An approach to integrating and creating flexible software environments

Engineers and scientists are attempting to represent, analyze, and reason about increasingly complex systems. Many researchers have been developing new ways of creating increasingly open environments. In this research on VEHICLES, a conceptual design environment for space systems, an approach was developed, called 'wrapping', to flexibility and integration based on the collection and then processing of explicit qualitative descriptions of all the software resources in the environment. Currently, a simulation is available, VSIM, used to study both the types of wrapping descriptions and the processes necessary to use the metaknowledge to combine, select, adapt, and explain some of the software resources used in VEHICLES. What was learned about the types of knowledge necessary for the wrapping approach is described along with the implications of wrapping for several key software engineering issues

Supporting End-User Development through a New Composition Model: An Empirical Study

End-user development (EUD) is much hyped, and its impact has outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts. Even so, the vision of end users programming their own solutions has not yet materialized. This will continue to be so unless we in both industry and the research community set ourselves the ambitious challenge of devising end to end an end-user application development model for developing a new age of EUD tools. We have embarked on this venture, and this paper presents the main insights and outcomes of our research and development efforts as part of a number of successful EU research projects. Our proposal not only aims to reshape software engineering to meet the needs of EUD but also to refashion its components as solution building blocks instead of programs and software developments. This way, end users will really be empowered to build solutions based on artefacts akin to their expertise and understanding of ideal solution

Active Loop Programming for Adaptive Systems

We describe a new approach to adaptive system construction, based on our belief that there are no one-way functions in biology. For example, no sensor is a one-way input device, and no effector is a one-way output device. We choose to mimic the fact that all biological systems have many active processing loops running at all times, at various different time and space scales, and all of them both produce and consume data. We wanted to see how far this notion can carry us towards highly adaptive computational systems, in combination with computational reflection and certain other biological principles of organization. We show that it carries us surprisingly far, by describing a system architecture that uses it as a fundamental organizing principle. We define what active loop programming is, show how it provides enormous flexibility in a software-intensive system, and show how it can be implemented with Wrappings, our integration infrastructure for self-modeling systems

Focal Spot, Winter 2006/2007

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/focal_spot_archives/1104/thumbnail.jp

Building IoT Applications with Raspberry Pi and Low Power IQRF Communication Modules

Typical Internet of Things (IoT) applications involve collecting information automatically from diverse geographically-distributed smart sensors and concentrating the information into more powerful computers. The Raspberry Pi platform has become a very interesting choice for IoT applications for several reasons: (1) good computing power/cost ratio; (2) high availability; it has become a de facto hardware standard; and (3) ease of use; it is based on operating systems with a big community of users. In IoT applications, data are frequently carried by means of wireless sensor networks in which energy consumption is a key issue. Energy consumption is especially relevant for smart sensors that are scattered over wide geographical areas and may need to work unattended on batteries for long intervals of time. In this scenario, it is convenient to ease the construction of IoT applications while keeping energy consumption to a minimum at the sensors. This work proposes a possible gateway implementation with specific technologies. It solves the following research question: how to build gateways for IoT applications with Raspberry Pi and low power IQRF communication modules. The following contributions are presented: (1) one architecture for IoT gateways that integrates data from sensor nodes into a higher level application based on low-cost/low-energy technologies; (2) bindings in Java and C that ease the construction of IoT applications; (3) an empirical model that describes the consumption of the communications at the nodes (smart sensors) and allows scaling their batteries; and (4) validation of the proposed energy model at the battery-operated nodes.This work was supported in part by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) under projects EHU13/42 and UFI11/28 and by the Basque Government (GV/EJ) under projects CPS4PSS ETORTEK14/10 and Thinking Factory ETORGAI14

Heritage science contribution to the understanding of meaningful khipu colours

Funding: Financial support by the Access to Research Infrastructures activity in the Horizon 2020 Programme of the EU (IPERION HS Grant Agreement n.871034) is gratefully acknowledged.This work is the first scientific study of khipu dyes and inorganic mordants and auxiliaries, paving the way for a new approach to understanding khipus’ meaningful materiality, technology, and colours. Khipus have usually been described as “Andean knotted records”, but they are much more than complex knotted cords: a great part of the information encoded resides in khipus’ incredible colours. The objects of this study are two Wari khipus, 1932.08.0001 and 1932.08.0002, now at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. After a morphological study of the khipus, the objects were imaged with multiband imaging (MBI) as an aid for the sampling decisional process. The khipus were then analysed non-invasively by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy on selected areas of particular interest. The khipus were consequently sampled for elemental characterisation by micro-XRF, and liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC–HRMS) for characterising the organic dye composition. This paper presents a part of the results of the project “Meaningful materials in the khipu code”, with the intent to shed light on the difficulties and possibilities of investigating khipu colours and dyestuffs. MBI and XRF revealed unforeseeable structural characteristics, such as remnants from a heavily degraded thread in an area of missing thread wrapping and a dual-coloured thread that was previously deemed single-coloured. The organic dyes identified by HPLC–HRMS comprised indigoids, cochineal, and an unknown flavonoid-based dyestuff. XRF of the inorganic components revealed associations of several elements with specific colours.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Heritage Science Contribution to the Understanding of Meaningful Khipu Colours

This work is the first scientific study of khipu dyes and inorganic mordants and auxiliaries, paving the way for a new approach to understanding khipus’ meaningful materiality, technology, and colours. Khipus have usually been described as “Andean knotted records”, but they are much more than complex knotted cords: a great part of the information encoded resides in khipus’ incredible colours. The objects of this study are two Wari khipus, 1932.08.0001 and 1932.08.0002, now at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. After a morphological study of the khipus, the objects were imaged with multiband imaging (MBI) as an aid for the sampling decisional process. The khipus were then analysed non-invasively by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy on selected areas of particular interest. The khipus were consequently sampled for elemental characterisation by micro-XRF, and liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC–HRMS) for characterising the organic dye composition. This paper presents a part of the results of the project “Meaningful materials in the khipu code”, with the intent to shed light on the difficulties and possibilities of investigating khipu colours and dyestuffs. MBI and XRF revealed unforeseeable structural characteristics, such as remnants from a heavily degraded thread in an area of missing thread wrapping and a dual-coloured thread that was previously deemed single-coloured. The organic dyes identified by HPLC–HRMS comprised indigoids, cochineal, and an unknown flavonoid-based dyestuff. XRF of the inorganic components revealed associations of several elements with specific colours

Two adhesive systems cooperatively regulate axon ensheathment and myelin growth in the CNS

Central nervous system myelin is a multilayered membrane produced by oligodendrocytes to increase neural processing speed and efficiency, but the molecular mechanisms underlying axonal selection and myelin wrapping are unknown. Here, using combined morphological and molecular analyses in mice and zebrafish, we show that adhesion molecules of the paranodal and the internodal segment work synergistically using overlapping functions to regulate axonal interaction and myelin wrapping. In the absence of these adhesive systems, axonal recognition by myelin is impaired with myelin growing on top of previously myelinated fibers, around neuronal cell bodies and above nodes of Ranvier. In addition, myelin wrapping is disturbed with the leading edge moving away from the axon and in between previously formed layers. These data show how two adhesive systems function together to guide axonal ensheathment and myelin wrapping, and provide a mechanistic understanding of how the spatial organization of myelin is achieved