A Knowledge-Based Agent Modeling and Design Environment

Agent-oriented software systems are becoming large and complex. This paper presents a methodology for agent-oriented software development, grounded in software engineering principles. It also presents a knowledge-based agent modeling and design environment that supports different phases of the agent-software lifecycle

Technology-based Practical Blockchain System Audit Maturity Model

Information system auditing can reveal the quality of such systems, and standard audit items are crucial elements of system and audit quality. Blockchain technology is currently being applied to various areas including the financial, manufacturing, healthcare, distribution, and public sectors, and an increasing number of systems that apply such technologies are also being developed.The current audit model is insufficient for application in the field, and the auditing of systems applying new technologies, such as blockchain, has not been given sufficient attention. Furthermore, it is difficult to evaluate the relative levels of audited systems using audit results. Existing studies have only examined the auditing of systems that apply blockchain. Although the Korea Association of Information Systems Audit has suggested a checklist for systems applying blockchain, it has yet to be adopted. To address this problem, 50 existing audit result reports and technical data were collected, from which sixteen factors of four audit quality properties consisting of blockchain system, technology compliance, software quality, and document were derived. Furthermore, an audit maturity model was presented after evaluating the priorities of the 16 derived factors. The results of the evaluation of the priorities of audit items indicated that auditors give a higher importance to technology-based than document-based audits of information systems. This study contributes to the literature by deriving field-oriented audit items including blockchain technology, thus enabling practical audits to be conducted in a short time. Further, this study enables the maturity of systems to be compared based on audit results by presenting audit maturity

A Decentralized Lightweight Blockchain Nodes Architecture Based on a Secure OpenFlow Protocol Controller Channel

The Blockchain technology raises many concerns because all transactions must be verified by every node in the Blockchain network. Because of this the spread of Blockchain technology in all sectors has been very slow. This paper introduces Blockchain nodes and the difference between nodes and then our approach light node control node based on SDN that has a more secure routing mechanism than only light nodes or networks without full nodes and light nodes. In peer to peer networks nodes connect and disconnect all the time and some of these nodes are malicious and will cost the network security and scalability. We applied a technique that uses route packet information by making a table of the IP address with OpenFlow. We calculate our approach flow measurement performance using large scale simulations. The result showed that by using an IP table we can control the nodes connections and make more scalable, secure ones without the need of full nodes working all the time. The proposed model is a distributed architecture based on Blockchain and OpenFlow protocol technology that provides a low-cost, secure, intelligent, and simple approach in all types of computer network infrastructure

Metric and Tool Support for Instant Feedback of Source Code Readability

In the software maintenance phase, comprehending the legacy source code is inevitable, which consumes most of the time of the phase. The better the code is readable, the easier it is for code readers to comprehend the system based on the source code. This paper proposes an enhanced source code readability metric to quantitatively measure the extent of code readability. In addition, we developed a tool support named Instant R. Gauge to update the code on the fly based on the readability feedback of the current code. The tool also provides the history of the readability change so that developers recognize the more readable code and gradually change their coding habit without any annoying advice. The suggested readability metric achieves 75.74% of explanatory power, and our experiment showed that readability of most of the methods authored in our tool is higher than that of the methods without our approach

Process Correlation Analysis Model for Process Improvement Identification

Software process improvement aims at improving the development process of software systems. It is initiated by process assessment identifying strengths and weaknesses and based on the findings, improvement plans are developed. In general, a process reference model (e.g., CMMI) is used throughout the process of software process improvement as the base. CMMI defines a set of process areas involved in software development and what to be carried out in process areas in terms of goals and practices. Process areas and their elements (goals and practices) are often correlated due to the iterative nature of software development process. However, in the current practice, correlations of process elements are often overlooked in the development of an improvement plan, which diminishes the efficiency of the plan. This is mainly attributed to significant efforts and the lack of required expertise. In this paper, we present a process correlation analysis model that helps identify correlations of process elements from the results of process assessment. This model is defined based on CMMI and empirical data of improvement practices. We evaluate the model using industrial data

VisionGuard: Runtime Detection of Adversarial Inputs to Perception Systems

Deep neural network (DNN) models have proven to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks. In this paper, we propose VisionGuard, a novel attack- and dataset-agnostic and computationally-light defense mechanism for adversarial inputs to DNN-based perception systems. In particular, VisionGuard relies on the observation that adversarial images are sensitive to lossy compression transformations. Specifically, to determine if an image is adversarial, VisionGuard checks if the output of the target classifier on a given input image changes significantly after feeding it a transformed version of the image under investigation. Moreover, we show that VisionGuard is computationally-light both at runtime and design-time which makes it suitable for real-time applications that may also involve large-scale image domains. To highlight this, we demonstrate the efficiency of VisionGuard on ImageNet, a task that is computationally challenging for the majority of relevant defenses. Finally, we include extensive comparative experiments on the MNIST, CIFAR10, and ImageNet datasets that show that VisionGuard outperforms existing defenses in terms of scalability and detection performance

Affordable Fabrication of Conductive Electrodes and Dielectric Films for a Paper-based Digital Microfluidic Chip

In order to fabricate a digital microfluidic (DMF) chip, which requires a patterned array of electrodes coated with a dielectric film, we explored two simple methods: Ballpoint pen printing to generate the electrodes, and wrapping of a dielectric plastic film to coat the electrodes. For precise and programmable printing of the patterned electrodes, we used a digital plotter with a ballpoint pen filled with a silver nanoparticle (AgNP) ink. Instead of using conventional material deposition methods, such as chemical vapor deposition, printing, and spin coating, for fabricating the thin dielectric layer, we used a simple method in which we prepared a thin dielectric layer using pre-made linear, low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) plastic (17-μm thick) by simple wrapping. We then sealed it tightly with thin silicone oil layers so that it could be used as a DMF chip. Such a treated dielectric layer showed good electrowetting performance for a sessile drop without contact angle hysteresis under an applied voltage of less than 170 V. By using this straightforward fabrication method, we quickly and affordably fabricated a paper-based DMF chip and demonstrated the digital electrofluidic actuation and manipulation of drops