Architecture for Distributed Embedded Systems Based on Workflow and Distributed Resource Management

The study on the computer aided design system for machine tool structures has made a startling progress. The present computing methods cannot be applied to the absolute estimation of structural rigidity, only based on the information from engineering drawings, because there are some problems in the determination of the mathematical model. In future, it is, therefore, necessary to estimate absolutely and quantitatively the rigidity of a machine tool as a whole, using the information from engineering drawings. There are, however, two difficult aspects to the problems; one is a reasonable procedure for the deter-mination of the mathematical model to analyse the characteristics of the structural components, and the other is a procedure concerning how to incorporate the joint characteristics into the mathematical model. In this paper, therefore, a new reasonable procedure to determine the mathematical model using the rigidity distribution diagram for the basic structural component was proposed, and as an example, the static stiffness of the column of a floor type horizontal boring machine was analysed and the propriety of the procedure was certified.

Typical, numerical structural optimization is well established in improving structural design in its final design phase. The overall product topology is then already defined and structural optimization is “only” used to improve shape and size parameters, which have no influence on the global mechanical topology. Significant decisions have been made already in earlier development stages. However, it is desirable to expand this optimization capabilities to CAE based support for the definition and preliminary design of the general layout, geometrical and structural architecture, equipment configuration and functional requirements. For satellites such a support can be defined as follows: Finding the conceptual geometrical architecture of a satellite satisfying the basic geometrical, mechanical and thermal requirements within an automated optimization process. This includes mainly the (a) topology and geometry of the basic structural components, (b) placements of basic components and equipment and (c) preliminary concept evaluation (e.g. FEM, etc.) Intentionally, the satellite design engineering team should be supplied with a set of feasible or nearly feasible satellite configurations (satisfying the main geometric, mechanical and thermal requirements) serving as a good starting basis for satellite configuration development in early design phases. The design engineers investigate these preliminary conceptual satellite designs for the remaining, typically more specific and more locally acting requirements (e.g. fastening, piping, etc...). In this way the main basic effects guiding satellite design can be taken into account at the very early development stages and, moreover, can be compared with alternative designs to find the best tradeoff. This is a great advantage and progress compared to the traditional design process. Optimization now starts to enter the early and important design phases, the real significant design decisions can now be made by support of optimization techniques. It should be further noted, that our system is not proposed to substitute the design engineers, but to supplement and to enlarge the potentials of the design branch to reach a better design in a shorter time conforming to concurrent engineering issues. In this paper our approach for an automated satellite conceptual design method will be presented, and emphasis is put on demonstration and verification by the satellite GammaBus 1 (the carrier of the Galileo system) as well as other real space applications. Further some main aspects regarding discrete-continuous optimization for structural configuration tasks from an algorithmic point of view are discussed to round out this paper

Watermarking is one approach to address the problem about authority of multimedia data. The concept of digital watermarking is associated with the data-hiding technique known as steganography. Digital watermarking has been proposed as a way to identify the source, creator, owner, distributor, or authorized consumer of multimedia data. Recently, DRM has emerged for the purpose of more powerful and integrated management system of multimedia contents. On the contrary to the watermarking technique, in the DRM systems we need to embed more than one data. In past watermarking techniques, we could distinguish individual watermarks but it was impossible to separate them. In this paper, we propose a new multiple image data embedding method for DRM using Fresnel transform. Two watermark images are Fresnel-transformed as the real number and imaginary number data individually for Fresnel transform, and the values of difference between coefficients of a transformed pattern and their average are embedded into an original image. Our watermarking model allows flexibility in hiding the watermark. It is possible to get many embedding patterns from by using various distance parameters with Fresnel transform. Watermarking experiments have shown the validity of our watermarking technique and its robustness in resisting attacks

Synthesis of Well Behaved Synchronized Processes

The utility of spatial data to delineate river riparian functions and management zones: A review

Summary form only given. Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are usually designed to run with the workflow (process) definitions and artifact definitions from repository. The static characteristics for process definitions might reduce the practicability of the systems. The cost to develop a WfMS is so high that it is reasonable to take the flexibility of system architecture into account. In this paper, we present an approach to adapt to dynamic changes on workflow definitions with agents. In our agent-based workflow system, the definition of a workflow can be modified by the agent itself. Therefore, agents can modify their guidance for workers, and the system is more flexible to meet the specification modification.

Biomedical imaging relies heavily on the interoperability between PACS, RIS, and HIS for an efficient workflow and timely clinical decision-making that is critical not only for clinical practice but also patient care. Even though some hospitals have developed advanced digital infrastructures, many hospitals suffer from difficulties around interoperability, database performance, workflow bottlenecks, and user competency issues. This study investigated the technical, operational, and people -based factors impacting imaging integration performance at Dr. Sulaiman Al-Habib Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Using a quantitative descriptivecorrelational design, data was pulled from 40 selected personnel in imaging and IT using a validated 40 -item Likert-scale questionnaire. Results revealed high system integration, database management, and integration performance levels, and moderate to high workflow efficiency. Correlation and regression analyses revealed a strong and significant relationship between all parameters and 68% explains of variation in integration performance were due to technical and operational reasons. Database administration and workflow efficiencies are the most positive (moderate to strong) by user competency differences. A second key finding is that organized subsystem optimization is necessary to enhance the imaging integration process, as they stress. Structured Abstract. Background. PACS, RIS, and HIS should be integrated to provide an effective biomedical image. Continued interoperability, database effectiveness, workflow consistency and user acceptability concerns can create challenges to the efficient workflow and clinical efficacy of imaging. Methods. A descriptive, quantitative, correlational design was utilized in the analysis of system integration, database organization, workflow productivity, and imaging integration functionality. Data were gathered via a va lidated 40-item Likert-scale questionnaire among 40 IT and Dr. Sulaiman Al-Habib Hospital imaging practitioners. Analysis included descriptive statistics; Pearson correlations; regression and moderation testing. Results. System integration, database management, and workflow efficiency were also identified as highperforming and robustly linked with integration effectiveness and performance. Linear regression analysis found that 68% of this performance variance is accounted for by regression analysis. User competency, however, is shown to moderate performance with respect to the DBMS, and workflow efficiency effect. Conclusion. Imaging integration performance is manifested from the interaction of technical, operational and human subsystems. We believe improving its interoperability, database architecture, processes in workflow and competency of the user is important in improving imaging outcomes.

The Shipborne combat system (SCS) includes many application systems. The integration of application systems is necessary because they are distributed and need to complete combat tasks together. For such integration, an integration model needs to be developed. Firstly, the integration framework of application systems of SCS is introduced, which involves three layers: data integration, function integration and workflow integration. Secondly, integration metamodel based on the framework is discussed. Data, application system, function, component, workflow and their relationships are explained in detail. Finally, a system integration modeling language for application system design (SIML4ASD) based on the metamodel is defined by extending UML using profile mechanism. A case study of anti-submarine combat is given to explain the use of SIML4ASD. Since it is an extension of UML, SIML4ASD is easy to learn, understand and use for the system designers and can be used to describe the integration model clearly and exactly in multi-view.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a major problem confronting manufacturing organizations that have deployed large-scale enterprise information systems and aim to coordinate inter- and intraorganizational product development, supply-chain, and customer management activities. Successful EAI is a key enabling step toward implementation of viable Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) strategies. Extant EAI technologies, such as distributed object and messaging technologies for communication and ontology-based database schema integration, are tedious to develop and maintain in an organization. Though workflow management systems have enabled process coordination of both manual and system-oriented tasks in organizations, coping with the lack of adaptability and inter-operability in workflow systems is a manual and resource intensive effort. Recent advances in (i) standardized, modular, and distributed software delivery frameworks, such as web services; (ii) standard semantic markup languages for developing domain ontologies; and (iii) intelligent process coordination frameworks promise the development of flexible, responsive, integrated, and organic process management architectures. In this paper, we present an intelligent mediator-based architecture for enabling EAI. Intraorganizational information sources and services are made available via a web-services framework. An Integrated Service Planning and Execution (ISP&E) framework interleaves service composition and execution at the mediator to fulfill service requests. Processes that interleave information gathering and transactional tasks are generated using domain-independent Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) AI planning and a domain-specific ontology and then executed in a scalable and reliable manner. Benefits and limitations of mediator-based frameworks for EAI and topics for further research are discussed based on a prototype development experience.

The rapid development and implementation of Internet of Medical Things has made interoperability a serious challenge. In this scoping review, we provide an overview of the interoperability challenge, as reported in the health literature, and highlight the proposed solutions. After searching between January 2018 and June 2023 in Compendex via Engineering Village and PubMed, we found 18 publications. The interoperability challenges identified were device heterogeneity, system heterogeneity, data standardization, security and safety, system and architecture standard, system and workflow integration and regulatory and compliance requirements. Solutions included ontology approaches, conceptual semantic frameworks, improved standards, design of middleware, and using blockchain technology.

The prevalence of scientific workflows with high computational demands calls for their execution on various distributed computing platforms, including large-scale leadership-class high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. To handle the deployment, monitoring, and optimization of workflow executions, many workflow systems have been developed over the past decade. There is a need for workflow benchmarks that can be used to evaluate the performance of workflow systems on current and future software stacks and hardware platforms.We present a generator of realistic workflow benchmark specifications that can be translated into benchmark code to be executed with current workflow systems. Our approach generates workflow tasks with arbitrary performance characteristics (CPU, memory, and I/O usage) and with realistic task dependency structures based on those seen in production workflows. We present experimental results that show that our approach generates benchmarks that are representative of production workflows, and conduct a case study to demonstrate the use and usefulness of our generated benchmarks to evaluate the performance of workflow systems under different configuration scenarios.

Today, components and Component Based Development (CBD) is seen as one of the important events in the evolution of information technology. Components and CBD offer the promise of a software marketplace where components may be built, bought, or sold in a manner similar to components in other industries. In the light of the ongoing developments, in the manner and art of developing software systems, it is important to consider how the Computer Aided Systems Engineering (CASE) environment that supports building these systems can be produced on a CBD approach. In spite of the fact that CASE environments have been around since the ’70s, there are still many problems with these environments. Among the problems of CASE environments are the lack of conceptual models to help understand the technology, the poor state of user requirements specification, inflexible method, support and complicated integration facilities, which contribute to the dissatisfaction in CASE users. During the ’90s there has been a growing need to provide a more formal basis to the art of software development and maintenance through standardized process and product models. The importance of CAME (Computer Aided Method Engineering) in CASE led to the development of CASE shells, MetaCASE tools, or customizable CASE environments that were intended to overcome the inflexibility of method support. The declining cost of computing technology and its increasing functionality, specifically in graphic user interfaces, has contributed to the present re-invention of CASE environments. CASE research in the last decade has addressed issues such as method integration, multiple user support, multiple representation paradigms, method modifiability and evolution, and information retrieval and computation facilities. Considerable progress has been made by isolating particular issues and providing a comprehensive solution with certain trade-off on limited flexibility. The requirement of a fully Component Based architecture for CASE environments has been not examined properly. The combination of requirements of flexibility in terms of support for arbitrary modeling techniques, and evolution of the development environment to ever-changing functionality and applications never the less needs a flexible environment architectures. Therefore, the theory formulation and development of a prototype for designing a next generation of CASE environments is addressed in this book. A CAME environment is considered as a component of a CASE environment. A comprehensive solution is sought to the environment problem by paying attention to a conceptual model of such an environment that has been designed to avoid the confusion around integration issues, and to meet the specification of user requirements concerning a component-based architecture. A CAME environment provides a fully flexible environment for method specification and integration, and can be used for information systems design activities. A large part of this book reports how this theory leads to the designing of the architecture of such an environment. This final chapter contains a review of the theory and an assessment of the extent to which its applicability is upheld.

In these lecture notes we present the iTasks system: a set of combinators to specify work flows in a pure functional language at a very high level of abstraction. Work flow systems are automated systems in which tasks are coordinated that have to be executed by either humans or computers. The combinators that we propose support work flow patterns commonly found in commercial work flow systems. In addition, we introduce novel work flow patterns that capture real world requirements, but that can not be dealt with by current systems. Compared with most of these commercial systems, the iTasks system offers several further advantages: tasks are statically typed, tasks can be higher order, the combinators are fully compositional, dynamic and recursive work flows can be specified, and last but not least, the specification is used to generate an executable web-based multi-user work flow application. With the iTasks system, useful work flows can be defined which cannot be expressed in other systems: a work can be interrupted and subsequently directed to other workers for further processing. The iTasks system has been constructed in the programming language Clean, making use of its generic programming facilities, and its iData toolkit with which interactive, thin-client, form-based web applications can be created. In all, iTasks are an excellent case of the expressive power of functional and generic programming.

To identify key traits brought about by citrus domestication, we have analyzed the transcriptomes of the pulp of developing fruitlets of inedible wild Ichang papeda (Citrus ichangensis), acidic Sun Chu Sha Kat mandarin (C. reticulata) and three palatable segregants of a cross between commercial Clementine (C. x clementina) and W. Murcott (C. x reticulata) mandarins, two pummelo/mandarin admixtures of worldwide distribution. RNA-seq comparison between the wild citrus and the ancestral sour mandarin identified 7267 differentially expressed genes, out of which 2342 were mapped to 117 KEGG pathways. From the remaining genes, a set of 2832 genes was functionally annotated and grouped into 45 user-defined categories. The data suggest that domestication promoted fundamental growth processes to the detriment of the production of chemical defenses, namely, alkaloids, terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, flavonoids, glucosinolates and cyanogenic glucosides. In the papeda, the generation of energy to support a more active secondary metabolism appears to be dependent upon upregulation of glycolysis, fatty acid degradation, Calvin cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, and ATP-citrate lyase and GABA pathways. In the acidic mandarin, downregulation of cytosolic citrate degradation was concomitant with vacuolar citrate accumulation. These changes affected nitrogen and carbon allocation in both species leading to major differences in organoleptic properties since the reduction of unpleasant secondary metabolites increases palatability while acidity reduces acceptability. The comparison between the segregants and the acidic mandarin identified 357 transcripts characterized by the occurrence in the three segregants of additional downregulation of secondary metabolites and basic structural cell wall components. The segregants also showed upregulation of genes involved in the synthesis of methyl anthranilate and furaneol, key substances of pleasant fruity aroma and flavor, and of sugar transporters relevant for sugar accumulation. Transcriptome and qPCR analysis in developing and ripe fruit of a set of genes previously associated with citric acid accumulation, demonstrated that lower acidity is linked to downregulation of these regulatory genes in the segregants. The results suggest that the transition of inedible papeda to sour mandarin implicated drastic gene expression reprograming of pivotal pathways of the primary and secondary metabolism, while palatable mandarins evolved through progressive refining of palatability properties, especially acidity.

We have constructed an extended composite luminosity profile for the Andromeda galaxy, M31, and have decomposed it into three basic luminous structural components: a bulge, a disk and a halo. The dust-free Spitzer/IRAC imaging and extended spatial coverage of ground-based optical imaging and deep star counts allow us to map M31's structure from its center to 22 kpc along the major axis. We apply different decomposition methods for the 1D luminosity profiles and 2D images. These include non-linear least-squares and Bayesian Monte-Carlo Markov-chain analyses. The basic photometric model for M31 has a Sersic bulge with shape index n = 2.2 +/- 0.3 and effective radius R_e = 1.0 +/- 0.2 kpc, a dust-free exponential disk of scale length R_d = 5.3 +/- 0.5 kpc; the parameter errors reflect the range between various decomposition methods. The bulge parameter, n, is rather insensitive to bandpass effects and its value suggests a first rapid formation via mergers followed by secular growth from the disk. The M31 halo has a 2D power-law index ~ -2.5 +/- 0.2. We find that the M31 bulge light is mostly dominant over the range R_minor < 1.2 kpc. The disk takes over in the range 1.2 kpc < R_minor < 9 kpc, whereas the halo dominates at R_minor > 9 kpc. The stellar nucleus, bulge, disk, and halo components each contribute roughly 0.05%, 23%, 73% and 4% of the total light of M31 out to 200 kpc along the minor axis. Nominal errors for the structural parameters of the M31 bulge, disk and halo amount to 20%. If M31 and the Milky Way are at all typical, faint stellar halos should be routinely detected in galaxy surveys reaching below mu_i ~ 27 mag/arcsec^2. We stress that our results rely on this photometric analysis alone. Structural parameters may change when other fundamental constraints, such as those provided by abundance gradients and stellar kinematics, are considered simultaneously (Abridged).