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Summary: While the use of database technology is ubiquitous throughout IT (and health IT in particular), it is not generally appreciated that, as a database increases in scope, certain designs are far superior to others. In biomedical domains, new knowledge is continually being generated, and the databases that must support areas such as clinical care and research must also be able to evolve while requiring minimal or no logical/physical redesign. Appropriately designed metadata, and software designed to utilize it effectively, can provide significant insulation against change. Many of the larger EMR or clinical research database vendors have realized this, but their designs are proprietary and not described in the literature. Consequently, numerous misconceptions abound among individuals who have not had to work with large-scale biomedical systems, and graduates of a health or bioinformatics program may find that they need to unlearn what they were taught in database and software design classes in order to work productively. with such systems. A working knowledge of such systems is also important for individuals who are not primarily software developers, such as health informaticians, medical information officers and data analysts. This book is, in a sense, intended to prepare all of the above individuals for the real world.

Manual editing of RNA structural alignments may be considered more art than science, since it still requires an expert biologist to take multiple levels of information into account and be slightly creative when constructing high-quality alignments. Even though the task is rather tedious, it is rewarded by great insight into the evolution of structure and function of your favorite RNA molecule. In this chapter I will review the methods and considerations that go into constructing RNA structural alignments at the secondary and tertiary structure level; introduce software, databases, and algorithms that have proven useful in semiautomating the work process; and suggest future directions towards full automatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, projects involve members from different geographical areas more than any other time in history. Thus, adequate Collaborative Project Management Software (CollabPMS) solutions are needed to enable individuals and organizations to manage, communicate and work together across time and space barriers. This article describes a set of managerial and collaborative functionalities that a CollabPMS should provide to support the complexities of a distributed project effectively. Out of hundreds software packages available in the market, four were selected, ProjectLibre, Redmine, Microsoft Project 2013 and Clarizen, to assess if they have the described functionalities. Clarizen can be considered the best software for managing distributed projects, because it provides, by default, all the managerial functions and the collaborative features that support the coordinated collaboration level. ProjectLibre was the software that less stood out in this evaluation, although it provides the majority of the outlined managerial functionalities it doesn't support any level of collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed a set of techniques and an analysis methodology aimed at boosting the quality of interactive tourism systems. The details of it will be presented in full and with real examples which have yielded interesting results in the last few years, both from the social and economical point of view, but with a huge wealth of cultural and natural heritage. We will also present a first guidelines to foster tourism in those villages that are willing to promote themselves in the national and international market at a low cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I survey briefly some of the recent and emerging trends in hardware and software features which impact high performance transaction processing and data analytics applications. These features include multicore processor chips, ultra large main memories, flash storage, storage class memories, database appliances, field programmable gate arrays, transactional memory, key-value stores, and cloud computing. While some applications, e.g., Web 2.0 ones, were initially built without traditional transaction processing functionality in mind, slowly system architects and designers are beginning to address such previously ignored issues. The availability, analytics and response time requirements of these applications were initially given more importance than ACID transaction semantics and resource consumption characteristics. A project at IBM Almaden is studying the implications of phase change memory on transaction processing, in the context of a key-value store. Bitemporal data management has also become an important requirement, especially for financial applications. Power consumption and heat dissipation properties are also major considerations in the emergence of modern software and hardware architectural features. Considerations relating to ease of configuration, installation, maintenance and monitoring, and improvement of total cost of ownership have resulted in database appliances becoming very popular. The MapReduce paradigm is now quite popular for large scale data analysis, in spite of the major inefficiencies associated with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to meet the requirement of national modern rabbit husbandry and breeding management, based on animal breeding theory and the computer application technology, the Modern Rabbit Management Software that can run on Windows9X/Me/NT/2000 /XP was programmed with Visual FoxPro9.0, which could enhance veracity and efficiency of selection & breeding of rabbit. The software could perform the selection of rabbit, the request of breeding and the tasks of production management for different scale rabbit farms. The software show it΄s convenience to operation and efficiency to breeding management from the using in six rabbit farms, which had great auto-action to implement production management automatization of rabbit farms and improve the efficiency of breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the oriented-object software, coupling is the degree of inter dependence between objects. In order to measure the coupling of a software system formally, a novel approach is presented. Firstly, the coupling of Object-oriented software system is analyzed. Second, the definition of the structure entropy is given; Entropy is the most influential concept to arise from statistical mechanics. Entropy measures the disorder in a system. Finally, based on the structure entropy, an approach to measure the coupling of the oriented-object software system is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In component-based software engineering, components have become increasingly important. Software component is a unit of computing in software system. First, the definition of OR-transition Colored Petri Net is given. Second, in accordance with the related properties of software component, the formal definition of component is presented. In OR-transition Colored Petri Net, the transitions can effectively represent the operations of the software component. So, based on OR-transition Colored Petri Net, an approach is put forward to modeling the software component formally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development and wide application of electronics, communication and embedded system technologies, the global agriculture is changing from traditional agriculture that is to improve the production relying on the increase of labor, agricultural inputs to the new stage of modern agriculture with low yields, high efficiency, real-time and accuracy. On the other hand the research and development of the Internet of Things, which is an information network to connect objects, with the full capacity to perceive objects, and having the capabilities of reliable transmission and intelligence processing for information, allows us to obtain real-time information of anything. The application of the Internet of Things in field information online monitoring is an effective solution for present wired sensor monitoring system, which has much more disadvantages, such as high cost, the problems of laying lines and so on. In this paper, a novel field information monitoring system based on the Internet of Things is proposed. It can satisfy the requirements of multi-point measurement, mobility, convenience in the field information monitoring process. The whole structure of system is given and the key designs of system design are described in the hardware and software aspect. The studies have expanded current field information measurement methods and strengthen the application of the Internet of Things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to predict the operating conditions of crude storage and analyze the energy consumption of equipments, based on fluid transient theory, the transient simulation mathematical model of pipeline was established, the major equipments of crude storage were used as boundary, and the characteristic method was used to solve the transient model. On the basis of Microsoft Access and C++ Builder development platform, the simulation software was developed, including the functional modules of data management, graphic processing and simulation calculation, etc. By the system, the operational management and safety standards of crude storage was advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception measuring and perception management is an emerging approach in the area of product management. Cognitive, psychological, behavioral and neurological theories, tools and methods are being employed for a better understanding of the mechanisms of a consumer΄s attitude and decision processes. Software is also being defined as a product, however this kind of product is significantly different from all other products. Software products are intangible and it is difficult to trace their characteristics which are strongly dependant on a dynamic context of use. Understanding customer΄s cognitive processes gives an advantage to the producers aiming to develop products ˵winning the market″. Is it possible to adopt theories, methods and tools for the purpose of software perception, especially software quality perception? The theoretical answer to this question seems to be easy, however in practice the list of differences between software products and software projects hinders the analysis of certain factors and their influence on the overall perception. In this article the authors propose a method and describe a tool designed for the purpose of research regarding perception issues of software quality. The tool is designed to defeat the above stated problem, adopting the modern behavioral economics approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific software development is a process whereby software is created to assist scientists in achieving their target solutions. This process lacks harmonious communication between scientists and software engineers and thus, a gap needs to be breached between the scientific community and the computing world. This vital issue can be resolved by utilizing a new perspective in scientific software development, using well-established practices of software engineering. This new paradigm is discussed in a case study with several scientists, who confirm its effectiveness for developing scientific software if it can be adapted to their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author is carrying out technology studies to explore and expand human emotions, sensibility, and consciousness by making innovative use of artistic creativity. We develop interfaces for experiencing and expressing the ˵essence of culture″ such as human feelings, ethnicity, and story. History has shown that human cultures have common and unique forms such as behavior and grammar. We suggest a computer model for that process and a method of interactive expression and experiencing cultural understanding using IT called ˵cultural computing″. We particularly examine Japanese culture, although it is only a small subject of computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability of products is related to Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment. It is widely understood that environmentally preferable products cannot be simply defined by ˵Recyclable,″ ˵natural,″ ˵renewable resource based,″ ˵biodegradable,″ ˵chlorine free,″ ˵reusable,″ or ˵organic.″ It is the product΄s complete life cycle that must be environmentally preferable. Misconceptions still exist, particular on plastics. But looking closer there is no environmentally good or bad material, there are only good or bad applications of a material. This means consistent rules for sustainability assessment on a life cycle basis are important. Standard approaches already used in industry practice and can be complemented with further aspects. Tools are established, databases exist, and experts are have already formed networks. Further improving polymers for more sustainable products is hence a process that has already started, by consistently combining existing life cycle approaches, tools, and databases. Herein are summarized misconceptions, rules, standard approaches and needed additions, tools, databases, and experts related to the Sustainability of polymers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the design of and the considerations for a course programme in mobile robotics at the Technical University of Denmark. An integrated approach was taken designing mobile robot hardware, software and course curricula in an interconnected way. The courses in the programme all feature hands-on elements and competitions to motivate the students and support the learning objectives of the particular course. As the design of such competitions is not trivial some examples and observations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper remains to introduce the various design and runtime aspects of a state-of-the-art control architecture adopted for the development of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV-150), capable of operating up to a depth of 150 meters to perform sea-bed mapping and collecting oceanographic data. The system control architecture has been presented as an ensemble of both hardware and software modules organized in a well-connected framework for effective operation. Various specifications, harnessing layout and design issues have been discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important trend of software engineering is that systems are in transition from component based architectures towards service centric ones. However, software product line engineering techniques can help in a quality based and systematic reuse. The content of this paper addresses the issue of how to perform design and quality analysis of cross domain reference architecture. The reference architecture is designed based on the domains requirements and features modelling. We propose a service based approach for cross-domain reference architecture development. Throughout the sections we try to introduce an innovative way of thinking founded on bridging concepts from software architecture, service orientation, software product lines, and quality analysis with the purpose to initiate and evolve software systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a webpage that has been developed based on heuristic elements which refer to the International Conference Software Engineering and Computer Systems for requirement. Heuristic and web base method have been applied in this system with combination of PHP language and MySQL as database system. The objective of this paper is the development of a webpage that has been developed based on heuristic elements which refer to university conference is to simplify and get quality webpage in using conference webpage for the Faculty of Computer Systems and Software Engineering, University Malaysia Pahang in Malaysia. Besides minimize human contacts thus provide fast, efficient, transparent and effective service to author, admin and reviewer. Therefore this system can facilitate user by computerized all the form accordance to paper submission, review papers, download paper, assign reviewer through heuristic online university conference webpage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Broadcast and Television coverage has increased to more than 98% in china. Information services by radio have wide coverage, low cost, easy-to-grass-roots farmers to accept etc. characteristics. In order to play the better role of broadcast information service, as well as aim at the problem of lack of information resource in rural, we R & D the text-to-speech system. The system includes two parts, software and hardware device, both of them can translate text into audio file. The software subsystem was implemented basic on third-part middleware, and the hardware subsystem was realized with microelectronics technology. Results indicate that the hardware is better than software. The system has been applied in huailai city hebei province, which has conversed more than 8000 audio files as programming materials for the local radio station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Settlement is one of the most obvious phenomenon of MSW Landfills. The prediction of settlement is very important for landfill operation, management and post-closure reclamation. This paper gives a brief introduction to the development of a computer software for predicting landfill settlement and capacity throughout the landfill life. The overall structure and main features of the computer software are presented. An illustrative analysis is used to demonstrate the functions of the software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software products can only be improved if we have a good understanding of the faults they typically contain. Code faults are a significant source of software product problems which we currently do not understand sufficiently. Open source change repositories are potentially a rich and valuable source of fault data for both researchers and practitioners. Such fault data can be used to better understand current product problems so that we can predict and address future product problems. However extracting fault data from change repositories is difficult. In this paper we compare the performance of three approaches to extracting fault data from the change repository of the Barcode Open Source System. Our main findings are that we have most confidence in our manual evaluation of diffs to identify fault fixing changes. We had less confidence in the ability of the two automatic approaches to separate fault fixing from non-fault fixing changes. We conclude that it is very difficult to reliably extract fault fixing data from change repositories, especially using automatic tools and that we need to be cautious when reporting or using such data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analysis non-technical aspects of software quality perception and proposes further research activities for this subject. Cognitive science, psychology, micro economics and other human-oriented sciences do analyze human behavior, cognition and decision processes. On the other hand engineering disciplines, including software engineering, propose many formal and technical approaches for product quality description. Linkage between technical and subjective quality has been subject of research in areas related to food and agricultural applications and in this article we propose analysis of professional product perception which beyond doubt is a software product. This new research is called Software quality psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the general-purpose simulation infrastructure MAGI, with features and computational strategies particularly relevant for strongly geo-spatially oriented simulations. Its main characteristics are (1) a comprehensive approach to geosimulation modelling, with a flexible underlying meta-model formally generalising a variety of types of models, both from the cellular automata and from the agent-based family of models, (2) tight interoperability between GIS and the modelling environment, (3) computationally efficiency and (4) user-friendliness. Both raster and vector representation of simulated entities are allowed and managed with efficiency, which is obtained through the integration of a geometry engine implementing a core set of operations on spatial data through robust geometric algorithms, and an efficient spatial indexing strategy for moving agents. We furthermore present three test-case applications to discuss its efficiency, to present a standard operational modelling workflow within the simulation environment and to briefly illustrate its look-and-feel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The waterfall life cycle model suffers from a number of problems but in spite of this, it continues to be the most widely used life cycle model. A different life cycle approach is proposed that emphasizes the product life cycle rather than the project life cycle, quality management priorities rather than project management priorities and views of quality rather than views of the project schedule. A quality management tool based on different views of quality is used to identify the ˵gaps″ that inevitably exist between a user΄s needs, the requirements specification and the product that is delivered. This is followed by a brief discussion of how these ˵gaps″ can be closed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a first set of strategies for the establishment of a virtual campus. Additionally, a set of pedagogic and communicative rules is established with the purpose of achieving a better diffusion of the university contents among the students. These rules are constantly updated according to the teaching supply and demand, and the requirements of the teachers and the students. Additionally the different components of interactive education are present as well as their main functions in the virtual campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simulation of the main molecular operations used in DNA Computing can lead the researchers to develop complex algorithms and methods without the need of working with real DNA strands in-vitro. The purpose of this paper is to present a computer program which simulates an electrophoresis process over DNA molecules which is an essential operation for the identification of DNA strands. This simulation represents a useful tool for a virtual laboratory which is oriented to DNA computations. A wide variety of variables are taking into account like voltage, friction, temperature and viscosity of the gel used. The results given by the software can show the behavior of a DNA electrophoresis under certain physical conditions which allow us to obtain the relative size of the molecules involved and the best parameters to carry out the operation in-vitro efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many models of attention have been implemented in recent years, but comparison and further development are difficult due to the lack of a common platform. We present JAMF, an open source simulation framework for drag & drop design and high-performance execution of attention models. Its building blocks are ˵Components″, functional units encapsulating specific algorithms. Simulations are created in the graphical JAMF client by connecting Components from the server΄s repository. Today it contains Components suitable for replication and extension of many major models of attention. Simulations are executed on the JAMF server by translation of model definitions into binary applications, while automatically exploiting the model΄s structure for parallel execution. By disentangling design and algorithmic implementation, the JAMF architecture combines a novel tool for rapid test and implementation of attention models with a high-performance execution engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the issue of accessibility of digital resources has been increasingly studied by the world of research, training, associations and law-makers. If educational software is built without keeping in mind the principles of Design for all, might be considered a new obstacle to learning and an occasion to highlight the limits and not the potential of disabled people. Starting from this, we have carried out a survey among more than four thousand (italian and foreign) educational softwares available on our Educational Software Documentation Service. The result - as one could predict - shows that there are very few software products that can be used for educational purposes which completely satisfy the main accessibility criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address unified intelligent descriptive experiment design regularization (DEDR) methodology for computer-aided investigation of new intelligent signal processing (SP) perspectives for collaborative remote sensing (RS) and distributed sensor network (SN) data acquisition, intelligent processing and information fusion. The sophisticated ˵Virtual RS Laboratory″ (VRSL) software elaborated using the proposed DEDR methodology is presented. The VRLS provides the end-user with efficient computational tools to perform numerical simulations of different RS imaging problems. Computer simulation examples are reported to illustrate the usefulness of the elaborated VRSL for the algorithmic-level investigation of high-resolution image formation, enhancement, fusion and post-processing tasks performed with the artificial and real-world RS imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem addressed in this paper is the increasing time and cost of developing critical software. In particular the tried and trusted software development processes for safety critical software are becoming untenable because of the costs involved. Model Based Development, in the general, offers a solution to reducing time and cost in software development. Unfortunately the requirement of independence of verification can negate any gains and indeed lead to more cost. The approach advocated in this paper is to employ the ˵guess and verify″ paradigm in the context of automatic code generation to enable automated verification that is independent of the code generation. The approach is illustrated by the development of an automated verification capability for a commercial automatic code generator. A research topic on metadata for automatic code generators is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a newly proposed Morphotronic System paradigm that can be used as a general computation model for construction of software. The Morphotronic System allows for a definition of very flexible software prototypes, in which a processing path can be interpreted as an extremum principle. This approach offers a significant improvement to traditional software practices. The system purpose is stated as a conceptual input to the computer system at a starting point of the computation process while the local machine state is completely ignored. The system context and its rules are generated as resources to allocate the computational components. The morphotronic system applies non-Euclidean geometry which allows to shape the context and to define the projection operators for an ideal network of forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of bringing together information (data) from different databases faces a variety of practical challenges. These make it difficult to readily access, merge, and present data collected and maintained by different researchers and organizations. Practical challenges range from the need for matching “keys” on which to merge information in an automated manner, to different data organizational structures in different databases, to issues of obtaining permission to link data through a single source. A wide range of users (e.g. journalists, military analysts, laypeople, quantitative data analysts) also want to access information in different formats, display modes, and with varying levels of precision. This paper discusses some of these practical issues with meshing data from different sources. It will also discuss the EUGene software program. This software was designed for (typically academic) analysts, and pulls together data from a number of widely-used international relations data bases and makes data merging and access to the resulting data easy for end users. EUGene has confronted some of these issues, and the solutions suggested by that experience are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The variable visual acuity nature of human vision across fovea and periphery prompted the need to study the differential magnification method as compared with the traditional linear magnification. With differential magnification, outer-area objects were magnified at a level higher than the inner-area objects. An application software was specially developed by the authors previously for the examination of differential linear and traditional linear magnification methods. This paper presents the enhancement of the application software and the addition of other magnification interface factors which worth further investigating. The newly designed differential nonlinear magnification method was featured and comparisons were made with the differential linear and the traditionally linear magnification methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]