10840593
The Web: Interactive and Multimedia Education
The World Wide Web is becoming increasingly important in the provision of education, as recognised by several high profile UK government reports. Improved tools for developing Web-based teaching and learning materials, together with focused training by individuals, institutions and national programmes, have led to a greater confidence in network technologies by educators at many levels. Higher education institutions have been leading players in the UK in the development of innovative ideas for exploiting the educational potential of the Web. This paper presents examples of several techniques in evidence in UK higher education which demonstrate some of the key innovations in teaching and learning, focusing on the themes of multimedia and interactivity. Some of the pedagogic and technology issues associated with these techniques are identified, and the way in which integration into the curriculum can be achieved is explored. This integration takes many aspects of the learning process into account, from the delivery of information and references, through demonstration, example and practice, to learning by reflection and assessment. In particular, the way in which the Web encourages the trend away from directed teaching and towards self-paced and distance learning is investigated. The Web is shown as supporting the learning process in many more ways than its traditional information delivery role. Three main areas explored are: (1) Virtual environments, where real-life scenarios are reconstructed to bridge the gap between theory and practice; (2) interactive simulations, which allow the investigation of changing experimental conditions without the cost and effort of laboratory equipment; and (3) assessment, which can provide valuable feedback to teachers and learners alike, exploiting both interactive and multimedia elements to give added value to online educational materials.
11583473
Architectural Mismatch: Why Reuse Is So Hard
Why isn't there more progress toward building systems from existing parts? One answer is that the assumptions of the parts about their intended environment are implicit and either don't match the actual environment or conflict with those of other parts. The authors explore these problems in the context of their own experience with a compositional approach. >
1741470
Architectural Mismatch or Why it's hard to build systems out of existing parts
Many would argue that future breakthroughs in software productivity will depend on our ability to combine existing pieces of software to produce new applications. An important step towards this goal is the development of new techniques to detect and cope with mismatches in the assembled parts. Some problems of composition are due to low-level issues of interoperability, such as mismatches in programming languages or database schemas. However, in this paper we highlight a different, and in many ways more pervasive, class of problem: architectural mismatch. Specifically, we use our experience in building a family of software design environments from existing parts to illustrate a variety of types of mismatch that center around the assumptions a reusable part makes about the structure of the application in which is to appear. Based on this experience we show how an architectural view of the mismatch problem exposes some fundamental, thorny problems for software composition and suggests possible research avenues needed to solve them.
326385
A formal basis for architectural connection
As software systems become more complex, the overall system structure—or software architecture—becomes a central design problem. An important step toward an engineering discipline of software is a formal basis for describing and analyzing these designs. In the article we present a formal approach to one aspect of architectural design: the interactions among components. The key idea is to define architectural connectors as explicit semantic entities. These are specified as a collection of protocols that characterize each of the participant roles in an interaction and how these roles interact. We illustrate how this scheme can be used to define a variety of common architectural connectors. We further provide a formal semantics and show how this leads to a system in which architectural compatibility can be checked in a way analogous to type-checking in programming languages.
9208543
Formalizing Architectural Connection
As software systems become more complex the overall system structure { or software architecture { becomes a central design problem. An important step towards an engineering discipline of software is a formal basis for describing and analyzing these designs. In this paper we present a theory for one aspect of architectural description: the interactions between components. The key idea is to de ne architectural connectors as explicit semantic entities. These are specied as a collection of protocols that characterize each of the participant roles in an interaction and how these roles interact. We illustrate how this scheme can be used to de ne a variety of common architectural connectors. We provide a formal semantics and show how this leads to a sound deductive system in which architectural compatibility can be checked in a way analogous to type checking in programming languages.
618088
Specifying and Analyzing Dynamic Software Architectures
A critical issue for complex component-based systems design is the modeling and analysis of architecture. One of the complicating factors in developing architectural models is accounting for systems whose architecture changes dynamically (during run time). This is because dynamic changes to architectural structure may interact in subtle ways with on-going computations of the system. In this paper we argue that it is possible and valuable to provide a modeling approach that accounts for the interactions between architectural reconfiguration and non-reconfiguration system functionality, while maintaining a separation of concerns between these two aspects of a system. The key to the approach is to use a uniform notation and semantic base for both reconfiguration and steady-state behavior, while at the same time providing syntactic separation between the two. As we will show, this permits us to view the architecture in terms of a set of possible architectural snapshots, each with its own steady-state behavior. Transitions between these snapshots are accounted for by special reconfiguration-triggering events.
19591181
RAVE: Real-Time Services for the Web
Abstract RAVE provides Web clients with real-time data services. Thus, RAVE supports live and stored video and audio as well as less typical real-time services such as MIDI and information services (e.g., news or stock market feeds). The system is extensible so that new real-time services can easily be added. RAVE has a flexible distribution architecture: it supports unicast and multicast, as well as both real-time data sources and sinks. RAVE integrates well into the Web so that many multimedia applications may be written using simple HTML extensions. We describe the RAVE architecture, the Web-client facilities that are required to support it, and three applications we have built using RAVE: a video library, a video mail system, and a video-conferencing tool.
44457281
An improved algorithm for relational distance graph matching
One of the problems in computer vision is to give a computer a representation of a scene and recognize the objects in the scene and their spatial relationships. This involves low-level vision (image processing), mid-level vision (feature extraction and measurement) and high-level vision (interpretation). One important part of high-level vision is relational matching, the process of matching two relational descriptions of objects, often for the purpose of object identification. This paper presents an improvement of the original method by Shapiro and Haralick for solving the relational distance graph matching problem for unlabeled graphs on a parallel computer.
11904917
Neuro-fuzzy closed-loop control of depth of anaesthesia
The utility of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) is under investigation as a feedback signal for the automatic closed-loop control of general anaesthesia using neural networks and fuzzy logic. The AEP is a signal derived from the electroencephalogram (EEG) in response to auditory stimulation, which may be useful as an index of the 'depth' of anaesthesia. A simple back-propagation neural network can learn the AEP and provides a satisfactory input to a fuzzy logic infusion controller for the administration of anaesthetic drugs, but the problem remains that of reliable signal acquisition.
33532247
Running an NSF REU program: observations, comments and suggestions
The Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation (NSF), offered a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program during the summer of 1991. This paper discusses the administration, structure, organization, and research efforts associated with this program.