Common Programming Languages Research Articles

Real-World Evidence BRIDGE: A Tool to Connect Protocol With Code Programming.

To enhance documentation on programming decisions in Real World Evidence (RWE) studies. We analyzed several statistical analysis plans (SAP) within the Vaccine Monitoring Collaboration for Europe (VAC4EU) to identify study design sections and specifications for programming RWE studies. We designed a machine-readable metadata schema containing study sections, codelists, and time anchoring definitions specified in the SAPs with adaptability and user-friendliness. We developed the RWE-BRIDGE, a metadata schema in form of relational database divided into four study design sections with 12 tables: Study Variable Definition (two tables), Cohort Definition (two tables), Post-Exposure Outcome Analysis (one table), and Data Retrieval (seven tables). We provide a guide to populate this metadata schema and a Shiny app that checks the tables. RWE-BRIDGE is available on GitHub (github.com/UMC-Utrecht-RWE/RWE-BRIDGE). The RWE-BRIDGE has been designed to support the translation of study design sections from statistical analysis plans into analytical pipelines and to adhere to the FAIR principles, facilitating collaboration and transparency between researcher and programmers. This metadata schema strategy is flexible as it can support different common data models and programming languages, and it is adaptable to the specific needs of each SAP by adding further tables or fields, if necessary. Modified versions of the RWE-BRIGE have been applied in several RWE studies within VAC4EU. RWE-BRIDGE offers a systematic approach to detailing variables, time anchoring, and algorithms for RWE studies. This metadata schema facilitates communication between researcher and programmers.

STEP-NC compliant 3-axis CNC machine controller based on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays

ABSTRACT Manufacturing processes have gone through several transformations in history. Previously, G&M codes served as a common programming language for CNC machines. Codes of CNC machines contain the information related to the tools and trajectories. G&M codes are machine-specific and vendors must customize them for the tools installed on a particular machine. STEP-NC, described by ISO-14649, provides an alternative to G&M codes aiming at generic interoperability of CNC machine codes. STEP-NC includes information on both the trajectories and the tool’s specifications making it generic and machine-independent. STEP-NC is an emerging area and a gateway to intelligent machining targeting ‘design anywhere and develop anywhere’. Therefore, several researchers have developed software-based decoders and interpreters. They are difficult to implement on a serial pipelined processor limiting their use for real-time applications. This paper presents a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based STEP-NC controller implemented and validated on a SPARTAN-3E kit. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first FPGA-based implementation of STEP-NC. The main contribution of this work is a generic state-machine representation of the STEP-NC entities suitable for implementation on different FPGA platforms. The developed decoder was successfully tested and evaluated on a three-axis CNC machine for an example given in ISO-14649-11 for compliance.

Design and Management of a Spatial Database for Monitoring Building Comfort and Safety

As the impacts of climate change on urban environments and buildings become more and more prominent, building comfort and structural safety monitoring becomes crucial. However, efficiently storing and managing the multi-source monitoring data generated during the long-term monitoring process has been an urgent challenge. In order to solve the above problems, this paper designs and develops a spatial database management system for building comfort and structural safety monitoring based on standard database development tools. A conceptual model of a spatial database for building comfort and structural safety monitoring is proposed, and the entities, attributes, and connections in the model are discussed to transform the E-R conceptual model into a logical model supported by an object-relational spatial database management system. Based on this conceptual and logical model, a mainstream backend framework was adopted and combined with common database and programming language tools and BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology for development to establish a spatial database management system with data storage, management, analysis, and visualization functions. We designed building monitoring experiments and proved through the experiments that the database management system can stably store, analyze, and manage the monitoring data and visualize the display, with the advantages of a fast response speed and low error rate. The spatial database system improves the storage and management efficiency of building comfort and structural safety monitoring data, eliminates redundant data, and realizes comprehensive analysis and management of building comfort and structural safety monitoring data. It provides data support for building comfort and structural safety assessment, helps users analyze the formation mechanism and evolution law of the urban heat island effect, assesses the interrelationship between climate change and urban building morphology, and constructs an urban thermal environment that is more adaptable to climate change.

A Syllabi Analysis of CS1 Courses from Brazilian Public Universities

The design and administration of methodological interventions is a possible way to address dropout and failure rates in undergraduate introductory programming courses (CS1). However, to implement such strategies, it is required to identify how CS1 courses are organized and offered to students. In this work, we analyzed 225 syllabi from CS1 courses distributed in 95 Brazilian public universities. We collected these syllabi from Brazilian undergraduate programs with focus on Computer Science aspects. We report context information regarding the most covered topics, most common CS1 course names, when undergraduates take the course, total class hours, and the programming paradigms and languages taught. The results indicate that the Brazilian scenario has its own characteristics that differs from those presented in related work conducted in other countries or world regions. In Brazil, we identified 90% of the analyzed CS1 courses teaches the procedural paradigm, with C as the most common programming language (53% of the total). These results differ from those conducted in other countries where Java and object-oriented are the most common languages and paradigm taught in CS1 courses. We believe that our results can be used to: (1) provide an update to those interested in the Brazilian scenario of CS1 courses; (2) support future interventions in teaching and learning of CS1; and (3) support the Brazilian community in the development of future CS1 syllabi.

SYSTEMATIC MAPPING STUDY: THE USE OF TRANSPILERS

A systematic mapping of the literature on the topic of transpiler use was conducted. Research questions addressing the research topic have been compiled. A search for publications narrating the topic of transpilers in various digital sources was conducted. The selection of unique and relevant publications was performed. A quantitative distribution of works by type of publication channel, geography, and quantitative composition of authors was performed. Based on the obtained sample of publications the answers to the research questions were obtained. The terms used in place of the term "Transpiler" were researched. The most common synonym turned out to be the term "Source-to-source compiler". The fields of application of transpiling were investigated. Most often transpilers were used for code generation, computation, and optimization purposes. The programming languages most commonly encountered in research were also examined. The most common programming languages were C/C++ and Python. It was also noted that JavaScript is never the source language of transpilation. Correlations between research questions were examined. A correlation was found between research questions of synonyms and fields of application, where the names transpiler and transcompiler are more often used in the field of code generation. A connection was also found between research questions of synonyms and programming languages, where transpilers used within the same programming language are more often referred to as source-to-source compiler. A growing trend in the number of studies on transpiler topics was demonstrated. The prospects of the work were also identified – the classification of programming languages by their level (low, high) and the study of correlation with other classifications.

Hardware Design and Simulation of Boost Converter Suitable for PV Applications

Abstract: In order to power today's most advanced electronic devices efficiently and quickly produce extremely useful devices through software interfacing, new techniques must be developed as the size, utility, and complexity of these devices rise. In order to step-up DC voltages, the boost converter that is the focus of this paper will be modelled. The pulse width modulation pulses that are applied to power switches are produced by the Arduino. The software runs on the microcontroller and includes a boot loader for common programming languages. C is the programming language used. As a result, creating PWM triggering signals is less complicated. Instead of using traditional methods, an efficient feedback system is used, depending on the application, to obtain the desired DC voltages. Even though using a linear regulator is the simplest way to control the DC supply voltage, they are less efficient in terms of power consumption and have fewer uses. With the right feedback, Arduino-based DC converters have a high efficiency (95%) rate

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Mechanical Design and Optimization

This study offers a complete analysis of the use of deep learning or machine learning, as well as precise recommendations on how these methods could be used in the creation of machine components and nodes. The examples in this thesis are intended to identify areas in mechanical design and optimization where this technique could be widely applied in the future, benefiting society and advancing the current state of modern mechanical engineering. The review begins with a discussion on the workings of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. Different techniques, classifications, and even comparisons of each method are described in detail. The most common programming languages, frameworks, and software used in mechanical engineering for this problem are gradually introduced. Input data formats and the most common datasets that are suitable for the field of machine learning in mechanical design and optimization are also discussed. The second half of the review describes the current use of machine learning in several areas of mechanical design and optimization, using specific examples that have been investigated by researchers from around the world. Further research directions on the use of machine learning and neural networks in the fields of mechanical design and optimization are discussed.

Software analysis for mobile robots control programs

The use of the software allows the mobile robot to control the working parameters: turn on and off the mechanisms and devices, monitor the indicators of the sensors, perform various technological operations (cutting, welding, painting, etc.), calculate the trajectory of movement depending on the working surface, etc. Research in the field of robotics testifies to the high activity of scientific works on the creation of high-precision and energy-efficient robotic systems in general for autonomous mobile robots by improving control programs. The work is devoted to the review and analysis of the software for creating control programs for mobile robots. The work presents a generalized structural diagram of a hierarchical mobile robot control system, in which decentralized software processing of information takes place, and separate software and hardware components are remote from each other. When building a mobile robot control system, various robot programming environments are considered, which represent a wide range of tools for creating various models and systems. Moreover, the issues of using graphic and text software environments with high-level programming languages are considered. Development environments are considered among the software complexes: LabView; NXT-G; Robolab; EV3-G; MRDS; Scratch; 12Blocks; Simulink; ROBO Pro; Arduino Studio and TRIK Studio. The following are considered the most common programming languages at work: C++, Python, Pascal, JAVA and Scratch. All software is analyzed according to the following criteria: mathematical expressions, computational model, interpretation, stand-alone use, code generation, modeling, debugging, tutorials, free, platforms, designers, license and development prospects. Among the software, EV3 and Arduino text tools stand out for their capabilities, and Simulink and LabView among graphic tools, as these software tools have proven themselves to be powerful development environments with fairly universal approaches to creating programs in mobile robotics.

Interpolation Results for Arrays with Length and MaxDiff

In this paper, we enrich McCarthy’s theory of extensional arrays with a length and a maxdiff operation. As is well-known, some diff operation (i.e., some kind of difference function showing where two unequal array differ) is needed to keep interpolants quantifier-free in array theories; our maxdiff operation returns the max index where two arrays differ and so it has a univocally determined semantics. The length function is a natural complement of such a maxdiff operation and is needed to handle real arrays. Obtaining interpolation results for such a rich theory is a surprisingly hard task. We get such results via a thorough semantic analysis of the models of the theory and of their amalgamation and strong amalgamation properties. The results are modular with respect to the index theory and we show how to convert them into concrete interpolation algorithms via a hierarchical approach realizing a polynomial reduction to interpolation in linear arithmetics endowed with free function symbols. In this paper, we enrich McCarthy’s theory of extensional arrays with a length and a maxdiff operation. It is known from the literature that a diff operation is required in order for the theory of arrays to enjoy the Craig interpolation property at the quantifier-free level. However, the diff operation introduced in the literature is merely instrumental to this purpose and has only a purely formal meaning (it is obtained from the Skolemization of the extensionality axiom): instead, our maxdiff operation returns the max index where two arrays differ and so it is univocally determined at the semantic level. The length function is a natural complement of such a maxdiff operation and is needed to handle real arrays (which are defined in their specified allocation memory). Obtaining interpolation results for such a rich theory is a surprisingly hard task. We get such results via a thorough semantic analysis of the models of the theory and of their amalgamation and strong amalgamation properties. The results are modular with respect to the index theory and we show how to convert them into concrete interpolation algorithms via a hierarchical approach realizing a polynomial reduction to interpolation in linear arithmetics endowed with free function symbols. The array theory in the paper has been modified so as to model real arrays used in common programming languages (we now require them to be ‘contiguous’, i.e., not undefined in any of their allocation entries); moreover strong amalgamation and interpolation with free function symbols are proved. The interpolation algorithm avoids full instantiation routines and unbounded loops, thus achieving the above mentioned polynomial reduction complexity. The present paper is a substantially revised version of a previous conference paper presented at FoSSaCS 2021.

Computation Against a Neighbour: Addressing Large-Scale Distribution and Adaptivity with Functional Programming and Scala

Recent works in contexts like the Internet of Things (IoT) and large-scale Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) propose the idea of programming distributed systems by focussing on their global behaviour across space and time. In this view, a potentially vast and heterogeneous set of devices is considered as an "aggregate" to be programmed as a whole, while abstracting away the details of individual behaviour and exchange of messages, which are expressed declaratively. One such a paradigm, known as aggregate programming, builds on computational models inspired by field-based coordination. Existing models such as the field calculus capture interaction with neighbours by a so-called "neighbouring field" (a map from neighbours to values). This requires ad-hoc mechanisms to smoothly compose with standard values, thus complicating programming and introducing clutter in aggregate programs, libraries and domain-specific languages (DSLs). To address this key issue we introduce the novel notion of "computation against a neighbour", whereby the evaluation of certain subexpressions of the aggregate program are affected by recent corresponding evaluations in neighbours. We capture this notion in the neighbours calculus (NC), a new field calculus variant which is shown to smoothly support declarative specification of interaction with neighbours, and correspondingly facilitate the embedding of field computations as internal DSLs in common general-purpose programming languages -- as exemplified by a Scala implementation, called ScaFi. This paper formalises NC, thoroughly compares it with respect to the classic field calculus, and shows its expressiveness by means of a case study in edge computing, developed in ScaFi.

Trends in Teaching Programming in Schools in Hungary

Programming education in Hungary has undergone significant changes with the new National Core Curriculum released in 2020. It introduced a new, revised Digital Culture curriculum in public schools as a successor to the earlier informatics subject. The new curriculum contains several new themes and topics, with a bigger emphasis on programming and algorithms. However, little is known about the effect of these changes on the teaching practices and tools used to teach programming. In this paper, we present the results of a survey conducted with schoolteachers, and data provided by the Educational Authority of Hungary. We identify the most common programming languages, environments and pedagogical methods used by teachers, to give a general overview of the trends in teaching programming in Hungarian public schools.

MODERN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: CLASSIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION

In this article, the most common programming languages are considered, as well as their comparative analysis and the study of the prospects of their use in the future.

NIfTI-MRS: A standard data format for magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Multiple data formats in the MRS community currently hinder data sharing and integration. NIfTI-MRS is proposed as a standard spectroscopy data format, implemented as an extension to the Neuroimaging informatics technology initiative (NIfTI) format. This standardized format can facilitate data sharing and algorithm development as well as ease integration of MRS analysis alongside other imaging modalities. A file format using the NIfTI header extension framework incorporates essential spectroscopic metadata and additional encoding dimensions. A detailed description of the specification is provided. An open-source command-line conversion program is implemented to convert single-voxel and spectroscopic imaging data to NIfTI-MRS. Visualization of data in NIfTI-MRS is provided by development of a dedicated plugin for FSLeyes, the FMRIB Software Library (FSL) image viewer. Online documentation and 10 example datasets in the proposed format are provided. Code examples of NIfTI-MRS readers are implemented in common programming languages. Conversion software, spec2nii, currently converts 14 formats where data is stored in image-space to NIfTI-MRS, including Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and vendor proprietary formats. NIfTI-MRS aims to solve issues arising from multiple data formats being used in the MRS community. Through a single conversion point, processing and analysis of MRS data are simplified, thereby lowering the barrier to use of MRS. Furthermore, it can serve as the basis for open data sharing, collaboration, and interoperability of analysis programs. Greater standardization and harmonization become possible. By aligning with the dominant format in neuroimaging, NIfTI-MRS enables the use of mature tools present in the imaging community, demonstrated in this work by using a dedicated imaging tool, FSLeyes, for visualization.

Analysis of Application Data Mining to Capture Consumer Review Data on Booking Websites

The rapid development of the Internet has led to the prevalence of big data analysis. Data mining is crucial to extracting potentially valuable information from big data and has therefore received considerable attention from researchers. Python is a common programming language used in data mining. Because of its rich database and robust capacity for scientific calculations, Python is considered an irreplaceable tool for data mining. This study adopted Python to perform a data mining analysis on visitor comments on Booking.com. The study was divided into several stages, namely, data source selection, data acquisition, data saving, data preprocessing, indexing of comments on Booking.com through the Python-based Scrapy framework, and user operation simulation through Selenium to analyze the performance of the spider program. Data mining can be used to identify useful information, which can serve as references for consumers to make purchase decisions. Extraction of data from booking sites through spider programs enables site administrators to attract more visitors. Analysis of extracted data also facilitates the elimination of misjudged comments and helps hotels improve their service quality, hardware, and personnel training.

A simplified method for evaluating temperature effect on the behavior of layered soil with a time-varying cylindrical heat source

The engineering application of cylindrical heat source usually influences the characteristics of the surrounding soil and induces significant coupling responses of temperature, seepage and stress fields. This paper presents a numerical investigation into the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) coupling behavior of layered soils surrounding a cylindrical heat source by combining the analytical layer element method (ALEM) and the finite element method (FEM). The FEM is utilized to analyze the soil-cylindrical heat source interaction and the ALEM is used to obtain the fundamental solution of the layered soil. Then the THM coupling solution between the heat source and the soil is obtained by the simplified FEM-ALEM coupling method. Detailed validation against experimental result, and verifications against semi-analytical solution and numerical results by Comsol Multiphysics are performed to confirm the robustness of the present method, followed by extensive parametric studies to examine the effects of decaying half-life and type of the time-varying heat source, and the soil layered characteristics on the behavior of soils. It’s evident that the present method is accessible and can be implemented via common programming language, e.g. Fortran.

Probabilistic programming with stochastic variational message passing

Stochastic approximation methods for variational inference have recently gained popularity in the probabilistic programming community since these methods are amenable to automation and allow online, scalable, and universal approximate Bayesian inference. Unfortunately, common Probabilistic Programming Languages (PPLs) with stochastic approximation engines lack the efficiency of message passing-based inference algorithms with deterministic update rules such as Belief Propagation (BP) and Variational Message Passing (VMP). Still, Stochastic Variational Inference (SVI) and Conjugate-Computation Variational Inference (CVI) provide principled methods to integrate fast deterministic inference techniques with broadly applicable stochastic approximate inference. Unfortunately, implementation of SVI and CVI necessitates manually driven variational update rules, which does not yet exist in most PPLs. In this paper, we cast SVI and CVI explicitly in a message passing-based inference context. We provide an implementation for SVI and CVI in ForneyLab, which is an automated message passing-based probabilistic programming package in the open source Julia language. Through a number of experiments, we demonstrate how SVI and CVI extends the automated inference capabilities of message passing-based probabilistic programming.

A digital pattern playback system implemented in Python

Pattern playback systems were instrumental in speech perception research [e.g., Cooper et al. (1951)] and can be valuable for pedagogical purposes [e.g., Arai et al. (2006)]. They would be utilized further if one could integrate them with other speech processing software written in a common programming language. In response, I present an open-source digital pattern playback system implemented in the Python programming language. The software allows the user to provide an image of a magnitude spectrogram as input by either selecting an image file (e.g., PNG, JPG) or drawing one directly on a blank canvas using a pointing device (e.g., computer mouse, stylus, fingertip). It first translates pixel values of the image to an array of magnitude spectral coefficients and then applies the inverse short-time Fourier transform assuming zero phase to convert the array into a waveform. Users can readily manipulate basic parameters of conversion (e.g., sampling rate, frame length) and augment the process by utilizing various signal processing methods available in Python libraries such as SciPy and librosa. The source code is available for download and will be maintained on the author's GitHub repository and personal website.

EXCEL VBA-BASED USER DEFINED FUNCTIONS FOR HIGHLY PRECISE COLEBROOK’S PIPE FLOW FRICTION APPROXIMATIONS: A COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW

This review paper gives Excel functions for highly precise Colebrook’s pipe flow friction approximations developed by users. All shown codes are implemented as User Defined Functions – UDFs written in Visual Basic for Applications – VBA, a common programming language for MS Excel spreadsheet solver. Accuracy of the friction factor computed using nine to date the most accurate explicit approximations is compared with the sufficiently accurate solution obtained through an iterative scheme which gives satisfying results after sufficient number of iterations. The codes are given for the presented approximations, for the used iterative scheme and for the Colebrook equation expressed through the Lambert W-function (including its cognate Wright ω-function). The developed code for the principal branch of the Lambert W-function has additional and more general application for solving different problems from variety branches of engineering and physics. The approach from this review paper automates computational processes and speeds up manual tasks.

Developing Evidence-based Population Health Informatics curriculum: Integrating competency based model and job analysis.

With the rapid pace of technological advancements, public health professions require a core set of informatics skills. The objective of the study is to integrate informatics competencies and job analysis to guide development of an evidence-based curriculum framework and apply it towards creation of a population health informatics program. We conducted content analysis of the Population Health Informatics related job postings in the state of New York between June and July 2019 using the Indeed job board. The search terms included "health informatics" and "population health informatics." The initial search yielded 496 job postings. After removal of duplicates, inactive postings and that did not include details of the positions' responsibilities resulted in 306 jobs. Information recorded from the publicly available job postings included job categories, type of hiring organization, educational degree preferred and required, work experience preferred and required, salary information, job type, job location, associated knowledge, skills and expertise and software skills. Most common job title was that of an analyst (21%, n=65) while more than one-third of the hiring organizations were health systems (35%, n=106). 95% (n=291) of the jobs were fulltime and nearly half of these jobs were in New York City (47%, n=143). Data/statistical analysis (68%, n=207), working in multidisciplinary teams (35%, n=108), and biomedical/clinical experience (30%, n=93) were the common skills needed. Structured query language (SQL), Python, and R language were common programming language skills. A broad framework of integrating informatics competencies, combined with analysis of the skills the jobs needed, and knowledge acquisition based on global health informatics projects guided the development of an online population health informatics curriculum in a rapidly changing technological environment.

Aviator: a web service for monitoring the availability of web services.

With Aviator, we present a web service and repository that facilitates surveillance of online tools. Aviator consists of a user-friendly website and two modules, a literature-mining based general and a manually curated module. The general module currently checks 9417 websites twice a day with respect to their availability and stores many features (frontend and backend response time, required RAM and size of the web page, security certificates, analytic tools and trackers embedded in the webpage and others) in a data warehouse. Aviator is also equipped with an analysis functionality, for example authors can check and evaluate the availability of their own tools or those of their peers. Likewise, users can check the availability of a certain tool they intend to use in research or teaching to avoid including unstable tools. The curated section of Aviator offers additional services. We provide API snippets for common programming languages (Perl, PHP, Python, JavaScript) as well as an OpenAPI documentation for embedding in the backend of own web services for an automatic test of their function. We query the respective APIs twice a day and send automated notifications in case of an unexpected result. Naturally, the same analysis functionality as for the literature-based module is available for the curated section. Aviator can freely be used at https://www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/aviator.