pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
OTAWA: An Open Toolbox for Adaptive WCET Analysis

International audienceThe analysis of worst-case execution times has become mandatory in the design of hard real-time systems: it is absolutely necessary to know an upper bound of the execution time of each task to determine a task schedule that insures that deadlines will all be met. The OTAWA toolbox presented in this paper has been designed to host algorithms resulting from research in the domain of WCET analysis so that they can be combined to compute tight WCET estimates. It features an abstraction layer that decouples the analyses from the target hardware and from the instruction set architecture, as well as a set of functionalities that facilitate the implementation of new approaches
Human safety algorithms for a parallel cable-driven haptic interface

A parallel cable-driven haptic interface is designed to allow interaction with any type of virtual object. This paper presents and analyzes computational methods for addressing the issues regarding human safety and control reliability using such an interface, thereby ensuring safe operations inside the virtual world. Four strategies are explored: sensor reliability, mechanical interference management, workspace management and human-robot interaction. This paper focuses mainly on the sensors’ reliability and workspace management algorithms for a parallel cable-driven haptic interface that imposes special requirements on the control architecture design. One challenging task is to develop efficient computational algorithms for hard real-time processes included in haptic display applications which improve safety without compromising performance
Automatic Verification of Parametric Specifications with Complex
  Topologies

The focus of this paper is on reducing the complexity in verification by
exploiting modularity at various levels: in specification, in verification, and
structurally. For specifications, we use the modular language CSP-OZ-DC, which
allows us to decouple verification tasks concerning data from those concerning
durations. At the verification level, we exploit modularity in theorem proving
for rich data structures and use this for invariant checking. At the structural
level, we analyze possibilities for modular verification of systems consisting
of various components which interact.We illustrate these ideas by automatically
verifying safety properties of a case study from the European Train Control
System standard, which extends previous examples by comprising a complex track
topology with lists of track segments and trains with different routes.Comment: The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co
A CSP approach to Control in Event-B

Event-B has emerged as one of the dominant state-based formal techniques used for modelling control-intensive applications. Due to the blocking semantics of events, their ordering is controlled by their guards. In this paper we explore how process algebra descriptions can be defined alongside an Event-B model. We will use CSP to provide explicit control flow for an Event-B model and alternatively to provide a way of separating out requirements which are dependent on control flow information. We propose and verify new conditions on combined specifications which establish deadlock freedom. We discuss how combined specifications can be refined and the challenges arising from this. The paper uses Abrial’s Bridge example as the basis of a running example to illustrate the framework
Compositional Formal Analysis for Concurrent Object-Oriented Languages

Concurrency is a ubiquitous phenomenon in modern software ranging from distributed systems communicating over the Internet to communicating processes running on multi-core processors and multi-processors. Therefore modern programming languages offer ways to program concurrency effectively. Still, writing correct concurrent programs is notoriously difficult because of the complexity of possible interactions between concurrent processes and because concurrency-related errors are often subtle and hard to reproduce, especially for safety-critical applications. This thesis develops and formally investigates different static analysis methods for various concurrency-related problems in concurrent object-oriented programming languages to guarantee the absence of common concurrency-related errors, hence contribute to the quality of concurrent programs.
Aspects covered by our analyses involve lock-based concurrency, transaction-based concurrency, resource consumption and inheritance. In the lock-based setting, using explicit locks in a non-lexical scope to protect critical regions might be the source of aliasing problems or misuse of locks. In the transaction-based model, a similar problem of misuse of non-lexical transactions can happen in the same way as the misuse of explicit locks. Furthermore, for the purpose of checking conflicts and supporting rollback mechanisms, additional storage are required to keep track of changes during transactions’ execution which can lead to resource consumption problems. So it is useful to investigate different analysis methods to achieve safe concurrent programs. In open systems, the combination of inheritance and late-binding problematic, e.g., replacing one base class by another, seemingly satisfying the same interface description, may break the code of the client of the base class. This thesis also investigates an observable interface behavior of open systems for a concurrent object-oriented language with single-class inheritance where code from the environment can be inherited to the component and vice versa.
All analyses developed in this work are formulated as static type and effect systems resp. an open semantics based on a type and effect system. As usual for type and effect systems, they are formalized as derivation systems over the syntax of the languages, and thus compositional. In all cases, we prove the correctness of the analyses. When based on a rigorous formal foundation, the analyses can give robust guarantees concerning the safety of the program. To tackle the complexity of large and distributed applications, we have insisted that all the analysis methods in this thesis should be compositional. In other words, our analyses are scalable, i.e., a composed program should be analyzed in a divide-and-conquer manner relying on the results of the analysis of its sub-parts, so they are useful in practice
Generating SQL queries from SBVR rules

Declarative technologies have made great strides in expressivity between SQL and SBVR. SBVR models are more expressive that SQL schemas, but not as imminently executable yet. In this paper, we complete the architecture of a system that can execute SBVR models. We do this by describing how SBVR rules can be transformed into SQL DML so that they can be automatically checked against the database using a standard SQL query. In particular, we describe a formalization of the basic structure of an SQL query which includes aggregate functions, arithmetic operations, grouping, and grouping on condition. We do this while staying within a predicate calculus semantics which can be related to the standard SBVR-LF specification and equip it with a concrete semantics for expressing business rules formally. Our approach to transforming SBVR rules into standard SQL queries is thus generic, and the resulting queries can be readily executed on a relational schema generated from the SBVR model
Measuring the Influence of the kth Largest Variable on Functions over the Unit Hypercube

By considering a least squares approximation of a given square integrable function f: [0,1]^n\to R by a shifted L-statistic function (a shifted linear combination of order statistics), we define an index which measures the global influence of the k-th largest variable on f. We show that this influence index has appealing properties and we interpret it as an average value of the difference quotient of f in the direction of the k-th largest variable or, under certain natural conditions on f, as an average value of the derivative of f in the direction of the k-th largest variable. We also discuss a few applications of this index in statistics and aggregation theory.Peer reviewe
Generic competences for the IT knowledge workers: a study from the field.

Proceedings of: Third World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2010), Corfu, Greece, September 22-24, 2010This paper aims to identify generic competency levels relevant to a particular kind of knowledge workers: software engineers. Based on previous works, and in particular in the description of a professional career, authors review of the literature related to the characterization of the labor force in the Software Engineering (SE) domain. Subsequently, using a quantitative analysis based on investigative surveys administered to a number of representative professionals, authors provide with a generic competency ladder adapted to the given career description.Publicad
Extracting powers and periods in a string from its runs structure

International audienceA breakthrough in the field of text algorithms was the discovery of the fact that the maximal number of runs in a string of length n is O(n) and that they can all be computed in O(n) time. We study some applications of this result. New simpler O(n) time algorithms are presented for a few classical string problems: computing all distinct kth string powers for a given k, in particular squares for k = 2, and finding all local periods in a given string of length n. Additionally, we present an efficient algorithm for testing primitivity of factors of a string and computing their primitive roots. Applications of runs, despite their importance, are underrepresented in existing literature (approximately one page in the paper of Kolpakov & Kucherov, 1999). In this paper we attempt to fill in this gap. We use Lyndon words and introduce the Lyndon structure of runs as a useful tool when computing powers. In problems related to periods we use some versions of the Manhattan skyline problem
A study of emotions in requirements engineering.

Proceedings of: 3rd World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WKKS 2010), September 22-24, 2010, Corfu (Greece)Requirements engineering (RE) is a crucial activity in software development projects. This phase in the software development cycle is knowledge intensive, and thus, human capital intensive. From the human point of view, emotions play an important role in behavior and can even act as behavioral motivators. Thus, if we consider that RE represents a set of knowledge-intensive tasks, which include acceptance and negotiation activities, then the emotional factor represents a key element in these issues. However, the emotional factor in RE has not received the attention it deserves. This paper aims to integrate the stakeholder’s emotions into the requirement process, proposing to catalogue them like any other factor in the process such as clarity or stability. Results show that high arousal and low pleasure levels are predictors of high versioning requirements.Publicad
Linearity within the SMS4 Block Cipher

We present several new observations on the SMS4 block cipher, and discuss their cryptographic significance. The crucial observation is the existence of fixed points and also of simple linear relationships between the bits of the input and output words for each component of the round functions for some input words. This implies that the non-linear function T of SMS4 does not appear random and that the linear transformation provides poor diffusion. Furthermore, the branch number of the linear transformation in the key scheduling algorithm is shown to be less than optimal. The main security implication of these observations is that the round function is not always non-linear. Due to this linearity, it is possible to reduce the number of effective rounds of SMS4 by\ud
four. We also investigate the susceptibility of SMS4 to further cryptanalysis. Finally, we demonstrate a successful differential attack on a slightly\ud
modified variant of SMS4. These findings raise serious questions on the security provided by SMS4
GPS calibrated ad-hoc localization for geosocial networking

LNCS v. 6406 is conference proceedings of UIC 2010Cost-effective localization for large-scale Geosocial networking service is a challenging issue in urban environment. This paper studies an ad-hoc localization technique which takes advantages of short-range interchanged location information for calibrating the location of mobile users carrying non-GPS mobile phones. We demonstrate by simulation that a small percentage of GPS-enabled mobile phones can greatly enable the localization of other non-GPS pedestrians in the urban environment. Based on the proposed localization technique, we implement a location-aware social networking tool called Mobile Twitter, similar to the microblogging service of Twitter, for fast propagation of social events happening in surroundings. Evaluation shows the our localization algorithm can achieve better accuracy of the location estimation and wider coverage as compared with the Amorphous algorithm and the Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) method. Moreover, we show that the Mobile Twitter implemented on an Android mobile phone is power-efficient in real-life usage scenarios. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.postprintThe 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC) 2010, Xi'an, China, 26-29 October 2010. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010, v. 6406, p. 52-6
An Energy Efficient Localization Strategy for Outdoor Objects based on Intelligent Light-Intensity Sampling

A simple and low cost strategy for implementing pervasive objects that identify and track their own geographical location is proposed. The strategy, which is not reliant on any GIS infrastructure such as GPS, is realized using an electronic artifact with a built in clock, a light sensor, or low-cost digital camera, persistent storage such as flash and sufficient computational circuitry to make elementary trigonometric computations. The object monitors the lighting conditions and thereby detects and tracks the sunrise and sunset times. By the means of a simple celestial model an estimate of the geographical position of the object can be made. An intelligent light sampling method is proposed allowing the object to sleep most of the time and hence save battery power. The strategy is energy efficient and the speed of convergence can be adjusted as a function of the energy consumed. Objects employing the method can therefore operate for long times without recharging their batteries. The strategy has applications in mobile sensor networks where nodes need to log geographical information, sensing equipment such as floating buoyancies, or pervasive technologies in need of geo-spatial information such as digital cameras, mobile devices, etc
Coordination in supply chains: from case studies to reference models\ud

Intensive competition has forced companies to focus on their core business and participate in more and more complex supply networks. The necessity to preserve the autonomy of each partner makes that such networks are usually managed in a decentralized way. Consequently, problems and conflicts emerge during the coordination processes. This paper describes some coordination problems identified through interviews and locates them within the activities of the coordination processes. We also suggest interpretation of the aspects which influence coordination allowing better explaining the origins of these problems
Testing (subclasses of) halfspaces

We address the problem of testing whether a Boolean-valued function f is a halfspace, i.e. a function of the form f(x) = sgn(w . x − θ). We consider halfspaces over the continuous domain R n (endowed with the standard multivariate Gaussian distribution) as well as halfspaces over the Boolean cube { − 1,1} n (endowed with the uniform distribution). In both cases we give an algorithm that distinguishes halfspaces from functions that are ε-far from any halfspace using only poly(1) queries, independent of the dimension n.
In contrast to the case of general halfspaces, we show that testing natural subclasses of halfspaces can be markedly harder; for the class of { − 1,1}-weight halfspaces, we show that a tester must make at least Ω(logn) queries. We complement this lower bound with an upper bound showing that O(√n) queries suffice.National Basic Research Program of China (grant 2007CB807900)National Basic Research Program of China (grant 2007CB807901)National Natural Science Foundation (China) (grant 60553001
Dynamic Approximate Vertex Cover and Maximum Matching

We consider the problem of maintaining a large matching or a small vertex cover in a dynamically changing graph. Each update to the graph is either an edge deletion or an edge insertion. We give the first randomized data structure that simultaneously achieves a constant approximation factor and handles a sequence of k updates in k. polylog(n) time. Previous data structures require a polynomial amount of computation per update.
The starting point of our construction is a distributed algorithm of Parnas and Ron (Theor. Comput. Sci. 2007), which they designed for their sublinear-time approximation algorithm for the vertex cover size. This leads us to wonder whether there are other connections between sublinear algorithms and dynamic data structures.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0732334)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0728645)Marie Curie International (Reintegration Grant PIRG03-GA-2008-231077)Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1147/09)Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1675/09
A method for filtering large conceptual schemas

We focus on the problem of filtering a fragment of the knowledge contained in a large conceptual schema. The problem appears in many information systems development activities in which people need to operate with a piece of the knowledge contained in that schema. We propose a new method in which a user focuses on one or more entity
types of interest for her task at hand, and the method automatically filters the schema in order to obtain a set of entity and relationship types (and other knowledge) relevant to that task, taking into account the interest of each entity type with respect to the focus, computed from the
measures of importance and closeness of entity types. The method has been implemented in a prototype tool, and it has been experimented with the schema of the osCommerce and the ResearchCyc ontology.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Specifying aggregation functions in multidimensional models with OCL

Multidimensional models are at the core of data warehouse systems, since they allow decision makers to early define the relevant information and queries that are required to satisfy their information needs. The use of aggregation functions is a cornerstone in the definition of these multidimensional queries. However, current proposals for multidimensional modeling lack the mechanisms to define aggregation functions at the conceptual level: multidimensional queries can only be defined once the rest of the system has already been implemented, which requires much effort and expertise. In this sense, the goal of this paper is to extend the Object Constraint Language (OCL) with a predefined set of aggregation functions. Our extension facilitates the definition of platform-independent queries as part of the specification of the conceptual multidimensional model of the data warehouse. These queries are automatically implemented with the rest of the data warehouse during the code-generation phase. The OCL extensions proposed in this paper have been validated by using the USE tool.Work supported by the projects: TIN2008-00444, ESPIA (TIN2007-67078) from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC), QUASIMODO (PAC08-0157-0668) from the Castilla-La Mancha Ministry of Education and Science (Spain), and DEMETER (GVPRE/2008/063) from the Valencia Government (Spain). Jesús Pardillo is funded by MEC under FPU grant AP2006-00332
Decision-Making Ontology for Information System Engineering

International audienceInformation Systems (IS) engineering (ISE) processes contain steps where decisions must be made. Moreover, the growing role of IS in organizations involves requirements for ISE such as quality, cost and time. Considering these aspects implies that the number of researches dealing with decision-making (DM) in ISE increasingly grows. As DM becomes widespread in the ISE field, it is necessary to build a representation, shared between researchers and practitioners, of DM concepts and their relations with DM problems in ISE. In this paper, we present a DM ontology which aims at formalizing DM knowledge. Its goal is to enhance DM and to support DM activities in ISE. This ontology is illustrated within the requirements engineering field
Simulation in Information Systems: Potential of the vulnerability theory

Systems simulation has been widely used in the last decades in order to analyze the impact of different scenarios in several areas, and its application to information systems in no exception. Analyzing information systems through simulation models is simultaneously much more affordable; it is required a smaller amount of resources and it is less disruptive with the real system. Since information systems are becoming a cornerstone for our society, a failure in these systems can have a huge impact. The theory of vulnerability identifies failures in which small damage can have disproportionate impact consequences in terms of the functionality of the whole system. This paper discusses the use of the theory of vulnerability in information system simulation
A framework for the analysis of the potential performance of chief information officers

Proceeding of: International Conference CENTERIS, 2010, Viana do Castelo, Portugal, October 20-22, 2010Information Systems Function is an organisational area of major importance in the context of the competitive development of organisations. At the centre of the Information Systems Function we find the Chief Information Officer (CIO), who is the main responsible for the organisation and leadership of this function. Given the nature of the duties assigned to the CIO, her/his work directly influences the development of an organisation, so it has become important to assess her/his potential performance before s/he finds herself/him in charge of the information systems function. This article proposes the CIO Performance Square - a framework for analysing the potential performance of CIOs based on their education and experience