bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The lookahead strategy for distance-based location tracking in wireless cellular networks
Authors: Tsai I-Fei , Jan Rong-Hong
Published: January 2007

Based on a multi-scale, straight-oriented mobility model, this paper presents a lookahead strategy for distance-based location tracking so the rate of location update can be reduced without incurring extra terminal paging costs. For linear mobility graphs, the optimal registered cell is found by an iterative algorithm so the average cycle length is maximized. For planar mobility graphs, the authors employ the results from linear cases to determine the eligible registered cell. Performance gain is evaluated by using Monte Carlo simulation for mobiles with different degrees and scales of mobility. Analysis shows that the tracking cost for mobile users with large mobility scales in microcellular networks, costs which are usually underestimated by the traditional random walk model, can be effectively reduced.
MoCCA
Authors: Smailagic Asim , Siewiorek Dan , Iannucci Bob , Dahbura Anton , Bass Len
Published: January 2007

The Mobile Communication and Computing Architecture (MoCCA) was built to support field-based teams of service engineers to collaborate autonomously and perform their activities in an on-the-move working environment. There is no physical contact among the members of a group of geographically distributed mobile field service engineers (FSEs) to share/build corporate memory. The challenge was to provide a system that allowed the FSEs to access information and advice from other FSEs while on customer sites and while commuting between sites. This novel wearable computer architecture can support collaborative multimedia: on-the move networking for high-tech equipment maintenance using voice bulletin boards, video clips, and access to maintenance databases. Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration are supported for both voice and digitized information.
A generalized learning game
Authors: Peelle Howard A.
Published: January 2007

APL is used to describe a "learning" game, generalized to allow for a class of rules.
The branchless loop
Authors: Whiteman Cole
Published: January 2007

I present a clean, attractive expression for looping in APL. It uses no branches, labels, or global variables. It requires no modifications to the interpreter. Its simplicity makes it especially appealing for ad hoc applications in immediate execution.
Some comments on numerical reliability
Authors: Gribble Jules de G.
Published: January 2007

From a numerical point of view, certain commonly accepted algorithms may be unreliable. The Least-Squares Problem will be used to illustrate some of the differences between mathematics and numerics, or computational mathematics.
Dyadic execute
Authors: Oates Richard H.
Published: January 2007

The quotes that distinguish a constant from a name are inconvenient in an expression dominated by constants, and they critically overload the quote character if monadic Execute is also used. When constants predominate, the declarative burden can be shifted to the names by means of a dyadic Execute function that takes a list of "names" as its left argument. A token in the right argument that does not appear in the left argument is a constant even when not enclosed in quotes. This technique would be useful to the programmer in a variety of ways, and it suggests two related functions for the user: an evaluated but nameless input for commands and data entry, and a primitive for text processing that would partition but not evaluate its argument. The new primitives would not extend the language so much as they would vary an existing function, bringing certain of its properties under explicit control. (The models of the new primitives use a function-definition statement based on αϖ-notation. The compiler for the statement uses the statement extensively, and it can also recompile itself.)
Polygon shading with a pen plotter
Authors: Bastian C. , Cervini C.
Published: January 2007

Functions are given to find the extremities of parallel or convergent shade lines filling any set of closed polygons.
Performance study of dispatching algorithms in multi-tier web architectures
Authors: Andreolini Mauro , Colajanni Michele , Morselli Ruggero
Published: January 2007

The number and heterogeneity of requests to Web sites are increasing also because the Web technology is becoming the preferred interface for information systems. Many systems hosting current Web sites are complex architectures composed by multiple server layers with strong scalability and reliability issues. In this paper we compare the performance of several combinations of centralized and distributed dispatching algorithms working at the first and second layer, and using different levels of state information. We confirm some known results about load sharing in distributed systems and give new insights to the problem of dispatching requests in multi-tier cluster-based Web systems.
East Coast Computer Algebra day
Authors: Sit William Y.
Published: January 2007

East Coast Computer Algebra Day 2002 (ECCAD 02) was held on May 18, 2002 at LaGuardia Community College of The City University of New York, New York. The abstracts of the invited speakers were published in the March 2002 issue of this
Bulletin
. Below are the abstracts of posters and demonstrations that were accepted and presented at the conference (some posters were presented
in absentia
).
Automatic and portable performance modeling for parallel I/O
Authors: Yu Shengke , Winslett Marianne , Lee Jonghyun , Ma Xiaosong
Published: January 2007

A performance model for a parallel I/O system is essential for detailed performance analyses, automatic performance optimization of I/O request handling, and potential performance bottleneck identification. Yet how to build a portable performance model for parallel I/O system is an open problem. In this paper, we present a machine-learning approach to automatic performance modeling for parallel I/O systems. Our approach is based on the use of a platform-independent performance metamodel, which is a radial basis function neural network. Given training data, the metamodel generates a performance model automatically and efficiently for a parallel I/O system on a given platform. Experiments suggest that our goal of having the generated model provide accurate performance predictions is attainable, for the parallel I/O library that served as our experimental testbed on an IBM SP. This suggests that it is possible to model parallel I/O system performance automatically and portably, and perhaps to model a broader class of storage systems as well.
Flood search under the California split strategy
Authors: Baryshnikov Y. , Coffman E. , Jelenković P. , Momčilović P. , Rubenstein D.
Published: January 2007

We study a version of the problem of searching peer-to-peer networks by means of
floods,
or
expanding rings;
when a network reduces to a path, then the term flood becomes the more familiar search term "scan," which is the focus of this paper.
Robust traffic engineering
Authors: Marbukh Vladimir
Published: January 2007

On-line routing algorithms deal with requests as they arrive without assuming any knowledge of the underlying process that generates the streams of requests. By contrast, off-line traffic engineering algorithms assume complete statistical knowledge of the request generating process. This dichotomy, however, oversimplifies many practical situations when some incomplete information on the expected demands is available, and proper utilization of the available information may improve the network performance. This paper proposes a game theoretic framework for robust traffic engineering intended to guard against the worst case scenario with respect to possible uncertainties in the external demands and link loads. The proposed framework can be interpreted as a game of the routing algorithm attempting to optimize the network performance and the adversarial environment attempting to obstruct these efforts by selecting the worst case scenario with respect to the uncertainties. Two different classes of schemes are considered: first, suitable for
MPLS
implementation, centralized schemes, and, second, suitable for
OSPF-OMP
implementation, decentralized schemes.
Modeling throughput in TCP vegas
Authors: Samios Charalampos (Babis) , Vernon Mary K.
Published: January 2007

This abstract describes a simple and accurate analytic model for the steady state throughput of TCP Vegas, as a function of round trip time and packet loss rate. Such models have previously been developed for TCP Reno. However, several aspects of TCP Vegas need to be treated quite differently from their counterparts in Reno. In particular, TCP Vegas employs an algorithm to detect the incipient stages of congestion in the network and preemptively adjusts the sending rate to avoid losses. The proposed model reflects this behavior, as well as Vegas' new slow start mechanism, and the most important of the innovative congestion recovery mechanisms introduced in TCP Vegas. Initial validations against the ns-2 simulator configured to simulate TCP Vegas are presented.
Product-forms from a CAT and DOG
Authors: Harrison Peter G.
Published: January 2007

The equilibrium state space probabilities of a stationary Markov chain can be obtained immediately from its reversed process. There are two main steps in the derivation of product-form solutions for multi-dimensional Markov chains using this approach. First, the reversed process must be determined. This is achieved for a wide class of cooperating processes using a compound agent theorem (CAT), a compositional result from Markovian Process Algebra (MPA). Secondly, a path to each state must be found from some specified reference state. This is usually obtained in a simple way by considering the components of the state in order of dimension, e.g. in a dimension-ordered graphical (DOG) representation. In this note, the main results for reversing a stationary compound Markov process, under appropriate conditions, are given and applied to deriving product-forms. No balance equations are solved.
Simulations of random divisions of an interval
Authors: O'Connor C. A. , Hook A. , Elmaghraby A. S.
Published: January 2007

This article describes the simulation results for the following random experiment. Fix a value for the parameter p, O
2, define the random variables X
n
and the random intervals [L
n
, U
n
] by:[EQUATION]If X
n-1
< (L
n-1
+U
n-1
)/2, the intervals are constructed as above with the probabilities reversed.
Implementing a mainframe architecture in a 9370 processor
Authors: Mitchell James
Published: January 2007

This paper develops a high level view of the central electronics complex in the 9373 and 9375 systems, showing how the hardware and microcode elements combine to create a central processor as defined by the System/370 architecture. Within the context of this discussion, the logical subsystems described here will be defined as the working base architecture. The hardware implementation of the central processor will be examined in detail, both in terms of hardware subsystems, and as resources to be used by the various microprograms to provide the correct System/370 interface and function.
Exploiting horizontal and vertical concurrency via the HPSm microprocessor
Authors: Hwu Wen-mei W. , Patt Yale N.
Published: January 2007

HPSm is a single-chip microarchitecture designed and implemented at the University of California to achieve high performance. The approach is to exploit both vertical and horizontal concurracy in the microarchitecture. Experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the effectivenese of HPSm as compared is a popular single-chip microarchitecture, the Berkeley RISC/SPUR. Evaluations have been done with both central intensive and hosting point intensive benchmarks. For both types of benchmarks, we show that the HPSm microarchitecture achieves significant speedup ever the RISC/SPUR microarchitecture implemented with the same fabrication technology.
SPAM: a microcode based tool for tracing operating sytsem events
Authors: Melvin S. , Patt Y.
Published: January 2007

We have developed a tool called SPAM (
for System Performance
Analysis using Microcode), based on microcode modifications to a VAX 8600, that traces operating system events as a side-effect to normal execution. This trace of interrupts, exceptions, system calls and context switches can then be processed to analyze operating system behavior for the purpose of debugging, tuning or development. SPAM allows measurement to be made on a fully operating UNIX system with little perturbation (typically less than 10%) and without the need for modifying the kernel.
NSF initiatives in higher education: high-end computing
Authors: Connolly John
Published: January 2007

I am going to describe a few NSF activities which in some ways may make your life easier and in some ways may make your life a little more complicated. Our new NSF national supercomputing facility is, in a way, very complementary to the kinds of responsibilities that you have in a local computing facility. I like to think that we are offering a top-of-the-line scientific computing resource. Your faculty who will require top-of-the-line scientific computing will be using our centers, rather than your resources. Every computing center director knows physicists who want to use the whole machine and then cry for more. These people are the ones that we welcome at the national facility.
Papal visit press center
Authors: Thorn William , Mallinger Ann
Published: January 2007

When Pope John Paul II visited the United States from September 10 - 19, 1987 the media scramble for information could have overwhelmed the small communication offices of the 9 host dioceses. Marquette University's VAXCluster was used to ease that bottleneck with an innovative experiment, the Papal Visit Computer Press Center.
Computer centres - the next decade
Authors: Alty J. L.
Published: January 2007

When trying to predict what will happen in the next decade it is always instructive to step back a decade and see how things have, or have not changed. It is often said that the computing world is a rapidly changing one, and this is certainly true of some key parameters, for example CPU power, store size and reliability. However, we should not be misled into thinking that change has been rapid in all areas. For example, progress in user-friendly interfaces, proof of correctness, and reliable software design techniques has been slow.
Computer center stress test
Authors: Stager Sue
Published: January 2007

It's old news that the work environments of college and university computing centers are stressful. I put together the "Computer Center Stress Test" as a way to humorously deal with the day to day stress, and to maybe provoke some discussion about
why
some of these seemingly trivial and predictable events are stressful and what can be done to minimize the stress of these events in our environment.
Organizational issues for user services
Authors: Velleman Agelia
Published: January 2007

In this session, I'll wear two hats. One hat belongs to a computing administrator who considers global issues in academic computing and their impact on higher education. The second hat belongs to a manager of talented and dedicated technical staff who focus on providing computing services for the community at large. I want to share with you the ways in which I've chosen to reorganize User Services at Cornell to reconcile some of the conflicts that arise when wearing these two hats --- to describe some of the ways in which our new organization is working, as well as some of the ways in which more fine-tuning is required. I'd also like to know whether you think this kind of structure would work at your institution.
Issues and threats affecting timesharing and microcomputer sales
Authors: Gillespie Robert , Gossman Patrick
Published: January 2007

This article is aimed at acquainting members of the higher education community with current national and state issues affecting university timesharing and personal computer resales. Many universities have been selling computer services for a number of years. More recently they have seen the need for computer resales in order to carry out the key academic objectives supported by the introduction of computers on campuses. These resales have allowed advantageous prices for faculty, staff and students as well as the opportunity for imposing some standards which support network and instructional use. However, many for-profit timesharing services and computer retailers see the timesharing sales and resale of computers by colleges and universities as a competitive threat.
Statement of ethics in the use of computers
Authors: The Catholic Univ. of America's CORPORATE
Published: January 2007

The provision of computing resources at The Catholic University of America requires strictly legal and ethical utilization by all users. The computing facilities of the University are limited and should be used wisely and carefully. The following list, though not covering every situation, specifies some of the responsibilities that accompany computer usage, whether it is on the central computers, the networks of which CUA is a member, or on microcomputers. All users are expected to abide by these regulations.
A view of academic computing in China
Authors: Skelton John E.
Published: January 2007

Early last summer I had the privilege of spending six weeks in the People's Republic of China. The visit was sponsored by the Chinese Provincial Universities Project which is funded by the World Bank. One of the purposes of the project is to improve the use of technology in the provincial universities. Thus I spent four weeks as the guest of Anhui University in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Provence. These observations are mine alone and do not represent the views of any other organization or individual. The information was gained by either direct observation or a little bit of research into existing information.
Staying afloat—a collective enterprise
Authors: Slater J. B.
Published: January 2007

Higher Education in the UK can be characterised by a division into Polytechnics, (until recently funded essentially by Local Education Authorities) and Universities (private organisations). This description of the division, often called the binary divide, hides from a outside observer both the fact that both sides of the divide are essentially government funded and the fact that the divide is essentially a rift.
From arcane ASCII to the printed page - computer basics
Authors: Lee Gee , Suter Vicki
Published: January 2007

To paraphrase John Seybold (
Publishing from the Desktop
), human computer users have the illusion that computers talk in ordinary text, while the computer believes humans communicate in positive and negative voltage patterns called "bit patterns." One bridge between human and machine that helps maintain this illusion is a convention called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).
The role of VHDL as a description language for off-the shelf integrated circuits
Authors: Morris J.
Published: January 2007

The US Department of Defense (DoD), through its military departments, procures thousands of electronic systems every year. These electronic systems are comprised of printed circuit boards, which, in turn, are comprised of hundreds of distinct integrated circuits (ICs). Some of these ICs are "custom-made" for each specific electronic system, but many are purchased "off-the-shelf" as individual components.
Book Review: Non-Standard Logics for Automated Reasoning by P. Smets, E. H. Mamdani, D. Dubois, and H. Prade (Academic Press)
Authors: Patel-Schneider Peter F.
Published: January 2007

A common way of creating collections is to have a small conference on some topic and then publish revised versions of the papers presented at the conference. A common problem with such collections is a lack of cohesiveness, as there is little or no attempt to have the papers refer to each other or to have a common terminology.
The symptom-component approach to knowledge acquisition
Authors: Bradley J. , Harbison-Briggs K.
Published: January 2007

Knowledge acquisition is a critical aspect of the knowledge engineering approaches that are used in complex diagnostic problem-solving. Experience with a machine diagnostic problem pointed to difficulties in mapping the acquired knowledge to the fault tree representation and with obtaining an overall picture of the system. We also found that use of the prototype for interactive knowledge elicitation required extremely structured interviews to allow the knowledge engineer time for on-line changes. A knowledge acquisition methodology was developed that works in conjunction with a fault-tree diagnostic tool. The methodology employs task analysis, process analysis, structured interviews, and analogies in a process that focuses on the relationships between symptoms and faults.To correct the problems encountered during task analysis of the fault tree, we used a systems approach to modify the original knowledge acquisition methodology. In the modified methodology, knowledge comprising the symptom and component trees is acquired independently in an almost mechanical fashion. Information to link the symptoms to the components is then obtained from the most capable experts using standard knowledge acquisition techniques. This process has the advantage of providing a framework of symptoms and components that focus the knowledge acquisition activities toward identifying the relationships between these objects as well as assisting in verification and validation during later knowledge acquisition sessions. The new methodology also helps to structure the placement of faults, and questions about faults, to avoid replication and to fit easily into the tool logic. We believe that the symptom-component approach to knowledge acquisition for component diagnostic problems is a significant improvement on our original approach and that it can have general applicability to fault-tree diagnosis.
A natural language front-end for knowledge acquisition
Authors: Arinze B.
Published: January 2007

Knowledge Acquisition has historically been a bottleneck in the development of knowledge based systems. While efficient and powerful techniques have been developed for knowledge representation and processing, transferring knowledge from the problem domain into the knowledge base is characterized by the inordinate effort required by knowledge engineers; a lack of any substantial automation of the knowledge acquisition process; and in particular, the difficulty and undue complexity of the knowledge acquisition interfaces for many knowledge based systems. This paper proposes a Natural Language Interface or Front-End as a means of effective knowledge acquisition for knowledge based systems. This would have the advantage of transferring the burden of knowledge acquisition from the user to the system, while providing ease of natural language interaction to the user. By constraining such a front-end to use within limited problem domains, many of the difficulties associated with natural language processing may be avoided, while reaping the benefits of more effective knowledge acquisition. It is also recognized that the knowledge acquisition activity is one that possesses expertise of itself, and using a knowledge acquisition expert system in parallel to this front-end will likely offer further advantages in the development of part or wholly-automated knowledge acquisition.
Towards an expert/novice learning system with application to infectious disease
Authors: Kopec D. , Latour L. , Brody M.
Published: January 2007

The threat of AIDS is widely recognized as an important educational problem, particularly in the college age population. To date, intelligent software has not been developed and employed to effectively disseminate the critical knowledge relevant to this epidemic. Since sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as a group are a personal problem which few people feel comfortable discussing, the computer can provide an opportunity for learning about these diseases while insuring anonymity.
Investigating the communication problems encountered in knowledge acquisition
Authors: Waldron V. R.
Published: January 2007

Whether conducted manually or with the help of automated software tools, knowledge acquisition is a process fraught with numerous communication problems. It has become widely accepted that domain experts sometimes have trouble articulating their knowledge in a way that knowledge engineers or knowledge acquisition programs can use effectively. These communication difficulties are often vaguely attributed to the unverbalizable, "intuitive" nature of expert problem solving. However, if we are to make substantive improvements in knowledge acquisition technology, a more sophisticated understanding of the communication characteristics of expert-novice (knowledge engineering) interactions needs to be developed.
The design of an automated assistant for acquiring strategic knowledge
Authors: Gruber T. , Cohen P.
Published: January 2007

Knowledge acquisition is the transfer and transformation of expertise from knowledge sources in the world (mainly people) into a form that can be executed by a knowledge-based system to perform an expert task. It is widely acknowledged that the knowledge acquisition problem is a significant barrier to the development of knowledge-based systems. The research reported here focuses on the problem of acquiring
strategic knowledge:
knowledge used by an agent to decide what action to perform next, where the actions are external events that effect both what is believed by the agent and the state of the world.
ViewPoint: a troubleshooting-specific knowledge acquisition tool
Authors: Caviedes J. E. , Reed M. K.
Published: January 2007

As knowledge bases grow in size and complexity, tools for extracting and encoding knowledge from the domain experts become critical for the success of an expert system project. Many of the available expert system tools are designed for a broad range of domains and therefore are often inadequate for building and maintaining domain-specific knowledge structures. This results from the fact that some structures may only exist implicitly or have semantics than cannot be interpreted by generic tools. On the other hand, a tool that is specific to just one application in a domain lacks useful generality. A tool should be flexible enough to be widely applicable within the domain for which it was designed. We describe our knowledge acquisition tool, ViewPoint, which achieves this flexibility by being build on top of a generic expert system architecture for the troubleshooting domain. ViewPoint allows (i) the handling of all knowledge structures present in a troubleshooting knowledge base, (ii) the viewing of many levels of detail, from the global overview of the knowledge base to the examination of a single object, and (iii) the ability to cope with the knowledge acquisition strategies used in the domain.
Automatic generation of knowledge structures
Authors: Merrem F. H.
Published: January 2007

The Program for Regional Observing and Forecasting Services is investigating the use of expert systems in weather forecasting, using "learning systems" as models. The first model to be tested was an adaption of Quinlan's ID3 and Friedman's CART. A "heuristic" structure generated by a learning system was compared with that of a human expert. It was tentatively concluded that automatic generation methods (1) did not suffer from loss of dimensionality as do numerical methods, (2) will provide a preliminary knowledge base suitable for modification by domain experts, and (3) may provide some insight into and understanding of data sets having unknown structures.
Knowledge elicitation during dynamic scene description
Authors: Malec J.
Published: January 2007

Analyzing and describing the dynamic scenes of an autonomous intelligent vehicle is a problem tackled in many recent research projects. However, the suggested (or realized) solutions do not introduce any methodology - they are direct implications of current state of the art in sensor technology and applications of sensor fusion techniques.
Operational knowledge acquisition problems for air traffic expert controller
Authors: Kornecki A. J.
Published: January 2007

Air Traffic Control System (ATC) is a service of the Federal Aviation Administration to accomplish a safe and expeditious flow of the air traffic in the National Airspace System. To assist in AT controller training and to improve the future ATCS operation there is a need to design a computer program that would imitate the decision process of an experienced controller. Such a program, given a set of data describing a current traffic situation, would first analyze, recognize, and process the data to generate a set of facts constituting the bases for the controller's action. Then, using an available ATC operational knowledge base, the program would generate an appropriate controller action. We can differentiate two types of actions. The first type of actions reflect the final controller decision. The second type are actions initializing a request to acquire more data to solve the problem.
Acquisition of macro-operators from worked examples in problem solving
Authors: Yamada S. , Tsuji S.
Published: January 2007

In general, as building a problem solver, the expert in the problem-solving, not the knowledge-base, can easily give the system the basic-operators that transform the problem state formally. However, the condition-parts of these basic-operators that transform the problem state formally. However, the condition-parts of these basic-operators are usually too general. For example, considering a basic-operator: LHS = RHS --> LHS + A = RHS + B in the solving of equations, this operator is applicable to any equation and A, B are arbitrary formulas. Therefore, without any strategy knowledge that can control the applications of basic-operators, the search space explosively gets large and the problem solver can not solve the problem by itself. The strategy knowledge typically contains problem states in which each basic-operator should be applied. Unfortunately, this strategy knowledge is difficult for the expert to give to the problem solver. In general, an expert can solve the problem given to the problem solver, thus another input that an expert can easily give to a problem solver is a worked example which is the history of the expert's problem solving. Thus, if a learning system which can acquire the strategy knowledge from worked examples and basic-operators is added to the problem solver, the expert will be able to easily build the knowledge base for the problem solver. This method of knowledge acquisition that the learning system obtains, the expertise from expert's behavior is called
Learning Apprentice
[1] and some applications were reported [1,2].
Using simulation to compile diagnostic rules from a manufacturing process representation
Authors: Becker L. A. , Barlett R. , Soroushian F.
Published: January 2007

Instead of acquiring diagnostic rules about a manufacturing process directly from domain experts, one can acquire a deeper, model-based representation, and compile the diagnostic rules directly from it. A manufacturing process representation (MPR) is a
deep
(Harmon, 1985), functional representation (Davis, 1984; Chandrasekaran, 1985) which embodies a model of the given process. This representation includes knowledge about the ordering of process steps, as well as what they are designed to accomplish and what would make them fail or what errors they may trap. As indicated below, an MPR can be acquired either by a knowledge engineer (KE), who would interview an expert and make use of any available process design documents, or by an Intelligent Interrogator (II) program.
Extracting lexical knowledge from dictionary text
Authors: Slator B. M.
Published: January 2007

A lexicon providing subsystems, that produces text-specific lexicons from selected machine readable dictionary definitions from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE; Procter, 1978) has been developed. Although designed as part of a larger system for Preference Semantics (Wilks; 1972, 1975a, 1975b, 1978) and knowledge-based parsing, the resulting lexicons are in a very general predicate and frame representation that would have utility as part of a variety of differing systems of language analysis. The input to this subsystem is unconstrained text; the database is LDOCE (a machine-readable dictionary which is, itself, simply a special purpose text); the output is a collection of lexical semantic objects, one for every
word sense,
of every part of speech, of every word in the text. Each lexical semantic object in this lexicon contains grammatical and sub-categorization information, often with general (and sometimes specific) grammatical predictions; most of these objects also have semantic selection codes; and many have contextual (pragmatic, LDOCE subject code) knowledge as well.
Application requirements for middleware for mobile and pervasive systems
Authors: Raatikainen Kimmo , Christensen Henrik Bærbak , Nakajima Tatsuo
Published: January 2007

In this paper, we examine the requirements for future middleware to support mobile and pervasive applications and identify key research areas. We illustrate the research areas with requirements identified in two specific research projects concerning pervasive healthcare and home entertainment.
Communication paradigms for mobile computing
Authors: Meier René
Published: January 2007

The widespread deployment and use of wireless data communications causes the need for middleware to interconnect the components that comprise a mobile application. Middleware for mobile computing must deal with the increased complexity that comes with a dynamically changing population of application components and the resulting dynamic reconfiguration of the connections between these components. This paper presents an overview of two communication paradigms that are well suited as the basis for middleware for mobile computing, namely the event-based communication model and proximity-based group communication.
An optimized authentication protocol for mobile network reconsidered
Authors: Wong Duncan S.
Published: January 2007

In [6], an authenticated key transport protocol was proposed for establishing secure communications between a base station and a mobile unit. The protocol is public-key based and relies on certificates to validate public keys of communicating parties. A signature scheme was also proposed and used in the certification mechanism of the protocol. We find that the signature scheme is vulnerable to an attack which allows an adversary to generate a signature on any message at its will. In this paper, we describe the attack and explain how the entire system can be compromised by an intruder after eavesdropping only one single run of the protocol.
AI online: the coverage of the literature of artificial intelligence in online bibliographic databases
Authors: Mills William J.
Published: January 2007

Two years ago I analysed the degree of scatter of AI literature across a wide range of online bibliographic databases [1]. This paper presents the results of a similar survey two years later. Besides drawing attention to those databases which are most likely to yield relevant information for any particular query, the survey also demonstrates the massive growth in the amount of AI-related literature and to some extent identifies where that growth has been most rapid and which other areas may be ripe for development.
Knowledge-based agents in a command and control simulation
Authors: Lehnert Kevin , Sullivan Michael
Published: January 2007

To facilitate research into multi-agent planning issues, we have developed the Command and Control Testbed Using Simulation (CACTUS) and the Situation-based Autonomous Reasoner in a GBB Environment (SARGE). CACTUS is a simulation of combat operations for platoon-sized units in battalion-level engagements. We model in detail those command and control problems impacting the way planning is done by a formation commander. These include incomplete and uncertain information, imperfect control, differing agent characteristics, and limited inter-unit communications.The testbed originally required the user to input specific movement and firing instructions for each unit simulated. An interface to the simulation permits the integration of automated planners in place of user input. The SARGE commander was built to relieve the user of the need to provide detailed instructions at the simulation system level. Units with SARGE commanders take goal level instructions and SARGE then explictly reasons about plans to achieve those goals and submits the instructions necessary to implement those plans in CACTUS. SARGE uses the blackboard model of reasoning as implemented in the Generic Blackboard (GBB) tool. User access to the knowledge affecting SARGE behavior allows us to assess the impact of different tactical and doctrinal schemes on planning at higher levels of command.The SARGE and CACTUS systems provide the foundations for developing automated planners for multiple unit formations by raising the level of abstraction for inputting instruction to subordinate units. We will use this incremental approach to address command and control issues at progressively higher levels in the chain of command and to develop, refine, and evaluate artificial intelligence techniques to integrate human and machine capabilities. Our ultimate goal is to collect applicable techniques into a system supporting rapid prototyping of tactical decision aids. SARGE and CACTUS are vital steps in this process.
A note on the preconditioning for factorization of homogeneous polynomials
Authors: Moritsugu S. , Goto E.
Published: January 2007

This paper proposes a method for the improvement of factorization of homogeneous polynomials by some preconditioning. The result of experimental implementation is given, which shows the effectiveness of our method.
Visual system browser
Authors: Hudlicka E.
Published: January 2007

The Visual System Browser is a tool for viewing the static structure of a software system in terms of trees representing the procedure calls. The focus in the browser's construction was on the ease of use and the flexibility of what can be seen. These two features encourage the user to view the system in many different ways, to "browse" through its call structure by creating a series of customized system views, and thus gradually build a solid understanding of its overall organization. Typical users are experienced programmers who wish to orient themselves within an unfamiliar software system. Since the use of the browser may be occasional, we have chosen a visual, direct-manipulation style of interface, which is easier to learn and retain than a textual command interface. The browser is written in VAX LISP™ and runs under the VMS operating system on a MicroVAX workstation. It currently browses LISP programs.
NYNEX intelligent systems group
Authors: Atwood M. E.
Published: January 2007

The Intelligent Interfaces Group is an interdisciplinary group with interests in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science. The primary mission is to provide research and development support to both the regulated and unregulated business units of NYNEX (the Regional Bell Operating Company for New York and New England). The Group was started in October 1986. The Intelligent Interfaces Group is part of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; other groups in this Laboratory are Expert Systems, Neural Networks and Machine Learning, and Speech Technologies.

Staff members have interests in tutoring systems and tutoring strategies, the design and use of multi-modal communications systems, the evaluation of interactive systems, the development of software toolkits, and similar areas. Projects are selected to support these interests as well as have near-term practical benefits. Some projects are conducted at the request of NYNEX family units, others are initiated by staff members. All projects are funded by NYNEX.
Center for coordination science, MIT
Authors: Malone T. W.
Published: January 2007

The costs and capabilities of information technology are improving by orders of magnitude every decade, but we are only beginning to understand the opportunities these changes provide for new ways of organizing human activity and new kinds of technology to help people work together. The new MIT Center for Coordination Science conducts multidisciplinary research to help understand these possibilities better. Research in the center draws upon many parts of MIT and ongoing projects in a variety of fields, including: computer science, organization theory, psychology, information systems, management science, and economics.

We believe that a powerful source of intellectual leverage on questions about how groups of people can use computers will result from a better understanding of the nature of coordination. Therefore, work in the center focuses on how coordination can occur, both with and without technology. The center includes projects in the following areas:

Coordination technology
- designing and studying innovative computer systems that help people work together in small or large groups (e.g., “groupware”, “computer-supported cooperative work”, and “electronic markets”).

Organizational structures and information technology
- observing, analyzing, and predicting how information technology affects organizational structures and processes and how organizations can use information technology more effectively.

Coordination theory
- developing and testing theories about how the activities of separate actors can be coordinated. These theories are expected to draw upon and illuminate coordination among people and also coordination in distributed or parallel processing computer systems.

In addition to research projects in these areas, the Center also sponsors seminars, workshops, working papers, and conferences.
Generating highly interactive user interfaces
Authors: Wiecha C. , Bennett W. , Boies s. , Gould J.
Published: January 2007

Developers of User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) have demonstrated that separating the application from its user interface supports device independence and customization. Interfaces produced in UIMS are typically crafted by designers expert in human factors and graphic arts. Little attention has been paid, however, to capturing the knowledge of such experts so that interfaces might be automatically generated by the application of style rules to additional applications. This paper considers how toolkits and style rules can be structured so that the resulting interfaces take advantage of the best human factors and graphic arts knowledge, and are consistently styled.
The tourist artificial reality
Authors: Fairchild K. , Meredith G. , Wexelblat A.
Published: January 2007

This paper describes a prototype system designed to meet the needs of the next generation of user interfaces. We address research questions of information complexity, multiple shared semantically-oriented views, and customizable tool environments. Our domain of interest is software systems that require interfaces for teams of people to large bodies of design artifacts. This prototype is built around the metaphor of tourists and tour guides.
Constraint grammars–a new model for specifying graphical applications
Authors: Zanden B. T.
Published: January 2007

User Interface Management Systems often attempt to separate the graphical and nongraphical aspects of an application, but rarely succeed.
Constraint grammars
provide a new model for specifying interfaces that achieves this goal by encapsulating the data structures in a single package, and providing a powerful transformation-based editing model for manipulating them. Constraint grammars incorporate a number of important tools, such as the
part-whole hierarchy, almost hierarchical structures
, and
multidirectional constraints
, that permit designers to specify a wide variety of graphical applications, including simulation systems, program visualization systems, and visual programming environments.
Models of user interactions with graphical interfaces: 1. statistical
Authors: Gillan D. J. , Lewis R. , Rudisill M.
Published: January 2007

Three models of human interactions with computer-displayed statistical graphics were developed and tested in an experiment which examined users' speed and accuracy on identification and comparison questions using 17 graph types. The results indicated that response time and accuracy were influenced by the perceptual and informational complexity of the graph, as well as the relation between the figure and axes, (Model 1); by the physical elements of the graph — points, lines, and areas (Model 2); and by the data-ink ratio and data density (Model 3). The discussion focuses on the development of a single integrated model of interactions with graphics.
Book review: DESIGNING THE USER INTERFACE by Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland 1987)
Authors: Borgman Christine L.
Published: January 2007

Designing the User Interface
consists of two videotapes with a total of five 55-minute sessions that were taped from a telecourse presented by Ben Shneiderman on October 16, 1987. The tapes are accompanied by two photocopied sets of printed materials. One is the set of slides used in the presentation and a bibliography. The other contains six articles by Shneiderman and others and a list of information resources for further study. The 1987 book of the same title [1] is listed as the text for the course, but is not included with the tapes.
Stimulating change through usability testing
Authors: Dumas J. S.
Published: January 2007

Usability testing is often viewed as a way to improve the usability of products. Testing can, however, have a larger, long-range influence on the way an organization develops its products. As a test specialist, you can use a usability test or set of tests to diagnose such factors as the effectiveness of product design technologies, the technical and managerial skills of the people who produce products, and how well the members of a design team are working together. To make diagnoses at this level, you must keep a focus on the underlying causes of the strengths and weaknesses of the usability of products. To have a long-range impact on the way an organization develops products, usability test specialists need to view themselves as change agents. You must involve designers in test planning and execution, and write reports that speak about the underlying causes of the problems users have with products.
The 1988 CSCW: trip report
Authors: Greenberg S.
Published: January 2007

Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is a new research field focused on the role of the computer in group work. On one hand it is technology-driven, motivated by such things as distributed computing, network file systems, electronic messaging, and high-bandwidth communication channels. On the other hand, it is socially-driven, motivated by studies of group interaction.
An empirical approach to the evaluation of icons
Authors: Webb J. M. , Sorenson P. F. , Lyons N. P.
Published: January 2007

This poster provides a definition and taxonomy for iconic communication and describes the use of formal psychological tools and methods in the evaluation of icons. The methods that can be usefully applied include:1. Psychophysics2. Scaling3. Recognition/Memory Testing4. Statistical Modeling/AnalysisExamples of some of these approaches are provided from pilot studies currently under way at HP. Analyses used include Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) and Cluster analysis. Results can be applied to development of metrics, standard methods, and design guidelines.
FINGER—Formalizing Interaction for Gesture Recognition
Authors: Weber G. , Wetzel P.
Published: January 2007

Tactile braille displays and speech output devices help blind computer users to overcome their inability to receive feedback from a screen; nonetheless user interfaces based on graphics for output and pointing devices for input are still unusable by the blind. For example dragging an icon on the screen cannot verbally be described. A tactile representation of an icon also doesn't fit on the canvas of usual braille displays with 20 - 80 braille cells.