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 <li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expression Matching and Partial Derivatives</H4>
 <p>
 <B>Description:</b>
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Regular expressions</A>
-are extremely useful for many text-processing tasks...finding patterns in texts,
+are extremely useful for many text-processing tasks such as finding patterns in texts,
 lexing programs, syntax highlighting and so on. Given that regular expressions were
 introduced in 1950 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cole_Kleene">Stephen Kleene</A>, you might think
 regular expressions have since been studied and implemented to death. But you would definitely be mistaken: in fact they are still
 an active research area. For example
 <A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">this paper</A>
 mounting a nice <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack">DoS attack</A> against
 your program if it contains such an &quot;evil&quot; regular expression. Actually
 <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> (and also Java) are almost immune from such
 attacks as they can deal with strings of up to 4,300 <code>a</code>s in less than a second. But if you scale
 the regular expression and string further to, say, 4,600 <code>a</code>s, then you get a <code>StackOverflowError</code>
-potentially chrashing your program.
+potentially crashing your program.
 </p>
 <p>
 On a rainy afternoon, I implemented
 <A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/re3.scala">this</A>
 regular expression matcher in Scala. It is not as fast as the official one in Scala, but
 it can match up to 11,000 <code>a</code>s in less than 5 seconds  without raising any exception
 (remember Python and Ruby both need nearly 30 seconds to process 28(!) <code>a</code>s, and Scala's
-offical matcher maxes out at 4,600 <code>a</code>s). My matcher is approximately
+official matcher maxes out at 4,600 <code>a</code>s). My matcher is approximately
 85 lines of code and based on the concept of
-<A HREF="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293">derivatives of regular experssions</A>.
+<A HREF="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293">derivatives of regular expressions</A>.
 These derivatives were introduced in 1964 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Brzozowski_(computer_scientist)">
 Janusz Brzozowski</A>, but according to this
 <A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~so294/documents/jfp09.pdf">paper</A> had been lost in the &quot;sands of time&quot;.
 The advantage of derivatives is that they side-step completely the usual
 <A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">translations</A> of regular expressions
 <li> <H4>[CU2] Automata Theory in Your Web-Browser</H4>
 <p>
-There are a number of classic algorithms in automata theory (such as the transformation of regular
+This project is about web-programming (but not in Java):
-expressions into NFAs and DFAs, automata minimisation, subset construction). All these algorithms involve a fair
+There are a number of classic algorithms in automata theory (such as the
-amount of calculations, which cannot be easily done by hand. There are a few web applications that annimate these
+<A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">transformation</A> of regular
+expressions into NFAs and DFAs,
+<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFA_minimization">automata minimisation</A>,
+<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerset_construction">subset construction</A>).
+All these algorithms involve a fair
+amount of calculations, which cannot be easily done by hand. There are a few web applications, typically
+written in <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">Javascript</A>,  that animate these
 calculations, for example <A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">this one<A/>.
+But they all have their deficiencies and can be improved with more modern technology.
 </p>
 <p>
-There now many useful libraries for Javascript, for example, this one for graphs. There are also
+There now many useful libraries for JavaScript, for example, this
-a number of new programming languages targetting Javascript. This project is for someone who
+<A HREF="http://getspringy.com">one</A> for graphs or this
-want to get to know these languges by implementing and animating algorithms from automata
+<A HREF="http://demos.bonsaijs.org/demos/star/index.html">one</A> for graphics.
-theory or parsing.
+There are also
+a number of new programming languages targeting JavaScript, for example
+<A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A>,
+<A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">CoffeeScript</A>,
+<A HREF="http://www.dartlang.org">Dart</A>,
+<A HREF="http://scriptsharp.com">Script#</A>,
+<A HREF="http://clojure.org">Clojure</A>
+and so on.
+The task in this project is to use a web-programming
+language and suitable library to animate algorithms from automata theory (and also parsing, if wanted).
+This project is for someone who
+want to get to know these new languages.
 </p>
 <B>Literature:</B>
 The same general literature as in [CU1].
 </p>
 <p>
 <B>Skills:</B>
-This is a project for a student with good programming skills.
+This is a project for a student with very good programming
-JavaScript or a similar web-programming language seems to be best suited
+and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacking</A> skills.
-for this project. Some knowledge in HTML and CSS cannot hurt either.
+Some knowledge in JavaScript, HTML and CSS cannot hurt The algorithms from automata
+theory are fairly standard material.
 </p>
 <!--
 <li> <H4>[CU2] Equivalence Checking of Regular Expressions</H4>
 </p>
 <p>
 However, there is one restriction that makes this project harder than it seems
 as first sight. The department does not allow large server applications and databases
-to be run on calcium. So the problem should be solved with as few resources needed
+to be run on calcium - the central server in the department. So the problem should be solved with as few resources needed
 on the &quot;back-end&quot; which collects the votes.
 </p>
 <p>
 <B>Literature:</B>
 The project requires fluency in a web-programming language (for example
-<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">Javascript</A>,
+<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">JavaScript</A>,
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP">PHP</A>,
 Java, <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>,
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>,
 <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)">Ruby</A>).
 <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
 course at <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> is a good starting point
 to be aware of the issues involved. This course uses <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>.
 To evaluate the answers from the student, Google's
 <A HREF="https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts">Chart Tools</A>
-might be useful, which ar also described in this
+might be useful, which are also described in this
 <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtgT4jgnE8">youtube</A> video.
 </p>
 <p>
 <B>Skills:</B>
 <p>
 <B>Description:</B>
 There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
 <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
-describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
+describes a new algorithm developed by NASA for clocks that communicate by exchanging
 messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
 A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
 <A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
-The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
+The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate a networks of clocks.
 </p>
 <p>
 <B>Literature:</B>
-There is a wide range of literature on clock syncronisation algorithms.
+There is a wide range of literature on clock synchronisation algorithms.
 Some pointers are given in this
 <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
 which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
 are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
 </p>

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