Model-based development of dynamically adaptive software

Security requirements analysis depends on how well-trained analysts perceive security risk, understand the impact of various vulnerabilities, and mitigate threats. When systems are composed of multiple machines, configurations, and software components that interact with each other, risk perception must account for the composition of security requirements. In this paper, we report on how changes to security requirements affect analysts risk perceptions and their decisions about how to modify the requirements to reach adequate security levels. We conducted two user surveys of 174 participants wherein participants assess security levels across 64 factorial vignettes. We analyzed the survey results using multi-level modeling to test for the effect of security requirements composition on participants' overall security adequacy ratings and on their ratings of individual requirements. We accompanied this analysis with grounded analysis of elicited requirements aimed at lowering the security risk. Our results suggest that requirements composition affects experts' adequacy ratings on security requirements. In addition, we identified three categories of requirements modifications, called refinements, replacements and reinforcements, and we measured how these categories compare with overall perceived security risk. Finally, we discuss the future impact of our work in security requirements assessment practice.

On the effectiveness of phase based regression models to trade power and performance using dynamic processor adaptation

An Internet Marketing Multi-Agent System (IMMAS) has been proposed to enhance traditional Internet marketing mechanism through the mobile agent technique [3]. A critical design of the proposed system is the introduction of two software agents, namely a Sales agent and a Personal agent, for performing the delegated jobs of the designated marketing activity helping customers to assist his own job administration respectively. This paper is aimed to report the architecture for IMMAS represented in form of Agent UML (AUML) specifications. The strength of a multi-agent architecture is highly dependent on the coordination of multiple distributed software components. Therefore, the description of IMMAS architecture will be focused on the coordination and interaction patterns among multiple agents in a three-layer presentation. This architecture could be helpful to and used as the reference for later software engineers in agent-based software systems.

Human experience in an architectural space is defined as the state of mind that is reflected on their physiological, emotional, and cognitive statuses. Ergonomic data, as an objective manifestation of quantifiable signals generated by the human body during specific spatial perception processes, serves as a vital foundation for spatial evaluation and guidance for optimization. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, as quantifiable sensory indicators directly arising from the interaction between individuals and external stimuli, hold substantial potential as a data-driven force and as a means of optimization assessment in the study of generative design. Although existing research has effectively established a unidirectional relationship between EEG and spatial-environment assessment, there is still a notable deficiency in addressing the creation of a two-way, mutually informative feedback mechanism. This study investigates the applicability of EEG signals as a data-driven basis for generative design across universal methods. It delves into various scales and scenarios of digital design, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, encompassing planar and volumetric visual elements, the design of architectural spatial environmental characteristics, and urban space design grounded in human perceptual sightlines. The research examines the viability and appropriateness of an interactive generative design method based on form generation, predicated on human-factor physiological data exemplified by EEG signals. This paper initially conducts a methodological and tool-based examination of current research in ergonomics-driven design and the use of EEG for design assessment, thereby discussing the objective feasibility of employing EEG in interactive generative design. Subsequently, the study establishes an integrated data flow system encompassing multiple hardware and software components to form a comprehensive workflow. Following this setup, empirical studies based on this method are conducted at different scales of application, yielding corresponding form-generative outcomes. Finally, this paper substantiates the rationality and feasibility of this framework in multi environment design domains.

This work presents Petri nets as an intermediate model for hardware/software codesign. The main reason of using of Petri nets is to provide a model that allows for formal qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to perform hardware/software partitioning. Petri nets as an intermediate model allows one to analyze properties of the specification and formally compute performance indices which are used in the partitioning process. This paper highlights methods of computing load balance, mutual exclusion degree and communication cost of behavioral description in order to perform the initial allocation and the partitioning. This work is also devoted to describing a method for estimating hardware area, and it also presents an overview of the general partitioning method considering multiple software components.

The need for adaptability in software is growing, driven in part by the emergence of pervasive and Autonomic computing. In many cases, it is desirable to enhance existing programs with adaptive behavior, enabling them to execute effectively in dynamic environments. Increasingly, software systems should self adapts to satisfy new requirements and environmental conditions that may arise after deployment. Due to their high complexity, adaptive programs are difficult to specify, design, verify, and validate. In this paper we propose an approach for Genetic Algorithm based Autonomic System using Design Patterns. The proposed pattern satisfies the properties of Autonomic System. This pattern is an amalgamation of different Design Patterns like Observer, Strategy, Singleton, Adapter and Thread per connection. For monitoring we use Observer pattern, Decision making we use Strategy Design Pattern. Adapter, Singleton and Thread per Connection pattern are used for execution of Genetic Algorithm population. Proposed pattern distribute population of Genetic Algorithm to different clients for execution. Main objective of the proposed system is to reduce the load of the server. This design pattern solve multi objective optimization problem using Genetic Algorithm.The pattern is described using a java-like notation for the classes and interfaces. A simple UML class and Sequence diagrams are depicted.KeywordsDesign Patternsdistributed systemGenetic Algorithms and Autonomic System

Objectives: Parenteral drug products manufactured under GMP conditions should be visually inspected for defects and particulate contamination by trained and qualified personnel. Although personnel qualification is required, no practical protocols or formal guidelines are available for the development of qualification test sets (QTSs) used for qualification procedures. The current practice is to either procure a standardized QTS from a commercial supplier or amass sufficient manufacturing rejects during visual inspection procedures to compile in-house QTSs. However, both strategies inherently possess disadvantages and limitations. The objective of this study was to develop a manufacturing protocol for an optimal and adaptable QTS for training and qualification procedures. Methods: We combined the results of a literature search, survey of five Dutch hospital pharmacy compounding facilities, semi-structured personnel interviews, and extensive pre-GMP formulation studies to develop an optimal and adaptable QTS manufacturing protocol. Results: The literature search did not identify a manufacturing protocol for an optimal and adaptable QTS, but did identify specifications and requirements for optimal QTSs. The survey among hospital pharmacy compounding facilities revealed considerable variability in the qualification procedures and used QTSs. Semi-structured personnel interviews and pre-GMP formulation studies demonstrated that defects encountered during routine productions could be realistically simulated with pharmaceutical-grade excipients. As a proof-of-concept, we manufactured two different QTSs under GMP conditions and assessed these for formal GMP training and qualification purposes, which were considered a significant improvement compared to using manufacturing rejects. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study presenting these data and our adaptable protocol, which is provided in the Supplemental Materials, may aid compounding facilities in the standardization, training, and qualification of personnel involved in visual inspection procedures.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of different dimensions of supply chain integration on performance, while considering both the interconnections between these supply chain integration dimensions and the effect of context. Specifically, the authors investigate the relationship between two enablers (communication infrastructure and cooperative behaviour) and two practices (planning information and joint improvement), and the moderating effect of supply complexity on their relationship with performance.Design/methodology/approachA survey among 145 Dutch and Spanish manufacturers is used to gather data on the buyer‐supplier relationship. Both the sample and two subsamples – for high and low supply complexity – are analysed using SmartPLS.FindingsThe paper finds that two dimensions – communication infrastructure and cooperative behaviour – enable the two collaborative practices: joint improvement and planning information. All mentioned supply chain integration dimensions, except joint improvement are related to performance, but specifically if the supply complexity is high. Among these dimensions the effect of cooperative behaviour is relatively high.Originality/valueThis paper adds to our understanding of how contingencies influence the supply chain. It is the first paper that investigates the moderating effect of the complexity of the process of delivery (supply complexity) on the effectiveness of supply chain integration practices.

The ability to dynamically adjust target contours, derived Boolean structures, and ultimately, the optimized fluence is the end goal of online adaptive radiotherapy (ART). The purpose of this work is to describe the necessary tests to perform after a software patch installation and/or upgrade for an established online ART program. A patch upgrade on a low-field MR Linac system was evaluated for post-software upgrade quality assurance (QA) with current infrastructure of ART workflow on (1) the treatment planning system (TPS) during the initial planning stage and (2) the treatment delivery system (TDS), which is a TPS integrated into the delivery console for online ART planning. Online ART QA procedures recommended for post-software upgrade include: (1) user interface (UI) configuration; (2) TPS beam model consistency; (3) segmentation consistency; (4) dose calculation consistency; (5) optimizer robustness consistency; (6) CT density table consistency; and (7) end-to-end absolute ART dose and predicted dose measured including interruption testing. Differences of calculated doses were evaluated through DVH and/or 3D gamma comparisons. The measured dose was assessed using an MR-compatible A26 ionization chamber in a motion phantom. Segmentation differences were assessed through absolute volume and visual inspection. (1) No UI configuration discrepancies were observed. (2) Dose differences on TPS pre-/post-software upgrade were within 1% for DVH metrics. (3) Differences in segmentation when observed were small in general, with the largest change noted for small-volume regions of interest (ROIs) due to partial volume impact. (4) Agreement between TPS and TDS calculated doses was 99.9% using a 2%/2-mm gamma criteria. (5) Comparison between TPS and online ART plans for a given patient plan showed agreement within 2% for targets and 0.6 cc for organs at risk. (6) Relative electron densities demonstrated comparable agreement between TPS and TDS. (7) ART absolute and predicted measured end-to-end doses were within 1% of calculated TDS. An online ART QA program for post-software upgrade has been developed and implemented on an MR Linac system. Testing mechanics and their respective baselines may vary across institutions, but all necessary components for a post-software upgrade QA have been outlined and detailed. These outlined tests were demonstrated feasible for a low-field MR Linac system; however, the scope of this work may be applied and adapted more broadly to other online ART platforms.

With the emergence of ever-growing advanced vehicular applications, the challenges to meet the demands from both communication and computation are increasingly prominent. Without powerful communication and computational support, various vehicular applications and services will still stay in the concept phase and cannot be put into practice in the daily life. Thus, solving this problem is of great importance. The existing solutions, such as cellular networks, roadside units (RSUs), andmobile cloud computing, are far from perfect because they highly depend on and bear the cost of additional infrastructure deployment. Given tremendous number of vehicles in urban areas, putting these underutilized vehicular resources into use offers great opportunity and value. Therefore, we conceive the idea of utilizing vehicles as the infrastructures for communication and computation, named vehicular fog computing (VFC), which is an architecture that utilizes a collaborative multitude of end-user clients or near-user edge devices to carry out communication and computation, based on better utilization of individual communication and computational resources of each vehicle. By aggregating abundant resources of individual vehicles, the quality of services and applications can be enhanced greatly. In particular, by discussing four types of scenarios of moving and parked vehicles as the communication and computational infrastructures, we carry on a quantitative analysis of the capacities of VFC. We unveil an interesting relationship among the communication capability, connectivity, andmobility of vehicles, and we also find out the characteristics about the pattern of parking behavior, which benefits from the understanding of utilizing the vehicular resources. Finally, we discuss the challenges and open problems in implementing the proposed VFC system as the infrastructures. Our study provides insights for this novel promising paradigm, as well as research topics about vehicular information infrastructures.

Administration and deployment of software systems become increasingly complex. This complexity results from the need of uniform access to applications from heterogeneous terminals through different communication infrastructures. Moreover, applications consists in complex architectures of lot of small components connected together. A first step to simplify deployment is to have an unified and abstract model for representing deployment dependencies and managing them properly. Therefore, we propose here a deployment model and a conceptual foundation for component installation. Installation dependencies and installation rules are expressed in a logic language.

Java Beans provides a robust mechanism for combining software components. However, to a large extent Java Beans components are currently not being combined to create documents in an environment such as a word processor or illustration program. This is not due to a weakness in the Beans property model, but rather to limitations in how Java Beans' user interfaces are currently implemented. Verdantium is a prototype Java-based API (for JDK 1.2.2 and above) for document embedding that takes a novel approach to implementing software components. This environment retains the property-based semantics from Java Beans, but implements different approaches for on-screen presentation, visual embedding, document printing, and persistence. Fully functional applications (i.e., word processors, illustration programs, equation editors, etc.) can be implemented as individual software components that can either run independently or be embedded in other applications using the same API.

From the last few years, we have witnessed an exponential increase in the usage of delay-sensitive applications by the end-users because of the paradigm shift and revolution in different technologies starting from 1G to 5G most of which are having focus on QoS and QoE to the end-users. The existing standards on 5G mainly concentrate on the following issues: 10 Gigabyte data rate, 1-millisecond latency, high bandwidth per unit area, 99.999% availability, 100% coverage and 90% reduction in network energy usage. Hence, 5G has the capability to support various types of communications from the low power Local Area Network (LAN) to Wide Area Networks (WAN) with low-latency and high-speed. It allows human-to-human (H2H), human-to-machine (H2M) interactions for exchanging of data and signals. So, for better data transmission between different entities (for example, smart objects located across different geographic locations), efficient communication between billions of smart devices is required and the associated technology is called as “Internet of Things”. However, issues such as- latency-tolerant, low-data rate, high complexity, privacy and security in existing solutions may deteriorate the performance of any implemented solution in this environment. To mitigate the above-mentioned problems, the literature suggests that fog computing can be one of the options as it provides ultra-low-latency for Tactile-based applications. Tactile Internet is an emerging technology used for H2M interactions to support high-reliability, ultra-responsive, and high fidelity. Keeping focus on all the aforementioned challenges and constraints, in this paper, we provide an analysis on the usage of the strong backbone infrastructure of fog computing for 5G-enabled Tactile Internet with a maximum bandwidth of 1 Gigabyte having the minimum latency of 1-millisecond. It supports low-latency and high-reliability in Tactile-based applications. Keeping focus on the issues such as- resource management, communication infrastructure, fog orchestration, fog networking, healthcare, security and privacy of fog system in Tactile-based applications, we have explored and compared the existing state-of-the-art proposals using various parameters such as- energy-efficient, QoS, scalability, mobility, and interoperability. In addition, a number of open research challenges of fog computing for 5G-enabled Tactile Internet are also explored to provide deep insights to the readers.

Lactipro (Axiota Animal Health; Fort Collins, CO) delivers an immediate, viable population of Megasphaera elsdenii directly to the rumen, thereby reducing the time needed for the animal to adapt to a high starch diet. Yearling steers [n = 1000; initial body weight (BW) = 403 kg; SD = 30] were utilized to evaluate the effects of an accelerated adaptation program for finishing steers drenched with Lactipro NXT (1.0 x 1010 CFU) on d 1 on performance, carcass characteristics, and health. Treatments were designed to evaluate the length of an accelerated adaptation phase (0, 7, or 14-d) compared to a traditional adaptation (21-d). Dietary treatments included 1) traditional 21-d adaptation (TRAD-21; 100% finisher on d 21), 2) accelerated 14-d adaptation (ACC-14; 100% finisher on d 14), 3) accelerated 7-d adaptation (ACC-7; 100% finisher on d 7), 4) accelerated 0-d adaptation (ACC-0; 100% finisher on d 2), and 6) accelerated 0-d adaptation with intensive feed delivery (ACC-0+, 100% finisher on d 2). All cattle were fed 3 times daily during the adaptation phase, except cattle on the ACC-0+ treatment, which were fed 6 times daily for d 2-5. Dry matter delivery during the adaptation period was based on a percentage of maintenance energy requirement determined by bunk scores prior to feeding and cattle aggression scores at the time of the first feeding. Orthogonal contrasts defined linear and quadratic effects of TRAD-21, ACC-14, ACC-7 and ACC-0, the effect of ACC-0 vs. ACC-0+, and the effect of TRAD-21 vs. ACC-0+. Dry matter intake (DMI) responded quadratically (P = 0.01) with the greatest DMI observed at TRAD-21 and the least DMI at ACC-7. Cattle assigned to TRAD-21 and ACC-0 treatments gained faster and consequently had greater HCW compared to those in ACC-14 and ACC-7 treatments, which were similar, resulting in a quadratic response for both ADG and HCW (P = 0.01). The ACC-0+ treatment had similar ADG and HCW to the TRAD-21 and ACC-0 treatments (P ≥ 0.58) suggesting more frequent feed delivery during the initial days of the adaptation phase did not prove to be beneficial. Feed efficiency tended to respond quadratically (P = 0.07) with a reduction at ACC-14. Longissimus muscle area also tended to respond quadratically in a similar manner to HCW (P = 0.06). No other differences (P ≥ 0.16) were observed in carcass characteristics or health outcomes. These data suggest that when cattle are drenched with Lactipro NXT, an accelerated adaptation approach with 100% finisher from the beginning is suitable, likely by enhancing substrate availability, yielding results comparable to a traditional adaptation program. Moreover, this approach improves feedlot’s operational efficiency by improving mill efficiency with the need for less diets and reducing forage usage by 22%.

Adaptive protocol of raft in wireless network