Visual Economic Modelling System (VEMS) for Computable General Equilibrium Models

By using a graphical user interface of the software tool Visual Economic Modelling System (VEMS) a modeller can set up a computable general equilibrium model by specifying the various stocks and the flows between them. VEMS generates the corresponding social accounting matrix, the equations of the model, the equations for carrying out the calibration and is capable of performing simulations. The tool is build using Microsoft Visual Basic with an object oriented approach. GAMS is the tool in the background for solving each of the models. GAMS is also used for (partly) calibrating the model and a Prolog program can also be used for the calibration. Static and dynamic (backward and forward-looking) models can be generated. The models are written using the GAMS syntax. There are NLP, MCP, MCP\(^{+}\) and MPSGE versions of the model. VEMS is a prototype and needs further development. One obvious application of it would be as an educational tool for economic modellers.     

Visualizing parallel programs and performance

Performance visualization uses graphical display techniques to analyze performance data and improve understanding of complex performance phenomena. Current parallel performance visualizations are predominantly two-dimensional. A primary goal of our work is to develop new methods for rapidly prototyping multidimensional performance visualizations. By applying the tools of scientific visualization, we can prototype these next-generation displays for performance visualization-if not implement them as end user tools-using existing software products and graphical techniques that physicists, oceanographers, and meteorologists have used for several years     

User interface specification with sequence diagrams: an application to the AIRBUS A380 Datalink system

The development of user interfaces for safety critical systems is driven by requirements specifications. Because user interface specifications are typically embedded within complex systems requirements specifications, they can be intractable to manage. Proprietary requirements specification tools do not support the user interface designer in modelling and specifying the user interface. In this paper, a new way of working with embedded user interface specifications is proposed, exploiting sequence diagrams with a hypertext structure for representing and retrieving use cases. This new tool concept is assessed through an application to the requirements specification for the Airbus A380 air traffic control Datalink system; engineers involved in the development of the Airbus cockpit used a prototype of the tool concept to resolve a set of user interface design anomalies in the requirements specification. The results of the study are positive and indicate the user interface to requirements specification tools which user interface designers themselves need.     

Net-dbx: a web-based debugger of MPI programs over low-bandwidthlines

This paper describes Net-dbx, a tool that utilizes Java and other World Wide Web tools for the debugging of MPI programs from anywhere in the Internet. Net-dbx is a source-level interactive debugger with the full power of gdb (the GNU Debugger) augmented with the debug functionality of the public-domain MPI implementation environments. The main effort was on a low overhead, yet powerful, graphical interface supported by low-bandwidth connections. The portability of the tool is of great importance as well because it enables the tool to be used on heterogeneous nodes that participate in an MPI multicomputer. Both needs are satisfied a great deal by the use of WWW browsing tools and the Java programming language. The user of our system simply points his/her browser to the Net-dbx page, logs in to the destination system, and starts debugging by interacting with the tool, just as with any GUI environment. The user can dynamically select which MPI processes to view/debug. A special WWW-based environment has been designed and implemented to host the system prototype     

MOG user interface builder: a mechanism for integrating application and user interface

Tools which provide graphical editing techniques for the design of user interface presentations are increasingly commonplace. Such tools vary widely in the mechanisms used to define user interfaces and while some are general purpose, others are targeted at particular application domains. Designers faced with varying requirements must choose one tool and live with its shortcomings, purchase a number of different tools, or implement their own. The paper describes an approach to facilitating the latter by providing a library of augmented user interface components called MOG objects which embody both end-user and editing semantics. User interface design tools based on this approach need only provide mechanisms for composing MOG objects into user interfaces and the addition of any other, higher-level functionality. MOG-based user interfaces retain an in-built editing capability and are inherently tailorable.     

The right picture is worth a thousand numbers: data displays in anesthesia

OBJECTIVE: To review the literature on data displays in anesthesia identifying issues and developing design recommendations. BACKGROUND: Unexpected incidents are common in critical care medicine. Adverse outcomes are frequently the catastrophic endpoints of an "evolving" chain of subtle incidents. One strategy to reduce the likelihood of an adverse patient outcome during anesthesia is to improve the anesthesiologist's ability to detect, diagnose, and treat critical incidents. METHOD: A literature review and analysis of data displays. RESULTS: Current numerical and waveform displays do not support anesthesiologists optimally. An alternative is graphical displays that functionally integrate variables into objects. In a well-designed graphic object, deviations from normal are shown by distortions in the object's symmetry. The emerging patterns that result from distorted symmetry facilitate the correct diagnosis. When treatment is effective, an object's shape is restored to normal. Graphical displays can be an effective tool in supporting anesthesiologists' situation awareness. CONCLUSION: Problems related to graphical displays have delayed their use in anesthesia, including the lack of conclusive clinical evidence of their value. However, currently more evidence is accumulating that graphical displays have the potential to improve clinical performance. The successful development of these graphical displays takes into account task requirements, a user's perceptual processes, and task-specific cognition. APPLICATION: This paper provides suggestions for the development of more effective displays in anesthesiology. Graphical displays can increase the anesthesiologist's situation awareness and improve clinical performance. Clinical use of these displays has the potential to significantly improve patient safety.     

Toward support for hypermedia on the World Wide Web

As organizations rush to embrace the World Wide Web as their primary application infrastructure, they should not bypass the benefit of hypermedia support. The Web's infrastructure can serve as an interface to all interactive applications and, over time, will become the graphical user interface model for new applications. Ubiquitous hypermedia support should become the jewel of the Web environment. Through Web integration, hypermedia could become an integral part of every interactive application. With the proper tools to support hypermedia in Web application development, it will become second nature for developers and individual authors to provide supplemental links and hypermedia navigation. However, as organizations adopt the Web as their primary application infrastructure, designers may use Java and other tools to recreate current application functionality, and not take advantage of the Web's hypermedia-augmented infrastructure. If users, designers, MIS departments and organizations don't demand hypermedia support, hypermedia may get lost in the frenzy of Web integration     

Graphics interface tool development in a problem solving environment

A Problem Solving Environment (PSE) is an integrated system of application tools that support the solution of a given problem, or a set of related problems. Paramount in the development of such environments is the design, specification and integration of user interface tools that communicate between the application tools of the system and the user. Typically these interactions are object oriented and involve the interaction with tool parameters, which in many applications (CAD/ CAM, Imaging Systems, Image Processing), are represented by graphical data. This paper describes a user-interface tool development system in which both textual and graphical display, and interaction techniques are integrated under a single model. This allows the user to interact with tool parameters in either graphical or textual modes, and to have the parameters displayed in the manner most relevant to the problem set.     

一个面向对象的交互式图形工具箱OOIGT

在开发交互式图形应用过程中，一个主要难题是如何表示和建立代表应用模型数据及操作的图形对象并提供直接操作的交互方式，另一个难题是如何有效地表示和管理图形对象之间的关系。ＯＯＩＧＴ是作者设计和实现的一个交互式图形建造工具箱，其目的是为解决上述个有效的解，ＯＯＩＧＴ提供了一相可扩充，用于表示应用模型并集成了事件模型的图形对象集，使应用不人需定义对象，而毋须了解如何作图，且容易处理在这些对象上的交互式直     

A virtual environment for multimedia intelligence data analysis

The article describes an experimental, exploratory information visualization system under development at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The system aims to integrate multimedia data and help users visualize the contents of multimedia databases. The prototype, named Starlight, interactively generates information-dense 3D graphical representations of multimedia data interrelationships. Despite the richness and complexity of the information displays, they remain easy to understand. The prototype incorporates an experimental immersive interface intended to foster improved understanding of, and interactions with, 3D information visualizations. The interface is intended to be of practical use in a production-oriented information analysis environment. Although the existing prototype intentionally addresses a specific class of problems faced by intelligence analysts, the authors feel the general approach has broad applicability outside the intelligence community     

Managing design ideas with a shared drawing tool

The generation of design ideas in group discussion is a complex and dynamic process. The fluent expression of ideas and the ability to interact and build on representations created by others contributes significantly to the process. When group members are separated by physical distance, the fluency of this process is interrupted. Computerized shared drawing tools re-establish this fluency. Such tools need to aid not only the drawing process, but also the management of design ideas during the process. The paper lays the groundwork for the design of the idea management portion of a shared drawing tool. It presents a list of group idea management behaviours and identifies user requirements in support of these activities. A prototype shared drawing system is described which attempts to incorporate the user requirements into an interface design. The paper then presents the results of a usability study conducted on the prototype. The interface performed miserably, but the study provided support for the user requirements and gave detailed insight into how a shared drawing interface should be designed.     

An interactive computer graphics interface for the introduction of fuzzy inference in environmental education

Fuzzy logic is based on sets of rules that can be easily understood by the students, since they bear a close resemblance to natural language. The introduction of fuzzy logic, within the framework of Environmental Education, is considered to be necessary in order to provide an insight to the complex environmental interactions. Fuzzy inference is introduced in this paper as an extension of hypothetico-predictive argumentation and it allows the investigation of alternative hypotheses. This is achieved through the development of an interactive computer graphics environment that encompasses a set of fuzzy logic analysis tools and a fuzzy inference model of a lake. The fuzzy model guarantees the scientific integrity of the simulation results, and the graphical interface presents to the students only the comprehensible characteristics of the environmental stressors in the ecosystem of the lake. The proposed graphical interface was developed in successive design stages, with the active participation of the students. The results of the students' experimentation with the graphical interface indicate that their comprehension of the significant environmental problems of the lake is considerably improved and some misconceptions are resolved. Thus, it is considered valuable as an aid to environmental education.     

A service creation environment based on scenarios

Scenarios are often constructed for illustrating example runs through reactive system. Scenarios that describe possible interactions between a system and its environment are widely used in requirement engineering, as a means for users to communicate their functional requirements. Various software development methods use scenarios to define user requirements, but often lack tool support. Existing tools are graphical editors rather than tool support for design. This paper presents a service creation environment for elicitation, integration, verification and validation of scenarios. A semi-formal language is defined for user oriented scenario representation, and a prototype tool implementing an algorithm that integrates them for formal specification generation. This specification is then used to automatically find and report inconsistencies in the scenarios.     

A coupled model of water,heat and mass transfer using object orientation to improve flexibility and functionality

The challenge of our software development is to introduce user-friendly document-orientation and graphical features that are typical in Windows software and to retain the possibility of easily extending existing legacy Fortran code. Keys to this development were the use of five development tools and our special management of shared memory. Numerical development of the code was thus continued in Fortran while the newly introduced multiple-document interface allows the new graphical features that are considered more user friendly (e.g. tool bar, status bar, animation, etc.) can be further refined and adjusted using Visual C++6.0 and the MS Visual Studio. Object orientation makes it possible to include modules with different type of dependencies that restrict the user interface to the specific use of the model. A large number of sub-models are combined and all input/output data have been adapted to an object-oriented standard. Multiple-run features and built-in links to a common database are new important features.     

一个西文DOS环境下中文用户界面的实现

在西文ＤＯＳ环境下建立图形化的中文用户界面具有一定的实用价值。本文从中英文显示，图形窗口及其操作函数，菜单窗口及菜单选项等几个方面简单介绍了一个西文ＤＯＳ环境下的中文用户界面－ＣＵＩＳ的实现。     

Tool support for the design and management of context models

A central task in the development of context-aware applications is the modeling and management of complex context information. In this paper, we present the NexusEditor, which can ease this task by providing a graphical user interface to design schemas for spatial and technical context models, interactively create queries, send them to a server and visualize the results. One main contribution is to show how schema awareness can improve such a tool: The NexusEditor dynamically parses the underlying data model and provides additional syntactic checks, semantic checks, and short-cuts based on the schema information. Furthermore, the tool helps to design new schema definitions based on the existing ones, which is crucial for an iterative and user-centric development of context-aware applications. Finally, it provides interfaces to existing information spaces and visualization tools for spatial data like GoogleEarth.     

基于LonWorks技术的智能家居工程应用

本文提出一种基于多I/O智能节点的解决方案。可实现对住宅三表远程计费及提供保安三防功能;利用Delphi开发监控系统,为用户提供一个图形界面的编辑工具,并且通过DDE技术与控制装置进行数据交换。     

面向专用处理器指令集设计的应用特征分析方法研究与实现

专用处理器的指令集设计是专用处理器设计中的关键问题。SoC专用处理器指令集设计有其特殊的程序特征分析需求,迫切需要面向专用指令集设计的程序特征分析工具支持,但当前能够完全支持专用指令集设计的特征分析工具比较少,设计人员仍需人工或同时调用多种分析工具才能来获取所需特征信息,且效率低、结果不够直观,无法迅速有效地对专用指令集设计提供有效的数据支持。本文面向专用处理器指令集设计,研究并实现了一种基于程序中间表示的应用特征自动分析方法,以可视化的方式得到了程序的控制关系特征、计算特征、操作数据特征和核心运算等特征。该工具不仅可支持专用指令集设计,对于SoC编译优化、任务分配等也可以提供简明直观的辅助支持,具有一定通用性,同时提供图形化的结果显示与友好的人机界面,使用简明方便。     

Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users.     

VxWorks的三维图形环境的开发

VxWorks作为一种广泛应用于高性能领域中的可裁剪的实时嵌入式操作系统,并没有为用户提供完善的图形界面。为了在VxWorks中实现三维图形的开发和显示,文中通过将OpenGL与WindML（WindRiver Multimedia Library）媒体库相结合,提出VxWorks下三维图形开发环境系统建立和基于该环境的图形开发的方法。完成VxWorks操作系统交叉编译环境的建立、MindML的配置和Mesa3D的编译,并完成VxWorks操作系统下的OpenGL程序开发。通过大量应用程序的测试验证,证明该方法能够完成VxWorks操作系统下的三维图形开发的要求,并且具有操作简单、容易开发等特点。