Exploiting Visual Languages Generation and UML Meta Modeling to Construct Meta-CASE Workbenches

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Exploiting XPG for Visual Languages Definition, Analysis and Development

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Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues, and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of geo-referenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry

Further Results on Time-Free P Systems

Membrane systems (currently called P systems) are parallel computing devices inspired by the structure and the functioning of living cells. A standard feature of P systems is that each rule is executed in exactly one time unit. Actually in living cells different chemical reactions might take different times to be executed; moreover, it might be hard to know precisely such time of execution. For this reason, in [7] have been defined and investigated two models of P systems (time-free and clock-free P systems) where the time of execution of the rules is arbitrary and the output produced by the system is always the same, independently from such time. Preliminary results concerning time-free and clock-free P system have been obtained in [6, 7, 8]. In this paper we continue these investigations by considering different combinations of possible ingredients. In particular, we present the universality of time-free P systems using bi-stable catalysts. On the other, hand we prove that this implies that is not possible to decide whether an arbitrary bi-stable catalytic P system is time-free. We present several results about time-free evolution- communication P systems, where the computation is a mixed application of evolution and symport/antiport rules. In this case we obtain the universality even by using non-cooperative evolution rules and antiports of weight one. Finally, we formulate several open problems

Specifying Dynamic Software Architectures by using Membrane Systems

We present a formalism for the definition of dynamic software architectures in terms of membrane systems, distributed computational models inspired from the structure and the functioning of living cells. The dynamics (the evolution) of the overall architecture is defined by rules that modify the contents (data) and structure of the membrane system. The evolution of the membrane system can be statically checked to ensure that some properties imposed by the architecture are preserved

Empowering end-users in the specification of security rules

With the rapid growth of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, especially in the context of smart homes, enduser programming is becoming increasingly common to easily create new functionalities by connecting IoT devices and online services using simple rules, such as event-condition-action (ECA) rules. Unfortunately, IoT devices and platforms are vulnerable under security terms, and the possible countermeasures to security threats are completely hidden to end-users. This position paper presents the idea of involving end-users in the management of security risks. In particular, we describe how existing ECA rules could be expanded to deal with security aspects, and possible strategies to support end-users in the definition and customization of security rules

Combining Unsupervised Clustering with a Non-Linear Deformation Model for Efficient Petroglyph Recognition

Petroglyphs are prehistoric engravings in stone unrevealing stories of ancient life and describing a conception of the world transmitted till today. In the current paper we consider the problem of developing tools that automate their recognition. This is a challenging problem mainly due to the high level of distortion and variability of petroglyph reliefs. To address these issues, we pro- pose a two-stage approach that combines unsupervised clustering, for quickly obtaining a raw classification of the query image, and a non-linear deformation model, for accurately evaluating the shape similarity between the query and the images of the more appropriate classes

Further Results on Time-Free P Systems

Membrane systems (currently called P systems) are parallel computing devices inspired by the structure and the functioning of living cells. A standard feature of P systems is that each rule is executed in exactly one time unit. Actually in living cells different chemical reactions might take different times to be executed; moreover, it might be hard to know precisely such time of execution. For this reason, in [7] have been defined and investigated two models of P systems (time-free and clock-free P systems) where the time of execution of the rules is arbitrary and the output produced by the system is always the same, independently from such time. Preliminary results concerning time-free and clock-free P system have been obtained in [6, 7, 8]. In this paper we continue these investigations by considering different combinations of possible ingredients. In particular, we present the universality of time-free P systems using bi-stable catalysts. On the other, hand we prove that this implies that is not possible to decide whether an arbitrary bi-stable catalytic P system is time-free. We present several results about time-free evolution- communication P systems, where the computation is a mixed application of evolution and symport/antiport rules. In this case we obtain the universality even by using non-cooperative evolution rules and antiports of weight one. Finally, we formulate several open problems

An Agent-Based and Context-Oriented approach to Symbol Recognition in Diagrammatic Drawings

http://www.suvisoft.comIn the last two decades, one new technology, that of agent-based systems, and one emerging research discipline, that of on-line recognition of hand-drawn diagrams, have gained wide attention and consensus. Since the application of the agent technology to disciplines where, traditionally, more standard approaches are adopted, usually leads to valuable and interesting results, we propose an agent-based system for on-line recognition of hand-drawn diagrams. In our system, agents are used 1) to manage the activity of parsers implemented according to the grammar formalism of Sketch Grammars, 2) to coordinate themselves in order to provide efficient and precise interpretations of the sketch to the user, and 3) to solve ambiguities by exploiting contextual information