The typical user base for computer applications has transformed, over time, from mostly technically-oriented individuals to include a vast range of the world's population - the majority of whom have little to no technical proficiency. As such, user interfaces have evolved from text-based shell input into multimedia interfaces which typically provide support for receiving input from a number of disparate devices that are operated in conjunction to manipulate a given program. A problem arises when applications add in support for explicit devices; which leads to strong coupling between the underlying code and the defined set of devices that they support. In a nutshell, support for new peripherals almost always requires that the original application be recompiled and /or its internal configuration modified to incorporate the given device(s). Portal, an interaction independence framework, seeks to add a layer of abstraction between arbitrary application code and the devices they support; allowing developers to deal in the realm of abstract program actions instead of crafting code to handle a variety of concrete device inputs. This should eliminate the need for custom device-tailored code for each user-wielded peripheral that an application must support and will enable application device support to be managed via configuration changes to the Portal middleware framework, rather than being hard-coded into an application. This thesis will define the conceptual design of the Portal framework while, at the same time, elaborating on the role that web services will play within it; investigate two pervasive service-oriented architecture paradigms, SOAP and REST, in order to gauge their potential effectiveness in meeting Portal's underlying back-end data transmission requirements; provide implementations for the Portal service-oriented architecture and data model; and, finally, critically evaluate both implementations with an emphasis on their performance with regard to both efficiency and scalability. / Master of Science

Quantum computers promise to offer a considerable speed-up in solving certain problems, compared to the best classical algorithms. In many instances, the gap between quantum and classical running times is conjectured to be exponential. While this is great news for those applications where quantum computers would provide such an advantage, it also raises a significant challenge: how can classical computers verify the correctness of quantum computations? In attempting to answer this question, a number of protocols have been developed in which a classical client (referred to as verifier) can interact with one or more quantum servers (referred to as provers) in order to certify the correctness of a quantum computation performed by the server(s). These protocols are of one of two types: either there are multiple non-communicating provers, sharing entanglement, and the verifier is completely classical; or, there is a single prover and the classical verifier has a device for preparing or measuring quantum states. The latter type of protocols are, arguably, more relevant to near term quantum computers, since having multiple quantum computers that share a large amount of entanglement is, from a technological standpoint, extremely challenging. Before the realisation of practical single-prover protocols, a number of challenges need to be addressed: how robust are these protocols to noise on the verifier's device? Can the protocols be made fault-tolerant without significantly increasing the requirements of the verifier? How do we know that the verifier's device is operating correctly? Could this device be eliminated completely, thus having a protocol with a fully classical verifier and a single quantum prover? Our work attempts to provide answers to these questions. First, we consider a single-prover verification protocol developed by Fitzsimons and Kashefi and show that this protocol is indeed robust with respect to deviations on the quantum state prepared by the verifier. We show that this is true even if those deviations are the result of a correlation with the prover's system. We then use this result to give a verification protocol which is device- independent. The protocol consists of a verifier with a measurement device and a single prover. Device-independence means that the verifier need not trust the measurement device (nor the prover) which can be assumed to be fully malicious (though not communicating with the prover). A key element in realising this protocol is a robust technique of Reichardt, Unger and Vazirani for testing, using non-local correlations, that two untrusted devices share a large number of entangled states. This technique is referred to as rigidity of non-local correlations. Our second result is to prove a rigidity result for a type of quantum correlations known as steering correlations. To do this, we first show that steering correlations can be used in order to certify maximally entangled states, in a setting in which each test is independent of the previous one. We also show that the fidelity with which we characterise the state, in this specific test, is optimal. We then improve the previous result by removing the independence assumption. This then leads to our desired rigidity result. We make use of it, in a similar fashion to the device-independent case, in order to give a verification protocol that is one-sided device-independent. The importance of this application is to show how different trust assumptions affect the efficiency of the protocol. Next, we describe a protocol for fault-tolerantly verifying quantum computations, with minimal "quantum requirements" for the verifier. Specifically, the verifier only requires a device for measuring single-qubit states. Both this device, and the prover's operations are assumed to be prone to errors. We show that under standard assumptions about the error model, it is possible to achieve verification of quantum computation using fault-tolerant principles. As a proof of principle, and to better illustrate the inner workings of the protocol, we describe a toy implementation of the protocol in a quantum simulator, and present the results we obtained, when running it for a small computation. Finally, we explore the possibility of having a verification protocol, with a classical verifier and a single prover, such that the prover is blind with respect to the verifier's computation. We give evidence that this is not possible. In fact, our result is only concerned with blind quantum computation with a classical client, and uses complexity theoretic results to argue why it is improbable for such a protocol to exist. We then use these complexity theoretic techniques to show that a client, with the ability to prepare and send quantum states to a quantum server, would not be able to delegate arbitrary NP problems to that server. In other words, even a client with quantum capabilities cannot exploit those capabilities to delegate the computation of NP problems, while keeping the input, to that computation, private. This is again true, provided certain complexity theoretic conjectures are true.

When building enterprise applications that need to be accessed through a variety of client devices, developers usually strive to implement most of the business logic device-independently while using a web browser to display the user interface. However, when those web-based front-ends shall be rendered on different devices, their differing I/O capabilities may require device-specific interaction patterns that still need to be specified and implemented efficiently. We present an approach for specifying the dialog flows in multi-channel web interfaces with very low redundancy and introduce a framework that controls web interfaces’ device-specific dialog flows according to those specifications, while keeping the enterprise application logic completely device-independent.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The great advance in the semiconductor industry allowed a increase in the development and marketing of mobile electronic devices. With the expansion of this market, the need for new programming methods and a different view for the development of user interfaces increased. Interfaces that were used before only in desktops and relied on keyboard and mouse interaction are now used in a variety of devices, including cell phones, smartphones and tablets. Often making the use of touch screens as well as by voice commands. Taking into account these aspects of cross-platform and different usability, it becomes apparent the importance of interfaces that adapt "to the environment." With the advent of mobile devices, this particular area became of fundamental importance because this kind of devices has specifics characteristics that are essential to the composition of a satisfactory user interface. So, mobile devices are covering a large variety of features, which makes the interfaces development a very complex task. One way to develop and adapt user interfaces in order to facilitate handling and to reduce stress at the time of use of the device is through the use of user profiles and capabilities of devices. Therefore, that interface is adapted to the user needs and preferences, as well be able to fully adapt to the device features. Considering this assumption, this dissertation aims to present the architecture PIDIM. This architecture goal to assist in the customization and adaptation of user interfaces for mobile devices in pervasive environments. The user interfaces adapted for this process plans to facilitate the use of mobile devices. The proposed approach presents an architecture that uses concepts of Pervasive Computing enabling information access anytime, anyplace, and in any computing device. Besides, it represents data on the user s profile, so that adaptation of the interfaces is entirely focused on the end user. The knowledge representation about the user profile needed for PIDIM architecture modeling is done through ontologies due to the possibility of reuse of stored information. In order to validate and demonstrate the flow of operation of the proposed approach is presented a case study in the literature, which has as scenario the adaptation of user interfaces when it is in motion. / O grande avanço na indústria de semicondutores possibilitou um aumento no desenvolvimento e comercialização de dispositivos eletrônicos móveis. Juntamente com este mercado, cresceu a necessidade de novos métodos de programação e uma visão diferente para criação de interfaces. Interfaces que antes só eram utilizadas em desktops com base de interação teclado e mouse, hoje são utilizadas em diferentes tipos de dispositivos, como celulares, smartphones e tablets, seja utilizadas em telas sensíveis ao toque como também por comando de voz. Levando em conta estes aspectos de multiplataforma e diferentes usabilidades, torna-se visível a importância de interfaces que se adaptem "ao meio". Com o aparecimento dos dispositivos móveis, a área em questão passou a ser de fundamental importância, pois estes dispositivos possuem características particulares fundamentais para a composição de uma interface satisfatória ao usuário. Os dispositivos móveis estão abrangendo uma diversidade grande de características, o que torna o desenvolvimento de uma interface um processo complexo. Uma das formas de desenvolver e adaptar interfaces de usuário de forma a facilitar o manuseio e diminuir o estresse no momento da utilização do dispositivo é através do uso de perfis de usuários e capacidades de dispositivos, fazendo com que a interface se adapte às necessidades e preferências do usuário e consiga se adaptar totalmente às funcionalidades do dispositivo. Considerando isto, este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar a arquitetura PIDIM, a fim de ajudar na personalização e adaptação de interfaces de usuário para dispositivos móveis em ambientes pervasivos. As interfaces de usuários adaptadas por este processo da arquitetura PIDIM visam facilitar a utilização de dispositivos móveis. A abordagem proposta apresenta uma arquitetura que utiliza conceitos de Computação Pervasiva possibilitando acesso à informação a qualquer hora, lugar, e dispositivo computacional, além de representar dados relativos ao perfil de usuários, para que a adaptação das interfaces seja totalmente focada no usuário final. A representação do conhecimento sobre o perfil do usuário necessário para a modelagem da arquitetura PIDIM é feita através de ontologias devido a possibilidade de reuso das informações armazenadas. A fim de validar e demonstrar o fluxo de funcionamento da abordagem proposta, é apresentado um estudo de caso, encontrado na literatura, o qual possui como cenário a adaptação de interfaces de usuários quando o mesmo se encontra em movimento.