Abstract
Social isolation and loneliness are among the important factors for the degradation of the life quality as the persons’ aging process advances. These factors can have a pronounced effect on the general health and are caused by the decrease in social interaction by the person with the friends, family and ex-coworkers groups. On the other hand, the software and hardware technologies has reached a maturation point were the electronic assistants can acquire information from the user through camera images, as well as to communicate with the user by means of natural voice language. In this context, a model for the adoption of electronic intelligent assistants by the elderlies has been proposed in previous work. In the current work, it is assessed the possibility of using the current consumer assistants to implement the proposed model. Several assistants are analyzed (Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple), assessing their functionalities and how they could be used to assist the elderly in strengthening their social bonds with the family, friends and ex-co-workers groups. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.

Abstract
This paper presents a case study regarding the usability evaluation of navigation tasks by people with intellectual disabilities. The aim was to investigate the factors affecting usability, by comparing their user-Web interactions and underline the difficulties observed. For that purpose, two distinct study phases were performed: the first consisted in comparing interaction using two different search engines’ layouts (Google and SAPO) and the second phase consisted in a preliminary evaluation to analyze how users performed the tasks with the usual input devices (keyboard and mouse) and provide an alternative interface to help overcome possible interaction problems and enhance autonomy. For the latter, we compared two different interfaces: a WIMP-based one and speech-based one. The main results obtained showed that users had a better performance with Google (with a simpler layout) than with SAPO (with a complex layout), and despite displaying a good keyboard handling ability, they did not show autonomy using this input device (due to the need for reading/writing when handling this device). In this perspective, Google’s speech recognition application could indeed be considered an alternative for interaction. However, we found that the speech recognition interface is not as robust as it should be: it could be more precise and less prone to errors due to poor word pronunciation. After this two-phased study, we think we may be able to infer some recommendations to be used by developers in order to create more intuitive layouts for easy navigation regarding this group of people, and thereby facilitate digital inclusion. © 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Abstract
Machine learning users need methods that can help them identify algorithms or even workflows (combination of algorithms with preprocessing tasks, using or not hyperparameter configurations that are different from the defaults), that achieve the potentially best performance. Our study was oriented towards average ranking (AR), an algorithm selection method that exploits meta-data obtained on prior datasets. We focused on extending the use of a variant of AR* that takes A3R as the relevant metric (combining accuracy and run time). The extension is made at the level of diversity of the portfolio of workflows that is made available to AR. Our aim was to establish whether feature selection and different hyperparameter configurations improve the process of identifying a good solution. To evaluate our proposal we have carried out extensive experiments in a leave-one-out mode. The results show that AR* was able to select workflows that are likely to lead to good results, especially when the portfolio is diverse. We additionally performed a comparison of AR* with Auto-WEKA, running with different time budgets. Our proposed method shows some advantage over Auto-WEKA, particularly when the time budgets are small.

Abstract
Compositional data are considered as data where relative contributions of parts on a whole, conveyed by (log-)ratios between them, are essential for the analysis. In Symbolic Data Analysis (SDA), we are in the framework of interval data when elements are characterized by variables whose values are intervals on representing inherent variability. In this paper, we address the special problem of the analysis of interval compositions, i.e., when the interval data are obtained by the aggregation of compositions. It is assumed that the interval information is represented by the respective midpoints and ranges, and both sources of information are considered as compositions. In this context, we introduce the representation of interval data as three-way data. In the framework of the log-ratio approach from compositional data analysis, it is outlined how interval compositions can be treated in an exploratory context. The goal of the analysis is to represent the compositions by coordinates which are interpretable in terms of the original compositional parts. This is achieved by summarizing all relative information (logratios) about each part into one coordinate from the coordinate system. Based on an example from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), several possibilities for an exploratory data analysis approach for interval compositions are outlined and investigated.

Abstract

Abstract
The number of software-defined controllers available in the market has increased greatly in the last few years. Nowadays, it is possible to find proprietary controllers as well as open source controllers. Examples are companies as HPE and Cisco that offer those two types of controllers to their clients simultaneously. It is also important to note that in both, the open source version is a commercial distribution of OpenDaylight. In the current market it is possible to find controllers for different areas of deployment, with a different programming language and supporting different southbound protocols. Therefore, we considered worth providing a description and a comparison of the main existing controllers.