Service-oriented simulation using web ontology

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) Simulation Packages (CSPs) have proved popular in a wider industrial setting. Reuse of Simulation Component (SC) models by collaborating organisations or divisions is restricted, however, by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organisation use of other software services. Semantic models, in the form of ontology, utilised by a web-service-based discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved using domain-grounded SC ontology to identify reusable components and subsequently loaded into a CSP, and locally or remotely executed. The work is based on a health service simulation that addresses the transportation of blood. The ontology-engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organisation simulation, uncovering domain semantics and providing a less intrusive mechanism for component reuse. The resulting web of component models and simulation execution environments present a nascent approach to simulation grids

Ecological and social determinants of birth intervals in baboons

Birth rates in primates have long been proposed to result from an interaction between ecological and social factors. We analyzed a variety of social and environmental variables to determine which ones best explain the observed variation in interbirth intervals across 14 baboon populations. Both the number of females in the group and mean annual temperature were found to be important, and a multivariate equation containing the quadratic components of both these variables accounts for almost all the observed variance in interbirth intervals. The quadratic relationship with temperature is explained in terms of the energetic costs of maintaining a stable body temperature at both low and high temperatures. The quadratic relationship with number of females results from relationships with both food availability and the costs of increasing intragroup competition as group size increases. Although females may be able to exert a certain degree of choice in their reproductive scheduling decisions, they are ultimately constrained by limits imposed upon them by the complex interactions between their ecological and demographic environment

Knowledge based systems for decision support in emergency situations

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