Common Infrastructure for Finite-State Based Methods and Linguistics Descriptions

Finite-state methods have been adopted widely in computational morphology and related linguistic applications. To enable efficient development of finite-state based linguistic descriptions, these methods should be a freely available resource for academic language research and the language technology industry. The following needs can be identified: (i) a registry that maps the existing approaches, implementations and descriptions, (ii) managing the incompatibilities of the existing tools, (iii) increasing synergy and complementary functionality of the tools, (iv) persistent availability of the tools used to manipulate the archived descriptions, (v) an archive for free finite-state based tools and linguistic descriptions. Addressing these challenges contributes to building a common research infrastructure for advanced language technology.Peer reviewe

Using mobile RE tools to give end-users their own voice

Researchers highlight end-user involvement in system design as an important concept for developing useful and usable solutions. However, end-user involvement in software engineering is still an open-ended topic. Novel paradigms such as service-oriented computing strengthen the need for more active end-user involvement in order to provide systems that are tailored to individual end-user needs. Our work is based on the fact that the majority of end-users are familiar with mobile devices and use an increasing number of mobile applications. A mobile tool enabling end-user led requirements elicitation could be just one of many applications installed on end-users' mobile devices. In this paper, we present a framework of end-user involvement in requirements elicitation which motivates our research. The main contribution of our research is a tool-supported requirements elicitation approach allowing end-users to document needs in situ. Furthermore, we present first evaluation results to highlight the feasibility of on-site end-user led requirements elicitation

Automated Synthesis of SEU Tolerant Architectures from OO Descriptions

SEU faults are a well-known problem in aerospace environment but recently their relevance grew up also at ground level in commodity applications coupled, in this frame, with strong economic constraints in terms of costs reduction. On the other hand, latest hardware description languages and synthesis tools allow reducing the boundary between software and hardware domains making the high-level descriptions of hardware components very similar to software programs. Moving from these considerations, the present paper analyses the possibility of reusing Software Implemented Hardware Fault Tolerance (SIHFT) techniques, typically exploited in micro-processor based systems, to design SEU tolerant architectures. The main characteristics of SIHFT techniques have been examined as well as how they have to be modified to be compatible with the synthesis flow. A complete environment is provided to automate the design instrumentation using the proposed techniques, and to perform fault injection experiments both at behavioural and gate level. Preliminary results presented in this paper show the effectiveness of the approach in terms of reliability improvement and reduced design effort

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

A linked data-driven & service-oriented architecture for sharing educational resources

The two fundamental aims of managing educational resources are to enable resources to be reusable and interoperable and to enable Web-scale sharing of resources across learning communities. Currently, a variety of approaches have been proposed to expose and manage educational resources and their metadata on the Web. These are usually based on heterogeneous metadata standards and schemas, such as IEEE LOM or ADL SCORM, and diverse repository interfaces such as OAI-PMH or SQI. Also, there is still a lack of usage of controlled vocabularies and available data sets that could replace the widespread use of unstructured text for describing resources. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has proven that it offers a set of successful principles that have the potential to alleviate the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we introduce an architecture and prototype which is fundamentally based on (a) Linked Data principles and (b) Service-orientation to resolve the integration issues for sharing educational resources