From visionary ideas to products

This paper presents the rationale for the creation of the Microelectronics and Computer Research Corporation (MCC), to be a cooperative research organization funded by a number of U.S. computer and electronics companies.

Factors inhibiting investment in fundamental research by individual companies today are presented and analyzed, and the benefits of the consortium approach for cooperatively performing basic research and early exploratory development work are described.

The present research activities of MCC in the areas of Advanced Computer Architectures, Computer Aided Design, Software Technology, and Packaging and Interconnect technology are presented. This is followed by a discussion of future directions for research in the field of computer science.     

Ergonomics of technology transfer

It is beyond doubt that high technology has elevated the standards of living of mankind. The modern technology created and developed to a great extent by Western or developed societies is now in great demand in Eastern and developing societies who are trying to leap-frog towards advancement. But unfortunately, in the transfer of technology, both the giver and the receiver seem to make many mistakes. A technology transferred without considering the ethnic variables in the societies and differences in the climates, has found to cause problems to the acquirer. Due to the basic human factor differences such as sizes of people, physical environment, physical capacities and organizational and cultural differences, a technology which is unadapted has found to be inappropriate, harmful, hazardous and unsuccessful. In the areas of health, working conditions, production and finance, undesirable effects have resulted through haphazard technology transfer, For a successful transfer, it is therefore stressed that technology has to be adapted or modified taking into consideration the technological, anthropological and socio-economic factors of the acquiring population.     

Information technology at the National Computing Centre

An outline is given of the information services used in the National Computing Centre. An update is provided of a previous paper describing the local area network implemented in 1981. Three IT landmarks are highlighted, these include the introduction of word processing, the local area network and a digital PABX. The implications and subsequent developments are described. The facilities available on the local area network are discussed. The use of three electronic mail services are also considered, along with the use of facsimile.     

The Migration of Multi-tier E-commerce Applications to an Enterprise Java Environment

As technology evolves, many organizations face the problem of migrating legacy applications from one technology base to another. We report on a case study involving the migration of legacy code into the IBM® WebSphere® Commerce Suite product. Specifically, we focus on the problem of migrating applications that use traditional database access techniques to applications using the Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) programming model. Our results include a practical methodology that facilitates such migration, as well as a tool that supports this methodology. The tool has been released on IBM's alphaWorks site.     

Preface: Volume 70, Issue 3

This volume contains the Proceedings of the REFINE 2002 workshop. The Workshop was held in Copenhagen, Denmark on July 20 and 21, 2002, as a satellite event to FLoC'02 as an FME-affiliated workshop.Refinement is one of the cornerstones of a formal approach to software engineering. Refinement is the process of developing a more detailed design or implementation from an abstract specification through a sequence of mathematically-based steps that maintain correctness with respect to the original specification.The aim of this BCS FACS refinement workshop was to bring together people who are interested in the development of more concrete designs or executable programs from abstract specifications using formal notations, tool support for formal software development, and practical experience with formal refinement methodologies.The purpose of the workshop was to provide a forum for discussion of common ground and key differences. Topics of interest included:

• Simulation techniques

• Foundations and semantics

• Case studies (specification and verification)

• Compositional and modular reasoning

• Object-orientation

• Time

• Specification notations

• Programming models

• Verification and tool support

The workshop continued a long tradition of refinement workshops run under the auspices of the British Computer Society (BCS) FACS special interest group. Running since 1988, previous refinement workshops have been held at Cambridge, London, Bath etc.In 1998 the BCS refinement workshop was combined with the Australasian Refinement Workshop to form the International Refinement Workshop, hosted at alongside Formal Methods Pacific 1998 at The Australian National University.The papers in this volume were reviewed by a small program committee consisting of

•

John Derrick<

jd1@ukc.ac.uk

, University of Kent, UK.

•

Eerke Boiten<

eab2@ukc.ac.uk

, University of Kent, UK.

•

Jim Woodcock<

jcpw@ukc.ac.uk

, University of Kent, UK.

•

Joakim von Wright<

jockum.wright@abo.fi

, Åbo Akademi University, Finland

Additional information about the Workshop can be found at: http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/eab2/refine/floc.htmlThis volume will be published as volume 70 issue 3 in the series Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS). This series is published electronically through the facilities of Elsevier Science B.V. and its auspices. The volumes in the ENTCS series can be accessed at the URLhttp://www.elsevier.nl/locate/entcsA printed version of the current volume was distributed to the participants at the workshop in Denmark.We are very grateful to the following persons, whose help has been crucial for the success of REFINE 2002: Lars-Henrik Eriksson and Peter Lindsay of FME for their help with the organization of the Workshop as satellite event of FLoC'02 and an FME affiliated workshop; Mike Mislove, one of the Managing Editors of the ENTCS series, for his assistance with the use of the ENTCS style files. Thanks are also due to the Computing Laboratory of the University of Kent, which supplied financial support to cover the printing costs.July 24, 2002John Derrick     

Application of remote sensing to parks and protected area monitoring: Introduction to the special issue

This special issue is the result of sustained and highly collaborative efforts to improve the use of remotely sensed data to inform management of protected areas. The 15 papers in the issue address a diverse range of topics. These papers provide a conceptual basis and a framework for establishing monitoring programs, techniques and methods to make operational the use of remotely sensed data, case studies, and synthesis papers liking remotely sensed data to models used to inform ecological assessments. Studies in this issue necessarily confront the universal challenges of scale, both spatial and temporal, and the sometimes tenuous link between observed patterns and significant ecological process. A clear message is that the information needs of resource managers require information across scales, and these information demands will continue to motivate advances in the collection and analysis of remotely sensed data. This compilation of papers is unusual in (1) articulating a basic, if somewhat technical, foundation of remote sensing that is required for resource managers to effectively collaborate with remote sensing specialists, and (2) providing a framework for addressing monitoring resource issues that is likely to be of interest to many remote sensing specialists. We hope these papers inspire broader use of remotely sensed data to manage the increasingly rare and valuable resources in protected areas around the world.     

Formal methods for verification and validation of partial specifications: A case study

This paper describes our work exploring the suitability of formal specification methods for independent verification and validation (IV&V) of software specifications for large, safety-critical systems. An IV&V contractor often has to perform rapid analysis on incomplete specifications, with no control over how those specifications are represented. Lightweight formal methods show significant promise in this context, as they offer a way of uncovering major errors without the burden of full proofs of correctness. We describe a case study of the use of partial formal models for IV&V of the requirements for Fault Detection Isolation and Recovery on the space station. We conclude that the insights gained from formalizing a specification are valuable, and it is the process of formalization, rather than the end product, that is important. It was only necessary to build enough of the formal model to test the properties in which we were interested. Maintenance of fidelity between multiple representations of the same requirements (as they evolve) is still a problem, and deserves further study.     

Ubiquitin Ligases in Longevity and Aging Skeletal Muscle

The development and prevalence of diseases associated with aging presents a global health burden on society. One hallmark of aging is the loss of proteostasis which is caused in part by alterations to the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) and lysosome–autophagy system leading to impaired function and maintenance of mass in tissues such as skeletal muscle. In the instance of skeletal muscle, the impairment of function occurs early in the aging process and is dependent on proteostatic mechanisms. The UPS plays a pivotal role in degradation of misfolded and aggregated proteins. For the purpose of this review, we will discuss the role of the UPS system in the context of age-related loss of muscle mass and function. We highlight the significant role that E3 ubiquitin ligases play in the turnover of key components (e.g., mitochondria and neuromuscular junction) essential to skeletal muscle function and the influence of aging. In addition, we will briefly discuss the contribution of the UPS system to lifespan. By understanding the UPS system as part of the proteostasis network in age-related diseases and disorders such as sarcopenia, new discoveries can be made and new interventions can be developed which will preserve muscle function and maintain quality of life with advancing age.     

Evaluation of a novel unfluorinated copper precursor for chemical vapor deposition

A kinetics of the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of copper using novel unfluorinated precursor, copper(I)(N(1(dimethylvinylsiloxy)-1-methylethano)-2-imino-4-pentanoate), namely Cu-KI5, was studied. Since its great thermal stability, Cu-KI5 allowed high source temperature to provide high vapor pressure, for example Cu-KI5 has a vapor pressure of 0.2-2.2 Torr at the temperature range of 100-140 °C. Furthermore, copper could be deposited by direct reduction from Cu-KI5 instead of disproportionation. By using formic acid (HCOOH) as a reducing agent, copper films were deposited on ruthenium substrate at temperature range of 150-350 °C. The activation energy was 48.9 kJ/mol in surface reaction limited region (<210 °C) and 1.9 kJ/mol in diffusion limited region (>210 °C) at the total pressure of 5 Torr. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis showed that CVD copper film of high purity (>99.99%) was deposited at 250 °C. The as-deposited copper films grown at 150-300 °C exhibited strong 〈111〉 preferred orientation. The minimum resistivity of the copper film was 1.77 μΩ cm obtained at the deposition temperature of 250 °C. In the surface reaction limited region, kinetic data extracted from experiments enabled 2-D computational simulation to predict copper deposition into trench structures. Simulation results showed excellent step coverage, which was larger than 90% for aspect ratio of 10:1. Cu-KI5 is a promising Cu-CVD precursor for the fabrication of ultra large scale integration (ULSI) or through silicon via (TSV) copper interconnects.