Transactors: Unifying Transactions and Actors

Composability and deadlock-freedom are important properties that are stated for transactional memory (TM). Commonly, the Semantics of TM requires linearization of transactions. It turns out that linearization of transactions that have cyclic communication brings incomposability and deadlock. Inspired from TM and Actors, this work proposes Transactors that provide facilities of isolation from TM and communication from Actors. We define the semantics of Transactors including support for cyclic transactional communication. An algorithm implementing this semantics is offered. The soundness of the algorithm is proved

A Proof-of-Concept IoT System for Remote Healthcare Based on Interoperability Standards

[EN] The Internet of Things paradigm in healthcare has boosted the design of new solutions for the promotion of healthy lifestyles and the remote care. Thanks to the effort of academia and industry, there is a wide variety of platforms, systems and commercial products enabling the real-time information exchange of environmental data and people's health status. However, one of the problems of these type of prototypes and solutions is the lack of interoperability and the compromised scalability in large scenarios, which limits its potential to be deployed in real cases of application. In this paper, we propose a health monitoring system based on the integration of rapid prototyping hardware and interoperable software to build system capable of transmitting biomedical data to healthcare professionals. The proposed system involves Internet of Things technologies and interoperablility standards for health information exchange such as the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and a reference framework architecture for Ambient Assisted Living UniversAAL.This research received no external funding. The APC was funded by Research group Information and Communication Technologies against Climate Change (!CTCC) of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain.Lemus Zúñiga, LG.; Félix, JM.; Fides Valero, Á.; Benlloch-Dualde, J.; Martinez-Millana, A. (2022). A Proof-of-Concept IoT System for Remote Healthcare Based on Interoperability Standards. Sensors. 22(4):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/s2204164611722

The visibility of digital money : a video study of mobile payments using WeChat Pay

This paper analyses situated uses of digital payment platforms, contributing to the sociology of money, and digital sociology. Our data are video recordings of 256 small-scale transactions, gathered from across four Chinese cities, at grocery stores, supermarkets, street markets, restaurants, and cafes. Our focus is the visibility of money and we focus on a particular circumstance associated with some WeChat payments. In the cases we analyse, payment is made visible via a confirmation screen the customer alone sees. We argue payment applications provide a good empirical site for understanding how digital media reconfigure ‘the social’ by shaping how monetary information is seen and heard. Rather than eliminating trust, reducing transactions to impersonal semi-automated affairs, we show mobile payments generate new and complex patterns of economic action. A nuanced language game is described that requires sellers trust customers are acting in good faith. We show how ‘the social’ is imprinted on this contemporary monetary medium

CONTREX: Design of embedded mixed-criticality CONTRol systems under consideration of EXtra-functional properties

The increasing processing power of today’s HW/SW platforms leads to the integration of more and more functions in a single device. Additional design challenges arise when these functions share computing resources and belong to different criticality levels. CONTREX complements current activities in the area of predictable computing platforms and segregation mechanisms with techniques to consider the extra-functional properties, i.e., timing constraints, power, and temperature. CONTREX enables energy efficient and cost aware design through analysis and optimization of these properties with regard to application demands at different criticality levels. This article presents an overview of the CONTREX European project, its main innovative technology (extension of a model based design approach, functional and extra-functional analysis with executable models and run-time management) and the final results of three industrial use-cases from different domain (avionics, automotive and telecommunication).The work leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2011 under grant agreement no. 611146

Moneywork: Practices of Use and Social Interaction around Digital and Analog Money

The emergence of various forms of digital money and innovative digital financial services allows stores of value to be created, held, moved, measured and exchanged in novel ways. Yet the success of these new forms of transactional media is largely dependent on the ways that they are understood as useful and credible as viable forms of exchange, and on how they support the ways that their users interact around them. This paper therefore examines interactional work around the use of money in making financial transactions: we call this moneywork. We report on an empirical study of the patterns of behaviour of users of a mixed media (digital and analog) currency that supports mobile device payments–the Bristol Pound– exploring the impacts of its users’ understanding of the systems that underlie these transactions, the technical constraints on their potential for action, their practices of use, and the social interactions that these activities lie within. We draw design implications to support these payment practices.EPSRC grants EP/K012304/1 and EP/P032001/1

Soft Computing Techniques and Their Applications in Intel-ligent Industrial Control Systems: A Survey

Soft computing involves a series of methods that are compatible with imprecise information and complex human cognition. In the face of industrial control problems, soft computing techniques show strong intelligence, robustness and cost-effectiveness. This study dedicates to providing a survey on soft computing techniques and their applications in industrial control systems. The methodologies of soft computing are mainly classified in terms of fuzzy logic, neural computing, and genetic algorithms. The challenges surrounding modern industrial control systems are summarized based on the difficulties in information acquisition, the difficulties in modeling control rules, the difficulties in control system optimization, and the requirements for robustness. Then, this study reviews soft-computing-related achievements that have been developed to tackle these challenges. Afterwards, we present a retrospect of practical industrial control applications in the fields including transportation, intelligent machines, process industry as well as energy engineering. Finally, future research directions are discussed from different perspectives. This study demonstrates that soft computing methods can endow industry control processes with many merits, thus having great application potential. It is hoped that this survey can serve as a reference and provide convenience for scholars and practitioners in the fields of industrial control and computer science

Survey of Template-Based Code Generation

L'automatisation de la génération des artefacts textuels à partir des modèles est une étape critique dans l'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM). C'est une transformation de modèles utile pour générer le code source, sérialiser les modèles dans de stockages persistents, générer les rapports ou encore la documentation. Parmi les différents paradigmes de transformation de modèle-au-texte, la génération de code basée sur les templates (TBCG) est la plus utilisée en IDM. La TBCG est une technique de génération qui produit du code à partir des spécifications de haut niveau appelées templates. Compte tenu de la diversité des outils et des approches, il est nécessaire de classifier et de comparer les techniques de TBCG existantes afin d'apporter un soutien approprié aux développeurs. L'objectif de ce mémoire est de mieux comprendre les caractéristiques des techniques de TBCG, identifier les tendances dans la recherche, et éxaminer l'importance du rôle de l'IDM par rapport à cette approche. J'évalue également l'expressivité, la performance et la mise à l'échelle des outils associés selon une série de modèles. Je propose une étude systématique de cartographie de la littérature qui décrit une intéressante vue d'ensemble de la TBCG et une étude comparitive des outils de la TBCG pour mieux guider les dévloppeurs dans leur choix. Cette étude montre que les outils basés sur les modèles offrent plus d'expressivité tandis que les outils basés sur le code sont les plus performants. Enfin, Xtend2 offre le meilleur compromis entre l'expressivité et la performance.A critical step in model-driven engineering (MDE) is the automatic synthesis of a textual artifact from models. This is a very useful model transformation to generate application code, to serialize the model in persistent storage, generate documentation or reports. Among the various model-to-text transformation paradigms, Template-Based Code Generation (TBCG) is the most popular in MDE. TBCG is a synthesis technique that produces code from high-level specifications, called templates. It is a popular technique in MDE given that they both emphasize abstraction and automation. Given the diversity of tools and approaches, it is necessary to classify and compare existing TBCG techniques to provide appropriate support to developers. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the characteristics of TBCG techniques, identify research trends, and assess the importance of the role of MDE in this code synthesis approach. We also evaluate the expressiveness, performance and scalability of the associated tools based on a range of models that implement critical patterns. To this end, we conduct a systematic mapping study of the literature that paints an interesting overview of TBCG and a comparative study on TBCG tools to better guide developers in their choices. This study shows that model-based tools offer more expressiveness whereas code-based tools performed much faster. Xtend2 offers the best compromise between the expressiveness and the performance

Policy-making in the European Union: the role of policy networks in EU environmental policy

Research into the European Union (EU) increasingly focuses on the policy-making processes which take place within the EU, as distinct from trying to explain or predict the broad phenomenon of European integration. This thesis adopts a similar focus on EU policy-making. Policy-making in the EU is examined using a policy network approach. The main aim of the thesis is to assess how useful the policy network approach is as a means of explaining EU policy processes and policy outputs. The policy network approach is therefore applied not simply as a mechanism for describing patterns of interest intermediation but, rather, as a tool for explaining a new form of network governance in the EU. The thesis therefore aims to test the claims of the policy network literature that it can better account for policy-making in the EU than can more traditional approaches derived either from international relations (IR) or comparative politics (CP). The thesis applies a policy network approach to the study of EU environmental policy-making. Three case studies - on air quality, landfill and drinking water legislation - are examined, in order to assess whether a policy network approach can help explain the development of EU policy in these areas. Overall the thesis finds a useful role for policy network analysis in helping to explain EU policymaking and policy outputs. At the same time, however, the thesis confirms the limitations of the policy network approach at EU-level. Policy network analysis must therefore be combined with both IR and CP approaches in order to gain a fuller understanding of how EU policy is made