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Some of the most interesting developments within computer system design in recent years have emerged from an exploration of the ways everyday objects and artefacts can be augmented with computational resources. Often under the rubric of "ubiquitous computing", research programmes in Europe, North America and Japan have directed substantial funding towards these initiatives, and leading industrial and academic research laboratories have developed a diverse range of ubiquitous computing "solutions". These developments mark an important shift in system design, a shift that is having a corresponding impact on social science research. Surprisingly though, given the growing commitment to the ubiquitous and the tangible, there is a mundane, even humble artefact that pervades our ordinary lives that has received less attention than one might imagine. This artefact is paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore new metaphors for interaction design on tabletop system. Tabletop systems are shared horizontal surface for co-located collaboration, which leads to original problems when designing interactions. We propose two metaphors based on the paper: the peeling metaphor, and the slot metaphor, and then suggest a way of using them to design new interactions for solving some of the problems of tabletop systems: documents organization, documents transmission and documents duplication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with a multi-resolution tool for screening paper formation variations in various frequency regions on production line. A paper web is illuminated by two red diode lasers and the reflected light recorded as two time series of high resolution measurements constitute the input signal to the papermaking process monitoring system. The time series are divided into blocks and each block is analyzed separately. The task is treated as kernel based novelty detection applied to a multi-resolution time series representation obtained from the band-pass filtering of the Fourier power spectrum of the series. The frequency content of each frequency region is characterized by a feature vector, which is transformed using the canonical correlation analysis and then categorized into the inlier or outlier class by the novelty detector. The ratio of outlying data points, significantly exceeding the predetermined value, indicates abnormalities in the paper formation. The tools developed are used for online paper formation monitoring in a paper mill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many design activities depend on communicative activities around collaboratively produced prototypes. A common communication practice in producing text documents is to add annotation in the form of comments. Previous research indicates that electronic paper-prototyping can be used to rapidly create simple prototypes of interactive systems, such as websites. Little is known, however, about how to provide and maintain variety of communication channels around such electronic paper-prototypes to enable end-users and other stakeholders to contribute to design dialogues. This paper presents Gabbeh, an electronic paper-prototyping tool, and reports on an evaluation using the tool in a simulated design exercise. [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]

We developed AirTransNote, a computer-mediated classroom collaboration system. The system enables real-time note-sharing. AirTransNote manages notes written by students on paper and enables the teacher to browse through the notes or show them to the students. AirTransNote can analyze students' answers, helping the teacher better understand their problems. The system is not meant to provide an alternative to the conventional way of instruction; rather, it is designed to enhance class interaction. We conducted a preliminary study using questionnaires and found that this system can be feasible to apply for classroom environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This talk will consider rigorous mathematics and the nature of proof. It begins with an historical perspective and follows the development of formal mathematics. The talk will conclude with examples demonstrating that understanding the relationship between formal mathematics and rigorous proof can assist with both the discovery and the quality of real proofs of real results. Keywords: rigor, formal mathematics, nature of proof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant advances in the development of model checking, it remains a difficult task in the hands of experts to make it scale to the size of industrial systems. A key step in achieving scalability is to "divide-and-conquer", that is, to break up the veri.cation of a system into smaller tasks that involve the verification of its components. Assume-guarantee reasoning [9, 11] is a widespread "divide-and-conquer" approach that uses assumptions when checking individual components of a system. Assumptions essentially encode expectations that each component has from the rest the system in order to operate correctly. Coming up with the right assumptions is typically a non-trivial manual process, which limits the applicability of this type of reasoning in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinction between "exploratory" and "confirmatory" work is crucial but is too often blurred in current literature. The term "exploratory" refers to empirical work that has as a goal the discovery of new and unforeseen insight. "Confirmatory" research, on the other hand, normally begins with some type of hypothesis or proposition (that has some type of support in previous literature), the confirmation of which is the aim of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe MultiModal WebRemUsine, a tool for remote usability evaluation of Web sites that considers data regarding the user behavior coming from multiple sources. The tool performs an automatic evaluation of the usability of the considered Web site by comparing such data with that contained in the task model associated with the pages (which describes the expected behavior of the user). The results of the analysis are provided along with information regarding the user behavior during the task performance. Using such information, evaluators can identify problematic parts of the Web site and make improvements, when necessary. An example of application of the proposed method is also discussed in the paper [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a software tool for rapid prototyping of interactive systems whose user interfaces could be distributed according to four axes defined in a design space: type of computing platform, amount of interaction surfaces, type of interaction surface, and type of user interface. This software is based on a virtual toolkit for rendering the user interfaces in a virtual world depicting the real world in which the distribution occurs. The virtual toolkit consists of a layer for rendering a concrete user interface specified in a user interface description language. This paper presents its extension to modeling the external environment in terms of the design space so as to render the context of use in which the user interfaces are distributed. For each axis, a pair of functions enables exploring the axis in decreasing and increasing order so as to explore various situations of distribution, axis by axis, or in a combined way. As the interfaces resulting from this rendering are truly executable ones, this system provides designers with an acceptable means for generating ideas about how a user interface can be distributed in a context of use, and helps to evaluate the quality of a solution at an early design stage. Four representative situations located on the design space are implemented and discussed: distribution in a multi-platform context, distribution of the workplace, ubiquitous computing, and ambient intelligence, thus proving the coverage of the design space and the capabilities of the whole system [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade a great many improvements have been made in the nuclear power industry relative to technology and equipment. System improvements have added redundancy to safety systems, electronics have improved and become more reliable, and better equipment continues to enter the workplace. These technological improvements have gone a long way in improving the reliability of nuclear power facilities. In order to obtain even further improvements, the industry has recognised the need for improving Human Performance. Whilst a great deal of focus has been placed on human performance over the past decade, there continues to be many opportunities to improve in this arena. Unplanned reactor trips continue to occur, nuclear reportable events have not been eliminated, and industrial safety accidents remain in need of attention. This paper explains the importance of human performance to British Energy (BE) and provides the drivers for continued improvement in human performance. The paper outlines the elements of the British Energy human performance enhancement programme, in line with the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO) Principles in an effort to reduce significant events caused by human error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The certification of software for use in safety-critical systems is a requirement in many domains: defence, aerospace, rail, nuclear. However, there is still significant variance in the practice of software safety assurance across these different domains. This paper compares two quite different approaches (software safety case development under the UK Defence Standard 00-56, and software assurance under the civil aerospace guidance document DO-178B.) The paper highlights both the similarities and differences between these approaches. Ultimately, we consider whether there are any circumstances under which they can be considered to be compatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tools for computational differentiation transform a program that computes a numerical function F(x) into a related program that computes F\t′(x) (the derivative of F). This paper describes how techniques similar to those used in computational-differentiation tools can be used to implement other program transformations—in particular, a variety of transformations for computational divided differencing. The paper also describes how computational divided differencing relates to the numerical-finite-differencing techniques that motivated Robert Paige's work on finite differencing of set-valued expressions in SETL programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A promising trend in software practice is the increasing adoption of model-driven design. In this approach, a developer first constructs an abstract specification of the required program behavior in a language, such as Statecharts, Stateflow, or LUSTRE, and then uses a code generator to automatically translate the specification into an executable program. This approach has major advantages over more traditional approaches. First, because a specification is more concise, it is usually more understandable than code, and hence manual inspections can detect more errors in specifications than in code. Second, a specification is also more amenable to both user validation (e.g., via simulation) and formal verification, which together provide high confidence that the specification captures the desired behavior. Finally, the automatic generation of source code usually produces software with fewer errors than handcrafted code. This paper describes a case study in which Bob Paige's program transformation system APTS was used to produce code generators that construct C source code from a requirements specification in the SCR (Software Cost Reduction) tabular notation. Two different code generation strategies were explored. The first strategy uses rewrite rules to transform the parse tree of an SCR specification into a parse tree for the corresponding C code. The second strategy associates a relation with each node of the specification parse tree. Each member of this relation acts as an attribute, holding the C code corresponding to the tree at the associated node; the root of the tree has the entire C program as its member of the relation. This paper describes the two code generators, how each was used to synthesize code for two example SCR requirements specifications, and lessons learned about APTS from the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Paige wrote this retrospective of his research work for the IFIP Working Group 2.1 meeting n. 53 which unfortunately he could not attend due to illness. This paper, delivered at the meeting in his absence, is focused on the transformational development of programs. The reader will find it useful to refer to the related paper "A National Science Foundation Proposal", also by Robert Paige, which is included in this book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a collaborative context, the integration of industrial partners deeply depends of the ability to use a collaborative architecture to interact efficiently. In this paper, we propose to tackle this point according to the fact that partners of the collaboration respect SOA (Service-Oriented Approach) concepts. We propose to design such a collaborative SOA architecture according to MDA (model-Driven Approach) principles. We aim at using business model (the needs) to design a logical model of a solution (logical architecture). The business model is a collaborative business model (in BPMN, at the CIM level), while the logical model is a collaborative architecture model (using UML, at the PIM level). This paper presents the theoretical aspects of this subject, the mechanisms of morphism and the dedicated translation rules. Finally, we show the prototype of a demonstration tool embedding the transformation rules and running those principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companies compete in saturated markets trying to be more productive and more efficient. In this context, to manage the entire supply network to optimize overall performance becomes critical. Enterprise Modelling of Decision Systems is an important instrument to structure this complexity. This paper explores the methodology in which the redesign of internal and external operational integrated processes should be done, applying the GRAI Meta Model and the Design Principles for Interoperability, in order to improve the overall performance of an Engineer to Order Supply Chain. This research has also conducted a case study in the Producer Goods Sector from an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) point of view. The main conclusions related to the aim of the paper are that, the reengineered system integrates the Supply Chain Network more effectively, as well as achieving the customers' objectives in terms of time and cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MDR(Model-Driven Runtime) environment is able to execute a PIM for a specific purpose such as generate system UI framework, which precisely models system UI and improves the UI development efficiency and maintainability. Model-Driven UI system such as Fuse or Versuf is aimed to GUI or general web UI rather than B/S UI of MIS. In this paper, we describe a B/S MIS's UI framework based on Model-Driven Runtime. Firstly, we introduce the modeling process of UI requirement Analysis Model in the requirement analysis stage, including the task model and domain model. Then the paper shows how BSMDR transform such models into Platform Independent Model, including Object Model, Layout Model, Content Model, Presentation Model, Interaction Model and Mapping Model. Finally, we focus on the design and implementation of the BSMDR Framework, demonstrate our approach with an example. Long-term application shows that BSMDR can generate most of the presentation layer pages and greatly facilitate the User-interface development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes are very important for the success within many business fields. They define the proper application of methods, technologies and company structures in order to reach business goals. Not only manufacturing processes have to be defined from the start point to their end, also other processes like product development processes need a proper description to gain success. For example in automotive industries complex product development processes are necessary and defined prior to product development. Over the last decades several product modeling languages have been developed moving to object oriented modeling languages, such as UML, but the used process modeling languages are still procedural. The paradigm shift caused by object oriented description within product modeling languages has to be transferred to process modeling languages. This paper introduces an object oriented approach for process modeling. Using UML as a starting point an object oriented process modeling method is differentiated. The basic concepts which are needed for process modeling are put into an object oriented context and are explained. The paper also deals with the most important methods behind object oriented process modeling and gives an outlook, what can be achieved by this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally in software development, there is a need to link the development work products with each other i.e., requirements with the corresponding design artefacts, to the resulting software and associated test cases. This enables, for instance, the efficient change impact analysis and reporting facilities during the different phases of the software development life cycle. Establishing and maintaining these links manually is a laborious and error prone task, so tool support is needed. This paper describes a configurable tool integration solution (the Merlin ToolChain) that integrates project management, requirements management, configuration management and testing tools. The paper introduces the architecture of the ToolChain as well as describes the development and validation activities carried out. Experiences from real life industrial case showed that the ToolChain works and is useful in collaborative software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, sophisticated Computer Aided Engineering applications are used to support concurrent and cross-enterprise product design and manufacture. However, at present, problems are still encountered whenever manufacturing information and knowledge have to be communicated and shared in computational form. One of the most prominent of these problems is concerned with semantic mismatches, which impinge onto achieving seamless manufacturing interoperability. In this paper, the possible configuration of frameworks to capture semantically enriched manufacturing knowledge for manufacturing interoperability is being discussed. Ontology-driven semantic frameworks, based on explicit definitions of manufacturing terminology and knowledge relationships, offer an attractive approach to solving manufacturing interoperability issues. The work described in this paper defines Hole Feature ontological models in order to identify and capture preliminary semantic requirements by considering different contexts in which hole features can be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual enterprises consist of a number of independent distributed members, which have to collaborate in order to succeed. The paper proposes an approach to creation of self-organising service networks to support semantic interoperability between virtual enterprise members. Since the centralized control is not always possible, presented approach proposes decentralized communication and ad-hoc decision making based on the current situation state and its possible future development. The presented approach proposes usage of self-organising networks of knowledge sources and problem solvers. The paper is devoted to questions of semantic interoperability in such kind of agent-based service networks. Ontologies are used for description of knowledge domains. Application of objecto-riented constraint networks is proposed for ontology modelling. The approach uses such technologies as knowledge and ontology management, profiling, intelligent agents, Web-services, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the concept of agility has become popular and is still growing in popularity in the management and technology literatures. How do we really define an agile information system? How do we know if an information system is agile? And how do we evaluate the agility in the context of enterprise information systems? This paper tries to answer some of these questions. It precisely aims to present the concept of agility of information systems and also provides an approach for the evaluation of this agility, namely POIRE approach that evaluates the agility as an amalgamation function that combines the agility measure of five complementary aspects that are Process, Organizational, Informational, Resource and Environmental aspects. Finally, this paper studies the role of interoperability in achieving agility and also the rapprochement of the concept of interoperability with the concept of agility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the Deployment Support Network (DSN), a new methodology for developing and testing wireless sensor networks (WSN) in a realistic environment. With an additional wireless backbone network a deployed WSN can be observed, controlled, and reprogrammed completely over the air. The DSN provides visibility and control in a similar way as existing emulation testbeds, but overcomes the limitations of wired infrastructures. As a result, development and experiments can be conducted with realistic in- and outdoor deployments. The paper describes the new concept and methodology. Additionally, an architecture-independent implementation of the toolkit is presented, which has been used in an industrial case-study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a car traffic control simulation realised in a decentralised way by message propagations: congested nodes (roads intersections) send speed-up or slow-down messages to neighbouring nodes. Different types of journeys have been modelled: regular car journeys, accidents and emergency cars journeys. These journeys have different lengths and speeds, and affect the system differently. Optimal values of parameters, used during the simulations for controlling the cars, have been determined through the use of a genetic algorithm (GA). This paper reports as well a preliminary experiment on different simulations realised with parameters values derived from the GA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major challenges IT department in investment banking industry faces include but not limited to frequently changing requirements, last minute change request, frequent emergency release request and unavailability of business users. The paper addresses those challenges with tailored strategies, specifically focusing on four areas including requirement capture and flush out, iteration and release planning, project status tracking and build automation. The paper also listed strong management support, team advocate and more involvement of business users as the key successful contributors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agile development and software reuse are both recognized as effective ways of improving time to market and quality in software engineering. However, they have traditionally been viewed as mutually exclusive technologies which are difficult if not impossible to use together. In this paper we show that, far from being incompatible, agile development and software reuse can be made to work together and, in fact, complement each other. The key is to tightly integrate reuse into the test-driven development cycles of agile methods and to use test cases - the agile measure of semantic acceptability - to influence the component search process. In this paper we discuss the issues involved in doing this in association with Extreme Programming, the most widely known agile development method, and Extreme Harvesting, a prototype technique for the test-driven harvesting of components from the Web. When combined in the appropriate way we believe they provide a good foundation for the fledgling concept of agile reuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a process initiative within IBM to make the Corporate Portal (ibm.com) development practices more responsive to changing customer needs and explains the bottlenecks that arose with application deployment when this agile approach was not initially extended throughout the wider solution delivery lifecycle. The paper details the simple process changes that were adopted to expand the agile philosophy beyond development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smalltalk is not only an object-oriented programming language; it is also known for its extensive integrated development environment supporting interactive and dynamic programming. While the default tools are adequate for browsing the code and developing applications, it is often cumbersome to extend the environment to support new language constructs or to build additional tools supporting new ways of navigating and presenting source code. In this paper, we present the OmniBrowser, a browser framework that supports the definition of browsers based on an explicit metamodel. With OmniBrowser a domain model is described in a graph and the navigation in this graph is specified in its associated metagraph. We present how new browsers are built from predefined parts and how new tools are easily described. The browser framework is implemented in the Squeak Smalltalk environment. This paper shows several concrete instantiations of the framework: a remake of the ubiquitous Smalltalk System Browser, and a coverage browser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An image fusion algorithm based on Energy Coefficient Matrix (ECM) is presented in this paper. Energy coefficient matrix is computed and proved to indicate the clarity of a pixel at a particular physical location. Based on this clarity value, a fusion decision map has been created. This decision map provides information about which pixel to choose at a particular physical location in wavelet domain. Comparison of the scheme proposed in this paper has been done with two other well known techniques based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Discrete Wavelet Frame Transform (DWFT). Experimental results have shown that the performance of the algorithm proposed in this paper is superior to that of DWT and DWFT-based one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise reduction is essential to achieve an acceptable QoS in VoIP systems. This paper proposes a Wiener filter-based noise reduction scheme optimized to the estimated SNR at each frequency bin as a logistic function is used. The proposed noise reduction scheme would be applied as pre-processing before speech encoding. For various noisy conditions, the PESQ evaluation is performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. In this paper, G.711, G.723.1, and G.729A are used as test VoIP speech codecs. The PESQ results show that the performance of our proposed noise reduction scheme outperforms those of the noise suppression one in the IS-127 EVRC and the noise reduction one in the ETSI standard for the advanced distributed speech recognition front-end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shopping around for a good service provider in a Grid Computing environment is no less challenging than the traditional shopping around in non-virtual marketplace. A client may consult a service broker for providers that can meet specific QoS requirements (e.g., CPU speed), and the broker may return a list of candidate providers that satisfy the client's demands. If this computing platform is backed up by some reputation system, the list of providers is then sorted based on some reputation criterion, which is commonly the user rating. We argue in this paper that judging the reputation of a provider based on user rating is not sufficient. The reputation should additionally reflect how trustworthy that provider has been with respect to complying with the finalized SLA (using a metric called conformance) and how consistent it has been with respect to honouring its compliance levels (using a metric called fidelity). Accordingly, we perceive the reputation as a vector of three dimensions: user rating, conformance, and fidelity. In this paper, we define these metrics, explain how to compute them formally, and how to use them in the reputation-enabled framework that we describe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Email has become one of the fastest and most economical forms of communication. However, the increase of email users have resulted in the dramatic increase of spam emails during the past few years. In this paper, email data was classified using four different classifiers (Neural Network, SVM classifier, Naïve Bayesian Classifier, and J48 classifier). The experiment was performed based on different data size and different feature size. The final classification result should be ‘1' if it is finally spam, otherwise, it should be ‘0'. This paper shows that simple J48 classifier which make a binary tree, could be efficient for the dataset which could be classified as binary tree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Advances & Innovations in Systems, Computing Sciences & Software Engineering is the property of Springer eBooks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This papers aims at the power control aspect of Resource allocation for wireless data via employing microeconomics concepts of utility and pricing in relation to the non-cooperative game theory and Nash Equilibrium. Specifically, an efficient algorithm based on stochastic gradient formulation is proposed to adaptively converge to arrive at optimal power set with higher utilities with the pricing factor is a parameter. Both single cell and multi-cell are presented in this paper. Comparative numerical and graphical results provided attest to practical usefulness of the proposed power control algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main focus of this paper concerns the measuring similarity in a content-based information retrieval and intelligent question-answering environment. While the measure of semantic similarity between concepts based on hierarchy in ontology is well studied, the measure of semantic similarity in an arbitrary ontology is still an open problem. In this paper we define a fuzzy semantic similarity measure based on information theory that exploits both the hierarchical and non-hierarchical structure in ontology. Our work can be generalized the following: firstly each concept is defined as a semantic extended fuzzy set along its semantic paths; secondly the semantic similarity between two concepts is computed with two semantic extended fuzzy sets instead of two concepts themselves. Our fuzzy measure considers some factors synthetically such as ontological semantic relation density, semantic relation depth and different semantic relations, which can affect the value of similarity. Compared with existed measures, this fuzzy similarity measure based on shared information content could reflect latent semantic relation of concepts better than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1970s, researchers have proposed several models to improve software reliability. Among these, the operational profile approach is one of the most common. Operational profiles are a quantification of usage patterns for a software application. The research described in this paper investigates a novel multi-agent framework for automatically creating an operational profile for generic distributed systems after their release into the market. The operational profile in this paper is extended to comprise seven different profiles. Also, the criticality of operations is defined using a new composed metrics in order to organise the testing process as well as to decrease the time and cost involved in this process. The proposed framework is considered as a step towards making distributed systems intelligent and self-managing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated navigation tool developed in the framework of an advanced study on navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The study aimed at testing innovative navigation sensor configurations to support fully autonomous flight even during landings and other critical mission phases. The tool is composed of sensor simulation and data fusion software. The most important navigation sensors that are installed onboard an unmanned aircraft have been modeled: i.e. inertial, GPS, air data, high accuracy altimeter, and magnetometer. Their model included every non negligible error source that has been documented in the literature. Moreover, a specific sensor data fusion algorithm has been developed that integrates inertial sensor measurements with GPS and radar altimeter measurements. The paper reports on numerical testing of sensor simulator and data fusion algorithm. The algorithm was coded for real time implementation to perform hardware-in-the-loop validation and in flight tests onboard a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Advances & Innovations in Systems, Computing Sciences & Software Engineering is the property of Springer eBooks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Advances & Innovations in Systems, Computing Sciences & Software Engineering is the property of Springer eBooks and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The need to provide computers with the ability to distinguish the affective state of their users is a major requirement for the practical implementation of Affective Computing concepts. The determination of the affective state of a computer user from the measurement of some of his/her physiological signals is a promising avenue towards that goal. In addition to the monitoring of signals typically analyzed for affective assessment, such as the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and the Blood Volume Pulse (BVP), other physiological variables, such as the Pupil Diameter (PD) may be able to provide a way to assess the affective state of a computer user, in real-time. This paper studies the significance of pupil diameter measurements towards differentiating two affective states (stressed vs. relaxed) in computer users performing tasks designed to elicit those states in a predictable sequence. Specifically, the paper compares the discriminating power exhibited by the pupil diameter measurement to those of other single-index detectors derived from simultaneously acquired signals, in terms of their Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building domain ontology is time consuming and tedious since it is usually done by domain experts and knowledge engineers manually. This paper proposes a two-stage clustering approach for semi-automatically building ontologies from the Chinese-document corpus ba-sed on SOM neural network and agglomerative hierarchical clustering and automatically checking the ontology consistency. Chinese lexical analysis and XML Path Language(XPath) are used in the process of extracting resources from Web documents. In our experiment, this two-stage clustering approach is used for building an automobile ontology. Experimental results and the comparison with the more conventional ontology-generation method are presented and discussed, indicating the high performance of our approach. A Racer-based consistency-checking method of reasoning is presented in this paper. An ontology evolution method and performance evaluation are also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing need for today's autonomous systems to collaborate in real-time over wireless networks. These systems need to interact closely with other autonomous systems and function under tight timing and control constraints. This paper concerns with the modeling and quality assurance of the timing behavior of such network embedded systems. It builds upon our previous work on run-time model checking of temporal correctness properties and automatic white-box testing using run-time assertion checking. This paper presents an architecture for the network embedded systems, a lightweight formal method that is based on formal statechart assertions for the design and development of networked embedded systems, and a process of using run-time monitoring and verification, in tandem with modeling and simulation, to study the timing requirements of complex systems early in the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advanced mechatronic systems of the next generation are expected to behave more intelligently than today's systems by building communities of autonomous agents which exploit local and global networking to enhance their functionality. Such mechatronic systems will therefore include dynamic structural adaptation at the network level and complex real-time coordination protocols to adjust their behavior to the changing system goals leading to cooperative self-adaptation in a safe and coordinated manner. In this paper the Mechatronic UML approach and its concepts for compositional modeling and verification of crucial safety properties for cooperative self-adaptive mechatronic systems are outlined. Based on former results for the compositional verification of the real-time coordination and safe rule-based dynamic structural adaptation, we present in this paper a systematic compositional verification scheme which permits to verify the safety of real-time systems with compositional adaptation and an a priori unbounded number of structural configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies models of computation, software techniques, and analytical models for distributed timed systems. By "timed systems" we mean those where timeliness is an essential part of the behavior. By "distributed systems" we mean computational systems that are interconnected on a network. Applications of timed distributed systems include industrial automation, distributed immersive environments, advanced instrumentation systems, networked control systems, and many modern embedded software systems that integrate networking. The introduction of network time protocols such as NTP (at a coarse granularity) and IEEE 1588 (at a fine granularity) makes possible time coherence that has not traditionally been part of the computational models in networked systems. The main question we address in this paper is: Given time synchronization with some known precision, how does this change how distributed applications are designed and developed? A second question we address is: How can time synchronization help with realizing coordinated real-time events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern large real-time systems are becoming more complex. Whilst Ada 2005 provides a comprehensive set of programming mechanisms that allow these systems to be implemented, the abstractions are low level. This paper argues that there is a need for a standardised library of real-time utilities that address common real-time problems. The paper presents some initial considerations on what could be in such a library and how it could be structured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This tool paper describes the functionality of ProM. Version 4.0 of ProM has been released at the end of 2006 and this version reflects recent achievements in process mining. Process mining techniques attempt to extract non-trivial and useful information from so-called "event logs". One element of process mining is control-flow discovery, i.e., automatically constructing a process model (e.g., a Petri net) describing the causal dependencies between activities. Control-flow discovery is an interesting and practically relevant challenge for Petri-net researchers and ProM provides an excellent platform for this. For example, the theory of regions, genetic algorithms, free-choice-net properties, etc. can be exploited to derive Petri nets based on example behavior. However, as we will show in this paper, the functionality of ProM 4.0 is not limited to control-flow discovery. ProM 4.0 also allows for the discovery of other perspectives (e.g., data and resources) and supports related techniques such as conformance checking, model extension, model transformation, verification, etc. This makes ProM a versatile tool for process analysis which is not restricted to model analysis but also includes log-based analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upward-closed sets of integer vectors enjoy the merit of having a finite number of minimal elements, which is behind the decidability of a number of Petri net related problems. In general, however, such a finite set of minimal elements may not be effectively computable. In this paper, we develop a unified strategy for computing the sizes of the minimal elements of certain upward-closed sets associated with Petri nets. Our approach can be regarded as a refinement of a previous work by Valk and Jantzen (in which a necessary and sufficient condition for effective computability of the set was given), in the sense that complexity bounds now become available provided that a bound can be placed on the size of a witness for a key query. The sizes of several upward-closed sets that arise in the theory of Petri nets as well as in backward-reachability analysis in automated verification are derived in this paper, improving upon previous decidability results shown in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]