Panel session: future directions and challenges for Java implementations of numeric-intensive industrial applications

This panel session focuses on utilization of Java for numeric-intensive applications, including the advantages and disadvantages of Java for future use with industrial independent software vendor (ISV)-based finite element methods (FEM) codes. Discussion will address both partial use of Java and/or complete code implementation; activities in this area are already in progress and have been reported by the Java Grande Forum (see http://www.javagrande.org). Some of the issues that will be discussed by the panelists and audience include: performance comparisons of Java, Fortran, C, and C++; primary deficiencies of Java with respect to future development of competitive commercial ISV-based FEM codes; Java standardization bottlenecks; strategies for transitioning to Java from existing large legacy commercial codes; current and future numeric-intensive benchmarks; actions to improve Java floating-point performance. This session is represented by biographical sketches of the panel participants, their individual reflections on the panel theme, and a list of related Internet references.     

Intelligent sensory evaluation: Concepts,implementations, and applications

Sensory evaluation has been widely applied in different industrial fields especially for quality inspection, product design and marketing. Classically, factorial multivariate methods are the only tool for analyzing and modeling sensory data provided by experts, panelists or consumers. These methods are efficient for solving some problems but sometimes cause important information lost. In this situation, new methods based on intelligent techniques such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, data aggregation, classification, clustering have been applied for solving uncertainty and imprecision related to sensory evaluation. These new methods can be used together with the classical ones in a complementary way for obtaining relevant information from sensory data. This paper outlines the general background of sensory evaluation and the corresponding industrial interests and explicitly indicates some orientations for further development by IT researchers.     

Properties,implementations and applications of rank filters

The results of research on rank filters are presented. The relationship of rank filters with other filters is briefly discussed. The main properties of rank filters are listed and an explanation is given for these properties. Several software and hardware implementations of the filter are described. Major applications to image processing are discussed, including noise smoothing, cluster detection, skeletization, edge enhancement and edge detection.     

The networked home: an analysis of current developments and future trends

The paper examines the concept of the networked home as both a social institution and a technological construction. While the concept of networks is not new to family studies, the new technologies of information and communication are requiring us to look at the home as an intersection point of sociology and technology. Fundamental to our analysis is the concept of home as living space that unfolds into a collection of multiple centers – home as activity center, entertainment center, work center, information center, communication center, learning center and shopping center. In our analysis, the living space is subdivided structurally into social, physical and technological spaces in which the centers are embedded as organic elements. The integration of the centers with the living space model is fundamental to understanding the home as a networked home. Electronic Publication     

Remote-sensing applications in Pakistan: current status and future programmes

Abstract

This paper gives a summary of current activities and future programmes of the Remote Sensing Applications Centre (RESACENT) of the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, Karachi, Pakistan.     

Execution levels for aspect-oriented programming: Design,semantics, implementations and applications

In aspect-oriented programming (AOP) languages, advice evaluation is usually considered as part of the base program evaluation. This is also the case for certain pointcuts, such as if pointcuts in AspectJ, or simply all pointcuts in higher-order aspect languages like AspectScheme. While viewing aspects as part of base level computation clearly distinguishes AOP from reflection, it also comes at a price: because aspects observe base level computation, evaluating pointcuts and advice at the base level can trigger infinite regression. To avoid these pitfalls, aspect languages propose ad-hoc mechanisms, which increase the complexity for programmers while being insufficient in many cases. After shedding light on the many facets of the issue, this paper proposes to clarify the situation by introducing levels of execution in the programming language, thereby allowing aspects to observe and run at specific, possibly different, levels. We adopt a defensive default that avoids infinite regression, and gives advanced programmers the means to override this default using level-shifting operators. We then study execution levels both in practice and in theory. First, we study the relevance of the issues addressed by execution levels in existing aspect-oriented programs. We then formalize the semantics of execution levels and prove that the default semantics is indeed free of a certain form of infinite regression, which we call aspect loops. Finally, we report on existing implementations of execution levels for aspect-oriented extensions of Scheme, JavaScript and Java, discussing their implementation techniques and current applications.     

利用全球导航定位系统进行大气和海洋遥感

首先对国外开展的利用GPS系统进行大气和海洋航天遥感的理论和试验研究工作进行了综述, 然后对利用GPS系统进行大气和海洋遥感的基本原理和一些试验结果作了简要介绍。同时对GPS遥感方法和传统的遥感方法加以比较分析, 最后开展了一些讨论, 以期对我国航天微波遥感的发展和二代卫星导航定位系统的应用提供一定的参考。     

Neural network applications in fault diagnosis and detection: an overview of implementations in engineering-related systems

The use of artificial neural networks (ANN) in fault detection analysis is widespread. This paper aims to provide an overview on its application in the field of fault identification and diagnosis (FID), as well as the guiding elements behind their successful implementations in engineering-related applications. In most of the reviewed studies, the ANN architecture of choice for FID problem-solving is the multilayer perceptron (MLP). This is likely due to its simplicity, flexibility, and established usage. Its use managed to find footing in a variety of fields in engineering very early on, even before the technology was as polished as it is today. Recurrent neural networks, while having overall stronger potential for solving dynamic problems, are only suggested for use after a simpler implementation in MLP was attempted. Across various ANN applications in FID, it is observed that preprocessing of the inputs is extremely important in obtaining the proper features for use in training the network, particularly when signal analysis is involved. Normalization is practically a standard for ANN use, and likely many other decision-based learning methods due to its ease of use and high impact on speed of convergence. A simple demonstration of ANN’s ease of use in solving a unique FID problem was also shown.

     

Usability professionals—current practices and future development

The usability concept has now received such a wide recognition in information technology (IT) development that working with usability can be regarded as a profession in its own right. In recent research projects, we have surveyed and studied usability work on an individual level in a number of Swedish development organisations, including success factors and obstacles. What we have seen relates to the individual usability professional and her background and experiences, the organisation in which she operates, the development process, communication and communication means, and finally the attitudes and basic values held by the people involved.In this paper, we compile and reflect on selected findings from different studies on usability work in practical systems¹ development in a number of Swedish organisations. We discuss our findings from a practical point of view and relate them to the research of others within the international HCI community. Finally, we discuss some issues we consider important for the future development of the practice of usability that we believe is of interest to the international community of usability professionals.     

An extended analysis of memory hierarchies for efficient implementations of image processing applications

Through continued miniaturization of electronic devices embedded smart cameras are steadily becoming more and more important. The reduction of the camera size increases the spectrum of applications. In industrial applications the range of smart cameras spans from quality monitoring and position tracking to the calibration of production machines. In non-professional applications a distinct boom in action cameras combined with fused sensor information can be observed. However, all of these applications have a common bottleneck: the memory architecture. Most image processing applications are memory-bound tasks. Thus, the amount of time for transferring data with image processing applications decisively affects the application’s entire processing time. Different memory access patterns require different memory configurations and hierarchies. An insufficient match between the image processing application and the memory architecture leads to a poor performance in the image processing system. This can lead to longer processing times, and larger energy consumption rates. This work introduces new methods of classifying image processing applications by using their memory access pattern for mapping on memory architectures. Our work combines a simulation framework the heterogenous memory simulator with a analytical framework the memory analyzer to find bottlenecks inside the image processing application and aids in finding a suitable, application-specific memory configuration in terms of processing time and energy consumption.     

Proteomic analysis of multiple myeloma: current status and future perspectives

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a malignant plasma cell neoplasm that accounts for slightly more than 10% of all hematologic cancers and remains incurable. The major challenge remains the identification of better diagnosis and prognostic biomarkers. The advent of proteomic technologies creates new opportunities and challenges for those seeking to gain greater understanding of MM. Although there is a limited number of proteomic studies to date in MM, those performed highlight the potential impact of these technologies in our understanding of MM pathogenesis and the identification of novel therapeutic targets. In this review, we introduce the proteomic technologies available for the study of MM, summarize results of the published proteomic studies on MM, and discuss the novel developments and applications for the analysis of protein PTM in MM. The application of proteomic technologies will be valuable to better understand the pathogenesis of MM and may in the future open novel avenues in the treatment of MM.     

WLAN security: current and future

Wireless LAN deployment improves users' mobility, but it also brings a range of security issues that affect emerging standards and related technologies.     

FrameNet, current collaborations and future goals

This paper will focus on recent and near-term future developments at FrameNet (FN) and the interoperability issues they raise. We begin by discussing the current state of the Berkeley FN database including major changes in the data format for the latest data release. We then briefly review two recent local projects, "Rapid Vanguarding??, which has created a new interface for the frame and lexical unit definition process based on the Word Sketch Engine of Kilgarriff et?al. (2004), and ??Beyond the Core??, which has developed tools for annotating constructions, and created a sample ??construction?? of especially ??interesting?? constructions which are neither simply lexical nor easy for the standard parsers to parse. We also cover two current collaborations, FN??s part in the development of the manually annotated subcorpus of the American National Corpus, and a pilot study on aligning WordNet and FrameNet, to exploit the complementary strengths of these quite different resources. We discuss FN-related research on Spanish, Japanese, German (SALSA), Chinese and other languages, and the language-independence of frames, along with interesting FN-related work by others, and a sketch of a large group of image-schematic frames which are now being added to FN. We close with some ideas about how FrameNet can be opened up, to allow broader participation in the development process without losing precision and coherence, including a small-scale study on acquiring data for FN using Amazon??s Mechanical Turk crowd-sourcing system.     

64-bit Block ciphers: hardware implementations and comparison analysis

A performance comparison for the 64-bit block cipher (Triple-DES, IDEA, CAST-128, MISTY1, and KHAZAD) FPGA hardware implementations is given in this paper. All these ciphers are under consideration from the ISO/IEC 18033-3 standard in order to provide an international encryption standard for the 64-bit block ciphers. Two basic architectures are implemented for each cipher. For the non-feedback cipher modes, the pipelined technique between the rounds is used, and the achieved throughput ranges from 3.0 Gbps for IDEA to 6.9 Gbps for Triple-DES. For feedback ciphers modes, the basic iterative architecture is considered and the achieved throughput ranges from 115 Mbps for Triple-DES to 462 Mbps for KHAZAD. The throughput, throughput per slice, latency, and area requirement results are provided for all the ciphers implementations. Our study is an effort to determine the most suitable algorithm for hardware implementation with FPGA devices.     

Decision Support Systems: A summary,problems, and future trends

This paper critically examines issues confronting Decision Support Systems (DSS) in the business/management area. Due to the lack of acceptable definition of DSS, the characteristics and components of DSS are discussed in detail. It is pointed out that work activities that require decision making form a spectrum of problems ranging from structured problem to unstructured problem. It is further pointed out that personality and cognitive style can influence individuals' decision styles, and thus different decision aids will be sought. DSS development and applications are briefly described. Finally, the major problems facing current DSSs are outlined, and the future trends of DSS are described.     

Usability and user experience of medical devices: An overview of the current state,analysis methodologies,and future challenges

Improvements to the reliability and safety of medical devices are vital for healthcare systems. It is necessary to consider the user experience (UX) of patients and healthcare professionals at all the development stages of medical devices. Ergonomic design principles can also reduce the cost of medical device production. This study is a multilateral analytical literature review of UX and usability issues in healthcare and medical device design. The total number of literature sources presented is n = 88. The literature sources are classified according to the difference between UX and usability for various target products and services, including healthcare. The literature is reviewed with a focus on human-oriented aspects. This includes medical technology and device design, which are dependent on the user type, medical device scope, and area of use. A review of key medical device standards and regulation documents is presented. The main analysis methodologies for the UX and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. The future challenges in healthcare and medical ergonomics are briefly highlighted. Above all, this study tried to examine the difference between usability and UX of general products and those of medical devices through the review of existing literature. Even standards do not reflect this well and need to be considered based on further research in academia and industry.Relevance to industryThe obtained results will help medical-device designers and healthcare professionals understand the main medical-research trends and improve the design process. Additionally, they will be helpful for increasing the satisfaction level among medical-device users and reducing user risks.     

Supporting the development of CAM/DAOP applications: an integrated development process

The increasing complexity of large‐scale distributed applications is driving the Software Engineering community to adopt new software technologies for the development of distributed systems. In this sense, the emergence of component‐based software engineering represents a significant advance towards assembling applications by plugging in pre‐fabricated components. Additionally, the principle of ‘advanced’ separation of concerns is nowadays widely applied to improve modularity, reusability and adaptability of software components. In this way, the aspect‐oriented software development paradigm separates into a new dimension, named aspect, those properties that crosscut the system ‘objects’ or ‘components’, reducing their dependencies. However, the development of software based on the composition of components and aspects is still in its early stages. Part of the reason for this is the lack of well‐defined development processes and tools that help software developers in the use of existing component and aspect‐based approaches. Therefore, the primary aim of this paper is to propose an integrated development process for deriving applications by the assembly of a set of prefabricated components and aspects. This process supports the development of Component‐Aspect Model/Dynamic Aspect‐Oriented Platform (CAM/DAOP) applications, where CAM/DAOP is a new model and platform based on components and aspects. Our intention is to show how, with the support of the integrated development process presented in this paper, it is possible to use CAM/DAOP as an alternative to current distributed platforms. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.