208798481
A Discourse Model For Collaborative Design
A Discourse Model, including a structure and a process, is developed that provides software support for collaborative engineering design. Components of the structure include a workspace that incorporates frames, constraints, semantic networks, libraries of sharable design objects, agents, and a Virtual Workspace Language. Components of the process include procedures for identifying agent interest sets, applying state transformations to the design model, switching design contexts, identifying conflicts between designers, and tracking resolved conflicts. The model is implementation-independent and applicable to many research and commercial design environments currently available. An example scenario is provided in the Architecture/ Engineering/ Construction domain that illustrates collaboration during the conceptual design of a fire station.
37627056
SWIFT: system workbench for integrating and facilitating teams
There have been many R&D efforts in recent years to develop computer environments that directly enhance group problem-solving productivity. An example of such efforts is the computer-based virtual teaming technology (VTT) developed at the knowledge-based Engineering Sytems Research Laboratory (KESRL). The core software environment for KESRL's VTT is called SWIFT and is based on the knowledge processing technology (KPT) previously developed at KESRL to support various engineering design tasks. SWIFT is a flexible environment which enables the rapid development of collaborative applications, linking workers in distributed environments, of many domains. The paper presents the overall system architecture of SWIFT, and introduces the current and future R&D efforts at KESRL in realizing SWIFT for significant industrial applications.<<ETX>>
28843712
Generalized Recursive Splitting Algorithms for Learning Hybrid Concepts
This paper describes the Competitive Relation Learner (CRL), a generalized recursive splitting algorithm capable of producing a wide range of hybrid concept representations through the competitive application of multiple learning strategies, multiple decomposition strategies, and multiple decomposition evaluation strategies. Experimental results are reported that demonstrate CRL's ability to outperform several well known fixed-bias strategies.
5343942
Knowledge-Based Equation Discovery in Engineering Domains
Machine learning techniques that can compress datasets into relationships that underlie the data have great utility for engineers. Most model discovery systems are not well suited to discovering comprehensible models in engineering domains. In this paper we present KEDS, a Knowledge-based Equation Discovery System, which uses a model-driven approach to discover equations and thereby build models from engineering data.
6309018
Knowledge-based learning integrating acquisition and learning
Empirical learning algorithms are hampered by their inability to use domain knowledge to guide the induction of new rules. This paper describes knowledge-based learning, an approach to learning that selects the examples and relevant attributes for an empirical algorithm. Knowledge-based learning can be used for developing rules for engineering expert systems. Engineers often have some rules for problem solving, but also many experiences (examples) that facilitate solving problems. Knowledge-based learning systems are able to use both forms of knowledge.
12297349
Creating and using models for engineering design: a machine-learning approach
An adaptive and interactive modeling system (AIMS) that integrates simulation, optimization and machine learning to help engineers make design decisions is described. AIMS views engineering decision making as a two-phase process of creating and then using models. The competitive relation learner and the induce-and-select optimizer, AIMS's two main components, and their roles in both phases of decision-making are discussed. AIMS's role in supporting the design of a diesel engine that outputs power within the 440- to 460-kW range and consumes the least amount of fuel is also discussed.<<ETX>>
242677
Model checking the secure electronic transaction (SET) protocol
We use model checking to establish five essential correctness properties of the secure electronic transaction (SET) protocol. SET has been developed jointly by Visa and MasterCard as a method to secure payment card transactions over open networks, and industrial interest in the protocol is high. Our main contributions are to firstly create a formal model of the protocol capturing the purchase request, payment authorization, and payment capture transactions. Together these transactions constitute the kernel of the protocol. We then encoded our model and the aforementioned correctness properties in the input language of the FDR model checker. Running FDR on this input established that our model of the SET protocol satisfies all five properties even though the cardholder and merchant, two of the participants in the protocol, may try to behave dishonestly in certain ways. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to formalize the SET protocol for the purpose of model checking.
2957457
Graph Matching Based Authorization Model for Efficient Secure XML Querying
XML is rapidly emerging as a standard for data representation and exchange over the World Wide Web and an increasing amount of sensitive business data is processed in the XML format. Therefore, it is critical to have control mechanisms to restrict a user to access only the parts of XML documents that he/she is authorized to access. In this paper, we propose the first DTD-based access control model that employs graph matching to analyze if an input query is fully acceptable, fully rejectable, or partially acceptable, and to rewrite for partially acceptable queries only if necessary, along with the features of optimization and speed-up for query rewriting by introducing an index structure.
9348766
Design and implementation of a TCP-friendly transport protocol for ad hoc wireless networks
Transport protocol design for mobile ad hoc networks is challenging because of unique issues, including mobility-induced disconnection, reconnection, and high out-of-order delivery ratios; channel errors; and network congestion. We describe the design and implementation of a TCP-friendly transport protocol for ad hoc networks. Our key design novelty is to perform multi-metric joint identification for packet and connection behaviors based on end-to-end measurements. Our testbed measurements and ns-2 simulations show a significant performance improvement over standard TCP in ad hoc networks.
12609380
A topology-independent fair queueing model in ad hoc wireless networks
Fair queueing of rate and delay-sensitive packet flows in a shared-medium, multihop wireless network remains largely unaddressed because of the unique design issues such as location-dependent contention, spatial channel reuse, conflicts between ensuring fairness and maximizing channel utilization, and distributed fair scheduling. In this paper we propose a new topology-independent fair queueing model for a shared-medium ad hoc network. Our model ensures coordinated fair channel access among spatially contending flows while seeking to maximize spatial channel reuse. We describe packetized algorithms that realize the fluid fairness model with analytically provable performance bounds. We further design distributed implementations that approximate the ideal centralized algorithm. We evaluate our design through both simulations and analysis.
15805395
How bad TCP can perform in mobile ad hoc networks
Several recent studies have indicated that TCP performance degrades significantly in mobile ad hoc networks. This paper examines how badly TCP may perform in such networks and provides a quantitative characterization of this performance gap. Previous approaches typically made comparisons by ignoring the inherent dynamics such as mobility, channel error and shared-channel contention. Our work provides a realistic, achievable TCP throughput upper bound, and may serve as a benchmark for future TCP modifications in ad hoc networks. Our simulation findings indicate that node mobility, especially mobility-induced network disconnection and reconnection events, has the most significant impact on TCP performance. TCP NewReno merely achieves about 10% of a reference TCPs throughput in such cases. As mobility increases, the relative throughput drop ranges from almost 0% in the static case to 1000% in a highly mobile scenario (mobility speed is 20 m/sec). In contrast, congestion and mild channel error (say, 1%) have less visible effect on TCP (with less than 10% performance drop compared with the reference TCP).