-Superior). Las rocas ígneas estudiadas son generalmente de composición andesítica, derivaron de un magma de afinidad alcalina con bajo grado de fusión parcial a partir de un manto metasomatizado en un ambiente compresivo de trasarco con influencia de subducción; dicho magma al ascender a la superficie sufrió procesos de diferenciación y adquirió características de un magma calcoalcalino rico en potasio. El conocimiento y el origen de las rocas magmaticas, constituye un elemento fundamental para entender la geodinámica de sector y las potencialidades a escala regional de los yacimientos minerales asociados.

In this thesis, the author presents a query language for an RDF (Resource Description Framework) database and discusses its applications in the context of the HELM project (the Hypertextual Electronic Library of Mathematics). This language aims at meeting the main requirements coming from the RDF community. in particular it includes: a human readable textual syntax and a machine-processable XML (Extensible Markup Language) syntax both for queries and for query results, a rigorously exposed formal semantics, a graph-oriented RDF data access model capable of exploring an entire RDF graph (including both RDF Models and RDF Schemata), a full set of Boolean operators to compose the query constraints, fully customizable and highly structured query results having a 4-dimensional geometry, some constructions taken from ordinary programming languages that simplify the formulation of complex queries. The HELM project aims at integrating the modern tools for the automation of formal reasoning with the most recent electronic publishing technologies, in order create and maintain a hypertextual, distributed virtual library of formal mathematical knowledge. In the spirit of the Semantic Web, the documents of this library include RDF metadata describing their structure and content in a machine-understandable form. Using the author's query engine, HELM exploits this information to implement some functionalities allowing the interactive and automatic retrieval of documents on the basis of content-aware requests that take into account the mathematical nature of these documents.

Biological data are inherently interconnected: protein sequences are connected to their annotations, the annotations are structured into ontologies, and so on. While protein-protein interactions are already represented by graphs, in this work I am presenting how a graph structure can be used to enrich the annotation of protein sequences thanks to algorithms that analyze the graph topology. We also describe a novel solution to restrict the data generation needed for building such a graph, thanks to constraints on the data and dynamic programming. The proposed algorithm ideally improves the generation time by a factor of 5. The graph representation is then exploited to build a comprehensive database, thanks to the rising technology of graph databases. While graph databases are widely used for other kind of data, from Twitter tweets to recommendation systems, their application to bioinformatics is new. A graph database is proposed, with a structure that can be easily expanded and queried.

A Smart City is a high-performance urban context, where citizens live independently and are more aware of the surrounding opportunities, thanks to forward-looking development of economy politics, governance, mobility and environment. ICT infrastructures play a key-role in this new research field being also a mean for society to allow new ideas to prosper and new, more efficient approaches to be developed. The aim of this work is to research and develop novel solutions, here called smart services, in order to solve several upcoming problems and known issues in urban areas and more in general in the modern society context. A specific focus is posed on smart governance and on privacy issues which have been arisen in the cellular age.

Recent research has shown that the performance of a single, arbitrarily efficient algorithm can be significantly outperformed by using a portfolio of —possibly on-average slower— algorithms. Within the Constraint Programming (CP) context, a portfolio solver can be seen as a particular constraint solver that exploits the synergy between the constituent solvers of its portfolio for predicting which is (or which are) the best solver(s) to run for solving a new, unseen instance. In this thesis we examine the benefits of portfolio solvers in CP. Despite portfolio approaches have been extensively studied for Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problems, in the more general CP field these techniques have been only marginally studied and used. We conducted this work through the investigation, the analysis and the construction of several portfolio approaches for solving both satisfaction and optimization problems. We focused in particular on sequential approaches, i.e., single-threaded portfolio solvers always running on the same core. We started from a first empirical evaluation on portfolio approaches for solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), and then we improved on it by introducing new data, solvers, features, algorithms, and tools. Afterwards, we addressed the more general Constraint Optimization Problems (COPs) by implementing and testing a number of models for dealing with COP portfolio solvers. Finally, we have come full circle by developing sunny-cp: a sequential CP portfolio solver that turned out to be competitive also in the MiniZinc Challenge, the reference competition for CP solvers.

Until few years ago, 3D modelling was a topic confined into a professional environment. Nowadays technological innovations, the 3D printer among all, have attracted novice users to this application field. This sudden breakthrough was not supported by adequate software solutions. The 3D editing tools currently available do not assist the non-expert user during the various stages of generation, interaction and manipulation of 3D virtual models. This is mainly due to the current paradigm that is largely supported by two-dimensional input/output devices and strongly affected by obvious geometrical constraints. We have identified three main phases that characterize the creation and management of 3D virtual models. We investigated these directions evaluating and simplifying the classic editing techniques in order to propose more natural and intuitive tools in a pure 3D modelling environment. In particular, we focused on freehand sketch-based modelling to create 3D virtual models, interaction and navigation in a 3D modelling environment and advanced editing tools for free-form deformation and objects composition. To pursuing these goals we wondered how new gesture-based interaction technologies can be successfully employed in a 3D modelling environments, how we could improve the depth perception and the interaction in 3D environments and which operations could be developed to simplify the classical virtual models editing paradigm. Our main aims were to propose a set of solutions with which a common user can realize an idea in a 3D virtual model, drawing in the air just as he would on paper. Moreover, we tried to use gestures and mid-air movements to explore and interact in 3D virtual environment, and we studied simple and effective 3D form transformations. The work was carried out adopting the discrete representation of the models, thanks to its intuitiveness, but especially because it is full of open challenges.