The Data Processing Pipeline for the Herschel-HIFI Instrument

The HIFI data processing pipeline was developed to systematically process diagnostic, calibration and astronomical observations taken with the HIFI science instrumentas part of the Herschel mission. The HIFI pipeline processed data from all HIFI observing modes within the Herschel automated processing environment, as well as, within an interactive environment. A common software framework was developed to best support the use cases required by the instrument teams and by the general astronomers. The HIFI pipeline was built on top of that and was designed with a high degree of modularity. This modular design provided the necessary flexibility and extensibility to deal with the complexity of batch-processing eighteen different observing modes, to support the astronomers in the interactive analysis and to cope with adjustments necessary to improve the pipeline and the quality of the end-products. This approach to the software development and data processing effort was arrived at by coalescing the lessons learned from similar research based projects with the understanding that a degree of foresight was required given the overall length of the project. In this article, both the successes and challenges of the HIFI software development process are presented. To support future similar projects and retain experience gained lessons learned are extracted.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

The ERATO Systems Biology Workbench: An Integrated Environment for Multiscale and Multitheoretic Simulations in Systems Biology

Over the years, a variety of biochemical network modeling packages have been developed and used by researchers in biology. No single package currently answers all the needs of the biology community; nor is one likely to do so in the near future, because the range of tools needed is vast and new techniques are emerging too rapidly. It seems unavoidable that, for the foreseeable future, systems biology researchers are likely to continue using multiple packages to carry out their work. In this chapter, we describe the ERATO Systems Biology Workbench (SBW) and the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), two related efforts directed at the problems of software package interoperability. The goal of the SBW project is to create an integrated, easy-to-use software environment that enables sharing of models and resources between simulation and analysis tools for systems biology. SBW uses a modular, plug-in architecture that permits easy introduction of new components. SBML is a proposed standard XML-based language for representing models communicated between software packages; it is used as the format of models communicated between components in SBW

An extensible architecture for run-time monitoring of conversational web services

Trust in Web services will be greatly enhanced if these are subject to run-time verification, even if they were previously tested, since their context of execution is subject to continuous change; and services may also be upgraded without notifying their consumers in advance. Conversational Web services introduce added complexity when it comes to run-time verification, since they follow a conversation protocol and they have a state bound to the session of each consumer accessing them. Furthermore, conversational Web services have different policies on how they maintain their state. Access to states can be private or shared; and states may be transient or persistent. These differences must be taken into account when building a scalable architecture for run-time verification through monitoring. This paper, building on a previously proposed theoretical framework for run-time verification of conversational Web services, presents the design, implementation and validation of a novel run-time monitoring architecture for conversational services, which aims to provide a holistic monitoring framework enabling the integration of different verification tools. The architecture is validated by running a sequence of test scenarios, based on a realistic example. The experimental results revealed that the monitoring activities have a tolerable overhead on the operation of a Web service

Efficient Sample Tracking With OpenLabFramework

The advance of new technologies in biomedical research has led to a dramatic growth in experimental throughput. Projects therefore steadily grow in size and involve a larger number of researchers. Spreadsheets traditionally used are thus no longer suitable for keeping track of the vast amounts of samples created and need to be replaced with state-of-the-art laboratory information management systems. Such systems have been developed in large numbers, but they are often limited to specific research domains and types of data. One domain so far neglected is the management of libraries of vector clones and genetically engineered cell lines. OpenLabFramework is a newly developed web-application for sample tracking, particularly laid out to fill this gap, but with an open architecture allowing it to be extended for other biological materials and functional data. Its sample tracking mechanism is fully customizable and aids productivity further through support for mobile devices and barcoded labels

Pathways: Augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories

In the emerging eScience environment, repositories of papers, datasets, software, etc., should be the foundation of a global and natively-digital scholarly communications system. The current infrastructure falls far short of this goal. Cross-repository interoperability must be augmented to support the many workflows and value-chains involved in scholarly communication. This will not be achieved through the promotion of single repository architecture or content representation, but instead requires an interoperability framework to connect the many heterogeneous systems that will exist. We present a simple data model and service architecture that augments repository interoperability to enable scholarly value-chains to be implemented. We describe an experiment that demonstrates how the proposed infrastructure can be deployed to implement the workflow involved in the creation of an overlay journal over several different repository systems (Fedora, aDORe, DSpace and arXiv).Comment: 18 pages. Accepted for International Journal on Digital Libraries special issue on Digital Libraries and eScienc

An enterprise modeling and integration framework based on knowledge discovery and data mining

This paper deals with the conceptual design and development of an enterprise modeling and integration framework using knowledge discovery and data mining. First, the paper briefly presents the background and current state-of-the-art of knowledge discovery in databases and data mining systems and projects. Next, enterprise knowledge engineering is dealt with. The paper suggests a novel approach of utilizing existing enterprise reference architectures, integration and modeling frameworks by the introduction of new enterprise views such as mining and knowledge views. An extension and a generic exploration of the information view that already exists within some enterprise models are also proposed. The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture is also outlined versus the existing architectures and the proposed enterprise framework. The main contribution of this paper is the identification and definition of a common knowledge enterprise model which represents an original combination between the previous projects on enterprise architectures and the Object Management Group (OMG) models and standards. The identified common knowledge enterprise model has therefore been designed using the OMG's Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and Common Warehouse MetaModel (CWM), and it also follows the RM-ODP (ISO/OSI). It has been partially implemented in Java(TM), Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and Corba/IDL. Finally, the advantages and limitations of the proposed enterprise model are outlined

Better Generative Programming with Generic Aspects

Abstract. After a brief introduction to generative, generic, and aspect-oriented programming, we point out four key elements that appear in the definition of generative programming and that are addressed in this position paper from the perspective of distributed systems development. Then, based on a concrete RMI distribution example, we start motivating how the expressiveness power of generics and the crosscutting modularization power of aspects could be combined in order to achieve highly reusable generic aspects. We conclude by presenting how generic concern-oriented model transformations could help in providing the necessary information to aspect generators for automatically instantiating our generic aspects before weaving them into concrete applications

Wireless Mobile Application for F&B Ordering System

The topic for the Final Year Project that has been proposed is "Wireless Mobile Application for Food& Beverages Ordering System". The topic ofthe project is to build a system that will be developed using Java 2 MicroEdition (J2ME). Currently, most of today's applications running on consumerdevices, such as mobilephones, PDAs,and TV set-top boxes, as well as a broad range of embedded devices have the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) embedded within it. Basically, the sole purpose ofthe topic chosen is to create an additional application which is the orderingsystem and installing it in the mobile devices. The main focus of this project is to create a wireless mobile application for ordering food and beverages in a restaurant or a food court. Users can order their food directly from the mobile device at the table directly to the kitchen where a mini server is installed for the cook use. Therefore, the cook can identify their customer order and instantly preparing for them, which makes the process a whole lot quicker. Theapplications used are devices using Wireless Java2 Micro Editionvia Bluetooth. Nowadays, the use of Bluetoothis growing rapidly and most of Java enabled devices has integration with the Bluetoothtechnology

Text-To-Speech Applications to Develop Educational Materials

[EN] There are several ways to develop educational materials and several different types of educational materials depending on the audience, objectives, topics or themes, type of education, among others. One of the most common educational materials developed is the use of presentations slides where to shape the information that the trainer wishes to share. The most used presentation graphics packages are Microsoft PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress and Apple KeyNote. These systems enable Word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and displaying different presentation management tools to design and configure a presentation. This educational material is usually used to be shown during an explanation in a master class or online through an e-learning platform. In the case that the education material is available through an online resource, it is important not only to present the information in a readable manner but: (i) to add the explanation as a spoken sound version in order to give to the receiver more information than the one that is displayed in the slides and (ii) to avoid fatigue due to reading all the information of the slides. Currently, there are different text-to-speech applications that allow to play sound files based on text without the interaction of humans. This paper focuses on these applications, which their main characteristics are and which their benefits and weaknesses are in order to select the most appropriate one to develop the different types of educational materials.Sanchis, R.; Andres, B.; Poler, R. (2018). Text-To-Speech Applications to Develop Educational Materials. INTED proceedings (Online). 6085-6093. doi:10.21125/inted.2018.1436S6085609

Web-based online tools for a shake table laboratory

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-71).by Hoang-Phong Nguyen.S.M