Hardware, Software, and Infoware

Formanyyears,computersciencehasbeenstrainingattheboundsofthecomputer,hopingforalanguage,atechnique,asysternthatwouldtranscendtherigidboundsofthepurelyprocedural.Allofthoseattemptshavefailed,toagreaterorlesserdegree.Yetnow,withoutintendingit,weperhapsfindourselvesimperceptiblyoverthatedge.Thereisnosinglewatershedevent,butwehaveneverthelesscrossedfromonecomputingeraintoanother.TwoMicrosoftonlineencyclopedias,EncartaandCinemania,standoneithersideofacontinentaldivideinelectronicpublishing.Bothma…     

“Extra-Ordinary” Ergonomics: How to Accommodate Small and Big Persons,the Disabled and Elderly,Expectant Mothers,and Children

Abstract

Data from a previous study of soldier driving postures and seating positions were analysed to develop statistical models for defining accommodation of driver seating positions in military vehicles. Regression models were created for seating accommodation applicable to driver positions with a fixed heel point and a range of steering wheel locations in typical tactical vehicles. The models predict the driver-selected seat position as a function of population anthropometry and vehicle layout. These models are the first driver accommodation models considering the effects of body armor and body-borne gear. The obtained results can benefit the design of military vehicles, and the methods can also be extended to be utilised in the development of seating accommodation models for other driving environments where protective equipment affects driver seating posture, such as vehicles used by law-enforcement officers and firefighters.

Practitioner Summary: A large-scale laboratory study of soldier driving posture and seating position was designed to focus on tactical vehicle (truck) designs. Regression techniques are utilised to develop accommodation models suitable for tactical vehicles. These are the first seating accommodation models based on soldier data to consider the effects of personal protective equipment and body-borne gear.     

Use cases – Yesterday,today, and tomorrow

To my knowledge, no other software engineering language construct as significant as use cases has been adopted so quickly and so widely among practitioners. I believe this is because use cases play a role in so many different aspects of software engineering.Although I first used the term in 1986, I had actually been working on and evolving the concept of use cases since 1967. So many people have asked me how I came up with this concept that I decided to write this article to explain the origins and evolution of use cases. Ill also summarize what they have helped us achieve so far, and then suggest a few improvements for the future.     

Living Book – Deduction, Slicing, and Interaction

Living Book is a system for the management of personalized and scenario-specific teaching material. The main goal of the system is to support active, explorative, and self-determined learning in lectures, tutorials, and self-study. Living Book includes a course on logic for computer scientists, with uniform access to various tools such as theorem provers and an interactive tableau editor. It is routinely used in teaching undergraduate courses at our university. This paper describes Living Book, together with its use of theorem-proving technology as a core component in the knowledge management system (KMS) and the use of this new concept in academic teaching. The KMS provides a scenario management component in which teachers may describe those parts of given documents that are relevant in order to achieve a certain learning goal. The task of the KMS is to assemble new documents from a database of elementary units called slices (definitions, theorems, and so on) in a scenario-based way (such as, I want to prepare for an exam and need to learn about resolution). The computation of such assemblies is carried out by a model-generating theorem prover for first-order logic with a default negation principle. Its input consists of metadata that describes the dependencies between different slices and logic-programming style rules that describe the scenario-specific composition of slices. Additionally, users may assess what units they know or dont know. This information is stored in a user model, which is taken into account to compute a model that specifies the assembly of a personalized document. This paper introduces the e-learning context we are faced with, motivates our choice of logic, and sketches the newly developed calculus used in the KMS. Furthermore, the application and evaluation of Living Book are presented. P. Baumgartner: This work has been carried out within the research programme New Media in Education funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany.     

Numerical modelling of transport,dispersion, and deposition — validation against ETEX-1, ETEX-2 and Chernobyl

A comprehensive, high-resolution, 3-dimensional tracer model, DREAM, has been developed for studying transport, dispersion, and deposition of air pollution caused by a single but very strong source. The model is based on a combination of a Lagrangian short-scale puff model and an Eulerian long-range transport model. The meteorological meso-scale model MM5V1 is used as a driver for the transport model. The tracer model and the numerical implementation of the model is described in this paper. The Eulerian transport model has been splitted into different submodels. The advantages of treating the different physical processes on different scales by using different numerical algorithms will be discussed. The model has been run and validated against measurements from the two ETEX releases (the European Tracer EXperiment) and the Chernobyl accident. 2-D and 3-D visualizations together with some comparisons of model results with measurements will be presented and discussed. The combined model is able to reproduce dosages within a factor of 2–3 in the worst case and arrival times within 2–3 h, compared to measurements from ETEX-1 and Chernobyl. This is within the currently achievable limits of accuracy in long-range dispersion modelling, according to the ETEX-1 experiment.     

Authentication and authorization infrastructure for Grids—issues,technologies, trends and experiences

Authentication and authorization for Grids is a challenging security issue. In this paper, key issues for the establishment of Grid authentication and authorization infrastructures are discussed, and an overview of major Grid authentication and authorization technologies is presented. Related to this, recent developments in Grid authentication and authorization infrastructures suggest adoption of the Shibboleth technology which offers advantages in terms of usability, confidentiality, scalability and manageability. When combined with advanced authorization technologies, Shibboleth-based authentication and authorization infrastructures provide role-based, fine-grained authorization. We share our experience in constructing a Shibboleth-based authentication and authorization infrastructure and believe that such infrastructure provides a promising solution for the security of many application domains.     

tment,Rizhao Vocational and Technical

e,Shandong,276826More attentions have been paid to the development of pervasive computing.Security in the pervasive comput- ing network is the key problem of a pervasive computing application.In this paper,it firstly gives out the outline of pervasive computing,analyzes the cha     

Design for manufacture and design for ‘X’: concepts,applications, and perspectives

The implementations of design for assembly and design for manufacture (DFM) led to enormous benefits including simplification of products, reduction of assembly and manufacturing costs, improvement of quality, and reduction of time to market. More recently, environmental concerns required that disassembly and recycling issues should be considered during the design stages. The effort to reduce total life-cycle costs for a product through design innovation is becoming an essential part of the current manufacturing industry. Therefore, researchers begin to focus their attention on design for environment, design for recyclability, design for life-cycle (DFLC), etc. These studies are sometimes referred to as Design for X (DFX). Since the late 1990s, hundreds of papers have been published pertaining to DFX applications in manufacturing. Most of them are widely distributed over many different disciplines and publications. This makes it very difficult for one to locate all the information necessary for the application of DFX in manufacturing. A paper that can help researchers and practitioners applying this emerging technology is highly desirable. The objective of this paper is to present the concepts, applications, and perspectives of ‘DFX’ in manufacturing, thus providing some guidelines and references for future research and implementation.     

Mutual information, variation, and Fano’s inequality

Some upper and lower bounds are obtained for the maximum of the absolute value of the difference between the mutual information |I(X; Y) ? I(X′; Y′)| of two pairs of discrete random variables (X, Y) and (X′, Y′) via the variational distance between the probability distributions of these pairs. In particular, the upper bound obtained here substantially generalizes and improves the upper bound of [1]. In some special cases, our upper and lower bounds coincide or are rather close. It is also proved that the lower bound is asymptotically tight in the case where the variational distance between (X, Y) and (X′ Y′) tends to zero.     

Fodorian semantics,pathologies, and “Block's Problem”

In two recent books, Jerry Fodor has developed a set of sufficient conditions for an object X to non-naturally and non-derivatively mean X. In an earlier paper we presented three reasons for thinking Fodor's theory to be inadequate. One of these problems we have dubbed the Pathologies Problem. In response to queries concerning the relationship between the Pathologies Problem and what Fodor calls Block's Problem, we argue that, while Block's Problem does not threatenFodor's view, the Pathologies Problem does.We would like to thank Ray Elugardo, Pat Manfredi, and Donna Summerfield for helpful comments on an earlier paper on Fodorian Semantics, X means X: Semantics Fodor-Style. We would especially like to thank Ned Block for extended e-mail conversations about Block's Problem. Block agrees that his problem is not the same as our pathologies problem. Contrary to what we say here, he still maintains that his objection can ultimately be made to work to defeat Fodor's theory of meaning. His elaboration of Block's Problem is different than the one we present here. Versions of a related paper were presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology as well as the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science.     

Organization-based agent-oriented programming： model,mechanisms, and language

An increasing number of social computational systems consist of a great amount of autonomous entities and operate in highly dynamic and unpredictable environments. To construct such systems needs to seek high-level abstrac- tion to manage the complexity of the systems and novel mechanism to support their characteristics, i.e., dynamism and flexibility. Agent-oriented programming （AOP） is con- sidered as a potential paradigm for developing such systems by exhibiting a number of characteristics, such as autonomy, flexibility, social ability, etc. However, current researches on AOP mainly focus on the construction of multi-agent system （MAS） with theory and language facilities inspired from arti- ficial intelligence （AI） and distributed AI, seldom considering and integrating the proven principles and practices of pro- gramming and software engineering. Moreover, abstractions and mechanism based on AI are inadequate for developing dynamic and flexible MAS in open environment. This paper proposes a novel AOP approach, namely Oragent, for con- structing and implementing dynamic and flexible systems. From a software engineering perspective, Oragent integrates organizational concepts and mechanism into AOP language, and support the dynamism and flexibility with explicit prim- itives. The proposed approach consists of a programming model and a corresponding programming language. This paper presents the syntax and formal operational semanticsof Oragent language, and studies a case to demonstrate our approach.     

Brain–computer interfaces and dualism: a problem of brain,mind, and body

The brain–computer interface (BCI) has made remarkable progress in the bridging the divide between the brain and the external environment to assist persons with severe disabilities caused by brain impairments. There is also continuing philosophical interest in BCIs which emerges from thoughtful reflection on computers, machines, and artificial intelligence. This article seeks to apply BCI perspectives to examine, challenge, and work towards a possible resolution to a persistent problem in the mind–body relationship, namely dualism. The original humanitarian goals of BCIs and the technological inventiveness result in BCIs being surprisingly useful. We begin from the neurologically impaired person, the problems encountered, and some pioneering responses from computers and machines. Secondly, the interface of mind and brain is explored via two points of clarification: direct and indirect BCIs, and the nature of thoughts. Thirdly, dualism is beset by mind–body interaction difficulties and is further questioned by the phenomena of intentions, interactions, and technology. Fourthly, animal minds and robots are explored in BCI settings again with relevance for dualism. After a brief look at other BCIs, we conclude by outlining a future BCI philosophy of brain and mind, which might appear ominous and could be possible.     

Drivers’ attitudes,preference, and acceptance of in-vehicle anger intervention systems and their relationships to demographic and personality characteristics

This research conducted focus group interviews and a questionnaire survey to investigate the potential demand of drivers for anger intervention systems (AISs) and explore the effects of demographic factors and personality traits on the preference and attitudes toward AISs. Results indicate that drivers prefer auditory intervention over tactile and visual interventions. Moreover, they favor emotion recording features but also have negative attitudes about accuracy and system security. In addition, age and some personality traits (i.e., types of driving anger and categories of driving anger expressions) play an important role in predicting the preference of intervention modalities or attitudes toward AISs and provide a new perspective on designing customized intervention systems. The outcome of this research provides practical implications regarding the design of in-vehicle anger intervention systems for the automotive industry to reduce drivers’ anger and improve driving safety.     

introduced and appraised. Finally, sugg

estions are made about future studies.soil dynamics; geotechnical earthquake engineering; dynamic constitutive model; dynamic analysis; dynamic test266河海大学学报(自然科学版)JOURNAL OF HOHAI UNIVERSITY9-18TU435A011;C038;H2;29;C;AA011_H2;C038_29;刘汉龙00050008000400180004;000600180011000     

“I plan to be a 10”: Online literacy and lesbian,gay, bisexual,and transgender students

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people use computer mediated communication (CMC) in a variety of ways as they come to understand their sexual identity and begin to identify with larger communities. A Web-based survey gathered 75 responses from Web users who supplied information about their online experiences as LGBT people. They report using online resources to serve many functions in the coming out process: They gather information, try out new ways of self-expression, and an find audience of like-minded people with whom they interact. Online resources were reported as most useful for obtaining basic information, for offering the ability to express oneself on LGBT issues and as a LGBT person, and for connecting with a larger LGBT community. The ways people find, use, and interact with these resources are examples of online literacy, a set of skills that may parallel traditional academic literacies but which may be used in different ways and to different ends.     

Rough Sets, Their Extensions and Applications

Rough set theory provides a useful mathematical foundation for developing automated computational systems that can help understand and make use of imperfect knowledge.Despite its recency,the theory and its extensions have been widely applied to many problems,including decision analysis,data mining,intelligent control and pattern recognition.This paper presents an outline of the basic concepts of rough sets and their major extensions,covering variable precision,tolerance and fuzzy rough sets.It also shows the diversity of successful applications these theories have entailed,ranging from financial and business,through biological and medicine,to physical,art,and meteorological.     

Reinforcement or Displacement? The Reciprocity of FtF,IM, and SNS Communication and Their Effects on Loneliness and Life Satisfaction

Does communication on social network sites (SNSs) or instant messengers (IMs) reinforce or displace face‐to‐face (FtF) communication, and how do the 3 channels affect loneliness and life satisfaction? Using cross‐lagged structural equation modeling in a longitudinal and representative sample from Germany, we found that SNS communication increased both FtF and IM communication 6 months later. Likewise, IM communication at T1 increased SNS communication at T2. FtF, SNS, and IM communication did not affect loneliness, and FtF and IM communication did not change life satisfaction. However, communication on SNSs slightly increased life satisfaction. Thus, the data indicated that conversing via SNSs and IM has a mainly reinforcing effect and that communicating via SNSs can enhance life satisfaction several months later.     

Fingerprint matching,spoof and liveness detection:classification and literature review

Fingerprint matching,spoof mitigation and liveness detection are the trendiest biometric techniques,mostly because of their stability through life,uniqueness and their least risk of invasion.In recent decade,several techniques are presented to address these challenges over well-known data-sets.This study provides a comprehensive review on the fingerprint algorithms and techniques which have been published in the last few decades.It divides the research on fingerprint into nine different approaches including feature based,fuzzy logic,holistic,image enhancement,latent,conventional machine learning,deep learning,template matching and miscellaneous tech-niques.Among these,deep learning approach has outperformed other approaches and gained significant attention for future research.By reviewing fingerprint literature,it is historically divided into four eras based on 106 referred papers and their cumulative citations.     

Employees’ opportunities,preferences, and practices in telecommuting adoption

This study uses three separate models for the opportunity, preference, and practice of telecommuting to analyze employee telecommuting adoption. Explanatory clusters relate to organizational, job, household, and individual characteristics derived from the combined insights from literature on telework management and employees’ telecommuting decisions and behavior. Data was collected from 849 employees using a personal computer at the workplace, selected from a representative sample of the Dutch labor force. Multivariate analyses were applied. Opportunity largely depended on organizational and job characteristics. Preference was dependent on all explanatory clusters. Practice was especially dependent on job and individual characteristics.