Dacar Cas/Somali Red Aloe: A New Species of Aloe (Asphodelaceae) From Somaliland

A new species of Aloe (Asphodelaceae) is described from Somaliland. It differs from other species in forming large clumps and in having sap that is initially yellow but quickly turns bright red and then dark red or reddish-brown, paniculate red-flowered inflorescences and uniformly coloured leaves with red teeth. Its recognition raises the number of species known from the combined area of Somaliland and Somalia s.s. from 31 to 36. A map portraying species density of Aloe by country, as that genus is now interpreted, shows that Aloe has its highest density on islands in the Indian Ocean but that, within Africa, the greatest density is in countries along the eastern highlands. The data also reinforce the importance of field botanists in determining a country’s known plant diversity

Automated Analysis in Feature Modelling and Product Configuration

The automated analysis of feature models is one of the thriving topics of research in the software product line and variability management communities that has attracted more attention in the last years. A recent literature review reported that more than 30 analysis operations have been identi ed and di erent analysis mechanisms have been proposed. Product con guration is a well established research eld with more than 30 years of successful applications in di erent industrial domains. Our hypothesis, that is not really new, is that these two independent areas of research have interesting synergies that have not been fully explored. To try to explore the potential synergies systematically, in this paper we provide a rapid review to bring together these previously disparate streams of work. We de ne a set of research questions and give a preliminary answer to some of them. We conclude that there are many research opportunities in the synergy of these independent areas.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009- 07366Junta de Andalucía TIC-590

Constraint solving in uncertain and dynamic environments - a survey

International audienceThis article follows a tutorial, given by the authors on dynamic constraint solving at CP 2003 (Ninth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming) in Kinsale, Ireland. It aims at offering an overview of the main approaches and techniques that have been proposed in the domain of constraint satisfaction to deal with uncertain and dynamic environments

Interactive Configuration based on Incremental Constraint Satisfaction

In this paper, we focus on techniques for incremental constraint-based configuration with discrete and continuous variables. We show how to formalize constraint knowledge using compatibility and activity constraints (Mittal 1990) and how this knowledge is used for reasoning within an intelligent CAD system. Most technical (as opposed to spatial) constraint configuration systems nowadays use algorithms for solving discrete problems (Haselboeck 1994) We claim that configuration is both discrete and continuous in nature and that new methods for handling both constraints in a unified way must be integrated in configuration systems. Visualization of the globally consistent configuration problem space allows a systematic and exhaustive exploration of the space in an interactive fashion (Haroud 1995)

On Automating the Network Management in Industrial Automation Systems

The installation and administration of large heterogeneous IT infrastructures, for enterprises as well industrial automation systems, are becoming more and more complex and time consuming [1][2]. The growing number of interconnections between networks, the development of new intelligent IT devices, and increasingly sophisticated computer hardwar