Perl-speaks-NONMEM (PsN)--a Perl module for NONMEM related programming

The NONMEM program is the most widely used nonlinear regression software in population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) analyses. In this article we describe a programming library, Perl-speaks-NONMEM (PsN), intended for programmers that aim at using the computational capability of NONMEM in external applications. The library is object oriented and written in the programming language Perl. The classes of the library are built around NONMEM's data, model and output files. The specification of the NONMEM model is easily set or changed through the model and data file classes while the output from a model fit is accessed through the output file class. The classes have methods that help the programmer perform common repetitive tasks, e.g. summarising the output from a NONMEM run, setting the initial estimates of a model based on a previous run or truncating values over a certain threshold in the data file. PsN creates a basis for the development of high-level software using NONMEM as the regression tool.     

Spam: it's not just for inboxes anymore

E-mail spam is a nuisance that every user has come to expect. But Web spammers prey on unsuspecting users and undermine search engines by subverting search results to increase the visibility of their pages.     

LEGO MindStorms: not just for K-12 anymore

Using LEGO Mindstorms robots to support the ACM Computing Curriculum 2001 in lab exercises and projects from the beginner courses in programming to advanced courses in operating systems, compilers, networks, and artificial intelligence.     

The extreme programming bandwagon: revolution or just revolting?

The software development field is constantly advancing; all programmers know that and most of us embrace it. Indeed, proponents of extreme programming (XP) must embrace change vehemently. While the paper's title suggests cynicism, thus leading to possible confusion over its thesis, the author likes the software industry's evolution and maturation. Still, he is concerned about some aspects of the new agile methodologies. He concludes that there are a multitude of development scenarios where agile approaches can excel, but at least an equal number where it is destined to fail. For example, XP's proponents openly admit that XP does not tend itself to mission- or safety-critical applications, and large teams will find the oral communication mechanism difficult to implement. The key here is to know your options and understand when you should use one over another.     

Visual design and programming for Web applications

With the development of the information society, it has become necessary to release software early that satisfies users. Therefore, it has become important to develop the software quickly so that the users can try it, and give the developers feedback. Recently, instead of the conventional water-fall-model development, new development techniques such as aspect-oriented programming have been researched. The software development techniques that make use of graphics have also been researched in a variety of fields. This paper presents the image-oriented programming method that uses graphics as a tool of designing software, and enables users to easily develop software according to their image of what they want to develop. It also describes the BioPro system that implements this method for Web applications. The BioPro system has the following features; (1) users can develop programs according to their image, (2) they can easily verify the completeness of components that make up the program and the consistency of those relationships, and (3) they can easily confirm what they have developed, regardless of which stage of development they are currently at.     

Web programming in Guide

Client-server programming is emerging as an important programming paradigm. Especially important, because of the pervasiveness of the HTTP protocol, is the stateless client-server paradigm, used in the so-called ‘Common Gateway Interface’, or CGI. CGI Programmers must deal with a number of design considerations that are not normally important in conventional programs. The most important are persistence and control of concurrent access. We describe these and other CGI programming considerations, and present a new ‘little’ programming language that was designed specifically as a server-side programming language. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PKI: it's not dead, just resting

Like other flexible objects, the public key infrastructure sacrifices some utility in trying to be all things to all people. Mainly, PKI's generic, all-purpose identity certificates fall short of what the marketplace demands, forcing vendors to develop more economically efficient, useful, and imaginative business models. Thus, we must adapt the PKI design to the real world rather than trying to constrain the real world to match the PKI. A variety of alternative approaches, ranging from simple workarounds to designing the application to sidestep PKI's shortcomings entirely, can help solve the problems inherent in the standard X.509 model.

Despite an original design that failed to address the marketplace's needs, the use of innovative public key infrastructure models can make the technology meet today's requirements.     

Perl: Internet duct tape

Perl is an expressive, general-purpose language with some very high-level features. By itself, it is well suited for tasks involving text processing, networking, or process management, and its module system extends its capabilities into other areas such as the World Wide Web, SQL databases, graphical user interfaces, image manipulation, vector and array data, and XML. The author discusses its many uses     

SWAM: A logic-based mobile agent programming language for the Semantic Web

Once a big repository of static data, the Web has been gradually evolved into a worldwide network of information and services known as the Semantic Web. This environment allows programs to autonomously interact with Web-accessible information and services. In this sense, mobile agent technology could help in efficiently exploiting this relatively new Web in a fully automated way, since Semantic Web resources are described in a computer-understandable way. In this paper, we present SWAM, a platform for building and deploying Prolog-based intelligent mobile agents on the Semantic Web. The article also reports examples and experimental results in order to illustrate as well as to assess the benefits of SWAM.     

Semantic based aspect-oriented programming for context-aware Web service composition

An aspect-oriented programming (AOP) based approach is proposed to perform context-aware service composition on the fly. It realises context-aware composition by semantically weaving context into Web service composition. The context weaver algorithm is implemented and illustrated. The proposed semantic weaving allows Web services to be composed as the context changes.     

基于Internet与MIDAS技术的Web应用程序设计--攀钢电力信息管理系统Web功能的设计方法

本文以攀钢SCADA计算机监控系统为基础，讨论与Internet管理网络联接，利用客户／服务器（C／S Client/Server）模式实现攀钢电力信息管理系统的方法。讨论利用Delphi5.0 Client/Server开发工具的Interet组件和MIDAS技术开发多层数据库Web应用程序的设计方法。     

一个基于Java Web开发应用的教学案例设计与实现

本文以构建一个简单软件实训网络管理平台的项目为例,阐述了编写Java Web开发应用技术教学案例的总体设计思路,并从开发环境、系统功能等方面介绍了整个平台的开发过程。     

The Web is not yet suitable for learning

Many sites on the Web refer to themselves as courses. Doing so is popular at present, with an ever increasing number of these courses cropping up everywhere. In some universities, administrators pressure the faculty to provide such courses without offering guidelines for how the Internet might best be used for learning. We've looked at many such courses and come away greatly disappointed. Most of these courses provide little in the way of interaction. Our concern is with situations in which the Web site is intended to be the primary delivery method for learning, not when it is a supplement to learning delivered mainly in other ways, such as through lectures. We are not suggesting that other ways of delivering learning-such as through lectures-are adequate. Distance learning is an important approach for future education, but not as it is currently delivered on the Web     

Automated Web navigation using multiagent adaptive dynamic programming

Today a massive amount of information available on the WWW often makes searching for information of interest a long and tedious task. Chasing hyperlinks to find relevant information may be daunting. To overcome such a problem, a learning system, cognizant of a user's interests, can be employed to automatically search for and retrieve relevant information by following appropriate hyperlinks. In this paper, we describe the design of such a learning system for automated Web navigation using adaptive dynamic programming methods. To improve the performance of the learning system, we introduce the notion of multiple model-based learning agents operating in parallel, and describe methods for combining their models. Experimental results on the WWW navigation problem are presented to indicate that combining multiple learning agents, relying on user feedback, is a promising direction to improve learning speed in automated WWW navigation.