Software assurance practices for mobile applications

Mobile software applications have to cope with a particular environment that involves small size, limited resources, high autonomy requirements, competitive business models and many other challenges. To provide development guidelines that respond to these needs, several practices have been introduced; however, it is not clear how these guidelines may contribute to solve the issues present in the mobile domain. Furthermore, the rapid evolution of the mobile ecosystem challenges many of the premises upon which the proposed practices were designed. In this paper, we present a survey of the literature on software assurance practices for mobile applications, with the objective of describing them and assessing their contribution and success. We identified, organized and reviewed a body of research that spans in three levels: software development processes, software product assurance practices, and software implementation practices. By carrying out this literature survey, we reviewed the different approaches that researchers on Software Engineering have provided to address the needs that raise in the mobile software development arena. Moreover, we review the evolution of these practices, identifying how the constant changes and modernization of the mobile execution environment has impacted the methods proposed in the literature. Finally, we introduced discussion on the application of these practices in a real productive setting, opening an area for further research that may determine if practitioners have followed the proposed assurance paradigms.     

A local landscape mapping method for protein structure prediction in the HP model

The hydrophobic-polar (HP) model has been widely studied in the field of protein structure prediction both for theoretical purposes and as a benchmark for new optimization strategies. In this work we present results of the recently proposed Hybrid Monte Carlo Ant Colony Optimization heuristic in the HP model using a fragment assembly-like strategy. Moreover we extend that method introducing a general framework for optimization in the HP model, called Local Landscape Mapping, and we test it using the pull moves set to generate solutions. We describe the heuristic and compare results obtained on well known HP instances in the 3-dimensional cubic lattice to those obtained with standard Ant Colony optimization and Simulated Annealing. Fragment assembly-like tests were performed using a modified objective function to prevent the creation of overlapping walks. Results show that our method performs better than the other heuristics in all benchmark instances when the fragment assembly-like strategy is used while in the case of pull moves-based neighborhood its performance is comparable to that of simulated annealing.     

An ensemble evolutionary constraint-based approach to understand the emergence of metabolic phenotypes

Constraint-based modeling is largely used in computational studies of metabolism. We propose here a novel approach that aims to identify ensembles of flux distributions that comply with one or more target phenotype(s). The methodology has been tested on a small-scale model of yeast energy metabolism. The target phenotypes describe the differential pattern of ethanol production and O₂ consumption observed in “Crabtree-positive” and “Crabtree-negative” yeasts in changing environment (i.e., when the upper limit of glucose uptake is varied). The ensembles were obtained either by selection among sampled flux distributions or by means of a search heuristic (genetic algorithm). The former approach provided indication about the probability to observe a given phenotype, but the resulting ensembles could not be unambiguously partitioned into “Crabtree-positive” and “Crabtree-negative” clusters. On the contrary well-separated clusters were obtained with the latter method. The cluster analysis further allowed identification of distinct groups within each target phenotype. The method may thus prove useful in characterizing the design principles underlying metabolic plasticity arising from evolving physio-pathological or developmental constraints.     

A bio-inspired predictive sensory-motor coordination scheme for robot reaching and preshaping

This paper presents a sensory-motor coordination scheme for a robot hand-arm-head system that provides the robot with the capability to reach an object while pre-shaping the fingers to the required grasp configuration and while predicting the tactile image that will be perceived after grasping. A model for sensory-motor coordination derived from studies in humans inspired the development of this scheme. A peculiar feature of this model is the prediction of the tactile image. The implementation of the proposed scheme is based on a neuro-fuzzy module that, after a learning phase, starting from visual data, calculates the position and orientation of the hand for reaching, selects the best-suited hand configuration, and predicts the tactile feedback. The implementation of the scheme on a humanoid robot allowed experimental validation of its effectiveness in robotics and provided perspectives on applications of sensory predictions in robot motor control.     

On the Construction of Classes of Suffix Trees for Square Matrices: Algorithms and Applications

We provide a uniform framework for the study of index data structures for a two-dimensional matrixTEXT[1:n, 1:n] whose entries are drawn from an ordered alphabetΣ. An index forTEXTcan be informally seen as the two-dimensional analog of the suffix tree for a string. It allows on-line searches and statistics to be performed onTEXTby representing compactly theΘ(n³) square submatrices ofTEXTin optimalO(n²) space. We identify 4ⁿ⁻¹families of indices forTEXT, each containing ∏ⁿ_i=1 (2i−1)! isomorphic data structures. We also develop techniques leading to a single algorithm that efficiently builds any index in any family inO(n² log n) time andO(n²) space. Such an algorithm improves in various respects the algorithms for the construction of the PAT tree and the Lsuffix tree. The framework and the algorithm easily generalize tod>2 dimensions. Moreover, as part of our algorithm, we provide new algorithmic tools that yield a space-efficient implementation of the “naming scheme” of R. Karpet al.(in“Proceedings, Fourth Symposium on Theory of Computing,” pp. 125–136) for strings and matrices.     

Non-confluence in divisionless P systems with active membranes

We describe a solution to the SAT problem via non-confluent P systems with active membranes, without using membrane division rules. Furthermore, we provide an algorithm for simulating such devices on a nondeterministic Turing machine with a polynomial slowdown. Together, these results prove that the complexity class of problems solvable non-confluently and in polynomial time by this kind of P system is exactly the class .     

Path dependent stochastic models to detect planned and actual technology use: A case study of OpenOffice

Context

Adopting IT innovation in organizations is a complex decision process driven by technical, social and economic issues. Thus, those organizations that decide to adopt innovation take a decision of uncertain success of implementation, as the actual use of a new technology might not be the one expected. The misalignment between planned and effective use of innovation is called assimilation gap.

Objective

This research aims at defining a quantitative instrument for measuring the assimilation gap and applying it to the case of the adoption of OSS.

Method

In this paper, we use the theory of path dependence and increasing returns of Arthur. In particular, we model the use of software applications (planned or actual) by stochastic processes defined by the daily amounts of files created with the applications. We quantify the assimilation gap by comparing the resulting models by measures of proximity.

Results

We apply and validate our method to a real case study of introduction of OpenOffice. We have found a gap between the planned and the effective use despite well-defined directives to use the new OS technology. These findings suggest a need of strategy re-calibration that takes into account environmental factors and individual attitudes.

Conclusions

The theory of path dependence is a valid instrument to model the assimilation gap provided information on strategy toward innovation and quantitative data on actual use are available.     

A clustering technique for the identification of piecewise affine systems

We propose a new technique for the identification of discrete-time hybrid systems in the piecewise affine (PWA) form. This problem can be formulated as the reconstruction of a possibly discontinuous PWA map with a multi-dimensional domain. In order to achieve our goal, we provide an algorithm that exploits the combined use of clustering, linear identification, and pattern recognition techniques. This allows to identify both the affine submodels and the polyhedral partition of the domain on which each submodel is valid avoiding gridding procedures. Moreover, the clustering step (used for classifying the datapoints) is performed in a suitably defined feature space which allows also to reconstruct different submodels that share the same coefficients but are defined on different regions. Measures of confidence on the samples are introduced and exploited in order to improve the performance of both the clustering and the final linear regression procedure.     

Hierarchies of parallel rewriting P systems — A survey

The paper is about some families of rewriting P systems, where the application of evolution rules is extended from the classical sequential rewriting to the parallel one (as, for instance, in Lindenmayer systems). As a result, consistency problems for the communication of strings may arise. Three variants of parallel rewriting P systems (already present in the literature) are considered here, together with the strategies they use to face the communication problem, and some parallelism methods for string rewriting are defined. We give a survey of all known results about each variant and we state some relations among the three variants, thus establishing hierarchies of parallel rewriting P systems. Various open problems related to the subject are also presented. Danicla Besozzi: She is assistant professor at the University of Milano. She received her M.S. in Mathematics (2000) from the University of Como and Ph.D. in Computer Science (2004) from the University of Milano. Her research interests cover topics in Formal Language Theory, Molecular Computing, Systems Biology. She is member of EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science) and EMCC (European Molecular Computing Consortium). Giancarlo Mauri: He is full professor of Computer Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His research interests are mainly in the area of theoretical computer science, and include: formal languages and automata, computational complexity, computational learning theory, soft computing techniques, cellular automata, bioinformatics and molecular computing. On these subjects, he published more than 150 scientific papers in international journals, contributed volumes and conference proceedings. Claudio Zandron: He received Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy, in 2001. Since 2002 he is assistant professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. He is member of the EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science) and of EMCC (European Molecular Computing Consortium). His research interests are Molecular Computing (DNA and Membrane Computing) and Formal Languages.