Persistent UAV Service: An Improved Scheduling Formulation and Prototypes of System Components

The flight duration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is limited by their battery or fuel capacity. As a consequence, the duration of missions that can be pursued by UAVs without supporting logistics is restricted. However, a system of UAVs that is supported by automated logistics structures, such as fuel service stations and orchestration algorithms, may pursue missions of conceivably indefinite duration. This may be accomplished by handing off the mission tasks to fully fueled replacement UAVs when the current fleet grows weary. The drained UAVs then seek replenishment from nearby logistics support facilities. To support the vision of a persistent fleet of UAVs pursuing missions across a field of operations, we develop an improved mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that can serve to support the system’s efforts to orchestrate the operations of numerous UAVs, missions and logistics facilities. Further, we look toward the future implementation of such a persistent fleet outdoors and develop prototype components required for such a system. In particular, we develop and demonstrate the concerted operation of a scheduling model, UAV onboard vision-based guidance system and replenishment stations.     

Service Engineering: Linking Business and IT

With its strong emphasis on modularization, service-oriented computing radically alters the way business processes are modeled, realized, and maintained. Domain-specific services virtualize complex functions of the underlying business applications so that they can be loosely coupled to form transorganizational processes. This level of abstraction fosters agility and lessens traditional provider dependence. Service-oriented design has long driven the development of the telecommunications infrastructure and applications, especially intelligent network services. Applying the same principles of domain specificity, visualization, loose coupling, and seamless vertical integration to business processes has the potential to lead to a new generation of personalized, secure, and highly available Web services     

Information Technology Service Delivery: an International Comparison

This article describes the delivery of information technology (IT) services in a sample of companies in the United States and the Netherlands. As a pilot study and one of few comparative international studies of service delivery, it begins to identify and explain differences in IT service delivery among companies based in different countries. the study compares sample companies in two countries along four dimensions of IT services — setting of priorities, standard setting, development, and operations. It also examines how the delivery of IT services has changed in recent years and comments about international differences in how these companies have dealt with such change. Finally, it addresses the implications of these results for the delivery of IT services in a global environment and offers directions for future research.     

The Digital Wallet: Opportunities and Prototypes

Example digital wallet applications support secure P2P mobile cash transactions and alleviate point-of-sale confusion for consumers using multiple payment, discount, and loyalty cards.     

A Model for the Dynamic Interaction Between Evolution and Learning

The interaction between learning and evolution has elicited much interest particularly among researchers who use evolutionary algorithms for the optimization of neural structures. In this article, we will propose an extension of the existing models by including a developmental phase – a growth process – of the neural network. In this way, we are able to examine the dynamical interaction between genetic information and information learned during development. Several measures are proposed to quantitatively examine the benefits and the effects of such an overlap between learning and evolution. The proposed model, which is based on the recursive encoding method for structure optimization of neural networks, is applied to the problem domain of time series prediction. Furthermore, comments are made on problem domains which associate growing networks (size) during development with problems of increasing complexity.     

Business Models in the Service World

With the rapid growth of cloud computing, the sharing of IT resources has become extremely popular in commerce. However, the term "cloud computing" hasn't been clearly distinguished from other approaches such as grid or voluntary computing. The authors describe a conceptual framework designed to help understand the products offered by cloud computing vendors like Amazon or Google. They provide a criteria catalogue along with a Cloud Business Ontology Model to give an overview of how products can be classified.     

Analyzing the Trade-off Between Investing in Service Channels and Satisfying the Targeted User Service for Brazilian Internet Service Providers

The computer connection to the Internet is provided by firms known as internet service providers (ISPs). The simplest mode of physical connection is when the user connects to an ISP's service channel by an ordinary telephone line (dial-up). Finding an available channel may not be an easy task, especially during the peak hours of many Brazilian ISPs. This results in a problem for the ISPs, which is how to achieve the most appropriate trade-off between investing in capacity and satisfying the target user service level. This paper analyzes this trade-off based on a three-step approach: (i) determine user arrival and service processes in chosen periods, (ii) select an appropriate queueing model using some simplifying assumptions, and (iii) generate trade-off curves between system performance measures. To illustrate the application of this approach, some results derived from a case study performed at an ISP in Sao Paulo state are given.     

机场货运物流业务服务管理系统的研究

近几年来,全球经济贸易的发展使得航空货运增长迅速。航空物流业作为我国国民经济中一个新兴的服务性行业,在迎接良好发展机遇时,也正面临着严峻的挑战。在这种形势下,如何提高我国航空货运服务的安全、效率和质量,成为我国航空物流企业参与市场竞争的首要问题。研究整合了机场货运物流管理系统结构,并对该系统进行了总体设计和功能模块的设计。     

一种支持业务用户编程的服务虚拟化技术--VINCA聚合服务机制

提出一种支持业务用户编程的服务虚拟化技术——VINCA聚合服务机制,其核心是VINCA聚合服务模型．该模型从业务与IT两个层面出发并“中间相遇”来实现服务资源的虚拟化,从而屏蔽具体服务资源的使用复杂性,使得业务用户更易于直接将业务需求映射到虚拟化的服务资源,为业务用户编程提供支持．定义了VINCA聚合服务的生命周期模型及使用方式,以明确地指导VINCA聚合服务的构造及使用过程．介绍了VINCA聚合服务支撑系统架构,并结合奥运综合信息服务系统的应用场景展示了VINCA聚合服务机制的效果．     

一种支持业务端编程的服务虚拟化机制VINCA-VM

针对服务环境下使能业务用户按需快速构建应用的需求,提出一种支持业务端编程的服务虚拟化机制,旨在将软件层面的Web服务通过抽象和转换等手段绑定到业务用户可理解的、易于使用的业务级服务．文中重点研究了服务虚拟化运算及其性质,提出一套虚拟化操作原语,并设计和实现了相应的服务虚拟化工具．结合实际应用案例,展示和讨论了服务虚拟化机制及其软件工具的效果．     

Perci: Pervasive Service Interaction with the Internet of Things

The advancement of ubiquitous computing technologies has greatly improved the availability of digital resources in the real world. Here, the authors investigate mobile interaction with tagged, everyday objects and associated information that's based on the Internet of Things and its technologies. Their framework for integrating Web services and mobile interaction with physical objects relies on information typing to increase interoperability. Two prototypes for mobile interaction with smart posters build upon this framework to realize multi-tag interaction with physical user interfaces. The authors' evaluation identifies usability issues regarding the design of physical mobile interactions, interfaces, and applications.     

Penetration-Enhanced Ultrasharp Microneedles and Prediction on Skin Interaction for Efficient Transdermal Drug Delivery

This paper presents penetration-enhanced hollow microneedles and an analysis on the biomechanical interaction between microneedles and skin tissue. The aim of this paper is to fabricate microneedles that reliably penetrate the skin tissue without using penetration enhancers or special insertion tools that were used in the previous studies. The microneedles are made of silicon and feature ultrasharp tips and side openings. The microneedle chips were experimentally tested in vivo by injection of dye markers. To further investigate the penetration, the insertion progression and the insertion force were monitored by measuring the electrical impedance between microneedles and a counter electrode on the skin. The microneedle design was also tested using a novel simulation approach and compared to other previously published microneedle designs. The purpose of this specific part of the paper was to investigate the interaction mechanisms between a microneedle and the skin tissue. This investigation is used to predict how the skin deforms upon insertion and how microneedles can be used to create a leak-free liquid delivery into the skin. The fabricated microneedles successfully penetrated dry living human skin at all the tested sites. The insertion characteristic of the microneedle was superior to an earlier presented type, and the insertion force of a single microneedle was estimated to be below 10 mN. This low insertion force represents a significant improvement to earlier reported results and potentially allows a microneedle array with hundreds of needles to be inserted into tissue by hand.     

WSRF：连接Web Service和OGSA的桥梁

典型的WebService对状态没有要求,但由此发展出的网格核心体系结构OGSA却要求具有状态性。本文首先对WebService的无状态性进行分析并指出缺陷,接着对在其基础上提出的WSRF进行介绍,其闻引出状态资源的概念,并对WSRF的六个组成部分进行说明。     

Synergy Between Business Process and Systems Reengineering

Business process reengineering (BPR) and systems reengineering (SR) often are implemented separately, in an uncoordinated fashion. Yet practitioners realize that BPR can be informed by SR and that SR can benefit from the application of BPR concepts. This article presents an integrated BPR and SR model that exploits the synergy of integrated BDR and SR. the model has been applied successfully in practice and shows how to tailor this model to meet each organization's situation.     

Prototypes and paratypes: designing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications

Conducting user-centered design is a primary challenge in ubiquitous computing. Two kinds of prototyping techniques can be particularly effective for developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications: compound prototypes and situated experience prototypes. Compound prototypes combine the final product's user interface (UI) with a computational implementation that runs on a separate system without the resource constraints of the target device. This model lets researchers and designers evaluate a new application's physicality and aesthetics as well as its functionality. Situated experience prototypes, or paratypes, include experimental protocols that attempt to reproduce user interaction with the system in real situations, and can optionally use common prototyping instruments such as paper mock-ups or physical props. Using our Personal Audio Loop (PAL) project as a case study, we discuss how you can fruitfully employ compound prototypes and paratypes when designing and developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications.     

Synergy Between Business Process and Systems Reengineering

Abstract

Business process reengineering (BPR) and systems reengineering (SR) often are implemented separately, in an uncoordinated fashion. Yet practitioners realize that BPR can be informed by SR and that SR can benefit from the application of BPR concepts. This article presents an integrated BPR and SR model that exploits the synergy of integrated BDR and SR. the model has been applied successfully in practice and shows how to tailor this model to meet each organization's situation.     

A Flexible, Event-Driven, Service-Oriented Architecture for Orchestrating Service Delivery

This event-driven architecture uses decentralized intelligence to orchestrate services across a network of public agencies, without compromising the individual agencies' autonomy.     

Virtual Service Grids: Integrating IT with Business Processes

The alignment of information technology and business has shifted significantly since computing's mainframe era. The high costs of mainframe technology meant that only the largest organizations could afford it, and applications were relatively few. Business was expected to adapt to the technology. This all changed in the 1990s. Industry's widespread adoption of PCs, especially Intel x86-based systems, radically reduced computing costs. The benefits of IT spread to much smaller organizations worldwide, and a large market for hardware, software, and business services emerged. As system integrators began using components from diverse suppliers to build standards-based computers, system costs dropped two orders of magnitude from those of comparably powered mainframes. Many large deployments moved from mainframes to client-server distributed systems. The three-tier computing architecture came to dominate this era, and it introduced a separation between hardware and software. The authors describe how we got to this point and what direction we're headed in for the future.