Performance evaluation of the register insertion protocol for voice-data integration

The performance of the register insertion protocol for mixed voice-data traffic is investigated by simulation. The simulation model incorporates a common insertion buffer for station and ring packets. Bandwidth allocation is achieved by imposing a queue limit at each node. A simple priority scheme is introduced by allowing the queue limit to vary from node to node. This enables voice traffic to be given priority over data. The effect on performance of various operational and design parameters such as ratio of voice to data traffic, queue limit and voice packet size is investigated. Comparisons are made where possible with related work on other protocols proposed for voice-data integration. The main conclusions are: (a) there is a general degradation of performance as the ratio of voice traffic to data traffic increases, (b) substantial improvement in performance can be achieved by restricting the queue length at data nodes and (c) for a given ring utilisation, smaller voice packets result in lower delays for both voice and data traffic.

The FUELCON meta-architecture, in the landscape of intelligent technologies for refuelling

The conception of the FUELCON architecture, of a composite tool for the generation and validation of patterns for assigning fuel assemblies to the positions in the grid of a reactor core section, has undergone an evolution throughout the history of the project. Different options for various subtask were possible, envisioned, or actually explored or adopted. We project these successive, or even concomitant configurations of the architecture, into a meta-architecture, which quite not by chance happens to reflect basic choices in the field's history over the last decade.

The FUELGEN alternative: an evolutionary approach. The architecture

This paper introduces a few architectural concepts from FUELGEN, that generates a "cloud" of reload patterns, like the generator in the FUELCON expert system, but unlike that generator, is based on a genetic algorithm. There are indications FUELGEN may outperform FUELCON and other tools as reported in the literature, in well-researched case studies, but careful comparisons have to be carried out. This paper complements the information in two other recent papers on FUELGEN. Moreover, a sequel project is outlined.

The FUELCON meta-architecture, II: alternatives for parameter prediction

We continue the discussion of the decision points in the FUELCON metaarchitecture. Having discussed the relation of the original expert system to its sequel projects in terms of an AND/OR tree, we consider one further domain for a neural component: parameter prediction downstream of the core reload candidate pattern generator, thus, a replacement for the NOXER simulator currently in use in the project.

A blackboard architecture for a hybrid CBR system for scientific software

This paper describes the use of a blackboard architecture for building a hybrid case based reasoning (CBR) system. The Smartfire fire field modelling package has been built using this architecture and includes a CBR component. It allows the integration into the system of qualitative spatial reasoning knowledge from domain experts. The system can be used for the automatic set-up of fire field models. This enables fire safety practitioners who are not expert in modelling techniques to use a fire modelling tool. The paper discusses the integrating powers of the architecture, which is based on a common knowledge representation comprising a metric diagram and place vocabulary and mechanisms for adaptation and conflict resolution built on the Blackboard.

An architecture of multiple heterogeneous case-based reasoning employing agent technologies

This paper presents an investigation into applying Case-Based Reasoning to Multiple Heterogeneous Case Bases using agents. The adaptive CBR process and the architecture of the system are presented. A case study is presented to illustrate and evaluate the approach. The process of creating and maintaining the dynamic data structures is discussed. The similarity metrics employed by the system are used to support the process of optimisation of the collaboration between the agents which is based on the use of a blackboard architecture. The blackboard architecture is shown to support the efficient collaboration between the agents to achieve an efficient overall CBR solution, while using case-based reasoning methods to allow the overall system to adapt and “learn” new collaborative strategies for achieving the aims of the overall CBR problem solving process.

A run-time configurable software architecture for self-managing systems

This paper describes a highly flexible component architecture, primarily designed for automotive control systems, that supports distributed dynamically- configurable context-aware behaviour. The architecture enforces a separation of design-time and run-time concerns, enabling almost all decisions concerning runtime composition and adaptation to be deferred beyond deployment. Dynamic context management contributes to flexibility. The architecture is extensible, and can embed potentially many different self-management decision technologies simultaneously. The mechanism that implements the run-time configuration has been designed to be very robust, automatically and silently handling problems arising from the evaluation of self- management logic and ensuring that in the worst case the dynamic aspects of the system collapse down to static behavior in totally predictable ways.

A dynamically reconfigurable automotive control system architecture

This paper proposes a vehicular control system architecture that supports self-configuration. The architecture is based on dynamic mapping of processes and services to resources to meet the challenges of future demanding use-scenarios in which systems must be flexible to exhibit context-aware behaviour and to permit customization. The architecture comprises a number of low-level services that provide the required system functionalities, which include automatic discovery and incorporation of new devices, self-optimisation to best-use the processing, storage and communication resources available, and self-diagnostics. The benefits and challenges of dynamic configuration and the automatic inclusion of users' Consumer Electronic (CE) devices are briefly discussed. The dynamic configuration and control-theoretic technologies used are described in outline and the way in which the demands of highly flexible dynamic configuration and highly robust operation are simultaneously met without compromise, is explained. A number of generic use-cases have been identified, each with several specific use-case scenarios. One generic use-case is described to provide an insight into the extent of the flexible reconfiguration facilitated by the architecture.

I wanna be a protocol: online media and electronic structures of kinship

Heidegger famously identified Modernity with a technological leveling of being to a single order of a “standing reserve.” In a radically different tone, Gilles Deleuze articulated a single “plane of immanence” within which ontological distinctions between mind and body, God and world, interiority and exteriority become indiscernible. Taking such philosophical declarations as points of departure, this panel will consider how a collapse of ontological distinction emerged as a thematic and structural trope in literary and cinematic modernisms. We hope to consider how writers and film-makers of the 20th c. utilize the resources of their media to ask “the question of being” that troubled their philosophical contemporaries and heirs. In this vein, we will examine how these modernist ontologies of immanence describe the crisis of a subject saturated and eclipsed by a world which comprises her while also remaining strange or opaque. Papers will ask what is lost with the departure of a distinctly human sense of “being” and how the historical arrival of an alternative ontological order may be evident in the lived experience of modernity. In this sense, the relationship to departures and arrivals becomes the modern subject’s suspicion that he is unable to do either vis á vis the world.

'Re-using an existing wheel' developing data architecture for cooperating autonomous and semi-autonomous, agent-based web services

This short position paper considers issues in developing Data Architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) through the medium of an exemplar project, Domain Expertise Capture in Authoring and Development ­Environments (DECADE). A brief discussion sets the background for IoT, and the development of the ­distinction between things and computers. The paper makes a strong argument to avoid reinvention of the wheel, and to reuse approaches to distributed heterogeneous data architectures and the lessons learned from that work, and apply them to this situation. DECADE requires an autonomous recording system, ­local data storage, semi-autonomous verification model, sign-off mechanism, qualitative and ­quantitative ­analysis ­carried out when and where required through web-service architecture, based on ontology and analytic agents, with a self-maintaining ontology model. To develop this, we describe a web-service ­architecture, ­combining a distributed data warehouse, web services for analysis agents, ontology agents and a ­verification engine, with a centrally verified outcome database maintained by certifying body for qualification/­professional status.

Psyche and the arts: Jungian approaches to music, architecture, literature, painting and film

Does art connect the individual psyche to history and culture? Psyche and the Arts challenges existing ideas about the relationship between Jung and art, and offers exciting new dimensions to key issues such as the role of image in popular culture, and the division of psyche and matter in art form. Divided into three sections - Getting into Art, Challenging the Critical Space and Interpreting Art in the World - the text shows how Jungian ideas can work with the arts to illuminate both psychological theory and aesthetic response. Psyche and the Arts offers new critical visions of literature, film, music, architecture and painting, as something alive in the experience of creators and audiences challenging previous Jungian criticism. This approach demonstrates Jung’s own belief that art is a healing response to collective cultural norms. This diverse yet focused collection from international contributors invites the reader to seek personal and cultural value in the arts, and will be essential reading for Jungian analysts, trainees and those more generally interested in the arts. [From the Publisher]

Curating architecture and the city

Addressing the collection, representation and exhibition of architecture and the built environment, this book explores current practices, historical precedents, theoretical issues and future possibilities arising from the meeting of a curatorial ‘subject’ and an architectural ‘object’. Striking a balance between theoretical investigations and case studies, the chapters cover a broad methodological as well as thematic range. Examining the influential role of architectural exhibitions, the contributors also look at curatorship as an emerging attitude towards the investigation and interpretation of the city. International in scope, this collection investigates curation, architecture and the city across the world, opening up new possibilities for exploring the urban fabric.