6352215
Reconfigurable Web wrapper agents for biological information integration
A variety of biological data is transferred and exchanged in overwhelming volumes on the World Wide Web. How to rapidly capture, utilize, and integrate the information on the Internet to discover valuable biological knowledge is one of the most critical issues in bioinformatics. Many information integration systems have been proposed for integrating biological data. These systems usually rely on an intermediate software layer called wrappers to access connected information sources. Wrapper construction for Web data sources is often specially hand coded to accommodate the differences between each Web site. However, programming a Web wrapper requires substantial programming skill, and is time-consuming and hard to maintain. In this article we provide a solution for rapidly building software agents that can serve as Web wrappers for biological information integration. We define an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based language called Web Navigation Description Language (WNDL), to model a Web-browsing session. A WNDL script describes how to locate the data, extract the data, and combine the data. By executing different WNDL scripts, we can automate virtually all types of Web-browsing sessions. We also describe IEPAD (Information Extraction Based on Pattern Discovery), a data extractor based on pattern discovery techniques. IEPAD allows our software agents to automatically discover the extraction rules to extract the contents of a structurally formatted Web page. With a programming-by-example authoring tool, a user can generate a complete Web wrapper agent by browsing the target Web sites. We built a variety of biological applications to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
14995712
Applying Pattern Mining to Web Information Extraction
Information extraction (IE) from semi-structured Web documents is a critical issue for information integration systems on the Internet. Previous work in wrapper induction aim to solve this problem by applying machine learning to automatically generate extractors. For example, WIEN, Stalker, Softmealy, etc. However, this approach still requires human intervention to provide training examples. In this paper, we propose a novel idea to IE, by repeated pattern mining and multiple pattern alignment. The discovery of repeated patterns are realized through a data structure call PAT tree. In addition, incomplete patterns are further revised by pattern alignment to comprehend all pattern instances. This new track to IE involves no human effort and content-dependent heuristics. Experimental results show that the constructed extraction rules can achieves 97 percent extraction over fourteen popular search engines.
12151320
Mining Periodic Patterns in Sequence Data
Periodic pattern mining is the problem that regards temporal regularity. There are many emerging applications in periodic pattern mining, including web usage recommendation, weather prediction, computer networks and biological data. In this paper, we propose a Progressive Timelist-Based Verification (PTV) method to the mining of periodic patterns from a sequence of event sets. The parameter min_rep, is employed to specify the minimum number of repetitions required for a valid segment of non-disrupted pattern occurrences. We also describe a partitioning approach to handle extra large/long data sequence. The experiments demonstrate good performance and scalability with large frequent patterns.
5203884
Reconfigurable Web Wrapper Agents for Web Information Integration
This paper provides a solution for rapidly building software agents that can serve as Web wrappers for biological information integration. We define an XML-based language called WNDL, which provides a representation of a Web browsing session. A WNDL script describes how to locate the data, extract the data and combine the data. By executing different WNDL scripts, user can automate virtually all types of Web browsing sessions. We also describe IEPAD, a data extractor based on pattern discovery techniques. IEPAD allows our software agents to automatically discover the extraction rules to extract the contents of a structurally formatted Web page without the need to label a Web page to train a wrapper. With a programmingby-example authoring tool, a user can generate a complete Web wrapper agent by browsing the target Web sites. We have built a variety of applications to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
26211788
Mockup-driven fast-prototyping methodology for Web requirements engineering
Web application development differs from the development of traditional software in several significant ways; therefore requirements engineering for Web applications entails new demands accordingly. This paper proposes an extreme Web requirements engineering - mockup-driven fast-prototyping methodology to help elicit and finalize system requirements, as well as facilitate adjustment to quickly changing user requirements typical to Web applications. Supporting the inclusion of customer feedback early in the development process, this strategy minimizes the risk of wasting valuable development efforts because of ambiguous or incomplete specifications. Real-life experiences of the use of the methodology in industry are reported as examples.
18983514
Sequence Learning in Mobile Robots Using Avalanche Neural Networks
This paper describes the implementation of a neural network for sequence learning that is based on a neurocomputational theory of learning. The network is implemented on a physical mobile robot in order to learn to reproduce sequences of motor actions. At the onset of a conditioned stimulus the robot is presented with a sequence of visual stimuli that produce reactive motor actions of different duration. Initial results show that after learning the robot can approximate the motor sequence with no visual stimulation.
9710130
A specification language for real-time distributed systems
The authors introduce a design specification method, extended modified Petri nets (EMPN), and its description language (EMPNDL). The specification is based on a stochastic Petri-net model and is suitable for modeling real-time distributed systems. The syntax of the language is formally described in BNF grammar while the semantics is based on that for stochastic Petric nets. In addition to the modeling capability of EMPN and EMPNDL, methods for verification and validation of such systems are also discussed. EMPN and EMPNDL have been extensively used to the specification of a prototype switching system, UICPBX. Based on the presented formulation, verification and validation of UICPBX can be automated to a great extent.<<ETX>>
11546106
Physical hierarchy generation with routing congestion control
In this paper, we develop a multi-level physical hierarchy generation (mPG) algorithm integrated with fast incremental global routing for directly updating and optimizing congestion cost during placement. The fast global routing is achieved by using a fast two-bend routing and incremental A-tree algorithm. The routing congestion is modeled by the wire usage estimated by the fast global router. A hierarchical area density control is also developed for placing objects with significant size variations. Experimental results show that, compared to Gordian-L, the wire length driven mPG is 3-6.5 times faster and generates slightly better wire length for test circuits larger than 100K cells. Moreover, the congestion driven mPG improves 50% wiring overflow with 5% larger bounding box wire length but 3-6% shorter routing wire length measured by graph based A-tree.
40684547
Supporting event based traceability through high-level recognition of change events
Although requirements traceability is crucial in both the development and maintenance of a software system, traceability links and related artifacts tend to deteriorate, as time-pressured practitioners fail to systematically update them in response to change. Event-based traceability addresses this issue by establishing links through a loosely coupled publisher/subscriber scheme. Dependent entities subscribe to requirements and receive event notifications as changes occur. This paper focuses upon the role played by the requirements specification as a publisher of events. A set of standard change events is defined and a method for monitoring a user's actions within a requirements management environment and the subsequent recognition and publication of the change events is proposed. Early results obtained from testing this approach are reported.