Engineering Commons^™

Leading Firms As Knowledge Gatekeepers In A Networked Environment, Deogratias Harorimana Mr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

This chapter introduces the role of the knowledge gatekeeper as a mechanism by which knowledge is created and transferred in a networked environment. Knowledge creation and transfer are essential for building a knowledge based economy. The chapter considers obstacles that inhibit this process and argues that leading firms create a shared socio-cultural context that enables the condivision of tacit meanings and codification of knowledge. Leading firms act as gatekeepers of knowledge through the creation of shared virtual platforms. There will be a leading firm that connects several networks of clients and suppliers may not interact directly with one another, but …

Collision-Tolerant Transmission With Narrow-Beam Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai, Kam-Wing Ng, Min-You Wu, Bo Li

Hong-Ning Dai

The application of directional antennas in wireless ad hoc networks brings numerous benefits, such as increased spatial reuse and mitigated interference. Most MAC protocols with directional antennas are based on the RTS/CTS mechanism which works well in wireless ad hoc networks using omni-directional antennas. However, RTS/CTS frames cannot mitigate the interference completely. Besides, they also contribute a lot to the performance overhead. This paper studies the problem from a new perspective. We have found that the transmission success probability under directional transmission and directional reception is quite high when the antenna beamwidth is quite narrow. Motivated by the analytical results, …

Using Triz For Maximizing Information Presentation In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The modern software tools provide numerous graphic elements in their GUI, which demand more and more screen space. As the size of a display screen cannot be extended beyond a limit, it is typically seen as a constraint in a graphical user interface.

Looking from a TRIZ perspective, the computer screen should display all the information that the user needs (Ideal Final Result). There are various methods of addressing the problem of screen space, some of which are, ”using icons for windows”, “the desktop metaphor”, “the large virtual workspace metaphor”, “multiple virtual workspaces”, “overlapping windows” and “increasing dimensions” etc.

There …

Using Triz To Improve Navigation In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A typical user interface consists of several buttons, menus, windows, trees and other type of controls. The increased number of GUI elements and complexities of the GUI controls necessitate the user to acquire certain level of skill and efficiency in order to operate the GUI. There are many situations which further make the navigation difficult. Ideally the user should face no difficulties in navigating through the user interface. Any operation in the graphical user interface should require minimum pointer operations from the user (Ideal Final Result). This objective of a graphical user interface has led to several inventions trying to …

Using Triz For Minimizing Cursor Movements In Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although a GUI is a revolutionary development over its predecessors, it suffers from a typical shortcoming that it requires a lot of pointer movements. As pointer movement is a slow process it affects the overall performance of a GUI operation. Besides too much pointer movement can frustrate a user. Hence, it is desirable to reduce the pointer movements while performing any action through a typical GUI. Ideally the user need not move the pointer to initiate a GUI based operation. In other words the pointer itself should automatically move onto the desired location on the graphical user interface (Ideal Final …

Inventions On Improving Visibility Of Gui Elements, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The evolution of computing technology has witnessed tremendous growth in the processing power of the computer. The memory and storage capabilities are also increasing year after year. In contrast to the above, the display area of a PC monitor remains the same. This inhibits the productivity of a computer, as the user does not just have enough view area to interact with the computer. Ideally the display screen should accommodate all required data, objects and GUI elements for user interaction. If some data or object is hidden behind or remaining beyond the display area, it should automatically come to the …

Inventions On User Friendliness Of A Gui- A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although a GUI is considered to be convenient it still has certain shortcomings like ambiguity of pictorial symbols, difficulty of cursor movements, difficulty of interacting with smaller graphic elements, likeliness of making mistakes by slip of fingers, demand of more screen space, difficulty of searching in nested containers etc. Many users fail to operate a computer satisfactorily because of the special skill or training required to operate it. In order to avoid this problem, it is necessary to design the user interface in such a way that even an untrained user should also be able to operate the computer effectively …

Using Triz To Design Error-Free Gui, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A graphical user interface has a lot of advantages over its predecessors. Its beauty, simplicity, adaptability, user-friendliness, visual clarity, speed and ease of operation have made it popular and suitable to a broad range of users. But a GUI also has certain limitations. Like any other type of user interface, a GUI can also be operated wrongly which may yield undesirable results. A good GUI should be intelligent to determine user’s intention and disallow him doing wrong operations. A less error-prone GUI is certainly more effective and efficient. Ideally the GUI should prevent users from doing any mistake while operating …

Arranging Display Of Gui Elements- A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

One of the biggest drawbacks of the graphical user interface is that it consumes the active display area associated with the device. Whether the display screen is a part of a television, computer, or any other consumer device, the graphical user interface appears on the active area of the display screen. As a result the GUI masks a part of the display screen and the amount of information that can be viewed on the screen is reduced. Ideally the GUI should offer all its features without blocking any part of the display screen. The features should be readily available and …

Inventions On Three Dimensional Gui- A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The graphical user interface has become popular because of its simplicity and user friendliness. The user can do very complex operations through GUI by simple pointer movements. One of its major drawbacks is that it consumes active display area. Every icon, every window and every other GUI element occupies some amount of screen space. It is desirable to display more GUI features within the limited amount of display screen. Adding another dimension to a graphical user interface can yield tremendous benefits such as improving aesthetics, data presentation, screen-space utilization and user friendliness. The user can easily locate the objects in …

A Heuristic Scheduling Scheme In Multiuser Ofdma Networks, Zheng Sun, Zhiqiang He, Ruochen Wang, Kai Niu

Zheng Sun

Conventional heterogeneous-traffic scheduling schemes utilize zero-delay constraint for real-time services, which aims to minimize the average packet delay among real-time users. However, in light or moderate load networks this strategy is unnecessary and leads to low data throughput for non-real-time users. In this paper, we propose a heuristic scheduling scheme to solve this problem. The scheme measures and assigns scheduling priorities to both real-time and non-real-time users, and schedules the radio resources for the two user classes simultaneously. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme efficiently handles the heterogeneous-traffic scheduling with diverse QoS requirements and alleviates the unfairness between real-time …

Investigation Of Stun Guns As Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (Emi) Sources, George H. Baker, Ryan C. Tuttle

George H Baker

Determined malefactors have demonstrated the use of common systems as effective weapons against civilian infrastructures, e.g. commercial jetliners used as kinetic weapons and cell phones used to trigger explosive devices. This undergraduate research project investigated the possibility of using readily available stun gun devices for electro-magnetic interference with or disruption of personal computers. At present, the system effects of high power electromagnetic sources are well recognized by world scientific and military communities. Former CIA Director John Deutch has said that, "the electron is the ultimate precision-guided weapon."1 There has been much research on the deleterious effects of pulsed voltages and …

Investigation Of Stun Guns As Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (Emi) Sources, George H. Baker, Ryan C. Tuttle

George H Baker

Because the operation and control of most critical infrastructures are highly dependent on electronics, it is important to understand the vulnerability of those electronics to intentional electromagnetic interference (EMI). The possibility of interference using readily available consumer devices is a particular concern. We investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of using compact stun guns to intentionally interfere with electronic systems. Test articles included individual computers and computers networked through a central hub. 60KV and 600KV devices were used in the experiments. Results indicate that stun guns are effective in disabling digital electronic systems.

Report Of The Commission To Assess The Threat To The United States From Emp Attack: Critical National Infrastructures, William R. Graham

George H Baker

The physical and social fabric of the United States is sustained by a system of systems; a complex and dynamic network of interlocking and interdependent infrastructures (“critical national infrastructures”) whose harmonious functioning enables the myriad actions, transactions, and information flow that undergird the orderly conduct of civil society in this country. The vulnerability of these frastructures to threats — deliberate, accidental, and acts of nature — is the focus of greatly heightened concern in the current era, a process accelerated by the events of 9/11 and recent hurricanes, including Katrina and Rita. This report presents the results of the Commission’s …

High-Resolution Optical Imaging For Deep-Water Archaeology, Hanumant Singh, Christopher Roman, Oscar Pizarro, Brendan Foley, Ryan Eustice, Ali Can

Christopher N. Roman

No abstract provided.

Architecting Ibm Global And Local Business Processes Using Rational Method Composer, Cécile Péraire

Cécile Péraire

No abstract provided.

Verifying Semantic Business Process Models In Inter-Operation, George Koliadis, Aditya Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Process inter-operation is characterized as cooperative interactions among loosely coupled autonomous constituents to adaptively fulfill system-wide purpose. Issues of inconsistency can be anticipated in inter-operating processes given their independent management and design. To reduce inconsistency (that may contribute to failures) effective methods for statically verifying behavioral interoperability are required. This paper contributes a method for practical, semantic verification of interoperating processes (as represented with BPMN models). We provide methods to evaluate consistency during process design where annotation of the immediate effect of tasks and sub-processes has been provided. Furthermore, some guidelines are defined against common models of inter-operation for scoping …

Verifying Semantic Business Process Models In Inter-Operation, George Koliadis, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Process inter-operation is characterized as cooperative interactions among loosely coupled autonomous constituents to adaptively fulfill system-wide purpose. Issues of inconsistency can be anticipated in inter-operating processes given their independent management and design. To reduce inconsistency (that may contribute to failures) effective methods for statically verifying behavioral interoperability are required. This paper contributes a method for practical, semantic verification of interoperating processes (as represented with BPMN models). We provide methods to evaluate consistency during process design where annotation of the immediate effect of tasks and sub-processes has been provided. Furthermore, some guidelines are defined against common models of inter-operation for scoping …

Hclp Based Service Composition, Ying Guan, Aditya K. Ghose, Zheng Lu

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

A key impediment to the widespread adoption of web services is the relatively limited set of tools available to deal with Quality-of-Service (QoS) factors. QoS factors pose several difficult challenges in how they may be articulated. While the functional requirements of a service can be represented as predicates to be satisfied by the target system, QoS factors are effectively statements of objectives to be maximized or minimized. QoS requirements occur naturally as local specifications of preference. Dealing with QoS factors is therefore a multi-objective optimization problem. In effect, these objectives are never fully satisfied, but satisficed to varying degrees. In …

Auditing Business Process Compliance, Aditya K. Ghose, George Koliadis

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Compliance issues impose significant management and reporting requirements upon organizations.We present an approach to enhance business process modeling notations with the capability to detect and resolve many broad compliance related issues. We provide a semantic characterization of a minimal revision strategy that helps us obtain compliant process models from models that might be initially non-compliant, in a manner that accommodates the structural and semantic dimensions of parsimoniously annotated process models. We also provide a heuristic approach to compliance resolution using a notion of compliance patterns. This allows us to partially automate compliance resolution, leading to reduced levels of analyst involvement …

Using Constraint Hierarchies To Support Qos-Guided Service Composition, Ying Guan, Aditya K. Ghose, Zheng Lu

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

A key impediment to the widespread adoption of web services is the is the relatively limited set of tools available to deal with Quality-of-Service (QoS) factors [12]. QoS factors pose several difficult challenges in how they may be articulated. While the functional requirements of a service can be represented as predicates to be satisfied by the target system, QoS factors are effectively statements of objectives to be maximized or minimized. QoS requirements occur naturally as local specifications of preference. Dealing with QoS factors is therefore a multi-objective optimization problem. In effect, these objectives are never fully satisfied, but satisficed to …

Process Discovery From Model And Text Artefacts, Aditya K. Ghose, George Koliadis, Arthur Cheung

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Modeling is an important and time consuming part of the Business Process Management life-cycle. An analyst reviews existing documentation and queries relevant domain experts to construct both mental and concrete models of the domain. To aid this exercise, we propose the Rapid Business Process Discovery (R-BPD) framework and prototype tool that can query heterogeneous information resources (e.g. corporate documentation, web-content, code e.t.c.) and rapidly construct proto-models to be incrementally adjusted to correctness by an analyst. This constitutes a departure from building and constructing models toward just editing them. We believe this rapid mixed-initiative modeling will increase analyst productivity by significant …

Combining Agent-Oriented Conceptual Modelling With Formal Methods, S. A. Vilkomir, Aditya K. Ghose, A. Krishna

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Agent-oriented conceptual modelling notations such as i* have received considerable recent attention as a useful approach to early-phase requirements engineering. Agent-oriented conceptual modelling notations are highly effective in representing requirements from an intentional stance and answering questions such as what goals exist, how key actors depend on each other and what alternatives must be considered. Formal methods such as those based on the Z notation offer a complementary set of representational facilities. We explore how these two otherwise disparate approaches might be used in a synergistic fashion.

Executable Specifications For Agent Oriented Conceptual Modelling, Y. Guan, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Agent-oriented conceptual modelling (AoCM) notations such as i* have received considerable recent attention as a useful approach to early-phase requirements engineering. AoCM notations are useful in modeling organizational context and in offering high-level anthropomorphic abstractions as modeling constructs. AoCM notations such as i* help answer questions such as what goals exist, how key actors depend on each other and what alternatives must be considered. In this paper, we suggest an approach to executing i* models by translating these into set of interacting agents implemented in the 3APL language. In addition, we suggest a hybrid modeling, or co-evolution, approach in which …

Hierarchic Decomposition In Agent Oriented Conceptual Modelling, R. B. Brown, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Software development processes requires a thorough understanding of stakeholder objectives and requirements. Product-centrism is an insufficient stance from which to achieve greater efficiencies and reduce reengineering. Stakeholder requirement elicitation is thus worthy of formalization. A suite of tools, notably the i* model, provides a framework for early-phase requirements capture. These tools currently are at best only semiautomated and essentially consist of a notational glossary and sets of mark-up symbols. Increasing formalization may lead to greater automation of the process in the future, but currently there is a degree of flexibility that presents pitfalls for the unwary practitioner. A notion of …

Co-Evolution Of Agent Oriented Conceptual Models And Use Case Diagrams, Moshiur Bhuiyan, M. M. Zahidul Islam, Aneesh Krishna, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Agent--oriented conceptual modeling notations such as i* represents an interesting approach for modeling early phase requirements which includes organizational contexts, stakeholder intentions and rationale. On the other hand Use Case diagram is used for capturing functional requirements of the system. The integration of i* model and Use Case diagram closes the gap of capturing organizational requirements and system requirements. But in both contexts the requirements might change at any time. Any change made in one model must be reflected in the other. This paper proposes a methodology supporting the co-evolution of these two otherwise disparate approaches in a synergistic fashion.

Co-Evolution Of Agent-Oriented Conceptual Models And Caso Agent Programs, A. Dasgupta, Aneesh Krishna, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Agent-Oriented conceptual modelling notations are highly effective in representing requirements from an intentional stance and answering questions such as what goals exist, how key actors depend on each other and what alternatives must be considered. In this paper, we suggest an approach to executing i* models by translating these into set of interacting agents implemented in the CASO language. In addition, we suggest a hybrid modelling, or co-evolution, approach in which i* models and CASO agent programs are concurrently maintained and updated, while retaining some modicum of loose consistency between the two. This allows us to benefit from the complementary …

A Combined Approach For Supporting The Business Process Model Lifecycle, George Koliadis, Aleksander Vranesevic, Moshiur Bhuiyan, Aneesh Krishna, Aditya K. Ghose

Professor Aditya K. Ghose

Business processes evolve throughout their lifecycle of change. Business Process Modeling (BPM2) notations such as BPMN are used to effectively conceptualize and communicate important process characteristics to relevant stakeholders. Agent-oriented conceptual modeling notations, such as i*, effectively capture and communicate organizational context. In this paper we argue that the management of change throughout the business process model lifecycle can be more effectively supported by combining notations. In particular, we identify two potential sources of process change, one occurring within the organizational context and the other within the operational context. As such the focus in this paper is on the co-evolution …

Criteria On Utility Designing Of Convex Optimization In Fdma Networks, Zheng Sun, Wenjun Xu, Zhiqiang He, Kai Niu

Zheng Sun

In this paper, we investigate the network utility maximization problem in FDMA systems. We summarize with a suite of criteria on designing utility functions so as to achieve the global optimization convex. After proposing the general form of the utility functions, we present examples of commonly used utility function forms that are consistent with the criteria proposed in this paper, which include the well-known proportional fairness function and the sigmoidal-like functions. In the second part of this paper, we use numerical results to demonstrate a case study based on the criteria mentioned above, which deals with the subcarrier scheduling problem …

Google Android Masses (Android), Chien Hsun Chen, Flow Lin

Chien Hsun Chen

Google Android Masses is a web2.0 social network application based on mobile, made by Chien-Hsun Chen and Flow. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1939321648198893927&hl=en http://www.slideshare.net/lucemia/gam-documentation/