User experiences with a MICROPAD

This paper examines the utility of a hand-print terminal (The MICROPAD) for implementing human interaction with a computer data base. Three issues are addressed:

• its usefulness for textual and numerical input;
• the feasibility of its supporting line diagram images via ‘peck boxes’; and
• its use within a multi-media workstation.

     

A consultancy service in industrial robotics: Methods and experience

In consideration of the growing importance of the application of ir in Austrian producing enterprises, the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce established a special department in 1982 with a view to:

• 1.(a) convince enterpreneurs of the advantages of using high technologies, such as microelectronics, industrial robots, flexible manufacturing systems, cad/cam etc. and
• 2.(b) assist and advise respective enterprises in making a decisioin as to whether and where to implement high technical products into their production and — in the affirmative — how to proceed further.

This contribution outlines various methods to ascertain most effectively

• •- where robots could be used in a certain enterprise
• •- how specific technical problems should be solved and
• •- the estimate of economy.

     

In brief

• Datacard Group
• GlobalPlatform
• Atmel Corporation
• Giesecke & Devrient
• Siemens Business Services
• Macao Special Administrative Region
• Unibanka
• Austria Card
• ViVOtech
• Global Payments
• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• Federation of Small Businesses
• Datacard Group
• Sony’s
• SSP Solutions
• SSP-Litronic
• Department of Defense
• Visa International
• Datacard Group
• Nissan Motor Co
• SchlumbergerSema
• Legic Identsystems
• Airbus
• Financial Supervisory Committee
• Societe Generale
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Visa
• MasterCard
• Wal-Mart, The Limited, Sears Roebuck, Safeway, Circuit City
• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• Eurosmart
• Micróelectronica Española
• Target Corporation
• Insight Consulting
• ActivCard
• Radio Frequency Investigation
• Bell ID
• Giesecke & Devrient
• OTI

     

In brief

Including brief stories on:

• Cubic
• Sharp Microelectronics
• MIPS Technologies
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Theseus
• Bluefish
• Afghan Wireless Communication Company
• Ministry of Communications and Telephone Systems International
• Cubic Transportation Systems
• Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA)
• Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
• NDS Group
• DIRECTV
• JCB Co
• Convex Letter Card
• Toppan Printing Co
• Maxell
• Crédit Mutuel
• Multos
• MasterCard
• Schlumberger’s Smart Cards and Terminals
• Desjardins
• MagIC 9000
• RSA Security
• SCM Microsystems
• OTI
• ABSA Bank
• Standard Bank
• The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• First National Bank Omaha
• Oberthur Card Systems
• Sunbeach Communications
• HID Corporation
• Dorado Products

     

In brief

• Schlumberger Smart Cards and Terminals
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Communications Security Establishment
• Orga Kartensysteme
• Giesecke & Devrient
• INSIDE Contactless
• Epecom Technology & Distribution
• PT Adiwira Sembada
• Saflink
• European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s
• Sagem
• Gemplus
• Ingenico
• Korea Information & Communications Co
• TDK Semiconductor Corporation
• All American Semiconductor
• SchlumbergerSema
• Schlumberger Ltd
• Tribute Ltd
• Giesecke & Devrient
• INSIDE Contactless
• Beacon Technologies
• US Navy
• Transport for London
• Smart Frog Holdings
• Red Alert Group
• NEXT
• Trintech Group
• Smart Card Forum of China
• Beijing Commercial Administration
• Schlumberger
• Precise Biometrics
• Microexpert
• Visa International
• Applied DNA Sciences
• Applied DNA Sciences Europe Ltd
• Biowell Technology

     

Computer network interconnection

This report examines the current situation regarding the interconnection of computer networks, especially packet switched networks (PSNs). Four major types of interconnections are surveyed:

• 1.1. Circuit Switched Network to PSN
• 2.2. Star Network to PSN
• 3.3. Simple Terminal to PSN
• 4.4. PSN to PSN

The emphasis is on identifying the barriers to interconnection and on surveying approaches to a solution, rather than recommending any single course of action.     

On modularity in infinitary term rewriting

We study modular properties in strongly convergent infinitary term rewriting. In particular, we show that:

• •Confluence is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems, even when these are non-collapsing.
• •Confluence modulo equality of hypercollapsing subterms is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of systems.
• •Normalization is not preserved across direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems.
• •Unique normalization with respect to reduction is not preserved across direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

Together, these facts constitute a radical departure from the situation in finitary term rewriting. Positive results are:

• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of an infinite number of left-linear systems iff at most one system contains a collapsing rule.
• •Confluence is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of non-collapsing systems if only terms of finite rank are considered.
• •Top-termination is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.
• •Normalization is preserved under the direct sum of a finite number of left-linear systems.

All of the negative results above hold in the setting of weakly convergent rewriting as well, as do the positive results concerning modularity of top-termination and normalization for left-linear systems.     

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is the chess machine that defeated then-reigning World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997. There were a number of factors that contributed to this success, including:

• •a single-chip chess search engine,
• •a massively parallel system with multiple levels of parallelism,
• •a strong emphasis on search extensions,
• •a complex evaluation function, and
• •effective use of a Grandmaster game database.

This paper describes the Deep Blue system, and gives some of the rationale that went into the design decisions behind Deep Blue.     

In Brief

• Ingenico
• Barclaycard
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• DCSSI
• Park City Mountain Resort
• Rapidtron
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Zhejiang Unicom
• China Unicom
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Gemplus
• Gartner Dataquest
• Gemplus
• Universal Kart
• Teknoloji Holding Group
• Texas Instruments RFid Systems
• National People’s Congress
• Bay Area Rapid Transit District
• San Francisco International Airport
• On Track Innovations
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Bluefish Technologies
• First National Bank of South Africa
• FirstRand Bank
• Hypercom Corporation
• Grintek Telecom
• Australian Bankers’ Association
• Thales e-Security
• Keycorp
• Eftpos New Zealand
• ANZ Banking Group
• Provenco
• STMicroelectronics
• CSOB Bank
• Kredyt Bank
• VISA
• KBC Bank & Insurance Group
• Proton World International
• K&H
• Smart Card Alliance
• SCM Microsystems
• Bureau of Immigration
• Hansabank
• Setec
• Aconite
• International Turnkey Systems

     

In Brief

• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• Datakey
• Sun Microsystems
• Departments of Defense
• Interior
• NASA
• Department of Defense
• Frost & Sullivan
• Transport for London
• Cubic Transportation Systems Ltd
• London Buses
• Transport for London
• EDS
• TranSys
• Microsoft
• Network Associates
• Visa
• Verisign
• Amazon
• eBay
• Coalition on Online Identity Theft
• Federal Trade Commission
• Emosyn
• ATMI
• Bioscrypt
• Little Rock National Airport
• HID’s
• General Services Administration
• BearingPoint
• Marks and Spencer
• Intercede’s
• Infineon Technologies
• Cubic Corporation
• LaserCard Systems Corporation
• Drexler Technology Corporation
• Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
• Visa
• ISO
• ANSI
• Open Security Exchange
• IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization
• Computer Associates
• Gemplus
• HID
• Tyco Fire & Security’s Software House
• Hypercom Corporation
• MasterCard’s
• Fazoli’s
• National Bank of Serbia
• Giesecke & Devrient
• GlobalPlatform
• ICC Solutions

     

Future paths for integer programming and links to artificial intelligence

Integer programming has benefited from many innovations in models and methods. Some of the promising directions for elaborating these innovations in the future may be viewed from a framework that links the perspectives of artificial intelligence and operations research. To demonstrate this, four key areas are examined:

• 1.(1) controlled randomization,
• 2.(2) learning strategies,
• 3.(3) induced decomposition and
• 4.(4) tabu search. Each of these is shown to have characteristics that appear usefully relevant to developments on the horizon.

     

Microsoft repository version 2 and the open information model

Microsoft Repository is an object-oriented meta-data management facility that ships in Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft SQL Server. It includes two main components:

• •• A repository engine that implements a set of object-oriented interfaces on top of a SQL database system. A developer can use these interfaces to define information models (i.e., schemas) and manipulate instances of the models.
• •• The Open Information Model, which is a set of information models that cover object modeling, database modeling, and component reuse.

The repository system is designed to meet the persistent storage needs of software tools. Its main technical goals are:

• •• Compatibility with Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) architecture
• •• Extensibility by customers and independent software vendors, so they can add behavior to objects stored by the repository engine and extend information models provided by Microsoft and others.
• •• Flexible and efficient versioning, configuration management, and checkout/checkin to support team-oriented activities.

This paper describes the programming interface and implementation of the repository engine and the Open Information Model.     

Measurement technology for automation in construction and large scale assembly

Fifty technical experts from business, industry, universities and government met in Washington, D.C., on February 5 and 6, 1985, to consider the issues of applying automation to construction and large scale assembly. This workshop, sponsored by the National Bureau of Standards and Transitions Research Corporation, concluded that:

• •• New technology achievable in the near term would have a major benefit in the construction and large scale assembly industries.
• •• The key to this benefit is the application of computers to data management and process control both off-site for design and planning and on-site for inventory management, production control and creation of an as-built database.
• •• The achievement of this new technology requires research carried out on the integration of systems for measurement and automated control of on-site construction and assembly tasks.

The consensus of the attendees at the workshop was that the specific problems that need attacking are:

• 1.1.System integration and standardization of data base technology for on-site use, for integration with measurement and inventory management systems, and integration with off-site computers.
• 2.2.Standardization of labeling for inventory management.
• 3.3.Development of real-time measurement technology for measuring position and dimensions and for inspection for quality assurance, particularly in materials properties (e.g. concrete).
• 4.4.Development of better machine control technology, particularly for lifting (cranes) and for material handling.

Specific recommendations for action included:

• •• Information transfer: a source of information on measurement technology that could be applied in construction and a major conference on this topic next year.
• •• A demonstration project to develop and demonstrate an as-built database on a real construction project.

     

Knowledge-based automatic dimensioning

A knowledge-based system, for automatically dimensioning a given 3D CAD model, is described. It was found that

• 1.1. dimensioning should preferably be based upon manufacturing features which are sets of surfaces in specified 3d relationships
• 2.2. several different kinds of rules are needed
  • 2.1.(a) for each feature, rules for generation of dimensions onto sets of surfaces comprising it
  • 2.2.(b) for each surface, the generation of linear dimension forms
  • 2.3.(c) for each such form, the instantiation of the dimension onto an explicit 3d linear element
  • 2.4.(d) the selection of 3d linear elements to express in 2d views, and the selection of views to use
  • 2.5.(e) the layout of the 2d dimensions generated.
• 3.3. a large amount of redundancy occurred, which had to be managed and retained, until final decision on selection and placement of 2D dimensions were made.

The system works by a sequence of applications of rules, which construct a set of prioritized goals connected by a network of redundancy relationships. Rules of types (a), (b) and (c) are successively applied, starting with the 3D model, to produce linear dimensioning goals, with redundancy relations among them. View selection and 2D layout involve rules of types (d) and (e), and a complex evaluation of each individual 2D dimensioning choice for each 3D linear dimensioning goal.The system was written in Prolog, using the UCLA CADLOG intelligent CAD system.     

A compiler for a linear chemical notation

A computer program, which translates an external linear representation of chemical components into an internal representation, is described. The recognition of the linear notation involves three main steps.

• •A lexicographic analysis.
• •A syntactic analysis carried out by means of a grammar associated to the linear language.
• •A semantic analysis.

     

Development of methods for modelling complex ecological systems

In modelling complex ecological systems

• 1.(i) a new theory of diffusion of non-conservative particles,
• 2.(ii) procedures for aggregation and averaging of ecosystem components with subsequent hierarchical decomposition and for
• 3.(iii) joint analysis of dynamic and logical informational models were developed and shortly described.

Numerical procedures support the elaboration of prognoses about the behaviour of men-controlled ecological systems. Some results in modelling the North-West Black Sea shelf ecosystem are demonstrated.     

High integrity software development: process and tool issues

YSE and BAe Defence have recently completed an unclassified study for MoD (PE) specifically concerned with high integrity software development process and tool issues. The overall objective of the project was to produce guidance for MoD project managers on the sorts of processes and toolsets which their suppliers should be expected to deploy on projects being conducted in the context of Interim Defense Standard (IDS) 00-55 and IDS 00-56. A wide-ranging survey of industrial practice underpinned the project.This paper reports the main areas of work of the project and its results. The topics covered include:

• •⊗ ideal high integrity software development including tool support requirements;
• •⊗ a review of current high integrity software development practice;
• •⊗ available tool support (COTS and proprietary);
• •⊗ a minimum acceptable process and associated tool support;
• •⊗ process and toolset hazard analysis;
• •⊗ process and toolset safety cases;
• •⊗ building better toolsets;
• •⊗ process and toolset assessment.

     

Preface: Volume 59, Issue 3

QAPL'01This volume contains the Post-Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (QAPL'01). The workshop was held in Firenze, Italy on Friday 7th September 2001, as satellite event to Principles, Logics, and Implementations of high-level programming languages, PLI'01.The majority of approaches in program semantics and analysis are arguably concentrated on qualitative investigations of various computational properties. As a result, some aspects of computation are neglected, which are of a quantitative nature. Such aspects are nevertheless important and sometimes essential in determining the behaviour of systems. As an example, issues related to resource consumption (storage, time, bandwidth, etc.) cannot be ignored when systems of interacting, competing or cooperating processes are considered.The aim of this workshop was to discuss appropriate models of programming languages, which are able to capture quantitative aspects of computation. Such models are good candidates to provide the base of new approaches in semantics and program analysis. Their investigation will hopefully not just allow for a better understanding of program behaviour (e.g. how agents compete for a limited resource), but also help to establish better connections with related complexity theoretic questions.Probabilistic languages and real-time languages constitute two important prototypical examples of quantitative models. But we encouraged the contributions covering other and/or more general quantitative aspects in the design, analysis and implementation of programming languages, with particular emphasis on the functional and declarative paradigms.The papers presented at the workshop were selected by the program committee consisting of

• •Luca de Alfaro, University of California at Berkeley, USA
• •Frank de Boer, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
• •Alessandra Di Pierro, University of Pisa, Italy
• •Maurizio Gabbrielli, University of Udine, Italy
• •Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, University of Birmingham, UK
• •Herbert Wiklicky, Imperial College, UK.

At the workshop there was one invited talk by

• •David Sands: Asymptotic Reasoning Meets Programming Language Semantics

as well as eight contributed talks:

• •Keye Martin: Powerdomains and Zero Finding
• •Thom Frühwirth: As Time Goes By: Complexity Analysis of Simplification Rule
• •Antonio Brogi, Alessandra Di Pierro and Herbert Wiklicky: On Language Expressiveness and Dimension
• •David Clark, Sebastian Hunt and Pasquale Malacaria: Quantitative Analysis of the Leakage of Confidential Data
• •Marius C. Bujorianu and Manuela L. Bujorianu: On the Hilbert Machine Quantitative Computational Model
• •Frank S. de Boer, Maurizio Gabbrielli and Maria Chiara Meo: Proving Correctness of Timed Concurrent Constraint Programs
• •Nicos Angelopoulos and David R. Gilbert: A Statistical View of Probabilistic Finite Domains
• •Richard Kieburtz: Real-time Reactive Programming for Embedded Controllers

These Post-Proceedings contain the reviewed and revised versions of the first four of these presentations.October 2002 Alessandra di Pierro Herbert Wiklicky     

Team structure and team performance in IS development: a social network perspective

Teamwork during IS development (ISD) is an important issue. This paper discusses the relationship between team structure and ISD team performance using a social network approach. Based on empirical evidence collected from 25 teams in a system analysis and design course, we found that:

• (1)Group cohesion was positively related to overall performance.
• (2)Group conflict indexes were not significantly correlated with overall performance.
• (3)Group characteristics, e.g., cohesion and conflict, fluctuated in different phases, but in later stages, much less cohesion occurred and the advice network seemed to be very important.
• (4)Group structures seemed to be a critical factor for good performance.

Further in-depth studies were conducted on teams exhibiting the highest and lowest performance to determine their differences from a sociogram analysis perspective.     

The hydromagnetic flow of a dusty visco-elastic fluid between two infinite parallel plates

An initial value investigation is made on the motion of an incompressible visco-elastic (Rivlin-Ericksen) fluid with small particles between two infinite moving parallel plates in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. The flow is generated in the fluid particle system due to time dependent pressure gradient and also the motion of the plates in the presence of an external imposed transverse magnetic field. By Laplace transform technique, the velocity distribution and wall shear stress have been obtained for four different cases, when the pressure gradient and both the plate velocities are

• 1.(i) decreasing exponentially with time,
• 2.(ii) varying periodically with time,
• 3.(iii) impulsive type, and
• 4.(iv) acting for a finite time.

In each case, shear stresses at the boundary plates are also calculated.