Understanding human behaviour is key to understanding the spread of epidemics, habit dispersion, and the efficacy of health interventions. Investigation into the patterns of and drivers for human behaviour has often been facilitated by paper tools such as surveys, journals, and diaries. These tools have drawbacks in that they can be forgotten, go unfilled, and depend on often unreliable human memories. Researcher-driven data collection mechanisms, such as interviews and direct observation, alleviate some of these problems while introducing others, such as bias and observer effects. In response to this, technological means such as special-purpose data collection hardware, wireless sensor networks, and apps for smart devices have been built to collect behavioural data. These technologies further reduce the problems experienced by more traditional behavioural research tools, but often experience problems of reliability, generality, extensibility, and ease of configuration. This document details the construction of a smartphone-based app designed to collect data on human behaviour such that the difficulties of traditional tools are alleviated while still addressing the problems faced by modern supplemental technology. I describe the app's main data collection engine and its construction, architecture, reliability, generality, and extensibility, as well as the programming language developed to configure it and its feature set. To demonstrate the utility of the tool and its configuration language, I describe how they have been used to collect data in the field. Specifically, eleven case studies are presented in which the tool's architecture, flexibility, generality, extensibility, modularity, and ease of configuration have been exploited to facilitate a variety of behavioural monitoring endeavours. I further explain how the engine performs data collection, the major abstractions it employs, how its design and the development techniques used ensure ongoing reliability, and how the engine and its configuration language could be extended in the future to facilitate a greater range of experiments that require behavioural data to be collected. Finally, features and modules of the engine's encompassing system, iEpi, are presented that have not otherwise been documented to give the reader an understanding of where the work fits into the larger data collection and processing endeavour that spawned it.

This thesis presents VERTIPH, a visual programming language for the development of image processing algorithms on FPGA hardware. The research began with an examination of the whole design cycle, with a view to identifying requirements for implementing image processing on FPGAs. Based on this analysis, a design process was developed where a selected software algorithm is matched to a hardware architecture tailor made for its implementation. The algorithm and architecture are then transformed into an FPGA suitable design. It was found that in most cases the most efficient mapping for image processing algorithms is to use a streamed processing approach. This constrains how data is presented and requires most existing algorithms to be extensively modified. Therefore, the resultant designs are heavily streamed and pipelined. A visual notation was developed to complement this design process, as both streaming and pipelining can be well represented by data flow visual languages. The notation has three views each of which represents and supports a different part of the design process. An architecture view gives an overview of the design's main blocks and their interconnections. A computational view represents lower-level details by representing each block by a set of computational expressions and low-level controls. This includes a novel visual representation of pipelining that simplifies latency analysis, multiphase design, priming, flushing and stalling, and the detection of sequencing errors. A scheduling view adds a state machine for high-level control of processing blocks. This extended state objects to allow for the priming and flushing of pipelined operations. User evaluations of an implementation of the key parts of this language (the architecture view and the computational view) found that both were generally good visualisations and aided in design (especially the type interface, pipeline and control notations). The user evaluations provided several suggestions for the improvement of the language, and in particular the evaluators would have preferred to use the diagrams as a verification tool for a textual representation rather than as the primary data capture mechanism. A cognitive dimensions analysis showed that the language scores highly for thirteen of the twenty dimensions considered, particularly those related to making details of the design clearer to the developer.

This thesis presents VERTIPH, a visual programming language for the development of image processing algorithms on FPGA hardware. The research began with an examination of the whole design cycle, with a view to identifying requirements for implementing image processing on FPGAs. Based on this analysis, a design process was developed where a selected software algorithm is matched to a hardware architecture tailor made for its implementation. The algorithm and architecture are then transformed into an FPGA suitable design. It was found that in most cases the most efficient mapping for image processing algorithms is to use a streamed processing approach. This constrains how data is presented and requires most existing algorithms to be extensively modified. Therefore, the resultant designs are heavily streamed and pipelined. A visual notation was developed to complement this design process, as both streaming and pipelining can be well represented by data flow visual languages. The notation has three views each of which represents and supports a different part of the design process. An architecture view gives an overview of the design's main blocks and their interconnections. A computational view represents lower-level details by representing each block by a set of computational expressions and low-level controls. This includes a novel visual representation of pipelining that simplifies latency analysis, multiphase design, priming, flushing and stalling, and the detection of sequencing errors. A scheduling view adds a state machine for high-level control of processing blocks. This extended state objects to allow for the priming and flushing of pipelined operations. User evaluations of an implementation of the key parts of this language (the architecture view and the computational view) found that both were generally good visualisations and aided in design (especially the type interface, pipeline and control notations). The user evaluations provided several suggestions for the improvement of the language, and in particular the evaluators would have preferred to use the diagrams as a verification tool for a textual representation rather than as the primary data capture mechanism. A cognitive dimensions analysis showed that the language scores highly for thirteen of the twenty dimensions considered, particularly those related to making details of the design clearer to the developer.

This thesis presents VERTIPH, a visual programming language for the development of image processing algorithms on FPGA hardware. The research began with an examination of the whole design cycle, with a view to identifying requirements for implementing image processing on FPGAs. Based on this analysis, a design process was developed where a selected software algorithm is matched to a hardware architecture tailor made for its implementation. The algorithm and architecture are then transformed into an FPGA suitable design. It was found that in most cases the most efficient mapping for image processing algorithms is to use a streamed processing approach. This constrains how data is presented and requires most existing algorithms to be extensively modified. Therefore, the resultant designs are heavily streamed and pipelined. A visual notation was developed to complement this design process, as both streaming and pipelining can be well represented by data flow visual languages. The notation has three views each of which represents and supports a different part of the design process. An architecture view gives an overview of the design's main blocks and their interconnections. A computational view represents lower-level details by representing each block by a set of computational expressions and low-level controls. This includes a novel visual representation of pipelining that simplifies latency analysis, multiphase design, priming, flushing and stalling, and the detection of sequencing errors. A scheduling view adds a state machine for high-level control of processing blocks. This extended state objects to allow for the priming and flushing of pipelined operations. User evaluations of an implementation of the key parts of this language (the architecture view and the computational view) found that both were generally good visualisations and aided in design (especially the type interface, pipeline and control notations). The user evaluations provided several suggestions for the improvement of the language, and in particular the evaluators would have preferred to use the diagrams as a verification tool for a textual representation rather than as the primary data capture mechanism. A cognitive dimensions analysis showed that the language scores highly for thirteen of the twenty dimensions considered, particularly those related to making details of the design clearer to the developer.

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Prosoft é um grupo de pesquisa do Instituto de Informática da UFRGS, desenvolvido pelo grupo de pesquisa homônimo e coordenado pelo Professor Daltro José Nunes. O objetivo do projeto é desenvolver um ambiente de desenvolvimento de software completo, o Ambiente Prosoft, que é baseado nos conceitos de Modelos, Cálculo Lambda, Tipos Abstratos de Dados e Orientação a Objetos. Um dos componentes do Ambiente Prosoft é sua linguagem de especificação algébrica: o Prosoft Algébrico. Apesar de ser base e tema de diversos trabalhos no grupo de pesquisa Prosoft, o Prosoft Algébrico não tem sua semântica devidamente definida. Os trabalhos desenvolvidos até agora foram baseados em noções operacionais, e apresentam diferentes interpretações do Prosoft Algébrico. Esta dissertação apresenta uma especificação de semântica denotacional para o Prosoft Algébrico, compreendendo, entre outras características, sua primitiva de comunicação entre tipos de dados, chamada ICS, e sua notação gráfica para representação de instanciação de tipos abstratos de dados. Essa dissertação apresenta também um estudo sobre prototipação semântica usando a linguagem de programação Haskell. O conceito de Literate Programming e a proximidade entre Cálculo Lambda e Haskell foram cruciais no rápido desenvolvimento de uma implementação protótipo do Prosoft Algébrico, baseada na sua semântica especificada. As principais contribuições dessa dissertação incluem: uma interpretação precisa e sem ambiguidades do Prosoft Algébrico, através da especificação da sua semântica; a definição de semântica para a ICS, um conceito único (até o limite do nosso conhecimento) que fornece um mecanismo de passagem de mensagens entre tipos de dados algébricos; uma implementação protótipo do Prosoft Algébrico, que pode realmente ser utilizada para experimentar e testar a definição da linguagem e a especificação da semântica do Prosoft Algébrico; resultados sobre prototipação semântica de especificações tanto de semântica denotacional quanto de semântica operacional usando a linguagem de programação Haskell para desenvolvimento rápido de protótipos de linguagens baseados na sua semântica. Como grande parte do desenvolvimento do Ambiente Prosoft é realizado através de projetos de cooperação internacional e essa dissertação irá influenciar fortemente o seu desenvolvimento futuro, o texto foi escrito em inglês para facilitar a troca de informação entre o grupo Prosoft e seus parceiros estrangeiros. / Prosoft is a research project at Instituto de Informática da UFRGS, developed by the research group with the same name and coordinated by Professor Daltro José Nunes. The project’s goal is to develop a full software development environment, the Prosoft Environment, based on the concepts of Models, Lambda Calculus, Abstract Data Types and Object orientation. One of the components of the Prosoft Environment is its algebraic specification language: Algebraic Prosoft. Although being the basis and theme of several works in the Prosoft research group, Algebraic Prosoft doesn’t have its semantics properly defined. Works done up to now were based on operational notions and presented different interpretations of Algebraic Prosoft. This thesis presents a denotational semantics specification for Algebraic Prosoft, comprising, among other features, its “inter-data type” communication primitive, called ICS, and its graphical notation for representing instantiations of abstract data types. This thesis also presents a study of semantic prototyping using the Haskell programming language. The concept of Literate Programing and the proximity between lambda calculus and Haskell were crucial to the rapid development of a prototype implementation of Algebraic Prosoft, based on its specified semantics. This thesis’ main contributions include: a precise and unambiguous interpretation of Algebraic Prosoft, through a semantics specification; the definition of semantics to the ICS, a unique (to the best of our knowledge) concept that provides a messagepassing mechanism between algebraic data types; a prototype implementation of Algebraic Prosoft, which can actually be used to experiment and test the Algebraic Prosoft language definition and semantics specification; results regarding semantics prototyping of both denotational and operational semantics specifications using the Haskell programming language for rapid development of semantics-based prototypes of languages. Since a large portion of Prosoft Environment’s development is done through international cooperation projects and this thesis will strongly influence its future development, the text was written in English in order to facilitate the information exchange between the Prosoft research group and its foreign partners.

Plagiarism among students of introductory programming courses has been increasing over time. The ease of exchange of information brought by the Internet can be the factor responsible for this increase. In many cases, students try to disguise the plagiarism making some modifications to the source code. However, some masking techniques are extremely complex to be detected and may not be seen with the naked eye. In this dissertation, detection techniques were analyzed and, on this basis, was developed a system able to detect plagiarism in source code. This system is based on the representation code as an abstract syntax tree and Karp-Rabin Greedy String Tiling algorithm. The system was evaluated using a source-code base of students of programming disciplines. Oracle based comparison was performed to compare the system with others. The oracle was created from the manual analysis of the teacher of the subject, which was marked if there was plagiarism or not in each pair of source code. To represent the results, ROC curves and confusion matrices were used. The same procedure was applied to existing systems, allowing direct comparison of results. More specifically, we use the value of the area under the curve and the minimum distance to point (0, 1) of the ROC space, since these figures represent the classification performance. The analysis of results shows that, for the sample used, the developed system obtained higher area under the curve and also the shortest distance to the point (0, 1) of the space ROC. However, we find that the choice of similarity detection tool in source code will depend on conservative or liberal profile of teaching. / O plágio entre alunos de disciplinas introdutórias de programação vem aumentando ao longo do tempo. A facilidade na troca de informações trazida pela Internet pode ser um dos fatores responsáveis por esse aumento. Em muitos casos, os alunos tentam disfarçar o plágio fazendo algumas modificações no código-fonte. Porém, algumas técnicas de disfarce são extremamente complexas e podem não ser detectadas a olho nu. Neste trabalho, foram analisadas as técnicas de detecção e, com base nelas, foi desenvolvido um sistema capaz de detectar plágio em código-fonte. Este sistema é baseado na representação do código como uma árvore sintática abstrata e no algoritmo Karp-Rabin Greedy String Tiling. O sistema foi avaliado utilizando uma base de códigos-fonte de alunos de disciplinas programação. Foi realizada uma comparação baseada em oráculo para comparar o sistema com os demais. O oráculo foi criado a partir da análise do docente da disciplina, onde foi marcado se havia plágio ou não em cada par de código-fonte. Para representar os resultados, foram utilizadas curvas ROC e matrizes de confusão. O mesmo procedimento foi aplicado aos sistemas já existentes, o que permitiu a comparação direta entre os resultados. Mais especificamente, utilizamos o valor da área sob a curva e a distância mínima para o ponto (0, 1) do espaço ROC, uma vez que esses valores representam o desempenho de classificação. A análise dos resultados indica que, para a amostra utilizada, o sistema desenvolvido obteve o maior valor da área sob a curva e também a menor distância para o ponto (0, 1) do espaço ROC. No entanto, concluímos que a escolha de uma ferramenta de detecção de similaridade em código-fonte dependerá bastante do perfil conservador ou liberal do docente.

Prosoft é um grupo de pesquisa do Instituto de Informática da UFRGS, desenvolvido pelo grupo de pesquisa homônimo e coordenado pelo Professor Daltro José Nunes. O objetivo do projeto é desenvolver um ambiente de desenvolvimento de software completo, o Ambiente Prosoft, que é baseado nos conceitos de Modelos, Cálculo Lambda, Tipos Abstratos de Dados e Orientação a Objetos. Um dos componentes do Ambiente Prosoft é sua linguagem de especificação algébrica: o Prosoft Algébrico. Apesar de ser base e tema de diversos trabalhos no grupo de pesquisa Prosoft, o Prosoft Algébrico não tem sua semântica devidamente definida. Os trabalhos desenvolvidos até agora foram baseados em noções operacionais, e apresentam diferentes interpretações do Prosoft Algébrico. Esta dissertação apresenta uma especificação de semântica denotacional para o Prosoft Algébrico, compreendendo, entre outras características, sua primitiva de comunicação entre tipos de dados, chamada ICS, e sua notação gráfica para representação de instanciação de tipos abstratos de dados. Essa dissertação apresenta também um estudo sobre prototipação semântica usando a linguagem de programação Haskell. O conceito de Literate Programming e a proximidade entre Cálculo Lambda e Haskell foram cruciais no rápido desenvolvimento de uma implementação protótipo do Prosoft Algébrico, baseada na sua semântica especificada. As principais contribuições dessa dissertação incluem: uma interpretação precisa e sem ambiguidades do Prosoft Algébrico, através da especificação da sua semântica; a definição de semântica para a ICS, um conceito único (até o limite do nosso conhecimento) que fornece um mecanismo de passagem de mensagens entre tipos de dados algébricos; uma implementação protótipo do Prosoft Algébrico, que pode realmente ser utilizada para experimentar e testar a definição da linguagem e a especificação da semântica do Prosoft Algébrico; resultados sobre prototipação semântica de especificações tanto de semântica denotacional quanto de semântica operacional usando a linguagem de programação Haskell para desenvolvimento rápido de protótipos de linguagens baseados na sua semântica. Como grande parte do desenvolvimento do Ambiente Prosoft é realizado através de projetos de cooperação internacional e essa dissertação irá influenciar fortemente o seu desenvolvimento futuro, o texto foi escrito em inglês para facilitar a troca de informação entre o grupo Prosoft e seus parceiros estrangeiros. / Prosoft is a research project at Instituto de Informática da UFRGS, developed by the research group with the same name and coordinated by Professor Daltro José Nunes. The project’s goal is to develop a full software development environment, the Prosoft Environment, based on the concepts of Models, Lambda Calculus, Abstract Data Types and Object orientation. One of the components of the Prosoft Environment is its algebraic specification language: Algebraic Prosoft. Although being the basis and theme of several works in the Prosoft research group, Algebraic Prosoft doesn’t have its semantics properly defined. Works done up to now were based on operational notions and presented different interpretations of Algebraic Prosoft. This thesis presents a denotational semantics specification for Algebraic Prosoft, comprising, among other features, its “inter-data type” communication primitive, called ICS, and its graphical notation for representing instantiations of abstract data types. This thesis also presents a study of semantic prototyping using the Haskell programming language. The concept of Literate Programing and the proximity between lambda calculus and Haskell were crucial to the rapid development of a prototype implementation of Algebraic Prosoft, based on its specified semantics. This thesis’ main contributions include: a precise and unambiguous interpretation of Algebraic Prosoft, through a semantics specification; the definition of semantics to the ICS, a unique (to the best of our knowledge) concept that provides a messagepassing mechanism between algebraic data types; a prototype implementation of Algebraic Prosoft, which can actually be used to experiment and test the Algebraic Prosoft language definition and semantics specification; results regarding semantics prototyping of both denotational and operational semantics specifications using the Haskell programming language for rapid development of semantics-based prototypes of languages. Since a large portion of Prosoft Environment’s development is done through international cooperation projects and this thesis will strongly influence its future development, the text was written in English in order to facilitate the information exchange between the Prosoft research group and its foreign partners.

Ensuring code quality is crucial in software development. Not seldom, developers resort to static analysis tools to assist them in both understanding pieces of code and identifying defects or refactoring opportunities during development activities. A critical issue when defining such tools is their ability to obtain information about code. Static analysis tools depend, in general, of an intermediate program representation to identify locations that meet the conditions described in their algorithms. This perspective can be enlarged when techniques of crosscutting concerns modularization, such as aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is applied. In AOP applications, a piece of code can be systematically affected, using both static and dynamic combinations. The main goal of this dissertation is the specification and the implementation of AQL, a domain-specific language (DSL) designed to search aspect-oriented code bases. AQL is a declarative language, based on object query language (OQL), which enables the task of querying elements, relationships and program metrics to support the construction of static analysis and code searching tools for aspect oriented programs. The language was designed in two steps. First, we built a framework (AOPJungle), responsible to extract data from aspect-oriented programs. AOPJungle performs the computation of metrics, inferences and connections between the elements of the program. In the second step, we built an AQL compiler as a reference implementation. We adopted a source-to-source transformation for this step, in which an AQL query is transformed into HQL statements before being executed. In order to evaluate the reference implementation, we developed a static analysis tool for identifying refactoring opportunities in aspect-oriented programs. This tool receives a set of AQL queries to identify potential scenarios where refactoring could be applied. / Assegurar a qualidade de código é um ponto crucial durante o desenvolvimento de software. Frequentemente, os desenvolvedores recorrem às ferramentas de análise estática para auxiliá-los tanto na compreensão de código, quanto na identificação de defeitos ou de oportunidades de refatoração durante o ciclo de desenvolvimento de aplicações. Um dos pontos críticos na definição de tais ferramentas está na sua capacidade de obter informações a respeito de código. As ferramentas de análise estática dependem, em geral, de uma representação intermediária de um programa para identificar situações que atendam às condições necessárias descritas em seus algoritmos. Esse panorama se amplia com o uso de técnicas de modularização de interesses transversais, tais como a programação orientada a aspectos (POA), na qual um código pode ser afetado de forma sistêmica, por meio de combinações estáticas e dinâmicas. O principal objetivo desta dissertação é a especificação e implementação de AQL, uma DSL (linguagem específica de domínio) para a realização de busca em código orientado a aspectos. A AQL é uma linguagem declarativa, baseada em linguagem de busca em objetos (OQL) e que permite consultar elementos, relações, derivações e métricas de um programa orientado a aspectos (OA), a fim de apoiar a construção de ferramentas de análise estática e de pesquisa em código. O projeto de implementação da linguagem foi realizado em duas etapas. Primeiro, foi criado um framework (AOPJungle) para a extração de dados de programas OA. O AOPJungle além de extrair dados de programas OA, realiza a computação de métricas, inferências e ligações entre os elementos de um programa. Na segunda etapa, um compilador de referência para AQL foi construído. A abordagem adotada foi a transformação fonte a fonte, sendo uma consulta AQL transformada em uma consulta HQL (Hibernate Query Language) antes de sua execução. A fim de avaliar a implementação proposta, uma ferramenta de análise estática para identificação de oportunidades de refatoração em programas AO foi elaborada, usando a AQL para a busca de dados sobre esses programas.

A presente pesquisa faz parte de um trabalho que visa o desenvolvimento de um método de simulação computacional que permita fazer a avaliação da qualidade da imagem radiográfica de maneira rápida e completa e que não apresente os problemas dos métodos tradicionais disponíveis e usados atualmente. Neste trabalho foi desenvolvido um método que leva em consideração e simula os parâmetros importantes dos sistemas radiológicos tais como: o tamanho e a distribuição de intensidade do ponto focal, as condições geométricas de exposição, a heterogeneidade do campo, a distribuição angular dos raios X, a grade supressora, bem como o efeito Compton. O método de simulação computacional desenvolvido realiza o controle de qualidade da imagem para um objeto colocado em qualquer posição do campo de radiação. A simulação foi feita implementando os algoritmos desenvolvidos em linguagem \"C\" e os resultados foram apresentados sob forma gráfica para facilitar a compreensão dos usuários. / This research is part of a work that aims the development of a computer simulation method which allows to evaluate the radiographic image quality in a faster and complete way, so that it doesn\'t present the problems found in the available methods used nowadays. The method developed in this work takes into consideration and simulates the important parameters of the radiologic systems such as: the focal spot size, the intensity distribution focal spot, the geometric conditions exposure, the field heterogeneity, the X-ray angular distribution, the antiscatter grid (Bucky), as well as the Compton effect. This developed computer simulation method achieves the image quality control of an object at any position of the radiation field. The simulation was done implementing the algorithms developed in C language and the results were displayed in a graphic way to facilitate the users comprehension.