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This paper describes a new e-paper system, which is suitable for office applications. As a replacement of paper based work, it is necessary to have the same readability as paper, capability of handwriting, and convenience of IT equipment. In order to satisfy these requirements, there are three main features of this system. One is a high resolution electrophoretic display (EPD) which provides printed paper image quality. Another is binary display driving which provides high speed image writing on a high resolution display. The last is an original EPD control scheme which gives quick page turning or handwriting performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to realize Web service technology for dynamic integration of distributed components have been started. There is also a proposal for a language that describes the integration flow in a platform-independent form. It is expected that Web service integration will be applied not only to the Internet, but also to various environments such as pervasive networks composed of mobile devices with wireless connections. In the latter case, it is necessary to deal with resource saving problems such as those that arise in a relatively low speed and unstable wireless channel. This study applies the mobile agent technique to the above problem and proposes a mobile agent system for Web service integration. In the proposed system, the physical actions of the mobile agents, that is, migration and cloning, are separated from the integration logic, and are represented as rules to be added to the integration flow description. By this separation, the physical behavior can be added or modified according to environmental conditions without modifying the integration flow. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 36(11): 34–48, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.20334 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including the article "An industrial experience in assessing the capability of non-software processes using ISO/IEC 15 504," by Antonio Coletta.

High-performance computing (HPC) offers the computing power to continuously support the world's most important discoveries in various scientific and business domains such as chemistry, physics, biology, material science, drug discovery, and financial investment risk analysis. Researchers from across the HPC community have been developing software systems, tools, libraries, frameworks, application packages, and methods that can fully exploit these extremely powerful computing resources. The eleventh paper titled "A large scale parallel fluid-structure interaction computing platform for simulating structural responses to a detonation shock" by Yang et al.[10] presents a partitioned fluid-structure interaction computing platform designed for parallel simulating structural responses to a detonation shock. [Extracted from the article]

Introduction: Liver cancer presents a growing global health concern, necessitating advanced approaches for intervention. This review investigates the use and effectiveness of software navigation in interventional radiology for liver tumour procedures. Methods: In accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta‐Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA‐ScR) guidelines, a scoping review was conducted of the literature published between 2013 and 2023 sourcing articles through MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL and Embase. Eligible studies focused on liver cancer, utilised cone‐beam computed tomography (CBCT), and employed software for intervention. Twenty‐one articles were deemed eligible for data extraction and analysis. Results: Categorised by type, software applications yielded diverse benefits. Feeder detection software significantly enhanced vessel identification, reducing non‐target embolisation by up to 43%. Motion correction software demonstrated a 20% enhancement in image quality, effectively mitigating breathing‐induced motion artefacts. Liver perfusion software facilitated efficient tumour targeting while simultaneously reducing the occurrence of side effects. Needle guide software enabled precise radiofrequency ablation needle placement. Additionally, these software applications provided detailed anatomical simulations. Overall, software integration resulted in shorter procedures, reduced radiation exposure and decreased contrast media usage. Conclusion: This scoping review highlights the innovative yet relatively underexplored role of software navigation for liver tumour procedures. The integration of software applications not only enhances procedural efficiency but also bolsters operator confidence, and contributes to improved patient outcomes. Despite the current lack of uniformity and standardisation, these software‐driven advancements hold significant promise for transforming liver tumour interventions. To realise these benefits, further research is needed to explore the clinical impact and optimal utilisation of software navigation tools in interventional radiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abtract: In this paper, a new cybernetic control technology that can be used in complex software systems will be introduced. In this approach, the software systems are governed by cybernetic control objects and the class libraries defining the types of these cybernetic control objects are produced by special meta‐programming platforms. In this approach, the requirements of the software to be developed are received from the programmer by meta‐programming systems before coding. Actually, the cybernetic control objects have standard design and properties and the programmers only determine the quantities and the locations of these properties before library production process. Then, the meta‐programming platforms build project‐specific class libraries based on previously determined code templates. By this way, the cybernetic control objects are constructed with optimal memory and they can receive feedback about ongoing operations on the process. With the help of the feedback coming from the process, the control objects steer the process in the line of the programmer directives. By this way, the control of the programmer on the software increases significantly. In addition, in this paper, a typical application of this approach to the multithread programming will be introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the article "A Generic Web Service for ad-hoc Statistical Spatio-Temporal Aggregation," that was published in a previous issue of the journal is presented.

Different quality grades of tea tend to have a high degree of similarity in appearance. Traditional image‐based identification methods have limited effects, while complex deep learning architectures require much data and long‐term training. In this paper, two tea quality identification methods based on deep convolutional neural networks and transfer learning are proposed. Different types and quality of tea images are collected by a self‐designed computer vision system to form a data set, which is small‐scale and of high inter‐ and intraclass similarity. The first method uses three simplified convolutional neural network (CNN) models with different image input sizes to identify the quality of tea. The second method performs transfer learning to identify the tea quality by fine‐tuning the mature AlexNet and ResNet50 architecture. Classification performance and model complexity are measured and compared. The related application software is also developed. The results show that the performance of the CNN models and the transfer learning models are close, and both can achieve high identification accuracy. However, the complexity of the CNN models is two to three orders of magnitude lower than that of the transfer learning models. The study shows that deep CNNs and transfer learning have great potential to be rapid and effective methods for automated tea quality identification tasks with high inter‐ and intrasimilarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various research papers within the issue on topics including aspects of distributed applications, collaborative search companion system and concept for the development of future context-aware applications.

Context: GitHub is the world's most prominent host of source code, with more than 327M repositories. However, most of these repositories are not labelled or inadequately, making it harder for users to find relevant projects. Various proposals for software application domain classification over the past years have been proposed. However, these several of those approaches suffer from multiple issues, called antipatterns of software classification, that reduce their usability. Objective: In this paper, we propose a new taxonomy in the GitHub ecosystem, called GitRanking, starting from a well‐structured data set, composed of curated repositories annotated with topics. The main objective is to create a baseline methodology for software classification that is expandable, hierarchical, grounded in a knowledge base, and free of antipatterns. Method: We collected 121K topics from GitHub and used GitRanking to create a taxonomy of 301 ranked application domains. GitRanking (1) uses active sampling to ensure a minimal number of annotations to create the ranking; and (2) links each topic to Wikidata, reducing ambiguities and improving the reusability of the taxonomy. Furthermore, we adopt the conceived taxonomy in a classification task by considering a state‐of‐the‐art classifier. Results: Our results show that GitRanking can effectively rank terms in a hierarchy according to how general or specific their meaning is. Furthermore, we show that GitRanking is a dynamically extensible method: it can currently accept further terms to be ranked, and with a minimum number of annotations (≈15$$ \approx 15 $$). Concerning the classification task, we show that the model achieves an F1‐score of 34%, with a precision of 54%. Conclusion: This paper is the first collective attempt at building a ground‐up taxonomy of software domains. Our vision is that our taxonomy, and its extensibility, can be used to better and more precisely label software projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we assess whether website rating systems are useful for selecting educational apps for preschool age children. We selected the 10 highest scoring and 10 lowest scoring apps for 2–4‐year‐olds from two widely used websites (Good App Guide; Common Sense Media). Apps rated highly by the two websites had a higher educational potential as assessed by a validated questionnaire for evaluating the educational potential of apps and were more likely to include a learning goal and feedback compared to low scoring apps. However, high scoring apps scored on average just 9/20 for indicators of educational potential, and both high and low scoring apps had poor language quality as determined by psycholinguistic and construction type analyses. We argue that website rating systems should also include quality of feedback, adjustable content, social interactions, storyline and a more fine‐grained analysis of language in their assessments. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Appropriately designed apps for preschool age children have the potential to teach early school readiness skills.Selecting high quality educational apps for preschool age children is challenging.The children's app marketplace is currently unregulated.What this paper adds We assess whether two leading app rating websites are useful for selecting educational apps for preschool age children.Children's apps rated highly by two app website rating systems had a higher educational potential than low rated apps as measured by a research informed app evaluation tool.In‐depth analysis of the language in apps shows that highly rated children's apps on app rating websites may not enrich a child's early language environment.Implications for practice and/or policy Children's app rating website assessments should include potential for feedback, language, adjustable content, storyline and social interactions.Policy should be implemented for app ratings in the app stores or on website app rating systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Fish 3D Locomotion app (F3LA), a Python‐based, Graphical User Interface (GUI)‐equipped tool designed to automate behavioral endpoint extraction in zebrafish locomotion assays. Building on our previous work, which utilized a specialized aquatic tank with a mirror and a single camera for fish movement tracking in three dimensions, F3LA significantly enhances data processing efficiency. Its accuracy was tested by reanalyzing and comprehensively comparing the calculated data with the previously published data from prior publications. From the comparison results, 90% of endpoints showed a similar statistical difference result. These minor differences were due to the different starting points for the dataset and updated calculation formulas that are implemented in F3LA. In addition, shoaling area or shoaling volume calculations are also included in F3LA as a new feature that can serve as sensitive indicators of social cohesion, group dynamics, or stress responses, offering insights into neuropsychological conditions or the effects of pharmacological interventions. Furthermore, F3LA offers a marked improvement over manual operations, being at least five times faster, while maintaining consistent accuracy as it reduces human‐induced errors, ensuring a higher degree of reliability in the results. Finally, the potency of F3LA was tested to evaluate the toxicities of 14 rare earth elements (REEs) to the adult zebrafish behaviors. Based on the results, our findings suggested that each tested REE altered fish behaviors in different patterns and magnitudes to each other. However, among the tested light rare earth elements (LREEs), neodymium was demonstrated to cause more relatively severe behavior alterations than other LREEs, indicated by the statistically higher value of entropy (0.2695 ± 0.04977 (mean with a standard deviation)) than the control group (0.2352 ± 0.05896). Meanwhile, in terms of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs), erbium seemed to lead to more distinct behavior toxicities than other HREEs, which was shown by the statistically lower level of fractal dimension (2.022 ± 0.3412) than the untreated group (2.255 ± 0.1661). Taken together, F3LA's development marks a significant advance in high‐throughput toxicological and pharmacological assessments in zebrafish, leveraging three‐dimensional locomotion data for a more comprehensive analysis of fish behavior performance, providing a significant contribution to research in various fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging software technology for automating business processes. RPA uses software robots to perform repetitive and error‐prone tasks previously done by human actors quickly and accurately. These robots mimic humans by interacting with existing software applications through user interfaces (UI). The goal of RPA is to relieve employees from repetitive and tedious tasks to increase productivity and to provide better service quality. Yet, despite all the RPA benefits, most organizations fail to adopt RPA. One of the main reasons for the lack of adoption is that organizations are unable to effectively identify the processes that are suitable for RPA. This paper proposes a new method, called Rule‐based robotic process analysis (RRPA), that assists process automation practitioners to classify business processes according to their suitability for RPA. The RRPA method computes a suitability score for RPA using a combination of two RPA goals: (i) the RPA feasibility, which assesses the extent to which the process or the activity lends itself to automation with RPA and (ii) the RPA relevance, which assesses whether the RPA automation is worthwhile. We tested the RRPA method on a set of 13 processes. The results showed that the method is effective at 82.05% and efficient at 76.19%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a research on estimating the positioning accuracy of autonomous industrial vehicles, using an original sensor fusion combination, in specific polymer production factories environments. Mechanical and electrical subsystems designs are presented, together with the software application and testing results. Conclusions are drawn, serving for future positioning system design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and purpose: Successful long‐term treatment of spasticity in people with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) is challenging. We investigated the effects of multidisciplinary inpatient rehabilitation (MIR) and an individualized self‐training program delivered by an app on spasticity in pwMS. Methods: First, we assessed the efficacy of 4‐week MIR in ambulatory pwMS (Expanded Disability Status Scale < 7.0) with moderate to severe lower limb spasticity (defined by ≥4 points on the Numeric Rating Scale for spasticity [NRSs]) in a cohort of 115 pwMS at seven rehabilitation centers in Austria. In the case of a clinically relevant improvement in spasticity of ≥20% on the NRSs following MIR (n = 94), pwMS were randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to either the newly designed MS‐Spasticity App or to a paper‐based self‐training program for 12 weeks. The primary outcome was change in NRSs (German Clinical Trials Registry DRKS00023960). Results: MIR led to a significant reduction of 2.0 points on the NRSs (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.5–2.0, p < 0.000). MIR was further associated with a statistically significant improvement in spasticity on the Modified Ashworth Scale, strength, and all mobility outcomes. Following MIR, self‐training with the MS‐Spasticity App was associated with a sustained positive effect on the NRSs, whereas paper‐based self‐training led to a worsening in spasticity (median NRSs difference = 1.0, 95% CI = 1.7–0.3, p = 0.009). The MS‐Spasticity App was also associated with a significantly better adherence to self‐training (95% vs. 72% completion rate, p < 0.001). Conclusions: In pwMS, MIR is able to significantly improve lower limb spasticity, strength, and mobility. Following MIR, an individually tailored antispasticity program delivered by an app leads to sustained positive long‐term management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are happy to introduce you to this special issue that presents selected papers from the 15th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM 2015). SCAM is a leading conference that brings together researchers and practitioners working on theory, techniques, and applications that concern analysis and/or manipulation of the source code of computer systems. While much attention in the wider software engineering community is properly directed towards other aspects of systems development and evolution, such as specification, design, and requirements engineering, it is the source code that contains the only precise description of the behavior of the system. The analysis and manipulation of source code thus remains a pressing concern. SCAM 2015 was held on September 27 to 28, 2015, in Bremen, Germany, together with 31st International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An enhanced reduced voltage differential signaling (eRVDS) intra-panel interface addressing both low-power and low-EMI requirements for tablet PC applications is presented. The proposed interface features a novel function called scrambled transition-minimized coding (STMC) to perform both data pattern randomization and toggle reduction. Additionally, automatic skew calibration (ASC) is proposed to further reduce dynamic power and EMI radiation in the eRVDS interface. For verification, a WQXGA (2560times1600) TFT-LCD system is implemented with the timing controller and source driver ICs that are fabricated using 65-nm and 180-nm CMOS processes, respectively. At the maximum operation speed of 1.8-Gbps, the display module adopting the eRVDS interface demonstrated 24.3% power saving and 6.2-dB suppression in EMI level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Developable surfaces have been extensively studied in computer graphics because they are involved in a large body of applications. This type of surfaces has also been used in computer vision and document processing in the context of three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction for book digitization and augmented reality. Indeed, the shape of a smoothly deformed piece of paper can be very well modeled by a developable surface. Most of the existing developable surface parameterizations do not handle boundaries or are driven by overly large parameter sets. These two characteristics become issues in the context of developable surface reconstruction from real observations. Our main contribution is a generative model of bounded developable surfaces that solves these two issues. Our model is governed by intuitive parameters whose number depends on the actual deformation and including the 'flat shape boundary'. A vast majority of the existing image-based paper 3D reconstruction methods either require a tightly controlled environment or restricts the set of possible deformations. We propose an algorithm for reconstructing our model's parameters from a general smooth 3D surface interpolating a sparse cloud of 3D points. The latter is assumed to be reconstructed from images of a static piece of paper or any other developable surface. Our 3D reconstruction method is well adapted to the use of keypoint matches over multiple images. In this context, the initial 3D point cloud is reconstructed by structure-from-motion for which mature and reliable algorithms now exist and the thin-plate spline is used as a general smooth surface model. After initialization, our model's parameters are refined with model-based bundle adjustment. We experimentally validated our model and 3D reconstruction algorithm for shape capture and augmented reality on seven real datasets. The first six datasets consist of multiple images or videos and a sparse set of 3D points obtained by structure-from-motion. The last dataset is a dense 3D point cloud acquired by structured light. Our implementation has been made publicly available on the authors' web home pages. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a stage in the research on the development and implementation of a low cost, flexible, and efficient method for assisted testing of foot prostheses, as the case. This paper describes a method for assisted evaluation of three types of foot prostheses standpoint form deviation (hip prosthesis and two osteosynthesis plates for fibula and tibia). The key aspect of the developed method is a software application as virtual instrument programmed in this research stage. Its role is to provide as quickly and objectively as possible all necessary information on the results of testing. The main advantage of the created and applied virtual instrument is that it is flexible and user friendly, so that it can be successfully used in all orthopedic surgeries. This research stage (described) includes the software application programming and also its application to process all measured data in terms of form deviation for all three tested foot implants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Cloud computing has permeated into the information technology industry in the last few years, and it is emerging nowadays in scientific environments. Science user communities are demanding a broad range of computing power to satisfy the needs of high‐performance applications, such as local clusters, high‐performance computing systems, and computing grids. Different workloads are needed from different computational models, and the cloud is already considered as a promising paradigm. The scheduling and allocation of resources is always a challenging matter in any form of computation and clouds are not an exception. Science applications have unique features that differentiate their workloads; hence, their requirements have to be taken into consideration to be fulfilled when building a Science Cloud. This paper will discuss what are the main scheduling and resource allocation challenges for any Infrastructure as a Service provider supporting scientific applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid expansion of smart devices leads to the increasing demand for vulnerability detection in the cyber security field. Writing secure source codes is crucial to protect applications and software. Recent vulnerability detection methods are mainly using machine learning and deep learning. However, there are still some challenges, how to learn accurate source code semantic embedding at the function level, how to effectively perform vulnerability detection using the learned semantic embedding of source code and how to solve the overfitting problem of learning‐based models. In this paper, we consider codes as various graphs with node features and propose a tensor‐based gated graph neural network called TensorGNN to produce code embedding for function‐level vulnerability detection. First, we propose a high‐dimensional tensor for combining different code graph representations. Second, inspired by the work of tensor technology, we propose the TensorGNN model to produce accurate code representations using the graph tensor. We evaluate our model on 7 C and C++ large open‐source code corpus (e.g. SARD&NVD, Debian, SATE IV, FFmpeg, libpng&LibTiff, Wireshark and Github datasets), which contains 13 types of vulnerabilities. Our TensorGNN model improves on existing state‐of‐the‐art works by 10%–30% on average in terms of vulnerability detection accuracy and F1, while our TensorGNN model needs less training time and model parameters. Specifically, compared with other existing works, our model reduces 25–47 times of the number of parameters and decreases 3–10 times of training time. Results of evaluations show that TensorGNN has better performance while using fewer training parameters and less training time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rigid solid body dynamics is a key element of the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum. In a context of reverse engineering and/or sustainable development, being able to analyze the mechanical and material properties of a system without damaging it is a required skill. In this work, two systems based on wheels rolling over horizontal paths without sliding are studied: an unbalanced hollow cylinder and a wheel with displaced mass assembly. Four generations of last year's bachelor's students in mechanical engineering, representing a hundred people a year, followed a total of 12 h of practical sessions working on such systems. Without focusing on the programming part, this paper aims at showing how computer tools can help and improve a rigid solid body dynamics course. The objectives were to develop, apply, and analyze this teaching sequence, allowing students to (i) perform and characterize experimental measurements, (ii) establish systems motion equations, and (iii) think about dynamics results through cross‐talks between different techniques such as geometrical and analytical methods as well as computer‐assisted design tools. Different analysis methods of these systems could be discussed in the context of the classes, successfully bringing pertinent reflections to the students. The possibility of transferring such discussions to other contexts proved to be wide, thanks to computer science, dynamics software, other analysis methods and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers recommend that parents look for five benchmarks as indicators of quality educational apps (ie, scaffolding, curriculum, development team, feedback, learning theory), yet results show that parents undervalue some of these benchmarks. The current study examined if a short video‐based intervention would enhance parents' value‐judgements of apps featuring the five educational benchmarks. In original and modified app experiments (n = 100; n = 101), parents of children 4–11 years old were randomly assigned to watch either a 9‐minute video that detailed how the five benchmarks augment learning, or a 2‐minute control video. Parents evaluated 10 simulated apps containing either benchmarks or buzzwords. The original app experiment shows that a brief intervention can help parents identify quality educational apps via the benchmarks, but the modified app experiment suggests it only works if developers are using specific keywords in app descriptions. Helping parents select quality educational apps is more complicated than simply telling them what to look for. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Parents have a main role in selecting apps and deciding on how often children use them; however, they have difficulty evaluating an app's educational potential in a market mixed with high‐ and low‐quality products that lacks a standard for including educational apps on the App Store.There are five research‐based benchmarks that are indicators of quality educational apps. These include apps created by an interdisciplinary development team, having a guiding curriculum with a clear purpose, including scaffolding and feedback, and being based on a learning theory. However, parents are not valuing all of these educational benchmarks equally.Educational videos disseminated via YouTube have become an established medium to enhance people's knowledge.Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which suggests that people learn better when there is both auditory and visual information given together, is a framework used to design educational videos.What this paper adds This study leveraged a useful, accessible medium (ie, educational YouTube videos) to make research on educational apps accessible enough such that it could influence parents' app selection.Parents of children aged 4–11 years‐old viewed either an educational intervention‐ or control‐video and assessed educational apps through measures that replicate how consumers evaluate apps on the App Store (ie, their willingness to download the app, how much they would pay, their rating, and ranking).Original and modified app experiments demonstrate that a brief, educational video designed using key features from Mayer's multimedia theory can improve parents' app selection.In the original app experiment, parents in the intervention group are valuing the guiding curriculum and development team benchmarks over others, which may be due to the structure of the intervention video (ie, worked‐examples immediately after pre‐training of benchmarks).In the modified app experiment, parents in the intervention group did not differ from the control group in their evaluations of the different benchmarks apart from rating the app with learning theory higher and ranking the guiding curriculum benchmark lower. The higher rating of learning theory may be a result of the language change in the simulated app to include more user‐friendly terms. The unexpected ranking result may be due to a limitation with the measure.Building on prior research on the educational benchmarks, these experiments show that parents are valuing them over buzzwords; however, even when shown an educational video, they are not valuing them all equally.Implications for practice and/or policy An educational video based on the five educational benchmarks could be used as a tool to easily disseminate knowledge to enhance parents' educational app selection.The experiments shed light on the complexity of knowledge dissemination to the public. While there is evidence for the use of research‐based educational videos to disseminate knowledge to parents when selecting educational apps, the App Store descriptions should include accessible language that makes the research‐based benchmarks easy to select.This study also provides suggestions for improving the development of educational videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laplace Beltrami operator is one of the essential tools in geometric processing. It allows us to solve numerous partial differential equations on discrete surface meshes, which is a fundamental building block in many computer graphics applications. Discrete Laplacians are typically limited to standard elements like triangles or quadrilaterals, which severely constrains the tessellation of the mesh. But in recent years, several approaches were able to generalize the Laplace Beltrami and its closely related gradient and divergence operators to more general meshes. This allows artists and engineers to work with a wider range of elements which are sometimes required and beneficial in their field. This paper discusses the different constructions of these three ubiquitous differential operators on arbitrary polygons and analyzes their individual advantages and properties in common computer graphics applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is one of the first to analyse the ethical implications of specific healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the first to provide a detailed analysis of AI‐based systems for clinical decision support. AI is increasingly being deployed across multiple domains. In response, a plethora of ethical guidelines and principles for general AI use have been published, with some convergence about which ethical concepts are relevant to this new technology. However, few of these frameworks are healthcare‐specific, and there has been limited examination of actual AI applications in healthcare. Our ethical evaluation identifies context‐ and case‐specific healthcare ethical issues for two applications, and investigates the extent to which the general ethical principles for AI‐assisted healthcare expressed in existing frameworks capture what is most ethically relevant from the perspective of healthcare ethics. We provide a detailed description and analysis of two AI‐based systems for clinical decision support (Painchek® and IDx‐DR). Our results identify ethical challenges associated with potentially deceptive promissory claims, lack of patient and public involvement in healthcare AI development and deployment, and lack of attention to the impact of AIs on healthcare relationships. Our analysis also highlights the close connection between evaluation and technical development and reporting. Critical appraisal frameworks for healthcare AIs should include explicit ethical evaluation with benchmarks. However, each application will require scrutiny across the AI life‐cycle to identify ethical issues specific to healthcare. This level of analysis requires more attention to detail than is suggested by current ethical guidance or frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a research project into undergraduates’ use of a software tool to learn symbolic logic—a complex abstract domain that has been shown to be intimidating for students. The software allows the students to manipulate proofs in certain ways and then calculates the consequences of their actions. A research method has been developed that allowed students’ use of this tool to be modelled, and this model was then used to identify, refine and create visual cues that provide support for students’ reasoning. The focus of this paper is the role of the software as an artefact to aid students’ visualisation of reasoning processes rather than the logic itself. The main mechanisms by which this visualisation is supported are the imposition of constraints on the actions available and the demonstration to students of the consequences of their actions. The study shows that the software encouraged experimentation with different routes to a proof, and constituted a challenge to fixated reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic review is a type of literature review that aims to collect and analyse all available evidence from the literature on a particular topic. The process of screening and identifying eligible articles from the vast amounts of literature is a time‐consuming task. Specialised software has been developed to aid in the screening process and save significant time and labour. However, the most suitable software tools that are available often come with a cost or only offer either a limited or a trial version for free. In this paper, we report the release of a new software application, Catchii, which contains all the important features of a systematic review screening application while being completely free. It supports a user at different stages of screening, from detecting duplicates to creating the final flowchart for a publication. Catchii is designed to provide a good user experience and streamline the screening process through its clean and user‐friendly interface on both computers and mobile devices. All in all, Catchii is a valuable addition to the current selection of systematic review screening applications. It enables researchers without financial resources to access features found in the best paid tools, while also diminishing costs for those who have previously relied on paid applications. Catchii is available at https://catchii.org. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GLAM organizations have been digitizing their collections and making them available for the public for several decades. Recent methods for publishing digital collections such as "GLAM Labs" and "Collections as Data" provide guidelines for the application of computational methods to reuse the contents of cultural heritage institutions in innovative and creative ways. Jupyter Notebooks have become a powerful tool to foster use of these collections by digital humanities researchers. Based on previous approaches for quality assessment, which have been adapted for cultural heritage collections, this paper proposes a methodology for assessing the quality of projects based on Jupyter Notebooks published by relevant GLAM institutions. A list of projects based on Jupyter Notebooks using cultural heritage data has been evaluated. Common features and best practices have been identified. A detailed analysis, that can be useful for organizations interested in creating their own Jupyter Notebooks projects, has been provided. Open issues requiring further work and additional avenues for exploration are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational apps can be considered a dominant medium for providing educational content to children. Parents are major stakeholders and mediators in the selection of apps (Dias & Brito, 2021). It is critical to know how they choose apps for their children and understand what indicates a quality educational app, as well‐designed apps can support and enhance children's learning process. An online study with parents was conducted to identify parents' most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children. Parents' app selection behaviour was investigated leveraging Uses and Gratifications theory. Parents viewed 10 mock math apps that replicated the App Store presentation format. Five apps included educational benchmarks (eg, feedback) and five contained educational buzzwords (eg, interactive). Immediately following each app, parents provided value judgements of the app by stating whether they would download the app or not, rating it on a 5‐point‐scale, stating how much they would be willing to pay, and explaining why they chose to download the app or not. Results from paired‐samples t‐tests, and repeated‐measures ANOVAs indicated that parents value educational benchmarks over buzzwords suggesting that parents are primarily seeking apps that meet their children's educational needs. Parents' app needs seem to align with some of the research on what makes a good educational app. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicTouch screen devices can enhance learning outcomes for children, if well designed educational applications are used (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2019; Cohen et al., 2011).Five educational benchmarks have been identified as indicators of app quality that parents can use to distinguish well designed apps (Dubé et al., 2020); having a development team that involves educators, possessing a guiding curriculum (Vaala et al., 2015), being based on a learning theory (Kebritchi & Hirumi, 2008), containing scaffolded learning, and providing feedback (Callaghan & Reich, 2018; Cayton‐Hodges et al., 2015).Uses and Gratifications theory suggests that people use the media to satisfy their psychological needs and to achieve their personal goals (Katz et al., 1973).What this paper addsThe study used Uses and Gratifications theory to identify parents' most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children. With the assumption that parents select apps based on their anticipated gratifications or parental need fulfilment (Broekman et al., 2016, 2018).Different features of the apps are presented in the forms of images and text descriptions in the App Store. The study investigated which features parents value when selecting apps from the App Store by including educational benchmarks and buzzwords in the images and text descriptions of the apps.Parents valued educational benchmarks over buzzwords. Thus, parents' app needs seem to align with the research‐based signifiers of app quality.Parents valued apps that feature development team, scaffolding, and guiding curriculums more than those with central learning theories and feedback.Development team had the highest download frequency and rating while learning theory had the lowest download frequency and rating.Parents were willing to pay more for the development team app and the least for ones containing feedback.The learning theory app was ranked the highest while the development team app received the lowest ranking from parents.Implications for practice and/or policyIncluding research‐based educational benchmarks in the apps and their app store descriptions promotes a research‐based framework for developing and identifying quality apps.Research‐based educational benchmarks could be used to determine a set of evidence‐based guidelines to assist app developers in the process of developing and presenting apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thin‐walled sections distortional buckling phenomena is treated in EN1993 part:1‐3 (EC3‐1‐3) through the calculation of reduced thickness of stiffeners group, mainly by the application of the simplified method presented in this specification which comes with a limitation of applicability to non‐standard sections or with multiple stiffeners that can result in over conservative or insecure results. With the objective of facilitating de study/utilization of such kind of sections by designers, maintaining a safe set of results and without the overwhelming amount of calculations, the alternative method in clause 5.5.1(7) is used, applied only to the distortional analysis and correspondent effective thickness of stiffeners This alternative method allows the use of Linear Buckling Analysis (LBA), which, in this paper, are obtained through the Generalized Beam Theory (GBT) by the GBTUL computer application that applies this theory in the identification of distortional modes and buckling critical loads calculation. The results are then incorporated in EC3‐1‐3 algorithm as defined in clause 5.5.1(7). For the application of this alternative method the LBA results are integrated with EC3‐1‐3 using the Class4Section application, updated for this paper, which uses the critical buckling loads for the calculation of the critical stress of stiffeners group. This more generic approach by the alternative method is easily implemented in computational environment. Following previous work by the authors, the section moment capacity is analyzed in this paper by applying this alternative method and comparing it with available experimental results for selected thin‐walled sections mainly used in flexural problems, namely Sigma and Omega section types, as well as the most commonly known C and Z sections, but with multiple stiffeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Transactional memory (TM) is an approach to concurrency control that aims to make writing parallel programs both effective and simple. The approach has been initially proposed for nondistributed multiprocessor systems, but it is gaining popularity in distributed systems to synchronize tasks at large scales. Efficiency and scalability are often the key issues in TM research; thus, performance benchmarks are an important part of it. However, while standard TM benchmarks like the Stanford Transactional Applications for Multi‐Processing suite and STMBench7 are available and widely accepted, they do not translate well into distributed systems. Hence, the set of benchmarks usable with distributed TM systems is very limited, and must be padded with microbenchmarks, whose simplicity and artificial nature often makes them uninformative or misleading. Therefore, this paper introduces Helenos, a realistic, complex, and comprehensive distributed TM benchmark based on the problem of the Facebook inbox, an application of the Cassandra distributed store. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: SlowMo therapy is a pioneering blended digital therapy for paranoia, augmenting face‐to‐face therapy with an interactive 'webapp' and a mobile app. A recent large‐scale trial demonstrated small–moderate effects on paranoia alongside improvements in self‐esteem, worry, well‐being and quality of life. This paper provides a comprehensive account of therapy personalisation within this targeted approach. Design: Case examples illustrate therapy delivery and descriptive data are presented on personalised thought content. Method: Thought content was extracted from the webapp (n = 140 participants) and coded using newly devised categories: Worries: (1) Persecutory, (2) Negative social evaluation, (3) Negative self‐concept, (4) Loss/life stresses, (5) Sensory‐perceptual experiences and (6) Health anxieties. Safer thoughts: (1) Safer alternative (specific alternatives to worries), (2) Second‐wave (generalised) coping, (3) Positive self‐concept, (4) Positive activities and (5) Third‐wave (mindfulness‐based) coping. Data on therapy fidelity are also presented. Results: Worries: 'Persecutory' (92.9% of people) and 'Negative social evaluation' (74.3%) were most common. 'General worries/ life stresses' (31.4%) and 'Negative self‐concept' (22.1%) were present in a significant minority; 'Health anxieties' (10%) and 'Sensory‐perceptual' (10%) were less common. Safer thoughts: 'Second‐wave (general) coping' (85%), 'Safer alternatives' (76.4%), 'Positive self‐concept' (65.7%) and 'Positive activities' (64.3%) were common with 'Third‐wave' (mindfulness) coping observed for 30%. Fidelity: Only three therapy withdrawals were therapy related. Session adherence was excellent (mean = 15.2/16; SD = 0.9). Behavioural work was conducted with 71% of people (119/168). Conclusion: SlowMo therapy delivers a targeted yet personalised approach. Potential mechanisms of action extend beyond reasoning. Implications for cognitive models of paranoia and causal interventionist approaches are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In earlier work, it has been suggested that processes and applications seem to share many important characteristics and seem to be amenable to similar approaches of modeling, definition, and analysis. In most of this previous work, approaches and technologies for developing applications have been applied to the development of processes, largely with positive results. This paper suggests the opposite, namely that approaches and technologies for developing processes seem likewise to be applicable to developing applications. As an example, this paper notes that resource specification, allocation, and management are central issues in the development of many processes, and suggests that although these capabilities seem to be important for growing classes of application software, the ability to support them seems curiously neglected. The paper also notes that management of rework is a central issue of virtually all creative activities. This is evidenced by the observation that facilities for supporting rework are prominent features in so many creative domains. Accordingly, the paper suggests an analogous need for facilities for supporting rework in application software as well, especially in application software aimed at supporting human creativity. The paper concludes by noting that both application and process software technologies grow through consideration of the relevance of technologies developed for one to the other. This in turn should lead to a clearer understanding of the essence of what they have in common, leading to conjectures about the nature of a more abstract class of entities, that we refer to simply as software. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional size measures are used in several software development processes, because they can be applied as soon as the functional user requirements of a software application have been specified. Quite often, functional user requirements are used as the main input of effort and cost estimation. Since effort and cost estimates are fundamental for decision making, project managers would like to get reasonably accurate estimates even before user requirements have been specified completely and at the proper level of detail. To this end, early size estimation methods have been proposed. In this paper, we consider a specific situation; namely, we consider processes in which the requirements elicitation and modeling phases are carried out according to the ICONIX process. The ICONIX process involves a few stages, each one tackling an aspect of requirements and delivering a specific artifact, in the form of a UML model. We explore the possibility of deriving from ICONIX artifacts the information needed to estimate the final size of the application. To this end, we analyzed the requirements of 21 software applications and derived statistical models that correlate the information extracted from ICONIX artifacts to the size, expressed in function points, of the application. The analysis of the achieved estimates shows that the approach is viable, in that it provides early estimates with good accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including computer software development, software engineering and application software.

Purpose: Respiratory motion during positron emission tomography (PET) scans can be a major detriment to image quality in oncological imaging. The impact of motion on lesion quantification and detectability can be assessed using phantoms with realistic anatomy representation and motion modeling. In this work, we develop an anthropomorphic phantom for PET imaging that combines anatomic fidelity and a realistic breathing mechanism with deformable lungs. Methods: We start from a previously developed anatomically accurate but static phantom of a human torso, and add elastic lungs with a highly controllable actuation mechanism which replicates the physics of breathing. The space outside the lungs is filled with a radioactive water solution. To maintain anatomical accuracy and realistic gamma ray attenuation in the torso, all motion mechanisms and actuators are positioned outside of the phantom compartment. The actuation mechanism can produce custom respiratory waveforms with breathing rates up to 25 breaths per minute and tidal volumes up to 1200 mL. Results: Several tests were performed to validate the performance of the phantom assembly, in which the phantom was filled with water and given respiratory waveforms to execute. All parts demonstrated expected performance. Force requirements were not exceeded and no leaks were detected, although continued use of the phantom is required to evaluate wear. The motion of the lungs was determined to be within a reasonable realistic range. Conclusions: The full mechanical design is described in this paper, as well as a software application with graphical user interface which was developed to plan and visualize respiratory patterns. Both are available online as open source files. The developed phantom will facilitate future work in evaluating the impact of respiratory motion on lesion quantification and detectability in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper considers the following fundamental scheduling problem. There are n deterministic jobs to be scheduled offline on multiple identical machines, which have bounded capacities. Each job is associated with a start-time, an end-time, a process time, and demand for machine capacity. The goal is to schedule all of the jobs non-preemptively in their start-time-end-time windows, subject to machine capacity constraints such that the total busy time of the machines is minimized. We refer to this problem as minimizing the total busy time for the scheduling of multiple identical machines (MinTBT). This problem has important applications in power-aware scheduling for Cloud computing, optical network design, customer service systems, and other related areas. Scheduling to minimize busy times is already NP-hard in the special case where all jobs have the same process time and can be scheduled in a fixed time interval. One best-known result for this problem is a 5-approximation algorithm for special instances using first-fit-decreasing algorithm. In this paper, we propose and prove a 3-approximation algorithm, modified first-fit-decreasing-earliest for the general case and obtain more results for special cases. We then show how our results are applied in cloud computing to improve the energy efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

X‐ray free‐electron laser (XFEL) pulses from SPring‐8 Ångstrom Compact free‐electron LAser (SACLA) with a temporal duration of <10 fs have provided a variety of benefits in scientific research. In a previous study, an arrival‐timing monitor was developed to improve the temporal resolution in pump–probe experiments at beamline 3 by rearranging data in the order of the arrival‐timing jitter between the XFEL and the synchronized optical laser pulses. This paper presents Timing Monitor Analyzer (TMA), a software package by which users can conveniently obtain arrival‐timing data in the analysis environment at SACLA. The package is composed of offline tools that pull stored data from cache storage, and online tools that pull data from a data‐handling server in semi‐real time during beam time. Users can select the most suitable tool for their purpose, and share the results through a network connection between the offline and online analysis environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design and development process of custom‐made medical devices is very complex and often requires the use of additive manufacturing to obtain a customer compliant product. One of the key stages, but also very time consuming in the development of bespoke medical products, is the data acquisition of the patients' specific anatomy. The current research paper presents a detailed process of upper body data acquisition using 3D scanning protocols, with the goal of designing a custom smart spinal orthosis using generative design and additive manufacturing technologies. The initial captured cloud points are subjected successively to a series of surface manipulation and mesh optimization operations to generate the final working 3D model of the upper body. Each stage of the 3D model is obtained using a specific software application, as follows: *.DICOM images are generated using a 3D scanner software; *STL files are obtained by transforming initial files using MeshMixer software; *.STEP files are optimized using Fusion 360. Shape validation is done by 3D printing of a real scale upper body anatomical prototype using material extrusion. Authors also proposed a generative design process for the development of a personalized vertebral body from the construction of the smart spinal orthosis. The generative study is initialized with the following data: connection type, stress scenarios, material type (metals – Ti, Al, Steel; composites – ABS, PET, HIPS), and manufacturing technology (additive, subtractive, injection molding). A set of 49 converged outcomes is generated after running the study and three are selected for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY The paper describes creation of a contention-aware environment in a large-scale distributed system where the contention occurs to access resources between external and local requests. To resolve the contention, we propose and implement a preemption mechanism in the InterGrid platform, which is a platform for large-scale distributed system and uses virtual machines for resource provisioning. The implemented mechanism enables the resource providers to increase their resource utilization through contributing resources to the InterGrid platform without delaying their local users. The paper also evaluates the impact of applying various policies for preempting user requests. These policies affect resource contention, average waiting time, and imposed overhead to the system. Experiments conducted in real settings demonstrate efficacy of the preemption mechanism in resolving resource contention and the influence of preemption policies on the amount of imposed overhead and average waiting time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Many globally distributed cloud computing (CC) applications and services running over the Internet, between globally dispersed clients and servers, will require certain levels of QoS in order to deliver and give a sufficiently smooth user experience. This would be essential for real-time streaming multimedia applications such as online gaming and watching movies on a pay as you use basis hosted in a CC environment. However, guaranteeing or even predicting QoS in global and diverse networks that are supporting complex hosting of application services is a very challenging issue that needs a stepwise refinement approach to be solved as the technology of CC matures. In this paper, we investigate if latency in terms of simple ping measurements can be used as an indicator for other QoS parameters such as jitter and throughput. The experiments were carried out on a global scale, between servers placed in universities in Denmark, Poland, Brazil, and Malaysia. The results show the correlation between latency and throughput, and between latency and jitter, even though the results are not completely consistent. As a side result, we were able to monitor the changes in QoS parameters during a number of 24-hour periods. This is also a first step toward defining QoS parameters to be included in service level agreements for CC at the global scale in the foreseeable future. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2013.© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY In this paper, we present the idea of developing an editor for MAchine-Readable Cataloguing records that is part of a library management system. The idea was realized and implemented as a part of the library management system BISIS. The objective was to generate an Eclipse plug-in of the editor in an Xtext environment by specifying the Xtext grammar and generating an Eclipse Modelling Framework model of the MAchine-Readable Cataloguing record. The next step was to specify additional features of the editor in the Xtext environment such as content assist and constraints on the record used for checking the correctness of the input. The implementation of additional functionalities of the editor was carried out in the Eclipse plug-in development environment, and user interface components were implemented by using Standard Widget Toolkit and JFace libraries. A special emphasis is placed on the Eclipse extension model that relies on the Open Services Gateway initiative standard and enables efficient implementation of the systems with a component-based, service-oriented architecture. We took advantage of that model and created an extensible and adoptable application that can be used by any database management system and can be integrated in other library management systems. Finally, we discuss a possible way of extracting applications from Eclipse by using Rich Client Platform technology. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY As the recent proliferation of social networks, mobile applications, and online services increased the rate of data gathering, to find near-duplicate records efficiently has become a challenging issue. Related works on this problem mainly aim to propose efficient approaches on a single machine. However, when processing large-scale dataset, the performance to identify duplicates is still far from satisfactory. In this paper, we try to handle the problem of duplicate detection applying MapReduce. We argue that the performance of utilizing MapReduce to detect duplicates mainly depends on the number of candidate record pairs and intermediate result size, which is related to the shuffle cost among different nodes in cluster. In this paper, we proposed a new signature scheme with new pruning strategies to minimize the number of candidate pairs and intermediate result size. The proposed solution is an exact one, which assures none duplicate record pair can be lost. The experimental results over both real and synthetic datasets demonstrate that our proposed signature-based method is efficient and scalable. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When available in multiple languages, educational apps can deliver the same mathematics instruction in the child's first language or different language of instruction. This pilot study examined the feasibility of a maths app intervention compared to standard mathematical practice with 61 children aged 5–6 years attending a bilingual immersion school in Brazil. The apps were delivered in either the child's first (L1, Brazilian Portuguese) or second (L2, English) language, while app content, time on task, and school setting were consistent across the two treatment groups. Time on task in the comparison group was less. After 10 weeks, results showed children made significant mathematical learning gains with the apps, for both languages of instruction, compared to standard practice: the finding is discussed in relation to the threat of time spent on task. Children using the apps in Brazilian Portuguese (L1) completed more app topics than children using the apps in English (L2) and proficiency in language of instruction correlated positively with app progress. As children's L1 was significantly stronger than their L2 proficiency, this suggests the apps were most effectively implemented in their L1. This study advances the conjoining of bilingual educational theories to educational apps in a controlled, real‐world, bilingual immersion setting and highlights important directions for improving app‐based mathematics instruction for bilingual children. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic Educational maths apps, available in multiple languages are increasingly popular.Emerging evidence demonstrates the benefits of maths apps for supporting children's mathematical development.To understand "what works" in the use of maths apps we need to consider factors that may impact outcomes, including children's proficiency in the language of instruction.What this paper adds When delivered in the child's first or second language, maths apps can support the acquisition of basic maths skills.To maximise engagement and learning with maths apps, children should have a sufficient level of proficiency in the language of instruction.Implications for practice and/or policy When deciding to implement maths apps with young children, educational practitioners and parents should consider the individual child's proficiency in the languages spoken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image synthesis designed for machine learning applications provides the means to efficiently generate large quantities of training data while controlling the generation process to provide the best distribution and content variety. With the demands of deep learning applications, synthetic data have the potential of becoming a vital component in the training pipeline. Over the last decade, a wide variety of training data generation methods has been demonstrated. The potential of future development calls to bring these together for comparison and categorization. This survey provides a comprehensive list of the existing image synthesis methods for visual machine learning. These are categorized in the context of image generation, using a taxonomy based on modelling and rendering, while a classification is also made concerning the computer vision applications they are used. We focus on the computer graphics aspects of the methods, to promote future image generation for machine learning. Finally, each method is assessed in terms of quality and reported performance, providing a hint on its expected learning potential. The report serves as a comprehensive reference, targeting both groups of the applications and data development sides. A list of all methods and papers reviewed herein can be found at https://computergraphics.on.liu.se/image_synthesis_methods_for_visual_machine_learning/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 5 years have been marked by an explosion of tablet and smartphone applications designed for young children and several calls to encourage educational researchers to engage in children's app research. This paper presents a novel prospect for educational researchers: to collaboratively research, implement and produce iPad apps for educational purposes. Based on the author's own research as well as that of others, an original framework ' Research, Practice and Design framework' (i RPD) for guiding such collaborative efforts is provided, along with five key principles: triple collaboration, shared epistemology, awareness of affordances and interconnected social factors, and child-centred pedagogy. The novel affordances of collaboratively produced i Pad apps for educational design-based research are outlined, along with several examples of how such an engagement might enrich educational research and the app landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud offers in the market increases, selecting an appropriate configuration of cloud resources for a given application becomes a non-trivial task even for experienced developers. Because cloud resources are relatively cheap, usually charged by the hour, developers could systematically evaluate the performance of their application using different resource types from different cloud providers, thus allowing them to accurately identify the best providers and resource types for their application. However, conducting systematic performance tests in multiple IaaS clouds may require a significant amount of planning and configuration effort from application developers. This paper presents Cloud Crawler, a declarative environment for specifying and conducting application performance tests in IaaS clouds. The environment includes a novel declarative domain-specific language, Crawl, by means of which cloud users can describe, at a high abstraction level, a large variety of performance evaluation scenarios for a given application, and a scenario execution engine, Crawler, which automatically configures, executes, and collects the results of the scenarios described in Crawl. The paper also reports on how Cloud Crawler has been successfully used to systematically test the performance of two open-source web applications in public IaaS clouds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed system consists of a collection of autonomous heterogeneous resources that provide resource sharing and a common platform for running parallel compute-intensive applications. The different application characteristics combined with the heterogeneity and performance variations of the distributed system make it difficult to find the optimal set of needed resources. When deployed, user applications are usually handled by application domain experts or system administrators who depending on the infrastructure provide a scheduling strategy for selecting the best candidate resource over a set of available resources. However, the provided strategy is usually generic, aimed at handling a wide array of applications and does not take into consideration specific application resource requirements. As such, an intelligent method for selecting the best resources based on expert knowledge is needed. In this paper, we propose a neural network-based multi-agent resource selection technique capable of mimicking the services of an expert user. In addition, to cope with the geographical distribution of the underlying system, we employ a multi-agent coordination mechanism. The proposed neural network-based scheduling framework combined with the multi-agent intelligence is a unique approach to efficiently deal with the resource selection problem. Results run on a simulated environment show the efficiency of our proposed method. Several scheduling simulations were conducted to compare the performance of some conventional resource selection methods against the proposed agent-based neural network technique. The results obtained indicate that the agent-based approach outperformed the classical algorithms by reducing the amount of time required to search for suitable resources irrespective of the resource size. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]