TOMSCOP - a synchronous P2P collaboration platform over JXTA
We focus on design and implementation of a synchronous P2P (peer-to-peer) collaboration platform called TOMSCOP (Technology Of Multiuser Synchronous Collaboration Platform). Based on the elementary peer group services offered by the JXTA general framework, TOMSCOP provides the extra four types of services: synchronous message transportation, peer room administration, peer communication support and application space management. By using the four services, different kinds of shared applications for various specific purposes can be relatively easily developed and associated collaborative cyber spaces or communities can be quickly built across the JXTA virtual network overlaid on top of the existing physical networks.

title: A general purpose virtual collaboration room
abstract: The general purpose virtual collaboration room (VCR) is an Internet based desktop groupware system that enables a group of remote individuals to flexibly and naturally conduct their collaborative teaching/learning/working without constraints on collaboration types, working styles, group scales, and system platforms. To cope with the complexity, a room metaphor, i.e., emulating a physical room and objects in it, is used as a framework of the system. System implementation becomes no more complex than the case of using one object by identifying associated objects in communication messages between a room server and clients. The VCR provides rich and effective support of awareness of the user, object, space, and their mutual relations. With the use of Java applets for system implementations, users can enter and use a VCR from any standard Java enabled Web browser.

title: A principled approach for formative Web learning assessment and adaptive tutoring
abstract: Web based distance learning is a trend of instruction delivery. One of the most difficult challenges of such a learning mechanism is the assessment of students' learning criteria. It is hard to judge the behavior of a student since the instructor is separated spatially and temporally from the students. However, it is possible to rely on some Web based tools to keep track of a student's course attendance, as well as the navigation behavior of that student. In addition, the navigation behavior of an individual can be compared to those of others. Analysis can be conducted, and an interactive tutorial can be generated to assist the student with a poor score. The paper proposes such a mechanism, as well as its supporting system run on Windows browsers.

title: Macro University
abstract: This paper discusses the technical issues related to the Macro University framework. First we present the characteristics of the Macro University, from which the design principles are derived. Then we describe Macro University's software architecture and networking infrastructure. Since the Macro University is a federation of virtual universities, the format and protocol for open information exchange will be very important. Another often neglected issue is the technical tools to facilitate evaluation and assessment. A third issue is a universal interface for distance learning.

title: The specification and implementation of a virtual university software system
abstract: Distance learning is one of the interesting research topics of distributed computing. This paper discusses a joint research project between the University of Aizu in Japan and Tamkang University in Taiwan. A software system supporting virtual university operations is proposed. The software architecture is designed based on three criteria of virtual university operations: administration, awareness and assessment. Specifications of each tools in the system are proposed, with some implementation details and solutions being discussed. We also point out some interesting research directions in the realization of a virtual university.

title: Implementation of a Pure P2p Collaboration Multiplatform and its Applications
abstract: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing offers many attractive features, such as collaboration, self-organization, load balancing, availability, fault tolerance and anonymity. However, it also faces many seri...

title: Pre-routing estimation of shielding for RLC signal integrity
abstract: The formula-based K/sub eff/ model is a figure of merit for inductive coupling, and has been used to solve the simultaneous shield insertion and net ordering (SINO) and simultaneous signal and power routing (SPR) problems. The authors first show that the K/sub eff/ model has a high fidelity compared to the SPICE-computed noise under an accurate RLC circuit model. We then develop simple yet accurate formulae to estimate numbers of shields needed by optimal SINO solutions under the K/sub eff/ model. Extensive experiments show that our pre-routing estimation has errors less than 10% compared to solutions given by detailed SINO algorithms. These formulae can be used effectively as a pre-routing congestion estimation for layout planning and synthesis.

title: Learning to cluster web search results
abstract: Organizing Web search results into clusters facilitates users' quick browsing through search results. Traditional clustering techniques are inadequate since they don't generate clusters with highly readable names. In this paper, we reformalize the clustering problem as a salient phrase ranking problem. Given a query and the ranked list of documents (typically a list of titles and snippets) returned by a certain Web search engine, our method first extracts and ranks salient phrases as candidate cluster names, based on a regression model learned from human labeled training data. The documents are assigned to relevant salient phrases to form candidate clusters, and the final clusters are generated by merging these candidate clusters. Experimental results verify our method's feasibility and effectiveness.

title: Design and implementation of a P2P shared Web browser using JXTA
abstract: The most shared applications use the client/server model in which, however a server is usually very complex and heavy since all of group managements are done by the server and sometimes becomes a communication bottleneck as all of date exchange among group members are mediated via it. To solve the above problems, our shared browser adopted a pure peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture without using any server A group member or a device called a peer dynamically finds other peers via distributed searching, and directly exchange data with other peers. It supports not only sharing a Web document in a peer group but also synchronously viewing the document and manipulating the browser with further support of some group users' awareness information like a user's moving a cursor, entering a new URL and clicking a hyperlink. It is implemented using JXTA protocols and Java programming language. To make the system applicable over the Internet across firewalls and NATs, the HTTP protocol can be used to transfer data via a pipe, a communication mechanism in JXTA.

title: Unexpected means of protocol inference
abstract: Network managers are inevitably called upon to associate network traffic with particular applications. Indeed, this operation is critical for a wide range of management functions ranging from debugging and security to analytics and policy support. Traditionally, managers have relied on application adherence to a well established global port mapping: Web traffic on port 80, mail traffic on port 25 and so on. However, a range of factors - including firewall port blocking, tunneling, dynamic port allocation, and a bloom of new distributed applications - has weakened the value of this approach. We analyze three alternative mechanisms using statistical and structural content models for automatically identifying traffic that uses the same application-layer protocol, relying solely on flow content. In this manner, known applications may be identified regardless of port number, while traffic from one unknown application will be identified as distinct from another. We evaluate each mechanism's classification performance using real-world traffic traces from multiple sites.

title: A Java-Based RFID Service Framework with Semantic Data Binding Between Real and Cyber Spaces
abstract: Recently there are getting more and more systems and applications using RFID. There is a necessity of a framework for them. This paper presents a Java-based framework that offers a set of general services to support various RFID systems for different purposes and application scenarios. The framework emphasizes on the semantic data binding for contextual information mapping between real and cyber spaces. The Java interface classes are provided to support general communications among a RFID, a reader and an application. Real and cyber spaces are synchronized via dynamic and real-time mapping from symbolic strings or IDs to the semantic XML data representations that are more effectively and efficiently useable by RFID applications. In this paper, the architecture and functional modules of the Java-based RFID service framework are explained in detail.