On Teaching Discrete Mathematics to Freshman Computer Science Students

Discrete Mathematics is an inevitable part of any undergraduate computer science degree programme. However, today's computer science student typically finds this to be at best a necessary evil with which they struggle to engage. Twenty years ago, we started to address this issue seriously in our university, and we have instituted a number of innovations throughout the years which have had a positive effect on engagement and, thus, attainment. In this paper, we describe and motivate the innovations which we introduced, and provide a detailed analysis of how and why engagement and attainment levels varied over two decades as a direct result of these innovation

Automating unobtrusive personalized services in ambient media environments

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-013-1634-2In the age of ambient media, people are surrounded by lots of physical objects (media objects) for rendering the digital world in the natural environment. These media objects should interact with users in a way that is not disturbing for them. To address this issue, this work presents a design and automation strategy for augmenting the world around us with personalized ambient media services that behave in a considerate manner. That is, ambient services are capable of adjusting its obtrusiveness level (i.e., the extent to which each service intrudes the user¿s mind) by using the appropriate media objects for each user¿s situation.This work has been developed with the support of MICINN, under the project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011, and the support of the Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft and the BMWFJ, Austria.Serral Asensio, E.; Gil Pascual, M.; Valderas Aranda, PJ.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2014). Automating unobtrusive personalized services in ambient media environments. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 71(1):159-178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-013-1634-2S159178711Bencomo N, Grace P, Flores-Cortés CA, Hughes D, Blair GS (2008) Genie: supporting the model driven development of reflective, component-based adaptive systems. In: ICSE, pp 811–814Blumendorf M, Lehmann G, Albayrak S (2010) Bridging models and systems at runtime to build adaptive user interfaces. In: Proc. of EICS 2010. ACM, pp 9–18Brown DM (2010) Communicating design: developing web site documentation for design and planning, 2nd edn. New Riders PressCalinescu R (2011) When the requirements for adaptation and high integrity meet. In: Proceedings of the 8th workshop on assurances for self-adaptive systems, ASAS ’11. ACM, New York, pp 1–4Filieri A, Ghezzi C, Tamburrelli G (2011) Run-time efficient probabilistic model checking. In: Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE ’11. ACM, New York, pp 341–350Gershenfeld N, Krikorian R, Cohen D (2004) The internet of things. Sci Am 291(4):46–51Gibbs WW (2005) Considerate computing. Sci Am 292(1):54–61Gulliksen J, Goransson B, Boivie I, Blomkvist S, Persson J, Cajander A (2003) Key principles for user-centred systems design. Behav Inform Technol 22:397–409Hinckley K, Horvitz E (2001) Toward more sensitive mobile phones. In: Proc. of the UIST ’01, pp 191–192Ho J, Intille SS (2005) Using context-aware computing to reduce the perceived burden of interruptions from mobile devices. In: Proc. of CHI ’05. ACM, pp 909–918Horvitz E, Kadie C, Paek T, Hovel D (2003) Models of attention in computing and communication: from principles to applications. Commun ACM 46:52–59Ju W, Leifer L (2008) The design of implicit interactions: making interactive systems less obnoxious. Des Issues 24(3):72–84Kortuem G, Kawsar F, Fitton D, Sundramoorthy V (2010) Smart objects as building blocks for the internet of things. IEEE Internet Comput 14(1):44–51Lewis JR (1995) Ibm computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: psychometric evaluation and instructions for use. Int J Hum Comput Interact 7(1):57–78Lugmayr A, Risse T, Stockleben B, Laurila K, Kaario J (2009) Semantic ambient media—an introduction. Multimed Tools Appl 43(3):337–359Mattern F (2003) From smart devices to smart everyday objects. In: Proc. Smart Objects Conf. (SOC 03). Springer, pp 15–16Morin B, Barais O, Jezequel JM, Fleurey F, Solberg A (2009) Models run.time to support dynamic adaptation. Comput 42(10):44–51Nelson L, Churchill EF (2005) User experience of physical-digital object systems: implications for representation and infrastructure. Paper presented at smart object systems workshop, in cojunction with ubicomp 2005Paternò F (2002) Concurtasktrees: an engineered approach to model-based design of interactive systems. In: L.E. Associates (ed) The handbook of analysis for human-computer interaction, pp 483–500Paternò F (2003) From model-based to natural development. HCI International, pp 592–596Ramchurn SD, Deitch B, Thompson MK, Roure DCD, Jennings NR, Luck M (2004) Minimising intrusiveness in pervasive computing environments using multi-agent negotiation. MobiQuitous ’04, pp 364–372Runeson P, Höst M (2009) Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empir Softw Eng 14(2):131–164Schmidt A (2000) Implicit human computer interaction through context. Pers Technol 4(2–3):191–199Serral E, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2010) Supporting runtime system evolution to adapt to user behaviour. In: Proc. of CAiSE’10, pp 378–392Serral E, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2010) Towards the model driven development of context-aware pervasive systems. PMC 6(2):254–280Siegemund F (2004) A context-aware communication platform for smart objects. In: Proc of the int conf on pervasive computing. Springer, pp 69–86Streitz NA, Rocker C, Prante T, Alphen Dv, Stenzel R, Magerkurth C (2005) Designing smart artifacts for smart environments. Comput 38(3):41–49. doi: 10.1109/MC.2005.92Thiesse F, Kohler M (2008) An analysis of usage-based pricing policies for smart products. Electron Mark 18(3):232–241. doi: 10.1080/10196780802265751Vastenburg MH, Keyson DV, de Ridder H (2008) Considerate home notification systems: a field study of acceptability of notifications in the home. Pers Ubiquit Comput 12(8):555–56

Personalization for unobtrusive service interaction

Increasingly, mobile devices play a key role in the communication between users and the services embedded in their environment. With ever greater number of services added to our surroundings, there is a need to personalize services according to the user needs and environmental context avoiding service behavior from becoming overwhelming. In order to prevent this information overload, we present a method for the development of mobile services that can be personalized in terms of obtrusiveness (the degree in which each service intrudes the user's mind) according to the user needs and preferences. That is, services can be developed to provide their functionality at different obtrusiveness levels depending on the user by minimizing the duplication of efforts. On the one hand, we provide mechanisms for describing the obtrusiveness degree required for a service. On the other hand, we make use of Feature Modeling techniques in order to define the obtrusiveness level adaptation in a declarative manner. An experiment was conducted in order to put in practice the proposal and evaluate the user acceptance for the personalization capabilities provided by our approach. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011.This work has been developed with the support of MICINN under the project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011 and co-financed with ERDF, in the grants program FPU.Gil Pascual, M.; Giner Blasco, P.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2012). Personalization for unobtrusive service interaction. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 16(5):543-561. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0414-0S543561165Abrams M, Phanouriou C, Batongbacal AL, Williams SM, Shuster JE (1999) Uiml: an appliance-independent xml user interface language. In: WWW ’99. Elsevier, North-Holland, pp 1695–1708Ballagas R, Borchers J, Rohs M, Sheridan JG (2006) The smart phone: a ubiquitous input device. IEEE Pervas Comput 5(1):70Balme L, Demeure A, Barralon N, Coutaz J, Calvary G (2004) Cameleon-rt: a software architecture reference model for distributed, migratable, and plastic user interfaces. In: EUSAI, pp 291–302Benavides D, Cortés RA, Trinidad P (2005) Automated reasoning on feature models. In: LNCS, advanced information systems engineering: 17th international conference, CAiSE 2005 3520, pp 491–503Blomquist A, Arvola M (2002) Personas in action: ethnography in an interaction design team. In: Proceedings of NordiCHI ’02. ACM, New York, NY, pp 197–200Bright A, Kay J, Ler D, Ngo K, Niu W, Nuguid A (2005) Adaptively recommending museum tours. In: Nick Ryan Tullio Salmon Cinotti GR (ed) Proceedings of workshop on smart environments and their applications to cultural heritage. Archaeolingua, pp 29–32Brown DM (2010) Communicating design: developing web site documentation for design and planning, 2nd edn. New Riders Press, USACalvary G, Coutaz J, Thevenin D, Limbourg Q, Bouillon L, Vanderdonckt J (2003) A unifying reference framework for multi-target user interfaces. Interact Comput 15(3):289–308Cetina C, Giner P, Fons J, Pelechano V (2009) Autonomic computing through reuse of variability models at runtime: the case of smart homes. Computer 42(10):37–43Chatfield C, Carmichael D, Hexel R, Kay J, Kummerfeld B (2005) Personalisation in intelligent environments: managing the information flow. In: OZCHI ’05. Computer-human interaction special interest group of Australia, pp 1–10Clerckx T, Winters F, Coninx K (2005) Tool support for designing context-sensitive user interfaces using a model-based approach. In: TAMODIA ’05: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Task models and diagrams. ACM Press, New York, pp 11–18Czarnecki K, Helsen S, Eisenecker U (2004) Staged configuration using feature models. In: Proceedings of SPLCDuarte C, Carriço L (2006) A conceptual framework for developing adaptive multimodal applications. In: Proceedings of IUI ’06. ACM, New York, pp 132–139Evans (2003) Domain-driven design: tacking complexity In the heart of software. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., BostonsFavre JM (2004) Foundations of model (Driven) (Reverse) engineering: models—Episode I: stories of the fidus papyrus and of the solarus. In: Bezivin J, Heckel R (eds) Language engineering for model-driven software development, no. 04101, Dagstuhl seminar proceedings. Dagstuhl, GermanyFischer G (2001) User modeling in human–computer interaction. User Model User-Adap Inter 11(1–2):65–86Gibbs WW (2005) Considerate computing. Scientific American 292(1):54–61Giner P, Cetina C, Fons J, Pelechano V (2010) Developing mobile workflow support in the internet of things. IEEE Pervas Comput 9(2):18–26Giner P, Cetina C, Fons J, Pelechano V (2011) Implicit interaction design for pervasive workflows. Pers Ubiquit Comput 1–10Gulliksen J, Goransson B, Boivie I, Blomkvist S, Persson J, Cajander A (2003) Key principles for user-centred systems design. Behav Inform Technol 22:397–409Hinckley K, Horvitz E (2001) Toward more sensitive mobile phones. In: Proceedings of the UIST ’01. ACM, New York, pp 191–192Ho J, Intille SS (2005) Using context-aware computing to reduce the perceived burden of interruptions from mobile devices. In: Proceedings of CHI ’05. ACM, New York, pp 909–918Horvitz E, Kadie C, Paek T, Hovel D (2003) Models of attention in computing and communication: from principles to applications. Commun ACM 46(3):52–59Ju W, Leifer L (2008) The design of implicit interactions: making interactive systems less obnoxious. Des Issues 24(3):72–84Lewis JR (1995) Ibm computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: psychometric evaluation and instructions for use. Int J Hum-Comput Interact 7(1):57–78Limbourg Q, Vanderdonckt J, Michotte B, Bouillon L, López-Jaquero V (2004) Usixml: a language supporting multi-path development of user interfaces. In: EHCI/DS-VIS, pp 200–220Mao JY, Vredenburg K, Smith PW, Carey T (2001) User-centered design methods in practice: a survey of the state of the art. In: CASCON ’01. IBM Press, New York, p 12McCrickard DS, Chewar CM (2003) Attuning notification design to user goals and attention costs. Commun ACM 46:67–72Mori G, Paternò F, Santoro C (2002) Ctte: support for developing and analyzing task models for interactive system design. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 28(8):797–813Mori G, Paternò F, Santoro C (2004) Design and development of multidevice user interfaces through multiple logical descriptions. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 30(8):507–520Myers B, Hudson SE, Pausch R (2000) Past, present, and future of user interface software tools. ACM Trans Comput-Hum Interact 7(1):3–28OMG (2006) Business process modeling notation (BPMN) specification. OMG Final Adopted SpecificationPaternò F, Santoro C (2003) A unified method for designing interactive systems adaptable to mobile and stationary platforms. Interact Comput 15(3):349–366Puerta A, Eisenstein J (2002) Ximl: a common representation for interaction data. In: Proceedings of IUI ’02. ACM, New York, pp 214–215Ramchurn SD, Deitch B, Thompson MK, Roure DCD, Jennings NR, Luck M (2004) Minimising intrusiveness in pervasive computing environments using multi-agent negotiation. In: First international conference on mobile and ubiquitous systems, pp 364–372Rumbaugh J, Jacobson I, Booch G (1998) The unified modeling language reference manual. Addison-Wesley, LondonSchobbens PY, Heymans P, Trigaux JC, Bontemps Y (2007) Generic semantics of feature diagrams. Comput Networks 51(2):456–479Serral E, Pérez F, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2010) An end-user tool for adapting smart environment automation to user behaviour at runtime. In: Proceedings of UCAmI ’10Streefkerk JW, van Esch-Bussemakers MP, Neerincx MA (2006) Designing personal attentive user interfaces in the mobile public safety domain. Comput Hum Behav 22:749–770Tedre M (2008) What should be automated? Interactions 15(5):47–49Unger R, Chandler C (2009) A project guide to UX design: for user experience designers in the field or in the making. New Riders Publishing, Thousand OaksVan den Bergh J, Coninx K. Using uml 2.0 and profiles for modelling context-sensitive user interfaces. In: Proceedings of the MDDAUI2005 CEUR workshopVastenburg MH, Keyson DV, de Ridder H (2008) Considerate home notification systems: a field study of acceptability of notifications in the home. Pers Ubiquit Comput 12(8):555–566Vertegaal R (2003) Attentive user interfaces. Commun ACM 46(3):30–33Weiser M, Brown JS (1997) The coming age of calm technology, pp 75–85Weld DS, Anderson C, Domingos P, Etzioni O, Gajos K, Lau T, Wolf S (2003) Automatically personalizing user interfaces. In: IJCAI ’03, pp 1613–161

Loss of Myotubularin Function Results in T-Tubule Disorganization in Zebrafish and Human Myotubular Myopathy

Myotubularin is a lipid phosphatase implicated in endosomal trafficking in vitro, but with an unknown function in vivo. Mutations in myotubularin cause myotubular myopathy, a devastating congenital myopathy with unclear pathogenesis and no current therapies. Myotubular myopathy was the first described of a growing list of conditions caused by mutations in proteins implicated in membrane trafficking. To advance the understanding of myotubularin function and disease pathogenesis, we have created a zebrafish model of myotubular myopathy using morpholino antisense technology. Zebrafish with reduced levels of myotubularin have significantly impaired motor function and obvious histopathologic changes in their muscle. These changes include abnormally shaped and positioned nuclei and myofiber hypotrophy. These findings are consistent with those observed in the human disease. We demonstrate for the first time that myotubularin functions to regulate PI3P levels in a vertebrate in vivo, and that homologous myotubularin-related proteins can functionally compensate for the loss of myotubularin. Finally, we identify abnormalities in the tubulo-reticular network in muscle from myotubularin zebrafish morphants and correlate these changes with abnormalities in T-tubule organization in biopsies from patients with myotubular myopathy. In all, we have generated a new model of myotubular myopathy and employed this model to uncover a novel function for myotubularin and a new pathomechanism for the human disease that may explain the weakness associated with the condition (defective excitation–contraction coupling). In addition, our findings of tubuloreticular abnormalities and defective excitation-contraction coupling mechanistically link myotubular myopathy with several other inherited muscle diseases, most notably those due to ryanodine receptor mutations. Based on our findings, we speculate that congenital myopathies, usually considered entities with similar clinical features but very disparate pathomechanisms, may at their root be disorders of calcium homeostasis

Respiratory Dendritic Cell Subsets Differ in Their Capacity to Support the Induction of Virus-Specific Cytotoxic CD8+ T Cell Responses

Dendritic cells located at the body surfaces, e.g. skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, play an essential role in the induction of adaptive immune responses to pathogens and inert antigens present at these surfaces. In the respiratory tract, multiple subsets of dendritic cells (RDC) have been identified in both the normal and inflamed lungs. While the importance of RDC in antigen transport from the inflamed or infected respiratory tract to the lymph nodes draining this site is well recognized, the contribution of individual RDC subsets to this process and the precise role of migrant RDC within the lymph nodes in antigen presentation to T cells is not clear. In this report, we demonstrate that two distinct subsets of migrant RDC - exhibiting the CD103+ and CD11bhi phenotype, respectively - are the primary DC presenting antigen to naïve CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes in the draining nodes in response to respiratory influenza virus infection. Furthermore, the migrant CD103+ RDC subset preferentially drives efficient proliferation and differentiation of naive CD8+ T cells responding to infection into effector cells, and only the CD103+ RDC subset can present to naïve CD8+ T cells non-infectious viral vaccine introduced into the respiratory tract. These results identify CD103+ and CD11bhi RDC as critical regulators of the adaptive immune response to respiratory tract infection and potential targets in the design of mucosal vaccines