XML-Based Static Type Checking and Dynamic Visualization for TCOZ
Timed Communicating Object Z(TCOZ) combines Object-Z's strengths in modelling complex data and state with TCSP's strengths in modeling real-time concurrency. Based on our previous work on the XML environment for TCOZ, this paper firstly demonstrates the development of a type checker for detecting static semantic errors of the TCOZ specification, then illustrates a transformation tool to automatically project TCOZ models into UML statechart diagrams for visualising the dynamic system behaviour.

title: TRMCS in TCOZ
abstract: The design of complex systems requires powerful mechanisms for modeling data, state, communication, and real-time behaviour; as well as for structuring and decomposing systems in order to control local complexity. Timed Communicating Object Z (TCOZ) builds on Object-Z's strengths in modeling complex data and state, and on Timed CSP's strengths in modeling process control and real-time interactions. In this paper, we demonstrate the TCOZ approach to the design and verification of the Teleservices and Remote Medical Care System.

title: A tools environment for developing and reasoning about ontologies
abstract: Started in the beginning of 2001, the semantic Web is regarded by many as the next generation of the Web. Ontology languages are the building blocks of semantic Web as they provide basic vocabularies for data markups: the ontologies. The correctness of shared ontologies is crucial to the proper functioning of agents. Hence ensuring the consistency of ontologies is a central issue in both the design and deployment phases of any semantic Web-aware application. Our experiences show that semantic Web is a novel and fruitful application domain for formal languages and their mature reasoning tool support. In order to ease the application of formal methods and tools to the semantic Web, we developed an integrated tools environment to support systematic development of OWL ontologies and then transformation, reasoning assistance and querying of them.

title: Object-Z web environment and projections to UML
abstract: This paper presents the XML/XSL approach to the development of a web environment for the formal speci cation language Object-Z. The projection techniques and tools from Object-Z (in XML) to UML (in XMI) are developed using XSL Transformations (XSLT). Furthermore, Object-Z (itself) is used to specify and design the essential functionalities of the web environment and the projection tools to UML. In a sense, the paper also demonstrates a formal approach to modeling web applications.

title: SVG Web Environment for Z Specification Language
abstract: This paper presents a web environment for the Z formal specification language using the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) technology. The Z Specification Web Editor (ZSWE) is the first prototype of a web based graphical editor for the Z specification language. It not only supports graphical editing and global accessibility for the Z formal specifications, but also provides model comprehension facilities such as schema expansion, specification navigation and model querying. This paper outlines the requirement, design and implementation of the tool and its future improvements.

title: A Z Approach in Validating ORA-SS Data Models
abstract: The rapid growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in more data being accessed over the Internet. In turn there is an increase in the use of semistructured data, which plays a crucial role in many web applications particularly with the introduction of XML and its related technologies. This increase in use makes the design of good semistructured data structures essential. The Object Relationship Attribute model for Semistructured data (ORA-SS) is a graphical notation for designing and representing semistructured data. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach to formally validate the ORA-SS data models in order to enhance the correctness of semistructured data design. A mathematical semantics for the ORA-SS notation is defined using the Z formal language, and further validation processes are carried out to check the correctness of the semistructured data models at both the schema and instance levels.

title: Mining clickthrough data for collaborative web search
abstract: This paper is to investigate the group behavior patterns of search activities based on Web search history data, i.e., clickthrough data, to boost search performance. We propose a Collaborative Web Search (CWS) framework based on the probabilistic modeling of the co-occurrence relationship among the heterogeneous web objects: users, queries, and Web pages. The CWS framework consists of two steps: (1) a cube-clustering approach is put forward to estimate the semantic cluster structures of the Web objects; (2) Web search activities are conducted by leveraging the probabilistic relations among the estimated cluster structures. Experiments on a real-world clickthrough data set validate the effectiveness of our CWS approach.

title: Selectivity estimation for predictive spatio-temporal queries
abstract: We propose a cost model for selectivity estimation of predictive spatio-temporal window queries. Initially, we focus on uniform data proposing formulae that capture both points and rectangles, and any type of object/query mobility combination (i.e., dynamic objects, dynamic queries or both). Then, we apply the model to nonuniform datasets by introducing spatio-temporal histograms, which in addition to the spatial, also consider the velocity distributions during partitioning. The advantages of our techniques are (i) high accuracy (1-2 orders of magnitude lower error than previous techniques), (ii) ability to handle all query types, and (iii) efficient handling of updates.

title: Analysis of large-scale topological properties for peer-to-peer networks
abstract: In This work we present a thorough study of the topological properties of the Gnutella network, which provides insight into the nature of the underlying system, helps us design high performance algorithms and generates more realistic topologies for simulation experiments. We compare two theoretical models of growing networks with the present real data of the Gnutella network.

title: Stereo Matching Using Belief Propagation
abstract: In this paper, we formulate the stereo matching problem as a Markov network consisting of three coupled Markov random fields (MRF's). These three MRF's model a smooth field for depth/disparity, a line process for depth discontinuity and a binary process for occlusion, respectively. After eliminating the line process and the binary process by introducing two robust functions, we obtain the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation in the Markov network by applying a Bayesian belief propagation (BP) algorithm. Furthermore, we extend our basic stereo model to incorporate other visual cues (e.g., image segmentation) that are not modeled in the three MRF's, and again obtain the MAP solution. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms the state-of-art stereo algorithms for most test cases.

title: User Adaptation for Online Sketchy Shape Recognition
abstract: This paper presents a method of online sketchy shape recognition that can adapt to different user sketching styles. The adaptation principle is based on incremental active learning and dynamic user modeling. Incremental active learning is used for sketchy stroke classification such that important data can actively be selected to train the classifiers. Dynamic user modeling is used to model the user's sketching style in an incremental decision tree, which is then used to recognize the composite shapes dynamically by means of fuzzy matching. Experiments prove the proposed method both effective and efficient for user adaptation in online sketchy shape recognition.