A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems

In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment. Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling tools to the software developers.Comment: model-driven architecture, COP, AOP, component composition, self-adaptive application, context oriented software developmen

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for June to December 2011

This potpourri of educational technology conferences includes gems such as “Saving Your Organisation from Boring eLearning” and “Lessons and Insights from Ten eLearning Masters”. And, if you wish, you can “Be an Open Learning Hero”. You will also find that the number of mobile learning conferences (and conferences that have a mobile learning component) have increased significantly. Countries such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand have shown a keen interest in mobile learning. It would be impossible for you to be present at all the conferences that you would like to attend. But, you could go to the conference website/url during and after the conference. Many conference organizers post abstracts, full papers, and/or videos of conference presentations. Thus, you can visit the conference virtually and may encounter information and contacts that would be useful in your work. The list below covers selected events focused primarily on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2011 are complete as dates, locations, or URLs are not available for a number of events held after December 2011. But, take a look at the conference organizers who planned ahead in 2012. A Word 2003 format is used to enable people who do not have access to Word 2007 or higher version and those with limited or high-cost Internet access to find a conference that is congruent with their interests or obtain conference proceedings. (If you are seeking a more interactive listing, refer to online conference sites.) Consider using the “Find” tool under Microsoft Word’s “Edit” tab or similar tab in OpenOffice to locate the name of a particular conference, association, city, or country. If you enter the country “Australia” or “Singapore” in the “Find” tool, all conferences that occur in Australia or Singapore will be highlighted. Or, enter the word “research”. Then, “cut and paste” a list of suitable events for yourself and your colleagues. Please note that events, dates, titles, and locations may change; thus, CHECK the specific conference website. Note also that some events will be cancelled at a later date. All Internet addresses were verified at the time of publication. No liability is assumed for any errors that may have been introduced inadvertently during the assembly of this conference list. If possible, do not remove the contact information when you re-distribute the list as that is how I receive updates and corrections. If you mount the list on the web, please note its source

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for June to December 2015

The 33rd edition of the conference list covers selected events that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2015 are complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held from January 2016 onward. In order to protect the privacy of individuals, only URLs are used in the listing as this enables readers of the list to obtain event information without submitting their e-mail addresses to anyone. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next

Asymmetrical Performance and Abnormal Synergies of the Post-Stroke Patient Wearing SCRIPT Passive Orthosis in Calibration, Exercise and Energy Evaluation

© 2014 Qin Y, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.In the context of therapeutic human-robot interaction, it is important to detect human contribution in interaction with robots, thus to auto-tune a robot to compensate or resist based on such input. A passive orthosis is used to evaluate interaction based on kinematic data and energy flow model to identify human-contributions during interaction experiments with healthy subject and stroke patient. The results identified presence of abnormal synergies between wrist and fingers, showed a skewness apparent in stroke patient performance which seemed to decrease over-time after the rehabilitation practice and indicated lack of fine control. We hypothesise that the presented methods can be used as potential performance benchmarks allowing to identify subject’s contribution during an interaction session but also to observe extent of fine motor control over time.Peer reviewe

Assessing system of systems information security risk with OASoSIS.

The term System of Systems (SoS) is used to describe the coming together of independent systems, collaborating to achieve a new or higher purpose. However, the SoS concept is often misunderstood within operational environments, providing challenges towards the secure design and operation of SoSs. Limitations in existing literature indicates a need for discovery towards identifying a combination of concepts, models, and techniques suitable for assessing SoS security risk and related human factor concerns for SoS Requirements Engineering. In this article, we present OASoSIS, representing an information security risk assessment and modelling process to assist risk-based decision making in SoS Requirements Engineering. A characterisation process is introduced to capture the SoS context, supporting a SoS security risk assessment process that extends OCTAVE Allegro towards a SoS context. Resulting risk data provides a focused means to assess and model the SoS information security risk and related human factors, integrating tool-support using CAIRIS. A medical evacuation SoS case study scenario was used to test, illustrate, and validate the alignment of concepts, models, and techniques for assessing SoS information security risks with OASoSIS, where findings provide a positive basis for future work

A Framework for Evaluating Model-Driven Self-adaptive Software Systems

In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately in order to specify the design of the self-adaptive applications, and, at the same time, support software with adaptability and context-awareness. This research studies the development methodologies that employ the principles of model-driven development in building self-adaptive software systems. To this aim, this article proposes an evaluation framework for analysing and evaluating the features of model-driven approaches and their ability to support software with self-adaptability and dependability in highly dynamic contextual environment. Such evaluation framework can facilitate the software developers on selecting a development methodology that suits their software requirements and reduces the development effort of building self-adaptive software systems. This study highlights the major drawbacks of the propped model-driven approaches in the related works, and emphasise on considering the volatile aspects of self-adaptive software in the analysis, design and implementation phases of the development methodologies. In addition, we argue that the development methodologies should leave the selection of modelling languages and modelling tools to the software developers

Educational Technology and Education Conferences, June to December 2012

The conference list contains events such as "Learning and Teaching","Innovation in e-Learning", "Online Teaching", "Distance Learning Administration", "The World Open Educational Resources Congress", "Mobile Health", and "Realizing Dreams"