Towards Domain-Specific Modeling Methodology for Avionic Safety-Critical Systems

The use of domain-specific modeling languages and associated methodologies, provide support in application domain where the safe and reliable operations of the systems are of paramount importance to the users and organizations, and wherein the domains are well understood and documented. One such area of domain-specific modeling application is in the field of avionic systems. For software systems to be used onboard aircrafts they must be certified, and as such certification protocols have been established for developing these safety-critical systems. These established protocols are usually represented as textual documents and inherently are difficult to apply directly in software development environments. The work presented herein proposes a graphical modeling representation for an avionic software system certification specification and an accompanying model-driven methodology for implementing the certification specification. This work is based on the RTCA Software Consideration in Airborne Systems and Equipment specification and the Unified Modeling Language. The presented model-driven methodology, incorporates the use of formal specification techniques to satisfy many of the verification requirements of the RTCA specification. The benefit of this work is in the transformation of textual description to graphical models in support of precise software system development, and a rigorous model-driven software development methodology for avionic soft-ware system development

Towards Verification of UML Class Models using Formal Specification Methods: A Review

Abstract In today s world many elements of our lives are being affected by software and for that we are in greater need of high-quality software The Unified Modeling Language UML is considered the de facto standard for object-oriented software model development UML class diagram plays an important role in the design and specification of software systems A class diagram provides a static description of system component

Software System Model Correctness using Graph Theory: A Review

The Unified Modeling Language UML is the de facto standard for object-oriented software model development The UML class diagram plays an essential role in design and specification of software systems The purpose of a class diagram is to display classes with their attributes and methods hierarchy generalization class relationships and associations general aggregation and composition between classes in one mode

Enhancing Teaching & Learning of Software Engineering in an International Environment

A fundamental artifact of any academic research isthe data used as the basis of that research effort. A group ofresearchers, from institutions in multiple territories, hasembarked on an ambitious research project that is initially aimedat enhancing the teaching of software engineering for four-yearundergraduate programs. The research project details a set ofworkshops, for which the objective is the capture of data that willbe the basis of the research effort. The first of these workshopswas held in August of 2011, and is reported on in this paper. Theworkshop comprised software engineering educators andrepresentatives from the information technology industry. Thedata collection task sought to identify a set of topics that areconsidered suitable for teaching software engineering, along withidentification of the years and depth at which these topics shouldbe taught. The use of technology in the curriculum design processis seen as an important step forward and this issue is alsodiscussed

Cloud Computing Security for Organizations using Live Signature – TPALM Printing Client Service

Cloud is taking over the computing environment in both public as well as private sector. This has increased the use of service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the development of services later deployed in the Cloud. This paper presents a Cloud Security algorithm using SOA 3.0 for secured transactions on the data, which usually governments of countries like USA International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR) requires to be utilized and distributed only within United States by security cleared personal only. In this paper, we describe a novel algorithm and corresponding cloud service as Cloud Monitoring Gateway (CMG). The current service prototype simulates the behavior of actual Cloud Security Gateway Application (CSGA) using the algorithm called as TPALM (The Privacy Authentication Latency Management). This simulation is coarse-grained, but is capable of measuring the privacy authentication on the given variables of a legit user. We also present an evaluation of this service utilization on actual data

Towards a Formal Approach to Validating and Verifying Functional Design for Complex Safety Critical Systems

The quality and reliability of safety criticalsoftware systems are highly dependent on proper systemvalidation and verification. In model-driven softwaredevelopment, semi-formal notations are often used inrequirements capture. Though semi-formal notations possessadvantages, their major disadvantage is their imprecision. Atechnique to eliminate imprecision is to transform semi-formalmodels into an analyzable representation using formalspecification techniques (FSTs). With this approach to systemvalidation and verification, safety critical systems can bedeveloped more reliably. This work documents early experienceof applying FSTs on UML class diagrams as attributeconstraints, and pre- post-conditions on procedures. Thevalidation and verification of the requirements of a system tomonitor unmanned aerial vehicles in unrestricted airspace is theorigin of this work. The challenge is the development of a systemwith incomplete specifications; multiple conflicting stakeholders’interests; existence of a prototype system; the need forstandardized compliance, where validation and verification areparamount, which necessitates forward and reverse engineeringactivities

Financial considerations in the conduct of multi-centre randomised controlled trials: evidence from a qualitative study.

National Coordinating Centre for Research Methodology; Medical Research Council, UK Department of Health; Chief Scientist OfficeNot peer reviewedPublisher PD

Book Reviews

With the observation of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, interest has risen in models of PeV-mass decaying dark matter particles to explain the observed flux. We present two dedicated experimental analyses to test this hypothesis. One analysis uses 6 years of IceCube data focusing on muon neutrino ‘track’ events from the Northern Hemisphere, while the second analysis uses 2 years of ‘cascade’ events from the full sky. Known background components and the hypothetical flux from unstable dark matter are fitted to the experimental data. Since no significant excess is observed in either analysis, lower limits on the lifetime of dark matter particles are derived: we obtain the strongest constraint to date, excluding lifetimes shorter than $10^{28}$ s at 90% CL for dark matter masses above 10 TeV

A Search for Neutrino Emission from Fast Radio Bursts with Six Years of IceCube Data

We present a search for coincidence between IceCube TeV neutrinos and fast radio bursts (FRBs). During the search period from 2010 May 31 to 2016 May 12, a total of 29 FRBs with 13 unique locations have been detected in the whole sky. An unbinned maximum likelihood method was used to search for spatial and temporal coincidence between neutrinos and FRBs in expanding time windows, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. No significant correlation was found in six years of IceCube data. Therefore, we set upper limits on neutrino fluence emitted by FRBs as a function of time window duration. We set the most stringent limit obtained to date on neutrino fluence from FRBs with an $E^{-2}$ energy spectrum assumed, which is 0.0021 GeV cm$^{-2}$ per burst for emission timescales up to \textasciitilde10$^2$ seconds from the northern hemisphere stacking search.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Improving Ethical Review of Research Involving Incentives for Health Promotion

Alex London and colleagues propose new ethical frameworks for evaluating the risks associated with research in which financial or other incentives are used to promote healthy behavior