SPaCIFY: a Formal Model-Driven Engineering for Spacecraft On-Board Software

International audienceThe aim of this article is to present a model- driven approach proposed by the SPaCIFY project for spacecraft on-board software development. This ap- proach is based on a formal globally asynchronous lo- cally synchronous language called Synoptic, and on a set of transformations allowing code generation and model verification

"The Paradox of Migration: Reconciling Economic Competition and 'Common Values' in Britain"

[From the introduction] This paper looks at Great Britain as an important case for explaining the inherent paradox of migration policy in Western Europe. Where immigration is an opportunity to jump-start latent industrial or struggling service economies, it is also a dominant political challenge in maintaining national identity and cohesion. This is particularly the case for Britain, where national identity is an inchoate, regularly re-defined concept (see Cesarani 1997; Hampshire 2006). Britain has seen positive economic growth and production in opening up their labor market to over half a million A-8 Accession workers, mainly from Poland and Lithuania. And under the banner of “controlled migration,” the Labor government has introduced a five-tiered, point-based entry system to bring highly skilled and need-based non-European migrants to Britain. However, where there is a desire to meet economic needs through migration, immigration has never been more of a contested, salient political issue. The promotion of citizenship requirements emphasizing integration (in English language and UK knowledge assessment) for non-EEA migrants, is an important innovation for defining British national identity, articulating for the first time a set of ‘common values’ to underscore the British national community. Britain’s migration calculus, maximizing the economic and social benefits of immigration against the efforts to isolate potential costs of immigration through the first, real definition of “Britishness” exemplifies the inherent paradox of migration for Western European states where more formed or consolidation visions of nation-state pre-dated large-scale migration. Following a review of context in which migration and citizenship laws were changed, discussing Britain’s strategic use of European Enlargement as being able to maintain selective admission alongside economic openness, the second part looks at British policy in detail by examining the most recent development of immigration and citizenship policy, beginning with the 2002 White Paper “Secure Borders, Safe Haven,” and manifesting in the 2005 Five-year strategy, “Controlling Our Borders.” Finally, I conclude with preliminary comparisons between Britain and other Western European countries, who are only now coming to terms with the realization that they are ‘countries of immigration,’ taking on all the benefits and responsibilities that come with it

A synthesis of logic and bio-inspired techniques in the design of dependable systems

Much of the development of model-based design and dependability analysis in the design of dependable systems, including software intensive systems, can be attributed to the application of advances in formal logic and its application to fault forecasting and verification of systems. In parallel, work on bio-inspired technologies has shown potential for the evolutionary design of engineering systems via automated exploration of potentially large design spaces. We have not yet seen the emergence of a design paradigm that effectively combines these two techniques, schematically founded on the two pillars of formal logic and biology, from the early stages of, and throughout, the design lifecycle. Such a design paradigm would apply these techniques synergistically and systematically to enable optimal refinement of new designs which can be driven effectively by dependability requirements. The paper sketches such a model-centric paradigm for the design of dependable systems, presented in the scope of the HiP-HOPS tool and technique, that brings these technologies together to realise their combined potential benefits. The paper begins by identifying current challenges in model-based safety assessment and then overviews the use of meta-heuristics at various stages of the design lifecycle covering topics that span from allocation of dependability requirements, through dependability analysis, to multi-objective optimisation of system architectures and maintenance schedules

Investigating communicating sequential processes for Java to support ubiquitous computing

Ubiquitous Computing promises to enrich our everyday lives by enabling the environment to be enhanced via computational elements. These elements are designed to augment and support our lives, thus allowing us to perform our tasks and goals. The main facet of Ubiquitous Computing is that computational devices are embedded in the environment, and interact with users and themselves to provide novel and unique applications. Ubiquitous Computing requires an underlying architecture that helps to promote and control the dynamic properties and structures that the applications require. In this thesis, the Networking package of Communicating Sequential Processes for Java (JCSP) is examined to analyse its suitability as the underlying architecture for Ubiquitous Computing. The reason to use JCSP Networking as a case study is that one of the proposed models for Ubiquitous Computing, the ?-Calculus, has the potential to have its abstractions implemented within JCSP Networking. This thesis examines some of the underlying properties of JCSP Networking and examines them within the context of Ubiquitous Computing. There is also an examination into the possibility of implementing the mobility constructs of the ?-Calculus and similar mobility models within JCSP Networking. It has been found that some of the inherent properties of Java and JCSP Networking do cause limitations, and hence a generalisation of the architecture has been made that should provide greater suitability of the ideas behind JCSP Networking to support Ubiquitous Computing. The generalisation has resulted in the creation of a verified communication protocol that can be applied to any Communicating Process Architecture