ABSTRACT:
A new Agent-Oriented Programming (AOP) language called A++ is introduced in this research for developing agent-based distributed systems. In this work, agent-oriented programming is defined as a programming method with characteristics of distribution, autonomy, concurrency, and mobility. Both agents and objects can be modeled in A++. In addition to data and methods that can be defined in objects including classes and instances, each agent is also associated with an independent computing process in agent-oriented programming.

ABSTRACT:
Virtual reality technology can be utilised to provide new systematic training methods for surgical procedures. Our aim is to build a simulator that allows medical students to practice the coronary stent implant procedure and avoids exposing patients to risks. The designed simulation system consists of a virtual environment and a haptic interface, in order to provide both the visualization of the coronary arteries and the tactile and force feedback generated during the interactions of the surgical instruments in the virtual environment. Since the arteries are soft tissues, their shape may change during an operation; for this reason physical modelling of the organs is necessary to render their behaviour under the influence of surgeon’s instruments. The idea is to define a model that computes the displacement of the tissue versus time; from the displacement it is possible to calculate the response of the tissue to the surgical tool external stimuli. Information about tools displacements and tissue responses are also used to graphically model the artery wall and virtual surgical instrument deformations generated as a consequence of their coming into contact. In order to obtain a realistic simulation, the Finite Element Method has been used to model the soft tissues of the artery, using linear elasticity to reduce computational time and speed up interaction rates.

ABSTRACT:
This study considers an intelligent control system to integrate flexibly its components by using weighted information where the system evaluation is reflected. Such system evaluates the information flowing through the components and converts them by weighting depending on the degree of importance. Integration of components based on the system evaluation enables a system consisting of them to realize various, flexible and adaptive control. In this study, the intelligent control method is applied to a swing up and stabilization control problem of a number of cart and pendulum systems on a restricted straight guide. To stabilize the pendulum in a restricted environment, each system should realize not only a swing-up and stabilization control of the pendulum, but also a position control of the cart to avoid collision or deadlock. The experiment using a real apparatus demonstrated that the controller learning light interaction acquires egoistic character, the controller learning heavy interaction behaves altruistically, and the controller equally considering self cart and another cart becomes cooperative. In other words, these autonomous decentralized controllers can acquire various characters and flexibility for cooperation.

ABSTRACT:
Reengineering is to reorganize and modify existing systems to enhance them or to make them more maintainable. Reengineering is usually necessary as systems evolve due to changes in requirements, technologies, and/or personnel. Design patterns capture recurring structures and dynamics among software participants to facilitate reuse of successful designs. Design patterns are common and well studied in network systems. In this project, we reengineer part of a network system with some design patterns to support future evolution and performance improvement. We start with reverse engineering effort to understand the system and recover its high level architecture. Then we apply concurrent and networked design patterns to restructure the main sub-system. Those patterns include Half-Sync/Half-Async, Monitor Object, and Scoped Locking idiom. The resulting system is more maintainable and has better performance.

ABSTRACT:
In wireless ad hoc networks, energy-constrained operation is very important due to the limited battery capacity. One of the reasons for excessive energy expenditure in this network is irregularly distributed node patterns which impose large interference range on a certain area. In this paper, we present a simple and energy efficient on-demand routing scheme by using discrete level of power control and priority based packet scheduling. With little additional routing overhead, the proposed scheme provides better way to deliver data than existing routing protocols which use fixed transmission power.

ABSTRACT:
A generic nanoscale computing model is presented in this paper. The model consists of a collection of fully interconnected nanoscale computing modules, where each module is a cube of cells made out of quantum dots, spins, or molecules. The cells dynamically switch between two states by quantum interactions among their neighbors in all three dimensions. This paper includes a brief introduction to the field of nanotechnology from a computing point of view and presents a set of preliminary architectural designs for fabricating the nanoscale model studied.

ABSTRACT:
This paper gives an overview of the functions of the proxy servers in accessing multimedia objects over the Internet. The proxy servers use the cache replacement policies to select the cold objects to be removed from cache to release space. They use the object partitioning methods to divide each multimedia object into cacheable and non-cacheable parts. When the client bandwidth is insufficient to receive the original object, the proxy servers convert multimedia objects into objects of lower resolution in order to adapt to the client characteristics. When multiple proxy servers are present, they may work together in a cooperative manner to further enhance the cache efficiency or in a distributed manner to evenly spread the load. In summary, proxy servers become the centre of management with respect to the delivery of multimedia objects from web servers to clients over the Internet.

ABSTRACT:
One of the chief computer security problems is not the long list of viruses and other potential vulnerabilities, but the vast number of systems that continue to be easy prey, as their system administrators or owners simply are not able to keep up with all of the available patches, updates, or needed configuration changes in order to protect them from those known vulnerabilities. Even up-to-date systems could become vulnerable to attacks, due to inappropriate configuration or combined used of applications and services.

Our mobile agent-based security tool (MAST) is designed to bridge this gap, and provide automated methods to make sure that all of the systems in a specific domain or network are secured and up-to-date with all patches and updates. The tool is also designed to check systems for misconfigurations that make them vulnerable. Additionally, this user interface is presented in a domain knowledge model known as a Concept Map that provides a continuous learning experience for the system administrator.

ABSTRACT:
System development is a process in which communication plays an important role. Requirements must be elicited from various stakeholders. But stakeholders also make decisions and must understand the consequences thereof. Different viewpoints must be reconciled, and agreements reached. An important assumption we make is that all actions in the development process are (or should be) based on rational decisions. The quest for rationality is a driving force behind the communication that takes place within the development process, because it raises issues that may otherwise have remained in the subconsciousness of stakeholders. We zoom in on the role of vagueness in communication, and argue that there are good reasons not to try and formalize things too soon in the development process. The purpose of this paper is to position our ongoing research, encourage discussion about the assumptions we make, and inspire novel approaches to system development. We work towards a comprehensive theory of rational system development, in which due attention is paid to development processes, communication, and the representations used therein.

ABSTRACT:
What is consciousness? Is it possible to create consciousness mechanically? Various studies have been performed in the fields of psychology and cerebral science to answer these questions. As of yet, however, no researchers have proposed a model capable of explaining the mind-body problem described by Descartes or replicating a consciousness as advanced as that of human beings. Ancient people believed that the consciousness resided in a Homunculus, a human in miniature who lived in the brain. It is no mystery that the ancients came up with such an idea; for consciousness has always been veiled in mystery, beyond the reach of our explorative powers. We can assert, however, that consciousness does not "live" in us, but "exists" in us. Insofar as the processes occurring inside the human brain are a product of the physical activity of the neurons that reside there, we believe that it should be possible to define consciousness systematically.

ABSTRACT:
Finding regularities in sequences is an important problem in various areas. Regularities are often words (in a strict or somewhat flexible meaning) "repeated" in the sequence, i.e. satisfying some constraints about their occurrence. In this paper we deal with relational values that express what relates two positions in a word or a sequence. Then a strict relational word is defined as the set of relational values corresponding to all pairs of positions within a subsequence. A relational word is flexible if the constraint on a relational value is to belong to a set of relational values. We present here an algorithm, called KMRCRelat, which is derived from a previous algorithm for identification of repeated flexible words. KMRCRelat find either the k-length or the longest repeated flexible relational words in a sequence or a set of sequences.

ABSTRACT:
In the field of handwritten Japanese address recognition, it is common to recognize place-name strings from place-name images. However, in practice, it is necessary to recognize the place-name strings from address images. Therefore, we have proposed the post-processing system, which checks the list of the place-name strings in two-stages for recognizing the place-name images. In this paper, we propose a new technique based on phased search of candidate rectangle lattice, and improve the technique with the detection of key-characters for final output. Applying our proposal to the IPTP 1840 image data of address strings, the results of experiments clearly show the efficiency of our system in handwritten Japanese address recognition.

ABSTRACT:
In the engineering database system, multiple versions of a design including engineering drawings should be managed efficiently. The paper proposes an extended spatial data structure for efficient management of multiversion engineering drawings. The R-tree is adapted as a basic data structure. The efficient mechanism to manage the difference between drawings is introduced to the R-tree to eliminate redundant duplications and to reduce the amount of storage required for the data structure. The extended data structures of the R-tree, MVR and MVR* trees, are developed and the performances of these trees are evaluated. A series of simulation tests shows that, compared with the basic R-tree, the amounts of storage required for the MVR and MVR* trees are reduced to 50% and 30%, respectively. The search efficiencies of the R, MVR, and MVR* trees are almost the same.

ABSTRACT:
In this study, we provide a new taxonomy of parameters of genetic algorithms (GA), structural and numerical parameters, and analyze the effect of numerical parameters on the performance of GA based simulation optimization applications with experimental design techniques. Appropriate levels of each parameter are proposed for a particular problem domain. Controversial to existing literature on GA, our computational results reveal that in the case of a dominant set of decision variable the crossover operator does not have a significant impact on the performance measures, whereas high mutation rates are more suitable for GA applications.

ABSTRACT:
Flood forecasting using numerical weather models is a computationally-intensive and complex task requiring cooperation of many experts in different areas. To enable this cooperation in a comfortable way, a part of the CrossGrid project is aimed towards developing a flood-forecasting, Grid-based environment. This Problem Solving Environment (PSE) consists mainly of a set of coupled simulation models, a storage system for configuration files, model codes and datasets, a WWW portal with collaboration tools and a powerful Computational Grid, provided by the partners in the CrossGrid project. This paper describes prototype of this PSE, targeting mainly the copled simulation models (simulation cascade), the portal and the Virtual Organization supposed to use the system.