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Metaphors in gesture and speech play a pivotal role in the way that programming concepts are presented in the classroom. However, little is known about the function of teachers' metaphors in practice. This study aims to explore teachers' use of metaphors in gesture and speech in a lecture on programming. Based on video observations of three upper secondary teachers, we employ Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) and Metaphor Identification for Gesture Guidelines (MIG-G) as methodological tools for identifying metaphoric speech and gestures related to programming concepts. The results of the study reveal that the gestures of the three teachers mainly function in two ways: (1) to add spatial properties to a programming concept and (2) to provide additional imagery for a programming concept. Consequently, the gestures identified in this study reduce the communicative burden of teachers' speech. Furthermore, the study reveals that teachers' gestures serve as means for making abstract concepts more tangible. For example, gestures concerning the abstract term "data" can generally be related to an object that could be received or moved. Hence, despite its metaphorical origin, data could be considered a graspable aspect of programming. Furthermore, spatial gestures enable the teachers to communicate programming processes in a tangible way, for example assigning programming processes a forward direction. Theoretical implications, potential implications for teaching and future research are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the need for new approaches to research regarding coding to support students in developing practices in computational thinking, such as abstraction and decomposition, in multidisciplinary contexts. We explore students' activities with a tool integrating constructionist textual programming activity with game‐based learning and specifically game modding. In this context, we designed a programmable 'design‐to‐play' game developed with the computational environment MaLT2. MaLT2 offers the affordances of textual programming, dynamic manipulation, and 3D navigation for the design of 3D animated models aiming to give children access to, otherwise, complex, computational and mathematical ideas. To develop an understanding of children's learning activity regarding computational practices, we organised an empirical study with middle‐school students, who played a game called 'Code‐the‐Mime'. It is a charades‐based game in which the players manipulate, programme, and modify a digital human model to describe a word to their teammates. The preliminary findings indicate that the affordances of MaLT2 in conjunction with the game context enabled students to express and develop key computational practices, including decomposition, pattern recognition, analysis and abstraction, in a meaningful and multidisciplinary context. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Computational Thinking is considered a key 21st‐century skill in preparing the young to become digital citizens. It involves concepts and practices that can be used to solve problems computationally across multiple fields. However, there is still limited knowledge of how students develop computational practices, such as abstraction, pattern recognition, decomposition, and how they may express and apply them in diverse contexts. Students' engagement with computational practices is unlikely to be supported either by closed, simplified coding tasks or higher‐level advanced programming exercises. There is a need to clarify the manifestation of these practices and how they can be realised and expressed and used by learners in meaningful and transdisciplinary contexts.What this paper adds It suggests the design of constructionist computational games that integrate design and programming into the gameplay, aiming to engage students with computational practices in a multidisciplinary, authentic context. It provides an example of a 'design‐to‐play' charades‐like game, developed in a 3D modelling programming environment, that embeds real‐life representations into computational design, to enable 'syntonic learning' of computational practices. Furthermore, it analyses student learning activity to elaborate on arguments and issues related to this approach.Implications for practice and/or policy There is added value in disconnecting computational thinking from positivist diagnostic approaches related to respective concepts and studying it in ways more related to realistic problem‐solving situations and multidisciplinary contexts. The study contributes to the scientific clarification of computational practices concerning how they are being realised and expressed by the students in different contexts through an original example of educational practice. The discussed approach and tools can contribute to the design and development of innovative digital media, embedding affordances for concepts and practices while maintaining relevance and interest for their users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a guest editorial for a special issue of the journal "Programming & Computer Software" titled "Recent Trends on Advanced Computing: The Converging Technologies." The issue features research and practical implementation results from researchers and industry experts in computer science, engineering, and technology. The papers cover a range of topics including microservices, software quality, user engagement on social media, non-functional requirements, medical software architecture, fallacies in political speeches, intelligent learning environments, and more. The guest editors for this special issue are Prof. Dr. Andrei Tchernykh, Prof. Reyes Juárez Ramírez, Dr. Esteban Mocskos, and Prof. Sergio Nesmachnow. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract Many metrics have been proposed to measure coupling—the degree of association between modules in a system. They have often been described in different ways, hindering comparison and research. Their definitions are often incomplete regarding language features in some languages, meaning that different tool developers may implement the same metric differently. This complicates comparing results from studies that use different tools. This paper therefore aims to define coupling metrics consistently and unambiguously. The paper describes a model of coupling that uses the reification of the concept of dependency as its fundamental unit. Based on this model, it defines a framework for defining coupling metrics. It shows how to define several well-known coupling metrics in the framework, and how defining different metrics based on the same model facilitates direct comparisons. It discusses how the framework resolves issues due to incomplete metric definitions, such as different language features. This formal framework is sufficiently simple that it can be implemented in such a way as to provide multiple metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computing hardware has mostly thrashed out the physical limits for speeding up individual computing cores. Consequently, the main line of progress for new hardware is growing the number of computing cores within a single CPU. This makes the study of efficient parallelization schemes for computation-intensive algorithms more and more important. A natural precondition to achieving reasonable speedups from parallelization is maintaining a high workload of the available computational resources. At the same time, reproducibility and reliability are key requirements for software that is used in industrial applications. In this paper, we present the new parallelization concept for the state-of-the-art MIP solver FICO Xpress-Optimizer. MIP solvers like Xpress are expected to be deterministic. This inevitably results in synchronization latencies which render the goal of a satisfying workload a challenge in itself. We address this challenge by following a partial information approach and separating the concepts of simultaneous tasks and independent threads from each other. Our computational results indicate that this leads to a much higher CPU workload and thereby to an improved, almost linear, scaling on modern high-performance CPUs. As an added value, the solution path that Xpress takes is not only deterministic in a fixed environment, but also, to a certain extent, thread-independent. This paper is an extended version of Berthold et al. [Parallelization of the FICO Xpress-Optimizer, in Mathematical Software - ICMS 2016: 5th International Conference, G.-M. Greuel, T. Koch, P. Paule, and A. Sommere, eds., Springer International Publishing, Berlin, 2016, pp. 251-258] containing more detailed technical descriptions, illustrative examples and updated computational results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer science (CS) is becoming an increasingly diverse domain. This paper reports on an initiative designed to introduce underrepresented populations to computing using an eclectic, multifaceted approach. As part of a yearlong computing course, students engage in Maker activities, participatory simulations, and computing projects that foreground the social and collaborative aspects of CS. Collectively, these activities are designed to introduce learners to the growing diversity of what CS looks like in the 21st century. This paper lays out the practical and theoretical motivations for the Computational Thinking for Girls (CT4G) project, specifically highlighting the use of Making through physical and social computing as ways to engage students in CS. A snapshot of one activity from the program is provided—Wearing the Web—in which students use open-hardware programmable badges to explore the underlying structure and technology that enables the Internet. Data from the first year of the CT4G program are presented to show the positive effects that this diverse introduction to CS is having on the students with respect to their attitudes toward CS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building Computational Thinkers, a three-year research study, explored how educators and designers can most effectively support the development of computational thinking capacity, and how these learning experiences could be customized to meet the needs of different learners. This research study focused on three specific exhibit design approaches that conveyed problem decomposition content in The Science Behind Pixar (Pixar), a 13,000 square foot traveling exhibition about the computer science, mathematics, and science behind Pixar's innovative films. Phase One investigated how novice learners could be supported to interact with exhibits and understand problem solving strategies that tackle complex, creative challenges in computer programming. Phase Two investigated the affordances of these exhibits to build capacity, feelings of efficacy, and interest in problem decomposition content in middle and high school youth. The findings in this paper describe the types of scaffolds that can be used to support computational thinking in novice youth, as well as how a combination of exhibit approaches were found to increase youth perceptions, understanding, and beliefs of computer programming. It will also discuss how two exhibit approaches worked particularly well for engaging girls in problem decomposition content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directed networks find many applications in computer science, social science and biomedicine, among others. In this paper we propose a new graph mining algorithm that is capable of locating all frequent induced subgraphs in a given set of directed networks. We present an incremental coding scheme for representing the canonical form of a graph, study its properties, and develop new techniques for pattern generation suitable for directed networks. We prove that our algorithm is complete, meaning that no qualified pattern is missed by the algorithm. Furthermore, our algorithm is correct in the sense that all patterns found by the algorithm are frequent induced subgraphs in the given networks. Experimental results based on synthetic data and gene regulatory networks show the good performance of our algorithm, and its application in network inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction begins by posing the question that this Special Issue addresses and briefly considers historical precedents and why the issue is important. The discussion then moves on to the consideration of important milestones in the history of computing, up until the present time. A brief specification of the essential components of computational systems is then offered. The final section introduces the papers that are included in this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with context dependent knowledge is a well-known area of study that roots in John McCarthy's seminal work. More recently, the Contextualized Knowledge Repository (CKR) framework has been conceived as a logic-based approach in which knowledge bases have a two layered structure, modeled by a global context and a set of local contexts. The global context not only contains the meta-knowledge defining the properties of local contexts, but also holds the global (context independent) object knowledge that is shared by all of the local contexts. In many practical cases, however, it is desirable to leave the possibility to “override” the global object knowledge at the local level: in other words, it is interesting to recognize the pieces of knowledge that can admit exceptional instances in the local contexts that do not need to satisfy the general axiom. To address this need, we present in this paper an extension of CKR in which defeasible axioms can be included in the global context. The latter are verified in the local contexts only for the instances for which no exception to overriding exists, where exceptions require a justification in terms of facts that are provable from the knowledge base. We formally define this semantics and study some semantic and computational properties, where we characterize the complexity of the major reasoning tasks, among them satisfiability testing, instance checking, and conjunctive query answering. Furthermore, we present a translation of extended CKRs with knowledge bases in the Description Logic SROIQ -RL under the novel semantics to datalog programs under the stable model (answer set) semantics. We also present an implementation prototype and examine its scalability with respect to the size of the input CKR and the amount (level) of defeasibility in experiments. Finally, we compare our representation approach with some major formalisms for expressing defeasible knowledge in Description Logics and contextual knowledge representation. Our work adds to the body of results on using deductive database technology such as SQL and datalog in these areas, and provides an expressive formalism (in terms of intrinsic complexity) for exception handling by overriding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technological world has witnessed many revolutions since the beginning of the 21st century, such as mobile development, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and also the Internet of Things. The internet of things revolution is driven by a broader access to internet and versatility of programmable hardware devices that can communicate between each other. In order to make internet of things devices, a technical background is required in many fields, especially electronics and Computer Science. Therefore, many efforts are put in place to develop educational kits that simplify the basics of these two fields so that everyone can make his internet of things prototype without technical knowledge. The authors present their own initiative: IOIOAI that simplifies the programming process for the input output input output electrical board. The service has been tested successfully on children and young students. In this paper, the authors present a wider adoption for their initiative. The IOIOAI service is imple- mented in introductory course to embedded systems for electrical and computer science students during the 2016-2017 academic year in the National Engineering School of Sfax, Tunisia. The efficiency of the solution is analyzed based on the students' marks and feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generation Z members use their smart devices as part of their everyday routine. Teaching methods may need to be updated to make learning materials more interesting for this generation. This paper suggests gamifying computer science subjects to enhance the learning experience for this generation. Additionally, many students face difficulty in understanding computer science materials and algorithms. Gamifying computer science education is one of the suggested teaching methods to simplify topics and increase students' engagement. Moreover, the field of computer science is dominated by males. The use of gamification could increase women's interest in this field. This paper demonstrates different techniques that were developed by the researchers to employ gamification in teaching computer science topics. The data was collected at the end of the two different courses. Results show that students enjoyed the suggested teaching method and found it useful. This paper also demonstrates two tools and their gamification elements. These tools were developed by the researchers to help people learn computer programming and information security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increase use of security driven approaches to support software development activities, such as requirements, design and implementation. The objective of this paper is to identify the existing software security approaches used in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). In order to meet our goal, we conducted a systematic mapping study to identify the primary studies on the use of software security techniques in SDLC. In total, we selected and categorized 118 primary studies. After analyzing the selected studies, we identified 52 security approaches and we categorized them in to five main categories, namely, ‘secure requirements modeling’, ‘vulnerability identification, adaption and mitigation’, ‘software security focused process’, ‘extended UML-based secure modeling profiles’, ‘non UML-based secure modeling notations’. The results show that the most frequently used approaches are static analysis and dynamic analysis that provide security checks in the coding phase. In addition, our results show that many studies in this review considered security checks around the coding stage of software development. This work will assist software development organizations in better understanding the existing software security approaches used in the software development lifecycle. It can also provide researchers with a firm basis on which to develop new software security approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st-century learning model to implement a week-long workshop, delivered as a “hackathon,” to encourage preuniversity teenagers to pursue careers in STEM, with a particular emphasis on computer science. For Irish preuniversity students, their experience of computing can vary from word processing to foundational programming, and while many schools are looking to introduce more ICT into the classroom, many students are left with a narrow view of what computer science is all about. Twenty-one students participated in the workshop and completed pre- and post-surveys, and a free word association exercise in the areas of computing and careers in computing. Analysis revealed that students’ motivation to learn about the design process, programming, inputs and outputs, and wearable technology (wearables)/Internet of Things (IoT) increased following participation. There were also increases in confidence in inputs and outputs and wearables/IoT following participation, as well as changes in the computing word associations, with students associating computing more with computer programming terms rather than general terms such as the Internet. The findings suggest that the combination of a hackathon event and a model for 21st century learning can be effective in motivating and increasing the self-efficacy of preuniversity teenagers in a number of emerging technological contexts such as IoT and wearables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A strong direct product theorem for a problem in a given model of computation states that, in order to compute k instances of the problem, if we provide resource which is less than k times the resource required for computing one instance of the problem with constant success probability, then the probability of correctly computing all the k instances together, is exponentially small in k. In this paper, we consider the model of two-party bounded-round public-coin randomized communication complexity. We show a direct product theorem for the communication complexity of any complete relation in this model. In particular, our result implies a strong direct product theorem for the two-party constant-round public-coin randomized communication complexity of all complete relations. As an immediate application of our result, we get a strong direct product theorem for the pointer chasing problem. This problem has been well studied for understanding round v/s communication trade-offs in both classical and quantum communication protocols. Our result generalizes the result of Jain which can be regarded as the special case when the number of messages is one. Our result can be considered as an important progress towards settling the strong direct product conjecture for two-party public-coin communication complexity, a major open question in this area. We show our result using information theoretic arguments. Our arguments and techniques build on the ones used by Jain. One key tool used in our work and also by Jain is a message compression technique due to Braverman and Rao, who used it to show a direct sum theorem in the same model of communication complexity as considered by us. Another important tool that we use is a correlated sampling protocol which, for example, has been used by Holenstein for proving a parallel repetition theorem for two-prover games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of closed world specialisation (CWS). While traditional CWS is performed as a postprocessing step, we propose two different approaches to incorporating it into the induction process of a bottom-up inductive logic programming system. The motivation comes from the fact that using CWS as a postprocessing step is incapable of solving problems in which the negated part of the hypothesis is crucial. We apply the proposed approaches to the ProGolem bottom-up ILP system. We give examples of problems, where classical CWS fails to find a complete and consistent solution, whereas the proposed approaches succeed. Tests on real-world datasets show that the proposed approaches perform at least as well as regular CWS, while being better in terms of predictive accuracy in some cases. We also point out some weaknesses of different CWS approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development, validation, and uses of the Collaborative Computing Observation Instrument (C-COI), a web-based analysis instrument that classifies individual and/or collaborative behaviors of students during computing problem-solving (e.g. coding, programming). The C-COI analyzes data gathered through video and audio screen recording software that captures students’ computer screens as they program, and their conversations with their peers or adults. The instrument allows researchers to organize and quantify these data to track behavioral patterns that could be further analyzed for deeper understanding of persistence and/or collaborative interactions. The article provides a rationale for the C-COI including the development of a theoretical framework for measuring collaborative interactions in computer-mediated environments. This theoretical framework relied on the computer-supported collaborative learning literature related to adaptive help seeking, the joint problem-solving space in which collaborative computing occurs, and conversations related to outcomes and products of computational activities. Instrument development and validation also included ongoing advisory board feedback from experts in computer science, collaborative learning, and K-12 computing as well as classroom observations to test out the constructs in the C-COI. These processes resulted in an instrument with rigorous validation procedures and a high inter-rater reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In computational science, it is necessary to make efficient use of multicore architectures for dealing with complex real-life application problems. However, with increased hardware complexity, the cost in man hours of writing and rewriting software to adapt to evolving computer systems is becoming prohibitive. Task-based parallel programming models aim to allow the application programmers tofocus on the algorithms and applications, while the performance is handled by a runtime system that schedules the tasks onto nodes, cores, and accelerators. In this paper we describe a task parallel programming model where dependencies are represented through data versioning. Our model allows expressing the program control flow without artificial dependencies, has low complexity for resolving dependencies, and enables scheduling decisions to be made locally. We implement this as a freely available C++ header-only template library, and show experimental results indicating that our implementation both scales and performs well in comparison to similar runtime systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a layered approach to model Jackson Pollock's dripping style of paintings. Having analyzed fractal-based algorithms and observed the details of Pollock's paintings, we designed a layered modeling approach that divides Pollock's artwork into four layers: from bottom up are background layer, irregular shape layer, line layer and water drop layer. The layers are drawn sequentially and independent, forming the desired Pollock style. We have developed a program using Processing to generate artworks of the dripping style. The parameters of our program can be randomly generated or tuned by the user, supporting high flexibility and effectiveness. Experimental results show that our layered modeling approach can systematically generate images resembling Pollock's dripping style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the state of the art in the theory of multisets, i.e., mathematical models of sets with repetitions (duplicates or copies of their elements). The corresponding bibliography is categorized as follows: the general theory of multisets, reviews, and application of multisets, in particular, in computer science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper continues the publication of the "SPARK 2014 Rationale", which started in the December 2013 issue of the Ada User Journal. In this instalment, we present two contributions regarding data dependencies and information flow in SPARK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]