All jurisdictions have an energy system consisting of processes responsible for the conversion and transportation of supplies of energy from various sources to meet the end-use energy demands. Energy systems are dynamic as they respond to uncertainties such as higher energy costs, new energy technologies, public concern over the environmental impacts of energy production, evolving consumption patterns, and the aging of existing infrastructure; these changes can affect the energy suppliers, the end users, and those responsible for operating the energy system. To reduce possible adverse effects and improve the energy security of the system, energy policies are often designed by those responsible for the processes. However, changes to the energy policies can also impact the system’s energy security. Therefore, it is critical to study the possible effects of changing energy policies before they are deployed. To address this problem, a visualization tool has been developed to represent a jurisdiction’s energy system. The tool allows the effects of changing energy policies on energy security to be analysed. A case study using real-time wind data from the City of Summerside has been implemented to demonstrate the capabilities of the tool. This presentation will elaborate on the methods and implementation of the visualization tool and explain the results obtained from the analysis of the Summerside project.

<p>Technology evolves at such a rapid pace nowadays, keeping up with education on cyber security tends to fall. Even with the rising threats, people put their personal information in their computers without knowing who could access the information. Many people keep their personal information online when they do shopping, banking, or on social media. These online activities attract adversaries that may have malicious attentions. The lack of cyber security practices is evident as we often hear the news of large-scale cyberattack incidents against financial institutions that leads to breach of personal information of their users. Cyber-attacks can have long term damaging effects. Cybersecurity awareness is necessary to start at an early age. If this subject is delivered to young users as an interactive tutorial, using game-based principles, then it is more likely to be learned in an entertaining manner. Hence, this thesis project focuses on a framework development for interactive and engaging cybersecurity education and its evaluation. </p> <p>The framework is developed to educate the users various cybersecurity related topics, such as malware, web security, and network security. It consists four stages for each topic: information, interaction, explanation, and assessment. In the information module, the user is presented details related to the topic. To maintain users’ interest, interaction module allows users to interrelate with common hacking attacks from real life situations. Explanation module provides the discussion of interaction module and introduces defense techniques. The users are tested in the Assessment module to measure their learning to be able to advance to next levels within the same topic. The developed framework is customizable since more modules can be integrated and existing modules can be swiftly modified. In addition, multiple surveys were conducted to analyze whether this framework explains the cybersecurity topics easily. </p>

abstract: With the advent of social media and micro-blogging sites, people have become active in sharing their thoughts, opinions, ideologies and furthermore enforcing them on others. Users have become the source for the production and dissemination of real time information. The content posted by the users can be used to understand them and track their behavior. Using this content of the user, data analysis can be performed to understand their social ideology and affinity towards Radical and Counter-Radical Movements. During the process of expressing their opinions people use hashtags in their messages in Twitter. These hashtags are a rich source of information in understanding the content based relationship between the online users apart from the existing context based follower and friend relationship. An intelligent visual dash-board system is necessary which can track the activities of the users and diffusion of the online social movements, identify the hot-spots in the users' network, show the geographic foot print of the users and to understand the socio-cultural, economic and political drivers for the relationship among different groups of the users. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2015

Due to a growing interest in communication in today’s society the demand for equipment that is used in communication networks increases while the competition between companies that produce this equipment grows. To meet the increasing demand and at the same time having a competitive product development many companies use some effective product design, such as the modular product design. When a modular product design is used it’s good to compare different module configurations for a certain product and to simplify these comparisons some tool can be used. This work examines the design and development of a tool that visualize information about different modular plans in a web interface. The focus of the work is on the storage and processing of data to be presented and also the software architecture, namely the back-end of the tool. The front-end consists of a web interface that is developed and described in another thesis. Different techniques to store data are examined and data models are developed. A multitier architecture, more precisely three tiers, is used in the tool where the three tiers are one tier for the data storage, one tier for the processing of data and one for the web interface. A relational database is used as data storage and to process data the programing language Java is used. To communicate between the web interface and the tier that process data a RESTful API is used.

Due to increased expectations as well as advances in technology, the interest in Self-adaptive Systems has increased in the last few years. As a consequence of this, thebody of work has also dramatically expanded, and it is essential to have an overviewin order to identify common problems and knowledge gaps. This paper introduces avisualization tool for the state of the art of Self-adaptive Systems. The tool shouldprovide all the needed insights into the body of work in the field of Self-adaptiveSystems.

[pt] O crescimento cada vez mais acelerado da produção de dados e a decorrente necessidade de explorá-los a fim de se obter respostas para as mais variadas perguntas têm promovido o desenvolvimento de ferramentas que visam a facilitar a manipulação e a construção de gráficos. Essas visualizações devem permitir explorar os dados de maneira efetiva, comunicando as informações com precisão e possibilitando um maior ganho de conhecimento. No entanto, construir boas visualizações de dados não é uma tarefa trivial, uma vez que pode requerer um grande número de decisões que, em muitos casos, exigem certa experiência por parte de seu projetista. Visando a facilitar o processo de exploração de conjuntos de dados através da construção de visualizações, nós desenvolvemos a ferramenta VisMaker, que utiliza um conjunto de regras para construir as visualizações consideradas mais apropriadas para um determinado conjunto de variáveis. Além de permitir que o usuário defina visualizações através do mapeamento entre variáveis e dimensões visuais, o VisMaker apresenta recomendações de visualizações organizadas através de perguntas construídas com base nas variáveis selecionadas pelo usuário, objetivando facilitar a compreensão das visualizações recomendadas e auxiliando o processo exploratório. Para a avaliação do Vis- Maker, nós realizamos dois estudos comparando-o com o Voyager 2, uma ferramenta de propósito similar existente na literatura. O primeiro estudo teve foco na resolução de perguntas enquanto que o segundo esteve voltado para a exploração de dados em si. Nós analisamos alguns aspectos da utilização das ferramentas e coletamos os comentários dos participantes, através dos quais pudemos identificar vantagens e desvantagens da abordagem de recomendação que propusemos, levantando possíveis melhorias para esse tipo de ferramenta. / [en] The increasingly rapid growth of data production and the consequent need to explore them to obtain answers to a wide range of questions have promoted the development of tools to facilitate the manipulation and construction of data visualizations. These tools should allow users to effectively explore data, communicate information accurately, and enable more significant knowledge gain through data. However, building useful data visualizations is not a trivial task: it may involve a large number of decisions that often require experience from their designer. To facilitate the process of exploring datasets through the construction of visualizations, we developed VisMaker, a software tool which uses a set of rules to determine appropriate visualizations for a certain selection of variables. In addition to allowing the user to define visualizations by mapping variables onto visualization channels, VisMaker presents visualization recommendations organized through questions constructed based on the variables selected by the user, trying to facilitate the understanding of the visualization recommendations and assisting the exploratory process. To evaluate VisMaker, we carried out two studies comparing it with another tool that exists in the literature, one aimed at solving questions and the other at data exploration. We analyzed some aspects of the use of the tools. We collected feedback from the participants, through which we were able to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the recommendation approach we proposed, raising possible improvements for this type of tool.

The rise of parallel programming languages, as a result of processors' flattening clock frequencies, has lead to further use of high-level parallel pattern-based programming framework such as SkePU. SkePU provides a sequential high-level interface connected to different back-ends, or a hybrid of several, which reduces the time required to learn several new programming languages. Although this high-level interface introduces a new problem, an abstraction layer from the user to what code is being executed. To make SkePU programs easier to analyze this thesis implements a performance visualization tool for SkePU. The conducted literature study found that there currently exists very few performance visualization tools that cater specifically towards skeleton programming languages. This thesis evaluates usability of the implemented tool by conducting a survey and a user study with participants whom are very familiar with SkePU. The choice of evaluation method is in itself critically evaluated, as is the design choices made, and results are presented with an accompanying discussion as to how those results were derived.

Visualisering är en ofta förekommande metod som används vid utveckling av en ny produkt för att redan i ett tidigt stadium kunna visa den färdiga produkten i form av en prototyp eller annan digital ritning. Det är dock inte lika vanligt att visualisera själva utvecklingen av produkten eller vilken fas den befinner sig i, vilket kan leda till osäkerhet inom utvecklingsgruppen och ge det fortsatta arbetet av produkten en tvetydig bild. Projektgrupperna på företaget CGI Östersund jobbar enligt den agila systemutvecklingsmetoden Scrum där arbetet delas upp i olika delleveranser och ärenden, vilket gör det möjligt att visualisera utvecklingsprocessen. Den här undersökningen har studerat Scrum-metoden ytterligare och därefter tagit fram ett visualiseringsverktyg bestående av en REST-webbtjänst i Java och en webbklient som hämtar information från ett ärendehanteringssystem, JIRA, som företaget använder sig av. Informationen presenteras sedan i form av olika grafer beroende på vad som skall visualiseras. Verktygets funktion och konstruktion har sedan utvärderats med användbarhetstester och även jämförts med ett liknande verktyg som redan finns i den befintliga JIRA-plattformen. Användbarhetstesterna utfördes både innan och efter implementation där det första testet enbart bestod av mock-ups och det andra när verktyget hade fått ett fungerande resultat. Resultatet har visat att det fortfarande råder en del oklarhet i verktygets mer invecklade funktioner, men att helheten av de olika delsystemen är förståelig i dess användbarhet. Jämförelsen med visualiseringen i JIRA visar att liknelserna är stora och att det i nuläget finns både för- och nackdelar med att använda den här lösningen. Verktyget är i övrigt uppbyggd med moderna tekniker och står på en bra grund för vidare utveckling från företagets sida. / Visualization is a frequent method used in the development of a new product to see the finished product to an early stage in the form of a prototype or digital drawing. However, it is not as common to visualize the actual development of the product or what phase it is in, which can lead to confusion within the development team and provide further the work of the product an ambiguous picture. Project teams at the company CGI Östersund works according to the agile system development methodology Scrum where the work is divided into different partial deliveries and issues, making it possible to visualize the development process. This investigation has studied the Scrum method further and then developed a visualization tool consisting of a REST web service in Java and a web client that retrieves information from a issue tracking system, JIRA, which the company uses. The information is then presented in the form of various graphs depending on what is to be visualized. The tool's function and design has been evaluated with usability testing and also then compared with a similar tool that is already in the existing JIRA platform. Usability tests were conducted both before and after implementation, the first test consisted only of mock-ups and the second when the tool had a functioning results. The results have shown that there is still some ambiguity in the tool's more complex features, but to the whole of the various subsystems is understandable in its usability. The comparison with the visualization in JIRA shows that the parables are great and that at present there are both advantages and disadvantages of using this solution. The tool is otherwise constructed with modern techniques and stands on a good basis for further development from the company.

Issue d’un partenariat de recherche entre le CEA et les laboratoires Servier, cette thèse avait pour objectif d’évaluer l’approche métabolomique par chromatographie liquide couplée à la spectrométrie de masse (LC-MS) pour l'identification de marqueurs indirects de l'induction dans les espèces de toxicologie. Le travail de thèse a débuté par l’optimisation de la méthode d’acquisition des empreintes métaboliques tant sur le plan analytique que dans le domaine du traitement des données brutes. Un outil reposant sur les matrices d’auto corrélation a alors été développé afin de s’affranchir d’une partie de la redondance du signal obtenu par spectrométrie de masse. Dans un troisième temps, les indices de Kendrick couplés à la sélectivité méthylène ont été appliqués à l’étude de composés biologiques en spectrométrie de masse haute résolution afin de proposer une méthode alternative de visualisation des données offrant une aide à l’identification des variables. Enfin, dans une dernière partie, les efforts se sont portés sur l’identification des composés endogènes modifiés au cours du protocole d’induction. / This work is the result of a research partnership between the CEA and Les laboratories Servier. It deals with the characterization of biomarkers of metabolic enzyme induction in rat biofluids using MSbased metabolomics. The first part of this work included methodological developments regarding theacquisition and the processing of metabolic fingerprints. A tool based on autocorrelation matrices wasthen implemented to reduce the redundancy of data generated with mass spectrometry and subsequently accelerate the isolation of discriminating variables. The next step consisted in the evaluation of the combined use of Kendrick mass defects and methylene selectivity as an alternative visualization tool for large data set, which would rely on compound chemical structures. Finally, the last part of the work was dedicated to the identification of discriminating signals raised up by ametabolomic global approach from rat biofluids collected before and after an induction assay.

Learning the syntax, semantics, and concepts behind software engineering can be a challenging task for many individuals. This paper examines the Alice 3 software, a three-dimensional visual environment for teaching programming concepts, to determine if it is an effective tool for improving student achievement, raising self-efficacy, and engaging students. This study compares the similarities and differences between a Fundamentals of Programming course with and without Alice integrated into the curriculum. Both the treatment and control Groups are using the same Java materials, assignments, and exams. The treatment group also completes Alice activities for each programming concept throughout the course; as well as two Alice assignments.