Enhancing the semantics of UML association redefinition

Association redefinition is a UML construct that permits us to define an association end more specifically in a particular context. Concretely, it allows specifying some additional participation and cardinality constraints on the association. Association refinements, which have been studied and used by many authors in conceptual modelling languages prior to UML, are closely related to association redefinitions. They also permit to refine the ends of an association adding participation and cardinality constraints. In this paper, we analyze and compare the semantics of both concepts and propose to extend the semantics of association redefinitions in UML to cover all the constraints that may be expressed by association refinements in other conceptual modelling languages. Additionally, we present how to integrate previous results on validation of association refinements to UML and how to generate code for a relational technology platform. Finally, we provide a prototype tool to verify the feasibility of the approach.     

Formal modelling of organisational goals based on performance indicators

Every organisation exists or is created for the achievement of one or more goals. To ensure continued success, the organisation should monitor its performance with respect to the formulated goals. In practice the performance of an organisation is often evaluated by estimating its performance indicators. In most existing approaches for organisation modelling the relation between performance indicators and goals remains implicit. This paper proposes a formal framework for modelling goals based on performance indicators and defines mechanisms for establishing goal satisfaction, which enable evaluation of organisational performance. Methodological and analysis issues related to goals are also discussed in the paper. The described framework is a part of a general framework for organisation modelling and analysis.     

Constructing malware normalizers using term rewriting

A malware mutation engine is able to transform a malicious program to create a different version of the program. Such mutation engines are used at distribution sites or in self-propagating malware in order to create variation in the distributed programs. Program normalization is a way to remove variety introduced by mutation engines, and can thus simplify the problem of detecting variant strains. This paper introduces the “normalizer construction problem” (NCP), and formalizes a restricted form of the problem called “NCP=”, which assumes a model of the engine is already known in the form of a term rewriting system. It is shown that even this restricted version of the problem is undecidable. A procedure is provided that can, in certain cases, automatically solve NCP= from the model of the engine. This procedure is analyzed in conjunction with term rewriting theory to create a list of distinct classes of normalizer construction problems. These classes yield a list of possible attack vectors. Three strategies are defined for approximate solutions of NCP=, and an analysis is provided of the risks they entail. A case study using the virus suggests the approximations may be effective in practice for countering mutated malware. R. Mathur is presently at McAfee AVERT Labs.     

The use of an electrothermal plasma gun to simulate the extremely high heat flux conditions of a tokamak disruption

Disruption damage conditions for future large tokamaks like ITER are nearly impossible to simulate on current tokamaks. The electrothermal plasma source SIRENS has been designed, constructed, and operated to produce high density (> 10²⁵/m³), low temperature (1–3 eV) plasma formed by the ablation of the insulator with currents of up to 100 kA (100 s pulse length) and energies up to 15 kJ. The source heat fluence (variable from 0.2 to 7 MJ/m²) is adequate for simulation of the thermal quench phase of plasma disruption in future fusion tokamaks. Different materials have been exposed to the high heat flux in SIRENS, where comparative erosion behavior was obtained. Vapor shield phenomena has been characterized for different materials, and the energy transmission factor through the shielding layer is obtained. The device is also equipped with a magnet capable of producing a parallel magnetic field (up to 16 T) over a 8 msec pulse length. The magnetic field is produced to decrease the turbulent energy transport through the vapor shield, which provides further reduction of surface erosion (magnetic vapor shield effect).     

Using standards to integrate soft real-time components into dynamic distributed architectures

A pervasive application domain today is one in which independently developed real-time components participate in a dynamic and decentralized way from distributed environments. Several challenges arise from this domain, related with participant heterogeneity, transient behavior, scalability or quality of service. The use of standards is important here, where a multidiscipline approach is required. We propose ServiceDDS, a framework that combines different standard technologies to solve the problems related with the integration of components into the described environment. ServiceDDS is based on DDS to support dynamic distributed interactions, XMPP to provide Web access, and RTSJ for real-time performance.     

Automatic parallelisation for LTI MIMO state space systems using FPGAs. An optimisation for cost & performance

The parallelism attained by the use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) has shown remarkable potential for accelerating control systems applications. This comes at a time when well established methods based on inherited serial Central Processor Units (CPUs) cannot guarantee solutions for the increasing execution speed demands. However, the transition from serial to parallel architectures represents a tremendous challenge due to overwhelming numbers of unexplored options and conflicting factors. The work presented achieves a parallelisation characterisation for generic MIMO systems using stand-alone FPGA implementations. The main contribution is that a very fine subset of possible serial/parallel implementations is obtained. This is used to achieve a flexible trade-off between cost and performance. Automatic optimisation of latency, occupied FPGA area and execution speed is attained and justified in respect to most of the feasible scenarios.     

Performance evaluation of priority CSMA-CA mechanism on ISA100.11a wireless network

The International Society of Automation recently released ISA100.11a as an open standard for reliable wireless networks for industrial automation. ISA100.11a uses the TDMA scheme in the medium access layer to provide deterministic services. However, ISA100.11a adopts the CSMA-CA mechanism with priorities for retransmission from failure on dedicated links, sporadic data, and network configuration.This paper evaluates ISA100.11a CSMA-CA by simulation, considering the effects of backoff procedures and priority settings to probability of collision and successful use of slots. It's demonstrated that a high number of priority classes enable better network utilization resulting in less number of packets exceeding their lifetime.     

A global localization approach based on Line-segment Relation Matching technique

This paper presents a novel global localization approach for mobile robots by exploring line-segment features in any structured environment. The main contribution of this paper is an effective data association approach, the Line-segment Relation Matching (LRM) technique, which is based on a generation and exploration of an Interpretation Tree (IT). A new representation of geometric patterns of line-segments is proposed for the first time, which is called as Relation Table. It contains relative geometric positions of every line-segment respect to the others (or itself) in a coordinate-frame independent sense. Based on that, a Relation-Table-constraint is applied to minimize the searching space of IT therefore greatly reducing the processing time of LRM. The Least Square algorithm is further applied to estimate the robot pose using matched line-segment pairs. Then a global localization system can be realized based on our LRM technique integrated with a hypothesis tracking framework which is able to handle pose ambiguity. Sufficient simulations were specially designed and carried out indicating both pluses and minuses of our system compared with former methods. We also presented the practical experiments illustrating that our approach has a high robustness against uncertainties from sensor occlusions and extraneous observation in a highly dynamic environment. Additionally our system was demonstrated to easily deal with initialization and have the ability of quick recovery from a localization failure.     

Bacteria foraging optimization for protein sequence analysis on the grid

Scientific applications such as protein sequence analysis require a coordination of resources. This is due to hundreds and hundreds of protein sequences being deposited into data banks by the research community which results in an extensive database search when one wants to find a similar protein sequence. This search becomes easier and the time taken is reduced when it is conducted in a grid environment implemented using the Globus tool kit. This paper proposes the use of Bacteria Foraging Optimization (BFO) for finding similar protein sequences in the existing databases. Usage of BFO further reduces the time taken by a resource to execute the user’s requests. Also, the resources utilized in the proposed method are better balanced compared to the existing scheduling algorithms. Also, it is found that the number of tasks executed is more compared to the existing algorithms even though there is a fall in the execution of tasks as the number of resources increases which might be due to network failure etc. The proposed BFO has been compared with the existing First Come First Serve (FCFS) and Minimum Execution Time (MET) scheduling algorithms and it has been found that the proposed BFO performs well compared to the existing algorithms in terms of makespan, resource utilization and minimization in the case of non-execution of client requests.