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Biological systems are open systems. They exchange permanently energy, matter and information with their environment. The consequence is, that life is bound together with systems of energy and matter. These conversion processes are irreversible. Consequently, biological systems are also regenerative systems. Their rhythms are the generation sequences of a total species and the biological system. In general rhythms are the measure of time of biological processes. There is no limitation of the biological diversity of modifications, structures, complexities and species in an open biological system. This is characterized by innovative developments. In an open system the number of degrees of freedom is inexhaustible for the manifestation of life. Innovative systems also include the potential for evolution. Mutation and selection are typical criteria of the biological evolution. The particular characteristica are self-renewal, self-organization, self-control and reproduction. Biological systems are symbiotic systems. The zero biological principle – Of life, matter and energy. The first biological principle – Of the urge of the biological species to survive. The second biological principle – Of the sacrifice of individuals by the species in times of crisis. The third biological principle – Of the interaction of individuals and the population. The fourth biological principle – Of the features of the species man.

On December 28, 2013, the sixth meeting of the 12th Standing Committee of National People’s Congress (NPC) amended the “Company Law of the People’s Republic of China” turning into the New Company Law. The amendments to the PRC Company Law focus on the registered capital, being involved with three types of companies, namely limited liability companies, one person limited liability companies and companies limited by shares.

The internal management system elements define the general framework of management control element system. This framework indicates that management control system is an open system. As the first element of management control system, control environment has an important influence on the management control mode and plays a significant role in the establishment and application of management control system. This chapter mainly studies the connation of control environment and its influences on management control system formulation.

Security is one of the main aspects of Web Services composition. In this paper we describe a logical approach based on partial model checking technique and open system analysis for the verification and synthesis of secure service orchestrators. Indeed through this framework we are able to specify a system with a possible intruder and verify whether the whole system is secure, i.e., whether the system satisfies a given temporal logic formula that describes a correct behavior (security property). Moreover we are able to define an orchestrator operator able to orchestrate several services in such a way to guarantee both functional and security requirements.

About 70-75% of the World’s electrical energy are produced in steam cycles. An external heat source is used to evaporate pressurized water, and then the high pressure vapor is expanded in steam turbines. The fuel for most steam power plants is coal, followed by nuclear power. Since the heat is supplied externally, many other heat sources can be used, including oil, gas and heat from solar radiation.

In physical chemistry, the world is divided in two parts: the system, containing the portion of the world of particular interest, and the surroundings, comprising the region outside the system (Atkins and de Paula 2002). A geochemical system is an open system that may be studied within two basic frameworks

The investigation of management control system from the perspective of management control elements can meet the general needs of describing the MCS. Management control is the process by which managers influence other members of the organization to implement organization’s strategies. Researching management control system from the perspective of control procedures can interpret the fundamental purpose of MCS better. As to management control procedures, researching them from different categories, levels or perspectives, the result may be different. If management control is regarded as a closed system, that is, the control environment is certain, the procedures of management control system are called formal control process. At present, three-step control procedures, four-step control procedures and five-step control procedures exist and are all belonging to formal process. If management control is regarded as an open system, namely, given uncertain and continuously changeable control environment, the procedures of management control system are called informal control process. Formal control process and informal control process are different. From the systematic and a long-term point of view, informal control process is inevitable, but formal control process is more scientific and operable from a specific and short-term point of view. In addition, the premise of our research about management control system is that the control environment is certain (a systematical research on control environment has been made in Chap. 9). Therefore, the focus of this chapter is on the formal control process.

The federation is a special case of open system where the resources are controlled and accessed by cooperation of one or more roles in the federation. The federation system needs a few special treatments like a subset ownership (i.e. multiple user ownership) of the objects, dynamic access right allocation etc. The treatments can not be handled by any combination of mandatory, discretionary and role-based access control models (i.e. MAC, DAC and RBAC). This paper gives a theoretical study on an access control model in federating systems by analysing the nature of subjects, objects and their relationships; and then proposes a generic access control model for any federation system. The safety proof shows that the federation system always remains in a safe state using the proposed federation access control model.

To deal with the difficulty of nonlinear inverse model identification of directive inverse control and improve the ability of robustness and anti-interference of the open system, the paper studied the realization of inverse system identification and control using least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM), and proposed a new nonlinear predictive control algorithm based on inverse system method. The method cascades the αth-order inverse model approximated by LS-SVM with the original system to get the composite pseudo-linear system. Then the predictive control method is introduced to the pseudo-linear system. The simulation results show that the combined method does not depend on the accurate mathematical model and has the characteristics of better robustness stability, simpler design process and high tracking accuracy. And this approach is one of the applicable methods for the control of nonlinear systems.

In a distributed and open system, such as the semantic web and many of the applications presented in the previous chapter, heterogeneity cannot be avoided. Different actors have different interests and habits, use different tools and knowledge, and most often, at different levels of detail. These various reasons for heterogeneity lead to diverse forms of heterogeneity, and, therefore, should be carefully taken into consideration.

Considering the shortcomings of close car E/E control system, through the analysis of the open system requirements and characteristics of the car E/E control system, an open system structure of the automotive electronic control system based on quantum framework established/E adopts advanced software technology of embedded system. The electronic control clutch design experiments show that the system can get open role use style of the building and system based on this architecture more than a closed system.

Within the framework of non-extensive statistical mechanics, statistical distributions and thermodynamic formulas for a completely open system have been derived on the basis of Shannon entropy using the maximum entropy method, and an ideal Boson system and the corresponding linear filament system have been discussed. For the ideal Boson system, the thermodynamic properties calculated here are the same as those calculated using the grand canonical distribution, only with the average volume replacing the constant volume in the grand canonical distribution. For the linear filament system, the thermodynamic properties calculated here are the same as those calculated for the E-V distribution, only with the average number of units replacing the constant number of units in the E-V distribution. However, the relative fluctuations calculated in the ideal Boson system are greater for the completely open system than for the grand canonical system. This is a completely new result, with which it is possible to explain some phenomena that cannot be explained by B-G statistical mechanics, such as the critical phenomenon.

Some open systems use mutually agreed rules to determine a decentralised allocation of endogenous common-pool resources, i.e. resources that are provided by the system components themselves. The problem is that some components may not comply to the rules, and an open system cannot demand the full disclosure required to verify compliance. This requires behaviour to be monitored, but monitoring must be ‘paid for’ from the same resources, detracting from the system’s capability to perform tasks for which it was intended. This paper addresses the problem from the perspective of principles for self-governing institutions, encapsulating a formal system of retributive justice. Experiments with a variant of the linear public good game show that self-organisation of operational-choice rules for monitoring and sanctioning can help to reduce costs, marginalise non-compliance and increase collective utility.

The use of new media in the service of cultural heritage is a fast growing field. The development of dynamic web has changed the concept for sharing information, allowing quick access to data and enabling the contents update through the active participation of users. Building digital heritage requires substantial resources in materials, expertise, tools and cost. Also there is a necessity of reflection to promote forms of electronic publication adapted to the needs of archaeologists. This contribution describes an approach and it main strategic choices followed in the construction of an open system through Internet to access and share archaeological information concerning to pottery shapes.

Software development in real-time and embedded systems has traditionally focused on stand-alone applications with static models for scheduling and resource allocation. Our goal is to facilitate the development of embedded applications in an open system, where tasks and resources arrive and leave dynamically, and their execution is concurrent. We model such applications as a dynamic composition of network services. This paper presents an enabling framework for dynamic service orchestration in cyber-physical systems, based on a modular, reusable, and extensible service-oriented architecture. By taking advantage of a network-wide programming model, adaptive global resource management, and late binding of tasks to resources, the architecture enables execution of dynamic embedded application workloads in a resource-efficient manner.

The popular Social Network Service, SNS, induces an open system for collaboration. A data exchange system is opened without any grant as a Computer-supported Cooperative-work tool for Computer-Aided Engineering via Web interface. The SNS plays the role for security instead. SNS is advantageous in recruiting members adequate to the cooperative work, and this open system could be a good workplace under the paradigm of convergence.

Under the third kind of constraint, using the method of OLM (Optimal Lagrange Multipliers formalism) and maximum entropy principle, we derive the statistical distribution and thermodynamic formulas in completely open system based on Tsallis entropy. Two hardships existed in the method of TMP (Tsallis-Mendes-Plastino formalism) are overcome. We give out the specific expressions of the three Lagrangian multipliers and make their physical significance clear.

The rapidly growing production of digital data, together with their increasing importance and essential demands for their longevity, urgently require systems that provide reliable long-term preservation of digital objects. Most importantly, these systems have to ensure guaranteed availability over a long period of time, as well as integrity and authenticity of the preserved data and their metadata. This means that all kinds of technical problems need to be reliably handled and that the evolution of data formats is supported. At the same time, systems need to scale with the volume of data to be archived. In this paper, we present DISTARNET, a fully distributed system that reliably executes pre-defined workflows for long-term preservation. Moreover, DISTARNET is designed as an open system that allows the curators of digital objects to specify new processes to cope with additional challenges.

Analysis of scientific literature, projects and existing market products show that distance learning is a new direction in the development of information systems. The literature, however, lacks a system-based insight at distance learning understood as a complex information system. Authors of this article perform a soft system analysis based on the theory of hierarchical multilevel systems, which allows developing a model of Open System of Distance Learning (OSDL). As a result of the soft system analysis the management model for OSDL is proposed. The OSDL's management model incorporated the learning object approach to knowledge repository development, social aspect of elearning process, and competence-based learning. The hierarchical structure of the information system defines the set of its sub-systems and their functioning scope. The main result of such modelling is the functional scheme that allows managing the chain "information - knowledge - competence" in different kinds of education organisations.

The impact of cerebral visual impairment (CVI) obviously is widely underestimated and knowledge about CVI is not widespread. This article illustrates in which way the dysfunction of visually guided handmovements as well as simultanous attention demands rethinking hardware design especially of input devices. CVI dysfunctions are manyfold and special software is needed. The challenges of some aspects of CVI may be met by everyday hardware as modern smartphones providing numerous software which might show to be useful, even if designed for other purposes than CVI-rehabilitation. It is possible that useful software is already created (or may be created) when the open system invites to creative program develpement from the public. The role of user centered design should therefore be given more attention.

Selecting the sorbent and solvent and minimizing the application zone widths are important factors on the way to obtaining optimum separating conditions. In this respect, TLC is very flexible with many possible methods. Thus, it provides additional opportunities not available to other chromatic processes, for example, using the vapour phase to influence separations. TLC uses an open system in which the mobile and stationary phases are formed during separation.

We present a simple cellular automaton model to study the traffic dynamics on a 4-ramp rotary. Vehicles can move in and out of the rotary through on-ramp and off-ramp, respectively. On the rotary, vehicles move deterministically; while the ramps operate stochastically. We show that, both numerically and analytically, the traffic states on the rotary are completely determined by the ramps. The ramps provide a means to stabilize the density difference on the rotary and to support the maximum flow as a distinct phase. We are able to obtain exact solutions in the full parameter space. The complete phase diagram can be derived. We compare the results between a closed system and an open system. We show that the bulk density is not a good parameter. The traffic states are better characterized by the stochastic rates in the boundaries.

In the last years, companies which provide consumables and medical devices have developed several catheter designs to study Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). If research groups want to incorporate the information from this catheter together with more biological parameters for their studies, open systems must be developed, allowing the integration of different probes with general purpose digital acquisition systems. This paper presents the comparison of the results of proposed probes in literature, focus on innovative solutions more suitable for medical applications.

In this section yet another approach to transport is examined. Rather than analyzing spatial energy density dynamics as done in the previous section, we now aim at investigating a stationary non-equilibrium state. This state is induced through the local coupling of reservoirs with different temperatures at either end of the system. The system is a chain of two-level systems coupled according to the Heisenberg model. The baths are modeled according to standard open system theory (see [3–6]). The resulting equations are numerically solved using a stochastic unraveling scheme.

This paper discusses system consequence, a central idea in the project to lift the theory of information flow to the abstract level of universal logic and the theory of institutions. The theory of information flow is a theory of distributed logic. The theory of institutions is abstract model theory. A system is a collection of interconnected parts, where the whole may have properties that cannot be known from an analysis of the constituent parts in isolation. In an information system, the parts represent information resources and the interconnections represent constraints between the parts. System consequence, which is the extension of the consequence operator from theories to systems, models the available regularities represented by an information system as a whole. System consequence (without part-to-part constraints) is defined for a specific logical system (institution) in the theory of information flow. This paper generalizes the idea of system consequence to arbitrary logical systems.

Modern open system thermodynamics, as pioneered by Prigogine, provides a new framework for examining living and associated systems [Ji 1987] [Schorr and Schroeder 1989] [Loye and Eisler 1987]. This paper will show how the behavior of molecules can lead to biological events. Novel hypotheses are proposed that integrate open system, far from equilibrium, physical principles with the many layers of biological complexity. An abstract conceptual development provides a unifying perspective of prebiotic evolution, the origins of the genetic code, and the origins of life itself. An understanding of the nature of health and disease arises as a natural extension of physical phenomena and includes thermodynamic interpretations of the basic living processes of cell division and cell death. The reiteration of underlying physical principles provides new definitions of speciation and individuality. Consideration of man’s place in an evolving biosphere is also examined.

Nonlinear Hamiltonian systems of only two degrees of freedom readily produce complicated Poincare-type (or, synonymously, chaotic) behavior. Nonlinear Hamiltonian systems of many degrees of freedom, on the other hand, produce not only chaos, but also modulate systematic motions (so-called dissipative structures). A two-degrees-of-freedom system is described which shows two types of ‘macroscopic’ behavior: On one hand, there is a ‘main regime’ which is characterized by a random distribution of both positional variables. From this ‘equilibrium’ the system only very rarely departs once it has come close to it. On the other hand, when the system is started sufficiently far away, it spends a certain time in a characteristic ‘transient regime’ which too (like the main regime) is the same for both time directions. One of the two particles hereby shows a statistical directional preference. This preference is the same as when the system is run as an open system (‘temporarily open regime’). The simple nature of the system encourages further quantitative and qualitative investigations.

I review some ideas and methods from dynamical systems theory and discuss applications, actual and potential, to the study of fully developed turbulent flows in an open system: the wall region of a boundary layer. After a brief account of applications to a closed flow system, the approach I concentrate on attempts a marriage between statistical methods and deterministic dynamical systems, both orderly and chaotic. Specifically, coherent structures are identified with combinations of certain basis functions using the proper orthogonal decomposition. A relatively low dimensional ordinary differential equation describing the dynamical interactions of a set of these spatially organized structures is then derived by Galerkin projection of the Navier-Stokes equations. The resulting system is optimal in the sense that it retains the greatest turbulent kinetic energy, in a time averaged sense, among all projections of the same dimension. The model is analyzed using the methods of dynamical systems and symmetries are found to play a crucial role. In particular, structurally and asymptotically stable heteroclinic cycles emerge as a common feature in models of various dimensions and orbits attracted to these cycles lead to solutions exhibiting intermittent, violent “events,” which appear to reproduce key features of the bursting process. I speculate on the validity of this approach, the “understanding” of turbulent processes it offers and on how some of the gaps in the procedure might be bridged. I do not suggest that this is the only way in which dynamical systems methods can be used, but it is one which seems worth pursuing.

Realizability - checking whether a specification can be implemented by an open system - is a fundamental step in the design flow. However, if the specification turns out not to be realizable, there is no method to pinpoint the causes for unrealizability. In this paper, we address the open problem of providing diagnostic information for realizability: we formally define the notion of (minimal) explanation of (un)realizability, we propose algorithms to compute such explanations, and provide a preliminary experimental evaluation.

In an electromagnetic particle simulation for magnetic reconnection in an open system, which has a free boundary condition, particles go out and come into the system through the boundary and the number of particles depends on time. Besides, particles are locally attracted due to physical condition. Accordingly, it is hard to realize an adequate load balance with domain decomposition. Furthermore, a vector performance does not become efficient without a large memory size due to a recurrence of array access. In this paper, we parallelise the code with High Performance Fortran. For data layout, all field data are duplicated on each parallel process, but particle data are distributed among them. We invent an algorithm for the open boundary of particles, in which an operation for outgoing and incoming particles is performed in each processor, and the only reduction operation for the number of particles is executed in data transfer. This adequate treatment makes the amount and frequency of data transfer small, and the load balance among processes relevant. Furthermore, a compiler-directive listvec in the gather process dramatically decreases the memory size and improves the vector performance. Vector operation ratio becomes about 99.5% and vector length turns 240 and over. It becomes possible to perform the simulation with 800 million particles in 512 × 128 × 64 meshes. We succeed in opening a path for a large-scale simulation.

Dynamical instabilities of a stationary open system are discussed as they apply to highly excited semiconductors. These include the quasi-thermodynamic instabilities responsible for the electron hole drop formation. In this context deviations of the electron hole system from a simple fluid are explored. Special attention is paid to the optical properties and their relation to macroscopic as well as single particle properties of the system. Some recent experiments determining the composition and coexistence within the excited electronic system are critically reviewed.

The subject under study is an open subsystem of a larger linear and conservative system and the way in which it is coupled to the rest of system. Examples are a model of crystalline solid as a lattice of coupled oscillators with a finite piece constituting the subsystem, and an open system such as the Helmholtz resonator as a subsystem of a larger conservative oscillatory system. Taking the view of an observer accessing only the open subsystem we ask, in particular, what information about the entire system can be reconstructed having such limited access. Based on the unique minimal conservative extension of an open subsystem, we construct a canonical decomposition of the conservative system describing, in particular, its parts coupled to and completely decoupled from the open subsystem. The coupled one together with the open system constitute the unique minimal conservative extension. Combining this with an analysis of the spectral multiplicity, we show, for the lattice model in particular, that only a very small part of all possible oscillatory motion of the entire crystal, described canonically by the minimal extension, is coupled to the finite subsystem.

This paper proposes an implementation of the data structure called bag or multiset used by descriptive programming languages (e.g. Gamma, Linda) over an open system. In this model, a succession of "chemical reactions" consumes the elements of the bag and produces new elements according to specific rules. This approach is particularly interesting as it suppresses all unneeded synchronization and reveals all the potential parallelism of a program. An efficient implementation of a bag provides an efficient implementation of the subsequent program. This paper defines a new communication and synchronization model adapted from workqueues used in parallel computing. The proposed model allows to benefit from the potential parallelism offered by this style of programming when only an approximate solution is needed.

Recent embedded systems are composed of many components, and each component is an open system, and it has both real-time properties and uncertainties. We specify each component using timing constraints and probabilities, and compose systems from all the components. In order to treat them, we develop the followings: First we develop probabilistic timed game automata based on a probabilistic timed game as a computational model. Next we develop probabilistic timed game verification.

The aim of the first part of these lecture notes is to give a concise and self-contained introduction into a mathematically sound theory of quantum Markovian master equations. The text is intended for those who are interested in practical applications and are not experts in mathematical physics. Therefore the original proofs are highly simplified or replaced by heuristic ones. However, the final results are always consistent with the rigorous mathematical theory. Subsection 1.2 is devoted to the general properties of an irreversible evolution for a quantum open system. In contrast to the classical theory the problem of the most general admissible dynamical transformation of quantum mixed states is not a trivial one and leads to the notion of complete positivity. The main result of this discussion is the general form of the Markovian master equation satisfying the complete positivity condition. Three methods of derivation of Markovian master equations from the underlying Hamiltonian dynamics of the open system coupled to the reservoir are presented in Subsect. 1.3. In contrast to many of the derivations which can be found in the literature the attention is paid to a mathematically proper form of the obtained equations of motion. The next subsection contains few examples of possible extensions of the presented formalism. The open systems influenced by varying external conditions, systems with different “channels of evolution” and the simplified description of many-body open systems in terms of nonlinear single-particle evolution equations are briefly discussed. In Subsect. 1.5 a model of N 2-level atoms interacting with the electromagnetic field in thermal equilibrium is worked out in some details and serves as an illustration of the general result.

Fluids at pressures and temperatures higher then the environment pressures and temperatures may perform technical work at the costs of their internal energy. Experience shows that not all available internal energy of fluids may be consumed for performing technical work but only part of it. The industrial revolution initiated with the invention of the steam machine started also the discussion on how much of the internal fluid energy may be transferred under given circumstances in technical work. The result of this discussion is well presented in the references and text books Baer (1996), Elsner (1974), Gouy (1889), Rant (1956 − 1964), Reynolds and Perkins (1977), Stephan and Mayinger (1998) and Zwicker (1976). We will shortly demonstrate the main ideas on a single-phase multi-component open system in which the spatial intermixing at any time is assumed to be perfect.

When designing an open system, there might be no implementation available for certain components at verification time. For such systems, verification has to be based on assumptions on the underspecified components. When component assumptions are expressed in Hennessy-Milner logic (HML), the state space of open systems can be naturally represented with modal transition systems (MTS), a graphical specification language equiexpressive with HML. Having an explicit state space representation supports state space exploration based verification techniques. Besides, it enables proof reuse and facilitates visualization for the user guiding the verification process in interactive verification. As an intuitive representation of system behavior, it aids debugging when proof generation fails in automatic verification. However, HML is not expressive enough to capture temporal assumptions. For this purpose, we extend MTSs to represent the state space of open systems where component assumptions are specified in modal μ-calculus. We present a two-phase construction from process algebraic open system descriptions to such state space representations. The first phase deals with component assumptions, and is essentially a maximal model construction for the modal μ-calculus. In the second phase, the models obtained are combined according to the structure of the open system to form the complete state space. The construction is sound and complete for systems with a single unknown component and sound for those without dynamic process creation. For establishing open system properties based on the representation, we present a proof system which is sound and complete for prime formulae.

The lack of available identity information in attribute-based trust management systems complicates the design of the audit and incident response systems, anomaly detection algorithms, collusion detection/prevention mechanisms, and reputation systems taken for granted in traditional distributed systems. In this paper, we show that as two entities in an attribute-based trust management system interact, each learns one of a limited number of virtual fingerprints describing their communication partner. We show that these virtual fingerprints can be disclosed to other entities in the open system without divulging any attribute or absolute-identity information, thereby forming an opaque pseudo-identity that can be used as the basis for the above-mentioned types of services. We explore the use of virtual fingerprints as the basis of Xiphos, a system that allows reputation establishment without requiring explicit knowledge of entities' civil identities. We discuss the trade-off between privacy and trust, examine the impacts of several attacks on the Xiphos system, and discuss the performance of Xiphos in a simulated grid computing system.

Agents in an open system interact with each other based on (typically, published) protocols. An agent may, however, deviate from the protocol because of its internal policies. Such deviations pose certain challenges: (1) the agent might no longer be conformant with the protocol—how do we determine if the agent is conformant? (2) the agent may no longer be able to interoperate with other agents—how do we determine if two agents are interoperable? (3) the agent may not be able to produce some protocol computations; in other words, it may not cover the protocol—how we determine if an agent covers a protocol? We formalize the notions of conformance, coverage and interoperability. A distinctive feature of our formalization is that the three are orthogonal to each other. Conformance and coverage are based on the semantics of runs (a run being a sequence of states), whereas interoperability among agents is based upon the traditional idea of blocking. We present a number of examples to comprehensively illustrate the orthogonality of conformance, coverage, and interoperability. Compliance is a property of an agent's execution whereas conformance is a property of the agent's design. In order to produce only compliant executions, first and foremost the agent must be conformant; second, it must also be able to interoperate with other agents.

An open system should admit agents from many sources and these agents may have conflicting goals. Therefore, some actions that an agent would like to perform could be detrimental to other agents. Such actions can be either acceptable or unacceptable within a given system. Social norms define what actions are acceptable and unacceptable within a given society. There should be a way to limit the actions of agents to enforce these social norms. One way to begin to accomplish this goal is to have the system observe the actions of agents to model their behaviour. Behaviours that do not conform to specified norms could then be detected, and some action could be taken to prevent agents from performing further actions that violate social norms. In this paper we discuss the use of social commitments to allow a system to define social norms and detect violations of those norms. Social commitments model an agent's commitments within a society. Some are implied while others are explicitly stated. Our system uses social commitments to define social norms. This paper focusses on the practical requirements that must be met for a system to implement social commitments as a way of defining social norms and detecting violations of those norms. In addition, we give an overview of how our multi-agent system design supports this goal.

Multiparty agreements often arise in a multiagent system where autonomous agents interact with each other to achieve a global goal. Multiparty agreements are traditionally represented by messaging protocols or event- condition-action rule sets in which agents exchange messages in a predefined sequence to ensure both global and local consistencies. However, these models do not readily incorporate agents' autonomy and heterogeneity, which limits their ability to help build a flexible open system. Commitments have been studied for modelling various agent interactions. This paper introduces commitments as the key elements in formulating multiparty agreements. Our model focuses on how agents may negotiate with each other to build a mutual agreement based on their individual constraints. The actual execution sequence is validated by checking the compliance of commitment casual relations. Our approach is geared toward constructing business processes where agents are mutually constrained in a manner that preserves their autonomy and heterogeneity.

Information systems have been mostly used to enhance the efficiency of administrative procedures in the local government sector as well as the central government sector. Information systems also help to improve transparency of civil affairs. The OPEN (Online Procedures Enhancement from civil application) system in the Seoul metropolitan government of South Korea has helped to achieve transparency in the civil administration by preventing unnecessary delays and unjust handling of civil affairs on the part of civil servants. The focus of this study is an administrative informatization at the level of the local government, not at the level of the central government. This paper, therefore, examines the success factors of the OPEN system, i.e., the powerful leadership of the city government, the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and citizens' attitudes. In addition, this paper analyzes some barriers to the development of the OPEN system and its existing problems.

The underlying homogeneousness between human being in a society and software agent in a MAS (Multi-Agent System)is opened out in this paper, based on which a new definition and architecture for agent is proposed. An agent is made of certain soft genes and roles. Such agents can be more appropriate for dynamic, open system’s analysis, design and implementation. The associated structure model and behavior model of MAS are described. A MAS modelling methodology RoMAS (Role-based MAS modelling methodology) based on these definitions is presented through RoboCup simulation football team case, including its graphical modelling language and the modelling process.

We describe Microsoft’s Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB). The system provides high assurance computing in a manner consistent with the commercial requirements of mass market systems. This poses a number of challenges and we describe the system architecture we have used to overcome them. We pay particular attention to reducing the trusted computing base to a small and manageable size. This includes operating the system without trusting the BIOS, most devices and device drivers and the bulk of the code of mass market operating systems. Furthermore, we seek to strengthen access control and network authentication in mass market systems by authenticating executable code at all system layers. We have implemented a prototype of the system and expect the full system to be mass deployed.

An open system is a system whose behavior is jointly determined by its internal structure, and by the input it receives from the environment. To solve control and verification problems, open systems have often been modeled as games between the system and the environment; we argue that the game view of open systems should be extended also to the definitions of system refinement and composition. We give a symmetrical interpretation to games between system and environment: the moves of the system represent the outputs that the system can generate (the output guarantees), and symmetrically, the moves of the environment represent the inputs that the system can accept (the input assumptions). We argue in favor of defining refinement of open systems in terms of alternating simulation, which is the relation between games that plays the same role of simulation between transition systems. Alternating simulation captures the principle that a component refines another if it has weaker input assumptions, and stronger output guarantees. Furthermore, we argue in favor of a notion of composition that accounts for the compatibility between input assumptions and output guarantees, and that enables the synthesis of new input guarantees for the composed system. These game-theoretical notions of refinement and compatibility are related to the type-theoretical notions of subtyping and type compatibility, and give rise to an expressive modeling framework for component-based design and verification.

We present a framework for reasoning about abstract open systems. Open systems, also called “reactive systems” or “modules”, are systems that interact with their environment and whose behaviors depend on these interactions. Embedded software is a typical example of open system. Module checking [KV96] is a verification technique for checking whether an open system satisfies a temporal property no matter what its environment does. Module checking makes it possible to check adversarial properties of the “game” played by the open system with its environment (such as “is there a winning strategy for a malicious agent trying to intrude a secure system?”). We study how module checking can be extended to reason about 3-valued abstractions of open systems in such a way that both proofs and counter-examples obtained by verifying arbitrary properties on such abstractions are guaranteed to be sound, i.e., to carry over to the concrete system. We also introduce a new verification technique, called generalized module checking, that can improve the precision of module checking. The modeling framework and verification techniques developed in this paper can be used to represent and reason about abstractions automatically generated from a static analysis of an open program using abstraction techniques such as predicate abstraction. This application is illustrated with an example of open program and property that cannot be verified by current abstraction-based verification tools.

Customer support through virtual-sales-assistants is becoming more important with the growing complexity of the products offered over the Internet. This chapter presents an open system architecture for virtual-sales-assistants, discusses in detail the technical challenges and solutions, and addressed the integration into existing e-business systems.

Tectonic phenomena that affect the lithosphere can occur at a wide variety of rates (Price 1975) from 100 to 10-18 s-1 for the processes described in previous chapters. The Soft Plate approach was proposed mainly for processes on the slow side of the spectrum of strain rates but also has implications on the fast side; in fact, viscoelastic rebound has deep implications in earthquake faulting. Can we extend the range of behaviour of the lithosphere by studying processes that operate at an even faster rate than earthquake faulting, if such processes exist? Only by exploring the whole range of possible behaviours can we propose a coherent theory for the central problem in geodynamics, the rheology of the lithosphere.

As explained in Part I, the stochastic limit technique does not apply only to the open system scheme, describing a discrete system interacting with a continuous one, but also to single continuous systems or to two (or more) mutually interacting continuous systems. The prototype of such systems is the Anderson model, proposed in [And58] to explain the finite conductivity of metals. It describes a system of fermions interacting with a classical Gaussian random field, modelling the impurities of the metal. If the classical field is discrete, we are in the framework described in Part I; even degree interaction bosonization takes place as described in Sect. 11.10.

The dynamics of isolated quantum system, described by one-parameter group of unitary operators, is reversible in time. The evolution of an open system, subject to exterior influences, whether it be the process of establishing equilibrium with the environment or interaction with the measuring apparatus, reveals features of irreversibility. Such irreversible changes are described mathematically by completely positive maps.