Dynamic Assembly for System Adaptability, Dependability, and Assurance

(DASASA) ProjectAuthor-contributed print ite

Formal Methods Specification and Analysis Guidebook for the Verification of Software and Computer Systems

This guidebook, the second of a two-volume series, is intended to facilitate the transfer of formal methods to the avionics and aerospace community. The 1st volume concentrates on administrative and planning issues [NASA-95a], and the second volume focuses on the technical issues involved in applying formal methods to avionics and aerospace software systems. Hereafter, the term "guidebook" refers exclusively to the second volume of the series. The title of this second volume, A Practitioner's Companion, conveys its intent. The guidebook is written primarily for the nonexpert and requires little or no prior experience with formal methods techniques and tools. However, it does attempt to distill some of the more subtle ingredients in the productive application of formal methods. To the extent that it succeeds, those conversant with formal methods will also nd the guidebook useful. The discussion is illustrated through the development of a realistic example, relevant fragments of which appear in each chapter. The guidebook focuses primarily on the use of formal methods for analysis of requirements and high-level design, the stages at which formal methods have been most productively applied. Although much of the discussion applies to low-level design and implementation, the guidebook does not discuss issues involved in the later life cycle application of formal methods

Formal Transformations from Graphically-Based Object-Oriented Representations to Theory-Based Specifications

Formal software specification has long been touted as a way to increase the quality and reliability of software; however, it remains an intricate, manually intensive activity. An alternative to using formal specifications is to use graphically-based, semi-formal specifications such as those used in many object-oriented specification methodologies. While semi-formal specifications are generally easier to develop and understand, they lack the rigor and precision of formal specification techniques. The basic premise of this investigation is that formal software specifications can be constructed using correctness preserving transformations from graphically-based object-oriented representations. In this investigation, object-oriented specifications defined using Rumbaugh\u27s Object Modeling Technique (OMT) were translated into algebraic specifications. To ensure the correct translation of graphically-based OMT specifications into their algebraic counterparts, a formal semantics for interpreting OMT specifications was derived and an algebraic model of object-orientation was developed. This model defines how object-oriented concepts are represented algebraically using an object-oriented algebraic specification language O-SLANG. O-SLANG combines basic algebraic specification constructs with category theory operations to capture internal object class structure as well as relationships between classes. Next, formal transformations from OMT specifications to O-SLANG specifications were defined and the feasibility of automating these transformations was demonstrated by the development of a proof-of-concept system

FCSIT Research Bulletin 2016

The FCSIT Research Bulletin is an annual publication of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, UNIMAS. The purpose of FCSIT Research Bulletin is to disseminate information that represent the current state of the research activities, publications, research findings, training, conferences and seminar conducted by the academicians in the faculty

Proceedings of Monterey Workshop 2001 Engineering Automation for Sofware Intensive System Integration

The 2001 Monterey Workshop on Engineering Automation for Software Intensive System Integration was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. It is our pleasure to thank the workshop advisory and sponsors for their vision of a principled engineering solution for software and for their many-year tireless effort in supporting a series of workshops to bring everyone together.This workshop is the 8 in a series of International workshops. The workshop was held in Monterey Beach Hotel, Monterey, California during June 18-22, 2001. The general theme of the workshop has been to present and discuss research works that aims at increasing the practical impact of formal methods for software and systems engineering. The particular focus of this workshop was "Engineering Automation for Software Intensive System Integration". Previous workshops have been focused on issues including, "Real-time & Concurrent Systems", "Software Merging and Slicing", "Software Evolution", "Software Architecture", "Requirements Targeting Software" and "Modeling Software System Structures in a fastly moving scenario".Office of Naval ResearchAir Force Office of Scientific Research Army Research OfficeDefense Advanced Research Projects AgencyApproved for public release, distribution unlimite

A theoretical and practical approach to a persuasive agent model for change behaviour in oral care and hygiene

There is an increased use of the persuasive agent in behaviour change interventions due to the agent‘s features of sociable, reactive, autonomy, and proactive. However, many interventions have been unsuccessful, particularly in the domain of oral care. The psychological reactance has been identified as one of the major reasons for these unsuccessful behaviour change interventions. This study proposes a formal persuasive agent model that leads to psychological reactance reduction in order to achieve an improved behaviour change intervention in oral care and hygiene. Agent-based simulation methodology is adopted for the development of the proposed model. Evaluation of the model was conducted in two phases that include verification and validation. The verification process involves simulation trace and stability analysis. On the other hand, the validation was carried out using user-centred approach by developing an agent-based application based on belief-desire-intention architecture. This study contributes an agent model which is made up of interrelated cognitive and behavioural factors. Furthermore, the simulation traces provide some insights on the interactions among the identified factors in order to comprehend their roles in behaviour change intervention. The simulation result showed that as time increases, the psychological reactance decreases towards zero. Similarly, the model validation result showed that the percentage of respondents‘ who experienced psychological reactance towards behaviour change in oral care and hygiene was reduced from 100 percent to 3 percent. The contribution made in this thesis would enable agent application and behaviour change intervention designers to make scientific reasoning and predictions. Likewise, it provides a guideline for software designers on the development of agent-based applications that may not have psychological reactance

Software maintenance by program transformation in a wide spectrum language

This thesis addresses the software maintenance problem of extracting high-level designs from code. The investigated solution is to use a mathematically-based formal program transformation system. The resulting tool, the Maintainer's Assistant, is based on Ward's [177] WSL (wide spectrum language) and method of proving program equivalence. The problems addressed include: how to reverse engineer from code alone (the only reliable source of information about a program [158]), how to express program transformations within the system, what kinds of transformations should be incorporated, how to make the tool simple to use, how to perform abstraction and how to create a tool suitable for use with large programs. Using the Maintainer's Assistant, the program code is automatically translated into WSL and the transformations, although tested for valid applicability by the system, are interactively applied by the user. Notable features include a mathematical simplifier, a large flexible transformation catalogue and, significantly, the use of an extension of WSL, A4etaWSL, for representing the transformations. MetaWSL expands WSL by incorporating a variety of extensions, including: program editing statements, pattern matching and template filling functions, symbolic mathematics and logic functions, statements for moving within the program’s syntax tree and statements for repeating an operation at each node of the tree. Using MetaWSL, 80% of the 601 transformations can be expressed in less than 20 program statements. The Maintainer's Assistant has been used on a wide variety of examples of up to several thousand lines, including commercial software written in IBM 370 assembler. It has been possible to transform initially unstructured programs into a hierarchy of procedures, facilitating subsequent design recovery. These results show that program transformation is a viable method of renovating old (370 assembler) code in a cost elective way, and that MetaWSL provides an effective basis for clearly and concisely expressing the required transformations

Development of the Beam Position Monitors for the Diagnostics of the Test Beam Line in the CTF3 at CERN

The work for this thesis is in line with the field of Instrumentation for Particle Accelerators, so called Beam Diagnostics. It is presented the development of a series of electro-mechanical devices called Inductive Pick-Ups (IPU) for Beam Position Monitoring (BPM). A full set of 17 BPM units (16 + 1 spare), named BPS units, were built and installed into the Test Beam Line (TBL), an electron beam decelerator, of the 3rd CLIC Test Facility (CTF3) at CERN ¿European Organization for the Nuclear Research¿. The CTF3, built at CERN by an international collaboration, was meant to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the key concepts for CLIC ¿Compact Linear Collider¿ as a future linear collider based on the novel two-beam acceleration scheme, and in order to achieve the next energy frontier for a lepton collider in theMulti-TeV scale. Modern particle accelerators and in particular future colliders like CLIC requires an extreme alignment and stabilization of the beam in order to enhance its quality, which rely heavily on a beam based alignment techniques. Here the BPMs, like the BPS-IPU, play an important role providing the beam position with precision and high resolution, besides a beam current measurement in the case of the BPS, along the beam lines. The BPS project carried out at IFIC was mainly developed in two phases: prototyping and series production and test for the TBL. In the first project phase two fully functional BPS prototypes were constructed, focusing in this thesis work on the electronic design of the BPS on-board PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) which are based on transformers for the current sensing and beam position measurement. Furthermore, it is described the monitor mechanical design with emphasis on all the parts directly involved in its electromagnetic functioning, as a result of the coupling of the EM fields generated by the beam with those parts. For that, it was studied its operational parameters, according the TBL specifications, and it was also simulated a new circuital model reproducing the BPS monitor frequency response for its operational bandwidth (1kHz-100MHz). These prototypes were initially tested in the laboratories of the BI-PI section¿Beam Instrumentation - Position and Intensity¿ at CERN. In the second project phase the BPS monitor series, which were built based on the experience acquired during the prototyping phase, the work was focused on the realization of the characterization tests to measure the main operational parameters of each series monitor, for which it was designed and constructed two test benches with different purposes and frequency regions. The first one is designed to work in the low frequency region, between 1kHz-100MHz, in the time scale of the electron beam pulse with a repetition period of 1s and an approximate duration of 140ns. This kind of test setups called Wire Test-bench are commonly used in the accelerators instrumentation field in order to determine the characteristic parameters of a BPM (or pick-up) like its linearity and precision in the position measurement, and also its frequency response (bandwidth). This is done by emulating a low current intensity beam with a stretched wire carrying a current signals which can be precisely positioned with respect the device under test. This test bench was specifically made for the BPS monitor and conceived to perform the measurement data acquisition in an automated way, managing the measurement equipment and the wire positioning motors controller from a PC workstation. Each one of the BPS monitors series were characterized by using this system at the IFIC labs, and the test results and analysis are presented in this work. On the other hand, the high frequency tests, above the X band in the microwave spectrum and at the time scale of the micro-bunch pulses with a bunching period of 83ps (12GHz) inside a long 140ns pulse, were performed in order to measure the longitudinal impedance of the BPS monitor. This must be low enough in order to minimize the perturbations on the beam produced at crossing the monitor, which affects to its stability during the propagation along the line. For that, it was built the high frequency test bench as a coaxial waveguide structure of 24mm diameter matched at 50¿ and with a bandwidth from 18MHz to 30GHz, which was previously simulated, and having room in the middle to place the BPS as the device under test. This high frequency test bench is able to reproduce the TEM (Transversal Electro-Magnetic) propagative modes corresponding to an ultra-relativistic electron beam of 12GHz bunching frequency, so that the Scattering parameters can be measured to obtain the longitudinal impedance of the BPS in the frequency range of interest. Finally, it is also presented the results of the beam test made in the TBL line, with beam currents from 3.5A to 13A (max. available at the moment of the test). In order to determine the minimum resolution attainable by a BPS monitor in the measurement of the beam position, being the device figure of merit, with a resolution goal of 5¿m at maximum beam current of 28A according to the TBL specifications.García Garrigós, JJ. (2013). Development of the Beam Position Monitors for the Diagnostics of the Test Beam Line in the CTF3 at CERN [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/34327TESI