Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 59881 - 59910 of 302581

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Impact Of Covid-19 On Residential Waste Streams Of Montclair Township, Jeanne Huguette Perrine May 2021

Impact Of Covid-19 On Residential Waste Streams Of Montclair Township, Jeanne Huguette Perrine

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has been found to have numerous impacts on day-to-day life, everywhere around the globe. One important sector which is particularly being affected is the waste management sector. Reports from the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) showed possible variations in the source and volume of solid waste generated due to the enforcement of lockdown by the authorities to contain the coronavirus outbreak (Kulkarni & Anantharama, 2020). Food waste specifically is one of the most discussed topics in the world nowadays. About one-third of the food produced for humans ends up in the trash (Nusaka, 2020). It …

Go to article

Upstream Propagation Of Sea-Level Signals In Fluvio-Deltaic Environments : Time-Lags, And The Dynamics Of The Fluvial Surface, Madeline Pianta Kollegger May 2021

Upstream Propagation Of Sea-Level Signals In Fluvio-Deltaic Environments : Time-Lags, And The Dynamics Of The Fluvial Surface, Madeline Pianta Kollegger

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The sedimentary record of fluvio-deltaic environments holds clues to past climate and sea level change. Although theories for stratigraphic interpretation generally rely upon the assumption that the fluvial surface responds uniformly to sea level changes, recent theoretical work suggests that changes in the relief and concavity of the fluvial surface can influence the propagation of sea level information upstream, and result in geologically long-lived lags in the system response. We test this theoretical result using measurements from an evolving experimental delta subject to sea-level cycles. As predicted by the theoretical results, during sea-level fall the relief increases and the fluvial …

Go to article

Investigating The Effects Of Catalytic Activity In Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Indole-3-Glycerol Phosphate Synthase In Wildtype, N189l, And E57d Variants, Sarah S. Cho May 2021

Investigating The Effects Of Catalytic Activity In Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Indole-3-Glycerol Phosphate Synthase In Wildtype, N189l, And E57d Variants, Sarah S. Cho

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Indole-3-glycerol phosphate synthesis (IGPS) is an enzyme that catalyzes the ring closure in 1-(o-carboxylphenylamino)-1-deoxyribulose 5-phosphate (CdRP). Multiple steps are expected to be involved in formation of the pyrrole ring including dehydration, decarboxylation, cyclization, and condensation. IGPS is an essential protein in the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and a potential target in the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. In order to better understand the function of Mycobacterium tuberculosis IGPS (mtIGPS), we introduced single-point mutations into active site residues. This was based on the hypothesis that introducing mutations would affect the catalysis in a way where we would be able to obtain more information …

Go to article

Vertical Metal Distributions In Brownfield Soils Drive Enzyme Activities And Plant Success, Eshariah N. Dyson May 2021

Vertical Metal Distributions In Brownfield Soils Drive Enzyme Activities And Plant Success, Eshariah N. Dyson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The distribution of contaminants in polluted soils can vary through depth. We measured the vertical distributions of heavy metals and enzyme activities in the top 10 cm of side-by-side, vegetated and barren brownfield soils. The data showed metals significantly accumulated in the top 2 cm of barren soil and uniformly distributed through vegetated soil. When planted, germination rate was significantly lower in the previously barren soil, with the metal layer intact, compared to mixed barren soil. These data suggest a feedback loop in which plant roots redistribute metals, diluting metal-rich regions, yet germination remains initially limited by a metal cap. …

Go to article

Fast And Secure Friend Recommendation In Online Social Networks, Raiyan Hossain May 2021

Fast And Secure Friend Recommendation In Online Social Networks, Raiyan Hossain

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Online Social Networks have completely transformed communication in the world of social networks. Participation in online social networks have been growing significantly and is expected to continue to grow in the upcoming years. As user participation in online social media is on the rise, so is the concern pertaining to user privacy and information security; users want to interact on social media without jeopardizing their privacy and personal information. Extensive research has been conducted in the area of developing privacy-preserving protocols to allow users to interact in a secure and privacy-preserving environment. One of the elements that social media have …

Go to article

Coordinating Stem Core Courses For Student Success, Cristina Villalobos, Hyung Won Kim, Timothy J. Huber, Roger Knobel, Shaghayegh Setayesh, Lekshmi Sasidharan, Anahit Galstyan, Andras Balogh May 2021

Coordinating Stem Core Courses For Student Success, Cristina Villalobos, Hyung Won Kim, Timothy J. Huber, Roger Knobel, Shaghayegh Setayesh, Lekshmi Sasidharan, Anahit Galstyan, Andras Balogh

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research indicates multi-section coordination improves the academic performance of students in STEM education. This paper describes the process of coordination in Precalculus, Calculus 1, and Calculus 2 courses undertaken by a large department that grew from the merger of two institutions through a pilot program, and a project grant. Components introduced in the project courses are documented, including collaborative problem-solving sessions, student learning assistants, Q&A sessions, and additional technology resources. Preliminary data is provided on the impacts of the initiative on student success. The study findings provide a template for coordination, faculty buy-in, and increased student engagement at similar institutions …

Go to article

Visualization Of Exact Invariant Solutions Associated With Atmospheric Waves In A Thin Circular Layer, Ranis N. Ibragimov, Lauren D. Mongrain, Benjamin Stimmel, Olga Trozkaya, Guang Lin, Sheng Zhang, Vesselin Vatchev, Daniel Stankiewicz May 2021

Visualization Of Exact Invariant Solutions Associated With Atmospheric Waves In A Thin Circular Layer, Ranis N. Ibragimov, Lauren D. Mongrain, Benjamin Stimmel, Olga Trozkaya, Guang Lin, Sheng Zhang, Vesselin Vatchev, Daniel Stankiewicz

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of the research was to investigate the exact solutions of nonlinear shallow water equations associated with planetary equatorial waves corresponding to the Cauchy-Poisson free boundary problem describing the nonstationary motion of an incompressible perfect fluid propagating around a solid circle. We consider water waves for which the ratio of the depth of fluid above the circular bottom to the radius of the circle is small (shallow water).

Go to article

Ramanujan Type Congruences For Quotients Of Level 7 Klein Forms, Timothy Huber, Dongxi Ye May 2021

Ramanujan Type Congruences For Quotients Of Level 7 Klein Forms, Timothy Huber, Dongxi Ye

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Klein forms are used to construct generators for the graded algebra of modular forms of level 7. Dissection formulas for the series imply Ramanujan type congruences modulo powers of 7 for a family of generating functions that subsume the counting function for 7-core partitions. The broad class of arithmetic functions considered here enumerate colored partitions by weights determined by parts modulo 7. The method is a prototype for similar analysis of modular forms of level 7 and at other prime levels. As an example of the utility of the dissection method, the paper concludes with a derivation of novel congruences …

Go to article

More Kawaii Than A Real-Person Live Streamer: Understanding How The Otaku Community Engages With And Perceives Virtual Youtubers, Zhicong Lu, Chenxinran Shen, Jiannan Li, Hong Shen, Daniel Wigdor May 2021

More Kawaii Than A Real-Person Live Streamer: Understanding How The Otaku Community Engages With And Perceives Virtual Youtubers, Zhicong Lu, Chenxinran Shen, Jiannan Li, Hong Shen, Daniel Wigdor

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Live streaming has become increasingly popular, with most streamers presenting their real-life appearance. However, Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), virtual 2D or 3D avatars that are voiced by humans, are emerging as live streamers and attracting a growing viewership in East Asia. Although prior research has found that many viewers seek real-life interpersonal interactions with real-person streamers, it is currently unknown what makes VTuber live streams engaging or how they are perceived differently than real-person streamers. We conducted an interview study to understand how viewers engage with VTubers and perceive the identities of the voice actors behind the avatars (i.e., Nakanohito). The …

Go to article

Solving 3d Bin Packing Problem Via Multimodal Deep Reinforcement Learning, Yuan Jiang, Zhiguang Cao, Jie Zhang May 2021

Solving 3d Bin Packing Problem Via Multimodal Deep Reinforcement Learning, Yuan Jiang, Zhiguang Cao, Jie Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, there is growing attention on applying deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to solve the 3D bin packing problem (3D BPP), given its favorable generalization and independence of ground-truth label. However, due to the relatively less informative yet computationally heavy encoder, and considerably large action space inherent to the 3D BPP, existing methods are only able to handle up to 50 boxes. In this paper, we propose to alleviate this issue via an end-to-end multimodal DRL agent, which sequentially addresses three sub-tasks of sequence, orientation and position, respectively. The resulting architecture enables the agent to solve large-scale instances of 100 boxes …

Go to article

Smart Contract Security: A Practitioners' Perspective, Zhiyuan Wan, Xin Xia, David Lo, Jiachi Chen, Xiapu Luo, Xiaohu Yang May 2021

Smart Contract Security: A Practitioners' Perspective, Zhiyuan Wan, Xin Xia, David Lo, Jiachi Chen, Xiapu Luo, Xiaohu Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart contracts have been plagued by security incidents, which resulted in substantial financial losses. Given numerous research efforts in addressing the security issues of smart contracts, we wondered how software practitioners build security into smart contracts in practice. We performed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative studies with 13 interviewees and 156 survey respondents from 35 countries across six continents to understand practitioners' perceptions and practices on smart contract security. Our study uncovers practitioners' motivations and deterrents of smart contract security, as well as how security efforts and strategies fit into the development lifecycle. We also find that blockchain platforms …

Go to article

Learning Index Policies For Restless Bandits With Application To Maternal Healthcare, Arpita Biswas, Gaurav Aggarwal, Pradeep Varakantham, Milind Tambe May 2021

Learning Index Policies For Restless Bandits With Application To Maternal Healthcare, Arpita Biswas, Gaurav Aggarwal, Pradeep Varakantham, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In many community health settings, it is crucial to have a systematic monitoring and intervention process to ensure that the patients adhere to healthcare programs, such as periodic health checks or taking medications. When these interventions are expensive, they can be provided to only a fixed small fraction of the patients at any period of time. Hence, it is important to carefully choose the beneficiaries who should be provided with interventions and when. We model this scenario as a restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem, where each beneficiary is assumed to transition from one state to another depending on the intervention …

Go to article

An Empirical Study Of The Landscape Of Open Source Projects In Baidu, Alibaba, And Tencent, Junxiao Han, Shuiguang Deng, David Lo, Chen Zhi, Jianwei Yin, Xin Xia May 2021

An Empirical Study Of The Landscape Of Open Source Projects In Baidu, Alibaba, And Tencent, Junxiao Han, Shuiguang Deng, David Lo, Chen Zhi, Jianwei Yin, Xin Xia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Open source software has drawn more and more attention from researchers, developers and companies nowadays. Meanwhile, many Chinese technology companies are embracing open source and choosing to open source their projects. Nevertheless, most previous studies are concentrated on international companies such as Microsoft or Google, while the practical values of open source projects of Chinese technology companies remain unclear. To address this issue, we conduct a mixed-method study to investigate the landscape of projects open sourced by three large Chinese technology companies, namely Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT). We study the categories and characteristics of open source projects, the developer's …

Go to article

A Differential Testing Approach For Evaluating Abstract Syntax Tree Mapping Algorithms, Yuanrui Fan, Xin Xia, David Lo, Ahmed E. Hassan, Yuan Wang, Shanping Li May 2021

A Differential Testing Approach For Evaluating Abstract Syntax Tree Mapping Algorithms, Yuanrui Fan, Xin Xia, David Lo, Ahmed E. Hassan, Yuan Wang, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Abstract syntax tree (AST) mapping algorithms are widely used to analyze changes in source code. Despite the foundational role of AST mapping algorithms, little effort has been made to evaluate the accuracy of AST mapping algorithms, i.e., the extent to which an algorithm captures the evolution of code. We observe that a program element often has only one best-mapped program element. Based on this observation, we propose a hierarchical approach to automatically compare the similarity of mapped statements and tokens by different algorithms. By performing the comparison, we determine if eachof the compared algorithms generates inaccurate mappings for a statement …

Go to article

Approximate Difference Rewards For Scalable Multigent Reinforcement Learning, Arambam James Singh, Akshat Kumar May 2021

Approximate Difference Rewards For Scalable Multigent Reinforcement Learning, Arambam James Singh, Akshat Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We address the problem of multiagent credit assignment in a large scale multiagent system. Difference rewards (DRs) are an effective tool to tackle this problem, but their exact computation is known to be challenging even for small number of agents. We propose a scalable method to compute difference rewards based on aggregate information in a multiagent system with large number of agents by exploiting the symmetry present in several practical applications. Empirical evaluation on two multiagent domains—air-traffic control and cooperative navigation, shows better solution quality than previous approaches.

Go to article

Guest Editorial: Non-Iid Outlier Detection In Complex Contexts, Guansong Pang, Fabrizio Angiulli, Mihai Cucuringu, Huan Liu May 2021

Guest Editorial: Non-Iid Outlier Detection In Complex Contexts, Guansong Pang, Fabrizio Angiulli, Mihai Cucuringu, Huan Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Outlier detection, also known as anomaly detection, aims at identifying data instances that are rare or significantly different from the majority of instances. Due to its significance in many critical domains like cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare, public security, and AI safety, outlier detection has been one of the most active research areas in various communities, such as machine learning, data mining, computer vision, and statistics. Traditional outlier-detection techniques generally assume that data are independent and identically distributed (IID), which are significantly challenged in complex contexts where data are actually non-IID. These contexts are ubiquitous in not only graph data, sequence data, …

Go to article

Retrieval-Augmented Generation For Code Summarization Via Hybrid Gnn, Shangqing Liu, Yu Chen, Xiaofei Xie, Jingkai Siow, Yang Liu May 2021

Retrieval-Augmented Generation For Code Summarization Via Hybrid Gnn, Shangqing Liu, Yu Chen, Xiaofei Xie, Jingkai Siow, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Source code summarization aims to generate natural language summaries from structured code snippets for better understanding code functionalities. However, automatic code summarization is challenging due to the complexity of the source code and the language gap between the source code and natural language summaries. Most previous approaches either rely on retrieval-based (which can take advantage of similar examples seen from the retrieval database, but have low generalization performance) or generation-based methods (which have better generalization performance, but cannot take advantage of similar examples). This paper proposes a novel retrieval-augmented mechanism to combine the benefits of both worlds. Furthermore, to mitigate …

Go to article

Automatic Web Testing Using Curiosity-Driven Reinforcement Learning, Yan Zheng, Yi Liu, Xiaofei Xie, Yepang Liu, Lei Ma, Jianye Hao, Yang Liu May 2021

Automatic Web Testing Using Curiosity-Driven Reinforcement Learning, Yan Zheng, Yi Liu, Xiaofei Xie, Yepang Liu, Lei Ma, Jianye Hao, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web testing has long been recognized as a notoriously difficult task. Even nowadays, web testing still heavily relies on manual efforts while automated web testing is far from achieving human-level performance. Key challenges in web testing include dynamic content update and deep bugs hiding under complicated user interactions and specific input values, which can only be triggered by certain action sequences in the huge search space. In this paper, we propose WebExplor, an automatic end-to-end web testing framework, to achieve an adaptive exploration of web applications. WebExplor adopts curiosity-driven reinforcement learning to generate high-quality action sequences (test cases) satisfying temporal …

Go to article

A Visual Analytics Approach To Facilitate The Proctoring Of Online Exams, Haotian Li, Min Xu, Yong Wang, Huan Wei, Huamin Qu May 2021

A Visual Analytics Approach To Facilitate The Proctoring Of Online Exams, Haotian Li, Min Xu, Yong Wang, Huan Wei, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online exams have become widely used in recent years to evaluate students’ performance in mastering the knowledge, especially during the pandemic of COVID-19. However, it is challenging to conduct proctoring for online exams due to the lack of face-to-face interactions. Also, prior research has shown that online exams are more vulnerable to various cheating behaviors, which can damage the credibility of online exams. In this paper, we present a novel vi- sual analytics approach to facilitate the proctoring of online exams by analyzing the exam video records and mouse movement data of each student. Specifically, we detect and visualize suspected …

Go to article

Tripdecoder: Study Travel Time Attributes And Route Preferences Of Metro Systems From Smart Card Data, Xiancai Tian, Baihua Zheng, Yazhe Wang, Hsao-Ting Huang, Chih-Cheng Hung May 2021

Tripdecoder: Study Travel Time Attributes And Route Preferences Of Metro Systems From Smart Card Data, Xiancai Tian, Baihua Zheng, Yazhe Wang, Hsao-Ting Huang, Chih-Cheng Hung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we target at recovering the exact routes taken by commuters inside a metro system that are not captured by an Automated Fare Collection (AFC) system and hence remain unknown. We strategically propose two inference tasks to handle the recovering, one to infer the travel time of each travel link that contributes to the total duration of any trip inside a metro network and the other to infer the route preferences based on historical trip records and the travel time of each travel link inferred in the previous inference task. As these two inference tasks have interrelationship, most …

Go to article

Working With Smart Machines: Insights On The Future Of Work, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller May 2021

Working With Smart Machines: Insights On The Future Of Work, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this article, we share our observations on how and why AI-based systems are being deployed. We look at how these systems have been integrated into existing and new work processes, especially the implications for the changing nature of work and how it will be conducted in future with AI-based smart machines. This will help companies that are in the earlier stages of considering, planning, or deploying these systems to know what to expect from recent developments in practice. We draw our analysis from 24 case studies that we have recently completed on AI system usage in actual operational settings.

Go to article

A Smarter Way To Manage Mass Transit In A Smart City: Rail Network Management At Singapore’S Land Transport Authority, Steven M. Miller, Thomas H. Davenport May 2021

A Smarter Way To Manage Mass Transit In A Smart City: Rail Network Management At Singapore’S Land Transport Authority, Steven M. Miller, Thomas H. Davenport

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

There is no widely agreed upon definition of a supposed “Smart City.” Yet, when you see city employees — in this case city-state employees — working in what are obviously smarter ways, “you know it when you see it.” One such example of a smarter way to work in a smart city setting is the way that employees of the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in Singapore are using a new generation of data driven, AI-enabled support systems to manage the city’s urban rail network. We spoke to LTA officers Kong Wai, Ho (Director of Integrated Operations and Planning) and Chris …

Go to article

Androevolve: Automated Update For Android Deprecated-Api Usages, Stefanus A. Haryono, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang, Julia Lawall, Hong Jin Kang, Lucas Serrano, Gilles Muller May 2021

Androevolve: Automated Update For Android Deprecated-Api Usages, Stefanus A. Haryono, Ferdian Thung, David Lo, Lingxiao Jiang, Julia Lawall, Hong Jin Kang, Lucas Serrano, Gilles Muller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Android operating system (OS) is often updated, where each new version may involve API deprecation. Usages of deprecated APIs in Android apps need to be updated to ensure the apps' compatibility with the old and new versions of the Android OS. In this work, we propose AndroEvolve, an automated tool to update usages of deprecated Android APIs, that addresses the limitations of the state-of-the-art tool, CocciEvolve. AndroEvolve utilizes data flow analysis to solve the problem of out-of-method-boundary variables, and variable denormalization to remove the temporary variables introduced by CocciEvolve. We evaluated the accuracy of AndroEvolve using a dataset of …

Go to article

Sguard: Towards Fixing Vulnerable Smart Contracts Automatically, Tai D. Nguyen, Long H. Pham, Jun Sun May 2021

Sguard: Towards Fixing Vulnerable Smart Contracts Automatically, Tai D. Nguyen, Long H. Pham, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart contracts are distributed, self-enforcing programs executing on top of blockchain networks. They have the potential to revolutionize many industries such as financial institutes and supply chains. However, smart contracts are subject to code-based vulnerabilities, which casts a shadow on its applications. As smart contracts are unpatchable (due to the immutability of blockchain), it is essential that smart contracts are guaranteed to be free of vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, smart contract languages such as Solidity are Turing-complete, which implies that verifying them statically is infeasible. Thus, alternative approaches must be developed to provide the guarantee. In this work, we develop an approach …

Go to article

Interactive Search Vs. Automatic Search: An Extensive Study On Video Retrieval, Phuong-Anh Nguyen, Chong-Wah Ngo May 2021

Interactive Search Vs. Automatic Search: An Extensive Study On Video Retrieval, Phuong-Anh Nguyen, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This article conducts user evaluation to study the performance difference between interactive and automatic search. Particularly, the study aims to provide empirical insights of how the performance landscape of video search changes, with tens of thousands of concept detectors freely available to exploit for query formulation. We compare three types of search modes: free-to-play (i.e., search from scratch), non-free-to-play (i.e., search by inspecting results provided by automatic search), and automatic search including concept-free and concept-based retrieval paradigms. The study involves a total of 40 participants; each performs interactive search over 15 queries of various difficulty levels using two search modes …

Go to article

When Function Signature Recovery Meets Compiler Optimization, Yan Lin, Debin Gao May 2021

When Function Signature Recovery Meets Compiler Optimization, Yan Lin, Debin Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Matching indirect function callees and callers using function signatures recovered from binary executables (number of arguments and argument types) has been proposed to construct a more fine-grained control-flow graph (CFG) to help control-flow integrity (CFI) enforcement. However, various compiler optimizations may violate calling conventions and result in unmatched function signatures. In this paper, we present eight scenarios in which compiler optimizations impact function signature recovery, and report experimental results with 1,344 real-world applications of various optimization levels. Most interestingly, our experiments show that compiler optimizations have both positive and negative impacts on function signature recovery, e.g., its elimination of redundant …

Go to article

Automated Query Reformulation For Efficient Search Based On Query Logs From Stack Overflow, Kaibo Cao, Chunyang Chen, Sebastian Baltes, Christoph Treude, Xiang Chen May 2021

Automated Query Reformulation For Efficient Search Based On Query Logs From Stack Overflow, Kaibo Cao, Chunyang Chen, Sebastian Baltes, Christoph Treude, Xiang Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As a popular Q&A site for programming, Stack Overflow is a treasure for developers. However, the amount of questions and answers on Stack Overflow make it difficult for developers to efficiently locate the information they are looking for. There are two gaps leading to poor search results: the gap between the user's intention and the textual query, and the semantic gap between the query and the post content. Therefore, developers have to constantly reformulate their queries by correcting misspelled words, adding limitations to certain programming languages or platforms, etc. As query reformulation is tedious for developers, especially for novices, we …

Go to article

The Shifting Sands Of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors In Open Source, Marco Gerosa, Igor Wiese, Bianca Trinkenreich, Georg Link, Gregorio Robles, Christoph Treude, Igor Steinmacher, Anita Sarma May 2021

The Shifting Sands Of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors In Open Source, Marco Gerosa, Igor Wiese, Bianca Trinkenreich, Georg Link, Gregorio Robles, Christoph Treude, Igor Steinmacher, Anita Sarma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Open Source Software (OSS) has changed drastically over the last decade, with OSS projects now producing a large ecosystem of popular products, involving industry participation, and providing professional career opportunities. But our field's understanding of what motivates people to contribute to OSS is still fundamentally grounded in studies from the early 2000s. With the changed landscape of OSS, it is very likely that motivations to join OSS have also evolved. Through a survey of 242 OSS contributors, we investigate shifts in motivation from three perspectives: (1) the impact of the new OSS landscape, (2) the impact of individuals' personal growth …

Go to article

Business-Driven Technical Debt Prioritization: An Industrial Case Study, Rodrigo Rebouças De Almeida, Rafael Do Nascimento Ribeiro, Christoph Treude, ‪Uirá Kulesza May 2021

Business-Driven Technical Debt Prioritization: An Industrial Case Study, Rodrigo Rebouças De Almeida, Rafael Do Nascimento Ribeiro, Christoph Treude, ‪Uirá Kulesza

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Incorporating the business perspective into prioritizing technical debt is essential to contribute to decision making in industry. In this paper, we evolve and evaluate a businessdriven approach for technical debt prioritization. The approach was evaluated during a five-months industrial case study with business and technical stakeholders’ active participation. The results show that the approach contributed to aligning business criteria between the business and technical stakeholders. We also observed a downward trend in the amount of technical debt that affects high-value business assets. Moreover, we identified eight business factors that affect the decision making related to the prioritization of technical debt. …

Go to article

Prototypical Contrastive Learning Of Unsupervised Representations, Junnan Li, Pan Zhou, Caiming Xiong, Steven C. H. Hoi May 2021

Prototypical Contrastive Learning Of Unsupervised Representations, Junnan Li, Pan Zhou, Caiming Xiong, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents Prototypical Contrastive Learning (PCL), an unsupervised representation learning method that bridges contrastive learning with clustering. PCL not only learns low-level features for the task of instance discrimination, but more importantly, it encodes semantic structures discovered by clustering into the learned embedding space. Specifically, we introduce prototypes as latent variables to help find the maximum-likelihood estimation of the network parameters in an Expectation-Maximization framework. We iteratively perform E-step as finding the distribution of prototypes via clustering and M-step as optimizing the network via contrastive learning. We propose ProtoNCE loss, a generalized version of the InfoNCE loss for contrastive …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last