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This is a summary of the papers presented at the Active Conceptual Modeling of Learning (ACM-L) Workshop, November 8, 2006, Tucson, Arizona, USA, and several invited papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active Learning in the classroom domain presents an interesting case for integrating physical and digital affordances. Traditional physical handouts and transparencies are giving way to new digital slides and PCs, but the fully digital systems still lag behind the physical artifacts in many aspects such as readability and tangibility. To better understand the interplay between physical and digital affordances in this domain, we developed PaperCP, a paper-based interface for a Tablet PC-based classroom interaction system (Classroom Presenter), and deployed it in an actual university course. This paper reports on an exploratory experiment studying the use of the system in a real-world scenario. The experiment confirms the feasibility of the paper interface in supporting student-instructor communication for Active Learning. We also discuss the challenges associated with creating a physical interface such as print layout, the use of pen gestures, and logistical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of an in-depth study of Bluetooth naming practices which took place in the UK in August 2006. There is a significant culture of giving Bluetooth names to mobile phones in the UK, and this paper's main contribution is to provide an account of those Bluetooth naming practices, putting them in their social, physical and intentional context. The paper also uncovers how users have appropriated the ways in which Bluetooth, with its relatively short range of about 10-100m, operates between their mobile phones as a partially embodied medium, making it a distinctive paradigm of socially and physically embedded communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content preparation is essential for web design [25]. The objective of this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation for the development of methods to evaluate the effectiveness of content preparation in information technology operations. Past studies identify information as the dominant concern of users, and delivery mechanism as a secondary concern [20]. The best presentation of the wrong information results in a design with major usability problems and does not aid the user in accomplishing his task. This paper shifts the focus of existing usability evaluation methods. It attempts to fill the void in usability literaoture by addressing the information aspect of usability evaluation. Combining the strengths of content preparation and usability evaluation yields major implications for a broad range of IT uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the progress of Internet technology and the increase of distributed information on networks, the present knowledge management has been based more and more on the performance of various experienced users. In addition to the increase of electronic documents, the use of paper documents has not been reduced because of their convenience. This paper describes a method of tracking paper document locations and contents using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. This research also focused on the expression of a task process and the seamless structuring of related electronic and paper documents as a result of task knowledge formalization using information organizing. A system is proposed here that implements information organization for both Web documents and paper documents with the task model description and RFID technology. Examples of a prototype system are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papers in HCI play different roles, whether to inspire, solve industrial problems or further the science of HCI. There is a potential conflict between the different views, and a danger that different forms of validity are assumed by author and reader — deliberately or accidentally. This paper reviews some of the issues in this complex area and makes practical recommendations. In particular, the paper introduces the term "cross-validity" to help make explicit the issues, problems and means to tackle them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Health-e-Child project aims to develop an integrated healthcare platform for European paediatrics. In order to achieve a comprehensive view of children's health, a complex integration of biomedical data, information, and knowledge is necessary. Ontologies will be used to formally define this domain knowledge and will form the basis for the medical knowledge management system. This paper introduces an innovative methodology for the vertical integration of biomedical knowledge. This approach will be largely clinician-centered and will enable the definition of ontology fragments, connections between them (semantic bridges) and enriched ontology fragments (views). The strategy for the specification and capture of fragments, bridges and views is outlined with preliminary examples demonstrated in the collection of biomedical information from hospital databases, biomedical ontologies, and biomedical public databases. Keywords: Vertical Knowledge Integration, Approximate Queries, Ontology Views, Semantic Bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative tagging has grown on the Internet as a new paradigm for web information discovering, filtering and retrieval. In the physical world, we use visual tags: labels readable by smartphones with cameras. While visual tags are usually related to a web site address, collaborative tagging, instead, provides updated, recommended information contributed and shared by users. In this paper we investigate the combination of collaborative tagging systems with visual tags. We present a prototype of a semiautomatic system generating visual tags which gather information from collaborative tagging. The user can interact with a list of relevant tags (built by clustering closely related tags) that can be further encoded in a visual tag, according to user's preferences. The user experience is enriched by retrieving multimedia content linked to the selected tags, present on the web. We finally show a case study illustrating our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation of multiagent systems may be approached from different stand-points. In this paper I will take the perspective of using a certain type of devices, electronic institutions, to regulate agent interactions. Furthermore, in this paper I am concerned with the tasks of design and construction of actual electronic institutions and I will explore some of the empirical aspects that one may encounter in such activities. More specifically, I will focus on those empirical aspects that are characteristic of electronic institutions rather than those that may be typical of multi-agent systems development in general or other types of software engineering. I use three examples of actual electronic institutions that show different and complementary features in order to motivate a number of distinctions that may be used to treat empirical features in a systematic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 13th Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ'07) will take place in the beautiful city of Trondheim, Norway on the 11th and 12th June 2007. As with most previous years, REFSQ'07 is affiliated with CAiSE. However, REFSQ'07 is significantly larger than in previous years, both in terms of the number of submissions and the size of the programme. 27 papers will be presented, plus a keynote address by Klaus Pohl, and parallel sessions will be necessary to make the programme possible within two days. However, the essential highly interactive and participatory nature of the REFSQ 'brand' will be retained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements engineering research has been conducted for over 40 years. It is important to recognize the plethora of results accumulated to date to: (a) improve researchers' understanding of the historical roots of our field in the real-world and the problems that they are trying to solve, (b) expose researchers to the breadth and depth of solutions that have been proposed, (c) provide a synergistic basis for improving those solutions or building new ones to solve real-world problems facing the industry today, and d) increase practitioner awareness of available solutions. A detailed meta-analysis of the requirements engineering literature will provide an objective overview of the advances and current state of the discipline. This paper represents the first step in a planned multi-year analysis. It presents the results of a demographic analysis by date, type, outlet, author, and author affiliation for an existing database of over 4,000 requirements engineering publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will propose our ideas for a semantically ready competency model. The model will allow semantic enrichment on different levels, creating truly meaningful competencies. The aim of this model is to provide a flexible approach for (re)use, matching, interpretation, exchange and storage for competencies. Our competency model is based on the DOGMA ontology framework and the proposed IEEE standards RCD and SCRM. We will focus on the model itself and how semantics can be applied to it as these elements form the basis for any kind of processing on them. Keywords: competence, competency, RCD, semantics, DOGMA, e-HRM, HRM, occupation, ontology, Semantic Web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfusion Ontology is a simple task-based ontology developed in the emergency health care domain. Taking the assumption that ontologies are instruments for supporting exchange of information among parties, the principles governing the design of this ontology was mainly based on the identification of the interactions of messages to be exchanged among parties. This paper shows how this simple design principle is able to guide a whole ontology construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usability maturation manifests in terms of quality in software, in interaction, and in value, constituting the three parts of this volume. In this green paper, the three editors present a range of ideas drawn and synthesized from the fifteen preceding chapters. It is not just a review, but, more importantly, it is an invitation for interested individuals or organizations to contribute more views and information, providing answers to open questions, challenging existing opinions, raising new issues, and bridging the gaps. In the Introduction, a brief overview of the development of the field of HCI is presented. In each of the three following sections, the five chapters comprising the respective part are reviewed and attendant issues are discussed, leading to research agendas that can serve as a roadmap for the future work on usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a small case study is presented to illustrate our conceptual understanding of a task-based requirements process. We argue that sub-models as known in model-based design (e.g. task models, dialog models) support the reflection about an existing work situation at a conceptual level and allow a formal specification of requirements. However, it is also shown that the integration of complementary analysis approaches facilitates a richer consideration of social as well as technical aspects. An intertwined creation of models differing in their focus and in the degree of abstraction and formality supports a more effective requirements elicitation and elaboration. In addition, the paper discusses some crucial issues in task- and model-based design such as the ‘myth' of generalised task models, the different roles of task and dialog models, or the influence of intentions on models of current situations. We hope to contribute to a further clarification of the problem space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activity sensing in the home has a variety of important applications, including healthcare, entertainment, home automation, energy monitoring and post-occupancy research studies. Many existing systems for detecting occupant activity require large numbers of sensors, invasive vision systems, or extensive installation procedures. We present an approach that uses a single plug-in sensor to detect a variety of electrical events throughout the home. This sensor detects the electrical noise on residential power lines created by the abrupt switching of electrical devices and the noise created by certain devices while in operation. We use machine learning techniques to recognize electrically noisy events such as turning on or off a particular light switch, a television set, or an electric stove. We tested our system in one home for several weeks and in five homes for one week each to evaluate the system performance over time and in different types of houses. Results indicate that we can learn and classify various electrical events with accuracies ranging from 85-90%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's mobile data applications aspire to deliver services to a user anywhere - anytime while fulfilling his Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. However, the success of the service delivery heavily relies on the QoS offered by the underlying networks. As the services operate in a heterogeneous networking environment, we argue that the generic information about the networks' offered-QoS may enable an anyhow mobile service delivery based on an intelligent (proactive) selection of ‘any' network available in the user's context (location and time). Towards this direction, we develop a QoS-predictions service provider, which includes functionality for the acquisition of generic offered-QoS information and which, via a multidimensional processing and history-based reasoning, will provide predictions of the expected offered-QoS in a reliable and timely manner. We acquire the generic QoS-information from distributed mobile services' components quantitatively (actively and passively) measuring the applicationlevel QoS, while the reasoning is based on statistical data mining and pattern recognition techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a community such as conferences, numerous service providers and service users exist, and people interact using contexts. With the improvements in context-awareness computing and mobile computing technologies, human-computer interactions for exchanging contexts started increasing. In this paper, we introduce some interaction techniques such as tag interaction and service discovery interaction using a mobile device to provide an efficient user interface to exchange contexts in a conference room. We identified typical situations in which these interactions can be used in a paper, poster session, and for providing individual information among the attendees. We analyzed the two interaction techniques to be suitable to improve the interactions for exchanging contexts in a conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of embedded systems, battery life becomes a critical restriction factor. Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) has been proven to be an effective method for reducing energy consumption of processors. This paper proposes an energy-saving algorithm under a task model (the MSPR model) where a task consists of multiple subtasks with different fixed priorities. This algorithm includes two parts. The first part is a static algorithm, which exploits the relationship among tasks to set the slowdown factors of subtasks. The second part is an algorithm that dynamically reclaims and reuses the slack time of precedent subtasks during the execution of tasks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work for energy-efficient scheduling under the complex periodic real-time task model where a task consists of multiple subtasks with different fixed priorities. Experimental results show this method can reduce energy consumption by 20%-80%, while guaranteeing the real-time requirements of systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CSDUML 2006 workshop is a continuation of the series regarding development of critical systems using modeling languages. The report summarizes papers presented and discussion at the workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book constitutes the refereed research proceeding of the 14th European Software Process Improvement Conference, EuroSPI 2007, held in Potsdam, Germany in September 2007. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agile methods, software process improvement studies, improvement methods, engineering and development, and quality and knowledge concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes and adaptations are always necessary after the deployment of a multiagent system (MAS), as well as of any other type of software systems. Some of these changes may be simply perfective and have local impact only. However, adaptive changes to meet changed situations in the operational environment of the MAS may have global impact on the overall design. In this paper, we analyze the issue of continuous design change/adaptation in a MAS organization, and the specific problem of how to properly model/design a MAS so as to make it ready to adaptation. Following, the paper focuses on the Gaia methodology and analyzes - also with the help of an illustrative example - its suitability in supporting and facilitating adaptive changes in MASs organizations, and its advantages and limitations with this regard over a number of different agent-oriented methodologies. Keywords: Agent Oriented Methodologies, Design for Change, Adaptive Organizations, Methodologies Evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book constitutes the refereed research proceeding of the 13th European Software Process Improvement Conference, EuroSPI 2006, held in Joensuu, Finland in October 2006. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on SPI (Software Process Improvement) processes, SPI and risk management, measurement, process modelling, human factors, and implementation of SPI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial structure supporting applications offer an abstract level of what can be found in the real world. However, in many systems, objects are aligned straight, rotation is not possible, they can be resized easily and can hold more text than is visible on the screen. Paper and structures created with paper seem to be more limited: Straight alignment is not possible without spending much time; paper can hardly be resized without damaging it; and piles may fall down if they become too tall. However, a closer look shows that paper structures offer much more attributes and dependencies than any current spatial structure supporting application. In this article, we compare paper structures to a selection of computer applications. We argue that the observed small additions with paper carry information which improves finding and organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes some results of a project that studied how multimedia can help the worker in an assembly task. The test case was a deep-cut assembly of a grid-anode for a cathodic protection system. A multimedia tool was implemented and compared with the conventional support method for the same task. The tool helps the worker by providing training and background information. During the task the tool acts as a guide and a set of well-defined instructions. The comparison of the methods was done by means of a field experiment. The results show that the use of the implemented tool helps to produce a slight increase to the quality of the work. However, the execution time of the work was not better when using the multimedia tool. According to a user questionnaire done in the test situation, the multimedia tool was more useful and easier to use, and gave the users more confidence than the conventional support method. It can be said that the use of multimedia support helps the worker to produce better quality in the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally, it is difficult to find constant patterns on identifiers in a container image, since the identifiers are not normalized in color, size, and position, etc. and their shapes are damaged by external environmental factors. This paper distinguishes identifier areas from background noises and removes noises by using an ART2-based quantization method and general morphological information on the identifiers such as color, size, ratio of height to width, and a distance from other identifiers. Individual identifier is extracted by applying the 8-directional contour tracking method to each identifier area. This paper proposes a refined ART2-based RBF network and applies it to the recognition of identifiers. Through experiments with 300 container images, the proposed algorithm showed more improved accuracy of recognizing container identifiers than the others proposed previously, in spite of using shorter training time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the problem of scheduling a set of n periodic preemptive independent hard real-time tasks on the minimum number of processors. We assume that the partitioning strategy is used to allocate the tasks to the processors and the EDF method is used to schedule the tasks on each processor. It is known that this scenario is NP-hard; thus, it is unlikely to find a polynomial time algorithm to schedule the tasks on the minimum number of processors. In this work, we derive a lower and an upper bound for the number of processors required to satisfy the constraints of our problem. We also compare a number of heuristic algorithms with each other and with the bounds derived in this paper. Numerical results demonstrate that our lower bound is very tight and it is very close to the optimal solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a test development method, named OTK, that is aimed at optimizing compiler testing. The OTK method is based on constructing a model of optimizer's input data. The method allows developing tests targeted to testing a chosen optimizer. A formal data model is constructed on the basis of an abstract informal description of an algorithm of the optimizer under test. In the paper, we consider in detail the process of analyzing an optimization algorithm and building a formal model. We also consider in outline the other part of the method, test selection and test running. The OTK method has been successfully applied in several case studies, including test development for several different optimizing compilers for modern architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple viewed search engine presented here retrieves documents of an indicated search area and displays a matrix of the distribution of the clustering from two aspects of the retrieval result. The search engine provides a visual and semantic bird's-eye view of the entire retrieval result. In addition, the characteristic words of each cluster are displayed in the matrix, and supports narrowing of the search. Furthermore, it is possible to immediately change the analysis criteria or the number of clusters and to use a zooming function. Thus, various retrieval conditions for a query can be attempted immediately and continuously. As a case study, this paper performs several analyses on the electronic journal Zoological Science using a multiple viewed search engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titled Documents (TD) are short text documents that are segmented into two parts: Heading Part and Excerpt Part. With the development of the Internet, TDs are widely used as papers, news, messages, etc. In this paper we discuss the problem of automatic TDs categorization. Unlike traditional text documents, TDs have short headings which have less useless words comparing to their excerpts. Though headings are usually short, their words are more important than other words. Based on this observation we propose a titled document classification framework using the widely used MNB classifier. This framework puts higher weight on the heading words at the cost of some excerpt words. By this means heading words play more important roles in classification than the traditional method. According to our experiments on four datasets that cover three types of documents, the performance of the classifier is improved by our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the problem of global stability for a class of neural networks with time-varying delays. A new sufficient condition for global stability is proposed by using some slack matrix variables to express the relationship between the system matrices. The restriction on the derivative of the delay function to be less than unit is removed. A numerical example shows that the result obtained in this paper improves the upper bound of the delay over some existing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software processes are highly people-dependent and they relay on the capabilities of a group of developers and their creative works. Therefore an Organization-Entity capability based software process modeling method OEC-SPM was proposed to modeling the software process by adopting Process-Agent (PA) as key element. Since the OEC-SPM needs a mass of PAs to perform precise modeling but then the current process of creating PAs is inefficient and people-dependent, this paper presents a tool to create the PAs for OEC-SPM automatically from the Historical Project Data (HPD). The paper makes an overview of the PA's structure in OEC-SPM then gives the definition of HPD. After that the paper introduces to the process of creating PAs in the tool and illustrates the application of the tool with an example on a software quality management system SoftPM. Finally the paper illustrates the tool's result and then presents the future works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The PSP (Personal Software Process) was developed to help developers make high-quality products through improving their personal software development processes. With consistent measurement and analysis activities that the PSP suggests, developers can identify process deficiencies and make a reliable estimate on effort and quality. However, due to the high-overhead and context-switching problem of manual data recording, developers have difficulties to collect reliable data, which can lead to wrong analysis results. Also, it is very inconvenient to use the paper-based process guide of the PSP in navigating its process information and difficult to attach additional process-related information to the process guide. In this paper, we describe a PSP supporting tool that we have developed to deal with these problems. The tool provides automated data collection and analysis to help acquire reliable data and identify process deficiencies. It also provides an EPG (Electronic Process Guide) in order to provide easy access and navigation of the PSP process information, which is integrated with an ER (Experience Repository) to allow developers to store development experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first edition of the workshop Models@run.time was co-located with the ACM/IEEE 9th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (formerly the UML series of conferences). The workshop took place in the antique city of Genoa, Italy, on the 1st of October, 2006. The workshop was organised by Gordon Blair, Robert France, and Nelly Bencomo. This summary gives an overview an account of the presentations and lively discussions that took place during the workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The workshop OCLApps 2006 was organized as a part of MoDELS/UML Conference in Genova, Italy. It continues the series of five OCL (Object Constraint Language) workshops held at previous UML/MoDELS conferences between 2000 - 2005. Similar to its predecessors, the workshop addressed both people from academia and industry. The advent of the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) vision and the rapid acceptance of MDE (Model Driven Engineering) approaches emphasize new application domains (like Semantic Web or Domain Specific Languages) and call for new OCL functionalities. In this context, the OCLApps 2006 Workshop, was conceived as a forum enabling researchers and industry experts to present and debate how the OCL could support these new requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of RFID technology, the so called internet of things for managing supply chain events has gained increasing attention. This paper proposes a peer to peer broker network on top of existing specifications for this infrastructure. With the broker network, event based communication is enabled for the internet of things. However, the main contribution of this paper is a mechanism to optimize event queries for in-network processing of supply chain events. Here, models of supply chain processes are exploited for optimizing event queries and enabling improved mapping of query operators to the broker network. Experiments are presented which show that the proposed mechanism reduces network load compared to existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal systems support people with different needs and different features during the interaction process making it more easy and natural. However naturalness can usually produce ambiguous interpretation. This paper discusses ambiguities in multimodal interaction proposing in particular two different examples of ambiguities: a) multimodal ambiguities produced combining un-ambiguous modal information containing contrasting concepts in multimodal dialogue, b) ambiguities arising by the propagation at multimodal level of a modal input ambiguity. Moreover, the paper proposes a formal representation of multimodal inputs using the hybrid approach that combines the attribute multi-set grammar with the linear logic. This paper starts from discussing the main features of a multimodal system and the classes of cooperation between modalities. The attribute multi-set grammar combined with the linear logic enables to highlight the multidimensionality of multimodality and allows to formally describe ambiguities that can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mizar, unlike in most other proof assistants, the types are not part of the foundations of the system. Mizar is based on untyped set theory, which means that in Mizar expressions are typed but the values of those expressions are not. In this paper we present the Mizar type system as a collection of type inference rules. We will interpret Mizar types as soft types, by translating Mizar's type judgments into sequents of untyped first order predicate logic. We will then prove that the Mizar type system is correct with respect to this translation in the sense that each derivable type judgment translates to a provable sequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering component interactions is a major challenge in the development of large-scale, open systems. In the realm of multiagent system research, organizational abstractions have been proposed to overcome the complexity of this task. However, the gap between these modeling abstractions, and the constructs provided by todays agent-oriented software frameworks is still rather big. This paper reports on the multiagent programming framework, which provides executable constructs for each of the organizational, ACL-based modeling abstractions of the theory. Setting out from a components and connectors perspective on the elements of the metamodel, their executions semantics is defined and instrumented on top of the JADE platform. Moreover, a systematic reuse approach to the engineering of interactions is put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software process improvement (SPI) has received much attention in both academia and industry. SPI aims to improve the effectiveness of the software development process. Several different approaches have been developed for SPI, including the SEI's Capability Maturity Model (CMM), more recently the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and ISO's SPICE. Research shows that the effort put into these approaches can assist in producing high quality software. This paper has a two-fold objectives: first to review and summarise the empirical evidence thus far on the costs and benefits of SPI approaches; second to establish a relationship between different approaches to SPI and to seek and identify whether these approaches fulfil all the needs for an effective SPI initiative. The aim of this review is to analyse material about SPI approach and to set the scene for future research in the area of Software Process Improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent proliferation of documents, automatic metadata extraction from document becomes an important task. In this paper, we propose a novel template matching based method for header metadata extraction form semi-structured documents stored in PDF. In our approach, templates are defined, and the document is considered as strings with format. Templates are used to guide finite state automaton (FSA) to extract header metadata of papers. The testing results indicate that our approach can effectively extract metadata, without any training cost and available to some special situation. This approach can effectively assist the automatic index creation in lots of fields such as digital libraries, information retrieval, and data mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-organizational business cooperations can be described from different viewpoints each fulfilling a specific purpose. Since all viewpoints describe the same system they must not contradict each other, thus, must be consistent. Consistency can be checked based on common semantic concepts of the different viewpoints. This is sufficient for equal concepts, while weakly related concepts, e.g. related to runtime behavior of viewpoints, have to be considered explicitly. In this paper we identify dynamic consistency issues correlated to the runtime behavior between value and coordination viewpoints on behalf of an example. In particular, an issue class on occurrence estimations of execution options and an issue class on granularity differences in modelling are identified and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the AgentAssebly architecture and specifically the agent framework platform component of the architecture. An introduction is given to the work covered in the paper and previous work (see [1]) this paper is based upon. Then an in-depth discussion is rendered on the agent framework platform provided by the AgentAssembly architecture. The paper concludes with some remarks on the research presented and future aims of the ongoing research project. Keywords: Agent programming languages, frameworks, and toolkits meta-modeling and meta reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a very hard optimization problem in the field of operations research. It has been shown to be NP-hard, and is an often-used benchmark for new optimization techniques. This paper pro- poses an improved multi-agent approach for solving large TSP. This proposed approach mainly includes three kinds of agents with different function. The first kind of agent is conformation agent and its function is generating the new solution continuously. The second kind of agent is optimization agent and its function is optimizing the current solutions group. The third kind of agent is refining agent and its function is refining the best solution from the beginning of the trial. At same time, there are many sub-agents in each kind of agent. These sub-agents accomplish the task of its superior agent cooperatively. At the end of this paper, the experimental results have shown that the proposed hybrid approach has good performance with respect to the quality of solution and the speed of computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient searching system is needed to offer the exact result of diverse web information to the user. Due to this reason, it is important to extract and analyze the user requirements in the distributed information environment. The searching method proposed in this paper uses the keyword as well as its context information for effective searching. Moreover, the proposed searching method is extracted keywords by using the new keyword extraction method also proposed in this paper, and it is executed web searching based on keyword mining profile generated by the extracted keywords. Unlike the conventional searching method, which searched for information by representative words, the proposed searching method is more efficient and exact. This is because data are searched by the example-based query including the content information as well as the representative words. Moreover, this searching method makes a domain keyword list for a quick search. The domain keyword is the representative word of a special domain. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed in a series of experiments to identify its various characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of research has been devoted in recent years to the designing Fuzzy-Neural Networks (FNN) from input-output data. And some works were also done to analyze the performance of some methods from a rigorous mathematical point of view. In this paper, a new approximation bound for the clustering method, which is employed to design the FNN with the Gaussian Membership Function, is established. It is an improvement of the previous result in which the related approximation bound was somewhat complex. The detailed formulas of the error bound between the nonlinear function to be approximated and the FNN system designed based on the input-output data are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The k-set agreement problem is a generalization of the uniform consensus problem: each process proposes a value, and each non-faulty process has to decide a value such that a decided value is a proposed value, and at most k different values are decided. It has been shown that any algorithm that solves the k-set agreement problem in synchronous systems that can suffer up to t crash failures requires $\lfloor \frac{t}{k} \rfloor +1$ rounds in the worst case. It has also been shown that it is possible to design early deciding algorithms where no process decides and halts after $\min\big( \lfloor \frac{f}{k} \rfloor +2, \lfloor \frac{t}{k} \rfloor +1\big)$ rounds, where f is the number of actual crashes in a run (0 ≤ f ≤ t). This paper explores a new direction to solve the k-set agreement problem in a synchronous system. It considers that the system is enriched with base objects (denoted [m,ℓ]_SA objects) that allow solving the ℓ-set agreement problem in a set of m processes (m < n). The paper has several contributions. It first proposes a synchronous k-set agreement algorithm that benefits from such underlying base objects. This algorithm requires $O(\frac{t \ell}{m k})$ rounds, more precisely, $R_t= \lfloor \frac{t}{\Delta} \rfloor +1$ rounds, where $\Delta= m \lfloor \frac{k}{\ell} \rfloor + (k\mbox{ mod } \ell)$. The paper then shows that this bound, that involves all the parameters that characterize both the problem (k) and its environment (t, m and ℓ), is a lower bound. The proof of this lower bound sheds additional light on the deep connection between synchronous efficiency and asynchronous computability. Finally, the paper extends its investigation to the early deciding case. It presents a k-set agreement algorithm that directs the processes to decide and stop by round $R_f=\min\big(\lfloor \frac{f}{\Delta} \rfloor +2, \lfloor \frac{t}{\Delta} \rfloor +1\big)$. These bounds generalize the bounds previously established for solving the k-set problem in pure synchronous systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SPAWAR Systems Center (SSC San Diego) of the U.S. Navy hosted two workshops on Active Conceptual Modeling of Learning (ACM-L). The first workshop was held at SSC San Diego on May 10-12, 2006 to introduce the Science &Technology (S&T) Initiative and identify a Research and Development agenda for the technology development investigation. Eleven invited researchers in Conceptual Modeling presented position papers on the proposed S&T Initiative. The second workshop was held on November 8, 2006 at the 25th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2006, 6-9 November 2006, in Tucson, Arizona. Complementary to the May Workshop, the November workshop was a forum for the international researchers and practitioners to present their papers as a result of a call for papers and to exchange ideas from various perspectives of the subject. This paper describes research issues identified by participants from the two ACM-L workshops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major purpose of the design of distributed databases is to improve system performance and to increase system reliability. Fragmentation and allocation play important roles in the development of a cost-efficient system. This paper addresses the problem of fragmentation in the context of complex value databases, which cover the common aspects of object-oriented databases, object-relational databases and XML. In this paper, we present a cost-based approach for horizontal and vertical fragmentation. Our approach is based on a cost model that takes the structure of complex value databases into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large IT company is creating a generic architecting process. Since the company has set an objective to achieve Maturity Level 3 of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), the process needs to comply with the relevant requirements set by the CMMI. This paper presents the elicitation of such requirements, and the resulting set of requirements. It analyzes their potential impact on generic architecting processes found in literature. It turns out that many key architectural concepts are at best loosely defined in the CMMI. CMMI is strong in support of the development-related architecting activities, but gives only indirect support for other architecting activities, particularly in a product development context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]