Ana C. Calderon

Understanding Game Semantics Through Coherence Spaces

Game Semantics has successfully provided fully abstract models for a variety of programming languages not possible using other denotational approaches. Although it is a flexible and accurate way to give semantics to a language, its underlying mathematics is awkward. For example, the proofs that strategies compose associatively and maintain properties imposed on them such as innocence are intricate and require a lot of attention. This work aims at beginning to provide a more elegant and uniform mathematical ground for Game Semantics. Our quest is to find mathematical entities that will retain the properties that make games an accurate way to give semantics to programs, yet that are simple and familiar to work with. Our main result is a full, faithful strong monoidal embedding of a category of games into a category of coherence spaces, where composition is simple composition of relations.

Incorporating Emotion and Personality-Based Analysis in User-Centered Modelling

Understanding complex user behaviour under various conditions, scenarios and journeys is fundamental to improving the user-experience for a given system. Predictive models of user reactions, responses—and in particular, emotions—can aid in the design of more intuitive and usable systems. Building on this theme, the preliminary research presented in this paper correlates events and interactions in an online social network against user behaviour, focusing on personality traits. Emotional context and tone is analysed and modelled based on varying types of sentiments that users express in their language using the IBM Watson Developer Cloud tools. The data collected in this study thus provides further evidence towards supporting the hypothesis that analysing and modelling emotions, sentiments and personality traits provides valuable insight into improving the user experience of complex social computer systems.

Developing computational thinking through pattern recognition in early years education

Alongside recent UK initiatives on computing education, coupled with demands for the development of broader societal digital competencies, we propose that computational thinking skills can be taught to early year students and highlight a method for teaching a specific aspect, namely pattern recognition. Although our example might appear specific to this context, we identify how this could readily be extended to a broader class of educational settings, proposing an underlying pedagogical framework. Finally, a proof-of-concept prototype, corresponding to the implementation of the method, is highlighted.

M-Health Solutions to Support the National Health Service in the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Young Children

With estimates of prevalence between 1 in 68 and 1 in 88 children [11], accurate and early identification of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in young children remains a pressing public health issue. In the absence of a single biomarker for ASD, however, a diagnosis is currently reached on the basis of a portfolio of evidence assembled by various health care professionals, parents and educational specialists. Studies have shown that early diagnosis and subsequent intervention are key to a favourable prognosis for children with autism. Many families, however, experience long periods of time between appointments with health care professionals, thus delaying the diagnosis and subsequent access to support and interventions. In this paper, we consider the potential role of m-health software solutions in supporting the diagnosis and ongoing monitoring of ASDs in young children. We consider their application particularly within the context of the UK’s National Health Service. This paper also presents a review of some of the current literature on user-behaviour analysis software on mobile computing devices such as tablet computers and smartphones, along with some of the emerging m-health solutions for supporting the diagnosis of ASD in children.

Using Interface Design to Develop Computational Thinking Skills

Human-computer interaction is a long established sub-discipline of computer science. While there has been significant focus on the importance of developing computational thinking skills, there appears to be a gap in the literature in using HCI principles, analysis and design as a framework for doing so. We present the first step to identify methodologies for systematically introducing HCI to pupils from an early age, presenting a commentary for their prospective future application, comparing to similar approach as other foundational aspects of computer science in developing computational thinking skills that have been considered for the past decade.

Susceptibility to Learn Computational Thinking Against STEM Attitudes and Aptitudes

An investigation was conducted over 2 years with undergraduate students enrolled in computer science, software engineering and information systems. The aim was to decide whether aptitudes (measured as performance) and preferences (measured using a variation of MAS) for (STEM vs humanities) subjects during secondary school had any impact on the students’ performance in computational thinking components. The investigation was measured against performance in more “traditional” subjects, linked to programming. Our results indicate that computational thinking approaches are more readily taught to varied skilled students, as compared to the core elements of computer science, where it seems that higher aptitudes in STEM link directly. This suggests that alongside standard subjects, higher education students might benefit from having a dedicated module of “computational thinking” at the beginning of their courses, as that would “even the playfield” for the remainder of their degree course. In addition to experimental data and analysis, we present the design of a short CT course to students used to pilot our idea. There is also some statistical evidence to suggest that students who completed the pilot had higher performance at mathematics-based computing courses.

Software Requirements Engineering in Digital Healthcare: A Case Study of the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Children in the UK’s National Health Service

A major issue in designing digital healthcare software solutions is ensuring they meet the clinical needs and requirements of key services, as well as the expectations of various healthcare professionals. Modern software requirements engineering must be adapted to cater for this demand; we argue that traditional (and popular) requirements engineering processes – particularly in relation to the elicitation and validation of key requirements – may not be the most appropriate within the context of a multi-disciplinary team of healthcare professionals. Successful software requirements engineering is vital in ensuring that digital healthcare solutions fulfill expectations and meet the clinical needs; we thus propose that new methods of gathering requirements in the ‘third space’ are needed. This paper draws on a case study of the multi-disciplinary team of healthcare professionals involved in the diagnosis and support of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in young children within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). It is worth noting that, in the context of our case study, requirements engineering is an iterative process and requires the input of numerous stakeholders from often stretched and fragmented services.

Information extraction in emergency management missions: an adaptive multi-agent approach

With increasing demands for autonomous agents to work alongside humans in emergency management response (EMR), considerations of translations of human to machine language (and the converse) are timely. We present a prototype where the translation is dealt with by restricting communications to occur through a form of controlled natural language (CNL) (Fuchs and Schwitter, 1995). The prototype is new in that it allows for communications between both physical and virtual autonomous agents, agents are assigned different levels of autonomy, and it includes a level of information hiding that allows for information to be passed to relevant agents, whilst keeping those (humans) involved anonymous. A real-life mission is then used to exemplify how information is retrieved and communicated in the prototype. Finally, some usability experimental results are presented.

Achieving an Information System's Capability through C2

The authors present a literature review of command and control, linking sociological elements of academic research to military research in a novel way. They will discuss task modeling literature seen in human machine interaction studies, general aspects of collectives and military and academic research on command and control, studies of autonomous systems and considerations of interactions between humans and autonomous agents. Based on the survey and associations between aspects from these fields, the authors compose a recommendation list for aspects crucial to building of information systems capable of achieving their true capability, through command and control.

Astrobiology App for Kids: Software as a cognitive prosthetic for conceptualization of astronomical theories

It is well-known that children have difficulty conceptualizing astronomical concepts, such as gravity (Schoultz et al., 2001). We argue that a solution to this is to create effective and efficient prosthetics for aiding in their thinking and visualization, and exemplify this with an app that introduces astrobiology to children. The app was designed to be a hybrid between a game-like learning app and an encyclopaedic app. Similar difficulties arise in teaching mathematics to children (see for instance, Trouche, 2003). We predict that our app might have usage not only in childrens astronomical education, but could also be used by people of all ages wishing to familiarize themselves with astrobiology, in an introductory manner.