18101194
The Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA)
The real-time process algebra (RTPA) is a set of new mathematical notations for formally describing system architectures, and static and dynamic behaviors. It is recognized that the specification of software behaviors is a three-dimensional problem known as: (i) mathematical operations, (ii) event/process timing, and (iii) memory manipulations. Conventional formal methods in software engineering were designed to describe the 1-D (type (i)) or 2-D (types (i) and (iii)) static behaviors of software systems via logic, set and type theories. However, they are inadequate to address the 3-D problems in real-time systems. A new notation system that is capable to describe and specify the 3-D real-time behaviors, the real-time process algebra (RTPA), is developed in this paper to meet the fundamental requirements in software engineering.RTPA is designed as a coherent software engineering notation system and a formal engineering method for addressing the 3-D problems in software system specification, refinement, and implementation, particularly for real-time and embedded systems. In this paper, the RTPA meta-processes, algebraic relations, system architectural notations, and a set of fundamental primary and abstract data types are described. On the basis of the RTPA notations, a system specification method and a refinement scheme of RTPA are developed. Then, a case study on a telephone switching system is provided, which demonstrates the expressive power of RTPA on formal specification of both software system architectures and behaviors. RTPA elicits and models 32 algebraic notations, which are the common core of existing formal methods and modern programming languages. The extremely small set of formal notations has been proven sufficient for modeling and specifying real-time systems, their architecture, and static/dynamic behaviors in real-world software engineering environment.
21455681
A layered reference model of the brain
Based on the advances of research in cognitive informatics and related fields, this paper attempts to develop a layered reference model of the brain that explains the functional mechanisms and cognitive processes of the natural intelligence. A variety of life functions and cognitive processes have been identified in cognitive informatics, cognitive science, neuropsychology, and neurophilosophy. In order to formally and rigorously describe a comprehensive and coherent set of mental processes and their relationships, an integrated reference model of the brain is established, which encompasses 37 cognitive processes at six layers known as the sensation, memory, perception, action, meta and higher cognitive layers from bottom up. The reference model of the brain may be applied to explain a wide range of physiological, psychological, and cognitive phenomena in cognitive informatics, particularly relationships between the inherited and the acquired life functions, as well as the subconscious and conscious cognitive processes.
7087864
Formal description of the cognitive process of decision making
Decision making is one of the basic cognitive processes of human behaviors by which a preferred option or a course of actions is chosen from among a set of alternatives based on certain criteria. Decision theories are widely applied in a number of disciplines encompassing cognitive science, computer science, management science, economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and statistics. The studies on decision making can be categorized into two classes: descriptive and normative theories. A number of decision strategies have been proposed from different angles and application domains such as the maximum expected utility and Bayesian method. However, there is still a lack of a fundamental and mathematical decision model and a rigorous cognitive process for decision making. This paper presents a decision making process on the basis of the layered reference model of the brain (LRMB). The cognitive process of decision making is modeled as a sequence of Cartesian-product based selections. A rigorous description of the decision process in real-time process algebra (RTPA) is presented. Different decision making strategies are comparatively analyzed. The result shows these strategies can be well fit in the formally described decision process. The cognitive process of decision making may be applied in a wide range of decision-based systems, such as cognitive informatics, software agent systems, expert systems, and decision support systems.
21184887
The cognitive processes of abstraction and formal inferences
Theoretical research is predominately an inductive process; while applied research is mainly a deductive process. Both inference processes are based on the cognitive process and means of abstraction. This paper describes the cognitive processes of abstraction and formal inferences such as deduction, induction, abduction, and analogy. The hierarchy of abstraction and the descriptivity of abstract means at different levels are analyzed. A set of mathematical models of formal inference methodologies are developed. Formal descriptions of the five cognitive processes of abstraction and inferences are presented using real-time process algebra (RTPA). Applications of abstraction and formal inferences in dealing with complicated problems in large-scale software system development in software engineering are discussed.
16244688
Formal Description of Time Management in Real-Time Operating Systems
This paper describes the formal specification of the time management subsystem of a real-time operating system. Real-time process algebra (RTPA) is adopted to formally specify the system. The architecture, static behaviors, and dynamic behaviors of a CPU time manager are systematically specified that form an abstract model of the system. The formal specifications are implemented in C, on which the system performance can be tested and verified
21557809
Formal description of the cognitive process of problem solving
One of the fundamental human cognitive processes is problem solving. Most of the decisions we make relate to some kind of problems we try to solve no matter how trivial and critical the problem may be. The problem solving process entails performing in a new situation with information acquired and knowledge learned from past situations. As a higher level cognitive process, problem solving involves the correlation process effort to connect newly encounter problem object(s) with the object-attribute-relation (OAR) model representation of knowledge in the brain. The goal of problem solving is to search along various solution paths within the problem solver's knowledge base in the memory. When a problem object is identified, problem solving can be perceived as a search process in the memory space for finding a relationship between a set of problem-solving goals and a set of alternative paths. This paper presents a mathematical and cognitive model that describes problem solving as a cognitive process. The cognitive structures of the brain and the mechanisms of internal knowledge representation behind the cognitive process of problem solving are explained. The cognitive process is then formally and rigorously described using real-time process algebra (RTPA) base on the aforementioned models. Extended discussions are presented on applications of the cognitive process model of problem solving in software engineering and psychology.
36989079
Sub-picture: ROI coding and unequal error protection
Region-of-interest coding and unequal error protection are two important tools in video communication systems to improve the received visual quality. One common property of the two techniques is that unequal coding or transmission is applied to improve the quality of the most important parts of images. The proposed sub-picture coding technique facilitates both region-of-interest coding and unequal error protection by partitioning images to regions of interest and separating the corresponding coded data units from each other. Simulation results show that the overall subjective quality is considerably improved compared to the conventional coding schemes.
14371503
A comparison of two approaches to pseudorandomness
The concept of pseudorandomness plays an important role in cryptography. In this note, we contrast the notions of complexity-theoretic pseudorandom strings (from algorithmic information theory) and pseudorandom strings (from cryptography). For example, we show that we can easily distinguish a complexity-theoretic pseudorandom ensemble from the uniform ensemble. Both notions of pseudorandom strings are uniformly unpredictable; in contrast with pseudorandom strings, complexity-theoretic pseudorandom strings are not polynomial-time unpredictable.
447865
Middleware support for embedded software with multiple QoS properties for ubiquitous computing environments
Ubiquitous application software usually has multiple QoS requirements, such as situation-awareness, real-time, and security, which make the application software development complicated. In this paper, an approach to supporting multiple QoS properties in application software using middleware is presented. Our reconfigurable context-sensitive middleware (RCSM), which provides situation-awareness support to the application software, is expanded to support more QoS by using aspect-oriented software development techniques. In the expanded RCSM, each QoS is processed through a set of aspect components. The application developers specify the QoS requirements in a specification file, which is in turn compiled to configure the corresponding aspect components. Being associated with certain application objects, the QoS aspect components enforce the QoS requirements according to the specification during run-time. In this paper, security, in addition to situation-awareness, is used as an example to illustrate our approach.
10719543
Structural and Semantic Matching for Assessing Web-service Similarity
The web-services stack of standards is designed to support the reuse and interoperation of software components on the web. A critical step in the process of developing applications based on web services is service discovery, i.e. the identification of existing web services that can potentially be used in the context of a new web application. Discovery through catalog-style browsing (such as supported currently by web-service registries) is clearly insufficient. To support programmatic service discovery, we have developed a suite of methods that assess the similarity between two WSDL (Web Service Description Language) specifications based on the structure of their data types and operations and the semantics of their natural language descriptions and identifiers. Given only a textual description of the desired service, a semantic information-retrieval method can be used to identify and order the most relevant WSDL specifications based on the similarity of the element descriptions of the available specifications with the query. If a (potentially partial) specification of the desired service behavior is also available, this set of likely candidates can be further refined by a semantic structure-matching step, assessing the structural similarity of the desired vs the retrieved services and the semantic similarity of their identifiers. In this paper, we describe and experimentally evaluate our suite of service-similarity assessment methods.
14805900
Shape-based 3D surface correspondence using geodesics and local geometry
This paper describes a new method for determining correspondence between points on pairs of surfaces based on shape using a combination of geodesic distance and surface curvature. An initial sparse set of corresponding points is generated using a shape-based matching procedure. Geodesic interpolation is employed in order to capture the complex surface. In addition, surface correspondence and triangulation are computed simultaneously in a hierarchical way. Results applied to human cerebral cortical surfaces are shown to evaluate the approach.