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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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

In this paper we propose a Data Integration System based on an ontology as Global Representation. The paper briefly introduces the motivations and the benefits that the use of an ontology brings to a Data Integration System, which is also formally defined. The paper, in particular, focuses on the limitation of the proposed system to handle the different relations that can exist between concepts of an ontology. We divide the relations that can be defined in an ontology in two different sets: Mapped relations, which we consider atomic relations and Derived relations, which can be generated by combining mapped relations using SWRL rules. Some examples of the different kind of relations are reported to clarify the concepts and a new definition of Mapping in the Data Integration System is proposed, in order to define the atomic relations. The paper ends with considerations about the problems that still need to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two major problems in constructing data federations (for example, data warehouses and database federations) concern achieving and maintaining consistency and a uniform representation of the data on the global level of the federation. The first step in creating uniform representations of data is known as data extraction, whereas data reconciliation is concerned with resolving data inconsistencies. Our approach to constructing a global conceptual schema as the result of integrating a collection of (semantically) heterogeneous component schemas is based on the concept of exact views. We show that a global schema constructed in terms of exact views integrates component schemas in such a way that the global schema is populated by exactly those instances allowed by the local schemas (and in special cases, also the other way around). In this sense, the global schema is equivalent to the set of component schemas from which the global schema is derived. This paper describes a modeling framework for data federations based on the Object-Role Modeling (ORM) approach. In particular, we show that we can represent exact views within ORM, providing the means to resolve in a combined setting data extraction and reconciliation problems on the global level of the federation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common for literature on context-awareness to focus on specific application domains or on the development of models and frameworks to facilitate context-awareness. In this study, however, we take a step back from such work in order to investigate how regular people may already be employing, or trying to employ, context-awareness in their everyday lives using existing mobile tools (such as mobile phones, paper notepads, etc.). We believe that an understanding of these existing real-world uses and needs of context-awareness will help to better inform and direct research efforts in this domain. Towards this aim we present the findings of a user study in which twelve randomly selected individuals recorded a diary on their use of mobile tools over the period of two days. The findings clearly demonstrate that people do indeed currently employ a wide variety of contexts and context-aware behaviours, albeit in a manner that is often imperfect and at a sub-conscious level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the study of the equational theory of the semantics in van Glabbeek's linear time - branching time spectrum over the language BCCSP, a basic process algebra for the description of finite synchronization trees. It offers an algorithm for producing a complete (respectively, ground-complete) equational axiomatization of any behavioral congruence lying between ready simulation equivalence and partial traces equivalence from a complete (respectively, ground-complete) inequational axiomatization of its underlying precongruence—that is, of the precongruence whose kernel is the equivalence. The algorithm preserves finiteness of the axiomatization when the set of actions is finite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a human-robot interface in networked and multi-sensored environments. The human robot interface is an essential part of intelligent robotic system. Through the human robot interface, human being can interact with the robot. Especially, in multi-sensored environment, the human robot interface can be developed with remarkably extended functionality. Generally, handheld device such as PDA is a suitable for human robot interface because of its mobility and network ability. In this paper, we select PDA as device of human robot interface. In the implemented framework, the robot user can monitor what happens in multi-sensored environment and control the mobile robot easily and intuitively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial safety can be regarded as a major issue of industrial environments nowadays. This is why industries are currently spending huge amounts of resources to improve safety in all levels by reducing risks of causing damages to equipment, human injuries or even fatalities. This paper describes how Virtual Reality, Human Factors and Rule-based technologies are used in the framework of the VIRTHUALIS Integrated Project towards industrial training, safety management and accident investigation. The paper focuses mainly on the VR system specification and basic modules, while at the same time it presents the main system modules that synthesize the tool as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal methods constitute a means of developing reliable and correctly behaving software based on a specification. In scenarios where information technology is used as a foundation to enable human communication, this is, however, not always enough. Successful interaction between humans often depends on the concept of trust, which is different from program correctness. In this paper, we present a framework for integrating trust into a formal development process, allowing for the construction of formally correct programs for communication, embracing trust as a central concept. We present a coordination language for use with action systems, taking a modular approach of separating trust aspects from other functionality. We also believe that our work can be adapted to modelling other aspects beside trust. Throughout the paper, we employ a case study as a testbed for our concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TCP/IP/Ethernet protocol is considered not suitable for use in real-time control systems. It deals with a lack of time determinism, which characterizes fieldbuses. Nevertheless several corporations propose networking based on the TCP/IP/Ethernet even for control purposes with some modifications of the standard however. This paper examines possibility of application of the TCP/IP/Ethernet communication without modifications (introducing also Internet as one of tested cases) for feedback control purposes. Experimental investigations have been performed in four stages. In the beginning tests of network properties, including tests of transmission time and packet loss measurements have been performed. Three following stages show experimental testing of feedback control, when TCP/IP transmission occurs between PI controller and control plant. Three representative platforms have been chosen for testing: LabVIEW, RSLogix and Simatic. The main and original contribution presented in this paper is design and construction of three test stands as well as methodology of testing experiments. Standard control over analog channel has been also presented as comparison. The results of testing show acceptable performance of control via TCP/IP/Ethernet networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By a domain we mean a universe of discourse. Typical examples are (partially) man-made universes of discourse - such as Air Traffic, Airports, Financial Services (banks, insurance companies, securities trading [brokers, traders, stock exchanges]), Health Care (hospitals etc.), Secure IT Systems (according to Intl. ISO/IEC Standard 17799), The Market (consumers, retailers, wholesalers, producers, "the supply chain"), Transportation (road, air, sea and/or rail transport), etc. We shall outline how one might describe such (infrastructure component) domains, informally and formally - what the current descriptional limitations appear to be, and, hence, the prospects for future research as well as practice. The current paper is based on Part IV, Chaps. 8-16 of [3]. The volume is one of [1,2,3]. The aim of this paper is to suggest a number of areas of domain theory and methodology research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outsourcing of work to support software development and services is seen primarily as a transfer of labor to another shore. But intellectual property, as software, is transferred as well. There are risks when IP is transferred. In order to assess the extent of those risks, one needs to know the value of that concerned software. Software is an intangible good, and the value of intangibles is based on the income they are expected to generate in the future. This paper exploits a model for software valuation based on principles of IP valuation, sales expectations, net present value, and related parameters. Having a quantitative model on a spreadsheet allows for the exploration of business alternatives in outsourcing. The motivation for this paper is to increase the awareness of members in the computing community. Software valuation plays a role in a global economy where the developers of the software and the users of the company reside in different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model checking Web service behaviour has remained limited to checking safety and liveness properties. However when viewed as a multi agent system, the system composition can be analysed by considering additional properties which capture the knowledge acquired by services during their interactions. In this paper we present a novel approach to model checking service composition where in addition to safety and liveness, epistemic properties are analysed and verified. To do this we use a specialised system description language (ISPL) paired with a symbolic model checker (MCMAS) optimised for the verification of temporal and epistemic modalities. We report on experimental results obtained by analysing the composition for a Loan Approval Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) makes application development flexible in such a way that services are composed in a highly distributed manner. However, because of the flexibility, it is often hard for users to define application configurations properly. Regarding the security concerns we address in this paper, though WS-SecurityPolicy provides a standard way to describe security policies, it is difficult for users to make sure that the defined policies are valid. In this paper, we discuss the validation of WS-SecurityPolicy in the context of Service Component Architecture, and propose a method called syntactic validation. Most enterprises have security guidelines, some of which can be described in the format of Web services security messages. There also exist standard profiles for Web services such as the WS-I Basic Security Profile that also prescribes message formats. Since those guidelines and profiles are based on accepted best practices, the syntactic validation is sufficiently effective for practical use to prevent security vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the mechanical design and simulation of a novel omnidirectional wheel based on Reuleaux-triangles. The main feature of our omniwheel is that the point of contact of the wheel with the floor is always kept at the same distance from the center of rotation by mechanical means. This produces smooth translational movement on a flat surface, even when the profile of the complete wheel assembly has gaps between the passive rollers. The grip of the wheel with the floor is also improved. The design described in this paper is ideal for hard surfaces, and can be scaled to fit small or large vehicles. This is the first design for an omnidirectional wheel without circular profile, yet capable of rolling smoothly on a hard surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IT organizations are continuously looking for systematic methods to manage IT services. Combining IT service management processes and knowledge management processes is an interesting topic because knowledge management will be included in the next release of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). In this paper, we focus on examining how knowledge management can be used to support the improvement of the ITIL-based problem management process. The research question in this paper is: how to improve the software problem management process by using a knowledge management framework. We use a case study research method to examine how an IT service provider identifies, creates, stores, shares and uses the knowledge of software problems. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a list of process improvement ideas collected during a knowledge management study in the case organization: TietoEnator Energy, Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of the conscious experience of love is a puzzle to people all around the world. Many of us want to understand our love in order to make it more sustainable. An application developed for this purpose is presented in this paper: Rose is a self-evaluation application that aims to help individuals evaluate and understand the many dimensions of their love. Rose is freely available on the Internet. In this paper, we summarize the results of everybody who has taken part in the on-line self-evaluation using this application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely traffic identification is critical in network security monitoring and traffic engineering. Traditional methods using well-known ports, protocols and precise signature matching are no longer accurate with the proliferation of new applications. Recently, applying pattern recognition methods to classify network application traffic based on the flow parameters (e.g. port, flow duration, etc.) has become increasing popular. However, many methods developed in the previous works are either too complex to be applied in real-time, or suffer from lower accuracy due to the insufficient knowledge of the application. In this paper, we first give an overview on the developments of pattern recognition methods as traffic classification tools. We then develop two separate pattern recognition methods: one with supervised learning, and one with un-supervised learning, and apply them to classify traffic captured from a campus backbone network. The supervised learning method (an optimized SVM method) yields approximately 99.41% accuracy for the collected traffic. The un-supervised learning method (an entropy based clustering method) gets the average accuracy of 92.41% for the top 20 traffic generating hosts during the same time period. Performance test on a single PC with 3GHz Pentium 4 processors and 1GB of memory show that both methods can handle more than 10000 network flows per second, close to real time requirements for many situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early stages of architectural training, tangibility plays an important role in developing spatial awareness. In such contexts, tangible user interfaces are believed to provide a significant advantage as they combine the affordances of both the physical and the digital world. We introduce CubeExplorer, a hybrid 3D conceptual aid that combines physical interaction and digital modeling in an effort to complement conventional architectural space-training tools (such as physical materials and digital CAD programs). Using a digital pen as an input mechanism, CubeExplorer lets users perform subtractive 3D geometric operations on a simple paper based cube model while observing the resulting model on a display. The tangibility of the model simplifies navigation and command execution, while the digital interface makes it easy for users to explore multiple alternative designs. To evaluate the potential of such an approach, we conducted a user study in a normal classroom environment where students were provided with physical (wooden block), hybrid (CubeExplorer), and virtual (FormZ) interfaces to complete the same assignment. Our evaluation showed that CubeExplorer combined the advantages of both digital and tangible media. The advantages of CubeExplorer over digital media were substantiated in a follow-up study comparing CubeExplorer and SketchUp in a similar building task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ubiquitous interaction places the user in the centre of dynamic configurations of technology, where work not necessarily is performed through a single personal computer, but supported by a multiplicity of technologies and physical devices. This paper presents an activity-theoretically based framework for analyzing ubiquitous substitution, i.e. a set of mediators that are or can be continuously substituted with the purpose of highlighting expected and indented uses, and the conflicts encountered when attempting substitution between them. The paper develops a four-leveled analysis of such mediators, and point towards a minimalist approach to design of ubiquitous interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reasoning about functional programs is simpler than reasoning about their imperative counterparts. However, finding bugs in lazy functional languages has been more complex until quite recently. The reason was that not much work was done on developing practical debuggers. Fortunately, several debuggers exist nowadays. One of the easiest to use Haskell debuggers is Hood, whose behavior is based on the concept of observation of intermediate data structures. However, although using Hood can be simple when observing some structures, it is known that it can be hard to understand how it works when dealing with complex situations. In this paper, we formalize the behavior of the Hood debugger by extending Sestoft's natural semantics. Moreover, we also indicate how to derive an abstract machine including such debugging information. By doing so, we do not only provide a formal foundation, but we also provide an alternative method to implement debuggers. In fact, we have already implemented a prototype of the abstract machine commented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient management of service level agreements which govern provision of service compositions remains a big challenge in the Web services environment. This paper reports innovative research aiming at supporting autonomous establishment of a set of interrelated service level agreements for service compositions. In this paper, an agent-based framework is proposed to exploit agent interaction and negotiation capabilities for achieving agreements on service provision. Based on this framework, this paper also discusses mechanisms for agents representing service consumers and providers to negotiate quality of service constraints for constituent services in a coordinated way, with a focus on achieving end-to-end quality of service requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider a problem of privacy preserving surveillance and monitoring in sensor networks. We propose a framework and a solution of the problem based on multi-party computations. Our approach use pattern matching on data streams from sensors in order to monitor and detect events of interest. We study a privacy preserving pattern matching problem where patterns are defined as sequences of constraints on input data items. We describe a new privacy preserving pattern matching algorithm over an infinite alphabet A where a pattern P is given as a sequence $\{p_{i_1},p_{i_2},...,p_{i_n}\}$ of predicates $p_{i_j}$ defined on A. The algorithm addresses the following problem: given a pattern P and an input sequence t, find privately all positions in t where P matches t. The privacy preserving in the context of this paper means that sensor measurements will be evaluated as predicates pi(ej) privately, that is, sensors will not need to disclose the measurement values to the monitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been significant effort to build high throughput computing systems out of many distributed multimedia servers. These systems should accommodate a larger number of servers and should handle the ever-growing user demands. Recently, Grid computing has become one of the promising technologies that can deliver such a system. Among the many problems encountered in building Grid computing systems, resource discovery, overhead reduction, workload balancing and fault tolerance are the most challenging. In this paper, we present a resource discovery and allocation mechanism (RDAM) in a computational Grid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in data and knowledge engineering have emphasized the need for formal concept analysis (fca) tools taking into account structured data. There are a few adaptations of the classical fca methodology for handling contexts holding on complex data formats, e.g. graph-based or relational data. In this paper, relational concept analysis (rca) is proposed, as an adaptation of fca for analyzing objects described both by binary and relational attributes. The rca process takes as input a collection of contexts and of inter-context relations, and yields a set of lattices, one per context, whose concepts are linked by relations. Moreover, a way of representing the concepts and relations extracted with rca is proposed in the framework of a description logic. The rca process has been implemented within the Galicia platform, offering new and efficient tools for knowledge and software engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactive digital multimedia broadcasting stands for a convergence application between digital multimedia broadcasting service and wireless internet service. It develops MPEG-4 BIFS (Binary Format for Scene) technologies which is standard component of associated data service for DMB. In this paper, we propose system architecture of the interactive DMB, called the interaction manager. The interactive DMB facilitates to transmit interactive contents and user can easily use these contents by clicking or typing some additional information. The proposed interactive DMB system can capture and response user interaction information by using the return channel. In this paper, we are mainly focused on extracting the event data of the user interaction on the device. We suggest an analyzer to catch the user event and transform into a specific format for bidirectional DMB service system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pattern matching is one of the most performance critical components in network intrusion detection and prevention system, which needs to be accelerated by carefully designed architectures. In this paper, we present a highly parameterized multilevel pattern matching architecture (MPM), which is implemented on FPGA by exploiting redundant resources among patterns for less chip area. In practice, MPM can be partitioned to several pipelines for high frequency. This paper also presents a pattern set compiler that can generate RTL codes of MPM with the given pattern set and predefined parameters. One MPM architecture is generated by our compiler based on Snort rules on Xilinx FPGA. The results show that MPM can achieve 4.3Gbps throughput with only 0.22 slices per character, about one half chip area than the most area-efficient architecture in literature. MPM can be parameterized potential for more than 100 Gbps throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous studies have applied various forecasting models to tourism demand analysis, data mining techniques have been largely overlooked by academic researchers in tourism forecasting prior to 1999. Based on our review of published articles in tourism journals that applied data mining techniques to tourism demand forecasting, we find that the application of data mining techniques are still at their infancy. This paper concludes with practical implications and future research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support vector regression (SVR) is a new technique for pattern classification , function approximation and so on. In this paper we propose an new constructing approach of classification rules based on support vector regression and its derivative characteristics for the classification task of data mining. a new measure for determining the importance level of the attributes based on the trained SVR is proposed. Based on this new measure, a new approach for clas-sification rule construction using trained SVR is proposed. The performance of the new approach is demonstrated by several computing cases. The experimen-tal results prove that the approach proposed can improve the validity of the ex-tracted classification rules remarkably compared with other constructing rule approaches, especially for the complicated classification problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on the development of a methodology for the evolution of software towards new architectures. In our approach, we represent source code as graphs. This enables the use of graph transformation rules, allowing the automation of the transformation process. Prior to its model representation, the source code is subject to a preparatory step of semi-automatic code annotation according to the contribution of each of its parts in the target architecture. This paper first describes the overall methodology and then focuses on the code annotation and model transformation parts. We also discuss issues of the implementation of the approach based on existing tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a metamodeling strategy of Service Level Agreements for Digital Video Broadcasting services based on Service Level Agreement Language(SLAng). The purpose of the paper is to provide a detailed analysis of SLAs in this domain and provide a motivation for modeling and automating their management. We also discuss why precise and machine readable SLAs can improve the levels of automation in SLA Management thereby reducing potential violations. The meta-modeling approach based on the Model Driven Architecture(MDA) described in this paper also simplifies the integration of a SLA Management systems with other infrastructure that delivers the service to the client. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate in the paper that user movement has great influences on the system performance of mobile cellular networks. We also develop a system model to study to what extent the influences will be, with focusing on the user movement simulation. We concern the parameters that determine the system performance of mobile cellular networks. We show partially in this paper that these parameters vary while user movement changes, but the effects are interactive. Since handoff calls are given a higher priority over new calls and GC mechanism is employed, our analysis shows that a mature mobile cellular network should make use of user movement characteristics and dynamically adjust its reservation threshold of the handoff call requests. Extensive simulation results validate our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, information communication market is reorganized focused on the digital convergence service used for integrating the communication, broadcasting and internet media by connecting the communication equipment, broadcasting equipment and computer via a network. The mobility support protocol enabling the effective handover between heterogeneous networks is emerged as the hot issue in relation with these next generation communication networks. In this paper, we are to suggest the MIH Vertical handover procedure required for the implementation of MIH over MIPv4 Low-Latency vertical handover by analyzing the handover performance in the overlap area between wireless networks using the vertical handover function of MIPv4 Mobile IP Technology of IETF and considering the expected problems. Also, we are to suggest the MIH L2-Trigger generation algorithm required for deciding the optimal handoff. We evaluate the vertical handover performance of MIPv4 low-latency in the overlap area between wireless networks by using the NS-2 and applying the IEEE 802.21 MIH (Media Independent Handover) based on the suggested technique and algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]