Submitted by Pedro Henrique Rodrigues (pedro.henriquer@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-04T17:46:47Z No. of bitstreams: 2 dissertation_dmc4_final.pdf: 2547061 bytes, checksum: 37ab52f20fadfed5e6ba1cfb7649f971 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-04T17:46:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 dissertation_dmc4_final.pdf: 2547061 bytes, checksum: 37ab52f20fadfed5e6ba1cfb7649f971 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-16 / Since the very first graphical user interfaces, progress indicators have been widely used to provide feedback regarding the execution of a system long-running tasks. In fact, practical experience and formal experiments suggest that such indicators are an important user interface tool, as they enhance the attractiveness and effectiveness of the programs that incorporate them. However, in order to make progress feedback possible, the system services involved must provide on-line monitoring capabilities. As the software systems become increasingly larger and more complex — often involving complex interactions between various different components and abstraction layers —, the crosscutting nature of monitoring concerns can introduce several inherent challenges to the software development: (1) code quality degradation with respect to tangling and scattering; (2) costly software evolution and maintenance difficulties; (3) absence of specific development patterns and regular standardized process guidance; (4) loss of development productivity; and (5) inconsistent monitoring results. In this context, this work provides an analysis of monitoring requirements, possible approaches towards its implementation along with an analysis of the main benefits and weaknesses involved. Furthermore, it is proposed and evaluated a solution to aid the software development by overcoming the monitoring-related inherent challenges, rather by mitigating or completely eliminating the problems. The solution consists of a framework, extended libraries, and generic software process guidelines regarding the monitoring requirements, with focus on the Rational Unified Process (RUP), for exemplification purpose, but not limited to it.

Cette thèse se propose de confronter un objet singulier, les pin-up, à un espace-temps tout aussi particulier : la période dite du pré-Code hollywoodien. Il s’agit tout d’abord de définir la pin-up comme figure féminine et cinématographique, et de proposer d’aller au-delà de la femme-objet qu’elle est censée incarner. L’étude attentive (par le biais notamment d’analyses de séquences) d’archétypes de pin-up produits entre 1930 et 1934 dans une perspective culturaliste influencée par les études de genre, permet, d’une part de déconstruire l’idée d’un pré-Code synonyme de liberté cinématographique. D’autre part, un retour sur l’histoire des pin-up et leur usage féministe potentiel, autorise cette figure féminine hyper-sexualisée à devenir un outil d’analyse des relations de genre, apte à révéler les mécanismes, parfois subtilement dissimulés, de la domination masculine. Les stratégies opposées par les personnages de pin-up au cadre patriarcal, sont à cet égard révélatrices. Les carrières cinématographiques de Betty Boop, de Jean Harlow, et de Mae West, étudiées sous cette lumière, indiquent quelles formes ces stratégies peuvent prendre. Les pin-up évoluant dans le genre de l’horreur et le personnage de Jane Parker incarné par Maureen 0’Sullivan durant les six premiers Tarzan de la MGM complètent ce passage en revue. La diversité des archétypes choisis fait in fine apparaître une difficulté commune aux pin-up cinématographiques, quel que soit leur statut ontologique : celle d’exister. / The goal of the present dissertation is to confront a specific object, the “pin-up”, to aspecific time and location: the so called « Pre code » Hollywood era. First of all, we wish todefine the pin-up as both a feminine and cinematographic figure, and to go beyond themere “woman as object “ that she is frequently reduced to. A careful study (relying, amongother, on sequence analysis) of pin-up archetypes created between 1930 and 1934 in acultural perspective, influenced by gender studies, makes it possible, first, to deconstructthe notion that Pre-code era has been a period of cinematographic freedom. Moreover,looking back at the history and evolution of the pin-up, and understanding how they can beused in a feminist agenda, helps turning this hypersexualised feminine figure into a deviceto analyze gender relationships, able to reveal the mechanisms, sometimes cleverlyconcealed, of masculine domination. In this respect, the strategies that pin-up charactersresort to in order to fight patriarchal order are revealing. Pin-up evolving in the horrorgenre, or the character of Jane Parker impersonated by Maureen O’Sullivan in MGM’s sixfirst Tarzan should complete this survey. The variety of archetypes that have been selectedhere seem, eventually, to lay bare a common difficulty, shared by all cinematographic pinup,regardless of their ontological status - their mere existence.

Dans le cadre de l’avion plus électrique, les avionneurs cherchent à remplacer les commandes de vol hydrauliques par des commandes de vol électriques, avec pour intérêt de diminuer le poids, et d’améliorer la flexibilité des équipements aéronautiques. Sachant que sur un A380, la distance cumulée pour les câbles peut atteindre plus de 500 km, la solution consistant à faire cohabiter les transmissions de données et de puissances au sein de mêmes câbles grâce à la technologie CPL pourrait contribuer à réduire la masse de câble dans un avion. Cependant les câbles de puissance n’ont pas été dimensionnés pour transmettre un signal informationnel, et les équipements présents sur le réseau sont source de bruits. Dans ce contexte nous souhaitons montrer la faisabilité d’une transmission CPL soumise aux contraintes avioniques tout en respectant les normes aéronautiques. La première partie des travaux a consisté à mesurer le canal de propagation sur un banc de test représentatif d’un environnement aéronautique. Le canal de propagation est composé de deux coupleurs de type inductif ou capacitif dont le but est de connecter les câbles de télécommunication au réseau de puissance et d’une paire bifilaire torsadée de puissance d’une longueur de 32 m représentative d’un réseau HVDC ±270 V. Nous avons alors testé trois architectures différentes : l’architecture point-À-Point avec coupleur capacitif, l’architecture point-À-Point avec coupleur inductif et l’architecture point-À-Multipoints avec coupleur inductif. Le but de ces mesures a été d’évaluer la fonction de transfert du canal sur la bande [1 ; 100] MHz. Nous avons alors calculé les éléments caractéristiques du canal comme la bande de cohérence et l’étalement des retards. Après la caractérisation du canal de propagation, nous avons choisi et dimensionné les algorithmes de traitement du signal au regard des spécifications aéronautiques à savoir : un débit utile de 10 Mbit/s, un temps de latence de 167-334 μs, un TEB de 10-12 et le respect du gabarit de la DO-160 en émission conduite. Au regard de la fonction de transfert du canal, nous avons choisi d’utiliser l’OFDM comme technique de transmission. Ainsi, à l’aide de la caractérisation du canal de propagation nous avons au cours d’une étude paramétrique défini les paramètres de la transmission OFDM au regard des spécifications de débit et de temps réel. Dans un second temps, nous avons implanté les paramètres OFDM ainsi que la modélisation du canal de propagation dans une chaine de transmission Matlab. Cette chaine nous a alors permis de vérifier les paramètres issues de l’étude paramétrique ainsi que de définir le système de codage de canal (Reed-Solomon et code convolutif) pour respecter les spécifications aéronautiques. La dernière partie de cette thèse a consisté en l’étude du système de synchronisation. Du fait de la stabilité du canal de propagation, nous avons considéré une synchronisation fine du système lors d’une phase d’initialisation puis nous nous somme focalisé sur le dimensionnement d’un système de suivi dans le but de corriger le décalage de fenêtre FFT dû au défaut de fréquence d’échantillonnage. Pour limiter les pertes de débit lors de la phase de suivi, nous avons proposé une estimation de l’erreur de fréquence d’échantillonnage sur la phase des données reçues sur une période de 20 symboles OFDM. / In the new aircrafts, hydraulic flight control systems are replaced by electric flight control systems. The main interests are a better flexibility of the aeronautical equipments and a decrease in maintenance costs and construction costs, but the major problem is the increasing of the wires length. In order to decrease this length, it has been proposed to use power line communications (PLC) technology for flight control systems. The decrease of wire will first decrease aircraft weight and therefore the consumption of kerosene and on the other hand will simplify maintenance and construction. The first part of this work is the measurement and the characterisation of the propagation channel on an aeronautic test bench (with HVDC supply and loads). This channel is composed of two couplers (inductive or capacitive) in order to connect the telecommunication system on the power wires with galvanic isolation and one twisted pair of 32 m longs. We have tested three architectures: the point-To-Point architecture with capacitive coupler, the point-To-Point architecture with inductive coupler and the point-To-Multipoint architecture with inductive coupler. The purpose of these measurements is to measured the transfer function on the [1 ; 100] MHz bandwidth. Then, we have computed the channel parameters like the coherence bandwidth and the delay spread. The second step was the design of the signal processing algorithm in order to satisfy the aeronautical specifications: a useful bite rate of 10 Mbit/s, a latency of 167- 334 μs, a BER of 10-12 and the respect of the DO-160 gauge in conducted emissions. For the transmissions, we have chosen the OFDM technology which has been use with success in other PLC systems. With the channel characterization, we have proposed a parametric study in order to define the OFDM parameters to satisfy the bite rate and the real time constraints. After, we compute digital simulations with Matlab to check the OFDM parameters. With these simulations, we have also defined the channel coding parameters (Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding) to satisfy the aeronautical specifications. The last part of this study was the design of the synchronisation system. Because of the channel stability, we considered a precise synchronisation after an initialisation period. Then, we focus on the estimation of the FFT shift, due to the sampling frequency shift, during a following-Up period. In order to avoid the decrease of the latency and the bitrate due to the pilot symbols or pilot sub-Carriers insertion, we proposed to correct the FFT shift with the receive data thanks to the maximal likelihood algorithm.

Context: Test-Driven development (TDD) is a software development approach where test cases are written before actual development of the code in iterative cycles. TDD has gained attention of many software practitioners during the last decade since it has suggested several benefits in the software development process. However, empirical evidence of its dominance in terms of internal code quality, external code quality and productivity is fairly limited. Objectives: The aim behind conducting this study is to explore what has been achieved so far in the field of Test-driven development. The study reports the benefits and limitation of TDD compared to TLD and the outcome variables in all the reported studies along with their measurement criteria. Additionally, an experiment is conducted to see the impact of Test-driven development (TDD) on internal code quality, external code quality and productivity compared to Test-Last development (TLD). Methods: In this study two research methodologies are used specifically systematic literature review according to Kitchenham guidelines and controlled pilot experiment. In systematic literature review number of article sources are considered and used, including Inspec, Compendex, ACM, IEEE Xplore, Science direct (Elsevier) and ISI web of science. A review protocol is created first to ensure the objectivity and repeatability of the whole process. Second, a controlled experiment is conducted with professional software developers to explore the assumed benefits of Test-Driven development (TDD) compared to Test-Last development (TLD). Results: 9 distinct categories related to Test-driven development (TDD) are found that are investigated and reported in the literature. All the reported experiments revealing very little or no difference in internal code quality, external code quality and productivity in Test-Driven development (TDD) over Test-Last development (TLD). However, results were found contradictory when research methods are taken into account because case studies tend to find more positive results in the favor Test-Driven development (TDD) compared to experiments possibly due to the fact that experiment are mostly conducted in artificially created software development environment and mostly with students as a test subjects. On the other hand, experimental results and statistical analysis show no statistically significant result in the favor TDD compared to TLD. All the values found related to number of acceptance test cases passed (Mann-Whitney U test Exact Sig. 0.185), McCabe’s Cyclomatic complexity (Mann-Whitney U test Exact Sig. 0.063), Branch coverage (Mann-Whitney U test Exact Sig. 0.212), Productivity in terms of number of lines of code per person hours (Independent sample Ttest Sig. 0.686), productivity in terms number of user stories implemented per person hours (Independent sample T-test Sig. 0.835) in experiment are statistically insignificant. However, static code analysis (Independent sample T-test Sig. 0.03) result was found statistically significant but due to the low statistical power of test it was not possible to reject the null hypothesis. The results of the survey revealed that the majority of developers in the experiment prefer TLD over TDD, given the lesser required level of learning curve as well as the minimum effort needed to understand and employ TLD compared to TDD Conclusion: Systematic literature review confirms that the reported benefits of TDD development compared to Test-Last development are very small. However, case studies tend to find more positive results in the favor of Test-Driven development (TDD) compared to Test-Last development (TLD). Similarly, experimental findings are also confirming the fact that TDD has small benefits over TLD. However, given the small effect size there is an indication that (Test-Driven development) TDD endorses less complex code compared to Test-Last development (TLD). / Systematic literature review confirms that the reported benefits of TDD development compared to Test-Last development are very small. However, case studies tend to find more positive results in the favor of Test-Driven development (TDD) compared to Test-Last development (TLD). Similarly, experimental findings are also confirming the fact that TDD has small benefits over TLD. However, given the small effect size there is an indication that (Test-Driven development) TDD endorses less complex code compared to Test-Last development (TLD). / hassanmunirr@hotmail.com, mm1844@gmail.com

Capturing the quality of software and detecting sections for further scrutiny within are of high interest for industry as well as for education. Project managers request quality reports in order to evaluate the current status and to initiate appropriate improvement actions and teachers feel the need of detecting students which need extra attention and help in certain programming aspects. By means of software measurement software characteristics can be quantified and the produced measures analyzed to gain an understanding about the underlying software quality. In this study, the technique of code profiling (being the activity of creating a summary of distinctive characteristics of software code) was inspected, formulized and conducted by means of a sample group of 19 industry and 37 student programs. When software projects are analyzed by means of software measurements, a considerable amount of data is produced. The task is to organize the data and draw meaningful information from the measures produced, quickly and without high expenses. The results of this study indicated that code profiling can be a useful technique for quick program comparisons and continuous quality observations with several application scenarios in both industry and education.

L’information visuelle est transmise de la rétine au cerveau par les cellules ganglionnaires. Il existe plusieurs types de cellules ganglionnaires, chaque type formant une mosaïque qui couvre l’intégralité de la scène visuelle. Comprendre la manière dont ces neurones encodent collectivement la scène visuelle est essentiel pour au moins deux raisons: - La manière dont une population de neurones encodent collectivement une information sensorielle reste jusqu’à aujourd’hui mystérieuse. La rétine est un système idéal pour étudier cette question: elle a en effet une structure en couches 2D qui se prête idéalement à l’enregistrement d’une population complète de neurones à grande échelle, et elle opère une transformation complexe de la scène visuelle. - Certaines maladies qui mènent à la cécité ne connaissent aujourd’hui pas de traitement. Plusieurs stratégies de restauration visuelle basées sur la stimulation directe de cellules ganglionnaires sont le sujet de recherches actives. Il pourrait être nécessaire de reproduire en imitant le code neural produit par la rétine pour optimiser les résultats de ces stratégies thérapeutiques. Au cours de ma thèse, j’ai travaillé sur deux questions complémentaires, qui sont liées à ces deux sujets respectivement. / Visual information is conveyed from the retina to the brain through ganglion cells. Ganglion cells are divided in different cell types, and each of them form a mosaic sampling the entire visual scene. Understanding how these neurons encode the visual scene is essential for at least two reasons: -It is still unclear how a population of neurons collectively code sensory information. The retina is an ideal system to study this issue: while it performs complex processing on the visual stimulus, its 2-D structure makes it suitable for large-scale recordings of complete populations of neurons. -Some diseases leading to blindness have currently no cure. Several visual restoration strategies based on the direct stimulation of ganglion cells are currently being investigated. Emulating the retinal code may be necessary to optimize the results of these therapeutic approaches. In my thesis I have worked on two complementary questions, that are related to these two topics.

Magister Artium - MA / The study explores the negotiation of identities through linguistic innovations such as codeswitching, code-mixing and differing language choices in different domains of home and school in Belhar. The focus is to examine how languages are used to negotiate class, age, generational, socio-economic, etc differences in selected schools and homes in the community of Belhar. The specific study objectives include the following: 1. To find out the linguistic options and identities (including hybrid identities), that are available to the Belhar community. 2. To explore how Afrikaans and English (and other languages) are used as linguistic resources in the community of Belhar. The Belvue Primary school was used as a vehicle to gain access to the families in Belhar which were used as case studies. The data was collected by observing learners in the classroom, interviewing educators, interviewing parents and observing linguistic practices in the homes/families of selected learners. Using poststructuralist coupled with the social constructionist approach the study is a clear departure from studies and paradigms current in vogue in South Africa, which have linked language and ethnic identity in unambiguous ways. These paradigms also see ethnic identity as fixed and communities as homogenous and language as having a one-to-one correlation with identity. However, these studies do not consider that identities are constructed and negotiated during interaction with others. In this regard it was found that individuals in the community of Belhar constantly construct and negotiate identity using language as central to the identity behaviour. Thus ultimately their language and identity cannot be described as pro-English or pro- Afrikaans.

This study seeks to report on the investigation into the need to use code switching as one of the language teaching strategies in the teaching and learning of Afrikaans as Additional Language in the FET band, in predominantly Xhosa-speaking environments in the Eastern Cape. The study was conducted in twelve secondary schools of the Transkei where Afrikaans is taught as an additional language. The sample of the study comprised the educators, the learners and the school managers of the twelve researched schools. The research was a case study of the selected schools. The participants were studied in their own environment and the data was collected by means of both the interviews and structured questionnaires. South Africa is a multilingual and multicultural country. This state of affairs calls for a serious re-evaluation of the existing teaching methodologies. Children acquire language skills in and outside the classroom in two different ways in multilingual societies. While children acquire proficiency in languages outside the classroom in a natural way, in the classroom they are constrained by rigid purist rules that compel them to learn languages in artificial ways. This manner of language acquisition in the predominantly Xhosa-speaking environments of the Eastern Cape, often goes hand in hand with code switching from source language to target language and vice versa. These children can be described as compound informal bilinguals (polyglots) as far as the indigenous languages are concerned since they acquire the indigenous languages from early childhood in natural settings. In the context of formal acquisition of European languages and Afrikaans in schools, they can be categorised as coordinate bilinguals. The linguistic disparities between classroom and natural acquisition practices were revealed in this investigation. In the classroom, code switching has two contradictory sides. On one hand code switching provides the teacher with ease of expression, confidence and satisfaction that the learners understand the lesson. Notwithstanding the dynamic attributes of code switching in the classroom, the learners are faced with the dilemma of having to avoid code switching as much as possible in the examinations since there is no room for code switching in the examinations. This investigation showed that despite the fact that non-mother tongue teaching is supposed to take place through the medium of the target language, both the teachers and the learners admitted that they code switch during Afrikaans classes and they perceive code switching as the best way to facilitate understanding. The findings of this study revealed that code switching was a natural and inevitable strategy in teaching an additional language. However, it also surfaced that some teachers resorted to using code switching because of their own lack of proficiency in the target language. Informed by the above findings, the study recommended that code switching be considered as one of the strategies to be used in the teaching and learning of Afrikaans as additional language. It was also recommended that learners be credited if they used code switching in the examinations since all respondents admitted that code switching was every-day practice in the classroom. This, however is to be done with extreme caution and with the sole purpose of assisting the learners achieve full mastery of the target language at the end of their learning career. Since this kind of exercise needs highly-skilled personnel, it was recommended that practising teachers be retrained and resource materials be expanded to all schools that offer Afrikaans as additional language. Although the arguments presented in this investigation do not reject the reality of the impeding effect code switching might have on the learning of an additional language, the study maintains that for purposes of mutual understanding, code switching is an enabling factor that impacts positively on the teaching-learning situation.

Les processeurs graphiques (GPU), originellement dédiés à l'accélération de traitements graphiques, ont une structure hautement parallèle. Les innovations matérielles et de langage de programmation ont permis d'ouvrir le domaine du GPGPU, où les cartes graphiques sont utilisées comme des accélérateurs de calcul pour des applications HPC généralistes.L'objectif de nos travaux est de faciliter l'utilisation de ces nouvelles architectures pour les besoins du calcul haute performance ; ils suivent deux objectifs complémentaires.Le premier axe de nos recherches concerne la transformation automatique de code, permettant de partir d'un code de haut niveau pour le transformer en un code de bas niveau, équivalent, pouvant être exécuté sur des accélérateurs. Dans ce but nous avons implémenté un transformateur de code capable de prendre en charge les boucles « pour » parallèles d'un code OpenMP (simples ou imbriquées) et de le transformer en un code CUDA équivalent, qui soit suffisamment lisible pour permettre de le retravailler par des optimisations ultérieures.Par ailleurs, le futur des architectures HPC réside dans les architectures distribuées basées sur des nœuds dotés d'accélérateurs. Pour permettre aux utilisateurs d'exploiter les nœuds multiGPU, il est nécessaire de mettre en place des schémas d'exécution appropriés. Nous avons mené une étude comparative et mis en évidence que les threads OpenMP permettent de gérer de manière efficace plusieurs cartes graphiques et les communications au sein d'un nœud de calcul multiGPU. / Graphic cards (GPUs), initially used for graphic processing, have a highly parallel architecture. Innovations in both architecture and programming languages opened the new domain of GPGPU where GPUs are used as accelerators for general purpose HPC applications.Our main objective is to facilitate the use of these new architectures for high-performance computing needs; our research follows two main directions.The first direction concerns an automatic code transformation from a high level code into an equivalent low level one, capable of running on accelerators. To this end we implemented a code transformer that can handle parallel “for” loops (single or nested) of an OpenMP code and convert it into an equivalent CUDA code, which is in a human readable form that allows for further optimizations.Moreover, the future of HPC lies in distributed architectures based on hybrid nodes. Specific programming schemes have to be used in order to allow users to benefit from such multiGPU nodes. We conducted a comparative study which revealed that using OpenMP threads is the most adequate way to control multiple graphic cards as well as manage communications efficiently within a multiGPU node.

La forêt ivoirienne connait une dégradation très avancée. Pour la préserver, la Côte d’Ivoire a élaboré la loi n° 65-425 du 20 Décembre 1965 portant code forestier et ses textes d’application. Mais ce premier instrument juridique de protection n’a pas eu l’efficacité escomptée. En effet, de portée sectorielle, la loi forestière ne peut régir tout le domaine forestier. D’autres légalisations sectorielles telles la loi de 1965 sur la chasse, le code de l’eau, la loi de 1998 sur le droit foncier rural devront intervenir pour combler le déficit législatif du code forestier. Il en résulte une législation relative à la forêt et ses ressources non coordonnée et non intégrée dont les conséquences sont les risques évidents de chevauchements de compétence, sources de conflits et de blocage et les doubles emplois. Pour assurer un cadre juridique idoine à la protection de la forêt ivoirienne, cette intégration juridique doit pouvoir prendre en compte toutes les dimensions sociopolitiques et conomiques des forêts, assurer la participation de tous les acteurs, permettre l’intégration du contenu des textes et requérir unecoopération des structures de gestion / The Ivorian forest is facing advanced degradation. To preserve it, Côte d’Ivoire has drafted Law No. 65 - 425 dated 20 december 1965 on the Forest Code and its implementing regulations. But first legal instrument of protection was not as effective as expected. Indeed, sectoral scope , forest law can govern the entire forest area. Other sectoral legalization as the 1965 Law on hunting, the Water Code, the 1998 Law on rural land law will step in to fill the legislative gap in the forestry code. The result is a law on the forest and its uncoordinated and non-integrated resources, the consequences are obvious risks of overlapping jurisdiction, sources of conflict and blocking and duplication. To ensure appropriate legal framework for the protection of the Ivorian forest, this legal integration must take into account all socio-political and economic dimensions of forests, ensuring the participation of all stakeholders, allow the integration of text content and require a cooperation of management structures