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     

The importance of access to information and knowledge coordination on quality and economic benefits obtained from Six Sigma

Wireless Networks - This paper presents a structural equation model that relates knowledge coordination with access to information in the process of implementing Six Sigma and their impact on the...     

欧洲电信管制难脱旧日窠臼

欧盟的电信管制陷入了与国家政体冲突的泥潭中,尽管高层有一些关于改革的勇敢论调,但事实胜于雄辩。欧盟所规定的电信规则设想在这个有25个国家、超过4．5亿人口的市场,以远远超出这个范围的影响创造一个公平的竞争环境,它能奏效吗?于布鲁塞尔制定的电信政策在许多方面呈现多极化趋向,这反映了对泛欧“超级国家”实体更大的争议。根据每天问题的不同,随着观点的转移,欧洲电信规则被同等程度地喜爱和痛恨着。对一方来说很协调的东西,对另一方则成了毫无根据     

Robust and accurate registration of 2-D electrophoresis gels using point-matching.

Point-matching is a widely applied image registration method and many algorithms have been developed. Registration of 2-D electrophoresis gels is an important problem in biological research that presents many of the technical difficulties that beset point-matching: large numbers of points with variable densities, large nonrigid transformations between point sets, paucity of structural information and large numbers of unmatchable points (outliers) in either set. In seeking the most suitable algorithm for gel registration we have evaluated a number of approaches for accuracy and robustness in the face of these difficulties. Using synthetic images we test combinations of three algorithm components: correspondence assignment, distance metrics and image transformation. We show that a version of the iterated closest point (ICP) algorithm using a non-Euclidean distance metric and a robust estimation of transform parameters provides best performance, equalling SoftAssign in the presence of moderate image distortion, and providing superior robustness against large distortions and high outlier proportions. From this evaluation we develop a gel registration algorithm based on robust ICP and a novel distance metric combining Euclidean, shape context and image-related features. We demonstrate the accuracy of gel matching using synthetic distortions of real gels and show that robust estimation of transform parameters using M-estimators can enforce inverse consistency, ensuring that matching results are independent of the order of the images.     

Modelling methodology for thermal analysis of hot solder dip process

The shift of electronics industry towards the use of lead-free solders in components manufacturing brought also the challenge of addressing the problem of tin whiskers. Manufacturers of high reliability and safety critical equipment in sectors such as defence and aerospace rely increasingly on the use of commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) electronic components for their products and systems. The use of COTS components with lead-free solder plated terminations comes with the risks for their long term reliability associated with tin whisker growth related failures. In the case of leaded type electronic components such as Quad Flat Package (QFP) and Small Outline Package (SOP), one of the promising solutions to this problem is to “re-finish” the package terminations by replacing the lead-free solder coatings on the leads with conventional tin–lead solder. This involves subjecting the electronic components to a post-manufacturing process known as Hot Solder Dip (HSD). One of the main concerns for adopting HSD (refinishing) as a strategy to the tin whisker problem is the potential risk for thermally induced damage in the components when subjected to this process.     

Mapping of Discrete Cosine Transforms onto Distributed Hardware Architectures

We present an algorithmically-aware, high-level partitioning methodology for discrete cosine transforms (DCT) targeted to distributed hardware architectures. The methodology relies on the exploration of alternate DCT formulations as part of the partition optimization process. To the best of our knowledge, no previously proposed DCT algorithm exists that is capable of consistently producing alternate regular formulations for an n-size DCT. Hence, a new Cooley-Tukey-like DCT factorization algorithm was developed to allow exploration of alternate formulations as part of the partitioning optimization process. The use of our factorization mechanism along with a greedy strategy to explore the space of equivalent DCT formulations yielded partitioning solutions with as much as 18% reduction in latency and 83% reduction in run-time as compared to previously proposed regular DCT formulations.

Dynamic group multicast routing with bandwidth reservations

Multicasting refers to the transmission of data from a source node to multiple destination nodes in a network. Group multicasting is a generalization of multicasting whereby every member of a group is allowed to multicast messages to other members that belong to the same group. The routing problem in this case involves the construction of a set of low cost multicast trees with bandwidth requirements, one for each member of the group for multicasting messages to other members of the group. In this paper, we examine this routing problem with an additional requirement that member nodes are allowed to join and leave the multicasting group anytime during a session. We call this problem, the dynamic group multicast routing problem (DGMRP). In this paper, we proposed three heuristic algorithms to generate a set of low cost multicast trees with dynamic group membership. Results from our empirical study shows that the one of the proposed algorithms, called Maximum bandwidth bottleneck path selection algorithm (MBBPS), achieves better utilization of bandwidth resources as compared with the other two algorithms which are based on a greedy approach. In addition MBBPS performs better in terms of cost when the bandwidth is not sufficient in the network. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

先进封装电镀中活性边界层的减薄

晶圆表面如果有一层薄且均匀的流体边界层,将有助于克服光刻图形带来的挑战,得到更均匀的金属沉积层。     

数据通信市场上的高速多层铜互连系统

数据信息永远不能满足整个社会的需求.因此,处理信息的计算、存储和交换系统对于更大数据吞吐能力的需求也在不断提高.在过去的五年时间里,处理能力有了巨大的提升,因此,更加迫切地需要适用于系统间移动海量数据更好、更高效的方法.