Computational tasks in robotics and factory automation

The design of Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems (MPCSs) — systems that negotiate with Customers and Suppliers to exchange products in return for money in order to generate profit, is discussed.\ud \ud The computational task of MPCS components are systematically specified as a starting point for the development of computational engines, as computer systems and programs, that execute the specified computation. Key issues are the overwhelming complexity and frequently changing application of MPCSs

Advanced Design Concepts for Open Distributed Systems Development

Experience with the engineering of large scale open distributed systems has shown that their design should be specified at several well-defined levels of abstraction, in which each level aims at satisfying specific user, architectural, and implementation needs. Therefore, designers should dispose of a comprehensive design methodology, which allows them to conceive a specification at a certain abstraction level and transform this specification into a conforming specification at a lower abstraction level. The collection of these transformations should abridge the total design trajectory from initial user requirements to final implementation. The authors present and discuss some advanced design concepts that provide a basis for such a design methodolog

What makes industries believe in formal methods

The introduction of formal methods in the design and development departments of an industrial company has far reaching and long lasting consequences. In fact it changes the whole environment of methods, tools and skills that determine the design culture of that company. A decision to replace current design practice by formal methods, therefore, appears a vital one and is not lightly taken. The past has shown that efforts to introduce formal methods in industry has faced a lot of controversy and opposition at various hierarchical levels in companies, resulting in a marginal spread of such methods. This paper revisits the requirements for formal description techniques and identifies some critical success and inhibiting factors associated with the introduction of formal methods in the industrial practice. One of the inhibiting factors is the often encountered lack of appropriateness of the formal model to express and manipulate the design concerns that determine the world of the engineer. This factor motivated our research in the area of architectural and implementation design concepts. The last two sections of this paper report on some results of this research

Advances in architectural concepts to support distributed systems design

This paper presents and discusses some architectural concepts for distributed systems design. These concepts are derived from an analysis of limitations of some currently available standard design languages. We conclude that language design should be based upon the careful consideration of architectural concepts. This paper aims at supporting designers by presenting a methodological design framework in which they can reason about the design and implementation of distributed systems. The paper is also meant for language developers and formalists by presenting a collection of architectural concepts which deserve consideration for formal support

A design model for Open Distributed Processing systems

This paper proposes design concepts that allow the conception, understanding and development of complex technical structures for open distributed systems. The proposed concepts are related to, and partially motivated by, the present work on Open Distributed Processing (ODP). As opposed to the current ODP approach, the concepts are aimed at supporting a design trajectory with several, related abstraction levels. Simple examples are used to illustrate the proposed concepts

Interface, a dispersed architecture

Past and current specification techniques use timing diagrams and written text to describe the phenomenology of an interface. This paper treats an interface as the architecture of a number of processes, which are dispersed over the related system parts and the message path. This approach yields a precise definition of an interface. With this definition as starting point, the inherent structure of an interface is developed. A horizontal and vertical partitioning strategy, based on one functional entity per partition and described by a state description, is used to specify the structure. This method allows unambiguous specification, interpretation, and implementation, and allows a much easier judgement of the quality of an interface. The method has been applied to a number of widely used interfaces

Formal description techniques for distributed computing systems:the challenges for the 1990's

Initially FDTs where developed within IS0 and CCITT for specification, at a high-level of abstraction, of distributed systems. Research is now being performed on the use of FDTs to support the complete implementation trajectory. In this paper we discuss a number of such research activities that are conducted within the framework of the Lotosphere project(*). The paper discusses aspects of design methodology, correctness preserving transformation, the reflection of design criteria, the role of pre-defined specification and implementation constructs, and formal approaches to conformance testing. Furthermore some insight is given in the development of a comprehensive toolset that supports these aspects of design methodology. The paper concludes with some experience obtained from the application of these methods and tools to some realistic pilot implementations: an ISDN and MHS application and a Transaction Processing application

Processes, Roles and Their Interactions

Taking an interaction network oriented perspective in informatics raises the challenge to describe deterministic finite systems which take part in networks of nondeterministic interactions. The traditional approach to describe processes as stepwise executable activities which are not based on the ordinarily nondeterministic interaction shows strong centralization tendencies. As suggested in this article, viewing processes and their interactions as complementary can circumvent these centralization tendencies. The description of both, processes and their interactions is based on the same building blocks, namely finite input output automata (or transducers). Processes are viewed as finite systems that take part in multiple, ordinarily nondeterministic interactions. The interactions between processes are described as protocols. The effects of communication between processes as well as the necessary coordination of different interactions within a processes are both based on the restriction of the transition relation of product automata. The channel based outer coupling represents the causal relation between the output and the input of different systems. The coordination condition based inner coupling represents the causal relation between the input and output of a single system. All steps are illustrated with the example of a network of resource administration processes which is supposed to provide requesting user processes exclusive access to a single resource.Comment: In Proceedings IWIGP 2012, arXiv:1202.422

Use of proton pump inhibitors and histamine-2 receptor antagonists and risk of gastric cancer in two population-based studies

Acknowledgements Access to UK Biobank data was approved and facilitated by UK Biobank (application number: 34374). Access to Primary Care Clinical Informatics Unit (PCCIU) data was approved and facilitated by the PCCIU Research team, University of Aberdeen. Access to the UK Biobank was funded by a Cancer Research UK Population Research Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to ÚCMcM. Funding: Access to the UK Biobank was funded by a Cancer Research UK Population Research Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to ÚCMcM. Liu P was supported by a joint scholarship from Queen's University Belfast and the Chinese Scholarship Council (201708060458). Data availability: The UK Biobank data (https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/) and PCCIU data (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/iahs/research/primary-care/pcciur/) are available, following the access procedures, for researchers to access to conduct health related research in the public interest.Peer reviewedPostprin