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Many software development methodologies are based on modeling the real world. In some of these methodologies, real-world models are gradually transformed into software models, while in others, the real world is only considered as a preliminary source of insight into the physical business domain. Real-world modeling was pushed to the sidelines due to anomalies in real-world modeling approaches; however, with the advent of the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), real-world conceptual modeling is likely to regain its importance. We propose a method for using Design Patterns in the context of model transformation, where real-world models are refactored through application of these patterns.... 

The goal of this paper is to develop a model to integrate "pricing" and "advertisement" for short life cycle products, such as branded fashion clothing products. To achieve this goal, we apply the concept of "Dynamic Pricing". There are two classes of advertisements, for the brand (regardless of product) and for a particular product. Advertising the brand affects the demand and price of all the products. Thus, the model considers all these products in relation with each other. We develop two different methods to integrate both types of advertisement and pricing. The first model is developed within the framework of dynamic programming. However, due to the complexity of the model, this method... 

People usually get involved in multiple social networks to enjoy new services or to fulfill their needs. Many new social networks try to attract users of other existing networks to increase the number of their users. Once a user (called source user) of a social network (called source network) joins a new social network (called target network), a new inter-network link (called anchor link) is formed between the source and target networks. In this paper, we concentrated on predicting the formation of such anchor links between heterogeneous social networks. Unlike conventional link prediction problems in which the formation of a link between two existing users within a single network is... 

When our sources are graph signals, a more efficient algorithm for Blind Source Separation (BSS) can be provided by using structural graph information along with statistical independence and/or non-Gaussianity. To the best of our knowledge, the GraphJADE and GraDe algorithms are the only BSS methods addressing this issue in the case of known underlying graphs. However, in many real-world applications, these graphs are not necessarily a priori known. In this paper, we propose a method called GraphJADE-GL (GraphJADE with Graph Learning) that jointly separates the graph signal sources and learns the graphs related to them accurately, in an alternating style. © 1994-2012 IEEE  

Although multiple techniques have been proposed with the goal of minimizing the semantic gap in virtual machine introspection, most concentrate on passive observation of the internal state, while there are also a number of proposals with which active modification of the VM's internal state is made possible. However there are issues when modifications are applied, such as keeping a consistent kernel state and avoiding a crash. In this paper we propose Oxpecker, a VMI platform for transactional modification. The out-of-VM read access allows an introspector to detect malware in the guest OS (e.g., rootkit) and the transactional write access allows Oxpecker to reliably neutralize the detected... 

Although multiple techniques have been proposed with the goal of minimizing the semantic gap in virtual machine introspection, most concentrate on passive observation of the internal state, while there are also a number of proposals with which active modification of the VM's internal state is made possible. However there are issues when modifications are applied, such as keeping a consistent kernel state and avoiding a crash. In this paper we propose Oxpecker, a VMI platform for transactional modification. The out-of-VM read access allows an introspector to detect malware in the guest OS (e.g., rootkit) and the transactional write access allows Oxpecker to reliably neutralize the detected... 

In this paper, we review the literature on enhancing synchronizability of diffusively coupled dynamical networks with identical nodes. The last decade has witnessed intensive investigations on the collective behavior over complex networks and synchronization of dynamical systems is the most common form of collective behavior. For many applications, it is desired that the synchronizability - the ability of networks in synchronizing activity of their individual dynamical units - is enhanced. There are a number of methods for improving the synchronization properties of dynamical networks through structural perturbation. In this paper, we survey such methods including adding/removing nodes... 

Many technological networks can experience random and/or systematic failures in their components. More destructive situations can happen if the components have limited capacity, where the failure in one of them might lead to a cascade of failures in other components, and consequently break down the structure of the network. In this paper, the tolerance of cascaded failures was investigated in weighted networks. Three weighting strategies were considered including the betweenness centrality of the edges, the product of the degrees of the end nodes, and the product of their betweenness centralities. Then, the effect of the cascaded attack was investigated by considering the local weighted flow... 

In this paper we highlight a remarkable difference between the step responses of a classical second-order transfer function and its fractional-order counterpart. It can be easily shown that the step response of a stable classical second-order transfer function crosses its final value infinitely over time. In contrast, it is illustrated here that the step responses of a fractional-order counterpart of the classical second-order model possess only a finite number of such crossovers. In other words, for such a system one can find a specific time instant after which the step response is over or under-convergent to its final value. This property interprets some phenomena observed in the... 

This paper introduces a novel framework for modeling temporal events with complex longitudinal dependency that are generated by dependent sources. This framework takes advantage of multidimensional point processes for modeling time of events. The intensity function of the proposed process is a mixture of intensities, and its complexity grows with the complexity of temporal patterns of data. Moreover, it utilizes a hierarchical dependent nonparametric approach to model marks of events. These capabilities allow the proposed model to adapt its temporal and topical complexity according to the complexity of data, which makes it a suitable candidate for real world scenarios. An online inference... 

In real world social networks, there are multiple cascades which are rarely independent. They usually compete or cooperate with each other. Motivated by the reinforcement theory in sociology we leverage the fact that adoption of a user to any behavior is modeled by the aggregation of behaviors of its neighbors. We use a multidimensional marked Hawkes process to model users product adoption and consequently spread of cascades in social networks. The resulting inference problem is proved to be convex and is solved in parallel by using the barrier method. The advantage of the proposed model is twofold; it models correlated cascades and also learns the latent diffusion network. Experimental... 

Betweenness centrality is a prominent centrality measure expressing importance of a node within a network, in terms of the fraction of shortest paths passing through that node. Nodes with high betweenness centrality have significant impacts on the spread of influence and idea in social networks, the user activity in mobile phone networks, the contagion process in biological networks, and the bottlenecks in communication networks. Thus, identifying k-highest betweenness centrality nodes in networks will be of great interest in many applications. In this paper, we introduce CS-HiBet, a new method to efficiently detect top-k betweenness centrality nodes in networks, using compressive sensing.... 

In real-world networks, nodes might have more than one type of relationship. Signed networks are an important class of such networks consisting of two types of relations: positive and negative. Recently, embedding signed networks has attracted increasing attention and is more challenging than classic networks since nodes are connected by paths with multi-types of links. Existing works capture the complex relationships by relying on social theories. However, this approach has major drawbacks, including the incompleteness/inaccurateness of such theories. Thus, we propose network transformation based embedding to address these shortcomings. The core idea is that rather than directly finding the... 

This paper proposes an artificial pheromone communication system inspired by social insects. The proposed model is an extension of the previously developed pheromone communication system, COS-Φ. The new model increases COS-Φ flexibility by adding two new features, namely, diffusion and advection. The proposed system consists of an LCD flat screen that is placed horizontally, overhead digital camera to track mobile robots, which move on the screen, and a computer, which simulates the pheromone behaviour and visualises its spatial distribution on the LCD. To investigate the feasibility of the proposed pheromone system, real micro-robots, Colias, were deployed which mimicked insects' role in... 

As web contents grow, the importance of search engines became more critical and at the same time user satisfaction decreased. Query recommendation is a new approach to improve search results in web. In this paper we represent a method to help search engine users in attaining required information. Such facility could be provided by offering some queries associated with queries submitted by users in order to direct them toward their target. At first, all previous query contained in a query log should be clustered, therefore, all queries that are semantically similar will be detected. Then all queries that are similar to user's queries are ranked according to a relevance criterion. The method... 

In present paper, a feedback linearization control is applied to control a chaotic pendulum system. Tracking the desired periodic orbits such as period-one, period-two, and period-four orbits is efficiently achieved. Due to the presence of saturation in real world control signals, the stability of controller is investigated in presence of saturation and sufficient stability conditions are obtained. At first feedback linearization control law is designed, then to avoid the singularity condition, a saturating constraint is applied to the control signal. The stability conditions are obtained analytically. These conditions must be investigated for each specific case numerically. Simulation... 

Coordinated operation of hydro-thermal power systems helps reduce generation costs. The Hydro-Thermal Coordinating Model (HTCOM) software package, as one of these models, determines long-term operational policies for a hydro-thermal power system with multipurpose reservoirs. The CLT was incorporated within this framework to ensure a logical time-based run-time, with no serious decrease in precision. HTCOM, based on both its theoretical background and its application in the KWPA system, has shown that it can handle real world problems successfully, with more reliable outcomes. Many models have also been developed to optimize the planning of hydro-thermal systems. HTCOM was developed and... 

Context: Software testing is a pivotal activity in the development of high-quality software. As software is evolving through its life cycle, the need for a fault-revealing criterion assessing the effectiveness of the test suite grows. Over the years, researchers have proposed coverage-based criteria, including statement and branch coverage, to solve this issue. In literature, the effectiveness of such criteria is attested in terms of their correlations with the mutation score. Objective: In this paper, we aim at proposing a coverage-based criterion named statement frequency coverage, which outperforms statement and branch coverage in terms of correlation with mutation score. Method: To this... 

Context: Software testing is a pivotal activity in the development of high-quality software. As software is evolving through its life cycle, the need for a fault-revealing criterion assessing the effectiveness of the test suite grows. Over the years, researchers have proposed coverage-based criteria, including statement and branch coverage, to solve this issue. In literature, the effectiveness of such criteria is attested in terms of their correlations with the mutation score. Objective: In this paper, we aim at proposing a coverage-based criterion named statement frequency coverage, which outperforms statement and branch coverage in terms of correlation with mutation score. Method: To this... 

The economic production quantity (EPQ) model is often used in manufacturing environments to assist firms in determining the optimal production lot size that minimizes the overall production-inventory costs. While there are some unrealistic assumptions in the EPQ model that limit its real-world applications, in this research, some of these assumptions such as (1) infinite availability of warehouse space, (2) all of the produced items being perfect, and (3) the existence of one product type are relaxed. In other words, we develop a multi-product EPQ model in which there are some imperfect items of different product types being produced such that reworks are allowed and that there is a...