Towards a General Framework for Formal Reasoning about Java Bytecode Transformation

Program transformation has gained a wide interest since it is used for several purposes: altering semantics of a program, adding features to a program or performing optimizations. In this paper we focus on program transformations at the bytecode level. Because these transformations may introduce errors, our goal is to provide a formal way to verify the update and establish its correctness. The formal framework presented includes a definition of a formal semantics of updates which is the base of a static verification and a scheme based on Hoare triples and weakest precondition calculus to reason about behavioral aspects in bytecode transformationComment: In Proceedings SCSS 2012, arXiv:1307.802

A case study in combining formal verification and model-driven engineering

International audienceFormal methods are increasingly used in software engineering. They offer a formal frame that guarentees the correctness of developments. However, they use complex notations that might be difficult to understand for unaccustomed users. It thus becomes interesting to formally specify the core components of a language, implement a provably correct development, and manipulate its components in a graphical/ textual editor. This paper constitutes a first step towards using Model Driven Engineering (MDE) technology in an interactive proof development. It presents a transformation process from functional data structures, commonly used in proof assistants, to Ecore Models. The transformation is based on an MDE methodology. The resulting meta-models are used to generate graphical or textual editors. We will take an example to illustrate our approach: a simple domain specific language. This guiding example is a Java-like language enriched with assertions

Organizational Obstacles of Employee Innovation: A case study on Olympic complex Mohamed Boudiaf

أصبح لزاما على المؤسسات الرياضية أن تواكب التطور الديناميكي الذي تواجهه في بيئتها الخارجية المحلية والعالمية، ولا يتسنى لها ذلك إلا من خلال توظيف المنهج الإبداعي القائم على الابتكار والتجديد في تسير كل شؤونها، ونهدف من خلال دراستنا هذه  إلى تحديد المعوقات التنظيمية التي تحول بين العاملين في المركب الاولمبي وبين الإبداع في أداء مهامهم وواجباتهم الوظيفية،  ومن خلال الاطلاع عللى مختلف الأدبيات خلصنا إلى أن المعوقات التنظيمية متمحورة حول عناصر وظيفة التوجيه من قيادة ( المركزية في اتخاذ القرار، الأنظمة وإجراءات العمل، الإمكانات المتوفرة)، الاتصال(نظام الاتصالات، ضغوط العمل، العلاقات  بين الموظفين)  والتحفيز ( نظام الحوافز المتبع)، حيث توصلنا بعد تحليل النتائج إلى وجود توليفة من المعوقات خاصة بكل هذه العناصر ولكن بنسب متفاوتة يعود أغلبها إلى عنصر القيادة.    Innovation is considered one of the requirements for every organization, but fulfilling such requirement may not be available at all conditions due to the lack of suitable environment for the development and innovation process. Thus, the idea of this study emerged and represented in studying the organizational obstacles of employee innovation at the Olympic complex Mohamed boudiaf, through exploring whether or not there are obstacles for the leadership, benefits, work rules and procedures, central communication and information, empowerment, available financial and human capabilities, work stress, absence of team work, relations within the job location, existence of relations between such obstacles and the personal characteristics of employee

Evidential-Link-based Approach for Re-ranking XML Retrieval Results

In this paper, we propose a new evidential link-based approach for re-ranking XML retrieval results. The approach, based on Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence, combines, for each retrieved XML element, content relevance evidence, and computed link evidence (score and rank). The use of the Dempster–Shafer theory is motivated by the need to improve retrieval accuracy by incorporating the uncertain nature of both bodies of evidence (content and link relevance). The link score is computed according to a new link analysis algorithm based on weighted links, where relevance is propagated through the two types of links, i.e., hierarchical and navigational. The propagation, i.e. the amount of relevance score received by each retrieved XML element, depends on link weight which is defined according to two parameters: link type and link length. To evaluate our proposal we carried out a set of experiments based on INEX data collectio

´Emergence de Comportements Adaptatifs et ´Evolutifs de Robots Modulaires

Modular robots are robotic systems composed of several interconnected modules; each module is self-contained with its sensing, actuating, computing, and communication means; these simple modules are connected to form more complex robots. Self reconfiguration is a property in modular robots that enable them to change their morphology autonomously to suit a specific task. Self-reconfiguration provides modular robots with more versatility and flexibility as opposite to single-purpose robots, and they represent a significant step towards building the universal robot. The potentials of modular robots are enormous, and it can be the perfect candidate for applications where the task is not entirely known in advance and rough and changing environments like rescue and space missions. The design of a modular robotic system is a very challenging task, and several design elements have to be considered. Modular robotics systems can be classified into different categories, chain-type, lattice-type, hybrid, and mobile; each of these types has its advantages and drawbacks and can dictate later the type of functions the robot can accomplish. Our proposed modular robot falls into the hybrid category; furthermore, it also demonstrates self-mobile capabilities. The main design goal behind our module is creating a simpler version of the previous hybrid modular robots; nonetheless, it must be fully capable of replicating all their reconfiguration strategies. In this thesis, we have used quantum genetic algorithms (QGAs) combined with artificial neural networks to evolve suitable controllers for our modular robot. Quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms represent a significant advancement over conventional evolutionary algorithms; it combines the probabilistic search methods of evolutionary algorithms with the concepts of quantum computing like superposition, measurement, and interference. We have experimented with several QGAs variants, and real-observation QGA achieved the best results in solving numerical optimization problems. The combination of our module design and our neural controllers evolved using QGAs was able to produce a modular robot capable of adaptive locomotion and self-reconfiguration

Approche quantique pour l'appariement de formes

L'appariement de formes est un sujet important dans la vision par ordinateur, il étudie la mesure de similarité entre les formes, il représente un composant essentiel dans la recherche de formes, la reconnaissance, la classification et le recalage. Dans ce travail, nous avons essayé d’aborder l’appariement de formes comme un problème d'optimisation, à l'aide des algorithmes évolutionnaires quantiques qui ont démontré le pouvoir d'être une amélioration majeure par rapport aux algorithmes évolutionnaires classiques. Nous proposons de combiner le descripteur shape context avec les algorithmes génétiques quantiques afin de définir une nouvelle approche d’appariement et de recherche de formes. L’appariement de formes avec shape context est basé sur l'idée de trouver la meilleure correspondance entre deux ensembles de points échantillonnés à partir des deux formes. Notre approche proposée utilise les algorithmes génétiques quantiques pour trouver la meilleure configuration de points afin d'obtenir le meilleur appariement possible entre les deux formes. Notre algorithme proposé (Quantum Shape Context) est également utilisé pour résoudre une des faiblesses de shape context, sa faible invariance à la rotation et le retournement, où nous utilisons les algorithmes génétiques quantiques pour estimer la meilleure orientation de la forme cible qui permet d’obtenir le meilleur appariement pour les formes avec des rotations et retournements. Les résultats expérimentaux ont montré la supériorité de notre algorithme proposé dans les tâches d’appariement et de recherche de formes par rapport au shape context et d'autres méthodes d'appariement de formes contre divers types de tests

Prise en compte des liens pour améliorer la recherche d'information structurée

Dans cet article nous présentons deux adaptations de l’algorithme PageRank aux collections de documents XML et les résultats d’expérimentation obtenus pour la collection Wikipedia utilisée dans INEX 2007. Ces adaptations que nous appelons "DOCRANK" et "HITS_docrank" permettent un reclassement des résultats renvoyés par l’exécution de base (base run) pour en améliorer la qualité. Nos expérimentations sont effectuées sur les résultats renvoyés par les trois systèmes les mieux classés pour la tâche "Focused" d’INEX 2007. Les évaluations que nous avons menés ont montrés des améliorations de la qualité des résultats (voir très significatives pour certaines "topics", ex : 491, 521, etc.). La meilleure amélioration obtenue pour les résultats renvoyés par le système de l’université DALIAN (pour l’ensemble des 107 topics d’INEX 2007) était de l’ordre de 3.78

Another Implementation Technique for Functional Programming Languages.

International audienc

A distance based approach for link analysis in xml information retrieval

In the present paper, we consider the problematic of efficiently generating ranked results in the XML IR context, by incorporating the link source of evidence. Despite of their popularity in the Web, only few research have exploited links to handle XML IR tasks. In contrast, we propose a new query-dependent link analysis approach based on a spreading-activation process that propagates relevance score through the two types of XML links, hierarchical and navigational, to compute a link score for each retrieved XML element. This propagation process depends on two features: the distance between elements and the type of the links separating these elements. The assigned link score is then combined with the content-based score to compute a new score used to re-rank the initial returned list of XML elements.We conducted a series of experiments based on INEX 2007 and 2009 test collections. Evaluation showed significant improvement compared to baseline runs and previous obtained results. These evaluation tests were followed by cross-validation test, which confirmed the robustness of our approac