Validation of static properties in unified modeling language models for cyber physical systems

Cyber physical systems (CPSs) can be found nowadays in various fields of activity. The increased interest for these systems as evidenced by the large number of applications led to complex research regarding the most suitable methods for design and development. A promising solution for specification, visualization, and documentation of CPSs uses the Object Management Group (OMG) unified modeling language (UML). UML models allow an intuitive approach for embedded systems design, helping end-users to specify the requirements. However, the UML models are represented in an informal language. Therefore, it is difficult to verify the correctness and completeness of a system design. The object constraint language (OCL) was defined to add constraints to UML, but it is deficient in strict notations of mathematics and logic that permits rigorous analysis and reasoning about the specifications. In this paper, we investigated how CPS applications modeled using UML deployment diagrams could be formally expressed and verified. We used Z language constructs and prototype verification system (PVS) as formal verification tools. Considering some relevant case studies presented in the literature, we investigated the opportunity of using this approach for validation of static properties in CPS UML models.     

Use of Ontologies as Representation Support of Workflows Oriented to Administrative Management

One of the applications of workflow systems is the management of administrative processes characterized by the transmission of information elements among users of an organization. Tasks contained in these processes are carried out by users responsible for confirming, modifying or adding information throughout. These processes need to be defined in workflow management systems in which all the elements are perfectly identified and are easily adaptable to changes that may arise in the sequences of tasks, in the users involved or in the data transmitted from one task to another. For this kind of processes is easier to reuse those represented in ontologies. On one hand, existing ontologies for representing some domain elements can be reused. At the same time, ontologies have an excellent expressive capacity to define tasks, their relationships and the flow control among them with precision. This paper proposes a complete model, together with the necessary software tools, for tackling this issue.

Crossing textual and visual content in different application scenarios

This paper deals with multimedia information access. We propose two new approaches for hybrid text-image information processing that can be straightforwardly generalized to the more general multimodal scenario. Both approaches fall in the trans-media pseudo-relevance feedback category. Our first method proposes using a mixture model of the aggregate components, considering them as a single relevance concept. In our second approach, we define trans-media similarities as an aggregation of monomodal similarities between the elements of the aggregate and the new multimodal object. We also introduce the monomodal similarity measures for text and images that serve as basic components for both proposed trans-media similarities. We show how one can frame a large variety of problem in order to address them with the proposed techniques: image annotation or captioning, text illustration and multimedia retrieval and clustering. Finally, we present how these methods can be integrated in two applications: a travel blog assistant system and a tool for browsing the Wikipedia taking into account the multimedia nature of its content.

Prediction of the percentages of cows'', goats'' and ewes'' milk in “Iberico” cheese by electrophoretic analysis of whey proteins

Stepwise multiple linear regression (SMLR) and principal components regression (PCR) have been used to predict the percentages of cows', goats' and ewes' milk in Iberico cheese, using the results obtained by electrophoretic analysis (PAGE and IEF) of whey proteins, using standard cheeses. Similar predictions of the percentages of milks from the three species were obtained when either SMLR or PCR were applied to the electrophoretic data, i.e. the optical intensity of the electrophoretic bands (PAGE or IEF) of the whey proteins. The root mean square error of prediction in cross-validation (RMSEPCV) was lower than 4% in all cases.     

Relating instance hardness to classification performance in a dataset: a visual approach

Machine Learning - Machine Learning studies often involve a series of computational experiments in which the predictive performance of multiple models are compared across one or more datasets. The...     

Filamentary Superconductivity in Semiconducting Policrystalline ZrSe<Subscript>2</Subscript> Compound with Zr Vacancies

Z r S e ₂ is a band semiconductor studied long time ago. It has interesting electronic properties, and because its layer structure can be intercalated with different atoms to change some of the physical properties. In this investigation, we found that Zr deficiencies alter the semiconducting behavior and the compound can be turned into a superconductor. In this paper, we report our studies related to this discovery. The decreasing of the number of Zr atoms in small proportion according to the formula Zr _x Se₂, where x is varied from about 8.1 to 8.6 K, changing the semiconducting behavior to a superconductor with transition temperatures ranging between 7.8 and 8.5 K, is depending on the deficiencies. Outside of those ranges, the compound behaves as semiconducting with the properties already known. In our experiments, we found that this new superconductor has only a very small fraction of superconducting material determined by magnetic measurements with applied magnetic field of 10 Oe. Our conclusions is that superconductivity is filamentary. However, in one studied sample, the fraction was about 10.2 %, whereas in others is only about 1% or less. We determined the superconducting characteristics; the critical fieldsthat indicate a type 2 superonductor with Ginzburg-Landau κ parameter of the order about 2.7. The synthesis procedure is quite normal following the conventional solid state reaction. In this paper, included are the electronic characteristics, transition temperature, and evolution with temperature of the critical fields.     

Empirical Comparisons of X‐bar Charts when Control Limits are Estimated

A control chart is a very common tool used to monitor the quality of business processes. An estimator of the process variability is generally considered to obtain the control limits of a chart when parameters of the process are unknown. Assuming Monte Carlo simulations, this paper first compares the efficiency of the various estimators of the process variability. Two empirical measures used to analyze the performance of control charts are defined. Results derived from various empirical studies reveal the existence of a linear relationship between the performance of the various estimators of the process variability and the performance of charts. The various Monte Carlo simulations are conducted under the assumption that the process is in both situations of in‐control and out‐of‐control. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of heating in air and chlorine atmosphere on the crystalline structure of pure Ta2O5 or mixed with carbon

Structure changes undergone by pure amorphous hydrated tantalum oxide mixed with different types of carbon when heated in air or chlorine atmospheres were monitored by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM). Heating in air of pure Ta2O5 causes the appearance of the hexagonal structure -Ta2O5 at 973 K and the ortho-rhombic structure -Ta2O5 at 1173 K. Heating in chlorine atmosphere markedly lowers the temperature at which transformation to the orthorhombic phase occurs. This effect is attributed to recrystallization of tantalum oxide from tantalum chloride and oxygen, both in gaseous phase, formed in a previous chlorination step of the amorphous oxide. When the thermal treatment is performed in chlorine atmosphere the presence of carbon permits the detection of the hexagonal form at 753 K; this temperature varies with the type of carbon and the oxide : carbon ration. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers     

A PDE method for patchwise approximation of large polygon meshes

Three-dimensional (3D) representations of complex geometric shapes, especially when they are reconstructed from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) data, often result in large polygon meshes which require substantial storage for their handling, and normally have only one fixed level of detail (LOD). This can often be an obstacle for efficient data exchange and interactive work with such objects. We propose to replace such large polygon meshes with a relatively small set of coefficients of the patchwise partial differential equation (PDE) function representation. With this model, the approximations of the original shapes can be rendered with any desired resolution at interactive rates. Our approach can directly work with any common 3D reconstruction pipeline, which we demonstrate by applying it to a large reconstructed medical data set with irregular geometry.