bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Comparing internal and external software quality measurements
Authors: Stavrinoudis Dimitris  , Xenos Michalis
Published: February 2025

Modern software development companies that have a quality assurance program use measurements and standards to improve product quality as perceived by the users of these products. However, during the entire software life cycle, except for the final customers, different types of ‘users’ also appear. This paper firstly shows the different views of software quality of these types of users. It also presents the internal and external measurement methods that we used in order to measure the users' opinion of software quality, the benefits and drawbacks of each method, as well as information concerning the techniques used to conduct internal and external measurements. Surveys and examples showing whether software metrics and external views of quality are correlated are also presented. The aim of this paper is to determine up to what point and in which cases can we rely on software metrics in order to define the users' perception of software quality.
Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Engineering Companies - The Case of Pipeline River Crossings in Greece
Authors: Batzias Fragiskos A.  , Spanidis Philip-Mark P.
Published: February 2025

The introduction of Knowledge Management (KM) processes is suggested herein for bridging knowledge gaps observed during long-term and high complexity engineering projects, like the Natural Gas Project (NGP) of Greece, with a view to deploying a dedicated KM system in engineering companies. The model of three essential knowledge management processes (acquisition, maintenance and sharing) is demonstrated, applying the IDEF0 method of functional analysis and design. The functionality of the introduced KM processes has been proved by a case study referring to a pipeline river crossing sub-project.
Experiments in Translating CSP∥B to Handel-C
Authors: Schneider Steve  , Treharne Helen  , McEwan Alistair  , Ifill Wilson
Published: February 2025

This paper considers the issues involved in translating specifications described in the CSP∥B formal method into Handel-C. There have previously been approaches to translating CSP descriptions to Handel-C, and the work presented in this paper is part of a programme of work to extend it to include the B component of a CSP∥B description. Handel-C is a suitable target language because of its capability of programming communication and state, and its compilation route to hardware. The paper presents two case studies that investigate aspects of the translation: a buffer case study, and an abstract arbiter case study. These investigations have exposed a number of issues relating to the translation of the B component, and have identified a range of options available, informing more recent work on the development of a style for CSP∥B specifications particularly appropriate to translation to Handel-C.
Solving the Santa Claus Problem: a Comparison of Various Concurrent Programming Techniques
Authors: Hurt Jason  , Pedersen Jan B.
Published: February 2025

The Santa Claus problem provides an excellent exercise in concurrent programming and can be used to show the simplicity or complexity of solving problems using a particular set of concurrency mechanisms and offers a comparison of these mechanisms. Shared-memory constructs, message passing constructs, and process oriented constructs will be used in various programming languages to solve the Santa Claus Problem. Various concurrency mechanisms available will be examined and analyzed as to their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Tock: One Year On
Authors: Sampson Adam T.  , Brown Neil C.C.
Published: February 2025

Tock is a compiler for concurrent programming languages under development at the University of Kent. It translates occam-π and Rain into portable, high-performance C or C++. It is implemented in Haskell using the nanopass approach, and aims to make it easy to experiment with new language and compiler features. Since our initial presentation of Tock at CPA 2007, we have added new frontends and back-ends, implemented a parallel usage checker based on the Omega test, improved the effectiveness of Tock's test suite, developed more efficient tree traversals using generic programming – and more besides! In this fringe session, we will describe our recent work on Tock, discuss our plans for the project, and show how it can be of use to other process-oriented programming researchers.
Introducing JCSP Networking 2.0
Authors: Chalmers Kevin
Published: February 2025

The original implementation of JCSP Networking is based on the T9000 model of virtual channels across a communications mechanism, and can be considered sufficiently adequate for applications which are not resource constrained or liable to connection failure. However, work undertaken has revealed a number of limitations due to excessive resource usage, lack of sufficient error handling, reliance on Java serialization, and reliance on now deprecated features of JCSP. These problems reflect badly when considering JCSP Networking in a broader sense beyond the normal desktop. In this talk, a brief overview on how these problems have been overcome is presented. This will be followed by some tutorial examples on how to use JCSP Networking 2.0. This should be familiar to current JCSP Networking users, but new additions to the library should make it easier for novices to get started. The new underlying protocol is also presented, which should enable interoperability between various platforms beyond the Java desktop environment. The new version of JCSP Networking is currently available from the JCSP Subversion repository, under the Networking-2 branch. Details are available at http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/jcsp/.
Santa Claus – with Mobile Reindeer and Elves
Authors: Welch Peter H.  , Pedersen Jan B.
Published: February 2025

Mobile processes, along with mobile channels, enable process networks to be dynamic: they may change their size (number of processes, channels, barriers) and shape (connection topology) as they run – much like living organisms. One of the benefits is that all connections do not have to be established statically, in advance of when they are needed and open to abuse. In classical occam, care had to be taken by processes not to use channels when they were not in the right state to use them. With occam-π mobiles, we can arrange that processes simply do not have those channels until they get into the right state – and not having such channels means that their misuse cannot even be expressed! Of course, it is a natural consequence of mobile system design that the arrivals of channels (or barriers or processes) are the very events triggering their exploitation. In our explorations so far with occam-π, we have taken advantage of the mobility of data, channels and barriers and seen very good results. Very little work has been done with mobile processes: the ability to send and receive processes through channels, plug them into local networks, fire them up, stand them down and move them on again. This talk illustrates mobile process design through a solution to Tronø's classical Santa Claus Problem. The reindeer and elves are modeled as mobile processes that move through holiday resorts, stables, work benches, waiting rooms, Santa's Grotto and back again. All those destinations are also processes – though static ones. As the reindeer and elves arrive at each stage, they plug in and do business. We will show the occam-π mechanisms supporting mobile processes, confess to one weakness and consider remedies. The occam-π solution did, of course, run correctly the first time it passed the stringent safety checks of the compiler and is available as open source (http://www.santaclausproblem.net).
A proposal for an Interactive Ontology Design Process based on Formal Concept Analysis
Authors: Bendaoud Rokia  , Napoli Amedeo  , Toussaint Yannick
Published: February 2025

Building a domain ontology usually requires several resources of different types, e.g. thesaurus, object taxonomies, terminologies, data-bases, sets of documents, etc. where objects are described in terms of attributes and relations with other objects. One important and hard problem is to be able to combine and merge knowledge units extracted from these different resources within the representation formalism supporting the ontology. The purpose of this paper is to show which kinds of resources can be taken as starting points for building an ontology, using FCA and its extension RCA. A real-world example in microbiology is proposed, detailing the interaction with domain experts during the ontology design process. Finally, an evaluation based on recall and precision gives an idea of the efficiency of the approach and points out several research perspectives.
Can Evolution Strategies Improve Learning Guidance in XCS? Design and Comparison with Genetic Algorithms based XCS
Authors: Morales-Ortigosa Sergio  , Orriols-Puig Albert  , Bernadó-Mansilla Ester
Published: February 2025

XCS is a complex machine learning technique that combines credit apportionment techniques for rule evaluation with genetic algorithms for rule discovery to evolve a distributed set of sub-solutions online. Recent research on XCS has mainly focused on achieving a better understanding of the reinforcement component, yielding several improvements to the architecture. Nonetheless, studies on the rule discovery component of the system are scarce. In this paper, we experimentally study the discovery component of XCS, which is guided by a steady-state genetic algorithm. We design a new procedure based on evolution strategies and adapt it to the system. Then, we compare in detail XCS with both genetic algorithms and evolution strategies on a large collection of real-life problems, analyzing in detail the interaction of the different genetic operators and their contribution in the search for better rules. The overall analysis shows the competitiveness of the new XCS based on evolution strategies and increases our understanding of the behavior of the different genetic operators in XCS.
Trading Paper Clips – An Analysis of “Trading Up” in Artificial Societies without Altruists
Authors: Cabanillas David  , Willmott Steven  , Cortés Ulises
Published: February 2025

The remarkable recent story of Kyle MacDonald who, by means of a sequence of bartering exchanges between July 2005 and July 2006, managed to trade a small red paperclip for a full sized house in the town of Kipling Saskatchewan has inspired interesting debates about the nature of such feats and questions as to how they might come about. While bartering is arguably the world's oldest form of trade, there are still cases such as this which surprise us. Although there are many factors to consider in Kyle's achievement, his feat raises basic questions about the nature of the trades made and to what extent they are repeatable.
Conflict-Driven Clause Learning SAT Solvers
Authors: Marques-Silva Joao  , Lynce Ines  , Malik Sharad
Published: February 2025

One of the most important paradigm shifts in the use of SAT solvers for solving industrial problems has been the introduction of clause learning. Clause learning entails adding a new clause for each conflict during backtrack search. This new clause prevents the same conflict from occurring again during the search process. Moreover, sophisticated techniques such as the identification of unique implication points in a graph of implications, allow creating clauses that more precisely identify the assignments responsible for conflicts. Learned clauses often have a large number of literals. As a result, another paradigm shift has been the development of new data structures, namely lazy data structures, which are particularly effective at handling large clauses. These data structures are called lazy due to being in general unable to provide the actual status of a clause. Efficiency concerns and the use of lazy data structures motivated the introduction of dynamic heuristics that do not require knowing the precise status of clauses. This chapter describes the ingredients of conflict-driven clause learning SAT solvers, namely conflict analysis, lazy data structures, search restarts, conflict-driven heuristics and clause deletion strategies.
Stochastic Boolean Satisfiability
Authors: Majercik Stephen M.
Published: February 2025

Stochastic satisfiability (SSAT) is an extension of satisfiability (SAT) that merges two important areas of artificial intelligence: logic and probabilistic reasoning. Initially suggested by Papadimitriou, who called it a “game against nature”, SSAT is interesting both from a theoretical perspective—it is complete for PSPACE, an important complexity class—and from a practical perspective—a broad class of probabilistic planning problems can be encoded and solved as SSAT instances. This chapter describes SSAT and its variants, their computational complexity, applications of SSAT, analytical results, algorithms and empirical results, related work, and directions for future work.
Algebraic Framework for Reverse Engineering on Specifications
Authors: Cafezeiro Isabel  , Haeusler Edward Hermann
Published: February 2025

This paper focuses on the problem of providing a well founded framework to make possible the reverse engineering on algebraic specifications. The paper considers existing and well-accepted formalizations for operations to compose specifications and propose a categorical formalization to operations to break specifications. The concept of categorical limit is adopted, and categorical equalizers are proposed to formalize operations to hide components of specifications. The proposed formalizations complete an algebraic framework that makes possible the manipulation of specifications, composing and decomposing old specifications in order to obtain a better use of existing specification.
Avatars Animation using Reinforcement Learning in 3D Distributed Dynamic Virtual Environments
Authors: Orozco Héctor Rafael  , Ramos Félix  , Zaragoza Jaime  , Thalmann Daniel
Published: February 2025

The animation problem of avatars or virtual creatures using learning, involves research areas such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Sciences, Virtual Reality, among others. This work presents a Machine Learning approach using Reinforcement Learning and a Knowledge Base for animating avatars. This Knowledge Base (ontology) provides the avatar with semantic definition and necessary awareness of its internal structure (skeleton), its behavior (personality, emotions and moods), its learned skills, and also of the rules that govern its environment. In order to animate and control the behavior of these virtual creatures in 3D Distributed Dynamic Virtual Environments, we use Knowledge-Based Conscious and Affective Personified Emotional Agents as a type of logical agents, within the GeDA-3D Agent Architecture. We focus on the definition of minimum conscience of the avatars. The conscience and cognitive processes of the avatars allow them to solve the animation and behavior problems in a more natural way. An avatar needs to have minimum conscience for computing the autonomous animation. In our approach, the avatar uses the Knowledge Base first as a part of its conscience, and second to implement a set of algorithms that constitute its cognitive knowledge.
Service Oriented Architecture Application for Latvian Public Sector E-service Development
Authors: Semenchuk Pavel  , Kornienko Yuri  , Narnicka Vita
Published: February 2025

At present time, a few integration and e-service development projects were started in Latvia. One of them is Integrated State Information System (ISIS, Latvian abbreviation IVIS), which was started in January, 2006. Customer and provider of this project is the Secretariat of Special Assignments Minister for Electronic Government Affairs (SSAMEGA)). This project solution forms the infrastructure for e-service development. The infrastructure is already accessible for e-service designers and developers since the middle of 2007. There are 12 e-services, which were developed using ISIS infrastructure, already accessible for Latvian inhabitants on Latvian government e-service portal (www.latvija.lv). It is planned to release else 18 new e-services till the end of 2008. ISIS is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles and includes many individual innovations and modern solutions. The paper describes development architecture and innovations, which are used in ISIS solution and in the current government projects.
Forward-Secure Hierarchical IBE with Applications to Broadcast Encryption
Authors: Yao Danfeng (Daphne)  , Fazio Nelly  , Dodis Yevgeniy  , Lysyanskaya Anna
Published: February 2025

A forward-secure encryption scheme protects secret keys from exposure by evolving the keys with time. Forward security has several unique requirements in hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) scheme: (1) users join dynamically; (2) encryption is joining-time-oblivious; (3) users evolve secret keys autonomously.
Pairings on Elliptic Curves
Authors: Vercauteren Frederik
Published: February 2025

This chapter presents an overview of the various pairings on elliptic curves used in pairing based cryptography and explains the necessary mathematical background. Several constructions of pairing friendly elliptic curves are also reviewed.
Generalized IBE in the Exponent-Inversion Framework
Authors: Boyen Xavier
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an abstraction for the class of Exponent-Inversion IBE exemplified by the ℬℬ2and 𝒮𝒦 schemes, and, on the basis of that abstraction, to show that those schemes do support interesting and useful extensions such as HIBE and ABE.
Automated Legal Assessment in OWL 2
Authors: van de Ven Saskia  , Breuker Joost  , Hoekstra Rinke  , Wortel Lars
Published: February 2025

In this paper we describe HARNESS, a legal knowledge-based system that is developed in the context of ESTRELLA. This system is primarily aimed at the task of legal assessment, i.e. determining whether some case violates and/or complies with legal norms. We explain how the sound and complete reasoning provided by OWL-DL reasoners is exploited by a careful representation of norms, using examples from law on taxation of gifts. We describe a plugin for Protégé 4 that enables easy experimentation for this system, powered by Pellet.
E-government in Flemish Municipalities
Authors: Rotthier Sabine  , De Rynck Filip
Published: February 2025

Theoretical models that represent the growth process of e-government are derived by iterating different phases. The ideal final phase as proposed in these models is a transformed government that offers the provision of services to its citizens in an integrated way. All of the Flemish municipalities have been online for several years now. Developments in the back office appear in practice not to extend further than the first phase of automation. This chapter focuses on the internal and external variables that explain this, such as a lack of capacity, expensive and incompatible applications, dependence on suppliers and the absence of central control. This chapter even goes a step further by stating that a strong automation phase militates against the completion of an integrated provision of services.
Finite-State Local Grammars for Disambiguating Conjunctions in Portuguese Proper Names
Authors: Eleutério Samuel  , Ranchhod Elisabete
Published: February 2025

Like common noun phrases, proper names contain ambiguous conjoined phrases that make their delimitation and classification difficult in text. This paper presents a finite-state approach to the disambiguation of Portuguese candidate proper name strings containing the coordinating conjunction e (and). In such name strings, the conjunction can denote a relation between two independent names, but it can also be part of a multiword proper name. The coordination of multiword independent names may involve ellipsis of some lexical constituents, which causes additional difficulties to proper name identification and classification.
Regular Expressions and Predicate Logic in Finite-State Language Processing
Authors: Hulden Mans
Published: February 2025

This paper proposes an extension to the formalism of regular expressions with a form of predicate logic where quantified propositions apply to substrings. The implementation hinges crucially on the manipulation of auxiliary symbols which has been a common, though previously unsystematized practice in finite-state language processing. We also apply the notation to give alternate compilation methods for two-level grammars and various types of replacement rules found in the literature, and show that, under a certain interpretation, two-level rules and many types of replacement rules are equivalent.
Particle Swarm Optimization for clustering short-text corpora
Authors: Ingaramo Diego  , Errecalde Marcelo  , Cagnina Leticia  , Rosso Paolo
Published: February 2025

Clustering of short-text collections is a very relevant research area, given the current and future mode for people to use “small-language” (e.g. blogs, snippets, news and text-message generation such as email or chat). In recent years, a few approaches based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) have been proposed to solve document clustering problems. However, the particularities that arise when this kind of approaches are used for clustering corpora containing very short documents have not received too much attention by the computational linguistic community, maybe due to the high challenge that this problem implies. In this work, we propose some variants of PSO methods to deal with this kind of corpora. Our proposal includes two very different approaches to the clustering problem, which essentially differ in the representations used for maintaining the information about the clusterings under consideration. In our approach, we used two unsupervised measures of cluster validity to be optimized: the Expected Density Measureand the Global Silhouette coefficient. In recent works on short-text clustering, these measures have shown an interesting correlation level with the “true” categorizations provided by a human expert. The experimental results show that PSO-based approaches can be highly competitive alternatives for clustering short-text corpora and can, in some cases, outperform the performance of the most effective clustering algorithms used in this area.
Public Private Partnership: Bridging e-Services Implementation in Remote Area
Authors: Sirisaengtaksin Jantima
Published: February 2025

e-Revenue initiative of Thailand Ministry of Finance has been a showcase under the country e-Government development in the recent decade. The prominent record to prove of the success is Tax Filing that hits almost 80% of the eligible taxpayers in filing their personal income tax through internet in 2008. The Revenue Department is now trying to extend its tax collection to remote area where potential online service is prone. Pubic Private Partnership or PPP approach has been applied to help make IT-ready for such high demand community like Koh Tao island, located about 75 kilometers from the coast of Suratthani province to pay tax online. The PPP effort for this online service project is elaborated in many key aspects including Processes, Preparation and Implementation.
Use of Semantics to Build an Academic Writing Community Environment
Authors: Bajanki Sirisha  , Kaufhold Kathrin  , Le Bek Alex  , Dimitrova Vania  , Lau Lydia  , O'Rourke Rebecca  , Walker Aisha
Published: February 2025

Writing a dissertation is a critical aspect of the learning experience for most university students in all disciplines. It is often accompanied by anxiety and uncertainty, which supervisors often struggle to understand and address. A community-driven approach to support dissertation writing based on semantic social scaffolding is presented here. The paper describes how a semantic wiki was tailored to develop a social writing environment to provide holistic support throughout the whole dissertation process. Based on initial evaluation studies, we discuss the benefits and pitfalls of semantics. The work contributes to a recent research strand that examines how to exploit new social computing technologies to develop effective learning environments.
Scaffolding effective help-seeking behaviour in mastery and performance oriented learners
Authors: Harris Amanda  , Bonnett Victoria  , Luckin Rosemary  , Yuill Nicola  , Avramides Katerina
Published: February 2025

In order to build learning systems that care we need to increase our understanding of the affective and motivational dimensions of learning. This will allow us to develop a model of our learners which extends beyond their behaviours to the feelings and motivations which underlie those behaviours. In this paper we focus on children's (10 yrs) help-seeking behaviour when using an interactive learning environment (ILE) called Ecolab II. We relate help-seeking strategies to lachievement goal orientation (AGO) by constructing detailed child profiles and directly observing behaviour.
Personal Access Tutor
Authors: Risco Silviu  , Reye Jim
Published: February 2025

The paper describes Personal Access Tutor (PAT),an Intelligent Tutoring System which helps students to learn how to create forms and reports in MS Access. We present the architecture and components of PAT and also the services that PAT provides to the students. Results for an external (system) evaluation of PAT (both qualitative and quantitative data) are presented and discussed.
A Study on the Automatic Selection of Candidate Sentences Distractors
Authors: Aldabe Itziar  , Maritxalar Montse  , Mitkov Ruslan
Published: February 2025

The paper outlines a system for generating multiple-choice tests on the choice of English verbs. In particular, the selection of candidate sentences and distractors are discussed in detail. The system is an extension of a system which generates language tests for Basque.
Recommendations support in standard-based learning management systems
Authors: Santos Olga C.
Published: February 2025

This research is focused on a semantic recommendations model that affects the life cycle of eLearning and can be used to build a knowledge-based recommender system to provide adaptive capabilities to existing learning management systems with the aim to support users in an inclusive and personalized way.
The Use of IRT for Adaptive Item Selection in Item-Based Learning Environments
Authors: Wauters Kelly  , van den Noortgate Wim  , Desmet Piet
Published: February 2025

The popularity of learning environments is increasing rapidly. In order to make learning environments more efficient, researchers have been matching the item difficulty to the learner's proficiency, as is done in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) by means of the item response theory (IRT). Even though some researchers have already implemented ideas of CAT and IRT for adaptive item selection in learning environments, some differences between testing and learning environments have been overlooked. In this study we focus on those differences that may require an adaptation of these existing CAT and IRT methods.
Towards An Ontology Infrastructure for Electromagnetism
Authors: Esposito Alessandra  , Tarricone Luciano  , Vallone Laura  , Zappatore Marco
Published: February 2025

Ontologies are more and more adopted to provide knowledge sharing and reuse, and to promote cooperation between several scientific fields. An increasing need of cooperation and resource sharing is emerging in the electromagnetic arena as well. The range of potential semantic-based applications seems to be wide and the knowledge to be codified is complex and diverse. Therefore the implementation of a well structured ontology in the electromagnetic domain is important. This paper describes a proposal for an electromagnetic ontology framework. The main design criteria were reusability and shareability, in order to make electromagnetic knowledge embeddable in larger and more general frameworks. The implementation of an ontology for aperture-antenna array design is provided as a specific example of a practical application.
CQA-ENV: An Integrated Environment for the Continuous Quality Assessment of Software Artifacts
Authors: Torre Damiano  , Blasco Belen  , Genero Marcela  , Piattini Mario
Published: February 2025

At present, the quality of software artefacts is an increasing concern for software development organizations. It is widely acknowledged that the quality of the software product that is finally implemented is influenced to an enormous extent by the quality of software artefacts (commonly models) that are produced throughout the software development process. Quality assessment and assurance techniques must therefore be applied from the early development stages onwards. The quality of the models is gaining even more relevance with the appearance of the Model Driven Development Model paradigm, which consists in the production of software as successive transformations of models. Although some methodologies for evaluating the quality of software artefacts do exist, all of them are isolated proposals, which focus on specific artefacts and apply specific assessment techniques. There is no generic and flexible methodology that allows the quality assessment of any kind of software artefact, regardless of type, much less a tool that supports it. When tackling this problem in this paper, we propose an integrated environment called “CQA-ENV”, consisting of a) Methodology for the continuous quality assessment of software artefacts, based on the ISO 14598 standard and other relevant proposals, 2) A set of tools that supports such methodology, which is composed of a vertical tool (CQA-Tool) that supports the methodology, along with several specific tools for the assessment of the different software artefacts. Current evaluation tools will also be able to be plugged into this generic tool. Moreover, the CQA-Tool provides a capacity for building a catalogue of assessment techniques that integrates available assessment techniques (e.g. metrics, checklists, modelling conventions, guidelines, etc.) for each software artefact. CQA-ENV can also be used by companies that offer software quality assessment services, especially for clients who are software development organisations, outsourcing software construction, thus obtaining an independent quality evaluation of the software products they acquire. Software development organisations that perform their own evaluation will be able to use it as well.
Mobile Computing and Urban Systems: A Literature Review
Authors: Jahns Veit
Published: February 2025

Using mobile systems in urban systems is a research subject, which was addressed in the last year by several research projects and research papers. Thus, the research field of mobile systems in urban systems becomes more complex and more diversified. In such a situation an analyzing look at the research work done so far can provide valuable insights. Hence, in this paper a work in progress for a review of literature regarding the design, use and impact of mobile systems in urban systems will be presented. In this review a verbal approach will be used, which will be based on a reference framework. This reference framework will be mainly designed with respect to the research methods and research questions applied respectively discussed in the evaluated literature, so that in the end of the review conclusions regarding future research questions in the field of mobile and urban systems can be drawn.
Adaptive Learning Using Moodle And Handheld Devices
Authors: Agudo J. Enrique  , Rico Mercedes
Published: February 2025

In addition to performing the function for which they were created, handheld devices are also provider of all kind of material through its integrated internet connectivity, enabling users to access and play multimedia information (pictures, videos, music, podcast, etc.), read news on screen, and complete educational activities. Regarding its role of learning facilitator, the challenge is to ensure that mobile devices are capable of presenting content considering the features of specific users. Our proposal is consequently focused on the integration of an adaptive learning architecture into the management platform Moodle, application which is conveniently enhanced by the incorporation of mobile devices into the adaptive platform by providing mobile access to Moodle. Thus, the adaptive architecture presents the educational tasks to the client by means of interactive Flash activities which make possible both the adaptation of the educational content and the presentation of such content to handheld device capabilities.
Generic Object Recognition in Urban Image Databases
Authors: Baró Xavier  , Escalera Sergio  , Radeva Petia  , Vitrià Jordi
Published: February 2025

In this paper we propose the construction of a visual content layer which describes the visual appearance of geographic locations in a city. We captured, by means of a Mobile Mapping system, a huge set of georeferenced images (>500K) which cover the whole city of Barcelona. For each image, hundreds of region descriptions are computed off-line and described as a hash code. All this information is extracted without an object of reference, which allows to search for any type of objects using their visual appearance. A new Visual Content layer is built over Google Maps, allowing the object recognition information to be organized and fused with other content, like satellite images, street maps, and business locations.
Shout and Act
Authors: de la Rosa Josep Lluis  , Trias Albert  , Martorano Antoni  , Colomeda Eloi  , Huerva David  , del Acebo Esteve
Published: February 2025

Shout and Act (S&A) is an evolution of Bar Systems, a family of algorithms for different classes of complex optimization problems in static and dynamic environments by reactive multi agent systems. We adapt these systems to RoboRescue, where robots explore land looking for victims. When they find someone they “shout” so that robot mates can hear it. The louder the shout, the most important or urgent the finding. Louder shouts can also refer to closeness. Several experiments show that this system works very scalably, and how heterogeneous teams of robots outperform homogeneous ones over a range of task complexity. Finally, our results impact the design of RoboRescue teams: a properly designed combination of robots is cheaper and more scalable when confronted with uncertain maps of victims.
Designing a Mathematically Verified I
Authors: Klomp Arjen  , Roebbers Herman  , Derwig Ruud  , Bouwmeester Leon
Published: February 2025

This paper describes the application of the Analytical Software Design methodology to the development of a mathematically verified I2C device driver for Linux. A model of an I2C controller from NXP is created, against which the driver component is modelled. From within the ASD tool the composition is checked for deadlock, livelock and other concurrency issues by generating CSP from the models and checking these models with the CSP model checker FDR. Subsequently C code is automatically generated which, when linked with a suitable Linux kernel runtime, provides a complete defect-free Linux device driver. The performance and footprint are comparable to handwritten code.
Resumable Java Bytecode – Process Mobility for the JVM
Authors: Pedersen Jan Bækgaard  , Kauke Brian
Published: February 2025

This paper describes an implementation of resumable and mobile processes for a new process-oriented language called ProcessJ. ProcessJ is based on CSP and the π-calculus; it is structurally very close to occam-π, but the syntax is much closer to the imperative part of Java (with new constructs added for process orientation). One of the targets of ProcessJ is Java bytecode to be executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and in this paper we describe how to implement the process mobility features of ProcessJ with respect to the Java Virtual Machine. We show how to add functionality to support resumability (and process mobility) by a combination of code rewriting (adding extra code to the generated Java target code), as well as bytecode rewriting.
Three Unique Implementations of Processes for PyCSP
Authors: Friborg Rune Møllegaard  , Bjørndalen John Markus  , Vinter Brian
Published: February 2025

In this work we motivate and describe three unique implementations of processes for PyCSP: process, thread and greenlet based. The overall purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of Communicating Sequential Processes as a framework for different application types and target platforms. The result is a set of three implementations of PyCSP with identical interfaces to the point where a PyCSP developer need only change which implementation is imported to switch to any of the other implementations. The three implementations have different strengths; processes favors parallel processing, threading portability and greenlets favor many processes with frequent communication. The paper includes examples of applications in all three categories.
Algorithms and topographic mapping for epileptic seizures recognition and prediction
Authors: Mammone N.  , La Foresta F.  , Inuso G.  , Morabito F.C.  , Aguglia U.  , Cianci V.
Published: February 2025

Epileptic seizures seem to result from an abnormal synchronization of different areas of the brain, as if a kind of recruitment occurred from a critical area towards other areas of the brain, until the brain can no longer bear the extent of this recruitment and it triggers the seizure in order to reset this abnormal condition. In order to catch these recruitment phenomena, a technique based on entropy is introduced to study the synchronization of the electric activity of neuronal sources in the brain. This technique was tested over 25 EEG dataset from patients affected by absence seizures as well as on 40 EEG dataset from healthy subjects. The results show an abnormal coupling among the electrodes that will be involved in seizure development can be hypothesized before the seizure itself, in particular, the frontal/temporal area appears steadily associated to an underlying high synchrony in absence seizure patients.
The TRIPLE Hybrid Cognitive Architecture: Connectionist Aspects
Authors: Grinberg Maurice  , Haltakov Vladimir
Published: February 2025

This paper introduces a recently proposed hybrid cognitive model, called TRIPLE focusing on its connectionist aspects. They are demonstrated on a series of schematic and realistic examples of analogy based retrieval from memory. The model integrates three modules which run in parallel: serial reasoning, connectionist and emotion engines. The serial reasoning engine deals with the current task, processes perceptual input, plans and performs actions, and synchronizes the activity the other two engines. Its special feature is formal reasoning. This paper focuses on the connectionist engine and the formalism behind it and how it compares to existing approaches. The connectionist engine can be considered as standalone model of retrieval from memory and mapping to the current task. It is based on a series of distributed re-representations of semantic net like symbolic localist representations of knowledge. The distributed representation building mechanisms proposed can reflect taxonomic, relational, semantic or other structure of the long term memory. The representations obtained are made dynamic by a complementary activation spreading process. The mapping-to-task mechanisms of the connectionist module are based on a dynamic similarity evaluation between task and memory content and simultaneous selection of the best mappings by a constraint satisfaction network.
On Mitigating Covert Channels in RFID-Enabled Supply Chains
Authors: Chawla Kirti  , Robins Gabriel  , Weimer Westley
Published: February 2025

In a competitive business environment, RFID technology can help a business to optimize its supply chain. However, it may also enable an adversary using covert channels to surreptitiously learn sensitive information about the supply chain of a target business. We argue that the tracking of tags and the compromising of readers can create covert channels in the supply chain and cause detrimental market effects. To mitigate such attacks, we propose a framework that enables a business to monitor its supply chain in a fine-grained manner. We model the supply chain as a network flow graph, select key nodes to verify the tag flow, and actively search for covert channels. We note that optimal checkpoint node selection is NP-Complete, propose node selection and flow verification heuristics with various tradeoffs, and discuss appropriate countermeasures against covert channels detected in the supply chain. These practical methods can be implemented economically using current RFID technology.
The Case for Dynamic RFID Tag Authentication
Authors: Robshaw M.J.B.  , Poschmann A.
Published: February 2025

RFID tag authentication is widely viewed as a valuable tool in the fight against product counterfeiting. In this paper we describe some of the different approaches that have been proposed and we focus on what is arguably the most secure; that of dynamic tag authentication. We highlight different ways of supporting dynamic tag authentication and provide the latest implementation results. The net result is that dynamic authentication using on-tag cryptography is a reality and should be considered for deployment before other less secure options. As a sideresult we note that the on-tag overhead when supporting an asymmetric rather than a symmetric cryptographic solution can be surprisingly light.
Cardiac Performance and Hemodynamics
Authors: Boissiere Julien  , Nottin Stéphane
Published: February 2025

Cardiac performance is a major determinant of aerobic fitness. It depends on cardiac output that can be varied by changes in stroke volume (SV) and heart rate (HR). SV is driven by numerous factors such as loading conditions (i.e. preload and afterload) and intrinsic myocardial properties (i.e. contractility, relaxation). During exercise, cardiac sympathetic activity increases HR and both ventricular contractility and relaxation. Venous return increases, due to both sympathetic vasomotor nerves that induces venoconstriction in the splanchnic circulation and skelatal muscle contractions that compress veins in the limbs. Moreover, afterload decreases consequently to the vasodilation in the exercise skeletal muscles that induces a fall in systemic vascular resistances. Human studies observed that, as a result of these adaptations within the heart and outside it, SV increases from rest to submaximal exercise (about 50 of maximal aerobic power), and then remains constant from submaximal to maximal exercise, that can be explained by a lower LV filling time compensated by a higher myocardial contractility. HR increases in proportion to oxygen consumption and reaches a maximum of about 180–200 beat per minute during maximal exercise in young adults. The changes in SV and HR result in a drop of cardiac output from 4–7 L. min−1at rest to 15–20 L. min−1. Cardiac performance can be improved by aerobic training. At rest, trained subjects exhibited a cardiac enlagement named as “athlete's heart” and including increases in LV chamber size and wall thickness. LV systolic function appears to be normal in athletes, both when measured at rest and during exercise. LV diastolic function is on average normal at rest, but enhanced during exercise wich favours adequate filling of the LV at high heart rate. These adaptations result in a higher cardiac reserve during effort in athletes. On overall, cardiac performance during exercise has been evaluated mainly using hemodynamics parameters such as mitral filling patterns or ejection fraction. New non-invasive tools based on Doppler echocardiography (e.g. Tissue Doppler or speckle tracking imaging) and cardiac magnetic resonnance imaging have the potential to evaluate intrinsic myocardial performance in the future.
Ventilatory Thresholds, Lactic Thresholds and Maximal Lactate Steady State Concept
Authors: Beneke Ralph
Published: February 2025

More than 200 years ago lactate and oxygen had been identified as important chemical components and shortly later they were linked with metabolism and physical activity. Compared to these roots, threshold concepts as measures of aerobic fitness are relative recent developments invented during the second half of the last century. All thresholds are based on specific patterns of individual or combined increases in measures such as lactate, oxygen uptake, carbon dioxide production and ventilation during exercise tests with an increasing workload. Thresholds are supposed to identify objectively the transition from one to another metabolic state related to aerobic and anaerobic components of energy metabolism. They are useful measures of aerobic fitness and may monitor selected adaptations to training more sensitively than the maximum oxygen uptake. However, different threshold concepts and testing procedures provide different estimates of aerobic fitness, which are not directly comparable. The maximal lactate steady state is no unique threshold concept. It shall indicate the highest prolonged constant workload that can be sustained without anaerobic energy. At higher exercise intensity some anaerobic energy is required as indicated by a continuous increase in lactate over time whilst the workload is kept constant. The maximal lactate steady state has been used to validate selected threshold concepts. Workloads detected by most threshold concepts and the maximal lactate steady state are equally well correlated with best performances in testing and competition, and with multiple exercise intensities predicted or observed in prospective or observatory training studies. However, there is no evidence that any specific threshold or the maximal lactate steady state directly predicts an optimal training load. There is a vital need for multi-disciplinary integrative and applied research to close the increasing gap between the rapid growth in the understanding of factors and mechanisms regulating and limiting metabolism on cellular and molecular level and the corresponding complex interplay of effects on whole body performance and non- and minimal invasive measures of physiological acute responses.
Anaerobic Power and Capacity
Authors: Chamari Karim  , Chaouachi Anis  , Racinais Sebastien
Published: February 2025

Muscle performance is commonly assessed on the field by various test procedure based on jump(s) or sprint(s). This chapter presents a review of the classical jump and sprint test, their methodology, their utility and their limitations. Less functional than these tests reproducing a sport movement are the tests and training methods based on isolated muscle contraction. These contractions can be isometric, eccentric, concentric, isokinetic or free. Training adaptations are dependent of contraction velocity or articulation angle. Training adaptations as well as fatigue effects are dependent of both peripheral (e.g., muscle) and central (e.g., neural drive) modifications. Lastly, the reproducibility of some standard test is presented.