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The article focuses on opportunities and obligations for physical computing systems. Seamlessly integrating computing with the physical world via sensors and actuators, physical computing systems promise to give society an improved living standard, greater security, and unparalleled convenience and efficiency. To better understand physical computing's advantages, this article gives emphasis on three application areas. These include assisted living, emergency response systems for natural or man-made disasters, and protecting critical infrastructures at the national level.

This paper, presents a modified priority based probe algorithm for deadlock detection and resolution in distributed database systems. The original priority based probe algorithm was presented by Sinha and Natarajan based on work by Chandy, Misra, and Haas. Various examples are used to show that the original priority based algorithm either fails to detect deadlocks or reports deadlocks which do not exist in many situations. A modified algorithm which eliminates these problems is proposed. This algorithm has been tested through simulation and appears to be error free. Finally, the performance of the modified algorithm is briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]