Formal methods using text to specify abstract data types (ADTs) are powerful, but they require great effort and a high level of expertise. Visual programming languages present an alternative way of programming but are limited to building small programs. This research presents an approach for specifying ADTs using a combination of text and visual objects. Furthermore, it presents two algorithms to map those specifications into imperative code. DataLab, a computer program for the MacintoshTM computer, is an implementation model for this approach. DataLab consists of two major components: a graphical editor and a source code generator. The graphical editor allows the user to build a specification consisting of an interface part and an implementation part for each ADT. The interface of the ADT is specified textually in a window that is part of the graphical editor. The implementation part of the ADT includes the operations, which are specified in Data Lab as a set of "Condition/Action" transformations. These transformations describe the behavior of the operations and are built by selecting graphical objects from a palette and placing them on the screen. The source code generator takes the specification of the ADT as an input and generates an encapsulated Pascal code. It consists of two algorithms: the first maps the specification into its semantics, and the second maps the semantics into Pascal modules. / Graduation date: 1990

This thesis develops the theory of operator algebras from the perspective of abstract harmonic analysis, and in particular, the theory of von Neumann algebras. Results from operator algebras are applied to the study of spaces of coefficient functions of unitary representations of locally compact groups, and in particular, the Fourier algebra of a locally compact group. The final result, which requires most of the material developed in earlier sections, is that the group von Neumann algebra of a locally compact group is in standard form.

This thesis develops the theory of operator algebras from the perspective of abstract harmonic analysis, and in particular, the theory of von Neumann algebras. Results from operator algebras are applied to the study of spaces of coefficient functions of unitary representations of locally compact groups, and in particular, the Fourier algebra of a locally compact group. The final result, which requires most of the material developed in earlier sections, is that the group von Neumann algebra of a locally compact group is in standard form.

<p><bold>This dissertation deals with Cuban art criticism and other written texts related to Abstract Art. From a critical perspective that relates art to society and political and institutional practices, all of the above texts are interpreted as bearers of aesthetic ideologies, which are expressed in the paradigms from which Art Criticism attempted to validate Abstraction. This study further demonstrates that the dominant discourses in the realm of Art Criticism are strongly related to Ideological State Apparatuses. Art Criticism not only mediates between the artwork and the spectator, but also between artistic acts of provocation and the establishment.</p><p> Abstraction in Cuba constituted an important axis in the polemic between autonomous art and socially committed art, but the debates themselves were subsumed in ideological and even political battlefields. Art Criticism oriented these debates, by emphasizing certain problems, and diminishing the importance of other ones. </p><p>This dissertation is organized in function of the dominant questions that Cuban Art Criticism addressed. The first chapter accordingly deals with definitions of abstract art that were prevalent in art writing and publications from 1948 to 1957, a period in which Art Criticism is mostly concerned with the autonomy of art. The second chapter follows the debates about the social commitment of abstract art, which became predominant during the first years of a Marxist-oriented Revolution. This polemic is implicit in the emergence of an Anti-Academic movement in the visual arts, and it began to lose its strength once the Cuban Avant-Garde started to gain institutional recognition. After being relegated to a peripheral position, the question concerning the social commitment of Abstract Art became crucial after the triumph of the Revolution. The final chapter deals with the relations between Abstract Art and the diverse documents that embodied and defined the Cultural Policy during the Cuban Revolution. </p><p>Throughout, this study strives to establish the place of Abstract Art in the Institutional, and discursive practices from 1959 onwards. This place is defined by its instability, as it is constituted through intermittencies and steps backwards on the path towards the institutional consecration of non-figurative tendencies. </bold></p> / Dissertation

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Purchasing products from online e-stores is getting popular with the advance of Internet infrastructure and network security. At current stage, most e-stores resemble vending machines rather than real stores because they lack clerks to persuade prospects into buying products and to bargain with the customers for making a good deal. This research aims to design an easy-to-use and autonomous sales-agent, called Isa, to act as a virtual clerk in an e-store. A new approach is proposed to enable the agent to dynamically adopt different persuasion and negotiation strategies according to different characteristics of human buyers. Additionally, this approach enables a sales-agent to learn the best strategies without seller¡¦s instructions. Both laboratory and field experiments are conducted to assess Isa¡¦s performance. The experimental results reveal that Isa can improve a seller¡¦s surplus and increase a buyer¡¦s product evaluation, willingness to pay more money for the product, and satisfaction with visiting the s-store.

The purpose of this thesis is to elaborate on the Marx&rsquo / s theory of knowledge. Historical materialism presented in the German Ideology and the methodological remarks in Grundrisse have led to many discussions concerning the relation between knowledge and reality in Marx&rsquo / s philosophy. This thesis tried to explore the interrelationships between the kinds of knowledge we produce, abstract concepts and the concrete material conditions, as elaborated by Marx. In contrast to traditional epistemology, and more along the lines of Hegel&rsquo / s epistemology, Marx does not see theory and reality as belonging to two distinct spheres. This thesis endeavors to elucidate the terms abstract and concrete in Marx&rsquo / s usage and tries to make a clear Marx&rsquo / s relations to Hegel in light of these terms.

This study examines master of art (MA) theses abstracts written in English in terms of their texual structures. In order to design a comparative study, abstracts are collected from universities (i) with a guideline in Turkey (ii) without a guideline in Turkey and (iii) with a guideline in the USA. 94 abstracts, randomly selected from these three groups of universities, are analyzed according to a content criteria list developed on the basis of Swales (1981, 1990, 2004), and Hyland&rsquo / s (2000) textual structure models and content instructions provided in thesis writing guidelines. The analysis of data is accomplished using MS Excel 2010 ve SPSS 16.0. The comparison between abstracts written at universities with and without a guideline in Turkey revealed a significant difference in terms of methodology and statement of the problem. Also, with regards to the order of the rhetorical elements (Introduction+Methodology+Results+Conclusion), universities with a guideline in Turkey displayed more consistency than the universities without a guideline. As for the comparison between the universities with a guideline in Turkey and the USA, the results showed that there is a significant difference between the two abstract sets in terms of their methodology, results, and conclusion parts. Besides, the texual pattern analysis showed that abstracts collected from universities with a guideline in Turkey follow a more consistent order than their counterparts in the USA. The results of the thesis have pedagogical implicatons for students, teachers, academics who prepare thesis writing guidelines, and researchers who want to make publications internationally.

As the size and complexity of a software system increases, the design problem goes beyond the algorithms and data structures of the computation. Designing and specifying the overall system structure -- or software architecture -- becomes the central problem. A system's architecture provides a model of the system that hides implementation detail, allowing the architect to concentrate on the analyses and decisions that are most crucial to structuring the system to satisfy its requirements. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, current exploitation of software architecture and architectural style is informal and ad hoc. The lack of an explicit, independent characterization of architecture and architectural style significantly limits the extent to which software architecture can be exploited using current practices. Architecture Description Languages(ADL) result from a linguistic approach to the formal description of software architectures. ADLs should facilitate building of architectures, not just specification. Further, they should also address the compositionality, substitutability, and reusability issues, which are the key to successful large-scale software development. A software architecture description language with a well defined type system can facilitate compositionality, substitutability, and usability, the three keys to successful large-scale software development. Our contribution is a new software architecture description language, TriSL, which supports these features. In this talk we describe the design and implementation of TriSL and its type system. We demonstrate the power of our language and its expressiveness through case studies of real world applications.

In this paper we introduce an algorithm for the creation of polyhedral approximations for objects represented as strongly connected sets of voxels in three-dimensional binary images. The algorithm generates the convex hull of a given object and modifies the hull afterwards by recursive repetitions of generating convex hulls of subsets of the given voxel set or subsets of the background voxels. The result of this method is a polyhedron which separates object voxels from background voxels. The objects processed by this algorithm and also the background voxel components inside the convex hull of the objects are restricted to have genus 0. The second aim of this paper is to present some improvements to our convex hull algorithm to reduce computation time.