An Autonomous Agent Approach to Query Optimization in Stream Grids

Stream grids are wide-area grid computing environments that are fed by a set of stream data sources, and Queries arrive at the grid from users and applications external to the system. The kind of queries considered in this work is long-running continuous (LRC) queries, which are neither short-lived nor infinitely long lived. The queries are “open” from the grid perspective as the grid cannot control or predict the arrival of a query with time, location, required data and query revocations. Query optimization in such an environment has two major challenges, i.e., optimizing in a multi-query environment and continuous optimization, due to new query arrivals and revocations. As generating a globally optimal query plan is an intractable problem, this work explores the idea of emergent optimization where globally optimal query plans emerge as a result of local autonomous decisions taken by the grid nodes. Drawing concepts from evolutionary game theory, grid nodes are modeled as autonomous agents that seek to maximize a self-interest function using one of a set of different strategies. Grid nodes change strategies in response to variations in query arrival and revocation patterns, which is also autonomously decided by each grid node.

Improvement of Restaurant Operation by Sharing Order and Customer Information

In full-service restaurants, it is important to share customer information among staff members in real time in order to perform complicated operations. Conventional point of sale (POS) systems in restaurants was developed to improve the verification and transmission of order information passed from the dining hall to the kitchen. However, POS systems have remained insufficient to share customers’ order information among many staff members in different positions. This paper introduces an information sharing system for full-service restaurants using an advanced POS system with which staff members can share order information in real time. Using this system, kitchen staff members can grasp the total number of orders and the elapsed time for preparation of each order. Moreover, service staff members can grasp the status of each customer quickly. Using this system in a large-scale restaurant, preparation processes can be made more efficient and reduce customer complaints.

A Social Bookmarking-Based People Search Service

The emergence of Web 2.0 has brought along the trend of community. It is also the trend that contributes to socialization of the Internet. The essence of Web 2.0 is creation and sharing which give rise to social networking communities such as Blog, Wikipedia and Facebook. Through Wikipedia, Blogs, Facebook and other kinds of social networking websites, interactive relationship and bridge of knowledge sharing have been built up successfully. This paper attempts to propose an effective way to locate people with shared interests. By using Internet resources bookmarked by the users, the similarity of interests between them can be analyzed. Based on this relationship, people could build communities. Also, through community activities, the innovation and exchange of collective intelligence are accomplished.

Transdisciplinary Approach to Service Design Based on Consumer’s Value and Decision Making

Science and technology are expected to support actual service provision and to create new services to promote service industries’ productivity. However, those problems might not be solved solely in a certain research area. This paper describes that it is necessary to establish transdisciplinary approaches to service design in consideration of consumers’ values and decision making. Recent research trends of services are overviewed. Then a research framework is proposed to integrate computer sciences, human sciences, and economic sciences. Three study examples of services are then presented. The first study is a multi-agent simulation of a cellular telephone market based on results of a psychological survey. The second presents a cognitive model constructed through integration of questionnaire data of a retail business and Bayesian network modeling. The third presents a pricing mechanism design for service facilities––movie theaters––using an economic experiment and agent-based simulation.

On the Notion of Collective Intelligence

In this article, the author explores the notion of Collective Intelligence (CI) as an emerging computing paradigm. The article is meant to provide a historical and contextual view of CI through the lenses of as many related disciplines as possible (biology, sociology, natural and environmental sciences, physics) in conjunction with the computer science point of view. During this explorative journey, the article also aims at pinpointing the current strengths and weaknesses of CI-related computational and system engineering design and implementation methodologies of CI-based systems. A non-exhaustive list of case studies set up the stage for CI applications as well as challenging research questions. These can be particularly directed towards the Social Web, as a very prominent example of synergistic interactions of a group of people with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds and its potential to become a platform for the emergence of truly CI-based systems.

An Experimental Performance Comparison for Indexing Mobile Objects on the Plane

In this paper, the authors present a time-efficient approach to index objects moving on the plane in order to answer range queries about their future positions. Each object is moving with non small velocity u, meaning that the velocity value distribution is skewed (Zipf) towards in some range , where is a positive lower threshold. This algorithm enhances a previously described solution (Sioutas, Tsakalidis, Tsichlas, Makris, & Manolopoulos, 2007) by accommodating the ISB-tree access method as presented in Kaporis et al. (2005). Experimental evaluation shows the improved performance, scalability, and efficiency of the new algorithm.

Towards a Trust Management Enabled Identity Metasystem

Existing identity metasystems provide enabling tools to manage, select, and control of digital identities but they have not provided the support of trust management that should cover how trust requirements associated with digital identities are modeled, how runtime conditions for trust are evaluated, and how the results of trust evaluation are consumed by systems/applications. In this paper, the authors propose an approach toward a trust management enabled identity metasystem that covers the analysis of trust requirements and the development of trust management system in a consistent manner. The proposed trust management architecture extends the existing identity metasystems by introducing computing components for carrying out typical trust management tasks associated with digital identities. The computing components in proposed architecture provide intelligent services for these tasks. The proposed high level architecture targets the automation of the development of the trust management layer for digital identities.

Chance Discovery as Analogy Based Value Sensing

The authors are finding rising demands for sensing values in existing/new events and items in the real life. Chance discovery, focusing on new events significant for human decision making, can be positioned extensively as an approach to value sensing. This extension enables the innovation of various artificial systems, where human’s talent of analogical thinking comes to be the basic engine. Games for training and activating this talent are introduced, and it is clarified that these games train the an essential talent of human for chance discovery, by discussing the experimental results of these games on the logical framework of analogical abductive reasoning.

Architectures for Enabling Flexible Business Processes

For decades, information systems have been designed for controlling and managing business processes. In the past, these systems were often monolithic in nature and not made for interacting and communicating with other systems. Today, departments and organizations must collaborate, which requires distributed Web-based systems to support the enactment of flexible business processes. In this paper, four architectures of process management systems are investigated by studying the components and the relationships with the tasks that make up the business processes. These different architectures support automation of non-repetitive, customized processes, and are compared based on dimensions of flexibility. This evaluation showed that the process orchestration architecture scored best, but still has its shortcomings. The results from the comparison are used for developing a research agenda that includes the suggestion to develop reference architecture for connecting individual architectural components.

3D Real-Time Reconstruction Approach for Multimedia Sensor Networks

Multimedia sensor networks have emerged due to the tremendous technological advances in multimedia hardware miniaturization and the application potential they present. However, the time sensitive nature of multimedia data makes them very problematic to handle, especially within constrained environments. In this paper, the authors present a novel approach based on continuous 3D real time reconstruction of the monitored area dedicated for video surveillance applications. Real-time 3D reconstruction allows an important network bandwidth reduction in context to sensor nodes sending descriptive information to the fusion server instead heavy video streams. Each node has to support additional processing in order to extract this descriptive information in real-time, which results in video sensors capturing tasks, data analysis, and extraction of features needed for 3D reconstruction. In this paper, the authors focus on the design and implementation of such sensor node and validate their approach through real experimentations conducted on a real video sensor.