24822225
Achieving a Better Middleware Design through Formal Modeling and Analysis
13531819
A visual approach to XML document design and transformation
This paper presents a visual approach to the representation and validation of multimedia document structures specified in XML and transformation of one structure to another. The underlying theory of our approach is a context-sensitive graph grammar formalism. The paper demonstrates the conciseness and expressiveness of the graph grammar formalism. An example XML structure is provided and its graph grammar representation, validation and transformation to a multimedia representation are presented.
14596334
A formal approach to designing secure software architectures
Software architecture plays a central role in developing software systems that provide basic functionality and satisfy critical properties such as reliability and security. However, little has been done to formally model software architectures and to systematically enforce required properties. We aim to propose a formal approach to designing secure software architectures. We use the software architecture model (SAM), a general software architecture model combining Petri nets and temporal logic, as the underlying formalism. Architecture design consists of the functionality part and the security part. Guidelines are proposed to design functionality of software architectures at both element level and composition level. Software security is enforced by stepwise refinement.
26263616
Developing a Formal Design Analysis Framework
10829689
A Framework for the Modeling and Prototyping of Distributed Information Systems
The major issues in designing Distributed Information Systems (DIS) include localization of control and data, inherent concurrency, intensive interactions among computation agents, history sensitivity, dynamic configuration and continuous system change and evolution. We propose a framework, called the G-Net model, for the specification, modeling and prototyping of DIS. The G-Net model not only provides a flexible notation to represent the executable specification of DIS through G-Net instantiation, but also offers a novel style of decentralized concurrent computation, allowing flexible inter-agent communication and interaction. A prototype of the G-Net framework has been implemented on workstations connected by a local network.
2725088
Architecture-driven modeling of real-time concurrent systems with applications in FMS
Abstract Petri nets have become increasingly popular for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) modeling and control because they accurately capture the concurrent, non-deterministic and time-dependent properties of the systems. While offering many advantages, conventional Petri net models suffer from some serious problems that limit their usability as design models for complex FMS. Central to these problems is the lack of an engineering support for incremental design, refinement, and analysis of large-scale systems. In this paper, we present an architecture-driven approach for the modeling and design of FMS that effectively addresses the problems while leveraging the strengths of Petri nets. The approach has two major aspects: The first is a Net-based and Object-based Architectural Model (NOAM) that introduces a well-founded architectural framework into the Petri nets notation and lays a foundation to support formal design. The second is a modeling method based on NOAM that uses architecture decomposition and refinement as the basis to reduce design complexity, to provide smooth transition from informal to formal design, and to support incremental refinement and analysis. A case study using NOAM for FMS modeling is provided to show the applicability of our approach.
3145299
Resettable Zero Knowledge in the Bare Public-Key Model under Standard Assumption
In this paper we resolve an open problem regarding resettable zero knowledge in the bare public-key (BPK for short) model: Does there exist constant round resettable zero knowledge argument with concurrent soundness for $\mathcal{NP}$ in BPK model without assuming \emph{sub-exponential hardness}? We give a positive answer to this question by presenting such a protocol for any language in $\mathcal{NP}$ in the bare public-key model assuming only collision-resistant hash functions against \emph{polynomial-time} adversaries.
45463269
Building Global Ecosystem for Collaborative Computing Research and Education
A knock-down tank for containing a liquid medium having a bottom panel, multiple side panels and a top panel secured together by fasteners inside the tank and insulated against heat transfer, the tank being made liquid tight by a plastic liner, and the top panel supporting a depending dip tube assembly whose tubes provide the only access to the liquid contained within the liner.
207130140
Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Issue on Embedded Software Engineering
Embedded systems, typically components of larger electro-mechanical systems with the purpose of controlling or helping such systems to achieve their overall goals, are playing an increasingly critical role in modern society and economy. According to David Tennenhouse, Chief Scientist of Intel and former director of DARPA ISO, 98% of all current computer applications are embedded systems. The market for embedded computer applications has shown explosive growth with tremendous applications in, for example, telecommunications, health-care, manufacturing, remote monitoring, and transportation, to name a few. An important trend is that embedded systems are becoming increasingly complex, software-intensive and distributed. For instance, it was projected that software written for cellular phones will reach from 2 to 5 million lines of code in the next few years. While this underscores the growing importance of software it also raises some concerns since methods of developing embedded software are lagging far behind hardware advances. The unique characteristics of embedded systems, such as complex control logic, severe limitations on resources (e.g. memory and power consumption), hard real-time constraints, and stringent performance and dependability requirements, are stressing the limits of mainstream architectures, languages, tools, and techniques. Much of the embedded software development today depends on intensive manual programming and costly yet error-prone testing methods for quality assurance. Further, current embedded software development techniques use monolithic designs which are not scalable, configurable, or adaptable. These problems have resulted in long product cycles, cost overruns, and poor system quality. These problems, if not addressed, will escalate, and significantly hinder the development and deployment of complex embedded systems. This special issue on embedded software engineering is aimed at stimulating research interests in this important emerging area, which merges software engineering methodologies and techniques with embedded system development techniques. After careful reviews, five papers were selected for the special issue. Collectively,
42696276
Concurrently Non-malleable Black-Box Zero Knowledge in the Bare Public-Key Model
In this paper we study the possibility of reducing the setup assumptions under which concurrent non-malleable zero knowledge protocol can be realized. A natural model choice is the bare public-key (BPK) model of [6], a model with very minimal setup assumptions. Our main contribution is to show in this model the following about constant-round concurrent non-malleable black-box zero-knowledge arguments. 
They can be constructed from any one-way function for any language in $\mathcal{NP}$. Here, our construction takes 5 rounds, and we can reduce it to a 4-round (round-optimal) argument under existence of one-way permutations. 
Under number-theoretic assumptions, they admit a time-efficient instantiation for some specific $\mathcal{NP}$ languages (e.g., all languages having efficient Σ protocols, for which we can implement our construction using only $\mathcal{O}(1)$ modular exponentiations). 
 
 
 
Compared to the non-black-box construction in a concurrent work of [OPV, ICALP 2008] in this model, our protocol (even the construction from one-way function) is significantly more time- and round-efficient and can be based on more general assumptions.
14201767
Stereo Correspondence with Occlusion Handling in a Symmetric Patch-Based Graph-Cuts Model
A novel patch-based correspondence model is presented in this paper. Many segment-based correspondence approaches have been proposed in recent years. Untextured pixels and boundaries of discontinuities are imposed with hard constraints by the discontinuity assumption that large disparity variation only happens at the boundaries of segments in the above approaches. Significant improvements on performance of untextured and discontinuity area have been reported. But, the performance near occlusion is not satisfactory because a segmented region in one image may be only partially visible in the other one. To solve this problem, we utilize the observation that the shared edge of a visible area and an occluded area corresponds to the discontinuity in the other image. So, the proposed model conducts color segmentation on both images first and then a segment in one image is further cut into smaller patches corresponding to the boundaries of segments in the other when it is assigned with a disparity. Different visibility of patches in one segment is allowed. The uniqueness constraint in a segment level is used to compute the occlusions. An energy minimization framework using graph-cuts is proposed to find a global optimal configuration including both disparities and occlusions. Besides, some measurements are taken to make our segment-based algorithm suffer less from violation of the discontinuity assumption. Experimental results have shown superior performance of the proposed approach, especially on occlusions, untextured areas, and near discontinuities