The fact-value distinction has structured and still structures ongoing debates in metaethics, and all of the major positions in the field (expressivism, cognitivist realism, and moral error theory) subscribe to it. In contrast, I claim that the fact-value distinction is a contingent product of our intellectual history and a prime object for questioning. The most forceful reason for rejecting the distinction is that it presupposes a problematic understanding of the subject-object divide whereby one tends to view humans as the sole source of normativity in the world. My dissertation aims to disclose the background against which human ethical praxis is widely seen as a unique and special phenomenon among other phenomena. I show that ethical norms, as delimited by utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc., derive from an originary proto-ethical normativity at the heart of the real itself. Every object, human and nonhuman, presents itself as a bottomless series of cues or conditions of appropriateness that determine adequate and inadequate ways of relating to it. That is, objects demand something from other objects if they are to be related to; they condition other objects by soliciting a change in disposition, perception, or sense, and for this reason are sources of normativity in and unto themselves. Ethical norms, or values, are the human expression of the adequacy conditions with which all objects show themselves. In the post-Kantian landscape it is widely thought that human finitude constitutes the origin of ethical norms. Consequently, the world is divided up into morally relevant agents (humans) on one side, and everything else on the other. Adopting a deflationary view of agency, I argue that human-human and human-world relations differ from other relations in degree rather than kind. Thus, instead of a fact-value distinction, value is inextricably bound up with the factual itself. The critical upshot of my project is that traditional subject-oriented ethical theories have served to conceal the real demands of non-human objects (such as animals, plants, microorganisms, and artificially intelligent machines) in favor of specifically human interests. Such theories have also been leveraged frequently in exclusionary practices with respect to different groups within the human community (e.g. women and those of non-European descent) based on arbitrary criteria or principles.

Les zones humides, à l’interface entre terre et eau, sont des milieux riches et diversifiés, aux fonctions et valeurs multiples aujourd’hui largement reconnues. Face à la sensibilité grandissante des organisations gouvernementales, régionales et du public aux effets néfastes, directs ou indirects, de la régression, voire dans certains cas de la disparition des zones humides, l’inventaire, la délimitation, mais aussi la caractérisation et le suivi de ces milieux sont devenus une priorité. Si leur délimitation est aujourd’hui opérationnelle, l’évaluation de leurs fonctions n’a été opérée que sur des sites de quelques hectares, alors qu’il est nécessaire d’évaluer l’état fonctionnel des zones humides sur des territoires plus étendus pour les gérer. Les objectifs de cette thèse sont de développer une méthode permettant de spatialiser les fonctions des zones humides à l’échelle de territoires d’une centaine de Km² au minimum, d’évaluer des données de télédétection optiques à très haute résolution spatiale afin de produire des indicateurs de l’état fonctionnel des zones humides, et d’évaluer l’impact de changements d’occupation des sols sur ces fonctions. Pour cela, la démarche FAP a été adaptée et appliquée sur deux sites de 130 et 650 km² localisés en Bretagne et en Dordogne. Après avoir délimités et caractérisés les zones humides à partir de données de télédétection, des indicateurs spatialisés dérivés de ces données ont été utilisés pour évaluer des fonctions hydrologiques, biogéochimiques et écologiques. L’évolution de ces fonctions a ensuite été simulée selon différents scénarios de changements d’occupation des sols. Les résultats montrent l’intérêt des données de télédétection, en particulier LiDAR, pour caractériser avec précision la micro-topographie, le réseau hydrographique et la végétation des zones humides. Ces données permettent de cartographier le potentiel fonctionnel des zones humides à différentes échelles allant de la parcelle à l’ensemble du site, et ce pour différentes fonctions. La simulation des changements d’occupation des sols à l’horizon 2030 et l’évaluation de ceux-ci sur les fonctions des zones humides peuvent constituer un outil d’aide à la gestion de ces milieux. / Interfacing between land and water systems, wetlands perform multiple functions and values that are now widely recognized. Inventory, delineation, but also characterization and monitoring of wetlands are now a priority to address the regression and in some cases the loss of these ecosystems. While wetland delineation is widely performed, the assessment of their functions has been only made on small sites of several hectares, whereas it is necessary to evaluate wetland functional status on larger areas to manage them. The objectives of this thesis are to develop a method to map wetland functions on areas greater than a hundred square kilometers, evaluate optical remote sensing data with very high spatial resolution to produce indicators of functional status of wetlands, and assess the impact of land use change on these functions. For this, the FAP approach has been adapted and applied to two sites located in Brittany and Dordogne. Once having defined and characterized wetlands from remotely sensed data, the spatial indicators derived from these data were used to evaluate hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological wetland functions. The evolution of these functions was then simulated under different scenarios of land use changes. The results show the usefulness of remotely sensed data, especially LiDAR data, to accurately characterize the micro-topography, drainage network and vegetation of wetlands. The functional potential of wetlands can therefore be mapped at different scales from the plot to the whole site for various functions. The simulation of land-use changes for the period 2000–2030 and the evaluation of their impact on wetland functions can be a tool for managing these environments

Formal methods are necessary in achieving correct software: that is, software that can be proven to fulfil its requirements. Formal specifications are unambiguous and analysable. Building a formal model improves understanding. The modelling of nondeterminism, and its subsequent removal in formal steps, allows design and implementation decisions to be made when most suitable. Formal models are amenable to mathematical manipulation and reasoning, and facilitate rigorous testing procedures. However, formal methods are not widely used in software development. In most cases, this is because they are not suitably supported with development tools. Further, many software developers do not recognise the need for rigour. Object oriented techniques are successful in the production of large, complex software systems. The methods are based on simple mathematical models of abstraction and classifi cation. Further, the object oriented approach offers a conceptual consistency across all stages of software development. However, the inherent flexibility of object oriented approaches can lead to an incremental and interactive style of development, a consequence of which may be insuffi cient rigour. This lack of rigour is exacerbated by the inconsistent and informal semantics for object oriented concepts at all stages of development. Formal and object oriented methods are complementary in software development: object oriented methods can be used to manage the construction of formal models and formality can add rigour to object oriented software development. This thesis shows how formal object oriented development can proceed from analysis and requirements capture to design and implementation. A formal object oriented analysis language is defined in terms of a state transition system semantics. This language is said to be customer-oriented: a number of graphical views of object oriented relations in the formal analysis models are presented, and the specifi cations produced say what is required rather than how the requirements are to be met. A translation to ACT ONE provides an executable model for customer validation. This translation is founded on a precise statement of the relationship between classes and types (and subclassing and subtypes). The structure of the resulting ACT ONE requirements model corresponds to the structure of the problem domain, as communicated by the customer. The step from analysis to design requires an extension to the requirements model to incorporate semantics for object communication. A process algebra provides a suitable formal model for the specifi cation of communication properties. LOTOS, which combines ACT ONE and a process algebra in one coherent semantic model, provides a means of constructing object oriented design semantics. Design is de fined as the process of transforming a customer-oriented requirements model to an implementation-oriented design, whilst maintaining correctness. Correctness preserving transformations (CPTs) are defined for: transferring requirements structure to design structure, manipulating design structure and changing internal communication models. Design must be targetted towards a particular implementation environment. The thesis examines a number of different environments for the implementation of object oriented LOTOS designs. It illustrates the importance of understanding programming language semantics. We show how Eiffel can be used to implement formal object oriented designs. A case study which evaluates the formal object oriented models and methods, developed in this thesis, is reported. This identifi es re-use at all stages of software development and emphasises the role of structure: it improves understanding and communication, and makes validation and veri fication easier and better. The thesis shows that formal object oriented technology is ready for transfer to industry. These methods should be exploited sooner rather than later: object oriented development can incorporate formal methods without signi ficant cost, and formal methods can utilise the object oriented paradigm to manage complexity. The thesis provides a rationale for formal object oriented development and a set of conceptual tools which makes the development of software systems a true engineering discipline.

FOOPS is a concurrent object oriented specification language with an executable subset. In this thesis we propose an extension of FOOPS with features for specifying systems of distributed and autonomous objects. This extension supports most features of concurrent object oriented programming, including classes of objects with associated methods and attributes, object identity, dynamic object creation and deletion, overloading, polymorphism, inheritance with overriding, dynamic binding, concurrency, nondeterminism, atomic execution, evaluation of method expressions as background processes, and object protection. The main contribution of this thesis is to develop a framework for supporting formal development of software in the extension of FOOPS mentioned above. In particular, we introduce a structural operational semantics for FOOPS, a notion of refinement for concurrent object oriented programs, congruence properties of refinement of FOOPS programs, and tools for mechanising refinement proofs. The operational semantics is the core of the formal definition of FOOPS. It is used to define notions of refinement for FOOPS states, programs, and specifications. Those notions and associated proof techniques for proving refinement are used to illustrate stepwise formal development of programs in FOOPS. The congruence properties of refinement (with respect to some of FOOPS operators) justify compositional development of software in FOOPS. The tools help to validate the framework introduced in this thesis and motivate its use in practice.

[pt] O desenvolvimento de frameworks é caro, não só pela dificuldade intrínseca relacionada à captura do conhecimento do domínio, mas também por causa da falta de métodos e técnicas apropriados para dar suporte à sua evolução e desenvolvimento iterativo. Neste trabalho de tese é proposta a utilização de duas técnicas complementares para dar suporte a evolução de frameworks: regras de refactoring e regras de extensão. A técnica de refactoring foi desenvolvida para restruturar software de forma a tornar o código mais legível e fácil de ser reutilizado. Regras da extensão são propostas para modificar a estrutura de pontos de variação do framework, possibilitando a adição mais fácil de novas funcionalidades no design. Ambas as técnicas preservam o comportamento observável dos programas. Esta propriedade é verificada formalmente usando-se CCS e técnicas de verificação de modelo. A abordagem proposta é testada com o auxílio de uma ferramenta semiautomática, desenvolvida para dar suporte à aplicação das regras definidas. / [en] Framework development is expensive not only because of the intrinsic difficulty related to the elicitation of domain knowledge but also because of the lack of methods and techniques to support its evolution and interactive development. The present thesis proposes the use of two complementary techniques to support framework evolution: refactoring and extension rules. The refactoring technique has been developed to enable software re-structuring in a way to produce more readable and reusable code. Extension rules have been proposed to change the structure of the framework variation points by allowing the addition of new design functionalities. Both techniques preserve the observable behavior of programs. This property is formally verified in this work by using CCS approach to model checking. The proposed approach has been tested by means of a tool specially developed to support the application of the defined rules.

A project report submitted to the Faculty of Erlglncerlng, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science In Engineering Johannesburg 1993 / This Project Repolt r ''"lorts on the study of an approach to building integrated real-time software systems based on re-usable object-oriented components. The basis of the approach is the development of a a-layered structure of components, where each layer is built on the underlying layer of components, The lower layer of components consists of generic re-usable building blocks that may be re-used for building and integrating other real-time applications. The middle layer consists of components that are generic to the application domain, and the top layer consists of components that are specific to each application of that application domain. The Report includes researching and developing methods of communicating between these building blocks using an OSI/CMIP-conformant 'software highway" and in this regard particular attention is given to the formal and de facto industry standards. With this approach, it is argued that the application engineer can effectively build new applications using the re-usable components. This is demonstrated by reporting on the implementation of a large real-world Telecommunications Network Management application. The Project Report contains a critical analysis of the technical, organisational and project management issues of this Object-oriented component approach as compared to the traditional development approach. The Report concludes that despite certain technical and organisational concerns, the object-oriented approach does indeed yield several worthwhile benefits for developing real-time software systems. These benefits include genuine re-usability, and l"1proved productivity, testability and maintainability.

This thesis documents the modelling of generic Environmental Control System(ECS) of an aircraft in Modelica by utilizing components from free version of theTTECCS (Technical Thermodynamic Environmental Control and Cooling Systems) library. In doing so, components used for developing ECS from the TTECCS library are mathematically verified with theoretical formula in MATLAB. Selected components are investigated with valid input data to initialize the simulation and verify its behaviors with corresponding available data. Hereinafter, the object-oriented modelling method is used to integrate ECS components to develop a functional system. The main function of ECS is to regulate the pressure and temperature inside the cabin to accepted physiology flight safetylevels. Different types of ECS architecture are presented in this document. An ECS developed here is based on the bootstrap system and consists only one cooling unit comprised with the source, pipes, two heat exchanger, compressor, turbine, temper-ature control valve, pressure control valve, and sinks. Dry air(Ideal gas) is used as a medium in the system. Temperature drop along each component corresponds to available A320 cruise flight data in order to calculate the top level parameter and to initialize the components, subsequently an ECS system. Several systematized methods for Object-oriented modelling and system design were studied and steps are extracted accordingly that suits to initiate the procedurefor this project, which is also presented. Time domain simulation is performed inModelica and Dymola. A simplified control system is built to regulate the system, therefore restrained it as a future work to develop real in-flight condition control system of an ECS.Top level parameters were selected within valid customized ranges for developing a performance map of the components. After generating the map, optimal data from the map were taken to initialize final ECS. The simulation results of the final model is then compared to A320 flight data which is comparable in behavior; this was expected. Above all, simulation environment Modelica and free version of TTECCS library components are reliable to develop ECS in order to investigate ECS components behavior and predict cabin conditions before developing a prototype.

Cette thèse traite des langages à objets en héritage multiple et typage statique exécutés avec des machines virtuelles. Des analogies sont à faire avec Java bien que ce langage ne soit pas en héritage multiple.Une machine virtuelle est un système d'exécution d'un programme qui se différencie des classiques compilateurs et interpréteurs par une caractéristique fondamentale : le chargement dynamique. Les classes sont alors découvertes au fil de l'exécution.Le but de la thèse est d'étudier et de spécifier une machine virtuelle pour un langage à objets en héritage multiple, pour ensuite spécifier et implémenter des protocoles de compilation/recompilation. Ces derniers devront mettre en place les optimisations et les inévitables mécanismes de réparations associés.Nous présenterons d'abord l'architecture et les choix réalisés pour implémenter la machine virtuelle : ceux-ci utilisent le langage Nit en tant que langage source ainsi que le hachage parfait, une technique d'implémentation de l'héritage multiple.Ensuite nous présenterons les spécifications pour implémenter des protocoles de compilation/recompilation ainsi que les expérimentations associées.Dans ce cadre, nous avons présenté une extension des analyses de préexistence et de types concrets, pour augmenter les opportunités d'optimisations sans risque. Cette contribution dépasse la problématique de l'héritage multiple. / This thesis is about object-oriented languages in multiple inheritance and static typing executed by virtual machines.We are in the context of a Java-like language and system but in multiple inheritance.A virtual machine is an execution system which is different from static compilers and interpreters since they are in dynamic loading.This characteristic makes classes to be discovered during the execution.The thesis' goal is to study, specify and implement a virtual machine for an object-oriented language in multiple inheritance and then in a second step to specify and implement compilation/recompilation protocols.These protocols are in charge of optimizations and unavoidable repairing.We will present the architecture of the virtual machine : the used language is Nit, and perfect hashing as the multiple inheritance implementation technique. Then we will present the protocols and the experiments.In this thesis, we have presented an extension of preexistence and concrete types analysis to increase optimization opportunities. This contribution is not limited to multiple inheritance object-oriented languages.

O mapeamento da vegetação urbana tem se restringido às áreas públicas ou a área total, não deixando de forma evidente a contribuição dos quintais privados para a vegetação urbana. Alguns trabalhos indicam que essas áreas teriam potencial para mitigar os impactos causados pela urbanização. Neste trabalho testaram-se diversos métodos para tentar mapear as áreas de quintais permeáveis com o intuito de desenvolver um método que possa auxiliar o planejamento urbano e na investigação da contribuição dessas áreas para a vegetação urbana. O trabalho conseguiu resultados com acurácia bastante elevada (Kappa = 0,9553) e apresentou técnicas inovadoras de filtragem e classificação, destacando-se o aplicativo desenvolvido para realizar a filtragem Kuwahara que demonstrou melhorar bastante os resultados de classificações por abordagem de pixels. As classificações de abordagem por pixel levaram a resultados estatisticamente até melhores que a classificação orientada a objetos, no entanto, a apresentação visual dos resultados da classificação orientada a objetos é superior pela redução do ruído. / Urban vegetation mapping has been restricted to the public areas or the total area, not showing the contribution of the private yards to the urban greening. Some studies indicate that these areas have potential to mitigate the impacts caused by the urbanization. In this work, many methods for mapping pervious gardens were tested aiming the development of a method that could aid urban planning and investigating the contribution of these areas to the urban greening. This work achieved highly accurate results (kappa = 0.9553) and presented novel techniques for filtering and classification. We highlight the development of a simple application to perform the Kuwahara filter, which improved the results of the classification by pixel approach. The classification algorithms by pixel approach resulted in statistically more accurate products, although visually the results presented by object-oriented approach is closer to landscape features.

We survey and compare the different major mechanisms for embedding the relational database language SQL in object-oriented programming languages such as Java and C#, with regard to how much impedance mismatch these embeddings suffer. Here impedance mismatch refers to clarity and performance difficulties that arise because of the nature of the embedding. Because of the central position in the information technology industry of object-oriented programs that access SQL-based relational database systems, reducing impedance mismatch is generally recognized in that industry as an important practical problem. We argue for the suitability of SQL as a database language, and hence for the desirability of keeping SQL as the view provided by a SQL embedding. We make the case that SQLJ, a SQL embedding for Java in which it appears that Java directly supports SQL commands, is the kind of SQL embedding that suffers the least impedance mismatch, when compared with call-level interfaces and object-relational mappings. We propose extensions to SQLJ that would reduce its impedance mismatch even further. / by Jose Luis Hurtado. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.