15835310
An Intuitive Formal Approach to Dynamic Workflow Modeling and Analysis
The increasing dynamics and the continuous changes of business processes raise a challenge to the research and implementation of workflows. The significance of applying formal approaches to the modeling and analysis of workflows has been well recognized and many such approaches have been proposed. However, these approaches require users to master considerable knowledge of the particular formalisms, which impacts the application of these approaches on a larger scale. This paper presents a new formal, yet intuitive approach for the modeling and analysis of workflows, which attempts to overcome the above problem. In addition to the abilities of supporting workflow validation and enactment, this new approach possesses the distinguishing feature of allowing users who are not proficient in formal methods to build up and dynamically modify the workflow models that address their business needs.
8350188
Constraint Propagation And Progressive Verification For Component-Based Process Model
System assembly is one of the major issues in engineering complex component-based systems. This is especially true when heterogeneous, COTS and GOTS distributed systems, typical in industrial applications, are involved. The goal of system assembly is not only to make constituent components work together, but also to ensure that the components as a whole behave consistently and guarantee certain end-to-end properties. Despite recent advances, there is a lack of understanding about software composability, as well as theory and techniques for checking and verifying component-based systems. A theory of software system constraints about components, their environment and about system as a whole is the necessary foundation toward solid understanding of the composability of component-based systems. In this paper, we present a systematic approach for constraint specification and constraint propagation in concert with design refinement with a novel technique to ensure consistency between system-wide and component constraints in a design composition process of component-based systems. The consistent constraint propagation is used in our approach to drive progressive verification of the design. It allows us to verify overall design composition without interference of internal details of component designs. Verification is done separately at architectural and component levels without having to compose results of component analyses. A component can be safely replaced with alternative design without re-verifying the overall system composition so long as the replacement conforms to the corresponding interface and component constraint(s).
34616421
Performance analysis of traffic networks based on Stochastic Timed Petri Net models
A compositional method for modeling and evaluation of performance indices of traffic control systems based on Stochastic Timed Petri Nets (STPN) is presented. We use STPN to specify traffic and traffic control at an intersection and use a random distribution model to model the motion of vehicles in a road segment between any two consecutive intersections. The traffic control system is thus modeled as a composition of individual intersection models and segment distribution models. A technique is presented to incrementally evaluate the system's performance by analyzing intersections separately, according to a carefully selected order. The analysis technique conforms to the accepted practice of transportation research. Compared to existing Petri net models of traffic control systems, our technique dramatically reduces the complexity of analysis.
985166
On AS-level path inference
The ability to discover the AS-level path between two end-points is valuable for network diagnosis, performance optimization, and reliability enhancement. Virtually all existing techniques and tools for path discovery require direct access to the source. However, the uncooperative nature of the Internet makes it difficult to get direct access to any remote end-point. Path inference becomes challenging when we have no access to the source or the destination. Moveover even when we have access to the source and know the forward path, it is nontrivial to infer the reverse path, since the Internet routing is often asymmetric.In this paper, we explore the feasibility of AS-level path inference without direct access to either end-points. We describe RouteScope-a tool for inferring AS-level paths by finding the shortest policy paths in an AS graph obtained from BGP tables collected from multiple vantage points. We identify two main factors that affect the path inference accuracy: the accuracy of AS relationship inference and the ability to determine the first AS hop. To address the issues, we propose two novel techniques: a new AS relation-ship inference algorithm, and a novel scheme to infer the first AS hop by exploiting the TTL information in IP packets. We evaluate the effectiveness of RouteScope using both BGP tables and the AS paths collected from public BGP gateways. Our results show that it achieves 70% - 88% accuracy in path inference.
31564513
Packing of Unequal Spheres and Automated Radiosurgical Treatment Planning
We study an optimization problem of packing unequal spheres into a three-dimensional (3D) bounded region in connection with radiosurgical treatment planning. Given an input (R, V, S, L), where R is a 3D bounded region, V a positive integer, S a multiset of spheres, and L a location constraint on spheres, we want to find a packing of R using the minimum number of spheres in S such that the covered volume is at least V; the location constraint L is satisfied; and the number of points on the boundary of R that are touched by spheres is maximized. Such a packing arrangement corresponds to an optimal radiosurgical treatment planning. Finding an optimal solution to the problem, however, is computationally intractable. In particular, we show that this optimization problem and several related problems are NP-hard. Hence, some form of approximations is needed. One approach is to consider a simplified problem under the assumption that spheres of arbitrary (integral) diameters are available with unlimited supply, and there are no location constraints. This approach has met with certain success in medical applications using a dynamic programming algorithm (Bourland and Wu, 1996; Wu, 1996). We propose in this paper an improvement to the algorithm that can greatly reduce its computation cost.
11111374
Neural Network Based Stereotyping for User Profiles
This paper discusses an approach of establishing system models of users’ task related characteristics, such as domain knowledge in human-computer interaction. Several neural networks are tested for the modelling process. These networks function as associative memories that capture the causal relationships among assumptions about the users’ characteristics. The outputs from the networks are considered as stereotypes assigned to individual users. It is suggested that this approach can be expected to overcome some limitations of user modelling approaches in terms of pattern recognition and classification.
17750098
Lineage Path Integration for Phylogenetic Resources
With the increase of genome and proteome data, phylogenetic information and phylogenetic analysis tools are increasing greatly in current biological repositories. First, many repositories allow users to browse information about species through taxonomic tools. These tools present the species with its lineage path and links to the various types of information the repository provides about the species. Second, some multiple sequence alignment tools offer users basic phylogenetic data through applying basic reconstruction algorithms to the alignment. With the availability of this information in multiple locations, integrated tools are needed to allow the user to compare this data. This paper presents data integration research on lineage paths using the BIO-AJAX framework. It introduces BIO-AJAX for Lineage Paths, a tool that integrates lineage path information for NCBI Taxonomy Database [1] and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)[6].
4374799
Appearance manifolds for modeling time-variant appearance of materials
We present a visual simulation technique called appearance manifolds for modeling the time-variant surface appearance of a material from data captured at a single instant in time. In modeling time-variant appearance, our method takes advantage of the key observation that concurrent variations in appearance over a surface represent different degrees of weathering. By reorganizing these various appearances in a manner that reveals their relative order with respect to weathering degree, our method infers spatial and temporal appearance properties of the material's weathering process that can be used to convincingly generate its weathered appearance at different points in time. Results with natural non-linear reflectance variations are demonstrated in applications such as visual simulation of weathering on 3D models, increasing and decreasing the weathering of real objects, and material transfer with weathering effects.