Attuning speech-enabled interfaces to user and context for inclusive design: technology, methodology and practice

This paper presents a methodology to apply speech technology for compensating sensory, motor, cognitive and affective usage difficulties. It distinguishes (1) an analysis of accessibility and technological issues for the identification of context-dependent user needs and corresponding opportunities to include speech in multimodal user interfaces, and (2) an iterative generate-and-test process to refine the interface prototype and its design rationale. Best practices show that such inclusion of speech technology, although still imperfect in itself, can enhance both the functional and affective information and communication technology-experiences of specific user groups, such as persons with reading difficulties, hearing-impaired, intellectually disabled, children and older adults.

Liquid phase sintering of hydroxyapatite by phosphate and silicate glass additions: structure and properties of the composites

Phosphate- and silicate-based glasses were added to hydroxyapatite in order to improve its mechanical properties and to fabricate composites with different degrees of bioactivity. A strong chemical bonding was obtained between hydroxyapatite and the phosphate-based glasses leading to samples approaching theoretical density, according to density measurements and scanning electron microscopy. Bioglass^® additions led to the formation of a complex calcium phosphate silicate which hampered the reinforcement process. The fracture toughness of the hydroxyapatite-glass composites was shown to be within the 1.1–1.2 MPam^1/2 range, which is double that determined for sintered hydroxyapatite. A 2 m thick apatite layer was observed on the surface of the hydroxyapatite-glass composites after 48 h immersion in a simulated human blood plasma, whereas only a few apatite crystals were detected on sintered hydroxyapatite after 7 days immersion. From the results obtained we anticipate that the composites might show a higher rate of bone bonding, leading to enhanced bioactivity.     

Studies in software reengineering: Capturing navy legacy software

This report is a summary of the continuing efforts of several teams at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Divsion (NSWCDD) to evaluate technologies and to define and refine a process to reengineer Navy legacy CMS-2 code into Ada. This effort involves tool and technology evaluation, methodology definition, and cost model definition.For systems developed in CMS-2, a Navy specific high order language, consideration must be given as to the most cost effective method of converting to the current high order language of choice, i.e., Ada, without losing the legacy lessons learned. NSWCDD engineers evaluated three translation tools, evaluated reverse engineering technologies, and defined both a process and a methodology to incrementally transition Navy CMS-2 code into Ada. The source code used for the evaluation is from the AEGIS Weapon System and the distributed, open environment is the High Performance Distributed Computing Program co-sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the AEGIS Program Manager.Many of the issues identified throughout these studies are unresolved, but software engineers are continuing to evaluated the impacts of transitioning to commercial environments and Ada. Some of the issues that are being studied follow: testing of distributed systems; system level integration; lack of time-stamped instrumentation: and reliability in commercial-off-the shelf environments. The Navy is in the early stages of identifying impacts of transitioning to Ada, commercial environments, and distributed architectures. NSWCDD is gathering data to confirm that capturing legacy systems, whether it is code or design ideas, is essential to minimizing the cost and the risk of these transitions. It is also evident that technology is neither mature nor ideal yet to satisfy the identified needs for capturing the legacy of a proven system. Translation, while useful to a point, is not suitable alone as a solution to the transition equation.     

SPIDER: An availability-aware framework for the service function chain placement in distributed scenarios

The network function virtualization (NFV) paradigm replaces hardware-dependent network functions by virtual network functions (VNFs) that can be deployed in commodity hardware, including legacy servers. Consequently, the use of NFV is expected to reduce operating and capital expenses, as well as improve service deployment operation and management flexibility. For many use cases, the VNFs must be visited and invoked following a specific order of execution in order to compose a complete network service, named service function chain (SFC). Nonetheless, despite the benefits from NFV and SFC virtualization technologies, their introduction must not harm network performance and service availability. On the one hand, redundancy is seen by network service planners as a mechanism well established to combat availability issues. At same time, there is a goal to optimize resource utilization in order to reduce operational expenditure. In this article, we share our experience in the design use of a framework, named SPIDER, focused on SFC placement that considers the network infrastructure condition and the required SFC availability to define the placement strategy. The SPIDER monitors the status of infrastructure nodes and links and defines which servers the VNFs should be placed on and the number of redundant replicas needed. We present a proof-of-concept of SPIDER using Kubernetes to launch the VNFs as containers. We also use Kubernetes to forward the traffic between the VNFs, composing the service chain. We perform experiments to evaluate the runtime of SPIDER and the SFC delay under different network conditions.     

Reinforcement of hydroxyapatite by adding P2O5-CaO glasses with Na2O, K2O and MgO

Commercial hydroxyapatite was reinforced by adding small amounts (2 and 4 wt%) of P₂O₅-based glasses during its sintering process. The composites prepared had a chemical composition closely related to the mineral part of bone tissues in terms of trace elements usually detected, such as Na, K and Mg. X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) showed that the glass reinforced-HA composites were composed of a HA matrix and variable amounts of tricalcium phosphate phase, depending on sintering temperature and glass composition. These composites were shown to have much higher biaxial bending strength than sintered HA, 107 MPa for Ha/2% of 35P₂O₅-35CaO-10Na₂O-10K₂O-10MgO glass composite and 28 MPa for sintered HA. The presence of -tricalcium phosphate in the microstructure of the composites is an important factor in the reinforcement process.This paper was accepted for publication after the 1995 Conference of the European Society of Biomaterials, Oporto. Portugal, 10–13 September.     

Software Development Cultures and Cooperation Problems: A Field Study of the Early Stages of Development of Software for a Scientific Community

In earlier work, I identified a particular class of end-user developers, who include scientists and whom I term ‘professional end-user developers’, as being of especial interest. Here, I extend this work by articulating a culture of professional end-user development, and illustrating by means of a field-study how the influence of this culture causes cooperation problems in an inter-disciplinary team developing a software system for a scientific community. My analysis of the field study data is informed by some recent literature on multi-national work cultures. Whilst acknowledging that viewing a scientific development through a lens of software development culture does not give a full picture, I argue that it nonetheless provides deep insights.     

A Lack of Insight: An Experimental Analysis of R&D Managers’ Decision Making in Innovation Portfolio Management

This study analyses the decision to exploit an innovation project and investigates differences in individuals’ evaluations of project attributes in the context of innovation project portfolio management. A conjoint field experiment was used to collect data on exploitation decisions made by 126 research and development (R&D) managers to test how managers evaluate specific project attributes in the context of innovation project portfolio management. I analyse the relative power and popularity of profitability, strategy, uncertainty and social dimensions of the portfolio while R&D managers exploit an innovation project. Moreover, using social judgement theory, I analyse actual exploitation processes (i.e., the innovation attributes an R&D manager considers while he or she is making an exploitation decision) and self‐reported decision‐making attributes (i.e., managers’ self‐reported data). The data underline that R&D managers value specific project attributes more and others less, and therefore find disparities in innovation project portfolio decision making. Based on this study's results, decision makers are better able to reflect and understand the influence of specific project attributes. Therefore, they should investigate established decision‐making processes which can help them to improve portfolio performance.     

An integration experience of a software architecture and a monitoring infrastructure to deploy applications with non‐functional requirements in computing grids

Resource management is an important aspect to consider regarding applications that might have different non‐functional or operational requirements, when running in distributed and heterogeneous environments. In this context, it is necessary to provide the means to specify the required resource constraints and an infrastructure that can adapt the applications in light of the changes in resource availability. We adopted a contract‐based approach to describe and maintain parallel applications that have non‐functional requirements in a Computing Grid context, called ZeliGrid. To form the supporting infrastructure we have designed a software architecture that integrates some of the Globus services, the LDAP and the NWS monitoring services. Some modules that map the contract approach into software artifacts were also integrated to this architecture. This paper addresses the architecture and integration issues of our approach, as well as how we put the pieces together highlighting deployment and implementation details, which have to consider diverse aspects such as monitoring, security and dynamic reconfiguration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

B2B Procurement and Marketplace Transformation

Emerging web technologies and systems have started a revolutionary path that will have a profound impact on procurement processes and systems, especially in the area of indirect procurement and the management of operating resources. In fact, what started as more narrowly focused procurement systems only a couple of years ago, has transformed into a web of technologies, markets, and business strategies that have ramifications well beyond the purchasing function. The focus of this paper is on the marketplace structure, functionality and capabilities of systems, and key factors that buyers need to take into consideration when transforming their procurement processes. Contents management, markets, standards, and outsourcing are important problems that are discussed in this paper.     

Janet W. Astington,Paul L. Harris and David R. Olson,eds., Developing Theories of Mind; Henry M. Wellman,The Child's Theory of Mind; Douglas Frye and Chris Moore,eds., Children's Theories of Mind: Mental States and Social Understanding JUDITH FELSON DUCHAN

Minds and Machines -